Leftists Having Second Thoughts on 'Affirmative Consent' Laws

From KC Johnson, at Minding the Campus, "Liberals Begin to Doubt the New Anti-Rape Laws."

How Many Rape Reports Are False?

From Megan McArdle, at Bloomberg (via Instapundit):

If someone comes into a police station with their face bashed in, you can be pretty much certain that unless they’re a professional boxer, a crime has occurred. If a rape kit shows evidence of sexual intercourse, however, all that tells you is that … something happened. Because this is something that a lot of people do to each other voluntarily, you cannot proceed immediately to the arrest. Usually there are only two witnesses, telling different stories. Often drugs or alcohol were involved, and intoxicated people make lousy witnesses.

We don’t want that to be true. Rape is an especially heinous crime, and heinously unfair -- it is mostly something that stronger men do to weaker women. How can we pile on an extra dose of unfairness -- by failing to prosecute so many of the crimes?

Feminists would like to rectify that unfairness by treating rape accusations as presumptively true, making it easier for victims to come forward. That’s understandable. But there’s a risk that this makes it easier for false accusations to get through the system, resulting in destroyed lives for men such as Brian Banks. Men’s-rights activists would like to make it harder for innocent men to get caught in a web of lies, so they want rape accusations to be interrogated with deep suspicion. But treating rape victims as possible or likely liars may make it harder for them to go forward, leaving rapists free to stalk their next victim.

Yeah, but Glenn adds:

Thing is, all the rape-talk isn’t about getting justice for victims. It’s about stirring up female voters for Hillary, while demonizing, marginalizing, and silencing men, and about justifying policies that generate employment and self-esteem for “social justice warriors.” Given that these are generally execrable people, any policy that enlarges their power or perks should be viewed with deep suspicion.

Word.

Mo'ne Davis!

I'm just tryin' to keep up with the pennant race in the American League West Division.

But this young lady is getting a lot of attention, at the New York Times, for example, "Mo’ne Davis: A Woman Among Boys at the Little League World Series."

And she'll be on the cover of Sports Illustrated:

Mo'ne Davis just landed the cover of Sports Illustrated http://t.co/mBw1At8LUq pic.twitter.com/eXYf7SZQ1R

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) August 21, 2014

It wasn't Mo'ne Davis's night, but her story is far from over: http://t.co/IMTCdPrp7a pic.twitter.com/3EYDGVq1OU

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) August 21, 2014

'Today, feminism has a major image problem...'

An interesting piece, at the New Republic, "Women's Studies Departments Are Failing Feminism."

Hat Tip: Instapundit, who writes: "THE NEW REPUBLIC: “Far from being sites of activism and empowerment, Berkeley’s Women’s Studies classes were weighed down by theory and jargon.” True, but since this article mindlessly parrots the discredited one-in-five-college-women-are-raped claim, maybe that’s just as well.."

Today's Feminists Can't Write for S***

An interesting piece, from Charlotte Allen, at the Los Angeles Times:

.@RSMcCain I don't understand today's feminists -- because they can't write http://t.co/X8tQij1JQh via @MeanCharlotte #RadFem

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) July 27, 2014

Heteronormativity and Gender Roles in Children's Movies

Another opus, from Robert Stacy McCain:

Sex Trouble: Feminists Worry That Disney Movies Are Making Girls Heterosexual http://t.co/6z231JRdqQ #tcot pic.twitter.com/bBWSW1eApy

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) July 27, 2014

Mary Jo Kopechne Was Unavailable for Comment

At Twitchy, "Today in the War on Women: OFA slaughters self-awareness in a single email [pic]."

'I love being female, and I’m actually quite confident about being a woman, but the only time I even come close to feeling bad about myself is when major media outlets and elite feminists use their power to tell me there’s some major flaw with me being female...'

It's Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist, "Why Are Feminists So Insecure?"

She's writing about Katty Kay and Claire Shipman's "The Confidence Gap," which I blogged here.

And see the Other McCain, "How @ClaireShipman Ironically Proves Phyllis Schlafly Right About the ‘Pay Gap’."

Men Have Too Much Confidence?

Heteronormative patriarchal privilege, I guess.

From Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, at the Atlantic, "The Confidence Gap."

.@KattyKayBBC and I had a great time doing this! Huge thank you to @TheAtlantic. pic.twitter.com/PCef68mWt8

— Claire Shipman (@ClaireShipman) April 15, 2014

A lot of young men I teach do not have "too much confidence." This is more of the war on boys, if you ask me.

Bradley Manning Is Not a Woman

Seems like it would go without saying, but not in our morally depraved leftist culture.

See Kevin Williamson, at National Review (via Memeorandum):

We have created a rhetoric of “gender identity” that is disconnected from biological sexual fact, and we have done so largely in the service of enabling the sexual mutilation of physically healthy men and women (significantly more men) by medical authorities who should be barred by professional convention if not by conscience from the removal of healthy organs (and limbs, more on that later), an act that by any reasonable standard ought to be considered mutilation rather than therapy. This is not to discount the feelings of people who suffer from gender-identity disorders — to the contrary, those feelings must be taken into account in determining courses of treatment for people who have severe personality disorders. But those subjective experiences do not render inconsequential the biological facts: A man who believes he is a woman trapped in a man’s body, no matter the intensity of his feeling, is no such thing. The duty of the medical profession is not to encourage and enable delusions, but to help those who suffer from them to cope with them. It is worth noting here that as a matter of law and a matter of social expectation, the fiction of sex change is treated as the paramount good: We are not expected to treat those who have undergone the procedure as men who have taken surgical and hormonal steps to impersonate women (or vice versa) but as people who have literally changed sex, which they have not — no more than Dennis Avner, the famous “Stalking Cat” who attempted to physically transform himself into a tiger, changed species.

RTWT.

And then compare to Amanda Marcotte, "Bradley Manning Is Now Chelsea Manning. The Press Should Start Using Female Pronouns Immediately," and Kate McDonough, "Media willfully misgender Chelsea Manning."

BONUS: From AoSHQ, "Salon, the Web Magazine for Dumb People: Why Is the Media Referring to Bradley Manning, Who is a Man Named Bradley Manning, as a Man Whose Name Is Bradley Manning?," and "The New Republic Headline in 20 Point Font: 'He Is Not Bradley Manning. She Is Chelsea Manning. Deal With It'."

Janet Yellen and the Left's Federal Reserve Gender Debate

Seems to me the relevant question should be "Is this woman the most qualified economist for the job?"

But it's never about that nowadays, in our quota drenched, PC gender-obsessed leftist culture.

Idiot leftist Greg Sargent has a piece up now at Memeorandum, "Senate Dems push White House to appoint Janet Yellen (and not Larry Summers) to the Fed."

And that reminded me of this morning's New York Times, "In Tug of War Over New Fed Leader, Some Gender Undertones":

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s choice of a replacement for the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, is coming down to a battle between the California girls and the Rubin boys.

Janet L. Yellen, the Fed’s vice chairwoman, is one of three female friends, all former or current professors at the University of California, Berkeley, who have broken into the male-dominated business of advising presidents on economic policy. Her career has been intertwined with those of Christina D. Romer, who led Mr. Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers at the beginning of his first term, and Laura D’Andrea Tyson, who held the same job under President Clinton and later served as the director of the White House economic policy committee. But no woman has climbed to the very top of the hierarchy to serve as Fed chairwoman or Treasury secretary.

Ms. Yellen’s chief rival for Mr. Bernanke’s job, Lawrence H. Summers, is a member of a close-knit group of men, protégés of the former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, who have dominated economic policy-making in both the Clinton and the Obama administrations. Those men, including the former Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and Gene B. Sperling, the president’s chief economic policy adviser, are said to be quietly pressing Mr. Obama to nominate Mr. Summers.

The choice of a Fed chair is perhaps the single most important economic policy decision that Mr. Obama will make in his second term. Mr. Bernanke’s successor must lead the Fed’s fractious policy-making committee in deciding how much longer and how much harder it should push to stimulate growth and seek to drive down the unemployment rate.

Ms. Yellen’s selection would be a vote for continuity: she is an architect of the Fed’s stimulus campaign and shares with Mr. Bernanke a low-key, collaborative style. Mr. Summers, by contrast, has said that he doubts the effectiveness of some of the Fed’s efforts, and his self-assured leadership style has more in common with past chairmen like Alan Greenspan and Paul A. Volcker.

But the choice also is roiling Washington because it is reviving longstanding and sensitive questions about the insularity of the Obama White House and the dearth of women in its top economic policy positions. Even as three different women have served as secretary of state under various presidents and growing numbers have taken other high-ranking government jobs, there has been little diversity among Mr. Obama’s top economic advisers.

“Are we moving forward? It’s hard to see it,” said Ms. Romer, herself a late addition to Mr. Obama’s original economic team, chosen partly because the president wanted a woman.

Continue reading.

President Obama runs an extremely sexist "good old boys" White House. He's leaning toward appointing Lawrence Summers, an interesting choice, considering he left Harvard's presidency after inflaming the radical left's gender grievance academic correct-think reeducation commissars.

But like I said, the job should go to the best candidate, and that's Yellen, according to none other than renowned monetary policy economist Amanda Marcotte, "The Best Candidate for Fed Chair Is a Woman, so Why Consider Larry Summers?":

On Tuesday [Ezra] Klein wrote a new column, this time saying that, to his utter disbelief, Larry Summers is the frontrunner for the Fed chair. And I've been told that the Summers camp is using the whisper campaign against Yellen to bolster their man's chances with Obama. Yes, the same Larry Summers who condescendingly told a roomful of people who had lived their adult lives as female scientists that women lack the innate abilities to do science. Yes, the same Larry Summers who, unlike Yellen, played an instrumental role in the economic collapse in the first place by consistently backing deregulation schemes that led to the housing bubble and its collapse. If this is the male candidate Obama needs to exhaust before he deigns to consider a female one, well, he should consider Summers exhausted.

The best minds have spoken!

Renowned monetary policy economist Amanda Marcotte cites renowned Washington juice box policy analyst Ezra Klein, with the added bonus of smacking down those sexist anti-Yellen whisper campaigns.

I'm torn, I'm torn!

Yellen? Summers?

Yellen? Summers?

Oh forget it!

I'm refuse to weigh in until I hear what Sandra Fluke has to say!

Girls Outnumbered in New York's Elite Public Schools

The progs won't be satisfied until everyone's freakin' identical in "equality of result."

At the New York Times, "Girls Excel in the Classroom but Lag in Entry to 8 Elite Schools in the City."

In the United States, girls have outshined boys in high school for years, amassing more A’s, earning more diplomas and gliding more readily into college, where they rack up more degrees — whether at the bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral levels.

But that has not been the trend when it comes to one of the highest accomplishments a New York City student can achieve: winning a seat in one of the specialized high schools.

At all eight of the schools that admit students based on an eighth-grade test, boys outnumber girls, sometimes emphatically.

Boys make up nearly 60 percent of the largest and most renowned schools, Stuyvesant, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Tech, and as much as 67 percent at the High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College, according to city statistics.

While studies suggest that girls perform as well as boys in math and science classes in high school, their participation in those fields drops off in college and ultimately in careers, a phenomenon that the White House, with its Council on Women and Girls, and the National Science Foundation have tried to reverse....

There are reasons for this that don't fit the collectivist narrative.

RELATED: From Christina Hoff Sommers, at the Atlantic, "What 'Lean In' Misunderstands About Gender Differences."

Students Who Refuse to Affirm Transgender Classmates Face Punishment

This is bizarre, from Todd Starnes, at FOX News:

Parents across Massachusetts are upset over new rules that would not only allow transgender students to use their restrooms of their choice – but would also punish students who refuse to affirm or support their transgender classmates.

Last week the Massachusetts Department of Education issued directives for handling transgender students – including allowing them to use the bathrooms of their choice or to play on sports teams that correspond to the gender with which they identify.

The 11-page directive also urged schools to eliminate gender-based clothing and gender-based activities – like having boys and girls line up separately to leave the classroom.

Schools will now be required to accept a student’s gender identity on face value.

You will obey --- or else!

Via Protein Wisdom.

Vaginas Will Vote You Out of Office!

From Dave in Texas, at AoSHQ, "Overreacting to The V Word."

Despite my discomfort in general with this girl part thing (they are confusing like calculus except calculus has rules and shit) her specific statement, "'And finally, Mr. Speaker,’ she said. ‘I'm flattered that you're all so interested in my vagina, but no means no.’" is just silly. A cutesy little shocka line. The controversial part of the bill that was passed was a halfway mark "no abortions after 20 weeks" thing.

It seems silly to me for Republicans to muzzle her in response to her use of the word "vagina" however cutesy stupid her motivation.

Oh shit. I said it.

Yeah, it's silly, but radical progressives are using it like a cudgel to hammer the evil troglodyte Republicans.

And at the clip below, MSNBC's Ed Schultz interviews Michigan Representative Barb Byrum. It's boilerplate radical feminism, but don't miss the protest sign at 1:38 minutes: "VAGINAS BROUGHT YOU INTO THE WORLD AND VAGINAS WILL VOTE YOU OUT!"

Behold the modern Democrat Party-progressive feminist anatomical identification industry. It's the modern left's women's movement in a nutshell. Oops, I probably shouldn't say "nuts" --- I'll be attacked as a patriarchal oppressor!

More at London's Daily Mail, "Michigan congresswoman's Vagina Monologues performance in protest against being banned from using THAT word turn into 2,500 strong rally."

Linked at Weasel Zippers Headlines. Thanks!

Women Are Overtaking Men as America's Breadwinners

Here's this week's cover story at Time, from Liza Mundy, "The Richer Sex."

And see also, "Why Men Are Attracted to High-Earning Women":

Today’s high-earning women are justly proud of their paychecks — I explore the rise of the female breadwinner in this week’s TIME cover story — but they still often feel that men will be intimidated rather than attracted to them as potential mates. They think their success will seem too threatening and be held against them. As a result, some women in the dating pool devise camouflage mechanisms. A young ob-gyn working in Pittsburgh tells men she meets that she “works at the hospital, taking care of patients” — subtly encouraging the idea that she’s a nurse, not a doctor. When a university vice president in south Texas was on the dating market, she would vaguely tell men she worked in the school’s administrative offices and avoid letting them walk her to her car for fear they would see her BMW. “I want them to give me a chance,” says the Pittsburgh doctor. “I want them to at least not walk away immediately.”

But a growing body of research shows that while there may have once been a stigma to making money, high-earning women actually have an advantage in the dating-and-marriage market. In February 2012, the Hamilton Project, a Brookings Institution initiative that tracks trends in earnings and life prospects, found that marriage rates have risen for top female earners — the share of women in the very top earning percentile who are married grew by more than 10 percentage points — even as they have declined for women in lower earning brackets. (The report also suggested that the decline in those lower brackets may be because women can support themselves and are dissuaded from marriage by the declining earnings of men.)

We got the first indication of a major shift back in 2001 with a study by University of Texas at Austin psychologist David Buss that showed that when men ranked traits that were important in a marital partner, there had been a striking rise in the importance they gave to women’s earnings and a sharp drop in the value they placed on domestic skills. Similarly, University of Wisconsin demographer Christine Schwartz noted in a 2010 study in the American Journal of Sociology that “men are increasingly looking for partners who will ‘pull their own weight’ economically in marriage” and are willing to compete for them.

Now that women are poised to become the major breadwinners in a majority of families within the next generation, this research suggests that men will be just as adaptive and realize what an advantage a high-earning partner can be. Men are just as willing as women to marry up, and life is now giving them the opportunity to do so. So, women, own up to your accomplishments, buy him a drink, and tell him what you really do.

Read that full cover story at Time.

This is the reality nowadays for many families, no doubt. Although I don't think this is as smooth a process as the author argues. The work of Christina Hoff Sommers comes to mind: "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men."

BONUS: See S.T. Karnick, at Salvo, "Girly Men: The Media's Attack on Masculinity."

EXTRA: From Sarah Hoyt, "War is Hell: If this is war it is war on men. And I’ve had just about enough of everyone who claims otherwise." (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

J. Crew President Paints Son's Toenails Pink

Don't get me started.

Obliterating gender difference is key to the radical left agenda. If gender roles don't matter, then neither do traditional parental roles, child-rearing roles, marriage --- you name it. That's why freak extremists like Racist Repsac3 go for the aggressive demonization should someone call bull on this deviancy.

The story's at ABC News, "J. Crew Ad With Boy's Pink Toenails Creates Stir: Social Conservatives Call Ad 'Propaganda;' Transgender Groups Say Reaction is 'Ridiculous'" (via Memeorandum):

Cited there is this piece, from Dr. Keith Ablow, "J. Crew Plants the Seeds for Gender Identity":

In our technology-driven world—fueled by Facebook, split-second Prozac prescriptions and lots of other assaults on genuine emotion and genuine relationships and actual consequences for behavior—almost nothing is now honored as real and true.

Increasingly, this includes the truth that it is unwise to dress little girls like miniature adults (in halter tops and shorts emblazoned with PINK across the bottoms) and that it is unwise to encourage little boys to playact like little girls.

If you have no problem with the J. Crew ad, how about one in which a little boy models a sundress? What could possibly be the problem with that?

Well, how about the fact that encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil—not to mention crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts? Why not make race the next frontier? What would be so wrong with people deciding to tattoo themselves dark brown and claim African-American heritage? Why not bleach the skin of others so they can playact as Caucasians?

Why should we hold dear anything with which we were born? What’s the benefit of non-fiction over fiction?

Well, the benefit is that non-fiction always wins, in the end. And to the extent that you take flights of fancy into masquerading through life, life will exact a psychological penalty.

And while the regular cultural radicals are shilling for this cultural degeneracy, we also have Doug Mataconis engaging the debate, "Social Conservatives Freak Out Over J. Crew Ad." Doug's libertarian, and he's blogging at Outside the Beltway, ostensibly a conservative blog, but I doubt most parents are down with painting their young sons' toenails hot pink. People of decent morals just know instinctively the dangers in such behavior. And what's bothersome --- no, loathsome --- is to be lectured by the deviants themselves about how "intolerant" are people of old-fashioned morality.

Naomi Wolf Feminist Concern Troll — 'If One Makes a Serious Criminal Accusation, One Must Be Treated As a Moral Adult'

I'm getting that partial title off this awful hate-Naomi Twitter feed.

Turn's out there's a huge uproar on the extreme gender-left over Naomi Wolf's latest piece at The Guardian, "Julian Assange's Sex-Crime Accusers Deserve to Be Named" (at Memeorandum).

And in an unusual twist, Ms. Naomi enters the comments section to defend herself, for example:

Well, I have now read all comments. Obviously and understandably very strong feelings and opinions stirred by my piece. To my fellow feminists, I wish to be completely clear about my experience that led me to this position: it derives from working WITH rape and sexual abuse victims IN the United Kingdom. Again and again I saw how the secrecy that surrounds this issue and their identities was used by police, defendants, and society in general -- and especially the media -- to inflame rape stereotypes and most of all to ensure that women who were raped or sexually assaulted had an ice cube's chance in hell of getting any serious justice. I also reported on my own experience with sexual harassment at Yale and reported out two decades of serious sex crime at Yale that was similarly swept under the rug -- to the point that an accused rapist (professor) had gotten several other positions where similar accusations arose -- and the practice of dealing with these accusations anonymously guaranteed that there was NO accountability institutionally and that future victims could not be protected. I also do believe strongly that rape should be treated, as we used to say in the second wave, like any other crime and that if we really want to communicate to our daughters that it is not a woman's stigma (if she is the victim) or a woman's fault then shielding her identity conveys the opposite. If it is his crime why should she have to hide? Of course rape is terribly traumatic. My mother was raped when she was twelve and she agrees with my position on this and gave me her permission to say so and to disclose her experience. The practice of secrecy is presented as a support for victims but in practice simply serves impunity for rapists and impunity for organizations in which rape and sexual assault are endemic. I am sorry it seems that many readers cast this position as anti-feminist and assume I have no familiarity with this issue; had I not seen rapists treated with impunity in your nation's system, and seen so many victims vilified in the media and denied justice systematically, I too would have believed the canard that anonymity serves women. I say again, it serves rapists.

And here's Ian B.'s take:

Naomi Wolf is an icon of feminism. In making this argument she has broken ranks with other feminists. Schadenfreude at the the sight of them rending each other is never far away, but schadenfreude does not actually give me an answer as to whether anonymity in rape cases is a good or a bad thing. I have bitterly criticised feminists and anti-rape activists in the past for their wilful denial of the possibility of false accusations of rape. I sneer at Naomi Wolf's late discovery of this type of possible injustice. Yet she makes a strong argument:

"Though children's identities should, of course, be shielded, women are not children. If one makes a serious criminal accusation, one must be treated as a moral adult."

Against that is a more nebulous pressure, but one with deep roots in the human psyche: rape is different from other forms of assault. The trauma of a rape victim, male or female, does not arise only from the physical injuries received. Harm is done to them by having the fact that they have suffered such a violation made public. Some victims would feel unable to come forward if it were to be made public.

Yet other rape victims argue that this reluctance merely reinforces the barbaric idea that there is something shameful in being raped. We use the word shame to mean too many things.

Kate Ausburn Enters #MooreandMe Feminist Minefield

Kate Ausburn, out of Sydney, Australia, has offered the latest pushback against the #MooreandMe ayatollahs, "Why Feminists and the Left Must Defend Julian Assange":

The key demands in the campaign to support Assange are that he be presumed innocent until proven otherwise, that he receive a fair and just trial, and included in that, the recognition of the case as being one against allegations of sexual misconduct by Assange and not a case against Wikileaks and its role in publishing leaked documents.

Well, extreme gender feminists have called Assange a liar, so I doubt the assumption of innocence is really in play here. But Ausburn continues:

It is important that the left continues to defend Assange’s right to a fair trial. It is not up to the media, politicians, or water-cooler conversations to condemn Assange or decide his fate, or that of Wikileaks. As Glenn Greenwald told CNN on Monday 27 December 2010: “People should go to jail when they are charged with a crime, and they are convicted of that crime, in a court of law.”

Some facts of which are certain: Assange remained in Sweden for more than a month after the initial allegations were made, he complied fully with police questioning at the time. The current arrest warrant was issued “in relation to questions the prosecutors’ office wishes him to answer regarding the accusations” (Sydney Morning Herald on 24 December 2o10).

Assange has at no time been charged with any crime and neither he or his lawyers have received evidence from Sweden of the crimes he is accused of having committed. Assange will next appear in court on 11 January for a case management session and again on 7 and 8 February for his extradition hearing.

It is up to us to ensure the process involved in prosecuting any charges brought against Assange in this case be fair and just, and that a sexual misconduct case does not instead become a case to stifle freedom of information or publishing rights.

Expect updates.

Daniel Ellsberg Defends Julian Assange Against 'False and Slanderous' Rape Allegations

Well, I wonder what hashtag the extreme gender feminists will come up with now?

I reported earlier on the Trotskyite defense of Julian Assange, which frankly offered a brutal take-down of the feminist-left's "legitimizing the suppression of nonconformists and political dissidents." And now comes news that antiwar icon Daniel Ellsberg is dissing the rape allegations, on Twitter:

Greg Mitchell at The Nation retweeted, and Melissa McEwan picked it up and ran with it, "The Thing Is, Rapists Lie":

I wonder if Ellsberg has also personally heard the accounts of Assange's accusers, and found them unconvincing. I doubt it.

I suspect that he just assumes that they would sound like liars, were he to speak to them, because Assange sounded sincere. And why would he not make that assumption? One of the key narratives of the rape culture is that false accusations are extremely common. (They are not.)

Or maybe he just assumes that rapists are easily identifiable, that he can suss out a rapist by talking to him. Unlike the stupid women who trust them, date them, marry them, work alongside them unawares. Until.

It's funny, ahem, how much implicit victim-blaming is embedded in the assertion to know a man has been wrongly accused.

The truth is, it doesn't really matter what Assange or his accusers sound like to Ellsburg, or anyone else. Because sounding honest and being honest are often mutually exclusive concepts.

And rapists are excellent liars.

More at the link.

This is a fascinating development. It's hardly constroversial to suggest that Daniel Ellsberg is a far more iconic figure on the progressive left than is Michael Moore. But clearly his support for Assange has struck a nerve among hardline anti-rape culture feminists. And while Sady Doyle's 15 minutes are up, no doubt we'll be seeing another man-hating extremist take the baton. Seriously. How far will this go? Personally, I'm hoping to see Glenn Greenwald strapped to the stocks and lashed to a bloody pulp, although so far he's stayed clear of the feminist backlash. He does have a new essay typically attacking the media's "pro-war agitprop" during the Iraq war (via Memeorandum). And linked there is another piece on WikiLeaks from Newsweek: "Why Journalists Aren’t Standing Up for WikiLeaks." But the big story is this soap opera of whiny feminist progressives who just can't catch a break. And speaking of breaks: Julian Assange is trying to break governments. Feminists are crying over broken condoms. (But to be fair, it's more complicated, for sure, but following the revolt of the violent femmes this last couple of weeks does feed the cynicism just a bit.)

Princess Boys

This was my picture of the day, March 6, 2009.

Radical progressive RepRacist3 just about had a heart attack, and Jay Mendes, pictured at right, commented at the post.

I'm reminded of all of this after seeing Cassy Fiano's post, "Would You Let Your Son Be a Princess Boy?"

Just read it at the link above. I love Cassy's writing. She's completely unbothered by the strictures of PC totalitarianism. She's right to stress the potentially damaging effects on a child's health and social well-being from encouraging an opposite gender orientation as young as age 2. When one is older perhaps they'll have the maturity to adapt to society's prejudices. While it's certainly fine to say "to each his own" for adult individuals, there remains the responsibility for parents to set their kids on the appropriate normative (and moral) course for their lives ahead.