The Other McCain

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

Feminism and ‘Strong Delusion’

Posted on | May 30, 2016 | 28 Comments

 

One of the things you notice about feminists, if you pay attention, is how many of them lack basic self-awareness. It seems unfair to accuse them of hypocrisy because it seems they cannot perceive the contradictions of their arguments, which are apparent to anyone outside the feminist cult. We often behold in feminism the neurotic psychology of self-justifying rationalizations, scapegoating and projection. Furthermore, because their worldview is essentially paranoid — a fear-based belief system that relies on an imaginary patriarchal conspiracy — feminists conjure up phantom threats with which to do battle. Consider the claims of Valerie Tarico:

Sexual intimacy and pleasure are some of humanity’s most cherished experiences. The so-called “best things in life” include natural beauty, fine dining, the arts, thrilling adventures, creative pursuits and community service. But love and orgasms are among the few peak experiences that are equally available to rich and poor, equally sweet to those whose lives are going according to plan and to many whose dreams are in pieces.
Religious conservatives think that these treasured dimensions of the human experience should be available to only a privileged few people whose lives fit their model: male-dominated, monogamous, heterosexual pairs who have pledged love and contractual marriage for life. . . .
To be clear, I’m not saying that Christianity’s sex rules are only a function of patriarchal Christian privilege. During the Iron Age, from whence Christianity’s sex rules got handed down, society was organized around kin groups, and the endlessly warmongering clans of the Ancient Near East were more at risk of extinction than overpopulation. Legally enforced monogamy created lines of inheritance and social obligation, clarifying how neighbors should be treated and who could be enslaved.
Also, hetero sex necessarily carried the risk of pregnancy, which made it adaptive to welcome resultant pregnancies. Children do best in stable, nurturing families and communities, and in the Ancient Near East, “No marriage? No sex!” may have served to protect the well-being of mothers and children as well as the social power of patriarchal men. But in today’s mobile, pluralistic societies with modern contraceptive options and social safety nets, God’s self-appointed sex police have little credible excuse save their own compelling need to bully and boss and stay on top.
It should come as no surprise that Church authorities want an exclusive license to grant “legitimate” sexual privileges. . . .
The ways in which God’s Self-Appointed Sex Police try to obstruct intimacy and orgasms are legion. . . .

You can read the whole thing, but you get the drift here. Along with her simplistic anthropology — locating the source of “patriarchal Christian privilege” in the Iron Age in the “Ancient Near East” — Tarico also provides a simplistic sociology in which “mobile, pluralistic societies with modern contraceptive options and social safety nets” have transcended these allegedly primitive “sex rules.” However, when we consider the basic procreative function of sex, the need for “stable, nurturing families and communities” has remained unchanged by modernity. Before there can be a “pluralistic society” with all the features Tarico describes, there must first be human life — children must be conceived, born and raised to adulthood — and it is therefore harmful to sneer dismissively at the family unit (and its attendant “sex rules”) as an obsolete remnant of a primitive past. Consider this list of states, ranked by total fertility rate (TFR, average lifetime births per woman, calculated on 2014 birth rates):

TOP FIVE
Utah ……………………. 2.33
South Dakota ……….. 2.27
North Dakota ………. 2.24
Alaska …………………. 2.19
Nebraska …………….. 2.16

BOTTOM FIVE
Connecticut …………. 1.63
Vermont ……………… 1.63
New Hampshire …… 1.58
Massachusetts ……… 1.58
Rhode Island ……….. 1.56

On average, women in conservative, religious Utah have 49% more babies than do women in liberal, secular Rhode Island. Whatever other socioeconomic or demographic differences there may be between the high-fertility and low-fertility states, we see that the “Birth Dearth” (as Ben Wattenberg called it) is most evident in liberal New England.

You will perhaps not be surprised to learn that Valerie Tarico supports population control as a solution to climate change, because more babies mean more carbon emissions. Unfortunately for the Gaia-worshipping “green” cult, however, the world’s most prolific baby-makers are unlikely to be reading their arguments.

Top Ten Countries by Total Fertility Rate
(Average lifetime births per woman)

  1. Niger …………………….. 6.76
  2. Burundi ………………… 6.09
  3. Mali ……………………… 6.06
  4. Somalia ………………… 5.99
  5. Uganda ………………… 5.89
  6. Burkina Faso ………… 5.86
  7. Zambia …………………. 5.72
  8. Malawi …………………. 5.60
  9. Angola …………………. 5.37
  10. Afghanistan …………. 5.33

Probably the folks in Burundi and Burkina Faso don’t worry too much about their carbon emissions. Meanwhile, in the First World . . .

Total Fertility Rates for
Selected Industrial Nations

South Korea …………… 1.25
Japan …………………….. 1.40
Greece ……………………. 1.42
Italy ……………………….. 1.43
Germany ………………… 1.44
Austria …………………… 1.46
Spain ……………………… 1.49
Switzerland ……………. 1.55
Canada ………………….. 1.59
Denmark ……………….. 1.73
Australia ………………… 1.77
Belgium …………………. 1.78
Netherlands …………… 1.78
United States …………. 1.87

The demographic collapse of industrialized societies, due to their abnormally low birth rates, is a very serious social problem.

“Europe needs many more babies to avert a population disaster” was the headline on a Guardian article in August 2015, and if the problem is not quite so bad in the United States, perhaps we can thank the Iron Age “sex rules” of “patriarchal Christian privilege” that Valerie Tarico deplores.

Yet who is playing “self-appointed sex police” in our society? Where do we see those with a “compelling need to bully and boss and stay on top”?

 

It is feminists who are the “sex police” on America’s university campuses where, backed by the power of the federal government, they are implementing new laws and policies that deprive students of basic rights in the name of fighting a non-existent “rape epidemic.”

Is America suffering from too much marriage and monogamy, as Valerie Tarico’s argument implies, or is the exact opposite true? Aren’t most of the problems that feminists criticize as “rape culture” the product of a society where random hookups are commonplace and where “sex rules” — the social standards and customs surrounding sexuality — are in a state of chaos and confusion? In a society where dating apps like Tinder and OKCupid make it easy to find partners for casual sex encounters, young people in the 21st century do not lack sexual freedom. What they do lack are meaningful and committed relationships, the kind that those allegedly primitive Iron Age “sex rules” helped protect. We see that Valerie Tarico’s paranoid fear of “patriarchal Christian privilege” has led her into a counterfactual belief system — exactly as the Bible warned.

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
— II Thessalonians 2:11-12 (KJV)

In 1973, radical feminist Mary Daly proclaimed the “spiritual dimension of feminist consciousness” in a movement that manifested itself “not only as Antichrist but also as Antichurch,” as a “rising woman-consciousness” unleashing chaos and terror by destroying the “Christocentric cosmos.” This deliberate destruction of Christian belief — “the myths of patriarchy,” in Daly’s phrase — obviously would have enormous consequences. What sort of culture would we expect to emerge in a society that rejects the divine authority of “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13) and other biblical commandments? Oddly enough, we may cite here the testimony of lesbian feminist Suzanne Pharr:

According to the FBI, there are several thousand women killed by their husbands and boyfriends every year. This number does not include the great numbers of women killed by rapists on the street and in their homes. . . .
Men beat, rape and kill women because they can; that is, because they live in a society that gives permission to the hatred of women.

So she wrote in “Hate Violence Against Women,” an essay included in the 1993 Women’s Studies textbook Feminist Frameworks. Is it true that we now “live in a society that gives permission to the hatred of women”? What sort of madness is this? Only in a society that has ceased to value women’s unique role in the creation of human life could this kind of violent “hatred of women” flourish, and what kind of fool would dare attack human life at its very source? Oh, wait . . .

“Marriage means rape and lifelong slavery.”
— Ti-Grace Atkinson, 1969

“Pregnancy is barbaric. . . .
“Moreover, childbirth hurts. And it isn’t good for you. . . .
“Reproduction of the species cost women dearly. . . . Women were the slave class that maintained the species in order to free the other half for the business of the world.”
— Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (1970)

“Women’s oppression is based in the fact that she reproduces the species. . . .
“In terms of the oppression of women, heterosexuality is the ideology of male supremacy.”
— Margaret Small, “Lesbians and the Class Position of Women,” in Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, edited by Nancy Myron and Charlotte Bunch (1975)

“The first condition for escaping from forced motherhood and sexual slavery is escape from the patriarchal institution of marriage.”
— Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (1988)

“I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding . . . time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . . This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”
— Amanda Marcotte, March 2014

Feminists condemn marriage as slavery and reject motherhood as oppression, and denounce babies as “time-sucking monsters.” Do they imagine their radical worldview will have no negative consequences? What did feminists expect their death cult ideology would produce?

When Valerie Tarico celebrates abortion as a “blessing,” do she believe that her hateful arguments against life itself will not undermine morality? Doesn’t feminism, by inciting murderous hatred toward the innocent in the name of “choice,” undermine the moral basis of kindness and respect toward others? Yet those in the grip of “strong delusion” quickly lose touch with reality and succumb to all manner of wickedness and folly.

Valerie Tarico praises Satanism, she accuses pro-lifers of “penis worship,” and promotes transgenderism. And have I neglected to mention perhaps the ultimate irony, that Valerie Tarico has a Ph.D. in psychology?

I was 26, in the last stage of my PhD program . . . at the University of Washington. . . .
I said to the god in my head, “I’m not making excuses for you anymore. I quit.” And just like that, God was gone.

When confronted by such a claim, logic requires us to point out that, if God exists, His existence is independent of any individual’s belief. Facts are facts, and you are free to believe whatever you want, but your belief does not alter the facts. The truth is still true. Furthermore, nature abhors a vacuum and, in consequence of the modern assault on Christianity, we constantly see proof of a familiar phenomenon: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

Valerie Tarico encourages hatred toward Christians in the name of “science,” and encourages hatred toward men in the name of “feminism.” It is useless to argue with fanatical atheists, because arguments require respect for facts and logic, and their hatred is wholly irrational. They are under “strong delusion” and find “pleasure in unrighteousness.”

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The Sex Trouble project has been supported by contributions from readers. The first edition of Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War on Human Nature is available from Amazon.com, $11.96 in paperback or $1.99 in Kindle ebook format.





 


Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

28 Responses to “Feminism and ‘Strong Delusion’”

  1. NRPax
    May 30th, 2016 @ 4:26 pm

    Just for amusement’s sake, I ran the numbers about how many women are allegedly raped at college and used my own college as an example.

    Call me a heterocisgenderedrightwinghomophobe, but I’m just a bit skeptical that over 2000 rapes happened in one year on 216 acres. Can’t help but think that “rape culture” is a fake.

  2. robertstacymccain
    May 30th, 2016 @ 4:54 pm

    Yeah, as soon as you start doing the math on the “1-in-5” statistic, applying it to specific schools, what I’ve called “The Campus Rape Shortage” becomes blindingly obvious. Others who have run the numbers have found that the actual statistic can’t possibly be higher than 1-in-40 — which is still not good, but it’s just one-eighth of what feminists are claiming. News flash: FEMINISTS LIE!

  3. NRPax
    May 30th, 2016 @ 5:01 pm

    You know that the Usual Suspects will see your article called “The Campus Rape Shortage” and interpret that to mean you’re advocating for more rape, yes? I’m sure you don’t care but I felt the need to point that out. -:-)

  4. Steve Skubinna
    May 30th, 2016 @ 5:31 pm

    I know a few conservatives, and a few religious people, and none of them want to be religious or sex or anything police. They may have strong ideas of what it right, but for the most part do not intend going into anybody’s bedrooms.

    Proggies, on the other hand? I doubt there is one not willing to monitor peoples’ behavior, speech, and thought. Willing? Eager.

    In the meantime, they love pointing and shrieking at religious people who have no interest to meddle in their personal lives, and would like nothing more than to be just left alone. But leaving people alone is not in the proggie playbook.

  5. RS
    May 30th, 2016 @ 7:25 pm

    I shall go back and finish this entry, but I needed to note the inconsistency between the idea of “social safety-nets,” which presumes a work force composed of, you know, people and the idea that the procreative essence of the family is somehow obsolete. One cannot have it both ways. Either there are enough babies born to pay the bills or there are not. Unless, of course, the oh-so-progressive Ms. Tarico is planning on importing a bunch of brown people on whose non-English speaking backs, she intends to place her world, of “fine dining, adventure,” etc.

  6. NeoWayland
    May 30th, 2016 @ 7:26 pm

    Pardon, but Christianity does not equal Western Civilization.

    I agree that the FamousFeminists™ are corrosive. It’s a mistake assuming that they are only attacking Christianity. Just as it’s a mistake to assume that many ideas originated with Christianity, or that only Christianity shaped our culture.

  7. NeoWayland
    May 30th, 2016 @ 7:30 pm

    Sadly, I have known some who have. I’m even related to a few.

    Fortunately they are a minority, and are obnoxious enough to keep themselves out of any real influence.

    One thing I like about conservatives in general is that they are usually upfront with you and they don’t do backstabbing.

  8. NRPax
    May 30th, 2016 @ 7:33 pm

    I thought feminists wanted procreation using only egg cells?

  9. RS
    May 30th, 2016 @ 7:40 pm

    Well, at least Mary Daly was honest about her intentions. Despising Creation and its subsequent perversion via Original Sin, she and her minions indeed wish to become gods in order to destroy and then re-create the universe in their image. Such a desire is, of course, not limited to feminists but is the hallmark of all Progressives. They need a human created god to worship, receive sacrifices and bestow bounty upon his/her/its acolytes. The fact that, like Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, their god has consistently been found wanting is irrelevant. The important thing is that he/she/it is formed from their own minds and shaped by their own hands, which they’ll use to pat themselves on the back all the way to Sheol.

  10. RS
    May 30th, 2016 @ 7:43 pm

    I’m sure that’s part of the fantasy world which inspires their onanistic frenzies. which occupy their free time when they’re not publishing doggerel on the internet.

  11. RS
    May 30th, 2016 @ 7:57 pm

    News flash: FEMINISTS LIE!

    Obviously, the numbers do not add up. I’ve mentioned before, at my son’s STEM university which has has a 3 to 1 male female ratio, the worst on campus crime in the last six years was a stolen laptop.

    That said, when you redefine “rape” to include regret, then anything goes.

  12. Steve White
    May 30th, 2016 @ 8:09 pm

    The feature quote from Valerie Terico: project much, Valerie?

  13. Joe Joe
    May 30th, 2016 @ 8:14 pm

    The biggest brakes on sex now are coming from the feminists and the state:
    http://www.cotwa.info/

  14. RS
    May 30th, 2016 @ 8:30 pm

    Ok, I clicked over and read the whole thing. Suffice it to say, Ms. Tarico’s opus can be summed up as follows: “I don’t believe in the Christian God and think His injunctions regarding sex are wrong.” No word about “policing” in the sense she wishes the casual web surfer to understand it, unless you think that religious organizations preaching conduct prescribed by their seminal texts constitutes “policing.”

    Oh, and she stretches the term “underprivileged” to the breaking point, I suppose to get the Progressive fish to hit on the click-bait. That is “underprivileged” means anybody (like her) who does not subscribe to Christian sexual morality.

    In short, it’s a waste of time. She must have running against a deadline.

  15. Robert What?
    May 30th, 2016 @ 8:36 pm

    I agree – marriage is slavery. For the man.

  16. Fail Burton
    May 30th, 2016 @ 10:48 pm

    Gee, why would mentally ill radical lesbians be against normal relations between men and women? Doesn’t add up. They are the truth tellers and wise women of the world.

  17. Fail Burton
    May 30th, 2016 @ 10:52 pm

    “Mark J. Perry ?@Mark_J_Perry Check Out These Stats: If the ‘1 in 5 Women’ Claim is True, There’s a Campus Sexual Assault Every Minute of Every Day”

    “Number of Women Enrolled in Degree-Granting Postsecondary Institutions: 11,723,000

    Annual Number of Campus Sexual Assaults if ‘One in Five’ Women Claim is True: 586,150

    Number of Campus Sexual Assaults Every Day of the Year: 1,606

    Number of Campus Sexual Assaults Every Hour: 66.9

    Number of Campus Sexual Assaults Every Minute: 1.1”

  18. Colorado Alex
    May 30th, 2016 @ 11:01 pm

    I’ll trust the institution that has two thousand years of human behavior to draw on over a group of women who aren’t nearly as smart as they like to believe.

  19. Steve Skubinna
    May 31st, 2016 @ 10:08 am

    They’re too good for us. We do not deserve them.

    And I wholly agree with that latter point.

  20. DeadMessenger
    May 31st, 2016 @ 1:24 pm

    I think history shows us that Western Civilization does equal Christianity, but that’s neither here nor there.

    The issue at hand is that belief systems can make you an enemy of the state. Not behaviors. Which is why the government supports LGBT groups, cross-gender bathrooms and locker rooms, and will also later support polygamy, pedophilia, bestiality, etc. It simply doesn’t care, because behavioral systems are no threat to it.

    Belief systems such as feminism and radical environmentalism/Gaia worship, Marxism, and others are supportive of the direction that the government wishes to go, and are thus no threat. Islam is totalitarian, anti-Constitutional and pro-Sharia, so same thing.

    Many members of other religions such as Wicca, Buddhism, etc., also fall into one or more of the above groups, so again, no threat.

    So which large group of people, most certainly in this country, and also to a lesser extent in other Western countries, generally not only do NOT fall into one of the above groups, but actively object to them? Which group is actively pro-Constitution? In this country, which group is likely to be the heaviest armed? Which group is the military actively discouraging from participation or removing from the armed forces?

    THAT group is an enemy of the state. (The DHS said so.) That group is most affected by anti-prayer laws, or rules regarding religious displays. That is the group most adversely affected by anti-Christian behavioral and belief indoctrination in schools. And speaking of which, why is it that there are two theories as to the emergence of life, neither of which can be empirically proven by controlled laboratory experiments, but evolution is indoctrinated as fact, and Intelligent Design is verboten?

    I’m calling it now: Hillary Clinton will be placed in office this year. And toward the end of her first year in office, as the Constitution is relatively rapidly burned to the ground (abetted by her future SCOTUS choices), the active persecution of Christians will begin in earnest.

  21. Quartermaster
    May 31st, 2016 @ 1:42 pm

    It didn’t start with Christianity = Western Civ, but it became that with the fall of Rome. There was nothing else to hold it all together.

  22. NRPax
    May 31st, 2016 @ 3:17 pm

    Maybe I just hung around the better parts of campus. “Oh sorry; didn’t realize you were raping. I’ll just head the other direction.”

  23. NRPax
    May 31st, 2016 @ 3:18 pm

    If only they would go away so we knew how special they were to us.

  24. NeoWayland
    June 1st, 2016 @ 12:46 pm

    Pardon, but that is not exactly true.

    There’s always trade.

  25. NeoWayland
    June 1st, 2016 @ 12:56 pm

    ?I think history shows us that Western Civilization does equal Christianity, but that’s neither here nor there.?

    Actually it is here and there. Christians like to claim that Christianity is the sole source of inspiration, goodness, and moral fibre. Or at least THE major source.

    Where do you think the progressives learned it?

    ?The issue at hand is that belief systems can make you an enemy of the state.?

    I agree. Which is why I don’t think any belief system should be enshrined in law. Even the ones you like. When it comes to beliefs controlling other people, I have to stand with Ferris Bueller.

    ?Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.” Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I’d still have to bum rides off people.?
    — Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

  26. Glenna Wood
    June 2nd, 2016 @ 1:24 am

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    two days ago grey McLaren. P1 I bought after earning 18,512 Dollars..it was my previous month’s payout..just a little over.17k Dollars Last month..3-5 hours job a day…with weekly payouts..it’s realy the simplest. job I have ever Do.. I Joined This 7 months. ago. and now making over hourly. 87 Dollars…Learn. More right Here !tr450u:?:?:.?.?.?.? http://GlobalSuperJobsReportsEmploymentsGateGetPay$98Hour…. .????????????????????????????????????????????????????::::::!tr450o….,

  27. Harry D Dullard
    June 5th, 2016 @ 6:27 am

    Oh, Amanda, if only your mother had felt the same, what pain we would have been spared.

  28. News of the Week (June 5th, 2016) | The Political Hat
    June 5th, 2016 @ 2:54 pm

    […] Feminism and “Strong Delusion” One of the things you notice about feminists, if you pay attention, is how many of them lack basic self-awareness. It seems unfair to accuse them of hypocrisy because it seems they cannot perceive the contradictions of their arguments, which are apparent to anyone outside the feminist cult. We often behold in feminism the neurotic psychology of self-justifying rationalizations, scapegoating and projection. Furthermore, because their worldview is essentially paranoid — a fear-based belief system that relies on an imaginary patriarchal conspiracy — feminists conjure up phantom threats with which to do battle. […]