Lawsuit Says Feminist @jenniferbedbaum Fired Employee in Purge of Lesbians

Posted on | May 2, 2016 | 67 Comments

Jennifer Baumgardner (left) is being sued by Elizabeth Koke (right)

How did I miss this story last fall?

A former staffer at CUNY’s Feminist Press claims she was illegally fired [in December 2014] because her new boss thought the imprint was “too lesbian.”
Elizabeth Koke filed a $3.5 million lawsuit against The Feminist Press, its executive director Jennifer Baumgardner and the City University of New York [in November 2015] claiming retaliation, wrongful termination and discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Koke, 30, says she was three years into her gig as publicity and marketing manager when Baumgardner took over in July 2013 and decided along with the board of directors that the independent publisher was “too lesbian” and needed a “change of direction.”
Baumgardner, 45, allegedly pushed for titles with more “mainstream appeal,” instead of books such as “Therese and Isabelle,” a love story involving two boarding school girls, according to the suit.
Koke claims employees who openly identified as gay were subjected to an environment of “alienation and isolation” and then “systematically terminated or forced out,” including Cary Webb in February 2014 and Amy Scholder in July 2014.
When Koke was let go without explanation on Dec. 22, 2014, she was the last employee who self-identified as lesbian, according to her claim.

Of course, as a conservative, I’m cheering for the plaintiff. If Elizabeth Koke’s suit gets to the discovery phase, her lawyer should email me all the documents and deposition transcripts. It’s not just my wicked anticipation of the possibility Feminist Press and CUNY could be forced to fork over millions to a disgruntled lesbian separatist witch. Beyond that sweet taste of ironic “social justice,” there’s also the potential to personally humiliate the perpetrator of this alleged purge of lesbians, Jennifer Baumgardner, who certainly deserves personal humiliation.

Baumgardner is bisexual and her biography confirms basically every negative stereotype of bisexual women — selfish, opportunistic and immature, playing around with lesbians in her 20s, before eventually settling down with a man. For such women, being with lesbians is really just cheap contraception, a way to avoid growing up. Instead of the whole husband-and-babies adult responsibility thing, the bisexual devotes her youth to bohemian adventure, skipping the high-risk game of heterosexuality for a lesbian roommate. No babies, no mortgage, no really permanent commitment, and none of the predictable difficulties associated with dating the kind of arrogant young bachelors that a young professional woman is likely to meet in the big city.

Look, feminists: I get this part, OK?

The imperious arrogance of young single men in hookup culture is not a new phenomenon. In an age of shameless promiscuity — an era of immoral hedonism that feminists have applauded as “empowerment” — no attractive young man ever has a shortage of female companionship.

“Where are all the good guys?” young women in the city are wont to complain. Alternatively: “Why is my boyfriend afraid of commitment?”

Well, ma’am, he’s not so much afraid of commitment, as he is simply lacking incentives. He’s making pretty good money. He’s a nice-looking guy with a pleasant personality and a bright future ahead of him.

He’s also got you, the girlfriend who’s glad to have a boyfriend who qualifies as a Potential Future Husband. The problem, from the girlfriend’s perspective, is that such a guy is always negotiating from an advantageous position. No need to hurry. A guy like that — 25, 26, 27, just a few years out of college — knows that if this girlfriend doesn’t work out, plenty more candidates are available. This girlfriend is not his first girlfriend, after all, and their “relationship” (as the girlfriend calls it, a word that makes her boyfriend noticeably uncomfortable) is always more serious to her than to him. He’s an ambitious young man on his way to success. He’s got a full head of hair, he hits the gym regularly, he’s driving a nice car and his 401(k) keeps growing. There are lots of young women who would like to be with him, and that’s not likely to change in the near future. No hurry, no pressure, no commitment.

Immoral hedonism is not a game that women usually win, which is why sane parents urge their daughters to avoid immoral hedonism.

No, ma’am, this is not a new game. The Peter Pan Syndrome — a book published in 1983, the year I graduated college — was a shrewd analysis of the narcissistic immaturity of Baby Boomer guys whose refusal to grow up typically took the form of being “afraid of commitment.” The problem wasn’t actually fear, as I say, but was rather a matter of incentives. If there were plenty of single women willing to have sex without marriage (and take my word for it, there were), why should an immoral hedonist bother with “commitment”? Even if a guy wasn’t just out for cheap thrills, if a woman saw him as a Potential Future Husband, and she had no moral scruples about fornication, the guy could easily string her along for six months or a year without even so much as saying “I love you.”

The slut book is here!!! pic.twitter.com/fjwu92zlEm

— Jennifer Baumgardner (@jenniferbedbaum) January 8, 2015

1/15 at @PShiftNYC How to Lose Your Virginity and talkback with dir http://t.co/BBBBbbasVx @VirginityMovie pic.twitter.com/2mCUtx9oFX

— Jennifer Baumgardner (@jenniferbedbaum) January 2, 2015

Are you a teenager whos sick of the status quo around #slutshaming & #rapeculture? Attend the next #stopslut meeting! pic.twitter.com/5RFxMAVmXX

— Jennifer Baumgardner (@jenniferbedbaum) December 2, 2014

Feminists are always publishing sexual memoirs, whereas the old rule that a gentleman does not kiss and tell is still basically in effect, so we almost never hear the guy’s side of these stories. Jennifer Baumgardner is author of a 2007 book called Look Both Ways: Bisexual Politics, which garnered predictably enthusiastic reviews like this:

Baumgardner, coauthor of the “third wave feminist” Manifesta, discovered her own bisexuality shortly after graduating from college, when she unexpectedly fell in love with a “girlie girl” co-worker at Ms. magazine, which was, significantly, the first place she “truly saw women without men as being successes, not failures.” Her story of how she explored her “urge toward bisexuality as a means to figuring out how to have a satisfying, truly equal and truly intimate relationship” weaves a personal thread through the book.

The “girlie-girl” was actually an intern, and whatever happened to her? We don’t know, nor to my knowledge have there been any memoirs by any of Baumgardner’s other ex-girlfriends or ex-boyfriends. From 1997 to 2002, she dated singer Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls and then . . .

I was feeling curious about men and increasingly returned the flirtation of a sexy and misanthropic musician/public-school teacher named Gordon. I threw myself into this new relationship. Within weeks, I was making excuses to my friends about his rudeness and saying things like “You just don’t get his sense of humor. He’s actually hilarious.” I swung between hating him and hating myself. In a moment of self-respect, I broke up with him. In an ensuing moment of denial, we got pregnant. I had a baby, Skuli, but ended the relationship with Gordon. . . .
The first three years of my son’s life were full with writing, book tours, friends, family, and the seemingly endless dramedies of the little boy with whom I lived. . . .
This time around, I dated only men. It’s hard to know why, but my sexuality isn’t some equal-opportunity employer; it has its own logic and serendipity. Just as I was starting to feel like I had my mojo back, I ran into Michael, an old friend of my sister’s, on a subway platform. He was broad shouldered, big eyed, and tall, his hair a thatch of floppy blondness.

My guess? It wasn’t just his looks. This guy also had money, unlike Gordon the musician/teacher, which is why she married Michael, but Jennifer Baumgardner is not going to say this in so many words. Hers is the kind of “happily-ever-after” bisexual fairy-tale ending Third Wave feminists want to believe in, and such stories do happen, but how often? And is this actually the end of  the story? Or will we come back in five or 10 years to read Jennifer Baumgardner’s next memoir, perhaps entitled I Divorced That Abusive Creep: Why I Never Should Have Stopped Dating Lesbians (and You Should Be a Lesbian, Too)? Maybe she’ll use the royalties from that to pay for her children’s therapy, then write another book, My Son, My Daughter: How I Coped With My Child’s Transgender Adolescent Crisis (and You Can, Too). This will eventually be followed by Finally Alone With My Cats: A Third-Wave Feminist Looks Back on Her Courageous Struggle Against Heteropatriarchy.

My next local screening event of #itwasrape is April 25 with @PShiftNYC Please join us! pic.twitter.com/ISa5teo8qa

— Jennifer Baumgardner (@jenniferbedbaum) March 21, 2013

Of course, Jennifer Baumgardner supports the “campus rape epidemic” hysteria, and brags about her “activism” in college:

In 1988, my freshman year at college, one of my friends was raped at a party and became pregnant; she dropped out, had the baby and changed schools, keeping mum about the whole experience for many years. Two women in my dorm were raped by the same international student. At another party, a woman I knew was trapped in a bathroom by her “friend” and not allowed out until she gave him a blow job. . . .
I scheduled meetings with deans where I angrily accused them of not caring about student safety and covering up the “real” rape statistics at my college, Lawrence University, in Appleton, Wisconsin. The Clery Act of 1990 mandated that schools publish their crime statistics, but sexual assaults reported by Lawrence amounted to just two or three; meanwhile, I alone had heard of dozens. Inspired by students at Brown University, my friends and I anonymously published a “castration list” — the names of male students who had raped women we knew — and hung it in the bathroom in the student union. In the end, we didn’t change much, but protesting the injustice and expressing rage felt good, felt important.

Don’t go to college parties and avoid international students — this is probably sound advice for young women, but “expressing rage” is more important for Third Wave feminists than giving young women sound advice. If young men need advice, I will repeat: AVOID FEMINISTS!

As soon as a woman indicates that she is a feminist, this should be a cue to any man to avoid her as much as possible. No male should ever speak to a feminist. . . .
Guys: Learn to take a hint. Learn to walk away.
If a woman tells you she is a feminist, say nothing and walk away.
No feminist wants to hear what a man has to say, and life is too short to waste your time taking to feminists. Just walk away.
Leave feminists alone, and then they can complain about that.

Warn your sons to avoid feminists and, while you’re at it, teach your daughters to avoid feminists, too. pic.twitter.com/PZu54ZoFhG

— FreeStacy (@Not_RSMcCain) April 7, 2016

Think about poor Gordon, the musician/teacher who sired Jennifer Baumgardner’s first child. He’s probably still paying child support, while his son is being raised by his bisexual Third Wave feminist ex-girlfriend and her rich husband. Is anyone offering to publish a memoir by Gordon? No, and neither could any of Jennifer Baumgardner’s ex-girlfriends get a contract for tell-all stories of their relationships with her. The feminist is always the protagonist of the story, and everyone else is a supporting character in the ensemble cast, their existence only important insofar as they play a role in her story. Feminism is ultimately nihilism, an expression of godless selfishness akin to Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, masquerading in 21st-century costumes of “social justice.”

Feminism is about psychological rationalization and scapegoating. Whatever she is unhappy about, whatever goes wrong in her life, the feminist blames on men — “patriarchy,” the male conspiracy that forces girls to get drunk at college parties with foreign guys named Abdul. She is never responsible for anything. She can do as she pleases and the negative consequences are not her fault. She breaks up with her lesbian girlfriend and, because she is now “curious about men,” she hooks up with a “sexy” rude guy, gets pregnant, then dumps him and finds another guy, “broad shouldered, big eyed, and tall,” and now it’s happily-ever-after, because she says so. And if it doesn’t end that way? Blame the patriarchy.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Feminist Roommate Problems. https://t.co/9fpIUqQVoy pic.twitter.com/BVESOvLH8Q

— FreeStacy (@Not_RSMcCain) May 2, 2016

Feminist lesbian witch is alumna of Smith College (annual tuition $46,288) https://t.co/2Jhi2EA8HC pic.twitter.com/1BGHJOzhbh

— FreeStacy (@Not_RSMcCain) May 2, 2016

It’s always beautiful to see feminists publicly going to war against each other. Jennifer Baumgardner allegedly purges lesbian staffers at the Feminist Press? Good! Lesbian witch sues for discrimination? Better!

No matter who wins this case, a feminist loses, and no one will believe either of them when they take turns blaming it on the patriarchy.

“All is proceeding as I have foreseen . . .”

 

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