The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Inappropriate Comments’: TV Executive Fired Over ‘Racially Charged Language’

Posted on | July 19, 2018 | Comments Off on ‘Inappropriate Comments’: TV Executive Fired Over ‘Racially Charged Language’

At age 41, Amy Powell seemed to be on her way to becoming one of the most powerful women in Hollywood as head of Paramount Television, but her career just got derailed by political correctness:

Five years after being tapped to lead the newly relaunched Paramount Television banner, Amy Powell is out.
The news was announced Thursday via an internal memo from Paramount CEO Jim Gianopulos in which he outlined “multiple individuals” who raised “concerns around comments” made by the executive in a “professional setting, which they believed were inconsistent” with Viacom’s values. According to sources, the comments included racially charged language.
“Having spent the past several days conducting a thorough investigation into this matter and speaking to those who were present, our Human Resources and Legal teams came to the same conclusion, and we have made the decision to terminate Amy’s employment, effective immediately,” Gianopulos wrote. . . .
Powell’s firing comes nearly a month after Netflix PR chief Jonathan Friedland was dismissed after repeated uses of the n-word at company functions.

“Social justice is a surveillance culture, a snitch culture.”

 

Category: Hollywood

These People Are Crazy

Posted on | July 19, 2018 | 3 Comments

 

It is not necessary to wonder if transgender people are mentally ill. We have scientific research as proof they’re mentally ill:

Background: Co-morbid psychiatric disorders affect prognosis, psychosocial adjustment and post-surgery satisfaction in patients with gender identity disorder. In this paper, we assessed the frequency of personality disorders in Iranian GID patients.
Methods: Seventy- three patients requesting sex reassignment surgery (SRS) were recruited for this cross- sectional study. Of the participants, 57.5% were biologically male and 42.5% were biologically female. They were assessed through the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory II (MCMI- II).
Results: The frequency of personality disorders was 81.4%. The most frequent personality disorder was narcissistic personality disorder (57.1%) and the least was borderline personality disorder. The average number of diagnoses was 3.00 per patient.
Conclusion: The findings of this study revealed that the prevalence of personality disorders was higher among the participants, and the most frequent personality disorder was narcissistic personality disorder (57.1%), and borderline personality disorder was less common among the studied patients.

(Hat-tip: Gender Identity Watch on Twitter.) We must add the caveat that this study was done at a university hospital in Iran, which is probably not an ideal research setting, but other studies have demonstrated that co-morbidity (i.e., the presence of multiple mental illnesses) is common among transgender people.

And the evidence is often quite visible, as in the case of Liam “Lily” Madigan, the British transgender 19-year-old who got elected as a Labour Party “women’s officer” after getting a woman dismissed for “transphobia.” On his/“her” Twitter account, Madigan admits to being diagnosed as both schizophrenic and autistic.

 

A “civil rights” approach to transgenderism — treating them as victims of unjust discrimination — has the effect of empowering these lunatics, enabling them to bully others in the name of “social justice.”

If more than 80% of transgender patients have personality disorders, and if narcissistic personality disorder is the most common diagnosis, what sort of behavior should we expect them to exhibit?

Avery Edison in 2006 before he began transgender treatment.

Saturday, readers were introduced to Avery Edison (“Loony Troons: Fantasy, Mental Illness and the Transgender Victimhood Narrative”), who infamously claims to be a lesbian with a penis. In the past few days, Edison has continued his/“her” Twitter harangues on this subject.

 

So, in addition to lecturing the online world with “rational, well-argued, and evidence-based” arguments, Avery is also a pornographer using Twitter to peddle obscene photos of himself/“herself” for $10. These are the people who assert that they have a “right” to taxpayer-funded hormones and surgery, who think our education system should promote transgenderism, and who demand special legal protections.

These people are crazy, and Crazy People Are Dangerous.

 

Remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!



 

 

Category: The Transgender Cult

Worst Mother Ever?

Posted on | July 19, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

You’ll have a hard time finding a mother worse than this:

A Kansas City-area woman has been charged with letting men rape her 2-year-old daughter.
Twenty-five-year-old Azzie Watson, of Independence, was charged Tuesday with child abuse and endangerment. Bond is set at $75,000. No attorney is listed for her in online court records.
WDAF-TV reports that court documents say Watson’s boyfriend recorded Watson talking about repeatedly taking her daughter to a house where her daughter was raped about five times. She says on the recording that she watched.
Police were given the recording last month while responding to a rape report at a hospital. Court documents say Watson told detectives that what she said in the recording was a lie because she was scared of her boyfriend. Watson also said she didn’t know how her daughter contracted a sexually transmitted disease.

If your teenage daughter has a sexually transmitted disease, that’s a serious problem. If your 2-year-old daughter has a sexually transmitted disease, somebody’s going to prison.

 

Category: Crime

Sex Offender Goes Transgender, Moves in With Family, Rapes 15-Year-Old Girl

Posted on | July 18, 2018 | 2 Comments

Montana sex offender Albert ‘Aliea’ Brown.

In November, 28-year-old “Aliea” Brown was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to felony rape of a 15-year-old girl. It was not the first time Brown had been charged with such a crime. In 2005, when Albert Brown was 16, he was convicted as a juvenile for raping a 10-year-old girl and registered as a sex offender. Brown later began identifying as female, and moved in with a woman with a teenage daughter:

Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office began investigating reports that a 15-year-old girl was having a sexual relationship with Brown.
Brown told a detective that she had become “like sisters” with the teenage girl and her mom, who Brown was staying with at the time.
Initially denying having a romantic relationship with the girl, Brown eventually admitted that they were in a relationship and that she had consent from the girl’s parents to date her.
Brown admitted to having sex with the girl multiple times. “I know it’s illegal,” she reportedly told a detective.
The detective spoke with the girl, who also initially denied having a relationship with Brown. But when the detective told the girl what Brown had divulged, she became emotional and admitted the two had been sexually involved, also saying she believed it was OK as long as she had parental consent.
The girl’s mother talked to investigators, saying she consented to her daughter’s relationship with Brown. She said she researched online and believed it was OK for Brown and the teenage girl to be in a romantic relationship as long as they had parental permission. She said she knew Brown was a sex offender.
The mother, who lived in Belgrade, was later charged with felony accountability for sexual intercourse without consent for allowing the relationship. She was also charged with felony custodial interference.
As part of a plea agreement, in March the mother pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of children and obstructing a public servant. She received a six-month suspended sentence and was ordered to complete 20 hours of community service.

So, 10 years in prison for the transgender pedophile, but just a couple of misdemeanors for the mom who approved of this “relationship.”

By law, sex with a 15-year-old is rape in most states. The law stipulates that persons below the statutory age cannot legally consent. It is obvious that many teenagers begin having sex before the age of consent, which varies from state to state, but the law is the law and, in general, parents are grateful for this legal protection of their children.

That a mother would go online to research whether it was legal for her 15-year-old daughter to have sex with a 28-year-old sex offender, and then approve of this crime, is rather mind-boggling. What is perhaps even more mind-boggling is that being an active accomplice to a felony would merit only a suspended sentence. They were “like sisters.” Ick.

Speaking of which, celebrity sex-change teenager Jazz Jennings underwent “gender confirmation surgery” last month. How is it even legal for parents to turn their child into a freak-show exhibit for the sake of a cable-TV “reality” show contract? Oh, I’m a hater for asking that.

UPDATE: Holy smokes! Thanks to the commenter who pointed me to the police affidavit in the Brown case, where we learn that Brown was introducing his teenage victim to the BDSM “lifestyle.”



 

Category: Crime, Montana, The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 07.18.18

Posted on | July 18, 2018 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 07.18.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #320
EBL: National Hot Dog Day. Related:


(h/t @SenatorShoshanna)
Twitchy: Slate’s Jamelle Bouie Leads Charge To Crap On This Wonderful Story
Louder With Crowder: Sacha Baron Cohen Gets Busted By California Gun Store Owner

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Welcome To The Jungle
American Power: Trump Calls Off Cold War II, also, Causal Link Found Between Screen Time & ADHD
American Thinker: History Explains Eastern Europe’s Hostility To Islam
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: If Dianne Feinstein Is Too Right-Wing For Democrats… also, Twitter Bans Satirist Godfrey Elfwick Again
CDR Salamander: Bye, Bye Bastion
Da Tech Guy: All You Need To Know About The MSM/Establishment Freakout Over The Trump/Putin Presser, also, Meaningless Media Spreading Manufactured Outrage – Among Itself
Don Surber: Boycotter Faces Boycott
Dustbury: Paranoia Strikes Creep
Fausta: Good News Of The Day – Texas To Pass Iraq, Iran As World’s #3 Energy Powerhouse
First Street Journal: NY AG & Governor File Suit Over “Unconstitutional” Tax Cuts, also, Trump Derangement Syndrome Meeting Hall
The Geller Report: Peter Strzok Grew Up In Iran, Saudi Arabia; Was Obama & Brennan’s Envoy To Iranian Regime, also, Czech PM Says Accepting Muslim Migrants “Road To Hell”, EU Must Stop The Boats
Hogewash: The Water’s Edge, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
Legal Insurrection: Establishment Democrats Already Tired Of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also, House Bill Includes $5 Billion For Border Wall And More ICE Agents
Michelle Malkin: Ms. Diversity Con-Artista – Boston University’s Fake-O-Nomics Darling
The PanAm Post: How Mao Zedong Helped To Reduce Poverty
Power Line: A Feel-Good Citizenship Story, also, Loony Dems Want Trump’s Russia Interpreter To Testify
Shot In The Dark: If You Think Healthcare Is Expensive Now, Wait Until It’s “Free”
The Political Hat: To Dissolve The People And Elect Another
This Ain’t Hell: Wednesday Morning Feelgood Stories, also, Security Concerns Led To “Weeding Out” Foreign Troops
Victory Girls: Democrats Looking For A Fresh Face
Weasel Zippers: Former CIA Director Brennan Says Intel Community May Start Withholding Info From Trump, also, Walls Closing In On NJ Dem Senator Bob Menendez, Could Fall To GOP Challenger
Mark Steyn: “Live In Truth” – Steyn Receives George Jonas Freedom Award


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Category: Linkagery

Trump’s Summer Summit Bummer

Posted on | July 18, 2018 | Comments Off on Trump’s Summer Summit Bummer

Here’s the top of the headline stack at the Drudge Report today:

 

Someone in the comments yesterday wanted to get my take on the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki, a topic I’ve deliberately avoided. It cannot be denied he’s had a bad week, perception-wise, at least. Trying to assess the damage immediately — amid a climate of cable-news hysteria — is difficult. Remember, I’m that guy who thought the Access Hollywood tapes spelled certain doom for Trump a month before his 2016 election. We are now less than four months away from the mid-term election, which will be the crucial test of the success of Trumpism. Right now I’d say the odds are 60-40 the Democrats take back the House.

The important thing to remember is that a couple of bad news cycles this early in an election year never make or break a campaign. In the age of instant information via cable news and social media, there’s a temptation to panic over every new development. But it is foolish to believe that one bad week in July — and, to be honest, this past week has been very bad — is going to make a difference in November.

If Team Trump can get its act together, they can shake this off and keep moving forward with an emphasis on the economic good news. If the guys at the RNC are smart — notice the word “if” there — they’ll target the key districts with upbeat ads focused on a positive message about how Trump is keeping his promises, cutting taxes, adding a record number of jobs, restoring American pride, rounding up illegal aliens, etc. No matter what the liberal media says about Trump, people are feeling pretty good about the economy, and that ought to be a major selling point in the final stretch after Labor Day, when ordinary people really start paying attention. Right now, in mid-July, the poll numbers aren’t encouraging for Republicans, but that doesn’t mean they can’t turn it around.

So that’s my take, basically: Don’t panic. Stay positive.



 

Category: Donald Trump, Russia

In The Mailbox: 07.17.18

Posted on | July 17, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Proof Positive: The Least Serious President In The History Of the Republic On Ukraine, Syria, & The Economy, Part Deux
EBL: As Giant Street Puppets Go, These Are Pretty Spectacular
Twitchy: Fact-Checking The Fact-Checkers – Byron York Looks Into Trump’s Claim About DNC Servers
Louder With Crowder: Amputee Actress Criticizes The Rock For Playing An Amputee

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Thinker: Correction – Trump Did Not Absolve Russians Of Meddling
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Clueless Socialist News
BattleSwarm: Everything In The Middle East Is Blowing Up, also, Socialism is The Axe Body Spray Of Ideologies
CDR Salamander: PEO Ships Goes Quasi-Salamander
Da Tech Guy: Even Social Justice Must Give Way To Basic Economics, also, Homage To Cowboys & Wyoming
Don Surber: Backing A Man Who Renounced His Citizenship, Denouncing Trump
Dustbury: The Original Rhumba Girl
First Street Journal: What Have I Been Doing?
The Geller Report: Nearly 600 Pregnant Illegals Hoping To Have Anchor Babies In The US Detained in The Last Five Months, also, Left Has Massive Hysterical Meltdown Over Trump’s Meeting With Putin
Hogewash: If It Looks Like A Duck…, also, Team Kimberlin Post of The Day
JustOneMinute: When You’ve Lost Laura Ingraham…
Legal Insurrection: After Post-Summit Meltdown, Carry On, also, Trump Discusses Russia Meeting With Congress, Clarifies Post-Meeting Remarks
The PanAm Post: Ecuador’s Former President Correa Implicated In Assassination Plot
Power Line: The Russia Indictments – Why Now? also, Ocasio-Cortez – Occupy Every Airport!
Shark Tank: NFIB Endorses Governor Scott
Shot In The Dark: Chefs On The Battlefield, Generals In The Kitchen
STUMP: Taxing Tuesday – Taxes On My Horizon
The Political Hat: AP Exam Sends Thousands Of Years Of History Down The Memory Hole
This Ain’t Hell: A Navy Cross For Marine 1LT Manion? also, Nicaragua – Another Communist Paradise
Victory Girls: UK PM’s Support Dropping Like Mayflies
Volokh Conspiracy: 9th Circuit Upholds Preliminary Injunction Against Magazine Confiscation In CA
Weasel Zippers: Dem Rep Steve Cohen Calls For Military Coup Against Trump, also, ICE Takes Aim At San Francisco Sanctuary City Law In “Rideshare Rapist” Case
Megan McArdle: Did We Win The War On Poverty?
Mark Steyn: Clubland Open Thread


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Category: Linkagery

The Butler Did It: ‘Gender Trouble’ and the Academic Roots of the #Transcult

Posted on | July 17, 2018 | Comments Off on The Butler Did It: ‘Gender Trouble’ and the Academic Roots of the #Transcult

 

When I began researching feminism in 2014, one of the first controversies that came to my attention was the conflict between radical feminists and transgender activists. Initially, my impulse was to point and laugh at what I called the Competitive Victimhood Derby, but after further investigation, it became apparent to me that the radical feminists — crazy as they might be — were actually on the side of truth.

The stubborn facts of human nature, the biological reality of sexual dimorphism, have been targeted by a deranged mob of activists engaged in a species of magical thinking, using rhetorical distortions and propaganda slogans in an effort to hijack the Feminist™ brand as a political weapon to be used for projects that were harmful to women. We may observe that this conflict, which had smoldered for many years on the radical fringe, burst into a widespread conflagration circa 2013 and has been raging out of control for the past five years. That is to say, the transgender rage against so-called “TERFs” (trans-exclusive radical feminists) became a public spectacle during Obama’s second term, and around the time the Supreme Court (in the U.S. v. Windsor decision) struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.

The political context of this conflict, then, overlapped with the attempted exploitation of the Feminist™ brand by Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign, and also with the judicial triumph of the same-sex marriage cause (in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision). Was the timing of this merely coincidental? I think not. One doesn’t need a conspiracy theory to see that, with the cultural Left seemingly triumphant circa 2013-2015, and the Feminist™ brand being widely celebrated in the lead-up to the 2016 election, there were many incentives for a power struggle within the “progressive” coalition. As the late Andrew Breitbart often said, politics is downstream from culture, and it is from this perspective that we must examine the cultural ideas that produce conflict within the factions of the Left’s 21st-century identity-politics coalition.

‘Gender Trouble’ made Professor Judith Butler a major academic figure.

We must look to academia to find the roots of this conflict. Modern feminism, which began on the fringes of the radical New Left in the 1960s had, by the 1990s, gained influence on university campuses via the Left’s “long march through the institutions.” It is impossible to understand what feminism has become in the past 25 years without examining the work of UC-Berkeley professor Judith Butler, as I explained in “Feminism: Reality Is a Social Construct” (March 30, 2017):

The enormous influence of Professor Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity has served as the vehicle by which French philosopher Michel Foucault (The History of Sexuality) became a feminist idol. . . . Keep in mind that Butler’s book is lodged more or less permanently among the Top 10 Amazon bestsellers . . . not because it is pleasant reading, but because it is required reading in so many college and university courses. Every year, many tens of thousands of young people enroll in Women’s Studies classes, and are introduced to Professor Butler’s version of feminist gender theory — the social construction of the gender binary within the heterosexual matrix.

This brief summary of Professor Butler’s influential book requires us to think clearly about three separate but related concepts:

  1. There is no such thing as human nature in terms of sexual behavior — no biological urges or instincts are involved in the behavioral differences between men and women, according to Professor Butler. All of the typical male/female patterns we may observe are the artificial products of “society,” which constructs “gender” for purposes having nothing to do with the innate qualities of men and women, as such.
  2. The division of human beings into two categories — male and female, produced by “society” — is at once both (a) essentially fictitious and (b) oppressive to women. The artificial nature of the “gender binary” is a reflection of “regimes of power/discourse” (a concept derived from Foucault) and this “binary” is also a gender hierarchy, as Butler acknowledges (p. xxx in the 1999 edition, which also cites Professor Catharine MacKinnon, pp. xii-xiii).
  3. Professor Butler’s real target, what she seeks to destroy by the “subversion of identity,” is not gender, however, but heterosexuality, per se. She does not avow this openly, by stating her destructive purpose in any declarative sentence that might be quoted as an aphorism. Indeed, quoting Professor Butler’s jargon-laden academic prose is difficult; she tends to ask leading questions, rather than to state anything plainly in concise, direct prose. Yet the anti-heterosexual premise of Gender Trouble is readily apparent to the careful and intelligent reader.

This is a topic I addressed in “Yes, ‘Gender’ Is About Sex” (April 2016):

Any reader familiar with the sources cited by Professor Butler — not only [Monique] Wittig, but also Adrienne Rich, Gayle Rubin, Esther Newton, Teresa de Lauretis, Eve Sedwick, Diana Fuss, et al. — recognizes that she takes for granted all feminist arguments made against heterosexuality. It was simply unnecessary, in 1990, for Professor Butler to cite such outspoken lesbian-feminist enemies of heterosexuality as Charlotte Bunch, Jill Johnston, Mary Daly, Marilyn Frye and Joyce Trebilcot. By the time Gender Trouble was published, there were enough such radicals among the tenured faculty of Women’s Studies that once Professor Butler invoked “gender hierarchy and compulsory heterosexuality” (on the second page of her 1990 preface), all of her academic readers could be expected to nod in recognition: “Yes, we see exactly where she’s coming from here.”

What is apparent to the intelligent reader familiar with Professor Butler’s sources, however, is not necessarily evident to the many tens of thousands of university students who, every year, are required to read Gender Trouble. The sophomore who signs up for a class called “Sexuality and Culture” (University of Texas) or “Theories of Gender and Sexuality” (University of Pittsburgh) expecting an easy “A” may be confused by the time she reaches page 7 of Professor Butler’s book:

Perhaps there is an opportunity at this juncture of cultural politics, a period that some would call “postfeminist,” to reflect from within a feminist perspective on the injunction to construct a subject of feminism. . . .
Is the construction of the category of women as a coherent and stable subject an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations? And is not such a reification precisely contrary to feminist aims? To what extent does the category of women achieve stability and coherence only in the context of the heterosexual matrix?[6]

Imagine yourself a sophomore, maybe hungover from last night’s keg party, trying to make sense of those three sentences. Notice, however, that two of these sentences are questions, and Professor Butler never provides direct answers to these questions. Perhaps, seeing the footnote, the sophomore will turn to page 209 and find this:

6. I use the term heterosexual matrix throughout the text to designiate that grid of cultural intelligibility through which bodies, genders, and desires are naturalized. I am drawing from Monique Wittig’s notion of the “heterosexual contract” and, to a lesser extent, on Adrienne Rich’s notion of “compulsory heterosexuality” to characterize a hegemonic discursive/epistemic model of gender intelligibility that assumes that for bodies to cohere and make sense there must be a stable sex expressed through a stable gender (masculine expresses male, feminine expresse female) that is oppositionally and hierarchically defined through the compulsory practice of heterosexuality.

Look, I don’t care how high your SAT score was, there’s no way you can understand that paragraph without reading it at least twice, and how many college sophomores are going to be as diligent as I was, in that I ordered copies of Monique Wittig’s and Adrienne Rich’s books in an effort to make sure I understood the sources cited by Professor Butler?

Isn’t it obvious that the typical reader’s feeling of confusion as to what Professor Butler means is something she deliberate intended? That is to say, she was writing “over the heads” of the lay reader, communicating in a specialized jargon only her academic peers could understand.

“It is difficult to come to grips with Butler’s ideas, because it is difficult to figure out what they are,” declared Professor Martha Nussbaum in a 1999 essay for The New Republic. A feminist herself, Professor Nussbaum spent more than 8,000 words decoding Professor Butler’s ideas and pronounced them “evil,” a formula for political passivity:

It tells scores of talented young women that they need not work on changing the law, or feeding the hungry, or assailing power through theory harnessed to material politics. They can do politics in safety of their campuses, remaining on the symbolic level, making subversive gestures at power through speech and gesture.

In other words, from Professor Nussbaum’s left-wing perspective, the message of Gender Trouble — that the “subversion of identity” is the chief project of feminism — does not yield anything useful in terms of the kind of “social justice” that progressive politics should seek.

Does this mean that Professor Butler’s ideas are conservative? No, it means that Professor Butler encourages a politics of gesture.

This Is Why Trump Won

The typical sophomore student is apt to conclude, from her introductory Gender Studies class, that her duty as a feminist is not to cooperate with the “regulation and reification of gender relations,” to escape from the cage of “gender intelligibility” that is the “heterosexual matrix.” In other words, membership in the LGBT community is the sine qua non — and perhaps also the summum bonum — of being a feminist. Read more

Category: Intellectuals, Sex Trouble, The Transgender Cult
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