Elsewhere (141)
Jim Goad is entertained by the vehement nuttiness of the Black Hebrew Israelites:
When I say “hate group,” I don’t mean groups who are accused of being hateful; I mean ones that get right up in your face and tell you they’re full of hate… Framed as they are within this dreadfully medicated and morbidly smiley-faced modern world, I find such jagged incongruity hilarious. For two decades running — ever since a friend sent me a VHS tape of them harassing the fuck out of frightened passers-by in Times Square — my “favourite” hate group has been the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, notably the screamingly belligerent iterations that infest street corners in the Northeast and Midwest bellowing through microphones and megaphones about “crackers” and “faggots” and “so-called Negroes.” For starters, I like the way they, well… goad people. I also enjoy their pharaonic sense of couture, which is an odd mix of Arabian Nights and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.
Peter Risdon on purity, extremism and the madness of Russell Brand:
The narcissism of much of the middle class left is tautological, considering that they are people born into above average affluence who still feel they should get other people’s money because their art, or environmental campaigning, or political thought – rather than their need for subsistence – merits it.
Brian Micklethwait offers a handy tip:
If someone starts to offer you unsolicited advice about how to improve whatever it is that you are doing, immediately ask if they are prepared to get involved and implement their suggestion themselves. If the answer is yes, listen to what they have to say. If the answer is no, stop them right there and change the subject.
And Maetenloch mulls the utopian blueprint of a certain feminist bedlamite:
Now before everyone gets too excited I have to tell you that there’s a drawback to it: About a half of you are going to have to be killed.
We also learn that, without men, “women’s life expectancy would rise to 130 years at least.”
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.
This is by far the best solution, and is the most legitimate, ethical way of reducing male population to more reasonable levels.
Now there’s a sentence.
We just need to practice sex selective abortion. Refuse to give birth to any more males. Let them die down to a manageable small minority and never allow them to repopulate above a token 10% of humanity. Use as needed for breeding purposes.
I don’t mind cleaning up after them if I know they’ll never make another mess again.
We could live in peace, cooperatively. It would be beautiful. Kind. Meaningful. Happy.
That’s from the comments section underneath that feminist blogpost. I think that the middle paragraph may be one of the most chilling things I’ve ever read in the English language, which is saying something considering the rest of her post.
Now there’s a sentence.
I think it was Craig Mc who first introduced us to Ms Witchwind and the splendour of her mind. For instance, her claim that “no woman is heterosexual” and that any attraction to men can only be a “trauma-bond” and “a chemical response to violence and oppression.” Or her belief that “all men are criminals” who “want to destroy all life on Earth.” Or things like this: “I’m not providing any evidence that men are our oppressors here, because that goes without saying.”
As Jeff at Protein Wisdom said, “Somewhere there’s an attic missing its madwoman.”
Thing is, bonkers as Witchwind is, she’s a definite type among radical feminists, one we’ve seen several times. Remember Margaret Jamison? A woman whose supporters took vehement exception to this blog and its host, possibly because I remarked on how readily Ms Jamison’s thoughts turned to the prospect of murdering children. (“I believe male infanticide to be a better option than the current circumstances. I think it’s better than what we’ve got.”) In feminist circles there’s often a dynamic of competitive extremism, and so quite a few (supposedly mainstream) feminists exult in a kind of radical callousness. People like Witchwind and Ms Jamison are just two or three notches further along.
Holly cr*p. I knew that some feminists were a bit crazy. But, wow. Totally bat sh*t insane. If a bloke had written the equivalent about women, they’d have been arrested by now.
We could live in peace, cooperatively. It would be beautiful. Kind. Meaningful. Happy.
And all it would take is killing all the world’s men and boys first.
“women’s life expectancy would rise to 130 years at least.” after the men are all gone?
What a laugh I enjoyed just now. She assumes– like many feminists seem to– that the world’s infrastructure magically builds and maintains itself without armies of (mostly) men putting-in the labor.
All those lovely things she takes for granted? Running water, electrical lines, internet, sewage, gas– these things don’t keep running without a hell of a lot of work. Work which is largely done by someone with a penis. We’re talking nasty, heavy work that women would have to in the absence of men. Work that this author would have no clue about how to do.
She also thinks that food magically appears in the supermarket, going from farm to shelf without a small army of pesky MEN picking, processing and delivering it. Again, that’s work that women would have to do in the absence of men.
Garbage collection? Don’t make me laugh. After one week of her ‘utopia’, the refuse would start piling and the rats would start taking-over the cities.
Who does the roofing in her utopia? Who installs the wiring? The plumbing? The air conditioner repair? The furnace repair? She’s so accustomed to modern conveniences at the touch of a button that she cannot see all of the male labor she’s dependent upon. They are invisible to her. So who will do all of this labor?
Her ‘utopia’ would require putting large numbers of women into the most unpleasant kinds of labor imaginable in order to keep-up the lifestyle she currently enjoys. And that really is the grand flaw which renders her wild imaginings at once pitiful and hilarious.
Thanks, David, for this latest selection of news from Elsewhere.
Even for people who are normally placid and unflappable, it can be all too easy to feel a little of the hysteria that drives the likes of Brand, Witchwind, Jamison and others tugging at the hem of your coat, as it were.
So it’s good to be reminded now and again that for the most part it’s simply the noise of empty vessels sounding off.
Brand is a vapid lothario, Jamison a light that gives no heat and Witchwind, well … there’s not much more that can be said about her that she doesn’t say about herself in her own words already really.
We could live in peace, cooperatively. It would be beautiful. Kind. Meaningful. Happy.
Based on what, exactly? I’ve found that when workplaces are dominated by women, it more than often descends into them breaking off into little cliques and fighting like ferrets in a sack.
The downfall of the Department of Killing Most Men would originate amid tears in the staff kitchen one Tuesday afternoon over a pashmina being knocked off the coat stand and accidentally trodden on. This would culminate eight months later in a screaming match at the Christmas party, someone being signed off indefinitely with stress and the whole operation grinding to a halt as half the staff are drawn into the vortex of a tedious and inconclusive HR investigation into bullying allegations.
I wonder if her desire to murder serial killers included Aileen Wournos, Rosemary West, Myra Hindley, you know, those well known blokes!
I’m all in favour of dingbats like her being without men, let’s send them all to a far off island where they can get on with it; oh, sorry, we lost the GPS coordinates so we wont be back!
It’s clearly a joke, as evidence by sections like:
Perfect health would be the normal state of women anyway, as we will learn by experience and observation what we should eat and do to stay healthy at all seasons and times. Most women will have rediscovered our healing, divination and extra-sensory communication powers.
Have you seen this article?
Highlights: we learned that,
“in Iceland, men live on average to the ripe old age of 81, whereas women live on average to 84. There is clearly a gap, but in each case these are healthy life expectancies, so this doesn’t really pose a problem, does it?”
But earlier we learned “There is a pay gap between men and women in the labour market, which overall amounts to almost 20%.”
But these are both healthy salaries, so this doesn’t really pose a problem, does it? 😉
Funny how life expectancy doesn’t matter, but a discrepancy in earnings (with no controls for any confounders) is awful.
Speaking of awful, “Last year, the ratio between men and women graduating from the University of Iceland was about two women for each man. However, there were clear gender preferences in terms of choice of studies; many women choose subjects that lead them to jobs in the care sector whereas men are more likely to choose subjects leading to lucrative jobs in sectors such as science, technology and engineering.”
Clearly their preferences are unacceptable.
It scarcely matters. It’s fucking Iceland – an island of no geopolitical consequence with the population of Croydon. It’s like boasting a colony of bacteria have got it sorted.
“We just need to practice sex selective abortion.”
The Left has been falling in love with post-birth abortion. Why not recommend that it be used on leftists, including radfems?
This means that Iceland’s strong performance on this measure is fragile, and could be undone with shifts in the political climate.
God forbid that people changing the way they vote might actually change something!
in Reykjavík a married couple would pay the equivalent of £132 per calendar month for eight hours of childcare a day (that includes food), whereas a single parent would only pay £78.
I’m surprised there are any married couples with children left, if there are those kind of financial disincentives to staying together.
Witchwind, well… there’s not much more that can be said about her that she doesn’t say about herself in her own words already really.
Well, it’s tempting to assume that she must be a parody, invented by pranksters. And yet Witchwind, like Margaret Jamison, is only slightly more unhinged than many of the stars of feminist “theory,” by which I mean, the women whose books are regurgitated in Women’s Studies classes here and overseas, and who are quoted deferentially by Witchwind, Jamison and any number of dutiful students.
There’s Mary Daly, a woman who was tenured in academia and yet apparently incapable of factual accuracy or sustained logical thought. If you attempt to read her books, you’ll find page after page of stream-of-consciousness blather – literally gibberish – with countless random leaps from one false assumption to another. Her writing doesn’t argue or explain; it just asserts. It browbeats the reader with mangled language and emphatic conclusions it hasn’t even tried to earn.
Ditto Sheila Jeffreys, a key figure in British feminism during the 70s and 80s, who also churns out reams of begged questions and bald assertion. Things like, “Feminists who sleep with men are collaborating with the enemy.” Or, “All feminists can and should be lesbians. We define a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women.” And then there’s Andrea Dworkin, an unhappy fantasist who wanted to “destroy” the family unit, heterosexuality and the nation state. Or Dee Graham and Marilyn Frye, whose views of heterosexuality and men are cartoonish and demented. Or Charlotte Bunch, a statusful academic who wants to “destroy” the “racist, capitalist, imperialist system” by propagating lesbianism.
I mean, where’s the threshold for bonkersdom?
[ Edited. ]
“It’s clearly a joke…”
No, it’s not clearly a joke at all. I’ve been poking around the site for ten minutes and I still can’t tell whether it’s sincerity or elaborate satire. I’d investigate further but my eyes are starting to bleed.
No, it’s not clearly a joke at all
Oh, come on. Women have supernatural powers of ESP, telekinetic healing etc that will manifest once enough men are killed?
It’s a joke. It’s obviously a joke.
I thought it was brilliant. Maetenloch forgot to add that whenever men and women meet, men must keep their eyes to the ground, shuffle their feet, and only speak when spoken to.
She also neglected to describe is how this utopia is to be brought about. Men can be feisty and recalcitrant, and might fail to recognize the plan’s many attributes. Just how are men going to be convinced to climb into those train boxcars headed for the interior?
Perhaps a screening of the Killing Fields will help witchwind with her planning. Oh, no wait, those nasty AK47s are tools of the patriarchy. I wonder how she will convince the nasty penetrators to line up submissively for their euthanizing?
Hmmm, Witchwind.
Can someone explain to me the vague but persistent connection between the black arts, self-styled spiritual insight and prowess, a peculiarly crooked naturalism, and compensatory, even radical feminism?
I once had the pleasure to acquaint myself with a likely narcissist who in retrospect I saw exhibited somewhat milder forms of all, albeit coupled with a propensity to exhibit and preach: a manifestation of compensational superior ranking probably not atypical of the disorder.
The self-styled part was pronounced, and naturally the absence of reason and the chilling apathy deterred dear soul not in the least.
As with many contemporary arteests, forever advertising insights and observations beyond us normals, these witchy sooths and seers need no mere verifiable, objective reality. Other simply does not exist except as a vehicle.
Somewhere in there is a paper to be written.
David – thank you for the Witch Wind update.
I don’t think she’s trolling. A troll wouldn’t have the dedication to write 10,000 word essays and then reply to himself twenty or forty times.
It would be trite to describe her as crazy. The real question is: what came first – the feminism or the crazy? Or do the two simply feed on each other like an ouroboros of mental?
She makes some startling claims and killing off all the men is just the headline act. My favourites include:
Building houses in ways that don’t require heating in winter or cooling in the summer.
Magic houses.
We will learn to be autonomous again and make our own clothes, food, furniture, houses, soaps, detergent products
Despite all that constant toil, women will live to 130 at least in their magic houses.
There is no such thing as fatherhood — as we all know, it’s a myth.
She hatched from one of those space reptile eggs David Icke warned us about.
No man will be allowed to take any decision without female guidance.
We already have this. It’s called marriage.
We know what happens when men decide on their own! DISASTER.
This is true. I tried making the bed once, and I lost a leg.
all form of punishment, authority or educational manipulation over children will equally be abolished
Probably for the best that she never has kids.
There will be no such thing as “teachers” with positions of authority over children. “Guiders” could learn also from the children or students as much the students from them. We’d learn anything we’d want from languages to sciences to art to music to medicine to building to witchcraft to swimming (etc) without restriction […] non-patriarchal learning is truly riveting.
She’s living proof.
Men would be permanently banned from any kind of medical practice.
Eff you, Jonas Salk!
All woman-hating, genocidal institutions such as gynecology, psychiatry, obstetrics, big pharma, […] will be banned. […] There will be no more chemical, synthetic and toxic products with often worse side effects than the illness itself it claims to heal.
No more crazy pills for Witch Wind. You can’t spell therapist without “the rapist”.
Our lives have no more or no less value than those of a rabbit, fly, tree, plant, fish, seashell or stone.
She’s no more valuable than a stone.
It is now widely known that energy such as electricity can be infinitely renewable if we use wind power, magnetic power, water power… And everything can be made DIY.
She blogs on a homemade computer she whittled out of seashells and recycled tampons.
All relationships of authority, domination and subordination will be abolished between all women of all ages. We will be able to recognise each other’s strengths, expertise, guidance and capacities (or lack of) without it implying superiority, inferiority, veneration or lack of respect. We would find each other beautiful. We would live our friendships, love and affection for women unhindered.
This is where she jumps the crazy shark.
Her improbable femi-nazi plan to somehow murder all the men is more amusing than sinister, like a kitten that thinks it’s going to maul you.
Her daffy ideas on economics, technology, medicine and witchcraft are just boilerplate New Age shite.
But her utopian view on what happens when you get a group of women together takes the biscuit.
Look – I like women a whole lot. This may be a man’s world, but for most men it would ‘t be nothing – nothing! – without a woman or a girl.
However, the awful truth about women is that they don’t really like each other. Even when they’re ‘friends’. Ever worked in an office full of women? I have. The endless cliquing and conspiring makes Game of Thrones look like Little House On The Prarie.
If they don’t find a designated whipping girl and make her cry in the toilets at least once a week, the Old Gods would be angry and arise from their eternal slumber to devour the living and usher in 10,000 of darkness and terror.
A misogynist is just a man who hates women as much as women do.
It is now widely known that energy such as electricity can be infinitely renewable if we use wind power, magnetic power, water power…
Magnetic power? OMG, she’s a free-energy proponent. Now I’m starting to lose respect for her views.
She also thinks that food magically appears in the supermarket, going from farm to shelf without a small army of pesky MEN picking, processing and delivering it
No, it’s worse than that.
She knows that food doesn’t magically appear in supermarkets; it’s just that she seems to think that subsistence farming is a charming, fun way to spend a lifetime (perhaps akin to tending a mini-herb garden in one’s window box), rather than a precarious, grinding existence hewn out of constant back-breaking labour, only ever one bad harvest away from dying of starvation.
Unless of course women use their magical powers to cause the New Eden to bring forth abundance on command. Maybe that’s the plan.
Talking of wimmin and utter barking stupidity …
http://www.newstatesman.com/lifestyle/2013/11/why-movember-isnt-all-its-cracked-be#comment-1146034956
I think there’s a bit of a danger in pointing and laughing at folks like Ms. Witchwind. By doing so you tend to suggest that she’s a uniquely strange person, part of the lunatic fringe of feminism. It tends to imply that she does not accurately represent feminism. There’s a sense of “hooboy, she’s nuts even for a feminist.”
On the contrary, she is completely in line with the core of feminist thought and doctrine. I think of feminism as being a lot like Scientology. The more you know of its core doctrines (which tend to be held back from public view, though enthusiastically shared in private) the crazier you see that it is. Also there are various people who are not crazy enough to believe in those internal doctrines who nevertheless think that they are, in fact, part of that group, though they are not in any meaningful sense. If you know the internal doctrines of feminism you know that heterosexual women are in this position with feminism, since heterosexuality is an external imposition from evil, patriarchal men, so to enter a relationship with one you would be giving into your own oppression. If you were a true feminist you would cast off that oppression and identify your attraction with the only good type of person, a woman.
RS McCain has been doing spectacular work on this with his Sex Trouble series:
http://theothermccain.com/category/feminism/sex-trouble/
“serial killers, serial torturers, pimps, pornographers, severe domestic abusers, serial rapists, genocide planners, biocide planners and pedocriminals across the world will simply be euthanised”
All those feminists like Simone de Beavoir, Dworkin and the writers of the Vagina Monologues, in spite of their creepy-assed pro-pedo writings, don’t count as pedocriminals, because… it’s different when they do it.
Also, my planning this mass killing doesn’t count as being a genocide planner.
“Our lives have no more or no less value than those of a rabbit, fly, tree, plant, fish, seashell or stone.”
Including male rabbits, flies, trees, plants, fish, seashells and, um, stones. But not human males. Even though all living things are of equal value. So this makes sense.
“Societal structures and decision-making assemblies wouldn’t exceed roughly 300 women (representing no more than themselves).”
The World of the Future shall be a global centralised government imposing nonnegotiable world wide bans on everything I don’t like, but also a world of fully autonomous anarcho-primitivist microsocieties whose members cannot impose their wills on anyone else. So this makes sense.
“laws would be abolished and totally dispensed with”
This in no way conflicts with all my wanting to kill vast swathes of the human race and imposing global bans on everything. Claiming otherwise will be abolished.
“There will be no more chemical, synthetic and toxic products”
In the World of the Future, water will be forbidden. That, or I don’t know what the word “chemical” means.
““Work” (exploitation and division of labour) as we know it would disappear”
Instead of work and division of labour, the World of the Future shall model itself on existing all-female societies found in nature, such as that of the bee, the ant, and the termi – no, wait…
“All materials should be harmless”
Fortunately, there are no naturally occurring poisons, so this is possible.
“And seriously, killing animals you’ve raised yourself in a farm or keeping animals enclosed is cruel”
But keeping men enclosed isn’t. Except non human animals. Also, all living things are equal. Remember – makes sense.
“It isn’t so much as dictating what women should do”
It’s just about mass executions and systemic imposition of inflexible global bans.
“laws would be abolished and totally dispensed with”
That’s just…stupid on steroids. I know this should all be taken with a grain of salt, but how does one not see the absurd contradiction here? So if some people (OK, women) decided to make some laws to live by, this would be what? Against the law? The law that doesn’t exist? The obvious hiding in plain sight. I mean it’s stupid and even stupid to point out it’s stupid because it’s so obvious it’s stupid, it’s stupid to point out how stupid it is. Which is itself, stupid.
“Societal structures and decision-making assemblies wouldn’t exceed roughly 300 women (representing no more than themselves).”
About the maximum size of tribal group which can be ruled by a cult leaderess with the help of a couple of henchwomen.
Radical feminism has long been a vehicle by which a few worthless fanatics can dominate other, weaker women.
Why Movember isn’t all it’s cracked up to be
This click-bait crap is so out of control …
I think there’s a bit of a danger in pointing and laughing at folks like Ms. Witchwind. By doing so you tend to suggest that she’s a uniquely strange person, part of the lunatic fringe of feminism. It tends to imply that she does not accurately represent feminism. There’s a sense of “hooboy, she’s nuts even for a feminist.”
On the contrary, she is completely in line with the core of feminist thought and doctrine.
This, unfortunately, is the truth.
What seemed ludicrous (i.e. originated in Social Science and Womens’ Studies) 30 years ago is now mainstream in the Humanities generally, and in the administrative classes in every Western country.
Laugh while you can. You don’t think that the definition of “hate crime” is going to be narrowed, do you?
“I think it was Craig Mc who first introduced us to Ms Witchwind and the splendour of her mind. For instance, her claim that “no woman is heterosexual” and that any attraction to men can only be a “trauma-bond” and “a chemical response to violence and oppression.” Or her belief that “all men are criminals” who “want to destroy all life on Earth.””
Thanks David. I tripped over it myself via Twitter (sorry, I can’t remember the original discoverer).
I still half-suspect that Witchwind is a 4chan male giving looney feminists the wind-up.
re my comment above- I don’t think that wanting to rid the world of men is mainstream feminism. However the blaming of all the worlds’ ills on, not just mens’ behaviour, but on our nature, and ascribing all of humanity’s virtues to women, is fairly mainstream feminism, if sympathetic newspapers such as the Guardian are any guide
What seemed ludicrous (i.e. originated in Social Science and Womens’ Studies) 30 years ago is now mainstream in the Humanities generally, and in the administrative classes in every Western country
Well, except that Ms Witchwind would be hounded out of any modern university for her insistence that trans-women are not, in fact, women.
Seriously, she’d be crucified.
James. ‘What seemed ludicrous (ie.started in the Social Science and Womens’ Studies) 30 years ago is now mainstream in the Humanities generally ,and in the administrative classes in every Western Country .’ It should be bonkers – but to paraphrase Mark Steyn – no-one with influence is laughing.
Lesseee . . .
. . . the vehement nuttiness of the Black Hebrew Israelites: and . . . The narcissism of much of the middle class left . . . and If someone starts to offer you unsolicited advice about . . . and . . . I have to tell you that there’s a drawback to it: . . .
and in today’s headlines we’re informed that one’s hobbies require the absolute strictest approval by the authorities; High school couple facing expulsion over prom photo
It would appear that Ms. Wind has been watching too many women’s prison movies. The parallels between Ms. Wind’s utopia and your average medium security female correctional institution are rather striking.
Russell Brand probably won’t have watched Kenneth Clark’s Civilization – all on Youtube by the way – but here’s a quote that might be relevant.
‘People sometimes tell me that they prefer barbarism to civilisation. I doubt if they’ve given it a long enough trial. Like the people of Alexandria they’re bored by civilisation. But all the evidence suggests that the boredom of barbarism is infinitely greater. Very restricted company, no books, no light after dark – no hope.’
The little bearded buffoon might change tack and retort that he’s not after barbarism, just a nice clean revolt followed by, er.. the right people being in charge. Same (or cheaper) internet packages, same NHS looking after us when we get appendicitis (or worse), all the fluffy stuff.
Anyway at some stage one hopes he’ll wake up
So the world’s female population are going to have to make do with 10% of the current male population…and this will lead to peace and harmony between women?!! Not been to small towns in Russia, has she?
Minnow is noticeably absent from this thread.
Henry: thank you for that. I was abroad the year Civilisation was broadcast. I have the BBC book, and just finished it for the third time. I should have thought to consult ‘t Tube, and will do so this evening.
If left unexposed to the evil patriarchal radiation emitted by a pair of functioning testes, women will grow to at least ten feet tall, be able to fly and shoot laser beams from their eyes.
See, it is possible to parody this stuff… but only just.
Minnow is noticeably absent from this thread.
The slippery little fish has been shown the door. Our gracious host has the patience of Job, but enough is enough at some point.
“The slippery little fish has been shown the door. Our gracious host has the patience of Job, but enough is enough at some point.”
Oh, is this true? David? Could you clue us in to what the proverbial “straw” was?
On Sheila Jeffreys though. She was first brought to my attention in the early 90s when I was watching a TV show on the ABC, one of those audience forum discussion shows, and it was about feminism. She uttered the deathless phrase “All male penetration is rape”. This was probably my first exposure to this particular strain of fascism. Even some of the other women in the audience could not remain silent on this. One of them said something along the lines of “Sister, I respect you, but I don’t agree with that”. I was so struck by Jeffrey’s statement that, some years later, I immortalised her in song.
I’ve whiled many an afternoon away enjoying the antics of the Black Hebrew Israelites on Youtube. It’s strange how some hate groups incense while others just amuse.
Ignore comment re: Minnow. Just read the other thread. Carry on.
Jeff, no doubt you’ve foud it by now but anyway here is one of the several playlists of the series on YT – which too I have only just got round to looking at recently
More laughs than usual reading the comments in this thread. It’s almost like a Mark Steyn column.
How long has this Witchwindbag been foaming at the mouth?
I wonder what her employer, assuming it’s a reputable corporation as opposed to (say) a feminist bookstore, would think about her plans. They seem somewhat more depraved than failing to sufficiently support same-sex marriage a la Brendan Eich, for example. Perhaps the consequences might be proportionally more severe?