{"id":3476,"date":"2016-11-07T16:23:04","date_gmt":"2016-11-07T15:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=3476"},"modified":"2016-11-07T16:28:22","modified_gmt":"2016-11-07T15:28:22","slug":"cannon-fodder-in-the-feminists-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/3476\/","title":{"rendered":"Cannon Fodder in the Feminists’ War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commenter Dom asks<\/a> a fair question in response to this<\/a> post:<\/p>\n

Since she wasn\u2019t raped, is there any reason why \u201cJackie\u2019s\u201d identity is still being withheld, or why journalists are not tracking her down to see WHY she lied? That seems like important information to me.<\/p>\n

And can\u2019t she be sued or prosecuted for SOMETHING? Certainly she isn\u2019t innocent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I responded<\/a> to Dom’s question, good egg that I am, but I will tidy it up a bit\u00a0and repeat it here.<\/p>\n

It was painfully obvious from reading the original Rolling Stone article that “Jackie” was a fantasist. \u00a0It wasn’t the police that failed her, it was whatever passes for mental health services in the USA. \u00a0She said her friends didn’t take her claims seriously, something I would interpret to mean some people who weren’t her friends thought she was a bit nuts and nodded kindly when she poured forth her tales. \u00a0I suspect they’d been hearing them for a while by the time she invented the gang rape. \u00a0One could ask if the university administration could have spotted the signs and got her some help, but my guess is they are terrified of getting sued in some way or, worse, being accused of political incorrectness including (but not limited to) being judgemental. \u00a0Whatever the case, this girl needed help.<\/p>\n

Instead of\u00a0assistance\u00a0she got third-wave feminists who cynically exploited her in order to further their own agendas. \u00a0They would have convinced this poor woman that her fantasies were real and her rape the result of a violent patriarchal situation which simply doesn’t exist. \u00a0If she was disturbed before they got hold of her, I’d imagine she’s six times worse now.<\/p>\n

Why I am angry at this is I have met people who’ve fallen under the influence of third-wave feminists, young women who made unwise choices and ought to have\u00a0dealt with them properly and grown up. \u00a0Instead they found comfort in people\u00a0who told them they’d done nothing wrong, all their misery was caused by other people, and they shouldn’t take responsibility for anything. \u00a0They enter their twenties being still acting like teenagers and their feminist “friends” ensure they stay that way emotionally and psychologically until middle age and beyond. \u00a0Without this poisonous influence they may have had half a chance of maturing and being able to function in normal social and romantic relationships, but to feminists these women are simply cannon fodder in the greater cause. \u00a0“Jackie” at UVA was merely one such casualty of this appalling war that’s being waged.<\/p>\n

I formed my response to Dom’s question this morning, and by chance over at David Thompson’s blog he has linked<\/a> to a review of the feminist Jessica Valenti’s latest book<\/a> which include elements which I find depressingly familiar. \u00a0I’ll quote them without comment.<\/p>\n

She was only 17, a middle-class girl from Queens, N.Y., and Tulane?\u2014?an elite private liberal arts school where annual tuition is now $51,010?\u2014?can be a cruel place for girls like that. Why was she there? Because when her ambitious parents \u201csaw the campus buildings and ivy and grass, it looked to them the way they imagined colleges were supposed to look, and so they were happy and proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

The belief that New York is the only place in America worth living has become anid\u00e9e fixe<\/em> among young writers, even as the Internet has made it possible for anyone to be a writer anywhere. No doubt the neighborhood in Brooklyn where Valenti and Golis live is crowded with would-be writers in their 20s, English majors fresh out of college, crowded into tiny apartments, working day jobs to pay the rent in hope that their spare-time hobby?\u2014?poetry, fiction, political commentary, whatever?\u2014?will someday make them famous.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Dear God, what awful choices she has made in her life! Her personality was warped by insecurity, a problem made worse by the way her parents burdened her with their own ambitions and, of course, there was New York City itself.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Many genuinely despicable behaviors are commonplace in big cities, including violent crime, drug abuse and sexual hedonism. Ms. Valenti was a practitioner of the latter two vices from an early age, but goes to some length to avoid admitting that her behavior was wrong<\/em>. She recounts her use of marijuana, ecstasy (MDMA) and cocaine as if being a dopehead was an ordinary aspect of life, the same way she discusses her drunkenness and all the various \u201chook-ups\u201d and \u201crelationships\u201d in which she engaged.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

She takes for granted that every intelligent person votes Democrat, just as she assumes that life in New York is the only life worth living. Having internalized these peculiar prejudices<\/em> (to call them what they really are) from childhood, Ms. Valenti cannot step outside herself to examine her values objectively, to wonder if life may be better for people who live and think differently.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Have I talked about how her heart has been poisoned by envy<\/em> since childhood? Oh, she was the uglier of two sisters, and keenly aware of this as a girl.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Yes, young ladies, it\u2019s still true?\u2014?lots of guys are OK with dating<\/em> a slut for a while, but they don\u2019t usually marry<\/em> them.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Ron turns out to be more or less a sociopath?\u2014?charming, but dishonest and unreliable.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Having convinced herself that promiscuity was harmless, she wasted her youth on a series of guys chosen on the basis of shallow judgments.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

What sort of deep-seated masochist tendency explains her husband\u2019s choice, perhaps no entirely sane person could ever hope to comprehend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You could map almost every aspect of that onto Laurie Penny, who I wrote about here<\/a>, and is frequently<\/a> the subject of David Thompson’s postings. \u00a0These feminist writers\u00a0have considerable influence and gullible young women who may be seeking some direction get pulled into their orbit and their lives ruined. \u00a0The results aren’t pretty.<\/p>\n

I’ve not met Jessica Valenti nor Laurie Penny, but I have met somebody whose own life could be summarised in those extracted paragraphs: parents sent her to a top university in the hope she would make something of her life; spending everything she earned in order to live in Brooklyn among “artists”; arrived in New York carrying deep insecurities which drove her straight into the arms of the city’s perverts; a history of drug abuse and sexual promiscuity; a vociferous Democrat supporter, along with everyone she knows; fraught relations with a prettier, more conventional sister; incapable of having a normal, functioning\u00a0relationship; fell for the charms of an older man who turned out to be dishonest and unreliable; has convinced herself her promiscuity in her youth was harmless; endured a 2-year marriage with a man she hated throughout; failed to take the slightest responsibility for any her lifestyle choices. \u00a0Very little of this was inevitable due to who she was, but it became so thanks to the people around her.<\/p>\n

It’s an absolute fucking tragedy that this is happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commenter Dom asks a fair question in response to this post: Since she wasn\u2019t raped, is there any reason why \u201cJackie\u2019s\u201d identity is still being withheld, or why journalists are not tracking her down to see WHY she lied? That … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[79,44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3476"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3480,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3476\/revisions\/3480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}