Tag: Sex

Revisiting an Unhappy Topic: Pedophilia and its Defenders

 

A few days ago, Susan wrote Normalizing Pedophilia, in which she drew attention to efforts by the United Nations to, among other things, promote international guidelines that blur the concept of “age of consent.”

An objection was raised in the comments that “pedophilia” wasn’t the right word for this, since that term apparently refers, clinically, to an attraction to pre-pubescent children, and the UN wasn’t specifically advocating tolerance for such attraction. Of course that’s true. All the UN was doing was removing one more hurdle, one clear line, protecting young people from sexually perverse adults.

Amidst fraught debates about what gender is, and how it fits into feminism, Annika sits down with Dr. Abigail Favale, an English professor specializing in gender studies and feminist literary criticism turned Catholic convert. Dr. Favale is now a professor and writer at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, and the author of “The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory.”

More about Dr. Favale: https://abigailfavale.wixsite.com/home

On this episode of “The Federalist Radio Hour,” Bishop Juhana Pohjola joins Executive Editor Joy Pullmann in the Hillsdale College Kirby Center studio to discuss his experience being prosecuted in Finland under hate crime laws after stating Biblical truths about the distinctions between males and females.

Bari Weiss Interview: Courage in the Face of Book Burners

 

I’m once again recommending a podcast from Bari Weiss. This one is an interview with Abigail Shrier, author of Irreversible Damage: Teenage Girls and the Transgender Craze, her piece of investigative journalism (remember when that used to happen?) on the topic of the exploding “trans” movement afflicting young girls.

I have purchased the book but not yet read it. I’ll undoubtedly write about it after I do.

On this episode of “The Federalist Radio Hour,” senior policy analyst at the Independent Women’s Forum and senior contributor at The Federalist Inez Stepman joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss how the progressive, Boomer emphasis on sex positivity hurt Generation Z.

[Member Post]

 

In my continuing effort to track cultural weirdness, I had another eye opening exposure I thought I’d drop it in here: The growing use of the term “birthing person.” I didn’t quite get what it was for, and found a counseling practice that explained it. They are willing to use “mother” if that is what […]

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.

One Man’s Response

 

Recently fellow Ricochetti @Sawatdeeka wrote a lovely post, here, that enumerates a few of the things she enjoys about being a woman. She wrote her piece while I was sitting at my desk, staring at my screen, trying to express my frustration with the sad state of manliness in our culture and the problems that spring from it. My own post was taking on the quality of a rant. I’m not averse to penning rants, of course, but I’m really not in a ranting mood at the moment, and so it wasn’t coming out just like I wanted.

Though we were in a sense both doing the same thing, Sawatdeeka did what she did better than I was doing what I was doing. And so I decided to try to say what I wanted to say in a positive way, rather than a negative way.

Rob Long is in for Jim today. Rob and Greg react to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo doing exactly what Rob said he would do to distract from his many scandals. Then they’re glad to see President Biden’s poll numbers sinking on immigration policy. They also explain how Biden’s “infrastructure” bill appears to include a bunch of Green New Deal provisions, guts freedom to work. And they call out the left’s refusal to acknowledge basic biological reality when it comes to determining a person’s sex.

Toxic Traits of Masculinity

 

The more obvious explanation from any outside analysis is that there seems to be a move less intended to improve men than to neuter them, to turn any and all of their virtues around on them and turn them instead into self-doubting, self-loathing objects of pity. It looks, in a word, like some type of revenge.

– Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky and Staff Editor Madeline Osburn break down the events, people, and legislation that shaped the cultural momentum to reclaim biological sex as a concept and push back on transgender politics.

“You say you want a revolution”: Incels, Ideology, and Charles Murray

 

For those that are unaware, Incel is a portmanteau of “involuntary celibate,” and encompasses men who fit just what that description implies, but also a range of other behaviors and opinions. The term was originally coined by a female Canadian university student as a reference, and the name for an online support group, to people of both genders that struggled to garner romantic relationships. Incels today are almost all men and are quite far afield of the original version of that term. In addition to their virginity, they have a developed system of thought on women, society, and romantic life. 

To put it bluntly, the vast majority of Incels consider women non-human. The kindest might deign to mark them as animals, or human-like creatures, hence the common use of the term “foid” (female humanoid). In their minds, women are incapable of love, loyalty, selflessness, real strength, or rational thought; they live to engage in casual relationships with high-status men (“chads”), and when they are inevitably made worthless anatomically and physically by this, spend the rest of their lives with desperate low-status men who provide them with money while they have children born of countless extramarital affairs. But maybe women who chose not to follow this path are slightly more highly regarded? No. Not even a little. Unmarried women are unimaginably selfish evildoers who live to lead on an endless stream of innocent men, and those that chose not to have children deserve instant death because they haven’t fulfilled the one purpose that women have in the world as breeding sows. 

Sex, Violence, and Marriage

 

I’ve been engaged in a pair of interesting conversations lately with people whose views are, shall we say, somewhere to the left of my own — and yes, I know that’s a pretty big crowd — about the meanings of words. Specifically, we’ve been talking about “sex” and “violence.”

The left is in the process of redefining sex to mean something other, something broader and less precise, than male or female. They do this by pointing to differences in the way human sexual traits are distributed, claiming that abnormal combinations of traits represent new sexes, rather than merely variations in distribution. (They also cite biological abnormalities, the rare genetic mutations that cause some people to actually be sexually ambiguous in their physiology.)

There’s a point to this redefinition. By stirring up mud and obscuring what we all pretty well know about normal sexual distinctions, they can marginalize those distinctions. That’s important, because their goal is to say that all differences of behavior and situation are the result of social constructs, arbitrary rules made up (by men) to achieve a social objective (the subjugation of women). Once biology is rejected, all that remains is injustice.

Make the Democrats Talk About Sex

 

Yes, really. I mean the meaning of “sex.” The leftists in the House of Representatives passed a resolution purporting to extend the deadline for passage of a Constitutional amendment that had failed for lack of ratification by the specified deadline. The Democrats did so as part of election politics. The Senate Republicans should seize the opportunity given them, rather than playing into Chuck and Nancy’s hand.

Democrats want to run this year as women’s rights advocates, even as they destroy the rights of actual girls and women. It is time one party stood up for girls and women against the patriarchy in dresses. The ERA, if passed as currently written, will be weaponized by the left, reading their cultural agenda through the word “sex.” Nevertheless, the recurring story we will see and hear for the next nine months will be that a bunch of old white men, led by Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, are standing in the way of women’s equality. It does not have to go this way.

The Democrats almost slipped the ERA by us back in 1972-1973, whereafter Phyllis Schlafly mobilized effective opposition. Eventually, several states reversed their ratification. Yet, the Democrats intend to claim in court that a state cannot un-ratify, so they get to collect every state, with the more recent passage by Virginia making the magical 38th state, adding the already redefined amendment onto the end of the Constitution, trumping all previous language—especially the First Amendment’s religion clauses.

Conservatives and Gender Nonsense Tolerance

 

The whole gender identity movement, the so-called “trans” thing, the idea that sex is not biologically determined, the idea that it’s really more complicated than two overlapping bell curves of masculine and feminine traits — all of that seems pretty absurd to me. It also seems important, in that it’s the first time we Americans have been told that we have to profess belief in something patently absurd or face censure in the workplace and society — and possible prosecution in New York City.

I comment on it more often than something as ridiculous as the “trans” movement would seem to deserve. I usually comment about it on Facebook, rather than here, because I assume most people here are broadly in agreement that the whole thing is silly.

[Member Post]

 

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20191219/de8a5407-1029-42aa-97c7-4ae37c98c4e9 JK Rowling of “Harry Potter” fame defends a woman who lost her job for saying that trans people haven’t changed biologically. One cannot even say that because it is “absolutist.” Can someone explain how it’s okay for Greta the climate change observer to be “absolutist”? Is science now only what p.c. allows it to […]

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.

Book Review: ‘5 Star’ by Michael Henry

 

In a good mystery, whatever the medium, the audience should not be able to tell very early on what really happened. It should be a journey of discovery for the audience as it is for the characters of the mystery. I was recently at a play which was a form of Sherlock Holmes fan-fiction wherein at the end, it turns out that Doctor John Watson is the real hero, but prefers to keep a low profile behind Holmes. It was hardly the first time I have encountered such a twist in Sherlock Holmes fan-fiction, but it was fairly well done. In this case, the writer was a little too cute in winking at the audience as he puts dialog into Holmes’ mouth about how writers can never be trusted.

I had been summoned to report for jury duty for yesterday. For those who have never been through the process, bringing a good book is always in order. Usually there is quite a bit of waiting time before selection. What is more appropriate than a mystery/legal thriller to read while awaiting empaneling or dismissal? I brought along Michael Henry’s latest Willie Mitchell Banks novel, 5 Star. To quote from a description of the book from the author’s Website:

El Ray, a 5-star Ole Miss quarterback recruit, is murdered on an unauthorized weekend visit, triggering a vindictive NCAA investigation eager to pin the blame on the university, and sending former D.A. Willie Mitchell Banks into a deadly drugs-for-sex underworld in rural Mississippi…

Mothers and Fathers

 

My number four son is now a police officer, a few months into his first year on the job. He spends his evenings and nights driving his patrol car around a New England city, staying awake, keeping the peace.

He tells me that about once a week he responds to a domestic call involving a minor. With few exceptions, they’re variations on the same theme: a single mother with one child, a son, who is unruly and defiant and whom she can’t control. My son tells me that his department responds to at least one of these every day — this in a relatively small city.

Mattel’s “Gender-Non-Binary Doll” a Hat Tip to Larger, Troubling Trend for Parents

 

Move over, Barbie, the new face of Mattel has arrived. Ze may not be as shapely and enduring as their predecessor, but according to a glowing feature in TIME magazine, ve might be headed for a holiday-neutral pine tree near you this December.

Billing their latest product as “a doll for everyone,” Mattel becomes the latest Fortune 500 corporation to go all-in on gender identity with its androgynous “Creatable World” doll, which follows closely on the heels of its decision last year to nix its respective boys and girls toy divisions.

So with yet another multi-billion-dollar company toeing the line and perhaps the world’s most recognizable toy brand going woke, perhaps there is more incentive for parents and other responsible adults to sit up and take notice.

Restoring the Patriarchy?

 

I think it would be a good idea. Oh, not the legal aspects of it: with two narrow exceptions, I think men and women should be treated the same under the law. Rather, I think we should restore the cultural aspect of patriarchy, the idea that the father has a special authority and a special responsibility within the home, and that men, in general, have special obligations within society.

Men are, in general, more powerful (by which I mean more powerful than women; all the comparatives here refer to men relative to women because there are only two kinds, male and female). Men do most of the creating and most of the destroying, impose most of the structure, cause most of the mayhem. Men are the principal actors in society by virtue of their greater drive and aggression and strength, their lesser interest in people, their greater interest in things and in the manipulation and control of things.

Biology made us that way. We don’t have to like it, but not liking it doesn’t make it untrue.

[Member Post]

 

Having solved the overuse of natural gas in homes problem now the city of Berkely has moved on. From USA today and other sources: Berkeley’s municipal code will no longer feature words like “manhole” and “manpower,” and instead say, “maintenance hole” and “human effort” or “workforce.” The measure passed unanimously Tuesday and replaces more than […]

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.