Canadian Cincinnatus

The Ghomeshi trial shows that the Canadian judicial system still works

What prompted this post is this article in Toronto’s 24-hr news radio station 680 News, entitled “Jian Ghomeshi’s trial highlights need for deep legal reform: lawyer”. Now I am not suggesting that you should listen to 680 News for deep thoughts, but it is a great place to go to see what the Mainstream Media’s current zeitgeist is, because 680 is both too stupid and too sane to deviate much from the received wisdom.

So why does the lawyer quoted by 680 News think our criminal justice system is broken?

“A Toronto lawyer who’s called for substantial reforms to how the legal system handles sexual assault cases says the Jian Ghomeshi trial shows that the adversarial model presently in place is ‘structurally ill-suited’ to deal with such allegations.

The current system is ‘basically trial by war.’”

The reason why our justice system involves ‘trials by war’ is that trials necessarily represent two irreconcilable interests: the interests of the guy who doesn’t what to go to prison, as well as the people who want to send him there. Non-adversarial criminal trials may sound superficially nicer but in practice will mean that one side will not be fairly represented. You either have kangaroo courts – where the rights of the accused are waived – or you have a paradise for criminals. I am old fashioned enough to not favour either option.

“That is probably the worst thing to do to complainants who are coming forward to talk about very intimate and distressing violations of their sexual integrity,” he said.

What about the distress that an innocent man will have to endure for the next ten years in a federal prison?

“The high-profile Ghomeshi case has seen witnesses alter their statements under relentless cross-examination that often focused on details of memories dating back more than a decade”

This is an interesting point, and illustrates the need for a statute of limitations on sexual assault. These cases, especially after an intervening decade, devolve into a question of he said – she said, with no physical evidence or corroborating testimony available for either side. If memories are as unreliable as has been demonstrated in the Ghomeshi trial, how can anybody be found guilty of sexual assault beyond a reasonable doubt after a decade has passed?

“— a tactic deemed common among defence lawyers.”

This tactic is also common among prosecutors. This, because it is useful for separating truthful witnesses from perjurers and false accusers.

“Moving away from an adversarial model, I think, is going to be necessary because look at the Ghomeshi trial — who would voluntarily put themselves through that?”

Somebody with a desire for vengeance against a person who has done them grievous harm? Of course, that assumes, grievous harm has actually been inflicted.

“Canada’s legal system has made strides in the last few decades in trying to recognize the unique nature of sexual assault cases, including the implementation of rape shield laws that bar using a woman’s sexual history to discredit her.”

If the Ghomeshi trial illustrates anything at all, it is the absolute necessity of vigorous cross-examination. The testimony of every complainant was full of contradictions and fanciful stories that made no sense at all. If they hadn’t been exposed by cross-examination, what chance would Ghomeshi have to prove his innocence?

“Sexual violence is nonetheless often kept secret: a Statistics Canada survey found that only five per cent of sexual assaults were reported to police in 2014, a proportion consistent with previous studies.”

Really? So how do you go about counting something that is, by definition, unreported? I smell a statistical fish here - as well as another story about the corruption in our sciences.

What’s their solution?

“Creating a specialized court to deal with sexual assault cases, like those earmarked for young offenders or those accused with mental health issues, could help, although those tend to focus on the circumstances of the offender, Witelson said.”

A specialized court that focuses on the circumstances of the complainant? Sounds like a kangaroo court to me.

“In order to convict, the criminal justice system requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, a standard that is ‘almost impossible’ to meet, particularly in cases when the complainant and accused have an existing relationship, Butt said.

The civil system, meanwhile, needs only for one side to be more believable that the other, which increases the likelihood that someone will be held responsible, he said.”

See, what did I tell you. This validates what I said in my previous article:

“I also think this case points out how dangerous The Left really is. They demonstrate through their actions that they do not want justice at all - in any recognizable form of the word. What they want to do is to mete out group justice, like the way the Bolsheviks meted out group justice to the kulaks, or how Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge exterminated a third of Cambodia. If this assessment seem harsh, then let me ask you this: in what way is the feminist idea of justice in sexual assault cases different from communist persecution?”

You know, the social justice warriors are not going to stop. They are going to keep going until they achieve Pol Pot’s Year Zero. And green-eyeshades conservatives who just want to focus on ‘balancing the books’ while leave the messy, culture-war stuff to the Left, are inadvertently aiding and abetting them.

For this nonsense to stop, good men (and women) have to step up to the plate and stop them.

Another day, another discredited witness: tales from the Jian Ghomeshi trial

Just to lay my own prejudices on the table, I don’t like Jian Ghomeshi. First of all, I had never heard of him before his sex scandal. (I guess I just don’t watch enough government propaganda.) Then I found out that he was a CBC big shot and the kind of trendy person with all the right opinions. In addition, I also find revolting the rough sex that he says he favours.

Nevertheless, in spite of the dislike I feel for the man, I have come to think that he might be innocent (and boy, if I ever needed a criminal defence lawyer, I would want his lawyer). Why?

Mostly because the two complainants gave inconsistent testimony. They said one thing at the time, another to prosecutors and a third on cross-examiantion.  And they wait a decade before pressing charges, which they only did after Ghomeshi's sex life blew up in public.

The standard counterargument is that they were intimidated into silence because Ghomeshi is powerful and famous. I say hogwash. If they really had been horrifically assaulted by Ghomeshi, I don’t think anything would have held them back from seeking retribution.

Take the case of drunk driver Marco Muzzo, who recently killed three children and their grandfather in Vaughan. Do the parents of those kids act like they are intimidated by the Muzzo family, one of the richest in Canada, and who have vastly more money at their disposal than Ghomeshi? No. In contrast to Ghomeshi’s lovestruck accusers, these grieving parents are aggressively pursuing justice at every turn. They have become Marco Muzzo’s living nemesis. They aren’t scared of him. After all, what more can the Muzzo family do to them?

I think it is possible that Ghomeshi’s complainants feel that Jian Ghomeshi’s real crime was not that he hurt them, but that he dumped them. How much of this translates into criminal culpability on Ghomeshi’s part is another matter.

As far as the charge that Ghomeshi might get away with it because he is famous, I think his fame has hurt him more than it helped. If he were a Joe Schmoe, I don’t think this case would have ever seen the inside of a courtroom. The cops aren’t gullible. They know a weak case when they see it, but I suspect they were forced into filing charges by political pressure. And if the case falls apart in the courtroom then, hey, it’s not our fault. Too bad about the destruction of an innocent man’s life.

I suppose that some might charge me with automatically siding with men against women. Not so. I was livid about the sexual assaults and gang rapes that occurred in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. I was horrified by the Rotherham rape scandal cover-up. I was furious when CBS correspondent Lara Logan was gang raped and nearly ripped to pieces in Tahrir Square, and was even more furious with CBS News when they tried to sweep the whole thing under the rug because it clashed with the narrative about Arab Spring that they were pushing. For these sentiments, my critics might accuse me of being anti-Muslim. Oh? So why do I side here with Ghomeshi, a man of Iranian heritage?

Rather, I have a quaint notion of justice, one that is almost archaic these days. I believe that criminal cases should be judged solely on the basis of evidence, not on which demographic or political group the victim and the accused belong to, or on the issues dredged up by the trial.

I also think this case points out how dangerous The Left really is. They demonstrate through their actions that they do not want justice at all - in any recognizable form of the word. What they want to do is to mete out group justice, like the way the Bolsheviks meted out group justice to the kulaks, or how Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge exterminated a third of Cambodia. If this assessment seem harsh, then let me ask you this: in what way is the feminist idea of justice in sexual assault cases different from communist persecution?

For a good example of the latter, consider what this half-wit said in the National Post:

“I am concerned at the potential consequences if Ghomeshi were to be criminally acquitted.”

“An acquittal could have a concomitant ominous chilling effect. If his lawyer sufficiently embarrasses the accusers by suggesting they are lying, or through salacious revelations as to their sexual history, others will be less prepared to come forward with sexual harassment allegations.”

These words are written by a lawyer, in the middle of an ongoing trial. He - an officer of the court - appears to be openly rooting for a conviction for reasons that have nothing to do with Jian Ghomeshi’s actual guilt or innocence. I’m no legal expert, but isn’t the purpose of this trial – its only purpose – to determine Ghomeshi’s guilt? Oh, how I miss the days when Conrad Black still ran the Post.

Personally, I reserve final judgment until the trial is over because I don’t know what the remaining evidence will turn out to be, and I am not in the courtroom to see everything. 

Fifty Shades of Grey and feminism’s contradictions

The current box office champ is Fifty Shades of Grey, produced, directed, and written by women, and based on a bestselling book written by a woman. The topic: a submissive woman falls in love with and loses her virginity to a powerful man who insists on ‘dominance and submission’ role-playing, and with a taste for rough sex. (If this took place in Canada, he’d have his own show on a government-funded radio network, but I digress.)  By all accounts, the overwhelming majority of the fans who made the book and movie so popular are women.

By feminist theory, this does not compute. According to the Gospel According to Germaine Greer, the film should have instead been popular with heterosexual men, as the film affirms the Patriarchy (as feminists imagine it to be in their nightmares). Rather, the husbands and boyfriends try to ditch their wives and girlfriends at the Cineplex to see American Sniper instead. What is happening here is the type of cultural event I look forward to, and that I savour like a fine wine when it happens: a contradiction in left-wing ideology played out in the media.

The contradiction in question is the fact that a woman is programmed by nature to be attracted to a powerful, successful, dominant man, much the same way that a man’s mind has been hard-wired to find young, fertile, and healthy young women to be the epitome of sexiness. This fact directly contradicts a basic tenet of Feminism, namely the equality of the sexes, which many of the movie’s fans would no doubt agree with, if you were to survey them. This is the contradiction.

This is also the reason why I believe so many feminists are miserable. Their core beliefs directly contradict their inner desires. The root cause is that the feminists have gone too far in trying to regulate society. A lot of the sensible things that Feminism championed – the vote for women, political equality, equality in the workplace – have been enacted, enough so that there are few legitimate jobs left for feminists to do, aside from mopping up operations here and there. But, feminists don’t want to lose their jobs, so they champion crusades that take Feminism too far.

In taking the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate, they thought they could remold humanity through legislative fiat, Political Correctness, and tendentious Hollywood movies-of-the-week. Men and women could be made – through force of will - to have the same personality type – not dominant, nor submissive, but neutral and reasonable. It was at this point where Feminism became a force of oppression. One popular way we deal with repression when it contradicts our desires is to mouth the Political Correct platitudes when required while living out our true nature while nobody is looking.

Except that every now and then a cultural event comes along to expose the hypocrisy.

Cultural conservatives are mostly clued out about this sort of thing, except that the institutions we champion (e.g. traditional marriage) have real knowledge about human nature baked into the cake, thanks to millennia of trial and error. A typical off-the-mark take on the Fifty Shades phenomenon is provided by Rich Lowry, who titled his article, “Creep Meets Girl, Fifty Shades of Grey: The proper response to Christian’s obsession would be a good kick in the groin.” The operative word here is ‘proper’. The improper – but instinctive – response of a woman facing a dominant alpha male is to fall in love with him and try to have his child. Much as a man’s improper response to a floozy with a set of implants and blonde dye-job is to have quick sex with her.

OK, I hear all my conservative female readers out there screaming, what do you know? I am a woman, and I don’t want to have anything to do with this BDSM garbage.

I hear you, and for what it’s worth, I have no use for it either. But here’s the thing: BDSM is a caricature of male-female relations, and that is the reason it is popular in certain quarters. Dominant-submissive role-playing is a normal man-woman relationship taken to an extreme. In other words, it is a reaction to the joyless, sexless Swedish ideal of equality where the man does macramé and the woman pumps iron. And like any reaction, it goes too far. (Go see the great Norwegian comedy series Lilyhammer on Netflix for a hilarious send-up of Nordic culture.)

What traditional morality does is to employ the woman’s natural abhorrence of female promiscuity to channel her sexuality towards a father-knows-best, pillar-of-the-community type of respectable alpha male. A woman who falls for the Christian Grey-type is shamed. Therefore, women end up shunning him (even if they secretly love him). Instead of being a winner, Christian Grey is turned into a sexual loser, and therefore becomes the butt of other men’s jokes, instead of an object for their admiration. At that point, the women no longer secretly love him. This is the way sexual regulation used to work.

More than anything else, traditional marriage is a compromise between the interests of men and women. As a result, nobody gets everything he or she wants but everybody gets something. And most importantly, everybody gets someone. The latter is the real reason for the prohibition on polygamy and extramarital sex. The only winners with those pursuits are alpha males and (to a lesser extent) alpha females. The rest end up as sexless chumps, which is what you see on the college campus today. The beta-males (aka the nerds) are ignored, while the alpha males (the jocks and players) live like Hugh Heffner. Unfortunately, it is the beta-male provider types who form the backbone of modern society.

The thing about compromises, even good compromises like traditional marriage, is that they often don’t look that great at first glance. All the customs and traditions making up the institution of marriage look like a patchwork of contradictions and antiquated habits. The hard-won empirical knowledge behind the rituals only becomes obvious after they are removed.

Many of our sexual customs were overthrown in the sixties. The reason for their existence is only becoming apparent now.

Carol Costello, the vicious misogynist fronting CNN

Carol Costello is some kind of talking head at CNN. The open glee she exhibits to a tape of a women being beaten up that she plays for the audience has to be seen to be believed.

Watch the video embedded in this link to see what I mean.

Carol Costello thinks she is demonstrating moral superiority. She is really demonstrating her own moral depravity. I rarely use the term evil to describe political enemies (unless they are foreign dictators like Vladimir Putin or Pol Pot), but the use of that adjective here is entirely justified:

Carol Costello is evil. 

A modern woman-of-the-world discovers that she is no longer a spring chicken

From Robin Korth, an “international speaker and writer” (h/t Chateau Heartiste):

“And so, we planned a weekend together. That's when things got confusing, unspoken and just-not-quite there. We went to bed in a couple's way -- unclothed and touching -- all parts near. Kisses were shared and sleep came in hugs. I attempted more intimacy throughout the weekend and was deterred each time.

On Monday evening over the phone, I asked this man who had shared my bed for three nights running why we had not made love. "Your body is too wrinkly," he said without a pause. "I have spoiled myself over the years with young woman. I just can't get excited with you. I love your energy and your laughter. I like your head and your heart. But, I just can't deal with your body."

I was stunned. The hurt would come later. I asked him slowly and carefully if he found my body hard to look at. He said yes. "So, this means seeing me naked was troublesome to you?" I asked. He told me he had just looked away. And when the lights were out, he pretended my body was younger -- that I was younger. My breath came deep and full as I processed this information. My face blazed as I felt embarrassed and shamed by memories of my easy nakedness with him in days just passed. 

We talked for some time more, my head reeling at the content of the conversation. He spoke of special stockings and clothing that would "hide" my years. He blithely told me he loved "little black dresses" and strappy shoes. He said my hair was not long and flowing as he preferred, but that was okay because it was "cool looking." I felt like a Barbie Doll on acid as I listened to this man. He was totally oblivious to the viciousness of his words.”

You know what? I gotta think that Korth’s boyfriend’s reaction wouldn’t have been news to a more traditional woman.

Before the sexual revolution of the 1960’s upended millennia of wisdom about human relations, wisdom encoded in our customs and tradition, people were less clued out about how human nature worked. Specifically, it was widely understood that men are sexually attracted primarily to women of child-bearing age. The more fertile they are, the sexier they will seem – for reasons that were too obvious to mention in an age when people understood that the primary purpose of sex is reproduction.

Among the embedded knowledge, was the understanding that a woman’s best strategy is to snag the best man she can while her looks are in their prime, marry him and raise his children. That way, when her looks fade, it doesn’t matter; she is the established matriarch of her family by then.

But the utopians of the 1960’s had a problem with this. The life-arc from girl to hot-young-thing to mother to matron was too stifling. Something more liberating was required. So the illusion that people aren’t limited by their biology was invented. You want to be fancy-free and sexy. Sure. No problem. Shake your booty until you’re dead. 

The only problem? Biology is more real than ivory tower assumptions. If you ignore biology, you wind up with suboptimal results. A perfect example of this is found in the following comment to Korth’s article:

“I've wasted decades as my worst enemy & searching for men's approval. Something happened in my late 40's, I decided I'd rather be ‘alone’ and content than with someone searching for perfection.”

In other words, she wasted her best years partying and now that she is in her late 40’s, she discovers – too late – that she is no longer a sex kitten and doesn’t have the options she once did. Unfortunately for her, Mr. Right ain’t interested anymore. This commenter - and Robin Korth - are the victims of modern feminism. 

These are needless, self-inflicted tragedies, and they happen when people follow the false promise of utopian dreams. There is only one reality. And all we can do is make the best of our worldly existence… and not try to lead others astray.

When Susan Patton, a Princeton grad, made the same point in an open letter to the Daily Princetonian, there were howls of outrage from the usual suspects. But she nevertheless became famous as a result and has published a dating manual called “Marry Smart”. According to the New York Post: 

“The book argues that coeds have a limited shelf life ‘as young, beautiful [women who are] as attractive to men or as fertile’ and advises them to spend three-quarters of their time in school on the hunt for Mr. Right.”

I guess some people out there are beginning to get past the wishful thinking.

Why don't feminists oppose the Moslem tradition of covering their women with burkas and niqabs?

I was wondering about this question for a long time. It seems logical that the same women, who tossed “a collection of symbolic feminine products, pots, false eyelashes, mops, and other items into a trash can” at the 1968 Miss America Pageant, and proclaimed “Women's Liberation”, would support the “liberation” of fully covered Moslem women. So why don't they?

The answer came to me indirectly from Rush Limbaugh, and is a proof of his famous “Undeniable truth of life #24”. 

"Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of American life."

Having all women covered from head to toe might seem like an oppression of women by men, to any logical thinking person, but when you look at it from the point of view of Rush's undeniable truth of life #24, it makes perfect sense for feminists to support it. Having all women fully covered, very effectively makes attractive women indistinguishable from unattractive ones.

WiseGuy

The Toronto Mayor’s Niece offers women better advice than the feminist movement

I can certainly see how the victims of the Bloor Annex groper could be offended by Krista Ford's infamous tweet. Nevertheless, the inescapable conclusion from a fair reading of her tweet is that Krista’s heart was in the right place but she worded it poorly. Unfortunately, she is the daughter of Councillor Doug Ford and the niece of Mayor Rob Ford, and the last thing the mayor’s enemies - which comprise the whole of Toronto's left – want to do is to interpret her statement charitably.

To see the truth of the matter, let us review what she actually said:

"Stay alert, walk tall, carry mace, take self-defence classes & don't dress like a whore. #DontBeAVictim #StreetSmart"

All good advice, but advice that feminists don’t appreciate, particularly the last bit.

Earth to feminism: nobody is talking about restricting the right of women to dress as they see fit, not Krista Ford nor the unfortunate cop at the York University safety conference (who unwittingly inspired the latest Childrens' Crusade of the left, the Slut Walk). You can dress any way you want. You can legally even go topless. But, as Krista Ford and the cop advise, there are certain precautions that you can take to make yourself safer from predators. And one of them is to refrain from dressing provocatively.

At this point feminists will object that women have a right not to be raped.

Actually, no. They don’t have a right not to be raped. Just like you don’t have a right not to be murdered. To be sure, we have stringent laws against rape and murder, laws that I and fellow conservatives would like to see strengthened, but laws against rape and murder are a prohibition on would-be criminals not a guarantee by the state to prospective victims that these things won’t happen to them.

And even if the government were so silly as to guarantee such things, what good would it do? Crime doesn’t happen in front of a police station at shift change time. It happens at the time of the predator’s choosing, when you and he are all alone and the deck is stacked as much as possible against you. As a retired police officer friend liked to point out, the police are not there to protect you, they are there to catch your murderer.

This sort of logic surfaced first in the French Revolution when the revolutionaries became obsessed with positive rights emanating from the government. They believed that the best way to solve problems was to hand out rights. Edmund Burke described this thinking best:

What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer or the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics.

People who look to the government for every solution are still governed by this logic. They - feminists among them - will be in for a rude shock when the confront a psychopath in the alley.

The advice of Krista Ford is much more practical – and empowering to everyday women: take sensible precautions, learn self-defence and “walk tall”. The only thing missing in her list is to carry a handgun – the only true equalizer between a woman and a rapist.

Oh, can’t get a concealed carry permit? I guess the feminists shouldn’t have supported Alan Rock and the Chrétien Liberals.

Middle aged women going crazy

A disturbing trend I have been noticing for a while among my circle of friends, acquaintances and coworkers is the break-up of a long-term marriage that is initiated by the wife, who then proceeds to cavort about like a teenage girl, quite often ending up with some tattooed scumbag several orders of magnitude lower on the socioeconomic ladder than the ‘good provider’ husband she just left. These divorces are almost always initiated by the woman and usually the husband is shell-shocked and says that he ‘didn’t know what hit him’.

The motivation of these late-blooming slatterns is easy to divine. Women in their early forties can still be fairly attractive if they are well preserved, but in a few short years, they are decisively into grandmother territory. By that point, their sexual appeal will be a distant memory and that can be hard to take. It is a regrettable fact that, sexually speaking, women hit a wall in their late thirties to mid forties that is fairly hard. Men, in contrast, can be desirable well into late middle age if they stay in reasonable shape, dress reasonably well and don’t lose their hair. But understandable or not, the popularity of ‘spiritual adultery’ among married women has serious consequences for our society. 

The obvious victims are the children. Instead of growing up in a stable home, secure in the knowledge that both of their parents will always be there for them, they have to make their own way through the wreckage of a broken home. 

Unfortunately, we as a society so obsessed with victimhood that we ignore other - possibly greater - damage that this sort of thing causes. Let me explain. It is a fact of human society that it is the job of women to select men and not the other way around. This is because men, by nature, are more wanton in their lust. Because women are the choosier sex, the type of men they tend to choose is a powerful normative force that shapes what is considered acceptable male behaviour. When women choose men on the basis of their ability to be a good provider, men will respond by working hard and being responsible. When women prefer the charismatic, bad-boy type, why make the effort to go to school and work hard? Just hang around, be an asshole and pick up the beta-male provider’s loopy wife (as well as his house, because the wife inevitably ends up with the matrimonial home). A lot easier to live the life of a Jersey Shore goon. 

Of late, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about what is wrong with today’s boys, in that, for the first time, girls outnumber boys in university. At the same time, it has also been noted that an alarming portion of young men today choose to be underachievers, content to play video games, drink beer and game women in bars. I think part of the reason women outnumber men in college campuses is because university attendance is too high. This makes a university degree less important and I think men are picking up on this fact better than women. Nevertheless, I also believe the rise of Generation Slacker and the renewed preference of women for charismatic love-em-and-leave-em types like Alex Rodriguez is not unrelated.

If you want to see the negative social consequences of a society where women prefer this sort of sexual partner, look at Africa. There, women do all the work, raise the children and bear all the responsibility. The men hang around, flex their muscles, drink and screw. The result: abject poverty, broken families and a background level of violence that is jacked through the roof. Not good.

Evolutionary psychology teaches us why women desire alpha male thugs. In the hunter-gatherer era where most of our DNA developed, mating with the leader of the pack was the best way a woman could ensure the survival of her children – and her. The further down the pecking order she had to go to find a mate, the worse it was for her in a harsh, unforgiving world.

Our social environment has changed considerably since those days so that such preferences have become a maladaption. In a civilized environment, it is much better for the well being of the woman - and society – if she chooses the conscientious beta male instead, the proverbial ‘good provider’. He would be low down on the pecking order of Genghis Khan’s hordes but is high up in the civilized world. Think Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

For this reason, civilization has evolved over the centuries to strongly encourage women to select the beta-provider mate and shun the alpha-cad. In the West, Christianity has played a prominent role in this regard, but all advanced societies have independently developed customs and traditions that serve this purpose. If they hadn’t, they would have self-destructed.

Which brings us back to today’s society. In the sixties, the sexual structure of our society broke down as people rejected the traditional family in favour of sexual freedom. While my instincts run libertarian in most things, the freedom to shun the customs and traditions regulating human mating behaviour has huge externalities (to borrow the language of economists). Society restricts our freedom to steal a lollypop from a variety store because exercising this personal choice corrodes the institution of property without which organized society is impossible. Society used to restrict our freedom to commit adultery for the same reason: significant external costs born by everybody when the institution of marriage is broken.

Because it is permissible in the age of feminism to bash men, it remains socially acceptable to frown upon married men who indulge in the universal male desire for cheap, throw-away sex. This is good. Unfortunately, because of feminism, it is not socially acceptable to frown upon married women who exercise their equally primitive desire to fuck alpha males. If our society is to survive in the long-term, this must change.

 

Slut walks: demonizing sensible advice

In January, a Toronto police officer inadvertently stepped on a feminist landmine while conducting a crime prevention seminar at York University. What prompted it was a spate of late night attacks against women walking around on campus (which are continuing). Among the preventative measures discussed, Constable Michael Sanguinetti recommended that women not walk around alone at night ‘provocatively dressed’.

Sounds like common sense advice to avoid rape?

Not if you’re a feminist. The usual suspects promptly seized upon that comment as an attack by the police on women’s freedom. To drive the point home, a ‘slut walk’ was promptly organized in Toronto, which was then copied across various American cities, as this MSNBC article recounts.

Confusing practical advice with moral pronouncements is commonplace in the left’s knee-jerk grievance mongering ‘dialogue’.

To see why Constable Sanguinetti was not ‘blaming the victim’, lets reframe his advice in terms of a nonsexual crime. Let’s say I want to drive my Cadillac Escalade into downtown Toronto and park it late at night in Regent Park (a bad neighbourhood). I leave the doors unlocked, the windows rolled down and the keys in the ignition. I can do that. I have a right to do that. As far as I can tell, it’s even guaranteed by the constitution. And furthermore, I vigorously defend my right to do that.

But at the same time, when I report it stolen, the reporting officer has a perfect right to tell me I am an idiot. And if I ask Constable Sanguinetti about the advisability of this course of action at a community safety meeting, I expect him to tell me that it is not a very good idea. This is what the good constable did at York University in January, except the crime was rape not auto theft. But regardless of the crime under discussion, he is no more taking the side of the rapist than he is taking the side of the auto thief. (Psst..this example is adapted from one given by Camille Paglia from an article of her’s on the same subject.)

The police force would be blaming the victim only if they charged victims of sexual assault with lewd conduct - as they do in Saudi Arabia, or as the police in Canada do when they charge gun owners with unsafe storage who report their guns stolen.

All of this would be common sense if it weren’t for the fact that the left aggressively pushes a grievance agenda that is completely divorced from reality. And because their advice (‘go ahead and dress like a slut and walk around at night alone because you have a God given right to do so’) is so dangerous, it is precisely the targets of their compassion who suffer the most.

For if a young woman finds herself alone at night in an underground parking garage with a rapist, her sacred human rights will do her precious little good against the deranged pervert now confronting her. In this case, Constable Sanguinetti could help her a lot more than a community organizer would be able to. Of course, a close second best would be a snub-nosed 38 in her purse, but I suspect that the activists who are so strenuously championing her right to dress provocatively wherever she wants to would be just as adamant that she do so only while in a state of complete helplessness.

Dr. Helen Smith: “Men Don’t Exist to Serve Women’s Desires”

By Dr. Helen Smith:

“I read Kay Hymowitz’s new book, Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys, recently. ... I do believe Hymowitz tried to be sensitive to the plight of today’s men, but the book presents as being more concerned about how men fit into the world of women rather than how men actually feel themselves.”

“According to Hymowitz, these child-men are all used to a freewheeling life of going from girl to girl and video game to video game. Hymowitz mistakenly believes that men are suffering from the limits of American individualism.

Though she reluctantly admits that the “materials available to young men are meager, and what is available contradicts itself,” she comes up with this ridiculous conclusion: “At bottom, they are too free, a fact epitomized by their undefined, open-ended, and profoundly autonomous pre-adulthood.” She ends the book suggesting that young women will have to get a better understanding of the limitations imposed by their bodies (Huh?) and young men need to man up.

My question to her: Why should they?

What do you have to offer these men you call child-men if they do man up? Are you going to ensure that they have fair access to their children should they divorce? Will you make sure that they aren’t hauled off to jail if the wife makes false accusations of domestic violence? Will you let them keep the earnings and property that they worked for over years rather than have them turned over to their wife, even if she cheated and was abusive? Will you shield the millions of men who live in fear of their significant other but have nowhere to turn for help? Will you make marriage, in other words, as valuable to men as you think it is for women?”

All too true. After reading Dr. Smith’s article, I am reminded of the fact that feminism is wrong not so much in what they say about the ‘patriarchy’ but in what they don’t say. What feminists neglect to mention is that in a traditional society, women have a huge normative role in male behaviour with the choices that they make: if you aren’t a stable, responsible, hard-working man (i.e. if you aren’t good-provider material), you don’t get to be married and therefore you don’t get sex.

But after trashing traditional marriage and/or making its cost exceed its benefit to men, is it any surprise that men aren’t interested in marriage any more? So men become slackers.

Feminists make things worse by telling women its OK to be a slut. They think they are doing women a favour by empowering them, but they are not. They are actually disempowering women by taking the power they used to have in controlling negative male behaviour away from them. Freeing men to be pump-and-dump, alpha male cads.

Who is all this good for?

Not men.

Not women.

Not society.

But this is what you get when you replace customs and traditions that have evolved over a long period of time with a theory concocted by ivory tower intellectuals.