The fundamentalism of Social Justice Warriors

I generally like Arthur Chu. I follow him on Twitter. I've quoted him with approval. I think his piece Your Princess is in Another Castle is great.

But unfortunately like so many other erstwhile smart and decent people, the subject of race completely short-circuits his rational thought processes.

Because when it comes to race, Social Justice Warriors are fundamentalists in comparison to other liberals. They are fanatical and constantly looking for chances to denounce others who are not as fanatical.

You can see the fundamentalism of Social Justice Warriors in action in this series of tweets Chu wrote in reference to Bill Maher using the term "house nigger" in a non-racist context.

But in the world of the SJWs, there is no context in which the word "nigger" may be used. The very sound of the word itself is a crime against humanity much like saying "Goddam" is always a sin to fundamentalist Christians. If you use the word "Goddam" you are a sinner. To a SJW, if you use the word "nigger" you are a racist. End of discussion. SJWs are not interested in context.

Others pointed out to Chu that Maher had no problem writing a check for a million dollars for Obama's 2012 presidential campaign. But to Chu, writing a check for a million dollars to a black candidate means nothing. The only thing that matters is that Maher used the taboo word.

And Chu used the word "indulgence" to describe Maher's donation. To Chu, to Social Justice Warriors, using the N-word, once, regardless of context more than balances out donating a million dollars to a black man's campaign. That is the religious intensity with which Social Justice Warriors view taboo words - they believe uttering a bad word is literally worth more than a million dollars of "indulgences."

One of the big differences between the Catholic Church and Protestantism is that Catholics believe that "good works" may ameliorate the wrath of God. So even if you have committed some (non-mortal) sins in your day and died before confessing them during the Sacrament of Confession, your kindliness and decency would weigh in your favor and you might go to Purgatory instead of Hell.

Like all human systems this one was abused - "good works" eventually became synonymous with "donating money to the Catholic Church" and so sinning was essentially monetized. The richer you were the more sins you could get away with as long as your forked over "indulgences." And so Protestants reacted by not only creating sects which refused indulgences but which also refused to count any good actions as beneficent.

Protestants came to believe that your actions as a moral human being mean nothing. In some sects they believe that only declaring that Jesus is your savior will save you from an eternity of hellfire. In other sects they are even more extreme - there is nothing you can do to save yourself from going to Hell, you are already predestined for Hell before you are born.

Much like Robin DiAngelo, the queen of the Social Justice Warriors, believes that all white people are racist simply by being born white, and neither their intentions nor their good works matter. You may have marched in Civil Rights rallies, married a non-white person, donated to the NAACP, campaigned for Obama, spoke out against a racist at work, or all of the above and you assume that a rational person would look at those actions and pause before declaring you a racist.

But Social Justice Warriors are not rational. And they are looking to point a finger at heretics. It's their greatest joy.

It would be interesting to do a study and see what percentage of Social Justice Warriors come from fundamentalist Protestant backgrounds. 

A Social Justice Warrior primer

Although my favorite critic of professional bigot Mikki Kendall is What About Our Daughters blogger Gina McCauley I am indebted to Will Shetterly of Social Justice Warriors: Do Not Engage for putting Kendall & company's brand of bigotry in context.

When I first became aware of a faction of Academia who were claiming that the Slutwalk movement was racist because the faction decided to give the word "slut" racial connotations that did not previously exist in the English language, I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard.

Until I heard their followers declaring that John Lennon and Yoko Ono were racists for this feminist song they released in 1971.

It was the Lennon/Ono issue that first brought me in contact with Mikki Kendall and her band of Tumblr sycophants because my disagreement with them resulted in them smearing me by name a few years ago. And then I discovered Kendall was also responsible for yellow journalism and the organized campaign of gender/ethnic bigotry #solidarityisforwhitewomen on Twitter. The campaign so beloved of Salon, Jane, Jezebel, NPR, Al Jazeera, The Guardian and Mother Jones. 

I thought Kendall and the Slutwalk saboteurs were just random dumbasses but thanks to Shetterly, I've learned that in fact there is an organized movement of dumbasses that has taken root in Academia known as Social Justice Warriors. Shetterly is working on a book called Social Mob Justice which focuses on Social Justice Warriors (SJW), especially those he knows from the science fiction community. Shetterly explains what SJW are all about:

This book is about social justice warriors, the angry people who rant and mob online. It’s not about social justice workers like Dom Hélder Câmara who said, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why are they poor, they call me a Communist.” It’s about the people who believe a righteous cause entitles them to do unto others as they would never want others to do unto them. It’s about the people who have, to use a term loved by warriors, “appropriated” the name of social justice, a concept created in Europe during the social unrest of the 1840s by two Catholic priests, Luigi Taparelli and Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, who wanted to help the poor while preserving the status quo, and which has been adopted by liberal capitalists of many beliefs. 

This book's focus is on a subset of warriors in science fiction fandom. If I ever write about Maoists, McCarthyites, or any group that believes their ends justify their means, I’ll remember fandom’s SJ warriors. 

While claiming to believe in racial diversity, they hounded a Cherokee author from the field. 

While claiming to celebrate strong women, they prevented a woman who was a pioneer in two male fields from being the guest of honor at a feminist sf convention. 

While claiming to believe in protecting women, they exposed a pseudonymous young woman’s legal identity, left a threatening note in her office, contacted her employers to try to get her fired, and google-bombed her online with dozens of blog posts about her to ensure anyone who searches for her name will immediately find their version of her past. 

While claiming to believe in tolerance, they call for boycotts and censorship of people who reject their ideology, even if—or perhaps, especially if—those people also want to make a world where everyone is treated equally.

While I have not suffered the wrath of the social justice warriors anywhere like the people listed here, I got a taste of what Shetterly rightly calls "mobbing." It's so good to find out that there are at least a few people aware of this phenomenon. 

I've been wondering lately if Kendall and her gang have been monitoring Shetterly's site, and sure enough... Shetterly is not shy about pointing out (as has Gina McCauley) that as much as the SJW fancy themselves heroes of the oppressed, in fact they are generally from privileged backgrounds - privileged enough to attend college. 

Turns out they do monitor Shetterly. Kendall is too cowardly to name him by name so instead references him by his initials - but her in-crowd knows who she means. And this Twitter screenshot will help me demonstrate the truth of Shetterly's description of them as "people who believe a righteous cause entitles them to do unto others as they would never want others to do unto them."

Kendall complains that Will Shetterly is "convinced that education = middle or upper class background."

If Mikki Kendall had any problems with some of the outrageous accusations made against the all-purpose white woman scapegoat  created by #solidarityisforwhitewomen I didn't hear about it. I don't remember her speaking out when the contemptible Aura Bogado of The Nation equated being a white woman with being wealthy:

1. 
   Aura Bogado ‏@aurabogado3h

   #solidarityisforwhitewomen when you build career on the low wage work of immigrant nannies whom you don't pay a living wage or offer benefits

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1. Aura Bogado ‏@aurabogado2h

   #solidarityisforwhitewomen when you tell your already underpaid immigrant nanny to teach your child Spanish--for free.

   Expand

1. 
   Aura Bogado ‏@aurabogado53m

   #solidarityisforwhitewomen when your organization offers internships without pay, which means most WOC can't afford to do them

   Expand

New Atheists vs. Social Justice Warriors

In the middle of my JULIA & BUDDY production I took the time to address the issue of Richard Dawkins vs. Adam Lee on July 6. It isn't only them though, but what they represent - New Atheists vs. Social Justice Warriors.

In case you aren't familiar with the terminologies - "New Atheists" are generally considered to be lead by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, and until he shuffled off this mortal coil, Christopher Hitchens.

Since Hitchens is gone other atheists are up for being considered as the fourth of the Four Horsemen of atheism - see the Wiki I linked to above. Steven Pinker is one of the most prominent runners-up, and I think the most appropriate - like the others he is devoted to explaining human behavior through evolutionary psychology, a research theory that posits among other things that women have evolved to be more monogamous than men, and less capable, innately, at math and science ways of thinking than men, which is why, as Larry Summers famously argued, women don't have as successful careers in STEM.

And Hitchen's own personal contribution to this mighty theory is that women have evolved to be unfunny. Outside of the New Atheist bubble, Hitchens is known as the guy who said women aren't funny. Serves the asshole right.

The New Atheists also tend towards xenophobia, especially against Muslims, most likely in a terrified response to the 9-11 attacks. Sam Harris is especially awful in this respect, justifying torture and promoting ethnic profiling in security checks.

I've discussed my objections to the New Atheist celebrity leaders throughout this blog, right from the very beginning if you count Pinker, who has flirted with the edges of more hard-core sociobiology - the racial aspect - through his publicly proclaimed intellectual affiliation with right-wing operative Razib Khan.

While Pinker has no trouble citing Khan to back up his own work, he has stated that Stephen Jay Gould's critical views on evolutionary psychology should be discounted due to Gould's leftist political leanings. Although as far as I know Gould was never an actual political operative like Razib Khan.

Pinker's absolute, shameless, blatant hypocrisy on this issue should be more widely-known and should certainly give anybody pause when deciding whether to worship Pinker as a Great Man of Atheism, along with those other seriously flawed celebrity atheists.

On the other side are the Social Justice Warriors, who are just as obnoxious as the New Atheists, but in different, and sometimes opposite ways. I haven't been criticizing Social Justice Warriors for as long as New Atheists, but I have certainly been doing so a lot lately. Surprisingly there is no entry in Wikipedia for Social Justice Warrior - I will probably remedy that soon - perhaps because the term is less well-known, although Richard Dawkins has been using the term lately. But science fiction writer Will Shetterly, while not the coiner of the term, has been most prominent in using the term, even writing a book about SJWs.

SJWs have well-known proponents, although they don't have the celebrity status of the leading New Atheists. But SJWs tend to think and act in mobs anyway, through the power of social media aggregation, and so are less likely to stand alone as an individual celebrity.

One of the most prominent SJWs is Mikki Kendall, whom readers of this blog know I have a personal beef with: several years ago she used her Tumblr account to proclaim me, by name, as a "racist." This was because some friend of hers I argued with on Facebook decided I was a racist because I defended John Lennon and Yoko Ono's use of the N word in a song written 40 years ago. They used the N word to make a serious political point about sexism, not to attack African Americans. But you can't reason with a SJW mob. They know what they know and anybody who argues with them is automatically a racist.

The power of Google-bombing a person's name is still under-discussed in the media, considering how much power it has to harm people, and legally. Google suggests that if you don't like what somebody is saying about you, which is showing up in Google results, ask them to take it down. But if you ask a SJW to take it down, that only confirms your guilt in their mind, and they will simply post even more links, to make their defamation against you go even higher in Google results.

Kendall was joined in her Tumblr smear of me by K. Tempest Bradford, also via Tumblr. Bradford is a science fiction writer, and included by Shetterly in his blog on SJWs. I had a Facebook exchange with Bradford during which I asked her to stop smearing me, and I found it fascinating that Bradford basically excused the smears on the grounds that I was rude to friends of hers when I argued with them. In other words, smearing me as a racist was justifiable payback for my bad manners. I will have more to say about Bradford's response, and the attitudes of SJWs generally as soon as I get a chance.

In any case, I concluded on July 6 that both sides are idiots.

However, I must acknowledge that Richard Dawkins has scored one for the New Atheists by this statement, made with Ophelia Benson:

It’s not news that allies can’t always agree on everything. People who rely on reason rather than dogma to think about the world are bound to disagree about some things. 

Disagreement is inevitable, but bullying and harassment are not. If we want secularism and atheism to gain respect, we have to be able to disagree with each other without trying to destroy each other.
In other words we have to be able to manage disagreement ethically, like reasonable adults, as opposed to brawling like enraged children who need a nap. It should go without saying, but this means no death threats, rape threats, attacks on people’s appearance, age, race, sex, size, haircut; no photoshopping people into demeaning images, no vulgar epithets. 

Richard adds: I’m told that some people think I tacitly endorse such things even if I don’t indulge in them. Needless to say, I’m horrified by that suggestion. Any person who tries to intimidate members of our community with threats or harassment is in no way my ally and is only weakening the atheist movement by silencing its voices and driving away support.

Bravo.

I was one of those who pointed out that Dawkins had a responsibility to denounce the shitstorm of rape and death threats that his ill-considered personal attack on Rebecca Watson inspired, and so even if this statement is three years late, it's something.

To give you a sense of how it should be done, recall that idiot Twitterer Suey Park called for the Colbert Report to be cancelled because of her own obtuseness (deliberate or not) over Colbert's parody of the Redskins football team name. I'm still not entirely convinced that Park is not a sock puppet of some right-wing think tank - her friendship with Michelle pro-Japanese-internment Malkin alone is extremely suspicious. But she could be real, and just a garden-variety dumbass Social Justice Warrior.

When his show returned after the weekend, Colbert defended himself, in character, but while he was doing it he said:

"Now all of this was started by a hash tag activist, or hashtivist, who has been viciously attacked on Twitter, and if anyone is doing that for me I want you to stop it right now. She's just speaking her mind and that's what Twitter is for..."

And that's how it's done. But Colbert is an entertainer and while his show and the Daily Show has a clear demographic, they can't speak only as the leaders of a self-selected group of people.

And that's what makes them different from both New Atheists and Social Justice Warriors, who tend to live in their respective bubbles. So New Atheists will make the most outrageous claims about the religious and religion in general without providing evidence, and as if all New Atheists live in a world in which they don't have to co-exist with religious people - including close friends and relatives.

Social Justice Warriors are perhaps more insidious - under the guise of social justice they will attack anybody, even allies, or perhaps especially allies, who ventures even slightly out of the political correctness compound, or who even leave themselves open to the slightest misinterpretation, as in the Colbert controversy. They are so in love with their self-image as defenders of justice that they will try to invent cases of injustice so they can get their superhero tights on and fight it.

Of course the New Atheists have their own dreams of glory - they like to imagine themselves standing tall against the forces of ignorance and superstition and, in their most misguided logical leap, terrorism which they equate with Islam. And so they support stupidities like the outcry against the "9-11 mosque." I went to the counter-demonstration.

Now it appears that Richard Dawkins was not getting off on the power of having his slavish New Atheist followers attack feminist atheists - especially but by no means only Rebecca Watson - at least if Dawkins was to be believed. He apparently was oblivious the the phenomenon, or at least didn't seem to understand he might have the power to reduce the viciousness through speaking up against it. Well now he has, so let's see if it works.

So that gives New Atheists a boost over Social Justice Warriors at this point - I consider Adam Lee of Daylight Atheism to be a SJW because he censored me when I suggested that certain of Ayn Rand's literary output might have been due to Ayn Rand possibly having an autism spectrum condition. He told me to STFU and allowed his good buddy Azkyroth to attack me as someone out to hurt people with Asperger's.

And mind you, I had been contributing to the discussion of Atlas Shrugged on Lee's blog for months, and had shown no indication of wanting to harm anybody with Asperger's. But that does not matter - when a SJW has their hero tights on, you cannot reason with them any more.

It's issues having to do with brain functionality that is one of the big problems with Social Justice Warriors. Just as it is unacceptable to use gender and race and other physical features to suggest a difference in emotional/intellectual expression, they believe it is also unacceptable to even discuss the possibility that conditions like Asperger's, or even mental illness might have an influence on the way a person expresses themselves.

You can see it in Greta Christina's response to somebody suggesting that the disgusting "Amazing Atheist" might have a mental illness:

Brian Walsh @ #13: Please don’t do that. The idea that hateful and vile people must be mentally ill gets trotted out a lot (it did with the Elliot Rodger shooting), and it’s very problematic. It diminishes responsibility for hateful and vile behavior. It marginalizes people who are mentally ill, perpetuating the idea that we’re dangerous and/or evil. And it disproportionately gets used to protect white people. (As has been pointed out many times by many people: When a white person shoots a bunch of people, they’re mentally ill. When a black person does it, they’re a thug. When a brown person does it, they’re a terrorist.) Please don’t do it. Thanks.

Please note that she doesn't present an argument for why the Amazing Atheist is not mentally ill - she proclaims that it is unacceptable to suggest that anybody who is hateful and vile has a mental illness.

Just as it is unacceptable to Lee and company for anyone to speculate that Ayn Rand might have had Asperger's. Because friends of Adam Lee and Greta Christina (or apparently Christina herself) have Asperger's and mental illness. And so you must not ever say that anybody who is bad might have the same condition. 

This is censorship, plain and simple. They think they are promoting social justice, but what they are doing instead is making areas of discussion taboo. And demonizing anybody who wants to explore that area of discussion.

Social Justice Warriors are wrong in this. Wrong and stupid. And they need to admit that their censorship and shaming attempts are wrong. And chances are they never will - they believe in their own absolute correctness and moral superiority and you dare not attempt to argue with them or they will have no qualms about smearing you and attributing all kinds of evil against you. And then they will censor you, so you cannot argue back. 

That's what Dawkins and company mean by "witch hunts" and they do have a point. So New Atheist are slightly up on Social Justice Warriors in my book.

Until the next horrific thing they do/say/support. Tune in for future reports.

Ta-Nehisi Coates and the anti-art, anti-intellectual fundamentalism of Social Justice Warriors

Social Justice Warriors mean well. But their methods to achieve social justice are contrary to actual justice.

One of the methods used by Social Justice Warriors is to prevent others from speaking, and from producing art,  even if the speech and the art are only theoretical. 

Social Justice Warriors don't want to be accused of censorship no matter how censorious they are and so Coates has to jump through some hoops in order to try to defend against what he is attempting to do: shut down a TV show based on what Coates guesses it might be like, per his piece in The Atlantic. 

First Coates admits that it's a good idea to reserve judgment until you actually see a thing. 

But then he explains why this must be an exception:

But HBO does not actually want the public to reserve judgment so much as it wants the public to make a positive judgment.

But of course promoting its shows is what any production company does. So why should this be an exception?

Then Coates argues that because others have made pro-Confederate art (Birth of a Nation included) nobody can be trusted.

Then he pointlessly quibbles on terminology - the promotional text is "what if the South had won the Civil War"? Everybody knows this means the Confederate army. 

Then Coates says it's not the same as with The Man in the High Castle which is about what if the Nazis had won. Coates says it's a bad comparison because the Nazis are more thoroughly reviled than the Confederacy.

But this is a matter of degree. It's certainly true that the Confederacy has been given far too much respect for an organization that committed treason in defense of human bondage. But the Confederacy did lose. And furthermore, the reason that Nazi Germany committed atrocities was primarily due to anti-Semitism - and anti-Semitism still exists.

And Coates ignores "A Handmaid's Tale" which posits religious zealots controlling women's bodies. And we still have that going on today. Obviously not as much as the dystopia presented in Handmaid. But again this is a matter of degree - African Americans are still the victims of systemic racism but things have gotten better since they were slaves. 

But I don't remember anybody making a big stink about "A Handmaid's Tale" on the grounds that patriarchy has not been completely obliterated.

Then Coates goes on to say that even though the show is probably anti-racist, it's not good enough because, since there is still systemic racism there's no point in asking what would have happened if the Confederacy won.

He then admits the show has two black writers but suggests that black writers would not ever want to write a show with such a premise on their own.

As always, Social Justice Warriors presume to speak for all non-whites.

Coates then complains that the idea of the show is not original. Which begs the question, so why is he making such a big deal out of it?

I knew the idea is not original because I remember seeing the "mockumentary" CSA thirteen years ago. 

Although maybe it's just as well Social Justice Warriors don't know about CSA - since they are all utterly irony deficient they will probably think that CSA is pro-Confederacy.

Newsflash: Social Justice Warriors too stupid to get satire, want to cancel Colbert

UPDATE: apparently Suey Park Considers Michelle Malkin to be a friend of hers.

This morning I saw this story in my Facebook newsfeed: People Who Don't Realize 'The Colbert Report' Is Satire Want It Cancelled Over Asian Joke

I immediately knew it was a Social Justice Warrior - and not only that, my prime suspect was the SJW with the Asian-outrage concession, Suey Park.

I haven't written about Suey Park directly before, but her tweets are shown in a recent post where I discuss an Aura Bogado pile-on.

And I just discussed the "intersectionality" between Social Justice Warriors and the far right - here's more evidence:

How far right is Michelle Malkin? Ten years ago she published a book in defense of Japanese internment camps. 

I keep saying that I think Mikki Kendall will one day find a rightwing buddy ala Camille Paglia/Rush Limbaugh, but really, it's hard to believe that the Social Justice Warriors are not already on the Heritage Foundation payroll, in an effort by conservatives to make liberals look like idiots. And it isn't all that far-fetched a conspiracy theory - here we see Suey Park referring to Michelle Malkin as a "reasonable person" - back in January of this year.

Speaking of Kendall, does she support Suey Park? Do you have to even ask? Of course she's also too stupid to get satire:

But then, that's what it means to be a Social Justice Warrior. 

So what do the other Social Justice Warriors have to say? Well Flavia Dzodan and Mazzie seem to be quiet on the Colbert front although maybe Mazzie didn't know about the movement to cancel Colbert, but once she reads this post (she reads this site every day - and three times this morning alone - obsessed much? although thankfully for the taxpayers, no longer from her work computer) she might have something to say. 

And a member of her mean girl gang, Amanda Levitt, certainly does have something to say - she wants to demonstrate exactly how Social Justice Warriors are too stupid to get satire:

Aura Bogado, of The Nation, and probably the most obnoxious Social Justice Warrior after Mikki Kendall is completely on board canceling Colbert:

When is The Nation going to fire this moron? Maybe they could get Michelle Malkin to replace her. 

Auragasmic, the Mikki Kendall wanna-be merely retweeted Suey Park. And Lynx Saint Marie, hater of the suffragettes, merely retweeted something from Amanda Levitt.

I couldn't resist joining in on the mockery of SJW stupidity:

UPDATE! I tweeted at Bogado that she should be fired from The Nation and cc'd Katha Pollitt - well apparently I was wrong about Bogado and The Nation:

Stupid shit that Social Justice Warriors say, Flavia Dzodan edition

Of all the stupid and extremist social justice warriors who gather round demagogue-wanna-be Mikki Kendall, possibly the stupidest and most extreme is Flavia Dzodan. 

I actually began a blog post last May about some stupid shit that Dzodan said and ended up not publishing because Dzodan is so absurd. This was before I knew what a social justice warrior was, in spite of being one of their targets via Mikki Kendall's Tumblr.

But now that I see she is also a member of the Mikki Kendall Social Justice Warrior gang, I might as well post it. 

Like the other Kendall gang members, Dzodan is still livid about the very gentle critique of Kendall by The Nation some weeks ago.

And by the way - Kendall gang member Aaminah Khan complained in her article that Kendall's detractors are publishing critiques of Kendall "in online publications with huge readerships" but the only one I've found to date is The Nation article - and it's the only one the Kendall gang talks about. So where are all these other huge media outlets? Every other huge media outlet that mentions her that I've seen thus far is a virtual Kendall love fest. But if the Kendall gang wants to point me to actual critiques of Kendall outside of The Nation, I'd love to know about it. 

If you study the "intellectual" output of Kendall long enough - and I have been since I found her smearing me by name in her karnythia Tumblr account in 2011 - you will realize that her main message, in the standard social justice warrior mode, is that white people suck and all carry the original sin of racism, regardless of what they, as individual human beings, say and do, and the only way they can be absolved of their original sin is to beg forgiveness of Kendall or one of her designated representatives.

Kendall calls this "heavy lifting." And in order to be forgiven, it very much helps if you attack feminism, or as Kendall likes to call it "white feminism."

Feminism will always be sacrificed in order to appease social justice warriors, because most prominent leaders of the feminist movement for the past 100 years have been white, and social justice warriors always judge people strictly by the color of their skin, rather than the content of their character.

That is what they really mean by "intersectionality."

Although really, Kendall doesn't just hate white feminists, she hates all white women, whom she likes to smear, en mass, in standard bigot fashion.  This is a typical Kendall move:

First Lily Allen, now Peggy Noland: when it comes to objectifying black women, white women are having the best week ever.

What's that? You say you don't know who Lily Allen and Peggy Noland are? Well you better find out, if you're a white woman, because on your behalf they were having the best week ever of objectifying black women.

But back to Flavia Dzodan. Last March she was perturbed by a meme on the Internet  that involved images of Jon Hamm. The problem with this, according to Dzodan, is not the objectification of a man, the problem as Dzodan sees it is that the meme is too heterosexual.

...how we would feel about food if the only thing on our plates, for the entirety of our lives and for the entirety of recorded history, had been spam with potatoes. The problem is not that we like penis, the problem is that in women’s metaphorical food plate of sexuality, penis has been the only available dish, the only dish it has been historically acceptable to eat at all.

And she is utterly wrong. Public displays of masculine beauty have in fact been severely restricted throughout most of recorded history and well into the 20th century.

It was considered shameful for a woman to even look at a naked man. For example, female art students were prohibited from drawing nude men - and some religious extremists believe in this prohibition in the present day.

Combine that with the prohibition against male homosexual desire and for most of the 20th century the artistic nude was always assumed to be female. Painter Paul Cadmus's work was often controversial because he broke the taboo against portraying men as objects of desire.

Dzodan's food metaphor is completely wrong because women didn't get the penis on the dish - women were on the dish. Only men had the luxury of engaging in sex for pleasure - for women it was a pleasure only if she somehow managed to beat the odds and marry a man she desired. Since the selection of her husband was most often based on her parents' preference and her own economic need, her own sexual desires were completely beside the point.

For women throughout recorded history sex was a full-time job. And like all jobs, your pleasure is beside the point. The point is getting paid.

So for women to express uninhibited desire to see a beautiful man's genitalia - even completely covered by cloth - is still quite new. Maybe if Flavia Dzodan wasn't so obsessed with beating down "neoliberal feminists" she would get that. Instead she writes this laughable bullshit:

When less than 100 years ago, women could be committed to psychiatric institutions and subjected to cruel medical practices for merely rejecting penis, for being “hysterical”, we are not exactly being revolutionary when we gaze at Jon Hamm’s penis. We are simply acknowledging the extent of patriarchy approved desire and, unintendedly, perpetuating said patriarchy by “choosing” to love penis rather than understanding how yes, we might love penis, but perhaps, we also love penis because it’s been sold to us as the only acceptable way to achieve orgasm.

Women weren't committed for "rejecting penis" but for rejecting the penis of the man who was paying for her room and board. If she wasn't going to give her husband sex, and given that divorce was incredibly hard or impossible to obtain, the easiest way to get rid of a woman who wasn't holding up her part of the economic arrangement that was traditional marriage was institutionalization.

Dzodan thinks it's likely that straight women like penis because it's been "sold" to us.
If sexual orientation was so easily manipulated through images there would be no gay men.

But it's pointless - Flavia Dzodan is just as uninterested in the actual socio-economics that drive human sexual practices as any postmodernist:

 I’m sometimes amazed that phallocentrism (in the Derrida sense of the term) is not used to unpack patriarchy more often. It’s not just about penis, of course. It’s specifically about white, heteronormative, cis penis and that deserves more feminist critique I believe…

Oh my fucking god, "in the Derrida sense." It's assholes like Flavia Dzodan that destroyed once admirable feminist media outlets like Tiger Beatdown.

UPDATE: while Flavia Dzodan hates Michelle Goldberg for daring to write a non-worshipful piece on Mikki Kendall, she does NOT hate Hugo Schwyzer:

I hate you all Glosswitches, booblediboops, Laurie Pennys, Louise Penningtons, Julie Bindels, Megan Murphys, Michelle Goldbergs and your ilk. The B Classes of white feminism fighting tooth and nail for a place at the table. At our expense. With your writing commissions, the coins tossed in your direction by the men who own the media you so desperately want to be part of. And we pay the price of your success. You are not even good enough to be in charge. You pick the dirty cents that they drop and you will sell us all for the chance of picking the most no matter which ethics, which principles, whose lives you need to shit in the process. You also want your portion of media attention. You will soil anyone that gets on the way of your climbing. You have aspirations! The fact that now you are low level media whores edited by people who would gladly throw you into the lions if it meant they can pocket the change is irrelevant for you. We are the bootstraps you pull in the hopes of raising to the top. And raise to the top you will. The top of a vat of turds floating in your own media shit. No ethics, no qualms, no compassion, no humanity. I hate you all for that. 

Contrary to popular belief, I do not hate Hugo Schwyzer, though. I feel deeply sad for him. Sad at the wasted potential of a man who obviously had the capacity to write and communicate and network and connect with people but became haunted by his own mental health issues and addictions...

So there you go. In spite of the ranting and raving and using Hugo Schwyzer as an excuse to blame all white women for everything bad in the world (see #solidarityisforwhitewomen) leading social justice warrior Flavia Dzodan doesn't hate him. She hates people who directly and legitimately oppose Mikki Kendall and her vicious tactics, instead.

Dzodan did get push back, best stated in My feminism will reject misogynistic screeds, or it will be bullshit:

Both Glosswitch and I have said it before, and who knows how many more times and how many more of us will need to say it again, but if your activism is focused on vicious, concerted efforts to silence women, you’re not doing feminism, you’re doing misogyny. And I promise you — I fucking guarantee you this — supporting bullies won’t protect you. It will not save you from being bullied yourself. Because some day you’ll step out of line and become the target yourself.

And guess who approved Dzodan's message? Of course you know who:

The author responds to Kendall's tweet:

(The author of this attack, for the record, is not someone I can recall having ever engaged with, nor have I written a single thing directly about her (it was brought to my attention, today, that I referenced an article of hers in a post I wrote back in 2012, though the post was not “about” her, per se, nor was it an attack on her, at all), despite the fact that some are defending this behaviour with more lies about how we “targeted” her, and she is simply responding to that. Never. Never have I “targeted” her or attacked her, spoken ill of her, or so much as addressed her on Twitter. My perspective on her work was that, while I may not agree with it, she was doing her thing and I was doing mine. No need to attack her or try to silence her. Saying “what did you think would happen” strikes me as a rather dishonest attempt to defend verbally abusive, misogynist behaviour à la “you had it coming.”)

Well of course you "had it coming" - you are a white woman in the public sphere, and therefore according to Mikki Kendall, Flavia Dzodan and all the other zany social justice warriors your job (unless you have praised Mikki Kendall and thus received her dispensation) is to STFU and take your abuse from your betters. Because privilege. And slavery.

Oh and speaking of white women who have received Mikki Kendall's dispensation, Sarah Kendzior, who lied about Katha Pollitt, also approves Flavia Dzodan's message:

Social justice warriors will lie freely and without shame for their hateful causes.

Pseudo-journalist/SJW Sarah Kendzior jumps on the satire-censorship bandwagon

Well I already knew that Sarah Kendzior was an idiot for siding with vicious bigot, liar and yellow journalist Mikki Kendall against bona fide feminist/intellectual Katha Pollitt, so I wasn't surprised that she would come out in favor of Social Justice Warrior brand stupidity like #CancelColbert - the big surprise was that it took her so long.

Kendzior will absolutely not hesitate to smear without evidence, as Katha Pollitt discovered, and as can be seen in her claim that Jezebel is out to get non-white people, above. 

Jezebel was completely on board Mikki Kendall's bigotry-fest #solidarityisforwhitewomen - which goes to show that if you are perceived as white - or a white organization - you will never be able to please Social Justice Warriors. No matter how much you suck up to them, they will eventually turn against you based on some trumped-up charge - and they won't provide evidence for your guilt either - just their own nutty paranoid unsupported statements. 

Much like Mikki Kendall's sleazy article suggesting that a doctor was out to kill her for needing a life-saving abortion. Amanda Marcotte defended Kendall against criticism by anti-abortion activists (who, I hate to admit, were right this once), and for her trouble was accused several months later by the ever-paranoid Kendall of stealing from non-white people. Naturally Kendall didn't provide any evidence of the theft.

Social Justice Warriors don't need no stinking evidence.

What Social Justice Warriors really need to do is to start a group - call it Mentally Challenged Americans, who will lobby for the right to be outraged by things you are too stupid to understand.

I mean, look at the utter, flabbergasting false equivalency of the Angus Johnston statement retweeted by Kendzior in the image above: "I'm curious if folks who think Colbert was 100% in the right think the same about Deadspin's use of the word "gook" to describe Suey Park."

It still has not sunk into Angus Johnston's thick thick skull that the folks who think Colbert was in the right do so because what Colbert was doing was satirizing the racism of the Washington Redskins owner. So yes, Colbert was in the right. 100%. Only a fucking idiot - like Angus Johnston, Suey Park, Sarah Kendzior or Michelle Pro-Internment Malkin - would fail to understand that Colbert was 100% right.

But what Angus Johnston believes is that thinking Colbert is right is a sign of racism, and so he has to ask if a racial slur was thought to be just as 100% right as Colbert's satire of racism. 

Truly mind-boggling.

The fact that Social Justice Warriors side with pro-internment Michelle Malkin against liberal satirist Stephen Colbert tells you everything you need to know about just how stupid and utterly useless SJWs are.

It's time for Mentally Challenged Americans! It's time to end the privileging of intelligence in social discourse!

Social Justice Warrior Rania Khalek attacks Gloria Steinem for being a white woman

Well it should be no surprise that Social Justice Warriors have decided to attack Gloria Steinem - they've already proven to support rightwing feminism-haters (and Japanese internment defenders) like Michelle Malkin over actual progressives.

Naturally this was re-tweeted by Mikki Kendall - there's nothing that Mikki Kendall hates so much as a white woman, and never misses a chance to equate the actions of a single white woman with all white women. It's always helpful to check Kendall's Twitter feed when looking for that latest SJW attacks against feminists - Kendall's pretty much a vector for hatred of feminism, or as Kendall calls it, "white feminism."

So what is it that Rania Khalek thinks is so Islamophobic about this movie? She doesn't bother to explain - but then, Social Justice Warriors don't have to explain anything - they just make assertions and their followers accept them uncritically, as fact.

Here is what the movie's web site says:

HONOR DIARIES FEATURES NINE COURAGEOUS WOMEN’S RIGHTS ADVOCATES WITH CONNECTIONS TO MUSLIM-MAJORITY SOCIETIES WHO ARE ENGAGED IN A DIALOGUE ABOUT GENDER INEQUALITY. 

These women, who have witnessed firsthand the hardships women endure, are profiled in their efforts to affect change, both in their communities and beyond. 

The film gives a platform to exclusively female voices and seeks to expose the paralyzing political correctness that prevents many from identifying, understanding and addressing this international human rights disaster. Freedom of movement, the right to education, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation are some of the systematic abuses explored in depth.
Spurred by the Arab Spring, women who were once silent are starting to speak out about gender inequality and are bringing visibility to a long history of oppression. This project draws together leading women’s rights activists and provides a platform where their voices can be heard and serves as inspiration to motivate others to speak out. 

More than a movie, Honor Diaries is a movement meant to inspire viewers to learn more about issues facing women in Muslim-majority societies, and to act for change.

Now I'm the first to argue against the notion that Islam is any more innately misogynist than Christianity. Nor do I think that religion has a monopoly on misogyny. But the fact remains that there are plenty of really hideously misogynistic customs present in countries with Muslim majorities.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is the movie's executive producer. Apparently Social Justice Warriors love to hate white women so much that they focus on Gloria Steinem, who has nothing directly to do with the movie, and ignore the women of color who were actually involved in making the movie.

So who is Rania Khalek? Well, like so many Social Justice Warriors she seems to have no problem getting published. According to her site:

My work has appeared at The Nation, Al Jazeera America, Truthout, Salon, AlterNet, Extra, Citizen Radio and more.

Funny how many supposedly liberal media outlets so frequently publish the work of anti-feminists like Khalek.

And naturally Khalek is a member of the too-stupid-to-get-satire brigade.

Khalek must be a member of the SJWs study group opposed to the privileging of intelligence in social discourse.

Based on her blog, Khalek doesn't actually have much interest in feminism. A search of her blog on "feminist" and "feminism" brings up six posts. Two of the posts contain the word feminism in a homicidal maniac's manifesto that Khalek posted. Another post uses the word feminist in the context of an attack on Amanda Marcotte, whom the Mikki Kendall brigade hates (in spite of Marcotte's defense of Kendall's scurrilous abortion article), second only to Lena Dunham. Another article compares the US occupation of Iraq unfavorably to Saddam Hussain's reign:

"The US-backed regime makes Saddam Hussein look like a feminist!"

In another piece she complains that the NYTimes had an editorial about rape in India, and she then proceeds to suggest that things are just as bad for women in the United States as they are in places like India - although she's too coy to come right out and say it plainly:

To the skeptics preparing to ask me whether I’d prefer to live in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan since I think the US is so awful, I wonder if you realize the level to which US foreign policy towards certain parts of the world has intensified violence against women. Backing sexist dictatorial rulers, knowingly arming religious fundamentalists who throw acid in women’s faces and forcing neoliberal economic policies that leave small farmers (most of whom are women) and their families starving; these are the policies that define the United States to many women abroad.

It's quite astounding: she manages to put the blame for the custom of throwing acid in women's faces on US foreign policy. But then, she doesn't seem to have such a big problem with the acid-in-the-face custom - she called a movie which criticizes such "honor" crimes Islamaphobic.

And then there is her piece in which she  calls the movie Zero Dark Thirty an example of "imperial feminism."

Being a Social Justice Warrior, Khalek's real issue is made clear in the Zillah Eisenstein piece she quotes:

My point: do not justify or explain US war revenge with a pretty red-head white woman with an "obsession" to catch the mastermind of 9/11.

Ah yes, it's the greatest Satan of the Social Justice Warrior enemies list - the white woman. Eisenstein mentions white women two other times in the article:

You do not drop bombs on the women you are supposedly trying to save. Do not now cleanse the wars of/on terror with the face of a white blonde female.

and

I was thinking through the film - if they hate us, they do so because we are hateful. I am sad to know that this film will be seen across the globe. It will be read as another story of imperial empire with a (white) female twist. How unfair to all the people in the US who do not choose revenge and murder. How unfair to my Pakistani friends who are also US citizens. How unfair to most of us across the globe.

This is published by Al Jazeera, BTW. They've also published Sarah Kendzior's attack on Katha Pollitt, and were a big promoter of Mikki Kendall's #solidarityisforwhitewomen.

Reading the quote above, you'd assume that Eisenstein was referring to actual human beings who "justified or explained US war revenge..." 

But nobody is - or if they are Eisenstein doesn't bother to name them. Because individual actions don't matter to SJWs - we are all undifferentiated members of a class of people identified by gender, ethnicity, nationality, etc. Especially white women.

Unless, of course, you have become a SJW which gives you immunity - and then you can join the attacks against white women, even if you yourself are a white woman. Good times.

Mikki Kendall pity party

Aw, Aaminah Khan is sad because people won't just lie down and allow the Mikki Kendall bulldozer to run over them without occasionally complaining.

If you want to see the sleazy "journalism" of social justice warriors in action, check this typical move that Khan uses. Right in the middle of an article about "mainstream feminism's gatekeepers" - and in case you're unclear, mainstream always means "white" to social justice warriors - she sticks this in:

It’s true that painting non-white people as menacing, scary, and even savage is not a new tactic. The “angry black woman” narrative, in particular, has been around a very long time and continues to be used routinely, including in characterizations of First Lady Michelle Obama.

The link goes to a Salon article complaining about the way Michelle Obama was portrayed in the Washington Post and the New York Daily News and Business Insider and the Huffington Post* and Wonkette.

Do you see what Aaminah Khan did there? She conflated "mainstream feminism" with all those media outlets. And she thinks you're too stupid to realize that she's deliberately smearing feminists with the sins of non-feminist media. And if you're a social justice warrior you probably are too stupid to understand that's what she did.

Although of all the obnoxious things that Aaminah Khan says in the article, this might be the worst:

It’s worth pointing out that detractors of women like Kendall publish their “critiques” in online publications with huge readerships, leaving their targets left to defend themselves on Twitter or in personal blogs.

How amusing that Khan would say this about detractors of Kendall, when Kendall herself has been published in Salon and Jane and promoted as a heroine of feminism by Michel Martin at NPR and at Mother Jones.

I'm not the only one who has been personally attacked and smeared by Mikki Kendall and her mob of social justice warriors via social media. I recently found this, which explains how Kendall operates:

The facts about me and Mikki Kendall

3. She has a long history of calling people liars about being survivors. 

Even if I was the most racist shit to ever crawl out from under a rock? That doesn't justify her standing up repeated and saying I lie about being a survivor. It doesn't justify her being part of pile ons that consisted of people repeatedly saying I was lying about being a survivor.
#Ibelieveher is important, it is not #Ibelievehersolongassheneversaysanythingoppressive. 

Even if someone lies? By doing this, she tells other survivors that they were at risk of being called liars if Karnythia decided they were awful people. She silences survivors with that tactic. It's harmful. 

She also accused a grieving mother of 'lying' about her babies death and attacked countless other people.

3. She have never acknowledged or apologised for any of this. When people talk about what she's done, they get attacked and she doesn't bat an eyelid.
Mikki Kendall continues to enjoy a media platform and the following that denies that when Ms Kendall is crossed in any way, she behaves in ways that actively perpetuated oppressions. Those of us with genuine reasons to criticise her get lumped in with those who don't and dismissed. We continue to be subjected to her oppressive actions and it is time this was acknowledged. 

Long story short? I'm sorry she's getting attacked and subjected to many of the tactics she's wielded against others, but I am also tired of being gaslighted by people who insist she isn't a bully and doesn't do this stuff. I am tired of being called a liar by people who self righteously tweet #Ibelieveher until someone tells them about Ms Kendall's past (or the past of any popular SJ advocate) and then they don't believe us.

Mikki Kendall will never apologize because Mikki Kendall believes she has never done anything wrong. And why should she admit to doing anything wrong? It seems that no matter what she does, her media enablers will promote her as a heroine and leader and defend her against any charges of bullying.

And look at the way Khan whines about the one liberal media outlet that isn't quaking in terror of the Mikki Kendall/Social Justice Warrior smear machine:

Why the sudden change? In a word, says Mikki Kendall, who tweets as @Karnythia and curates the site Hood Feminism: fear. Kendall was recently the target of what could only be described as a hit piece by Michelle Goldberg of The Nation, one that called her “feared” and “obsessed.”

Can you imagine what a shock it must have been for the Mikki Kendall brigade when, instead of promoting and praising Kendall, she actually got called out by liberal media for being a bully? It must have felt like they suddenly cancelled Christmas.

To borrow a phrase from Blogmother - you don't have to bow down to Mikki Kendall and the Social Justice Warrior bigotry/smear/bully campaign.

* maybe Khan considers HuffPo feminist because she writes for it?

Stupid shit Social Justice Warriors say, mazzie and her middle-school mean girl gang edition

This is how your typical Social Justice Warrior reacts to criticism: not by responding directly, but by gathering together a group of fellow Social Justice Warriors for a catty whine-and-snipe party.

You know, like a gang of middle-school mean girl bullies but with pretensions of political relevance.

I figured @mazzie (aka "Uncle Sugar") would take the cowardly Social Justice Warriors route and sure enough... Mazzie also has a blog, but last time I checked she hasn't posted anything to it since July 20, 2013. She appears to much prefer Twitter - but then Twitter is preferred most by hashtag hate-mongers, sloganeers and people who generally don't have enough worth saying to fill an entire paragraph of text.

In standard anonymous-coward SJW fashion Mazzie doesn't reveal her identity in her "about" page and while I could probably do some research and find out what it is, it's hardly worth my time.

Here she is quoting my blog post about her, but she doesn't bother to provide a link to the source. That's how your SJW rolls: no ethics, no honor, no shame.

Since I'm not a SJW I responded directly to mazzie (and of course that inevitably includes mazzie's mean girl gang).

I'm not sure what the "mmm bagel" comment is about. Perhaps mazzie is anti-Semitic and thinks I'm Jewish? If I was a SJW I would be all over that chance at smearing mazzie with the charge of "anti-Semitism" - a SJW never ever misses the chance to argue in bad faith.

So deliberately misrepresenting people - arguing in bad faith - is a pillar of the SJW movement. But even more perniciously is the SJW principle of judging everybody not by the content of their character, but by the color of their skin.

Although Mikki Kendall very specifically targeted me by name for her Google-bombing campaign, which is the ultimate cause of my squabble with mazzie, instead of responding to me as an individual human being mazzie decided that I was a representative of "white feminists."

Mazzie herself appears to be white, but white SJWs seek to avoid being lumped into the automatic-white-racist category by appeasing SJW leaders, such as Mikki Kendall, thus receiving forgiveness for the original sin of being born a racist.

"Bitter Gertrude" demonstrates the authoritarianism of Social Justice Warriors

Bitter Gertrude, aka Melissa Hillman, who used to be artistic director for the now-defunct Impact Theatre and is currently teaching high school students, is left of center, and so we agree on much in the socio-political sphere, and I've occasionally commented here when I've agreed with her.

But Hillman, like so many others in American theater is a Social Justice Warrior and therefore an irrational extremist when it comes to race.

When I heard about the Albee casting kerfuffle I knew Hillman would be right there with the extremists and sure enough, she was. So much so that her commentary on the issue is a perfect illustration of the Social Justice Warrior strategy used against those who disagree with them.

Hillman writes:

Racism isn’t the argument here. The estate’s decision was absolutely racist, period, the end. That’s not up for debate. It’s the kind of racism that demeans the entire industry and requires resistance.

There it is, two of the three stages of the standard SJW strategy:

1. Accuse those who disagree with you about any issue touching on race of racism
2. Shut down the conversation.
3. When the target complains that the conversation has been shut down, accuse the target of "white fragility."

Robin DiAngelo, as I've written about many times before on this blog, is the leading purveyor of the "white fragility" stage of the strategy.

Michelle Johnson an African American playwright, (who also happens to be my Facebook friend although we've never met in person) does not agree that Edward Albee's estate is racist.

On the Albee controversy, I was in the minority. As a playwright, and in general, I’m just not a fan of the “colorblind” concept. As with one-size-fits-all leggings, I believe it’s a fiction designed to make some people feel better about uncomfortable realities. Also, I don’t believe the writer’s intent is a secondary issue.
“Virginia Woolf” was written in 1962 — two years before the end of legalized discrimination. Projecting modern-day sensibilities on that doesn’t change it. Talking about the large number of amazing black actors today and how many black “Nicks” should have and could have been in existence in 1962 is beside the point.
The point is, that’s not the play Albee wrote. And to accuse him or his estate of racism in wanting his play about the 1960s culture of white academia to remain as he wrote it seems as ridiculous to me as letting a white woman be cast as lead in Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” a play about a black family discouraged from buying a house in a segregated neighborhood in 1959 Chicago.

So there you have it. An African American playwright doesn't think Albee's estate is racist, but Melissa Hillman is here to declare that the issue has already been decided, end of discussion, so STFU Michelle Johnson.

Social Justice Warriors like Hillman care much more about power and control than they do about actual social justice. Their idea of social "justice" is to willy-nilly accuse random white people of racism, based on faulty reasoning and even lies. I was a SJW target in 2011 and I've been watching them and their tactics in horror ever since. If SJWs ever get any serious political power they will use it to hunt witches and exact revenge on anybody who dares to disagree with them.