Category Archives: Men and Women

Relationships, Sex, Marriage, Love, Hate and Dating

Affirmative Consent

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Minnesota’s New Puritans trying to make college sex “safe” might destroy it, instead.  

The proposed legislation says consent to a sexual act must be given by words or actions that create mutually understandable, unambiguous permission regarding willingness to engage in, and the conditions of, sexual activity.   It goes on to say that consent may be withdrawn at any time.  

Does “at any time” mean “after the fact?”  Can a person regret having agreed to have sex and retroactively withdraw consent?  Do second-thoughts convert consensual activity into sexual assault? 

If a person is accused of engaging in sexual activity without obtaining express consent, at trial, how does the accused prove s/he did obtain explicit consent?  He-said-she-said testimony?  A witness who watched the sex act?  Sex video?  Who curates the library of sex videos? 

It would be much easier to enforce if they’d cut to the chase and say: “Students shall not engage in sexual activity while enrolled in college.”
Joe Doakes

My alma mater – at least while I was in school (I have no idea today) went through at least the formality of saying “nobody of the opposite sex in your room after 11PM – 1AM on weekends”. Everyone knew the rules were getting flouted – but the institution had the wisdom to imply “look, all you late-adolescents – we know you’re going to do it, because for all the academic jabbering you are all still governed by hormones. But we know you’re neither thinking clearly, nor ready for the consequences, and we’re at least going to nag you about it long enough that the consequences don’t happen on our watch”.

I’m pretty sure it was a better idea.

The Black And Pink Cloud

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Is it just me, or are people getting worse?

I worked at a job once upon a time – decades before #MeToo – where the boss took a lot of indecent liberties, verbally if not physically, with the women at work. This was in the 1980s.

And he wound up as the subject of seven sexual harassment lawsuits, and lost his job after about a year.

Again – 1988.

And as I’ve slogged through three decades in the working world since then, I’ve listened to a lot of pundits bemoaning that there just aren’t enough female managers, and enough respect for women. I’ve also worked for a lot of women; my first field after radio, technical writing, was pretty much dominated by women. My current field, perhaps less so.

I’ve also heard few stories from women about predatory bosses and coworkers. A few, to be sure – I’ve had a few good female friends who’ve related some shocking stories of coworkers and sexual predation on at least a rhetorical level…

…all pretty much followed up by a visit to HR, and some sort of consequence for the guy, commensurate with the severity of the indiscretion.

Let me sum up; over thirty years in the workforce, and a generalized knowledge that there are consequences, at least in the civilized world (forget about ad agencies and showbiz) for guys acting like neanderthals.

And so since then, as I have watched the #MeToo “movement” make sexual harassment a part of the “national conversation” yet again (that’s right, kids – it’s not the first time), and read stories like this…”

All woman live on a spectrum of misery because, we can only assume, we are women. I have endured attempted rape, and sexual assault on public transport. I have been fired from jobs for not being demure or flirtatious enough (because only two female archetypes are acceptable, and both have terrible pitfalls.) On my first day of work at a famous newspaper, a famous male journalist invited me to place a cigar in a place from which no words come. I giggled, and that giggle – it was a tragic giggle – tells you everything.

via, ironically, “Unherd“

I’ve had to wonder – am I (or, really, the decades of female friends I’ve had in the work force) been unshakeable pollyannas? Have I managed, at random, to steer a course through the working world without encountering my share of predatory guys? Have I – who spent most of the past 20 years neck-deep in raising kids – just been too buried to notice?

It’s possible.

Or is it the industries that’ve spawned “#MeToo” – the “elite” reaches of showbiz, the media, academia and politics, where power is one of the perks (for men and women), and the sense of entitlement that comes with the career for people who’ve never really known anything else?

Or is it the current generation, the millennials who as adults collect grievances and diagnoses the way they used to collect Pokemon cards? And for whom, like the raft of fake hate-crime hoaxers that’ve plagued our campuses, the perception of grievance is the same as an offense?

It’s not a rhetorical question.

Somewhere, Bobby Riggs Is Smiling

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I’m not the only one that figures that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez is setting back feminism half a decade or more:

In mere minutes, Ocasio-Cortez managed to affirm nearly every negative stereotype about the female sex, from the trope that we’re no good at math to the notion that you shouldn’t trust us with a credit card. If all you saw was her example, you’d think we’re all just emotional dreamers who need to be reined in by reality

Ocasio-Cortez is not the feminist hero most media coverage has made her out to be. If anything, her time in the spotlight has set women in politics back.

Not just women. I have a hunch after a few years of her (and Reps. Omar and Tlaib), millennials outside the safest of coastal loonie bins are going to have a harder sell to get into office as well.

Disparity Of Power

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Feminists have spent the last forty years convincing men thatn “no means no”.

So far so good.

They’ve spent a chunk of the last fifteen convincing first universities, then courts, that a “no”, even one applied retroactively and contradictorily, hours or days or months after the fact, really meant “no” even if it was an explicit “Yes” in the first place.

Feminist dogma has it than men are stupid – but some have developed a sense of self-preservation, and are starting to get affirmative consent on video immediately before, er, doing something that needs consent.

And, predictdably, feminists are bunged about that, too:

[Feminists] are not pleased with the idea of consent videos and their “problematic” ramifications.

In the case with [a woman complaining about the videos, idiot Brit feminist writer Rachel King] complains that the “implication” of a consent video “is that those in a position of power are the ones who need protection, and that’s just not true.”

I try to be polite.  I really do.  And I try to treat people they way I’d like to be treated.

Which is how I rationalize the following – because if I were being a complete dumbass like Rachel King, I’d hope someone pointed it out to me.

Rachel.  Dumbass.  Men don’t have the power.   When a woman has the ability to ruin a man’s life over a false, flighty or stretchy accusation, the idea of “male power” is as quaint as an episode of “Leave It To Beaver”.

King, who mocked that “it’s apparently ‘a scary time for young men,'”

(Love the patrohization, Rachel.  Also – eat s**t and die a painful death)

also emphasized that false accusations just don’t happen,

Duke.  Virginia Tech.  Every f****ng word out of Lena Dunham’s mouth.

pointing to a popularized hashtag on Twitter as evidence. “In reality, the vitriol that victims of rape and sexual assault are subject to is enough to put anyone off making a false report. If you don’t believe me, check out the #WhyIDidntReport tag on Twitter,” she wrote.

I’m done playing nice with these morons.

”

 

Fet Ish

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British “socialist dominatrix” claims to turn “white, right wing” men into socialists.

For many of her clientele, who are almost exclusively white right-wing men because she finds herself unable “to be even fictionally cruel to any other type of man,”

Of course they are, and of course she does.

that fetish is serving a powerful woman. Maybury derives her pleasure comes from forcing those men to see the contradiction between their love of powerful women and their support for political parties that actively work to limit women’s rights and empowerment. In her book, Dining with Humpty Dumpty, she detailed conversations with a man she said exhibited the “disgusting contradiction” of claiming to be both “a ‘female supremacist’ and a Tory.’”

A cursory Google search of Ms. Maybury shows no indication that she’s actually successfully “converted” anyone, but that she is the sort of D-list pseudo-academic (but increasingly, academic) “celebrity” that does pop up on NPR “arts and culture” programming often enough to get talked about…

…and this post would indicate it worked.

Some of my “progressive” friends over the weekend were chortling over this one, naturally, the way they usually do over this sort of pseudo-story.

My first reaction:  it says more about the nature of socialist men than about “right wing white” guys; they make Pajama Boy look like Chuck Norris.

The second?   This is such a complement to Berg’s Seventh Law that I am inaugurating a new one:  The Maybury Corollary to Berg’s Seventh Law.  To wit:  When a “progressive” makes a mocking or defamatory pronoucement about the deviance, depravity, deceit, dissipation or lack of a conservative’s sexuality, it is invariably a combination of their own insecurities and what they desperately want to believe about those who believe differently than them.

Progs want to believe that all it takes to convert a conservative male into a socialist…er, being is a little highly-stylized pseudo-sex from a modern pseudo-academic phrenologist.

And perception is reality, among the “evidence-based” set.

But it’s called Berg’s Law for a reason.

The Sixty Year Old Strawman

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Liberal feminists seem to be perpetually lodged in battle with men from the Mad Men generation…

…er, wherever they are:

Feminist author Jessica Valenti was pretty impressed with a piece in Glamour about a woman who has sworn off cooking for men now that her divorce has come through.

It’s Jessica Valenti, so you know it’s not actually “good”.

But you do know it’s wrenched straight from the little box of cultural cliches that no liberal enters an argument without.

Read the whole thing.  Feel better about your own level of intellectual oomph.

A Plug

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I’ve been reading “The Girls Are Gone”, by my old friend and former NARN co-host Michael Brodkorb and Allison Mann.

Do I recommend it?

Why, yes I do!

This case goes over so much material near and dear to my heart – family court reform, the bizarre “Judicial Election” cult in Minnesota, Michelle MacDonald in general – that I really can’t stop reading.

Michael may be a polarizing figure – but he’s done yeoman’s work covering this case.   The story is very very worth a read.

Dead Lock

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I now know as much as I need to know, to cast an informed vote in the governor’s race.

Joe doakes

The missive relates to this mailer:

Leaving aside the Orwellian use of “Health” to refer to dismembering fetuses, I just want to smack Democrats for making up “rights” as they go.

There is no “right” to health. There is a responsibility to take care of yourself.

No more!

Thoroughly Modern

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SCENE:  Mitch BERG is waiting for the train at University and Hamline.  

Suddenly, a group of 20 through 60-something women with protest signs and pink “feline” caps rushes across the street, waving signs and chanting chants.  One of them is Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, a twenty-something graduate of Saint Olaf, and of Camp Wellstone.  She works as a telemarketer for “Minnesotans United for All Progressive Causes”. 

She notices BERG.

BIRKENSTOCK (Loudly, aggressively):  Merg!

BERG:  Um, hi, Moonbeam…

BIRKENSTOCK:  Women are strong!  We are invincible!  A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle!  We will eclipse masculinity!  We will smash the patriarchy!

BERG:  Huh.  So women who make any sort of claim of abuse…

BIRKENSTOCK:  Must be believed without question or reservation!

BERG:  Huh.  You don’t think that’s already a big contradic…

(But BIRKENSTOCK has already run down the platform, joining a mob stomping on a roll of MEN-tos. 

BERG:  Huh.

(And SCENE)

Advice For Modern Life

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Top ten red flags that pop up in sexual assault claims that juuuuust might be more about revenge, control, money or power than justice:

Without naming any particular accusation, I offer these factors for consideration to the fair-minded who remain open to the possibility that guilt or innocence is not simply a question of politics. I also remind the reader that politicizing these accusations have allowed men like Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken, Matt Lauer, Les Moonves, Bill Clinton, and Keith Ellison to escape accountability. Nobody seems to care if they walk the walk so long as they talk the talk.

Read the whole list.  This one grabbed me:

4. When the accused’s opportunity to mount a defense is delegitimized.

The Duke Lacrosse coach was fired just for saying his players were innocent. When the players dared to protest their innocence, the prosecutor painted their stories in the press as “uncooperative.” If either the accused or the accused’s supporters are attacked for just for failing to agree with the accusation, it’s a red flag.

Apply it to current events.

Pass it on.

Anyone Remember #MeToo?

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Either does the Minnesota DFL Central Committee:

Ellison received 326 votes, or 82 percent of delegates on hand at the party’s state executive committee meeting Saturday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.

The endorsement comes after Ellison won the Democratic primary just days after Karen Monahan said Ellison had once dragged her off a bed by her feet while screaming obscenities. Ellison has denied the allegation. Monahan has said she has video footage of the 2016 encounter, but has declined to release it. Ellison says the video does not exist.

People are innocent until proven guilty.   Domestic abuse is itself abused in this country.   We should take accusers seriously – but guilt until proof of innocence is a notion worth fighting – rhetorically, politically, legally and if necessary militarily.

But I come not to bury Ellison (more later).   I come to pillory the MNDFLCC.  #MeToo was never anything but a virtue-signaling cudgel to use against conservatives (until it largely backfired, taking out Al Franken, Garrison Keillor, Dan Schoen and perhaps Ellison).

It’s the moral equivalent of Al Gore flying to Indonesia in a private jet to lecture the world about the climate;  it’s a moral imperative for the rest of us, an inconvenience to them.

Off Script

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Minnesota Democrats and the media that work for them will be and to some on natural angles to justify the behavior of Democrat politicians – especially virtue signal sponges like Keith “Thumper” Ellison.

But once in a while, you get surprised:

If the allegations are true, Keith Ellison has no right to serve as the state’s chief legal officer. And he had no right to run under false pretenses, as a man standing wrongly accused. Voters had only his word on that claim, and the investigation is ongoing.

In the meantime, Keith Ellison must withdraw from the race and not put Minnesotans through another cycle of political scandal. They’ve been through enough.

It’s very simple. We believe survivors.

Politics doesn’t matter. We believe survivors.

Keith Ellison says he wants to protect women from domestic violence and sexual assault. That starts by believing survivors.

As a matter of fact, I believe that people are innocent until proven guilty.

Given that representative Allison as often supported policy is (especially on domestic violence and gun control) that repudiate that idea, I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for him.

Maybe It’s “Common Core” Biology

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Two boys won the Connecticut state track meet.  The Girls track meet.  It’s “controversial.”  It shouldn’t be.

A human being having two X chromosomes is biologically Female, while a human having one each X and Y is biologically Male.  This is Sex, it’s science, it’s universally agreed to be true.

Over the last 5,000 years, human civilizations developed acceptable roles for members of the sexes.  Women raised children, men hunted and fought.  These were Gender Roles.  Until very recently, these were universally agreed to be sensible and appropriate.

The biological difference in chromosomes results in physical differences in reproductive organs, musculature, and hormones, Male and Female sexes.  Then societal difference results in differences in behavior, Masculine and Feminine.  Sex led to Gender but they are not identical and not interchangeable.  An individual biologically Female human may reject playing with dolls (training to raise children) preferring to roughhouse with boys (training for war) but being a Tomboy doesn’t change her from being a Girl.

All human attributes are distributed on a bell-shaped curve so yes, some women are stronger than some men; but at the competitive end of the curve, women simply cannot physically compete against men.

And everybody knows it.  That’s why there are two leagues, Men’s and Women’s.  That’s why Anika Sorenstam competing in the PGA was a publicity stunt.  That’s why John McEnroe was entirely correct to say Serena Williams is a great women’s tennis player but wouldn’t stand a chance against the top men’s tennis players.  She wouldn’t.  You can see the difference for yourself – watch Boy’s state championships in any sport, then watch the Girls’ championships in the same sport.  Boy champions are always stronger and faster than Girl champions.

Boys claiming to be pre-operative transgender Girls have been winning athletic contests in the Girls division for the last few years, in Alaska in 2016, in Connecticut last year, and two of them came in first and second in Connecticut this year.  They are defended by LGBTQ activists who point out transgender people have hard lives because of societal expectations on dress, behavior and even bathroom use.  Maybe so, but that doesn’t address the biological advantage of being born Male but competing against Females.  Defending against Biology using the defense of Societal Role is bait-and-switch.  People who refuse to acknowledge biology are science deniers.

If biological differences justify having two different leagues, then gender preference is irrelevant and those boys should go back to being losers in the Boys’ State meet.  Otherwise, if we let them compete against Girls, then there are no Girls’ sports anymore, there are only Boys’ sports – some won by boys who admit it, and some won by boys who pretend not to be.

Joe Doakes

I look for the quality of WNBA basketball to improve a lot in about a decade…

More, Faster.

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False rape accuser headed to prison:

Last year a young woman from Long Island who was attending Sacred Heart University in Connecticut came to the police with a harrowing tale. Nikki Yovino told the authorities that two football players from the school had trapped her in the bathroom at a party they were attending and raped her. Police immediately began investigating the horrible crime and quickly identified the suspects. They claimed that the sex was consensual but the victim was adamant. Or at least she wasadamant until others came forward to testify that the football players were telling the truth.

Eventually, Yovino retracted her story and admitted that she had engaged in sex with the boys at the party willingly. Later she decided to make up the rape story to win the support and affection of a different boy she had wanted to date. Then, in a shocking turn of events which we rarely if ever see in such instances of false accusations, Yovino was charged with a crime over her lies. Now, following a very generous plea deal, she’s heading off to prison. (Legal Insurrection and the College Fix)

Swine like this deserve, and should get, exactly the same sentence as the rapists themselves.

Toxic Feminization

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For all the caviling the LGBT community makes about being misunderstood, it’s a fact that even when I was in high school, psychology knew that the worst thing you could do with a gay kid was to force him/her to act straight.  The problems it caused were utterly intolerable.

And yet today, making boys act like neutered non-boys is generally accepted, at least in academia and the public schools.   And the effects are both identical and much more societally more sweeping:

Doesn’t it seem a little odd that masculinity gets blamed when some kid without a dad turns into a rapist or ends up in prison? Doesn’t it seem weird that masculinity would get blamed for a feminist ally like Harvey Weinstein, “who championed older actresses like Meryl Streep and Judi Dench, joined a Women’s March, donated to Democratic candidates, raised money for Planned Parenthood and publicly venerated Gloria Steinem”?We take a young man and kick his father out of his life, send him to school where he has mostly women teachers, barrage him with negative messages about masculinity, then turn him loose at college where we treat him like a guilty-until-proven-innocent rapist, and after all that, we blame “masculinity” when he goes off the rails despite the fact that he spent a lifetime bathed in femininity. Unsurprisingly, the more women try to change masculinity, the more negative and toxic it actually becomes. Yet, articles explaining how masculinity needs to be changed and rewired—written by women or feminized males—are practically a cottage industry these days.

The problem isn’t masculinity .It’s the forcing of genuine masculinity underground.

Berg’s Seventh Law In The Headlines

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Berg’s Seventh Law: “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”

Remember during the campaign, when Donald “The Donald” Trump’s history of sexist japes, braggadocio and womanizing went from being a Hollywood inside joke to grist for a desperate Clinton campaign to dig out of a hole?

Of course you do.  You couldn’t escape it.

And as I saw that unfolding in Hillary’s attempt to claw her way into office, I kept thinking;  “Yes, it’s about drawing attention away from Bill and her history of committing and abetting unspeakable horrors upon women to the winking and chuckling of their buddies in high lefty places”.

But I  also thought “it’s gotta be more than this”.

And with the juxtaposition of Roseanne Barr (whose show was tanked within a day of her racist jape on Twitter) and Samantha Bee (who will be a cause celébre on the left, just you watch), it became clear; the borg that is Big Left just doesn’t think their own (the “elite” at the top of the prog pile – the Clintons, Emmanuels, Feinsteins, Waterses and the like) can be guilty of anything.  

Case in point:

When you have a movement whose “elite” (koff koff) takes private jets halfway around the world to conferences where they tell everyone else to move into apartments and take transit? That sends its kids to private academies but hectors you for putting yours in a charter school? That parks its money in tax shelters run by rooms full of tax lawyers and tells you you’re unpatriotic for wanting your taxes lowered?

Who tell you “Misogyny is bad” while excusing…ugly stupid misogyny (in terms so patronizing and sexist that they’d have gotten any Republican politican exiled to rural Alaska)?

I guess I can see why they deflect to “Racism” when talking about why Trump won.

Behold

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Everything that’s wrong with modern feminism…:

Advertised as a “rejuvenating and a safe space where women can reinvent themselves and their desires,” an island off the coast of Raasepori in southern Finland is being touted as an all-inclusive, testosterone-free luxury resort. According to the Supershewebsite, the island can accommodate ten women in four newly-renovated cabins.

…and modern PC-entrepreneurship…:

Spending time in a “man-free” milieu is an expensive treat, as Benny Smeds has put the starting price for a week’s stay at “several thousand euros.” The price, however, includes food, service and even tailor-made programs.

…and casual sexim…:

Advertised as a “rejuvenating and a safe space where women can reinvent themselves and their desires,” an island off the coast of Raasepori in southern Finland is being touted as an all-inclusive, testosterone-free luxury resort. According to the Supershewebsite, the island can accommodate ten women in four newly-renovated cabins.

…and the modern social welfare state…:

Roth admitted scrapping plans for further investments in Finland, voicing her frustration over the difficult time she’s had as an entrepreneur in Finland, which she dubbed a “negative country that sucks energy and money.”

“My experience as an outsider and investor in this beautiful country led me to reconsider future plans,” Roth said…Meanwhile, Aija Valleala from the equality ombudsman’s office has said their investigation into whether a women-only business classifies as illegal discrimination hasn’t been completed yet.

…all in one story that you’d almost think was from The Onion if you didn’t know better.

Sexist But True

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I suspect the reason Stormy Daniels’ interview didn’t hurt Trump was because of the subconscious comparison it caused.
Look up the women Trump has sex with, compare them to the women Obama and Clinton married, then tell me who the Big Dog is.
Joe Doakes

He’s got a point.

Counterintuitive?

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Given the vigor with which Scandinavian countries (and those who romanticize their welfare states with all the subtlety of Swedish Chef Night at Karaoke Hut) play up the “gender equality” card, you’d think they’d have the whole “gender equity” thing figured out.

You’d be wrong.

Comparing the Nordic countries with each other, a pattern emerges: Those with more extensive welfare-state policies have fewer women on top. Iceland, which has a moderately sized welfare state, has the most women managers. Second is Sweden, which has opened up welfare services such as education, health care, and elder care for private-sector competition. Denmark, which has the highest taxes and the biggest welfare state in the modern world, has the lowest share of women in managerial positions.

The rise of the welfare state has been a double-edged sword for women’s advancement.Essentially, the rise of the welfare state has been a double-edged sword for women’s advancement. On the one hand, it has created jobs in women-dominated fields such as health care and education, and aided the labor-market entry of women by offering day care and other family-related services. On the other, the attendant high taxes have reduced the economic incentive for both parents to work full-time, and have also made it difficult for families to purchase services that alleviate household work (such as cleaning). Parental-leave policies have given women an incentive to take long breaks from working. And state monopolies in female-dominated sectors such as health care and education have limited women’s career choices.

Also worth noting – Scandinavian societies going back to the Vikings gave women rights they wouldn’t have for centuries elsewhere in the world – the rights to own land, inherit property, and file for divorce.   An astonishing level of gender equality predated the Scandinavian social state by centuries.  Not that that stops the left from claiming credit they dind’t earn.

ivvIf you’ve been readint thias blog any length of time3, you know how “unintended conse3qiuences” work.

Not This Again

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About thirty years ago, Big Media spread the word; forget the bars, meet the next significant other at…

…the supermarket.

Which sent millions of lonely hearts trudging through the aisles, finding nothing but, well, food.

The meme is back.  And I’m pretty convinced it’s a PR stunt by the National Supermarket Marketing Council.

Where Have All The Nice Things Gone?

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Powerline runs an occasional column “The Week in Pictures.”  A while back, they started to end each column with a photo of a beautiful woman holding a gun and wearing very little.  Come on, relax, it’s innocent fun.  Then some female reader complained – there should be photos of hunky men holding guns, for fairness.  That was added and the women holding guns got more clothes.  Not as much fun.  This week, a female reader complains in the comments that the hunk isn’t hunky enough and the girls are still too hot.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Joe Doakes

On this, I have no comment.

De-Stalinization

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In 1996, Christina Hoff Summers and Camille Paglia – two embattled minorities in the feminist academy – predicted feminism, as a worst case, was going to slide into a form of intellectually and morally dystopic Orwellianism.

In 2016, they – now more “endangered species” than embattled minorities in the modern feminist academy – reprised the discussion to note that things were worse than they’d predicted.

It’s well worth an hour.