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Feminism Tag

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on May 26, 2015 41 Comments
Leave it to feminists to be incensed over a dinosaur movie. "Jurassic World" hits theaters June 12. Presumably a redux of "Jurassic Park," but this time with one dude taking out dinosaurs instead of a motley crew of paleontologists, it's a film I can't wait to see on the silver screen. But that's probably because I'm not a feminist. In this edition of Feminists vs. Reality, the gripe is with (gasp!) traditional gender roles. According to NYU Local, Joss Whedon is to blame for reminding feminists they should be infuriated by traditional gender rolls instead of swooning over leading man, Chris Pratt:
When a clip from Jurassic World featuring Pratt and his co-star Bryce Dallas Howard was released on the Internet last week, Joss Whedon, director of the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron and well known feminist, had some major gripes with what he saw. Online feminist entertainment blog The Mary Sue tweeted out a link to the Jurassic World scene, commenting, “We’re too busy fanning ourselves to talk more about Chris Pratt in this #JurassicWorld clip.” Joss Whedon used his own Twitter account to reply: “…and I’m too busy wishing this clip wasn’t 70’s era sexist. She’s a stiff, he’s a life-force – really? Still?” He has since stated in an interview with Variety that he regrets sending the tweet, saying that Twitter was the wrong medium for such negative comments, but Whedon hasn’t retracted the opinion he expressed to his 1.12 million followers.
Whedon has since abandoned Twitter, but his tweeted seed of outrage has blossomed into a hideously stupid monstrosity.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 17, 2015 28 Comments
We have covered the case of Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student who vowed to carry her mattress around campus in protest of her alleged rapist who remained on campus. That alleged rapist was cleared by the University, and now is suing to clear his name. I don't know if Sulkowicz was lying or telling the truth. But the sharp dispute hardly makes the case comparable to what Afghan women have to go through. Beatings. Burkas. Lack of education. Executions.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on May 13, 2015 17 Comments
I love the Equal Pay debate. It's one of the simplest tests of political acumen. Caleb Bonham decided to chat it up with a few Hillary supporters who love Mrs. Clinton because she's, "doing a great job fighting for what should have happened a long time ago." "What should've happened a long time ago," being Equal Pay. There's just one problem with this whole Hillary the Salary Saint schtick -- while serving as one of New York's Senators, Mrs. Clinton paid year-round female employees 72 cents for every buck she paid their male counterparts. Oops? hillary clinton these are difficult hard choices Those numbers come report from the Washington Free Beacon, who analyzed the wages of then Senator Clinton's staff.
During those years, the median annual salary for a woman working in Clinton’s office was $15,708.38 less than the median salary for a man, according to the analysis of data compiled from official Senate expenditure reports.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on May 12, 2015 13 Comments
Forget the fictitious but politically expedient 'War on Women,' masculinity is under attack. Men are maligned for not being more feminine in quality and character, and little boys are expected to forsake their natural curiosity, fervor, and active nature so as not to offend anyone with their rambunctiousness. The compulsion to label little boys as violent, soon-to-be patriarchal overlords who can't possibly understand the plight of women is not only out of control, but is damaging future generations of men. Why can't boys just be boys anymore? That's a question Bill Whittle, Stephen Kruiser, Scott Ott, Stephen Green, and Dr. Helen Smith tackle in a video released by PJ Media Monday. Boys are diagnosed with ADHD and ADD at substantially higher proportions than girls. Do boys really suffer from attention deficits or are they simply... little boys? "Are we drugging our boys into femininity?" asks Whittle. While boys aren't being drugged into femininity per se, Dr. Smith notes that a byproduct of the progressive education movement is a school system staffed predominately with women who know best how to serve girl students. And the boys? There's really no place for them in this construct. In order to make the transition as seamless as possible, little boys are disproportionately drugged to make them more cooperative in the system built around the needs of little girls. The progressive left's troupe of feminist harpies are the worst offenders in the War on Masculinity and examples abound. As Whittle points out, "so much of this is the feminist movement thinking they can get rid of violence by getting rid of masculinity."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 11, 2015 14 Comments
If there is one thing Israel-haters hate more than anything, it's being reminded of how well women are treated in Israel compared to the surrounding Arab countries. So when the Israel Airforce posted a Mother's Day greeting of a female IAF pilot breastfeeding her child, it was major league trolling (h/t Nadav Eyal Twitter): https://www.facebook.com/IsraeliAirForce.EN/photos/a.247957101913936.56748.234494436593536/930385137004459/?type=1 The reaction was precious. Ali Abunimah, who runs The Electronic Intifada tweeted:

Posted by Amy Miller on May 11, 2015 32 Comments
Behold, Mars: site of future discoveries adventures microaggressions. Yes, really. Happy Sunday, everyone. Every once in a while, the social justice warrior set cracks a window and shines light on what's really bugging them about the world. Racism, ageism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, life-phobia---if they can't find a problem, they'll use one of these handy buzzwords to invent one. Last week, Martin Robbins at The Guardian (presumably) gazed up into the firmament and saw what only a social justice warrior could see when presented with such breathtaking splendor: potential. For discrimination. Martin presents a simple question: How can our future Mars colonies be free of sexism and racism? (Anyone with a brain reading this just did a spit take.) In his essay, he questions the idea that “[w]hen we go into space, we will all magically become nice,” and makes an exquisitely flawed case for why future off-planet settlements will look a less like a Picard-era Enterprise, and more like an Earp-era gambling outpost.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 10, 2015 6 Comments
We previously reported on how Oberlin Radical Feminists Freak Out at Christina Hoff Sommers:
In the Oberlin Review radical feminists responded to Sommers’ upcoming speech with an OpEd, “A Love Letter to Themselves.” In this love letter, they accuse Sommers of being a “rape denialist” and proceeded to list her “offenses” to feminism. The letter concluded:
So let’s engage in some radical, beautiful community care, support and love. Let’s make space for everyone to engage at whichever level they want/need. Let’s come through for each other, both now and in the future. Trauma is an experience that threatens a person’s bodily, spiritual and emotional integrity. The psychological, emotional and somatic impacts extend beyond the experience of trauma. Healing is a process that looks different for each person. Let’s make space to care for all experiences of trauma and to respect those we care for. Let’s focus our energy on taking care of each other and ourselves. Let’s make her talk irrelevant in the face of our love, passion and power.
Hoff Sommers was greeted with "Trigger Warning" signs and of course, the obligatory "Jazz Hands." Some enterprising person has put the controversy to music, including on-screen lyrics as the names of the people signing the Oberlin Review letter passed by in the background: Oberlin College Video Feelz before Reelz Choir Christina Hoff Sommers screenshot keep me from the real world

Posted by Leslie Eastman on May 10, 2015 13 Comments
As I was preparing for my Mother's Day vacation getaway, this tweet came across my screen: LI #04b Salon Mother's Day Tweet A worthy question, as I thought progressives would be positively joyful at this point in the "Hope and Change" presidency. However, they seem to be clinging to their bitterness. Following the social media trail, it turns out that in a piece on Salon.com, author Anne Lamott transforms a happy holiday into a scourge:

Posted by Laurel Conrad on April 27, 2015 33 Comments
When I wrote my previous LI piece about Christina Hoff Sommers lecture at Georgetown, I hoped that the “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” were the end to the attempted censorship of Dr. Sommers’ speech. The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, for which I am the lecture director, sponsored the speech, and recorded it so that others could both hear Dr. Sommers and the people who questioned her. Unfortunately, I was wrong about the controversy being over. [caption id="attachment_125067" align="alignnone" width="556"][Photo Credit: Georgetown U. Republicans] [Image Credit: Georgetown U. Republicans][/caption]Now, Georgetown University itself is putting pressure on the Georgetown College Republicans to make CBLPI edit its video of the lecture. In an email, the assistant director for Georgetown’s Center for Student Engagement told the lecture student organizers that if CBLPI is “unwilling or unresponsive to the request, Georgetown will need to step in.”

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 24, 2015 33 Comments
You might remember Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia University student who vowed to carry her mattress around campus in protest of her alleged rapist who remained on campus. Sulkowicz turned what she says was a horrible tragedy into performance art; performance art that will suffice as her senior thesis. Sulkowicz chose not to press charges, but to pursue allegations through Columbia's 'justice' system instead. A few months ago, Sulkowocz's alleged rapist, German student Jean-Paul Nungesser, provided his side of the story to the The Daily Beast. Nungesser's story, which was corroborated by Facebook and text messages provided to The Daily Beast, deviated significantly from Sulkowicz's version of the sordid tale. Though charges levied against by Nungesser were dismissed by Columbia University, he was judged harshly by his peers as a result of what appeared to be false accusations. When Nungesser's shared his version of events, I wrote:
Nungesser was judged in the court of public opinion because of what appear to be patently false accusations. He was hounded by the press and his peers. Meanwhile, Sulkowicz was praised for her bravery and artistic expression. And the compulsion to vilify the accused, in spite of evidence to the contrary, has yet another notch on its belt.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 24, 2015 38 Comments
We've written quite a bit about Trigger Warnings since before it became fashionable:
The fragile college student mind is getting more fragile by the day. As if the normal run of political correctness were not enough, we now have “Trigger Warnings” — the notion that students need to be warned that the material they are about to read in class may “trigger” emotional upset.... Of course, how the trigger is defined says much about the theory behind the movement — it almost always serves left-wing critical race and gender theories .... The Trigger Warning movement is all about enforcing a conformity of thought by forcing faculty and others to identify and warn about politically incorrect ideas.
The Trigger Warning in the Featured Image was displayed at Oberlin when Christina Hoff Sommers spoke: [caption id="attachment_124731" align="alignnone" width="550"]Image credit: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute Image credit: Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute[/caption] UT-Arlington Philosophy Prof. Keith Burgess-Jackson has come up with a Trigger Warning for his Philosophy of Religion class. He writes:
I've decided to include a trigger warning in each course syllabus, beginning this fall. Here is the trigger warning for my upcoming Philosophy of Religion course. What do you think?
What do I think? I think the precious, fragile souls demanding Trigger Warnings will demand that you put a Trigger Warning on this Trigger Warning. Here we go:

Posted by Laurel Conrad on April 21, 2015 39 Comments
College campuses are meant to be a place where students engage in new perspectives and critical reasoning. Or so they say. But by labeling conservative points of view as “extremist,” “anti-feminist,” and “racist,” feminists are shutting down the dialogue on their college campuses before it even begins. To the leftist student activists, it seemingly doesn't matter whether or not these labels are deserved. They've realized that all they need to do is to stigmatize a talk by a conservative speaker is to condemn the speaker as an oppressing force. For instance, last Thursday, I facilitated a lecture at the Georgetown University on behalf of the conservative organization I work for, the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, and the Georgetown CRs. As soon as the campus feminists caught wind of the event, they immediately began protesting and demanding trigger warnings in order to silence the talk.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on April 20, 2015 40 Comments
As Aleister wrote previously, Christina Hoff Summers received an... interesting response when she spoke at Georgetown Thursday night. Ms. Sommers is the Factual Feminist at the American Enterprise Institute. In the Oberlin Review radical feminists responded to Sommers' upcoming speech with an OpEd, "A Love Letter to Themselves." In this love letter, they accuse Sommers of being a "rape denialist" and proceeded to list her "offenses" to feminism. The letter concluded:
So let’s engage in some radical, beautiful community care, support and love. Let’s make space for everyone to engage at whichever level they want/need. Let’s come through for each other, both now and in the future. Trauma is an experience that threatens a person’s bodily, spiritual and emotional integrity. The psychological, emotional and somatic impacts extend beyond the experience of trauma. Healing is a process that looks different for each person. Let’s make space to care for all experiences of trauma and to respect those we care for. Let’s focus our energy on taking care of each other and ourselves. Let’s make her talk irrelevant in the face of our love, passion and power.

Posted by Mike LaChance on April 18, 2015 24 Comments
New Post - Oberlin Radical Feminists Freak Out at Christina Hoff Sommers. -------------------- You may remember Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute as the Factual Feminist. We've linked her outstanding work at College Insurrection many times. Ms. Sommers spoke at Georgetown on Thursday night and some students took it upon themselves to label the event with trigger warnings. Here are some more tweets via Twitchy:

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 24, 2015 33 Comments
Today will go down in history as the day feminists officially stepped beyond the bounds of self-parody. UK based outfit, the National Union of Students is hosting a conference for women. The multi-day conference for union delegates began today. Motions up for consideration at the conference include designating the abolishment of prisons as a feminist issue, free education and living grants, supporting the decriminalization of sex work, ending Transphobia, Biphobia, and Islamophobia on campus, and supporting the right to justice and education for Palestine. This afternoon (our time, anyway), a group in attendance made the following request: To which the NUS Women's Campaign responded, saying:

Posted by Amy Miller on March 20, 2015 30 Comments
Right now, lurking in your radio, is something so...so hideous...so backward....that it threatens to destroy gender equality as we know it. We've known for a long time that some feminists have a problem with women who choose to become housewives, and an even bigger problem with women who embrace their feminine roles and wiles to their advantage. Those same feminists are on the warpath again, this time against a 20-something pop star who chose to make a cheeky video about what she would like to see in her future partner. Watch and listen (no, actually watch and listen---the rest of the article depends on this) to the unspeakable bane: "Dear Future Husband," by Meghan Trainor. The shock. The horror. PURGE IT BEFORE THE CHILDREN SEE.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 20, 2015 19 Comments
Feminists found a new target for their incessant outrage -- Nike's new spring clothing line. Nike's latest fashion endeavor looks runway ready, and probably not meant for kickboxing, spinning, or anything else athletic. But then most runway fare isn't designed for anything but the runway. Even the promo photos look like the glossy ads that fill Marie Claire and not typical adverts placed in weekly circulars. Nike x sacai feminist outrage nike clothing line 1Nike x sacai feminist outrage nike clothing line Which seems to be the point. Partnering with Japanese fashion studio Sacai, Nike hopes to make their mark in the rapidly expanding world of fitness fashion. So Nike decides to create what is obviously a fashion couture line. No big deal, right? It shouldn't be. Except that Nike committed the unforgivable sin of describing the line as feminine. As described by Nike:
Renowned for her disruptive aesthetic, sacai’s founder Chitose Abe began the design journey by mining the Nike archives and pulling references from running, tennis and American football, reinterpreting Nike’s heritage sportswear silhouettes through a feminine and modern lens. The resulting eight-piece capsule collection seamlessly blends the iconic look of sport with a feminine and modern edge. New fabric innovations include a special mesh lace hem that was specifically developed by Nike and Abe to adorn the trim of graphic Nike T-shirts. The detail pays homage to sacai’s cool and subversive take on femininity. Abe also applied her signature paneling to several of the garments. Through technical innovation, the partners were able to achieve this effect by pleating the classic ripstop fabric for the first time. Bonded zippers that are attached without any stitching are another example of advanced design.
Cue faux feminist drama.
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