THE CITY OF CHICAGO, as a result of a federal appeals court ruling issued yesterday, will pay about $30 million to blacks who were not hired as firefighters because they scored significantly lower on entrance tests than white candidates. Not only must the Chicago fire department compromise standards and hire less qualified candidates purely because they are black, thus discriminating against more qualified whites, but it must pay millions in compensation to men who have never worked and will never work as firemen. These never-hired beneficiaries of the suit will receive compensation for one reason: they are black. (more…)

  AT VFR, a commenter Jeanette V. writes: Fifty years ago, it was easy to associate with homosexuals in the workplace, because a person's sexual proclivities were either unknown or known but never mentioned. These days the bedroom door is wide open and we are forced to acknowledge a person's perversions. This is a direct result of the decriminalization of homosexuality. I have done a complete 180 on what I feel about homosexuality. My best friend in high school (this was the 1970's) was a homosexual and I remember the horrible abuse he got from his peers. So I have lived in a time when homosexuality was illegal and now when it is celebrated. I have seen homosexuals stalk and harass people at home, online and where they work simply because they believe marriage should be redefined. I have friends with school-aged kids who tell me about the pro-homosexual propaganda being fed to their children. It is actually fashionable these days for women to consider themselves lesbian. They get lots of positive feedback for "coming out." I read that 40 percent of high school seniors now identify themselves as lesbian or bisexual. It seems the queering of our schools and entertainment has been successful. The decriminalization of homosexuality has had some very detrimental side effects indeed.

SARAH LAPLANTE writes:

I was reading your May 12th post on gendered pronouns, which I mainly have nothing to say about. But as a linguistics student I have to disagree with one sub-sub-sub-claim, namely:

Human beings have a hard time speaking in terms of non-sexed individuals.

This is pretty easy to be confused about, English does have mandatory sex differences in third person singular pronouns, as do most of the languages taught in American schools. But it’s easy to see on a map that this distinction is hardly a human universal, in fact it’s the exception.

The map is a bit unclear, so here’s a rundown: (more…)

HOLLY writes:

A friend and I regularly trade e-mails about what we’re reading. Your blog is often one of the topics I bring up for discussion. (I agree with you most of the time; she does not.) (more…)

ALEX A. writes from England:

Your observations on masculine and feminine pronouns caused the following reflection to jump into my brain.

One of the crazy and patronizing feminist notions that’s taken hold is that women in general are “vulnerable” to an extensive array of psychic injuries. They are not. This idea is a ideological lever
intended to force radical sexual adjustments that would reduce the incidence of so-called injuries to the female psyche, and at the same time, to use a coarse expression, put women in the driving seat.

I’ll risk a generalisation and say that most women are, as a rule, mentally tough. What’s more, as your blog and its female readers illustrate all the time, the life of the mind that a thoughtful woman
enjoys is just as varied and intellectually stimulating as a man could hope for.

(more…)

HOWARD SUTHERLAND writes:

The Telegraph publishes Germaine Greer lauding the “slut walk” women “fighting for their right to be dirty.” I’m not sure how familiar you are with the British press, but The Telegraph is generally considered the leading conservative broadsheet; small- and large-C alike. Yet another indication, alas, of just what ‘conservative’ now means in the ever-less-United Kingdom of less-than-Great Britain! Truly, this sort of thing challenges one’s ability to hope for recovery. Greer and her ilk are a social cancer on the West, and in British terms Greer is an imported one (Aussie).

Laura writes:

Greer’s argument is so absurd it amounts to lunacy, which is to be expected from a woman who has trumpeted every form of feminist nonsense and contradiction. She says it’s important that women embrace sluttiness so they can lose their hang ups about sexual pleasure and also their hang ups about cleaning their homes.  That’s right. Women are forced by some unseen conspiracy to clean. Women are denied the right – by men apparently – to be filthy. They do not pursue cleanliness with skill and devotion because they preferclean dwellings themselves but because they are – in the fevered imaginaton of this addled feminist – idiots and conformists and slaves who succumb to the slightest social pressure. With slut walks, we might finally have the chance to be promiscuously dirty. Hip, hip hooray! I knew feminism was going to get us somewhere! Social collapse, household collapse – it’s all just a neat form of dirtiness!

I repeat, she is around the bend – and please, Germaine, don’t ever invite me to your house. Greer writes: (more…)

  JACLYN FRIEDMAN, the writer and activist who spoke at the recent Boston SlutWalk, is author of this inspiring 2010 piece, "My Sluthood, Myself,"in which she defends promiscuity as heroic and cathartic. Caution: this piece is raunchy. She describes sleeping with a man she contacted on the Internet the same night that she met him and a long history of casual sex. She also speaks of "dating" a woman and praises women who support each other in their exploits. She writes: A slut needs a posse who finds her exploits almost as delicious as she finds them herself, who cares about her safety and her stories and her happiness but not one whit about her virtue. A slut alone is a slut in difficulty, possibly in danger.. This explains her support for sluts marching en masse. Here is an interview with Friedman, apparently in her mid-thirties and unmarried, about the Boston event. Miss Friedman has successfully defined the modern slut: part prostitute who doesn't take cash and part self-aggrandizing exploiter of others. In the feminist mind, it's okay for a woman to treat other people as instruments of her passing desires.

N.W. writes:

I may have sent you this poem by Richard Wilbur once before, but I thought it dovetailed nicely with what you had to say concerning pronouns.

 She

What was her beauty in our first estate
When Adam’s will was whole, and the least thing
Appeared the gift and creature of his king,
How should we guess? Resemblance had to wait

(more…)

A MALE READER writes:

My grown daughter told me she is involved with a woman. This was a total surprise to me and it really hurt. I gave her my complete blessing, which was a bit of a lie. I met the woman and I liked her quite a bit. I’m glad that I like her, because it makes it easier for me. The woman is fairly wholesome in her habits — at least there is that. (more…)

MORE THAN 75 Catholic professors have written to Speaker John Boehner on the occasion of his pending commencement address at Catholic University of America. The academics, in an outrageous distortion of theological principles, have charged the speaker with violating Catholic moral teachings for cutting government programs to the poor. They wrote to Boehner, who will be speaking at the university Saturday:

The 2012 budget you shepherded to passage in the House of Representatives guts long-established protections for the most vulnerable members of society. It is particularly cruel to pregnant women and children, gutting Maternal and Child Health grants and slashing $500 million from the highly successful Women Infants and Children nutrition program. (more…)

CONNOISSEURS of feminist scholarship may be interested in this 1994 interview by staff of the National Council of English Teachers with Kate Swift, the editor and writer who was author of The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing and who was a major force in inducing mass guilt and confusion as to the use of male pronouns.

Ms. Swift, who helped popularize the address of “Ms.,” died last week at the age of 87. Her major works, including Words and Women, were co-authored by her partner of many years, Casey Miller. Presumably, they were lesbians. They argued that the English language had “relegate[d] the female half of the species to secondary status.”

Ms. Swift and Ms. Miller recommended that “genkind” be used instead of “mankind” and that “tey,” “ter” and “tem” be adopted as sex-neutral substitutes for “he/she,” “his/her” and “him/her.” The New York Times glowing obituary of Swift provides an overview of their works. 

The use of male generic pronouns inflicts psychic damage on girls and women, Ms. Swift and Ms. Miller argued. They wrote:

The penetration of this habit of language into the minds of little girls as they grow up to be women is more profound than most people, including most women, have recognized; for it implies that personality is really a male attribute, and that women are a subspecies. (Women and Words, p. 19) (more…)

JESSE POWELL writes:

If you want to know what the real purpose behind SlutWalks is listen to what those who actually promote and organize the events have to say. A transcript of the first part of the speech given at the Boston SlutWalk by Jaclyn Friedman reads as follows:  

Look at all these beautiful sluts! Look at you, you’re gorgeous, you’re gorgeous. Are you having an amazing day? How many of you are having an amazing day? (more…)

RANDY B. writes:

For the first time I find a topic on your site to be actually offensive. As you know I am a 50-year-old man, and come from a very traditional upbringing. I have also publicly stood up for women, at times paying a heavy, albeit misdirected cost. This is one of those times. I am all for SLUT walks, and plan to be a part of the next march here in Salt Lake City. Hopefully the LDS Church signs on as a sponsor, as they have recently turned to support philosophies that are contrary to their teaching, and this should help them establish a pattern. 

Since the premise of the “SlutWalk” is about openness and expression, I hope that I will be well received as a man-SLUT. As I write this I have another browser window open, as I am on a quest for a size 38, Cheetah-print, spandex thong Speedo. As a guy with a bit of a gut, I hope to kill two birds with one sling, and protest for the future rights of “Estrogen-deprived Sympathetically Pregnant Narcissists” or ESPN. 

You will be glad-hearted to know I found a thong, but am having a challenging time finding a matching braw that will span my 48” chest. Don’t worry, us men-SLUT’s don’t give up that easy. (more…)

IN A RECENT article at The American Thinker, Robert Weissberg examines the racial issues surrounding the national deficit. The Tea Party is accused of racism not simply because most of its membership is white, he notes. Blacks disproportionately rely on government spending. To be for small government then is to be anti-black and racist. (more…)

A TORONTO police officer told a group of university students in January that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” Pandemonium ensued, with the officer’s job hanging by a thread. His honest, indisputable statement has since inspired protests in several cities, some of the more irrational manifestations of the urge to protest. They have been dubbed “SlutWalks” and thousands are anticipated to attend the one in Seattle on June 19. 

So what are the SlutWalkers protesting? They say they are protesting any link between a woman’s appearance and sexual assault. The idea that it doesn’t matter at all in all cases what a woman wears is too laughable to take seriously. And perhaps the protesters themselves don’t take it seriously.

In truth, perhaps they are protesting their own subconscious fears.  It seems these young women are suffering from some basic misconceptions about the dangers to themselves in the modern world and about immodesty itself. In the end, sluttiness matters not only because of the perversions of rapists. It matters because of the normal and healthy inclinations of decent men.

First, before clarifying that point, it’s important to note that these women are unable to make logical distinctions about what the police officer Michael Sanguinetti said. Their lack of thoughtfulness and their hair-trigger emotion are painful to behold. They suggest minds addled by texting and almost constant self-expression. To say that a woman’s dress may give the impression that she is promiscuous and ready for a casual encounter is not to say that most sexual assaults are a result of the woman’s behavior or that any sexual assault is only the result of the woman’s behavior. Nor is it to say that sexual assault is right.

The facts are: (more…)

THE NEWS that former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver have separated is not surprising. The couple never considered their marriage important enough for them to have the same name. They both have celebrity egos. He has a history of infidelity. She speaks and writes about women’s empowerment. Finally, neither of them takes the faith they profess seriously.

In 2008, Shriver told The Washington Post that she likes the “compassion and justice of Jesus Christ,” but can’t abide the Catholic Church’s positions on homosexuals, divorce and abortion. In other words, she’s a typical American Catholic at a serve-yourself buffet. “I’m a cafeteria Catholic,” she said.

She also said, “I consider myself a Catholic in good standing [even though] I don’t spend a lot of time squaring my own daily life with the institutional church.” (more…)

  THE CHIEF of U.S. Navy chaplains has announced that same-sex marriage ceremonies must now be permitted on Navy bases in any state that recognizes homosexual marital unions. In a memo dated April 13, Rear Admiral Mark L. Tidd told all chaplains that pursuant to the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," the Navy reviewed its guidelines regarding weddings on Navy bases. He said, "base facility use is sexual orientation neutral." In any state where same sex marital unions are legal, wedding ceremonies are now permitted on bases, though chaplains are not required to officiate. This reverses previous policy that forbade same-sex "marriage" ceremonies on federal property.

LYDIA SHERMAN writes:

Today’s spoiled feminists, who try to change the things that just “are,” remind me of the Persian ruler Xerxes I, who ordered the waters of the Hellespont lashed after his bridges across the strait were destroyed by storms. I thought you might enjoy this post on him.

Also, in case you have not seen this photograph, it is the tea house at Kew Gardens in England, destroyed by suffragettes in 1913. What did the tea houses ever do to them to deserve being burned down?

(more…)