Ashe Schow on attempts to exacerbate campus “rape” hysteria: 

One of the best tactics so-called researchers have used to conclude that fully one-fifth of college women will be sexually assaulted is to vastly expand the definition of what [rape] is… Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown dissects the [Rutgers University survey], noting the definition of “sexual assault” and “sexual violence” included everything from “remarks about physical appearance” and “persistent sexual advances that are undesired by the recipient” to “threats of force to get someone to engage in sexual behaviour, as well as unwanted touching and unwanted oral, anal, or vaginal penetration or attempted penetration.” There’s an ocean of difference between someone saying you look good today and someone physically pinning you down against your will. To include both under the category of “sexual assault” is just ludicrous, and certainly not a serious way of studying the issue.

These, though, are the standards of Rutgers’ School of Social Work.

And via Ace, Timothy Sandefur tracks the wildly changing politics of Star Trek: 

At no point in the show’s history had Kirk or his colleagues treated the Klingons unjustly, whereas audiences for decades have watched the Klingons torment and subjugate the galaxy’s peaceful races. In “Errand of Mercy,” they attempt genocide to enslave the Organians. In “The Trouble with Tribbles,” they try to poison a planet’s entire food supply… Yet never does the Klingon leader, Gorkon, or any of his people, acknowledge — let alone apologise for — such injustices. Quite the contrary; his daughter tells a galactic conference, “We are a proud race. We are here because we intend to go on being proud.” Within the context of the original Star Trek, such pride is morally insane. Yet in service to Spock’s mission of elevating peace over right, the film [Undiscovered Country] portrays the Klingons not as thugs, but as misunderstood casualties of human bigotry. Kirk and his crew, says Gorkon’s daughter at the Enterprise banquet, represent a “homo sapiens-only club,” devoted to such chauvinistic values as “inalienable human rights.” “Why, the very name,” she quips, “is racist.”

The incoherent utopianism of many Trek episodes – “the pernicious ideal,” as dicentra called it – has been discussed here before, many times, along with the authoritarian types who imagine a similarly ‘progressive’ tomorrow. 

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for. 

Janice Fiamengo on feminist narratives and unmentioned history: 

After 1832, about one in five men had the right to vote. Almost half of adult males, though, were still not eligible to vote when they accepted the call to fight and die for their country in the First World War. It wasn’t until 1918 that the right to vote was extended, not only to women – which of course we hear a great deal about – but to all men. So how can this be – that this part of the story is almost completely unknown? How come when we celebrate the extension of the franchise to women, we don’t talk about its extension to poor and working class men?

Via sk60, Jonathan Foreman on the Tim Hunt “sexism” drama and the dishonesty and malevolence of certain key players: 

The most generous interpretation of Connie St Louis’s bizarre behaviour is that she was too intellectually limited to recognise irony that was somehow obvious to an audience composed mostly of people who spoke English as a second language. A leak of the unedited version of her “Stop Defending Tim Hunt” piece for the Guardian is so garbled and incoherent that this actually seems plausible, though it also makes you wonder how and why she came to be teaching journalism even at a third-rate institution like London’s City University.

And Peter Hasson on ‘progressive’ educators and predetermined conclusions: 

Multiple professors at Washington State University have explicitly told students their grades will suffer if they use terms such as “illegal alien,” “male,” and “female,” or if they fail to “defer” to non-white students. According to the syllabus for Selena Lester Breikss’ “Women & Popular Culture” class, students risk a failing grade if they use any common descriptors that Breikss considers “oppressive and hateful language.” […] Students taking Professor Rebecca Fowler’s “Introduction to Comparative Ethnic Studies” course will see their grades suffer if they use the term “illegal alien” in their assigned writing.[…] White students in Professor John Streamas’s “Introduction to Multicultural Literature” class are expected to “defer” to non-white students, among other community guidelines, if they want “to do well in this class.”

Imagine what such ‘thinkers’ might do if granted real power. 

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for. 

Christina Hoff Sommers on the fantasies and evasions of hashtag feminism: 

Someone needs to tell [campus feminists] that most of [their] statistics are specious and that… they are among the most liberated and privileged — and safest — people on earth. Because their professors would not tell them, that someone turned out to be me; for this I was furnished with a police escort on more than one occasion… Too often, today’s gender activists are not fighting injustice, but fighting phantom epidemics and nursing petty grievances. Two leading feminist hashtags of 2015 are #FreeTheNipples and #LovetheLines. The former is a campaign to desexualise women’s breasts; the latter promotes stretch-mark acceptance. If the imprisoned women of Iran and Afghanistan were free to tweet, what would they say about these struggles?

Ah, but in terms of “oppression” and “patriarchal assumptions” – according to feminist scholarship – the average American campus is indistinguishable from Uganda and Somalia. What, you didn’t know?

John Leo shares a list of things that are apparently racist, including hoop skirts, raised eyebrows and Christmas dinner: 

Writer Ron Rosenbaum said in Slate that racism accounts for the popularity of white-meat turkey over more flavourful dark meat. “White meat turkey has no taste,” he explained. “Despite its superior taste, dark meat has dark undertones for some. Dark meat seems to summon up ancient fears of contamination and miscegenation as opposed to the supposed superior purity of white meat.”

And Peter Fricke notes a progressive approach to shoplifting: 

Everett Mitchell, a former assistant district attorney, suggested that communities of colour may prefer that police refrain from enforcing laws against theft from large retail chains because responding to such crimes leads to an increased police presence in neighbourhoods where shoplifting is prevalent.

Apparently Mr Mitchell prefers “restorative justice” and “community service” for non-violent offenders under the age of 25. Though one wonders how justice of any kind is to be achieved if criminals with brown skin mustn’t be apprehended.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments. It’s what these posts are for. 

Janice Fiamengo explains why she’s happy to be called an “anti-feminist”:  

If further explanation is required, it may be worth revisiting this video here, which offers vivid illustrations of the behaviour Fiamengo describes, including harassment, thuggery, and the spectacle of supposedly empowered feminists getting quite literally hysterical. See also this related video, in which a feminist professor of philosophy, Alice McLachlan, tells us that she’s “warmed” by the sight of students – self-imagined intellectuals – congratulating themselves for making discussion impossible. Apparently Ms McLachlan, whose gift for dishonesty is something to behold, “cares a lot about free speech.” Just not for people who might dare to disagree with her. But then we mustn’t expect consistency and logic from a professor of philosophy.

Paul Joseph Watson on people who like the idea of a “white privilege” tax: 

Asked to sign the petition to support a 1% income tax on all white Americans in order to “even out the playing field” and redistribute the wealth amongst minority communities, the first man in the clip is incredulous that such a policy would pass but signs his name to it anyway. After a Puerto Rican man signs the petition, another individual who admits he is a non-resident asks for clarification, remarking, “so in other words, tax the white man?” before signing the paper. “We’re gonna take the silver spoon out of the white people’s mouths and put it back into yours,” [prankster Mike] Dice tells an African American man who enthusiastically signs the petition before stating, “appreciate it, man!”

Somewhat related and somewhat less funny. 

Heather Mac Donald on women in science: 

The myth of a sexist science hiring process has persisted, even though it is contradicted every day by the observable characteristics of faculty searches. And that myth has given rise to a stupendously expensive campus bureaucracy tasked with increasing diversity and combating alleged faculty bias. Last month, the University of California at Los Angeles hired its first vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion at the jaw-dropping salary of $354,900 — enough to cover the tuition of nearly 30 underprivileged students a year.

And again, on the University of California’s plan to extinguish WrongThought™: 

The “message” conveyed by this particular microaggression, according to the university’s “Recognising Microaggressions Tool,” is that “people of colour are given extra unfair benefits because of their race.” Now where would anyone get that idea? Well, you might ask any high school senior, steeped in his class’s SAT rankings, if it’s true that “people of colour” are given “extra benefits” in college admissions. He will laugh at your naïveté. A 2004 study of three top-tier universities, published in Social Science Quarterly, found that black students were favoured over whites by a factor of 5.5 and that being black got students an extra 230 SAT points on a 1,600-point scale. Such massive preferences for “under-represented minorities” are found at every selective college and graduate school. Every student knows this, and yet diversity protocol requires pretending that preferences don’t exist.

Regular readers will be familiar with ‘progressive’ interference in school discipline policies and the emergence of punishment quotas based on race. And familiar, too, with the grotesque consequences. 

Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.