Desperado and the Desperation of Feminism

At the conclusion of El Mariachi, the film's titular character is left with even the simplest of his dreams shattered.

The woman he loves has been killed in a fit of rage by Mauricio, a gringo ganglord. He's been shot in the hand, ruining his dreams of becoming a great mariachi.

As Desperado begins, El Mariachi (now played by Antonio Banderas) is now a man possessed by rage. Killing Mauricio hasn't satisfied his desire for revenge, and he now seeks to vanquish Bucho (Joachim de Almeida), Moco's criminal patron.

El Mariachi has adjusted to life as a gun slinger remarkably well.

Early on in El Mariachi, the titular character muses that nothing ever changes. In Desperado, this has held to be true.

The only thing that has changed is El himself. He has set about building himself a reputation as a man to be feared, and he has succeeded, to the extent that anyone dressed in black and carrying a guitar case -- which describes nearly any mariachi in Mexico -- is shaken down and searched for weapons.

In fact, there now seems to be no one better at what he does than El Mariachi himslef. With daring and gusto he shoots down an entire barful of Mexican toughs.

Conditions in Mexico have only deteriorated since the events of El Mariachi. Even as Bucho's men hunt him, he is also hunted by an assassin sent by Bucho's Colombian suppliers. Played to perfection by Danny Trejo (Hollywood's prototypical big, scary Mexican), the knife-throwing assassin tears into Bucho's men before being killed.

Under such conditions, everyone in the town lives in a state of quiet desperation, helping Bucho run his operation out of a simple lack of safe alternatives.

But if trying to live free as a man under the reign of such chaos is difficult, it's even harder for women.

When El Mariachi meets Carolina (Salma Hayek), she is immediately struck by him. As with most of the townspeople, she acquiesces to participation in Bucho's activities, allowing her book store to be used as a front for portions of Bucho's criminal enterprise.

In falling in love with El Mariachi, she seems to become dependent on him for her way out. But appearances are very deceiving. In time, Caroline learns to be every bit as lethal as her lover.

Caroline shares with him a libertarian love of freedom. Bucho has managed to take her freedom of action and freedom of association away from her. It's through the conscious choice of helping El Mariachi when he is wounded -- on two occasions -- that she begins to recover that freedom.

When she leaves with him, it's of her own free choice. It may be the first free choice she has made in a long time.

Even though El Mariachi clearly has a hand in providing her with that choice, it's Caroline herself who finds the will to exercise it.

Caroline learns to be feminine, beautiful, powerful, masculine, and free all at the same time. It's a reminder that the approach to liberty espoused by libertarianism is actually the ideal condition for feminism to thrive.

The Self-Defeat of Political Tokenism

Diane Abbott must face serious questions about the seriousness of her candidacy

At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, it must be noted that defeated Labour Party leadership candidate Diane Abbott was a token candidate.

Not a token black candidate (although she was keen to invoke race when she declared Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy PM Nick Clegg to be "posh white boys"). Rather, she was a token female candidate.

Looking back on the Labour leadership campaign, it's hard to view her otherwise. She was never a serious contender. She very seldom brought anything of interest to the table.

In fact, the only attention-worthy statements from Abbott during the entire campaign were far-from-Earth-shattering speculation on the role of major donors on the leadership campaign, and questions about the legality of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In other words, Abbott strove to be little more than a standard left-wing candidate.

There seemed to be little compelling reason for her candidacy. Her campaign's sole boost came when disgraced candidate John McDonnell -- who obliterated his own slender chances at the leadership by musing about a desire to assassinate Margaret Thatcher while she was Prime Minister of Britain -- withdrew from the contest and threw his support behind her.

His reasoning? The Labour leadership contest needed a female candidate.

If Abbott being a woman was truly the only reason why electors in the campaign -- consisting of Labour Party members, Labour MPs and members of affiliated groups -- would want to vote for her, Abbot's candidacy was in trouble from the very get-go.

This shouldn't be mistaken for a suggestion that women shouldn't run for the leadership of political parties.

In fact, strong female candidates speak volumes about the strength of a particular political party. That Labour couldn't produce a strong female candidate for leadership does precisely that.

Even Abbott's own constituents declined to support her. Of the electors within her riding of Hackney North-Stoke Newton only 20.55% cast their votes in her favour.

While her candidacy may have been based on the best of intentions -- providing demographic diversity in the Labour leadership contest -- it certainly hasn't met those intentions.

In fact, Abbott's candidacy could be considered to have done a disservice to women in the Labour Party. If Abbott's candidacy -- a waste of time and resources by any account -- is the best the women of the Labour Party could produce, the role of women within the party should be very much a matter of question.

This is how political tokenism -- in the name of feminism, race, or anything else -- defeats itself. The next token candidate should leave such matters to serious contenders.

Oh God, Antonia. You Don't Say

Antonia Zerbisias blames conservatives for "rape culture"

In a characteristically banal column published in the Toronto Star, Antonia Zerbisias muses about the alleged rise of "rape culture".

Seeing as how many people wouldn't be familiar with what Zerbisias means by "rape culture", it's worth reproducing the definition here. She invokes the definition offered by feminist blogger Melissa McEwan:

“Rape culture is encouraging male sexual aggression. Rape culture is regarding violence as sexy and sexuality as violent. Rape culture is treating rape as a compliment, as the unbridled passion stirred in a healthy man by a beautiful woman, making irresistible the urge to rip open her bodice or slam her against a wall, or a wrought-iron fence, or a car hood, or pull her by her hair, or shove her onto a bed, or any one of a million other images of fight-f***ing in movies and television shows and on the covers of romance novels that convey violent urges are inextricably linked with (straight) sexuality."

Zerbisias' evidence for the alleged rise of rape culture is a number of rape jokes offered by the teenage son of University of Alberta professor Lise Gotell, a few accumulating on Facebook (including one invoking Superman, whom she incorrectly identifies as the "Caped Crusader"), and a number of rape scenes in various movies.

As with so many cultural critics, Zerbisias makes the error of assuming that the mere portrayal of a rape in film promotes it. When one considers that her argument refers to rape scenes in Descent, The Last House on the Left, and Observe & Report, Zerbisias' argument essentially deflates itself.

After all, the characters committing the rapes in each of these films are, unequivocally, not to be emulated. In two the films, the rapists are some of the most despicable victims in film history. In the third, the rapist is a paranoid schizophrenic.

Zerbisias being Zerbisias, she isn't finished there. Few Zerbisias features seem complete without a gratuitous potshot at conservatives.

Zerbisias doesn't merely want to chronicle what she considers to be the rise of "rape culture". She also wants to cast blame. And guess who she blames for the alleged rise of rape culture?

That's right. Conservatives.

Zerbisias first quotes Lee Lakeman of a spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres.

“I do think the conservative agenda has a lot to do with this," says Lakeman. “We don’t see public officials standing up for women. We don’t see the denunciation of ordinary violence against women. We don’t see men being held to account in any way that speaks to the whole society’s values."

Zerbisias then quotes Gotell.

“In Stephen Harper’s Canada, women’s groups which could have provided a voice on these issues have been weakened or eliminated," says Gotell, making reference to cuts to advocacy groups. “That’s another explanation for the escalation of rape culture."

Naturally, neither Gotell nor Lakeman offer anything even resembling compelling evidence that conservatives are responsible for the rise of so-called "rape culture". Each prefers ideologically-soothing far-left rhetoric.

Naturally, Lakeman doesn't bother to explain how the conservative approach to crimes such as sexual assault has been any different from the alternative. Nor does Gotell bother to explain why it is that women's advocacy groups couldn't be bothered to raise their own funding after their ideologically-preferential government funding was cut off. (Restoring liberal neutrality to government.)

For Antonia Zerbisias, the interest at hand isn't an honest exploration of this particular topic -- it seems that her sole interest is in smearing conservatives. Evidence is an afterthought if offered at all.

In this particular case, no evidence is offered whatsoever, and it shouldn't be considered surprising.

Measuring Women's Equality

In a political era in which many insist that left-wing feminist groups must be funded because equality must be promoted, it may be a fair question to ask:

How, precisely, does one measure women's equality.

Part two of The Spartans may provide a clue.

Comparing the treatment of women in Athens to the treatment of women in Sparta with the treatment of women in comparatively liberal and democratic Athens, the film reveals that women in Sparta were fed the same food as men, were educated, allowed to participate in sports and politics, and own property. In Athens, women were expected to remain largely invisible.

This transformed Spartan women into highly-desired sex objects among other Greek men. Athenean women didn't seem to compare to Spartan women.

But at the very heart of the superior treatment was a notion that seems intuitive, but retrograde in its implications: healthy women produce healthy children, something that a warrior society like Sparta would continually be in desperate need of.

One detects similar arguments today in the thinking of individuals like Mark Steyn, who portrays Islam -- not merely militant Islam, but all Islam -- as a threat to western (Christian) society, one that will bury it by way of demographics.

It would take centuries for demographic realities to turn against the Spartans. When it finally did, it wasn't because of the comparatively liberal freedoms enjoyed by women (as some would insist about demographic downturns today), but rather it was because of the restrictions placed upon men, who were not allowed to formally marry until they were 28 or 30.

When Sparta became threatened by its inability to produce enough young men to be warriors, one must have imagined there were many such as Steyn sounding the alarm.

When s plague descended upon Athens and left nearly one third of the Athenian population dead, a risk of mistreating women became evident: just as healthy women are necessary to produce healthy children, unhealthy women will be more suseptible to disease, and more likely to aid in its spread.

As retrograde as the Spartan approach to women seems -- granted citizenship only so they'd be willing to sacrifice their children for the good of the state -- there is a fundamental and undeniable truth in the notion:

The future of any society lies with its women. And while women shouldn't be empowered with citizenship only so they can produce children, any society (Saudi Arabia, Iran) that oppresses its women compresses its societal potential.

Opportunism Defined

American left out to crucify someone -- and they've chosen Carrie Prejean

For anyone who ever bought the myth that only the right-wing in America delights in destroying people who provoke their ire, the events that continue to swirl around Carrie Prejean prove differently. In this event the bloodthirstiness of the American left is on full display, and it seems very much equal to the non-mythical bloodthirstiness of the American right.

The Huffington Post rather gleefully jumped on a recent revelation that Prejean has had breast implants.

These people have slipped so deeply into folly that they've even managed to make one of America's perrenial wrong clocks, Laura Ingraham, right about something.

Substituting for Bill O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Factor, Ingraham contronted feminist Gloria Feldt over the body image-oriented attacks on Prejean.

At issue was a segment of Keith Olbermann's Countdown in which a gay writer launched into a long tirade of personal and body-oriented attacks on Prejean.

"I am thinking to myself, where are the feminists?" Ingraham asked. "Are feminists not going to say, wait a second. You do not go there with a young woman."

"I think now she is fair game. She is now fair game because she is a national spokesperson for a group that opposes marriage equality," Feldt replied. She evidently failed to perceive the irony.

But Ingraham did.

"This is great!" Ingraham said. "A feminist is attacking a woman for how she looks. This is great. You guys have come full circle here in the United States of America. Now it is OK for feminists to ridicule women for the way they look."

Just as many American feminists threw thousands of pregnant teenagers under the bus in order to get at Sarah Palin through her daughter, many American feminists -- certainly not all and hopefully not even a majority of them -- are now throwing the thousands of women who are insecure enough about their body image to get breast implants under the bus.

But an even deeper irony seems to rest on the Miss California organization's inability to properly define "opportunism".

In an April 30 press release, Miss California spokespeople wrote: "We are deeply saddened Carrie Prejean has forgotten her platform of the Special Olympics, her commitment to all Californians, and solidified her legacy as one that goes beyond the right to voice her beliefs and instead reveals her opportunistic agenda."

They may want to double-check the meaning of opportunism.

Levelling charges of opportunism against Prejean suggests that she went looking for this controversy. Yet those familiar with the overall story know the truth is very different. Prejean didn't go out of her way to find an opportunity to voice her opinion on same-sex marriage.

Rather, she was asked that question by Perez Hilton, who was looking for an opportunity to politicize the Miss USA proceedings.

While no one is obligated to agree with Prejean's opinion -- this author has previously expressed his disagreement -- one at the very least has to respect the fact that Prejean chose to answer the question honestly. She gave her true opinion, and has since been unflinching and unrepentant about that.

Certainly, one could raise the argument that Prejean could have offered the same "no comment" answer as she has used to respond to questions about her breast implants. Then again, one also has to keep in mind that one of Hilton's complaints is that Prejean allegedly didn't answer the question.

As soon as Hilton asked that question, there was no way that Prejean could escape the onslaught of public attack she's been subject to ever since with her integrity intact. She could either lie about her opinion and escape unattacked, or tell the truth and endure it.

She chose to do the former, and history has since largely spoken for itself.

Now that their elected representatives are firmly in control of the country, the American left is out to absolutely destroy someone. They've chosen Carrie Prejean.

The Intellectual Slavishness of Mallick Worship

"Nothing wrong here", says Unrepentant Old Hippie

As the Mighty Wind of outrage sweeps through the United States and Canada concerning Heather Mallick and her extremely intemperate and, frankly, loonish comments regarding American Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, it's unsurprising that a few members of Canada's extreme left is lining up alongside her in the impending scrum.

Among them, naturally, is Unrepentant Old Hippie JJ, who thinks there's nothing at all wrong with Mallick's extreme commentary, and that so-called right-wing "moonbats" are simply milking "fauxtrage".

However, what JJ in particular seems to miss is the impliations of Mallick's comments on her own personal pet cause -- the pro-abortion lobby.

Now, as with all intellectually dishonest pro-abortion lobbyists, JJ will be among the first to insist that she isn't, in fact, pro-abortion. Instead, she insists, she's pro-choice -- and yet, under the "wrong" circumstances will actually oppose choice and refuse to answer qeustions about that.

Yet when one takes a close second look at Mallick's comments about the much-maligned Briston Palin, it doesn't take a drastic intellectual leap of faith to understand the broader implications:

"Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

I know that I have an attachment to children that verges on the irrational, but why don't the Palins? I'm not the one preaching homespun values but I'd destroy that ratboy before I'd let him get within scenting range of my daughter again, and so would you.

...

Who delivered this line: "To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will." Was it Rev. James Dobson of Focus on the Family talking about Bristol Palin's shotgun wedding or was it a flashback to the Kingston Trio?"

It's not too hard to get the gist of Mallick's comments: Palin's relationship with the equally-maligned Levi Johnson is a disgrace, and the pregnancy resulting from it doubly so.

Never mind the fact that Mallick -- and those who, like her, are delighting themselves in throwing darts at what they've picked out as a vulnerable bullseye -- have never actually met Levi Johnson, and are extremely ill-equipped to judge his character.

Yet the question that remains is this: if Bristol Palin were to do what individuals such as Mallick seem to insist that she should and break off her relationship with Johnson -- again, something that these people actually know very little about, aside that a teen pregnancy has resulted from it -- what would be her alternatives?

This is a very simple question to answer: single parenthood, or an abortion.

Either way, Bristol Palin would spend a significant portion of her life carrying the very real stigma that still accompanies single teenaged parenthood: in short, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

If Palin were decide to keep that child, she would face numerous disadvantages -- economically and socially. Whether individuals like Mallick or JJ care to admit it or not, society still tends to treat unwed teenage mothers as "tramps", "sluts", "whores", or any number of other epithets. This stigma encompasses nearly every facet of the young mother's life, both economically and socially.

Worse yet, after the child is born and continues to grow through their school years, that stigma will begin to attach itself to the child, instead.

Then, of course, there's an alternative: abortion. Once again, after having recieved an abortion, the young woman would still carry a very similar label. She would still be regarded as a "tramp", "slut" or "whore", and would actually have to double that with the "baby killer" epithet that the more extreme elements of the anti-abortion lobby would inevitably heave upon her.

The difference, of course, being, that at least after having had an abortion, the young woman in question could at least move somewhere else to escape that stigma (unless, of course, you're living under a media microscope, as Bristol Palin is).

While gleefully rushing to label Bristol's mother as a "toned down porn star", Mallick doesn't seem interested in coming to Bristol Palin's defense, as she's labelled a "slut" in a very public manner.

Defeating the public stigma surrounding teenage pregnancy would go a long way toward empowering young women like Bristol Palin to keep their babies without keeping their (actual or alleged) "ratboy" boyfriends.

But Mallick seems very disinterested in that. Especially not when there are partisan political points to be scored -- in a foreign country, no less -- by helping pile it on.

It would take very little for Heather Mallick -- or JJ, for that matter -- to do the right thing by coming out and admitting that Bristol Palin's pregnancy is a private matter, and not a political football to kick around. Instead, we find JJ fetching Mallick the kicking tee in the extremely fickle name of pissing off some "wingnuts".

In Mallick's view, Bristol Palin is a "pramface", her fiancee a "ratboy", soon to be joined in a "shotgun wedding". "White trash", all around. A "slutty", "trampy", "whorish" "Alaskan Hillbilly".

There is, of course, the matter of thousands of other unwed teenaged mothers-to-be in the Unites States, likely taking note of the public humiliation being heaped on Bristol Palin and her family and thinking that an abortion is a much more attractive option than socially stigmatized single parenthood.

And JJ and Heather Mallick, north of the 49th parrallel, fiddling while their alleged "pro-choice" Rome burns to the ground.

They certainly insist that they don't favour abortion, and would prefer that women seek out other options. The other option, however, involves a great deal of social hardship -- and when the one who would suffer such hardship happens to be the daughter of an ideological enemy, all bets are off.

On a fairly similar vein, there's always Martin Rayner and his insistence that "well, other people are doing it, too".

Which doesn't make it any more acceptable, and one can expect that Bill Maher will be taken to task for his comments in time as well.

Then, there's the naturally-emerging protest that "well, the other guys do it, too!" Likely that's what Mallick herself meant when she told herself to "think like a Republican".

The problem with this being that dragging Bristol Palin through the mud in order to get at her mother is no less wrong than right-wing activists targetting the families of their political opponents. (No intellectually honest individual could pretend that such things have never happened.) And while it's abhorrent when right-wingers do it, it's equally abhorrent when left-wingers like Mallick do it.

Which, of course, takes one away from the point: when one considers all the social implications of Mallick's attitude toward Bristol Palin, it actually turns out that her comments regarding Sarah Palin are only the tip of the iceberg.

That's the irony of the entire affair: slavish Mallick worshippers, claiming to be feminists, lining up against the interests of legitimate feminism.

Why So Frantic, Heather Mallick?

Mallick comes unhinged at Sarah Palin's ascension to Vice Presidential candidate

In the ongoing American Presidential election, one of the unfortunate epithets flung at Republican Presidential candidate is that of "crazy".

But what is one to make of such epithets when those so prone to flinging it themselves act "crazily"?

Thus unfolds the sad episode of CBC online Columnist Heather Mallick's "analysis" of John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

In the course of her column, Mallick comes across as frantic, vicious and generally unhinged as she vents all of her left-feminist rage at a woman who clearly refuses to be prodded into the cookie-cutter identity laid out for so-called "liberated" women.

Palin isn't the first target of Mallick's seemingly intractable rage. When the Ottawa Senators "Better Halves" accepted the First Place Pregnancy Centre as one of the beneficiaries of their Christmas tree raffle, Mallick had this to say:

"I hate picking on women. We're born at a disadvantage and in our wild flailing to stay afloat, we make such easy targets. But really, do the wives and girlfriends of the Ottawa Senators have to dress up in matching pink team sweaters and call their ad hoc union "The Better Halves?"

It's bad enough that these women have hooked up with bruised artist-athletes with careers of inevitably brief span, sold by hockey corporations as if they were cans of Spam, shipped around the continent without notice, thus dooming their wives' careers from the start."

Her condescension for these particular women, who apparently offend Mallick's left-feminist ideology, she lashed out at them for the inexcusable crime of dating or marrying a hockey player.

Apparently, Mallick imagines that hockey players the world over should remain permanently single just so the world's women can appease her disturbingly authoritarian view of feminism.

She admits openly in the article that she doesn't know any of the Senators Better Halves. She certainly doesn't know why any of them chose the companionship of a hockey player, yet having done so transformed them from women into outlets for her contempt -- supporting a charity that doesn't fit neatly into the ideological camp supporting Mallick's pro-abortion agenda was apparently merely the icing on the cake.

So imagine that a woman accepts the Vice Presidential nomination for the Republican party. In doing so she would become the first female Vice Presidential candidate in American history. One would think that a so-called feminist like Mallick would be encouraged by that.

But, no. Apparently not. Instead it seems to be, as the kids say, on:

"I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

So why do it?

It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously."

Which is a rather curious way for a self-described feminist to open a column about the aforementioned first female Vice Presidential candidate in American history.

Apparently, Palin could only appeal to the "white trash vote". In no way could she possibly appeal to women.

In fact, Mallick suggests, Palin isn't even a woman at all:

"But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating themselves and reading columns like this one? I'm a feminist who understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.

Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America. No, she isn't even female really. She's a type, and she comes in male form too."

Apparently, in Mallick's fevered mind, Sarah Palin isn't a woman at all, as if she had somehow simultaneously sprouted a penis the second she accepted the Republican VP nomination, and apparently by simple virtue of not holding a lifetime membership in the Bra Burning Brigade.

No. In Mallick's mind, Sarah Palin -- despite everything she accomplished despite being a woman "born at a disadvantage" is nothing more than pure white trash:

"John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I'd had the wit to come up with it first. It's safer than "white trash" but I'll pluck safety out of the nettle danger. Or something.

Doyle's job includes watching a lot of reality television and he's well-versed in the backstory. White trash — not trailer trash, that's something different — is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the foreign, and a fan of the American cliché of authenticity. The semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new microwave."

If that particular passage doesn't seem shrill enough, just take a look at how Mallick follows it up:

"Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

I know that I have an attachment to children that verges on the irrational, but why don't the Palins? I'm not the one preaching homespun values but I'd destroy that ratboy before I'd let him get within scenting range of my daughter again, and so would you."

Just to ratchet off a tirade about how the first female VP candidate in American history so utterly offends Mallick's feminist sensibilities, why not accuse her of dressing herself up like a hussy?

Hell, don't even stop there. Take square aim at the woman's daughter, too. And let's drag her pregnant teenage daughter's relationship with her boyfriend -- himself also a hockey player -- through the mud while we're at it.

Mallick spends the next few paragraphs of her ill-concieved little frantic tirade to admit that she didn't really watch Palin's speech, and instead watched A Mighty Wind on Bravo.

Then she dropped this particular little nugget:

"I know that red states vote Republican on social issues to give themselves the only self-esteem available to their broken, economically abused existence."

Certainly, in Mallick's mind, the pitiful little mud people of the red states -- "white trash" as she herself so succinctly put it -- only vote for Republicans to build up their pathetic existence.

And as for the Republicans and their objections to the tax increases that, yes, Obama has practiced, it couldn't be an honest disagreement over whether or not the taxes in question are necessary (although, with the current state of the American federal budget, it's hard to imagine how they could disagree). No, instead, it must be racism. If not racism, then outright elitism:

"But surely they know Barack Obama is not planning to finish off the ordinary hillbilly when he adjusts tax rates. He's going to raise taxes on the top 2% of Americans and that doesn't include anyone at the convention beyond the Bushes and McCains and random party management. So why cheer Palin when she claims otherwise?

Is it racism? I'm told that it is, although I find racism so appalling that I have difficulty identifying it. It is more likely the dearly held Republican notion that any American can become violently rich, as rich as those hedge funders in Greenwich, Conn., who buy $40-million mansions unseen and have their topiary shaped in the form of musical notes.

When Palin and Rudy Giuliani sneered at Obama's years of "community organizing" — they said it like "rectal fissure" — the audience ewww-ed with them. Republicans dream of a personal future that involves only household staff, not equals who need to be persuaded to vote.

So I'm trying to imagine the pain of realizing, as they all must at some point, that it is not going to happen for them. It's the green light at the end of the dock. It's the ship that never comes in, gals, as Palin would put it. But she won't because the lie works for her. It helps her scramble, without compassion, above all those other tense no-hoper ladies in the audience."

No hope?

No hope, precisely, for what? It would be kind of pointless for Palin to run for Vice President if she had no hope for the future -- be it no hope for herself or no hope for the betterment of women in general.

It would be kind of pointless for all those "no hoper ladies" to support a woman for VP if they had no hope for the future. One simply has to wonder if Mallick so much as stopped to think for two seconds about what she was writing, or if she simply allowed her extreme ideological predispositions seize control of her while flailing frantically away at her keyboard?

In the end, it becomes immediately apparent. It isn't so much that Palin "isn't even female really" as she is the wrong kind of woman to be a Vice Presidential candidate:

"American politics isn't short of smart women. Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter, who just endorsed Obama, made an extraordinary speech at the Democratic convention (and a terrific casual appearance on The Colbert Report as Palin was speaking). The Republican party has already consumed nearly all of its moderate "seed corn," she said aptly. Time to start again.

Eisenhower, a scholar and journalist, has a point. Or am I only saying that because she's part of the thoughtful demographic that I'm trying to reach here? Think, Heather, think like a Republican! The Skeptics, shall I call them, are my base, and I'll pander to them as ardently as the Republican patriarchs tease their white female marginals."

So, in the end, what is it about Sarah Palin that Mallick finds so utterly repulsive?

It isn't that hard to figure out. Sarah Palin is a woman. Who is anti-abortion -- perhaps even shockingly so, as she once announced she would oppose an abortion "even if her own daughter had been raped".

Palin also supports absinence-only sex education in schools.

Both these positions have implications that are of obvious concern for feminists, and very well should be.

But perhaps Palin's greatest offense is being a member of Feminists for Life, a feminist group that opposes abortion.

Interestingly enough, Feminists for Life supports the establishment of support networks on College and University campuses for single mothers -- infrastructure such as on-campus daycare and appropriate housing facilities.

Feminists such as Heather Mallick should support and voraciously applaud such a policy position. But couple that with opposition to abortion, and suddenly all bets are off. "Feminists" like Heather Mallick seem to derive from this a bizarre need to strip women such as Sarah Palin of their "feminist cred", so to speak.

The message remains crystal clear: within the feminist movement, there is no room for disagreement on the topic of abortion. Even a hint of the wrong opinion on that particular topic, and not only can that particular woman not be accepted as a feminist, she can't even be accepted as a woman.

It's a bizarre tendency of the most extreme members of the left-wing feminist movement -- that any feminist possessing conservative political beliefs must not only be rejected as a feminist, but also thorougly re-gendered.

One could consider it a rather bizarre form of post-feminist feminist-chauvinism. Perhaps its the cognitive dissonance that makes Heather Mallick seem so utterly unbalanced.

Joyce Arthur and the Yellow Brick Road

Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada head longs for the good ol' days in Oz

Over the past several months, one has heard the litany of complaints over Edmonton-Sherwood Park MP Ken Epp's private members' bill, Bill C-484 -- the Unborn Victims of Crime bill.

According to Canada's pro-abortion lobby, the bill is an outrage -- nothing but a back-door "attack" on women's abortion rights.

Unfortunately for Joyce Arthur and the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, many opponents of the bill have reached this conclusion by intentional misreadings of the bill in question -- often refusing to acknowledge the existence of entire passages of the bill that don't fit the narrative they're so desperate to push.

Like many demagogues, Arthur has often pushed this particular narrative by promoting it in the places where it will receive the least possible scrutiny. What all too often emerges is a portrait of the pro-abortion lobby's fantasy version of the legislation, instead of the real deal.

"It’s very sneaky," says Arthur. "[Epp] is trying to rewrite the Criminal Code definition and allow a fetus to be treated as a person."

Which, of course, would be just awful -- that is, if you're a member of the pro-abortion lobby (more on this shortly).

When one examines the entirety of Arthur's complaints -- regarding both the bill and the government -- what quickly emerges is a portrait of an ideologically-constructed fantasy world in which Arthur, and those who share her opinions, are entitle to force their views on other people, often to the detriment of those she was supposed to be trying to help in the first place.

One particular point Arthur is stewing over deals with recent changes to Status of Women Canada -- transforming the organization from one that engages in lobbying, advocacy and research to one that provides funding to actual services for women in their community.

Arthur insists that the move was a blow to women's equality, and was intended as such -- despite the fact that the moves were largely managerial in nature. For example, the closing of a number of regional offices -- rendered less necessary by the access granted through the organization's website -- freed up $5 million for community-level services and support for women.

Arthur's objection to this really demonstrates a purely ideological view of how women's equality can be achieved, and what that represents.

To individuals like Joyce Arthur, women's equality demands that women be treated as equal in all respects, even in situations where they may not be. Certainly, women should be considered equal in all formal aspects -- and according to the letter of the law, they are.

But there's a difference between legal equality and practical equality. The test case for this always seems to be a hiring process wherein a man and a woman are competing for the same job. The principle of formal equality insists that, the two being equal in practical respects -- skills, capabilities and experience applicable to the job, the man should not be hired over the woman by simple virtue of being a man (nor should the woman be hired over the man by simple virtue of being a woman; this should go without saying, but all too often, is left unsaid).

However, if the man's skills, capabilities and experience exceeds the woman's, it should absolutely not be considered discriminatory to hire the man over the woman.

What ultimately emerges is a rather simple fact: legal equality is not necessarily practical equality.

The funding changes to the Status of Women that Joyce Arthur opposes, meanwhile, provide for many such things as job and skills training for women, to make them more competitive in the job market. If one favours practical equality between men and women, this is something they should certainly support.

If one favours legal equality over practical equality -- or believes that a woman's qualifications shouldn't have to match or exceed that of a man's in order to be hired over him -- than one would certainly oppose the changes. But it could be considered quite ironic that a group so preoccupied with equality would want to advance such a comparatively hollow definition of the concept.

They also seem to have a fairy-tale imagination for what such equality would mean for women -- that it would represent some sort of magical panacea for women, protecting them from all forms of violence so effectively that no further legislation would ever be necessary to help protect them.

"Ensuring women’s equality will go a long way to making them more safe," Arthur insists. "If the woman is safe, however we do that—through social supports or whatever—then the fetus is going to be safe too."

But Arthur reserves her finest vintage of rhetoric for espousing the threat that recognizing any fetal rights would allegedly pose to women's rights (actually a threat to Arthur's ideologically-driven world view).

"The bill basically gives fetuses a form of personhood," says Arthur. "It’s giving them a separate status apart from the mother, and the moment you do that, whatever else you say about that, you are setting a very dangerous precedent."

Dangerous for the pro-abortion lobby, perhaps. The distinct challenge posed by the concept that unborn children should have rights has been detailed elsewhere, but reiteration is necessary.

The recognition of the scientific fact that an unborn child -- or fetus, as preferred by the pro-abortion lobby -- very much is human life represents a devastating threat to the pro-abortion lobby's characterization as "nothing more than a clump of cells".

If one recognizes an unborn child as human life -- as more and more people are -- it becomes increasingly apparent that Canadian law needs to put measures in place to help protect it.

Furthermore, the implications of the pro-abortion lobby's attempts to dehumanize unborn children become more and more apparent, as the organization's own rhetoric begins to undermine it. The house of cards built on the fundamental principle that that unborn children are not human quickly collapses.

Of course, there are, as Arthur herself notes, portions of the criminal code that explicitly define an unborn child as "not a person". This is established both by Section 223 (1) of the Canadian Criminal Code, wherein it reads:

"When child becomes human being
223. (1) A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not

(a) it has breathed;

(b) it has an independent circulation; or

(c) the navel string is severed."

Then again, Canadian law once failed to recognize women and ethnic minorities as people, too. The explicit and counter-scientific establishment of unborn children as not human beings is no less an injustice, but unfortunately for the pro-abortion lobby, it's an injustice they're interested in perpetuating, not resisting.

Unfortunately, Arthur does have some allies in her ideologically-driven quest to deny unborn children what is indisputably already theirs by virtue of simple biology.

"In my almost 40 years in the women’s movement," said former NDP leader Alexa McDonough. "I have never had a single woman, a single advocate, a single representative of a single organization or an individual family member come to me and say this is a law they would like to see implemented."

Of course, it's unlikely that McDonough would tolerate her staff allowing any woman who did favour such a move through the front door. The hostile treatment by left-wing women's groups of organizations such as REAL women, or of individuals such as Mary Talbot -- the mother of the slain Olivia Talbot and grandmother of Lane Talbot Jr, and supports Bill C-484 -- is evidence enough of that.

The more one examines Joyce Arthur, the more sorry one feels for what the so-called "women's movement" has become. All too often, an extremely exclusive club of like-minded individuals. As some individuals have noted, membership in the so-called "women's movement" has all too often become more about what politics one believes in than what gender they belong to.

But that's another story for another time.

The women's movement has foresworn its time-honoured legacy of resisting social injustice. The same lack of personhood that was once vehemently rejected as it regarded women is now equally vehemently embraced as it regards unborn children.

And all the while, Joyce Arthur clicks her ruby slippers together telling herself "there's no place like home, there's no place like home". Sadly, not even the Wizard of Oz can give individuals like Arthur the courage to face legitimate challenges to her ideology, the intelligence to recognize they need to do so -- in cooperation with of all the people who favour legalized abortion (this author included) -- or heart enough to care.

Better to live in an Oz-like fantasy world.

Many a Tear Shed Over Canadian Blog Awards

Everything, it seems, has to be political

If anyone needed a crash course in acrimony, the recent controversy over the Canadian Blog Awards may be just the ticket.

Long story short, various feminist blogs have demanded the establishment of a feminist blog category, and have become quite outraged that they didn't get their way.

Perhaps what is most disheartening is the fact that these feminists were offered an opportunity to accept various compromises, including the establishment of a "men's issues" category. That suggestion, in particular, was rebuffed with regard as such:

"This whole but “what about the menz” argument is absolute bullshit. “Mens rights” organizations are not about helping men preserve their rights, they’re about maintaining privileges that allow them to treat women as second class citizens and get away with it. And that’s just as bad as being a racist in my book."

The undue denegration of masculinism
aside, the argument essentially boils down as follows: "we feminists deserve recognition on our terms, and our terms alone."

Considering that "their terms" clearly include denying similar recognition to others who may or may not want it says some very unfortunate things about the particular individuals involved. It's hard to credit such a relatively small group of people with speaking for all feminists, but it's certainly indicative of what these particular individuals think feminism stands for.

There once was a time when feminism was promoted as encouraging the reconceptualization of gender roles for both women and men. While this may or may not render any percieved need for a "men's issues" or "masculinist" category at the Canadian Blog Awards, the idea that feminists would reject it outright -- dismissing it as sexist simply because it deals men expresses a very unsettling attitude. The fact that they think the Canadian Blog Awards should institutionalize this attitude, and are so outraged when it won't, is more unsettling still.

Yet more unsettling than that is the suggestion, raised by a predictable source that Canadians with conservative political beliefs shouldn't even be allowed to participate:

"In the nuttiest of nutshells, SB, the CBAs were bound to collapse for one painfully simple reason -- you were going to allow Canada's conservatives to participate. And as I will explain in horrific detail, that was the fatal flaw since, quite simply, anything those people touch turns to shit. Every time. Without exception. As you have now learned.

There is a reason that Canada's wingnuts shouldn't be allowed near anything of value, and that's because they will wreck it every time, and the CBAs are no exception. Most of us -- the sane ones -- will look at something like the CBAs and think, "Cool. A way to recognize and reward the creme de la creme of the blogosphere." And we would proceed accordingly. So far, so good.

The wingnut contingent, on the other hand, would look at the CBAs and think, "Cool. A way to ram our political and ideological agenda down everyone's throat through carefully-choreographed and relentless freeping." See the difference, SB? Because that's (kind of) what happened here."

As it turns out, Cynic and his ilk want to use the freeping of the Beaver's "Worst Canadian" poll as a test case for excluding conservatives from the Awards.

As it turns out, Left-wingers have engaged in their share of freeping as well. Add to this the pro-abortion freeping of the Great Canadian Wish list (even as anti-abortion activists also freeped it), and the obvious freeping in favour of getting Stephen Harper on the "Worst Canadian" list as well, and it seems that Canada's left-wingers are no less guilty of the "cardinal sin" of freeping as their opponents.

(Truth hurts, get a fucking helmet.)

So, then, in the end, what does it all boil down to? Maybe that Canadian Cynic has spent the last two months pouting over his inability to propel the Galloping Beaver to a win in the 2007 Weblog awards. Also, that some feminists seem to think they're entitled to dictate the terms under which debate over gender can take place.

In the end, however, one has to feel bad for the awards' organizers, considering the amount of abuse they've been absorbing for nothing more than refusing to acquiesce to the demands of the wrong group of self-interested people.

Parvez Murder Becomes a Battleground for Multiculturalism

Barbara Kay suggests Aqsa Parvez case a black eye for Multiculturalism

In the wake of the murder of Aqsa Pervez, a 16-year-old Muslim girl who was strangled by her father for refusing to wear a Hijab, many commentators have pointed the finger of blame at Multiculturalism, and, more specifically, Islam.

Her 26-year-old brother has also been charged with obstruction of justice.

In a National Post Full Comment op/ed piece, Barbara Kay argues that Parvez's murder is proof of the failings of Multiculturalism and Feminism, as demands that we respect cultural differences force people to bend over backward in order to accomodate the most brutal practices of other cultures.

"...The alliance of feminism with multiculturalism has created a two-tier sisterhood.

The top tier, western women, have achieved full equality rights. Any and all male aggression against a top tier woman triggers a public outcry and a million lit candles. The second tier women — those from other cultures — are not so fortunate. Feminists exploit multiculturalism to justify their moral abandonment of the women who most need them: girl victims of dysfunctional or socially unevolved cultures."

Partially, Barbara Kay has it right. Certainly, there are some people who have become so enamoured with Multiculturalism that they have allowed various groups a "free pass", even within the borders of our own country, to do as their culture would allow, regardless of whether or not it violates the rules and laws of Canadian society.

This, however, is not a failing of Multiculturalism in and of itself. Rather, it's a failing of Multiculturalism as a political ideology. The use of Multiculturalism as a political ideology demands that it be rigid and uncompromising. It's under conditions such as this that the detail that a crime has been committed can easily be swept under a rug and forgotten.

Multiculturalism should not be so highly enshrined in the Canadian identity that it can allow for cultural values to be used as an excuse for murder.

To people such as Kay, however, the Parvez case has become more than merely a question of whether or not Multiculturalism should allow "honour killings" to be tolerated in Canadian society (although the answer to that question is obvious). They want to treat the Parvez case as a trial for the Hijab itself:

"Sixteen-year old Mississauga teenager Aqsa Parvez died on Tuesday of wounds suffered in an attack on her Monday — allegedly by her father. (A brother is also charged with the crime of obstruction.) Friends of Aqsa painted a picture of a young girl eager to integrate into Canadian society, in ongoing conflict with her conservative Pakistani father who insisted she wear the hijab, the Muslim symbol of sexual modesty.

Multiculturalists would have us believe that the hijab is merely a religious symbol, like the Sikh kirpan or the Christian cross, freely embraced by the girls wearing them. It isn’t, as many Muslim commentators, including Tarek Fatah in these pages yesterday, have frequently explained. The hijab is rather a public sign of supervised sexual modesty, and marks those wearing it as chattel, leashed to their fathers and brothers as surely as if they were wearing a dog collar.

But you’ll never hear a feminist murmur a word of complaint about these girls’ lack of autonomy, for the same reasons the judge in Australia couldn’t imagine that an aboriginal girl should be treated with the same dignity and respect as her own daughter.

I have argued before in these pages that the hijab, however benign-seeming, is still one end of a female-submissive spectrum that ends in the burqa, a garment virtually all Canadians find antithetical to our values. If public schools, which are supposedly secular, had banned hijabs as France did, along with all other religious paraphernalia, in order to create a level social Canadian playing field, Aqsa would have had Canada on her side."

To many Canadians, Kay's remarks would seem spot-on. Ignoring for a few moments that the Burqa holds different meanings for differing groups of Muslims (some of whom reject the practice altogether), many see the Burqa as an example of suppression of women at worst, and female submissiveness at best. Under either condition, they argue, the Burqa should be seen as anathema to Canadian values.

At first glimpse, they'd seem to be correct.

Yet the fact is that, at the end of the day, Canada is either a free society or it is not.

Anti-Hijab and anti-Burqa activists need to come to grips with the fact that religious freedom must also entail the right for Muslim women to choose either of these garments, if they do so of their own accord. However, Canadian Muslims, if they expect to benefit from the freedom of religion Canada offers, must also accept those freedoms will apply to their wives and daughters as well. Honour killings will absolutely not be tolerated.

Muhammad Parvez should be made an example of what the Canadian justice system holds in store for those who commit such foul acts.

However, banning all religious paraphenalia from schools, as Barbara Kay suggests, would only entrench religious intolerance in Canada, as the increasing fervour surrounding secularism and its religious counterpart, atheism, begins to demand that all religions be suppressed in the public eye.

Whether or not France (time and time again proven to be less tolerant than they pretend to be) has done this is immaterial. People used to agree that religious intolerance is bad, and in the wake of Aqsa Parvez's "honour killing" -- arguably a result of religious intolerance within her own home, as her father refused to respect her differing beliefs -- what is needed is more religious tolerance, not less.

We don't have to respect cultural values that allow for "honour killings". We do, however, have to respect that cultural values may lead people to dress differently than we may otherwise like them to.

To refuse to do so is nothing short of intolerance. We used to agree that was a bad thing.