Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- Western Feminists Life Safe, Soft Decadent Lives, and Focus on the Trivial at the Expense of the Profoundly Important

From Ace of Spades HQ:

My words, not hers, but that's her point.

"The white man is held to a moral standard that, in the West, men [who have immigrated] from other cultures are not held to," she told the Herald. ''If a white man sold his daughter into marriage, most people would be appalled and there'd be an outrage in any national context in any country in the West. But when it's a man from Pakistan or Somalia or Yemen or India, then what you see is this: 'Oh yes, but …'" ...

Hirsi Ali, who lives in the US, believes women in developed countries are distracted by issues like work-life balance when they should focus on big-picture issues, such as women's safety. She says it is the responsibility of Western feminists to push these issues onto the public agenda - but only if the movement returns to its original values.

The letter demanding that Hirsi Ali be dis-invited from speaking at Brandeis was, get this, largely signed by women in the Women and Gender Studies program, and more-or-less-explicitly stated that Ali's focus on genuine repression of women took the focus off the trivial microagressions they prefer to gab about.

The Brandeis professors who demanded that Ayaan Hirsi Ali be "immediately" dis-invited wrote that "we are filled with shame at the suggestion that (Hirsi Ali's) above-quoted sentiments express Brandeis's values." The professors also castigated Hirsi Ali for her "core belief of the cultural backwardness of non-western peoples" and for her suggestion that "violence toward girls and women is particular to Islam." The professors note that such a view "obscure(s) such violence in our midst among non-Muslims, including on our own campus."

........

Hirsi Ali's own story of genuine oppression, and her agitation about important, fundamental rights of, and dignities owed, to women, makes our own neurotic prattlings seem rather silly and fluffy by comparison.

One of the most important ideas in Post-Feminist philosophy (it's post-feminist now; this is just a degenerate, decadent, silly thing) is the concept of "rape culture."

"Rape culture" is crucial because it is the means by which the trivial is transmogrified into the profound. The fact that a man might commit a "microaggression" against a woman by opening the door for her is, in a series of logical steps, rapidly connected to something serious -- rape -- and thus invested with seriousness itself.

I have been confused by Woman's Studies Intellectuals regarding their reaction to Hirsi Ali's story. She tell a tale of a culture that encourages ACTUAL feminine discrimination and abuse. But since it is from a protected class/religion, it can't be heard in Universities in America, because it would shift the focus away from what the Feminists in this country wants, to change to a materialistic based society. Where women can oppress men, as revenge for perceived slights.

The Neo-Porn Feminists - Or, how the Left destroyed feminism.

From National Review Online:

It turns out that, in the rock-paper-scissors game of liberalism, “not judging” beats out “true female equality.”

The good folks at Politically Correct Central recently ran into a problem: Their incredibly useful “don’t judge!” mantra (which they have mercilessly hammered us with for many years now) ran into an obstacle: What happens when a woman willingly engages in the porn industry? Liberals, who once decried porn (and rightly so) as a male-dominated nightmare that objectifies women and exploits even its willing participants, have suddenly tiptoed backwards in the wake of Belle Knox, a Duke University freshman who gladly stars in porn films to cover her tuition costs.

What to do? thought the puzzled liberals. Standing against the sex industry would sound too “Christian Right”; also, criticizing the woman would effectively be siding with the frat boys who outed her — and, if there is any demographic we liberals hate, it’s male Duke students. (Remember the Duke-lacrosse case?) So, they concluded, let’s not be judgy.

Thus we suddenly found ourselves clicking on bizarre headlines — and watching equally confusing TV segments — in which liberal pundits and writers suddenly were perfectly okay with an industry that is anathema to their alleged values.

But the debate over feminism — what it means, as well as who can claim the feminist label —​ had been steaming for quite some time and was bound to explode sooner or later. You see, along the way, feminism became an inconvenience for the Left. Case in point: Some of its favorite celebs, who could always be counted on to publicly slam the Right or Western values, were all too happy to behave in sex-object ways that would make even the worst Mad Men misogynist say, “Tone it down.” Madonna and Miley Cyrus come to mind.

Thus, feminism’s definition needed to be twisted, contorted, and —​ basically — changed. And change it did: It became so elastic that the rubber band finally snapped and no one knows what the heck feminism means any longer.

Feminism and liberalism has never been able to defend themselves intellectually. The argument have been shallow and vapid. Watch any debate on any political TV show, as soon as the liberal starts losing, they resort to demagoguing and name calling. Something like Godwin's Law must be enforced during these debates, to truly show how intellectually inept defenders of liberalism are.

Obama Misspells ‘Respect’ While Honoring Aretha Franklin, CNN Covers for Him

From National Review via Ace of Spades HQ:

President Obama spoke to a very receptive audience at the event “In Performance at the White House — Women of Soul” on Thursday night, but misspelled “respect” while honoring Aretha Franklin.

“When Aretha first told us what R-S-P-E-C-T meant to her,” Obama said to the general laughter of the audience, “she had no idea it would become a rallying cry for African-Americans and women and then everyone who felt marginalized because of what they look like and who they love.”

CNN was quick to cover for Obama’s misspelling. Ashley Banfield said Obama just “wanted to throw us all, see if we were actually all paying attention.”

Just like he was checking if we knew whether there was 57 States or not.

Berman asked if people would “be making a bigger deal out of this than we are,” if it were, say, Dan Quayle who misspelled a word. “Is this liberal media bias?” he said. Maybe. Imagine if Bush couldn’t spelled “respect” correctly at a “Women of Soul” event . . .

Wasn't Dan Quayle making sure "we were actually all paying attention" when he spelled "P-O-T-A-T-O-E"?

Oops, I forgot, Obama is one of the smartest men in the world.

Correlation vs. Causation

From Chart Porn:

Don't always go together. But just wait until Jenny McCarthy sees this graph.

It’s important to know the difference between correlation and causation when using charts. Duh. Below is a good example of why.