In the early years of my blog, I used to publish a weekly “Mock Ross Douthat” post (and if you still remember those times, thank you for being such a loyal reader, you rock!). Then I got bored with his repetitive superficiality and stopped reading him. Years have passed, and today I discovered that for Douthat they have passed in vain. He is still as clueless and woman-hating as ever. Here is Douthat on the issue of European immigration:
How transformative depends on whether these men eventually find a way to bring brides and families to Europe as well. In terms of immediate civil peace, family formation or unification offers promise, since men with wives and children are less likely to grope revelers or graffiti synagogues or seek the solidarity of radicalism.
This is not only egregiously stupid, it’s also offensive. Women are not food, we are not fungible. Providing each man with his own piece of meat might prevent him from grabbing other men’s pieces of meat. But women are not pieces of meat (surprise!) and the reason men grope, poke, assault and humiliate us is not that they don’t have a willing object at home to do this to.
My mother has a friend, a Ukrainian woman who married a man from Morocco. He raped her and beat her for 20 years, in spite of being an educated, well-established, financially successful professional man.
When they emigrated to Canada, Mohammed brought both his wife and child and his contempt for women with him. Whenever they would come over to my parents’ place on a family visit, Mohammed would ogle me and my minor child sister in such a disgusting, offensive way that we would feel precisely like pieces of meat that Douthat considers us to be. The presence of his wife and our parents not 10 feet from all this in no way prevented Mohammed from acting like a pig. I am convinced that the only reason why he didn’t jump on us was not that he was married but that he was fat, clumsy and alone and we would all collectively whoop his ass if he tried. Put him at the train station in Cologne, and he’ll gladly participate in assaulting women.
If I had any temptation to wonder whether Mohammed’s piggishness was linked to his religion, that temptation evaporated the moment I met a group of Christian men from Lebanon. Their piggishness was so identical to Mohammed’s that I was cured from “my religion is better than yours” kind of hubris immediately.
The reason why Douthat doesn’t grope women against their will is not that he is Christian. It is that women from the culture to which Douthat belongs worked long and hard to spread the shocking news that women are valid human beings. And they were joined by some men who said, “Hey, this kind of makes sense.” And then more women joined and more men.
Gradually, after a lot of work by a lot of people it became possible to construct a tentative and insufficient yet still earth-shattering social consensus that everybody will be happier if women are treated like humans that we are and not pieces of meat.
If it were possible to skip that long and painful process of building this social consensus by adopting some religion and automatically achieving non-piggish treatment of women, I’d be all for it. But I studied a lot of history and I know for a fact that no religion or lack thereof leads to creating a space where women can go out to celebrate New Year’s and not be sexually assaulted.
Our consumerist mentality makes us want to believe that happiness resides in a correct selection of identity labels. Put the correct label on it, and joy will follow. But good things in life don’t come as a result of label switching. They come only as a consequence of long and painful labor of changing oneself and the reality that surrounds one.
P.S. I know the post is long and people hate that but ideas that are worth being expressed don’t exist in soundbites. If it’s simple, it’s probably stupid.
Clarissa's Blog 
Can you identify instances of Christians raping and/or beating women in the name of their God or Jesus? An Agnostic, I am by no means a student of Christianity. However, I recall nothing in the New Testament suggesting that Jesus married a girl of six, consummated the marriage when she was nine or had multiple wives simultaneously. Nor can I recall anything there or elsewhere in Christian literature encouraging his followers to do that. Do Christian preachers lecture their followers on the acceptable ways to beat their wives?
How very generous to honor wives by beating them only as prescribed.
Here, for such interest if any as it may hold, is a link to a lengthy article published today about the Islamisation of Germany during 2015.
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“Can you identify instances of Christians raping and/or beating women in the name of their God or Jesus?”
“However, I recall nothing in the New Testament suggesting that Jesus married a girl of six, consummated the marriage when she was nine or had multiple wives simultaneously.”
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I read the translated synopsis and assume that the events related there happened several centuries ago, when Roman Catholic missionaries sought to convert the “heathen” while stealing their artworks and other treasures — particularly gold — to the glory of the Roman Catholic
CaliphateChurch Universal.Do you have any more contemporary examples of that sort of thing being done in the name of the Christian God or Jesus?
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“I read the translated synopsis and assume that the events related there happened several centuries ago, when Roman Catholic missionaries sought to convert the “heathen” while stealing their artworks and other treasures — particularly gold — to the glory of the Roman Catholic Caliphate Church Universal.”
“Do you have any more contemporary examples of that sort of thing being done in the name of the Christian God or Jesus?”
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“I met a group of Christian men from Lebanon. Their piggishness was so identical to Mohammed’s”
In other words, they were from a similar cultural milieu…
And I repeat myself again: The tragedy of western femninists was that when the natural evolution of their successful movement indicated that the next target was non-western patriarchy…. they collectively chickened out and eventually retreated into dramatic nonsense about trivia (a la shakesville).
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“In other words, they were from a similar cultural milieu…”
Exactly. That’s my whole point. We can stand on our heads and contort ourselves into weird shapes but it is undeniable that cultural differences exist. They exist and they are very very powerful.
Talking about colonialist mentality, the belief that one’s trigger warnings, affirmative consents, transinclusivities and intersectionalities will be immediately clear, accessible, meaningful and helpful to everybody on the planet is the height of intellectually colonizing hubris.
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No matter which way you look at it, this is a disaster for Germany and Europe as a whole. How does one undo such horrendous damage done to a society?
This is real misogyny and this is real rape culture, and yet the German government prosecutes under “hate crime” legislation all who would point out the obvious, that it was Arab and North African men who perpetrated the sexual assaults on women. Is it racism to state the obvious?
It seems rather ironic that those who cry racism or Islamophobia are excusing the behaviour of the migrants and thus becoming what they purport to hate the most, that is they themselves have become “rape apologists”.
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“It seems rather ironic that those who cry racism or Islamophobia are excusing the behaviour of the migrants and thus becoming what they purport to hate the most, that is they themselves have become “rape apologists”.”
Yes, there is a sad, sad irony in all of this. The very same people who howled about the need to believe victims of sexual assault, not engage in victim-blaming and not make excuses for rapists are eagerly blaming victims and making excuses for rapists.
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Henrietta Reker, the mayor of Cologne (Köln) had the gall to tell women that they should keep men at arms length if they wanted to avoid a sexual assault. I would imagine that when 20 men have you surrounded and are groping you, keeping them at arms length would be a rather difficult feat.
Now Ms. Reker is lamenting the fact that people are making fun of her.
In another case, a politician for the Green(ie) Party attempted to deflect blame from the migrant Arab men who did the groping and assaulting, by stating that “all men are rapists”. As a happily married man with two daughters of my own, I deeply resent that accusation, and yet it is a common trope of the left to deflect blame from a supposed victim group, i.e. Arab men in this case and apply it to all men. But, it wasn’t German men who did the groping on New Year’s Eve. In fact more than a few young German men were beaten up by the mob as they tried to defend their girl friends. Likewise, it is not Swedish men who are raping Swedish women, nor was it English men who sexually abused 1,400 young girls in Rotherham.
As a society we need to come to terms with the fact that the various cultures that exist in this world are not equal. As was so aptly demonstrated in Cologne, some cultures are downright perverted. Hopefully the lesson learned from these horrific incidents will spell the end of political correctness.
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“Do you have any more contemporary examples of that sort of thing (beatings) being done in the name of the Christian God or Jesus?”
Sure. Read “To train up a child” by Michael Pearlman published in 1994.
Quotes:
“After about ten acts of stubborn defiance, followed by ten switchings, he surrendered his will to one higher than himself (i.e. God). In rolling the wheel, he (i.e. a 15 month old baby) did what every accountable human being must do–he humbled himself before the “highest” and admitted that his interests are not paramount. After one begrudged roll, my wife turned to other chores.”
“Any spanking, to effectively reinforce instruction, must cause pain, but the most pain is on the surface of bare skin where the nerves are located. A surface sting will cause sufficient pain, with no injury or bruising. Select your instrument according to the child’s size. For the under one year old, a little, ten- to twelve-inch long, willowy branch (striped of any knots that might break the skin) about one-eighth inch diameter is sufficient. Sometimes alternatives have to be sought. A one-foot ruler, or its equivalent in a paddle, is a sufficient alternative. For the larger child, a belt or larger tree branch is effective.”
“At this point, in utter panic, he will rush to demonstrate obedience. Never reward delayed obedience by reversing the sentence. And, unless all else fails, don’t drag him to the place of cleansing. Part of his training is to come submissively. However, if you are just beginning to institute training on an already rebellious child, who runs from discipline and is too incoherent to listen, then use whatever force is necessary to bring him to bay. If you have to sit on him to spank him then do not hesitate. And hold him there until he is surrendered. Prove that you are bigger, tougher, more patiently enduring and are unmoved by his wailing. Defeat him totally. Accept no conditions for surrender. No compromise. You are to rule over him as a benevolent sovereign. Your word is final.”
“Years have passed, and today I discovered that for Douthat they have passed in vain. He is still as clueless and woman-hating as ever.”
Actually he hasn’t changed since he was a student writer for the Harvard Crimson.
“The very same people who howled about the need to believe victims of sexual assault, not engage in victim-blaming and not make excuses for rapists are eagerly blaming victims and making excuses for rapists.”
I guess that the OpEds which really bother me are the ones who conflate the riots in Germany protesting these men’s actions with the fact that the 70 year ban on the publication of A. Hitler’s, “Mein Kampt” in Germany ended this month as if there was some sort of causality.
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“I guess that the OpEds which really bother me are the ones who conflate the riots in Germany protesting these men’s actions with the fact that the 70 year ban on the publication of A. Hitler’s, “Mein Kampt” in Germany ended this month as if there was some sort of causality.”
Seriously?? I have not seen those. Gosh, what wouldn’t people say to themselves to justify woman-hating actions.
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Well it should have ended long ago. The meta-message of a ban is “this is powerful stuff that people will believe!”. Nothing supports the message of a book more than banning it does….
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I agree completely that the book needs to be read, analyzed, studied and understood. Hiding from reality serves no purpose.
Of course, it’s kind of cute how people believe in the magical power of books as if readers didn’t bring their own selves to every act of reading.
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Look which people Europe hurries to eject “despite a national petition in his support” :
Denmark has expelled a top foreign undergraduate because he worked for 90 minutes more than the 15 hours a week the law allows overseas students to spend doing a part-time job.
Marius Youbi, 30, an electrical engineering student described by Aarhus University as “the best we have”, flew home to Cameroon on Thursday morning
…
An investigation by the agency found that, in some weeks, he had spent 16-and-a-half hours on his cleaning job, one-and-a-half hours over the limit for foreign students. It rejected Youbi’s complaint that, averaged out over the year, his hours did not exceed the limit, and revoked his residency permit.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/08/marius-youbi-foreign-student-forced-to-leave-denmark-exceeding-part-time-work-limit
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Oh yes. Only the immigrants who will not work and will never be equal to the locals are welcome. The rest are chased away.
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