Redstate

Catharine MacKinnon is almost single-handedly responsible for the introduction into American jurisprudence of the concept of "because I said so" crimes.

These are crimes that are defined by after-the-fact arbitrary and capricious judgments by women. In other words, one cannot tell by reading the statute what act is proscribed. One can only determine whether a specific act was a crime by asking a woman after the act is committed whether, in her opinion, it was a crime.

This concept essentially transfers the process of codifying law into the heads of random women, who may deem virtually any act a violation of the law by saying that it is one.

I was walking through the halls of a Household Name Company one day on a consulting assignment, and I overheard one twenty-something woman say to another, "What do you have to do these days to get a man to make a pass at you?"

Well, the problem she has is that men all know now if they make that pass, and it turns out she didn't like it, it wasn't just a failed pass. It was a crime, and they are going to lose their job, get fined, and be fleeced by lawyers. So it doesn't matter how cute this twenty-something is (and she was a fine specimen), no man who understand the rules is going to play.

Old Kumquat, because if word of this diary entry leaks out to the public at large, your blog at blogspot will serve as the jumping-off point for the people who will seek to destroy your career for organizing a backlash.  Everyone knows that MacKinnon's only main objective has been to ensure that women are treated by society as what they are -- full and equal human beings.  And that men are treated by society as what they are -- genetically-inferior üntermenschen driven by rape, conquest, destruction and war.  And rape.  And war.  Did I mention rape?  How about pornography and war?

I think you have some subconscious misogynist issues that you haven't addressed adequately.  I suggest therapy, along with at least a year of simultaneous immersion in feminist theory and a few books by Sam Keen.  In that way, and only in that way, you will be able to fully understand the men who suffer from an epidemic of

"...emptiness, loneliness, and longing for connection, but whose ways of dealing with these issues are limited by old paradigms and beliefs which could change if exposed to new information."

Check back with us in a year or so, and we may be able to pronounce you sufficiently cured, and who knows?  By then you may have even embraced your innate but latent bisexuality and committed yourself to a life of androgyny.  Good luck!

. . .whether the death of MacKinnon's favorite tag team partner--the late and unlamented Andrea Dworkin--might slow her down.  Sadly, it appears not, and I intend to keep an eye on her further attempts to corrupt the laws of this country.  As the proud owner of a Y chromosome, seeing Catherine MacKinnon trying to influence the legal structure of my country feels much like how the members of an international society of gourmets would probably feel if they arrived at a meeting one day and discovered that Hannibal Lecter was their new president.

Seinfeld had a funny bit on dating.  It went something like this:

"The problem with dating is that we're all trying to create rules for a system that doesn't have any rules.  I say let's make some rules.  

'Look, I hate to be a hard@$$, but we've gone out seven times and we haven't slept together.  That's an infraction.'

'Oh yeah, well you called me "Honey" before the third date.  I could have you thrown in jail for that.'"

I blame MacKinnon, Dworkin (may the devil rest her soul), Nan Aron, Ralph Neas, and anyone else who had anything to do with the Assault on Clarence Thomas.  Funny how unshocked and unappalled most of them were (including NOW President Kathy Ireland) (not to be confused with former supermodel/actress Kathy Ireland) when President Clinton broke rules (and some laws) that C.T. never even approached. (Um, forcible groping seems to be one of those areas where there actually IS a law against it.)

Anyway, thanks for letting me know who I can hate that is not in hell yet.

There is a difference.

Great links.

I think I need to read some of those books just to get more worked up than I already am.

I love the "androgyny" link.

Now if liberals would just put their money where there mouth was, they would nominate a truly androgynous presidential candidate.  Oh wait, they're about to.  (Begin prolonged tongue-biting until after the nomination process is over.)

Why is it that I always think of "Kathy Ireland" when Rush Limbaugh mentions "Patricia Ireland"?

I may need Miss MacKinnon's help figuring that one out.

ophthamologist.

(Please don't post one.)

I think that I'm probably better off with the Patty/Kathy dissonance.

Patricia

Kathy

My eyes feel hurty!  Ouch!  Thanks. But ouch.

the shot of Patricia Ireland in a thong...

but an "intellectual dwarf" is not one of them.  She is one of those special people who have learned to work the system, and to use words to obscure meaning rather than to illuminate.

The system, on the other hand, is populated with many functionaries, people who look upon their role in life as functioning within their niches.  They don't look beyond the walls of their offices; they see only the rules and regulations that are put in front of them. These people are helpless against a MacKinnon, because they accept her arguments as if they make sense, and they're incapable of conducting the analysis necessary to contradict them.  These functionaries can be found at all levels of government.

For another example of a "MacKinnon," look to Colorado and Ward Churchill.  He's far less skilled, far less significant, but he too is able to tie the system in knots with simple sophistry.

To this than meets the eye also.  One of the fundamental flaws of multiculturalism as it is practiced in the United States and abroad is that it gives the lie to the statement:  "Be a uniter and not a divider."  Because in fact, in the United States and elsewhere, but especially on college campuses, the ethnic, racial, and religious groups are further distant and more alienated from each other then they ever have been.

The main reason is simple:  being a member of a different identity politics group automatically disqualifies you from making making comments or criticisms about any other group.  Camille Paglia and Christina Hoff-Sommers can criticise MacKinnon/Dworkin or Carol Gilligan and the AAUW because they are women, but men are forbidden from criticizing them, because to do so would only reinforce their central assertion that a patriarchal power structure is engaged in a backlash against them.  It's similarly impossible to criticize Black studies if you're not Black, and Islamists if you're not Muslim -- that's racism.  And you will find it very difficult to make a way for yourself in queer studies if you're not gay/lesbian/bisexual, lest you say something negative and be charged with latent homophobia.

And so what we really have are an increasingly distant, balkanized collection of mutually-exclusive groups that can only be joined if you are willing to accept the umbrella priniciples of multiculturalism and join as a charter member, which means to adopt a leftist, pseudo-marxist ideology and swallow the entire canon hook, line and sinker.  If you're a straight, white  male, your only place in a group of BGLT activists is to advance their agenda; the other groups are similarly constructed.  

In fact, the only people who are allowed to intermediate between and move freely among those groups are leftist intellectuals, who have risen to the echelon of a new secular priesthood.  Everyone else wishing to make a comment, positive or negative, must constantly look over their shoulders and qualify their remarks, lest their careers be ruined, as Lawrence Summers found out rather abruptly when he tried to discuss the problem of gender imbalance in the sciences from a rational, "male-minded" point of view.  He was almost fired for that as the President of the most prestigious university in the world.  

Now, people with tenure know they can never be fired, unless they do something so terrible that everyone in the "community" sees as so repehensible that it merits their dismissal.  And so the fact of the matter is that the leftist intellectuals on college campuses are in fact the most powerful people in the United States, because not only do they teach your children and have jobs for life, to a great extent they exert a kind of ultimate economic veto over an individual's future success through their grading.  And that's exactly what they want.

This is a bit of an oversimplification, but I think it's largely true.  From my experience, all of these groups have become factions competing for power.  And it's the intellectuals who decide, on a rather ad-hoc and arbitrary basis, who their favorites are.  

you will find it very difficult to make a way for yourself in queer studies if you're not gay/lesbian/bisexual

Well, there goes that idea.

To stop you before it was too late. ;)  

Your argument that she is not an "intellectual dwarf," as I put it originally, is an interesting one. You may be right. I didn't take that tack because I usually prefer to rebut arguments rather than to question motives. Maybe MacKinnon is a con artist, as you seem to suggest.

That says it all.

To take on the cloak of homosexuality, become fabulous, infiltrate the left and start criticizing the hell out of them...and anytime anyone says "but but but!" Just hold up your fabulous hand and say "I'm GAAAY I can criticize you alllll I want!"

Tammy Bruce already has that gig. She's good at it, too.