And while I’m on the subject, to hell with you and your hate group too, Wonder Woman…
“We could ask all of the men in Congress to resign, is that what you’re asking me? You know that mostly all men do this kind of thing to women. It’s like saying there’s a good airline or a good bank, saying there’s some entity out there that is not sexist. They all should resign, every man in every industry. Maybe that’s a good thing because then women can take those positions and then we’ll finally get equal pay.”
Toni Van Pelt, president of the National Organization for Women, explaining why she feels it’s useless to demand Senator Al Franken’s resignation following credible allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault in 2006.
Oh, nice.
You know, I don’t think I ask for too much. I just expect the champions of equality, fairness, mutual respect and civility to believe in and live by the principles they claim so indignantly and self-righteously to be fighting for. Is that an unreasonable expectation? Is it unreasonable to expect activists and advocates to hold themselves to the same standards they demand of others?
There need to be real and dire consequences for the head of NOW for making such an ugly, vicious, bigoted and hateful statement. That’s gender bias and stereotyping of the most egregious kind, and until and unless her organization retracts it, repudiates it, and sheds this anti-male bigot from its leadership, I will not abide any of its supporters or members, and fully intend to do all I can to ensure that as many decent citizens as possible shun them as well.
Every candidate put forth by the Democratic Party, which courts NOW as part of its core constituency, needs to be read this statement and asked, yes or no, whether they endorse it or condemn it.
Under the definition of “hate group” used by the Southern Poverty Law Center— “any group with beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people”—Toni Van Pelt, speaking on behalf of her organization, has demonstrated that the National Organization for Women belongs on its list. NOW should be placed there, right next to such organized bigots as the KKK, as long Van Pelt is its leader or among its leader.
This woman just labelled “mostly all men” as criminals. “You know ‘mostly all men’ commit sexual assault” is indistinguishable from “You know mostly all them colored folk are lazy and dangerous,” or “You know mostly all you ladies lack what it takes to be in charge.” It is exactly the same: a statement of prejudice and hate.
In addition to being insulting, arrogant and a hypocrite, Van Pelt is wrong, inexcusably wrong, and ignorant as well. Most men, indeed the vast majority, have never sexually assaulted a woman, because they were raised correctly, like me, my father, my son, and the vast, vast preponderance of males I have known well in my life. I am not going to be lectured on misogyny by misandrists. I am not going to listen calmly to bigots who have the astounding arrogance to condemn harmful bias against their similarly chromosomed compatriots while they simultaneously say that there are no good human beings like me. I will not countenance irresponsible rhetoric about a “war on woman” from those who have declared war on men.
Damn Toni Van Pelt, damn NOW, and damn any political party and American, male or female, who refuses to damn them.
Ethics Alarms 
You’re wasting your breath, Jack. Women CAN’T be sexist, don’t you know? The same way blacks can’t be racist and gays can’t be bullies.
I pity this woman’s husband, if she has one. I wonder if she makes him wear a dog collar and beg for his dinner every night.
Well, but he’s always sexually abusing her, like all men, so you have to admit he has it coming.
Exactly right. It’s times like this it pays NOT to be a good looking bad boy with a roving eye and more roving hands. Actually no, women like v-girl would still like to crush our scrotums and set them on fire. They’d just get to us later.
Steve-O, I doubt Toni is that in to men. I don’t think she’s a threat to your family’s jewels.
No, she does have a husband and daughter…and a package of feminazi stickers she apparently slaps on anything she sees that she doesn’t like – a stack of porno mags, a sexy poster, etc. Let her go to one of the airshows I frequent and try to slap one on some nose art. She will quickly find some art on her own nose, with the color red prominent.
Some good old fashioned Authentic Frontier Gibberish from Toni and her vice president:
“As president, I will work tirelessly to build an unapologetically intersectional feminist movement,” said Van Pelt. “NOW’s progressive voice and grassroots strength are essential to resist misogyny and to achieve fundamental equality and justice for all.”
“We are eager to continue the fight to dismantle interconnected systems of oppression–including racial injustice, LGBTQIA discrimination, and economic inequality,” said Yazzie [the new vice president of NOW]. “Challenging times lie ahead for feminists, but we will lead the grassroots movement to fight back!”
I’m not going to sleep with you, ever. So how about you stop tugging on my metaphorical ponytail and leave me be?
The converse is also true, sarcasm aside. And no, I will NOT “leave you be.” What you said in a number of your posts, to me, about me, and about individuals you don’t even know, was extremely offensive, made me very angry, and led me to question your mental state a few times. I’m not going to “let it go,” I’m not going to “get over it,” and I’m not going to let you “turn the page on it.” The only way I’m going to stop going after you, which I think you richly deserve, is if you leave on your own, if Jack bounces you, or if Jack orders a ceasefire.
Well Jack, what’s it to be? You called for civility, I quieted down, someone else jumped right into that thread and turned it into a cesspool.
I said stop harassing me and got an answer. It is to never stop. Your space, Is this acceptable to you?
Indeed, Jack, what IS it to be? Are those who say and advocate outrageous things ultimately to be given a pass?
Yes Jack, are violent threats against other posters to be tolerated?
Is talk of violence against elected leaders or violent revolutionary rhetoric to be tolerated?
No, but then, you know Steve, and there is a context. It is not what the Supreme Court calls a “true threat”–all it means is, “you have made me angry.” Steve knows it. He’s acknowledged the problem; he’s apologized multiple times. Steve contributes much of value here, and then he crosses lines that shouldn’t be crossed. I write all this without having followed the thread, so now I will check through and find out exactly what you are referring to.
As you know, those, like you, who make substantive contributions to Ethics Alarms build up some privileges. They can still be abused, but believe it or not, I try to keep the group as diverse and open as possible, while allowing for individual eccentricities.
Well, I’ve read this far:
“The only way I’m going to stop going after you, which I think you richly deserve, is if you leave on your own, if Jack bounces you, or if Jack orders a ceasefire.”
Please consider said ceasefire in progress and enforced.
More later
I will cop to sometimes crossing lines, usually if I believe they need to be crossed, but just as often as a tactic to knock someone I hate off their game.
Here’s another beauty from Comrade Toni. In September of year there was evidently a kerfuffle in NOW about their supporting a March for Black Women which was to be held on Yom Kippur. This is Toni’ response on behalf of NOW:
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Morris said, “NOW had nothing to do with the date choice. Jews are only 10% of the USA population. The planners have apologized for overlooking the Jewish holiday, but will March for Black Women.”
Nice, Toni. And what percent of the U.S. population is black? I’ve heard thirteen percent more often than not. Actually, I’ve heard the Jewish population is three percent. And then there’s William F. Buckley’s famous line “If gays are only two percent of the population, I’ve met all of them.”
But this sort of thinking is okay because these are not ordinary times and oppression needs to be fought by whatever means are necessary. Don’t expect the oppressed and marginalized to play fair.
“Mostly all men” is comparatively restrained language. It’s very typical in discussion of these topics to say that “men” do bad things, without any qualifier at all. That means all men.
This is the root of the “women don’t feel safe in college” crap. All those men! You know, rapists…
If you can’t tell, I’m very angry about this…
So I guess using this warped sense of logic, Moore gets a pass too?
That’s the point. This was her way of avoiding saying “Al Franken should resign.” A little like Otter’s defense of Delta House in Animal House. “If we are going to punish Al Franken, shouldn’t all men resign from whatever they are doing?”
Would it be fair to say there awaits a “special place in Hell” for outliers that have not been “woke?”
Well, as you can see from my FB page Jack, I am being consistent. I am now starting to hear that the photo was staged and that she was in on the joke. If that is true (although I doubt it’s true), I will flay her alive.
Believable. Her “asleep” position doesn’t look right to me, having slept many times in many military vehicles with a *heavy* Kevlar helmet on top of my head with scant little behind my head to support it in a nearly vertical position.
(The flipside of that too, is YES, eventually you do run across people who can manage to sleep in the world’s most inexplicable positions)
Even if it’s a set up gag. All involved are incompetent (and therefore unethical) to think that’s OK for a Senator to do.
He wasn’t a Senator yet, but still not OK.
Ack. Right.
Something that any aspiring leader of the community is incompetent for doing.
There are all sorts of things one cannot do if one ever, EVER contemplates running for office. Some are just practical: you can’t write an ethics blog with 7000 sometimes controversial opinion pieces that gore a million oxen, for instance. You can’t make a porno movie; you can’t drive drunk. Sexual harassment and sexual assault were never something a candidate could joke about even post-Lewinski. Al’s smarter than that, or should have been.
I’d vote for you.
I am not on the “believe all women without question” train, and I do have questions about whether the kiss was a legitimate misunderstanding, but I have a very hard time believing that photo was staged.
I can see it as a “heh, she’s asleep in all her gear. I bet she wouldn’t even feel it if you grabbed her boob!” joke — immature and entirely inappropriate, but spur of the moment. But unless there was some kind of in-joke surrounding it, I can’t see anyone thinking it was funny enough to spend actual effort arranging.
As will everyone else.
Surely Al, while stumbling around various terrible half-apologies, would have remembered THAT and said so immediately. It would have discredited the entire crisis.If she consented to a dumb posed photo gag, then there was no there there.
But Jack, Al is a progressive! And straight. And white. And a Man. It’s not his job to defend himself, it’s his job to play the role of the self-flagellating albino and apologize profusely for his straight-white-maleness.
There is no way for him to defend himself without alienating his base right now, it’s what you get being part of a party of self hating, identity politics loving, moral molehill standing, white liberal guilt embracing, circle jerking reactionaries.
Yeah. Tell us all how YOU’RE the one GOOD guy out there, Al.
There was a day in age when fatuous arguments and dishonest arguments actually took work to interpret and weed out the intricate fallacies hidden in them. Nowadays, people don’t even try anymore.
C’mon, it was just Stuart being Stuart, am I right?
Chief political analyst Gloria Borger, anywho:
“He was not a member of the Congress at the time this occurred. He was just a comedian.”
So, there you have it.
It gets worse.
“(A) 1995 account of the SNL skit was captured by New York Magazine which sat in on a rehearsal in which he dreamed up the idea of giving a sleeping pill to Stahl, then raping her.
“New York Magazine quotesd (sic) Franken as saying, ‘And ‘I give the pills to Lesley Stahl. Then when Lesley’s passed out, I take her to the closet and rape her.’ Or ‘That’s why you never see Lesley until February.’ ”
http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/16/franken-pitched-snl-sketch-about-drugging-and-raping-a-news-anchor/
But he wasn’t a Senator then, either.
Is there a difference, Paul?
”Is there a difference, Paul?”
Excellent!!! FYI, in my opinion, there is no difference between comedians and politicians.
I was talking with a liberal friend of mine who said something about, “you know how you regret it when you’ve groped someone or grabbed their butt.” I looked at her like she was from mars. She couldn’t believe that I’d never done that – not one time, ever.
Should have asked her if she’d be shocked you’d never jacked off in front of a stranger.
Mercy me!
That gets you on the GUT LAUGH LEADER BOARD notwithstanding.
Still hard to believe flashing and masturbation are now commonly discussed activities. in the news. Yuck. I was glad my dear old mother died before the R.C. clergy sex abuse stories finally broke. Needless to say, I’m glad she’s not around for all this baloney.
Where do we go to find out how many gropes we get before it’s an issue? I’d like to cash those while I still remember what they’re for?
Jack wrote, “There need to be real and dire consequences for the head of NOW for making such an ugly, vicious, bigoted and hateful statement. That’s gender bias and stereotyping of the most egregious kind, and until and unless her organization retracts it, repudiates it, and sheds this anti-male bigot from its leadership, I will not abide any of its supporters or members, and fully intend to do all I can to ensure that as many decent citizens as possible shun them as well.”
I completely agree.
From the “Nothing To See Here” Department:
MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt: “[Franken] took a picture, which his office now says was of a joke, that showed him potentially — not actually groping — but mock-groping her while she was asleep.”
Might Kevin Spacey, George Takei, et al, say they were “mock-grabbing” a handful of crotch?
Perhaps Whoopi Goldberg will say that it wasn’t a “Grope-Grope?”
The “potentially” story seems to buttress Tweeden’s original story about the rehearsal. It’s hard to see a 50-year seeing such a gesture as a joke, unless it referred to some other incident.
I’m not defending Frankin but your comment is absurd. There’s a world of difference between an awful indefensible photo and actually sexually assaulting someone. Shame on you.
“your comment is absurd.”
Sharpshooting again, are we?
Franken’s right hand seems to be making contact with the wearing apparel covering an ostensibly unconscious Tweeden’s left knocker.
This contact, of which she claims she was unaware, would not have been welcome even had that not been the case.
He’s sporting a shit-eatin’ grin, AND to add an extra layer of perversion, it’s being photographed, something we may fairly assume she wouldn’t have been too keen on as well.
Factor in that this is the same person that thinks drugging and raping a X-Chromosomal Unit is so highfuckin’larious that it deserves to be on national prime-time T.V.
Yet that doesn’t appear to be sexual assault in your book, am I right?
Mind if we get a second opinion?
“Sexual assault is a sexual act in which a person is coerced or physically forced to engage against their will, or non-consensual SEXUAL TOUCHING of a person. (bolds & caps mine)
“Shame on you.”
Tell a friend.
Forgot to add:
“I’m not going to sleep with you, ever.”
Ooooooooooo Paul, I read somewhere that saying something like that is considered a “threat”, literally a “threat.
Oh the horror of your vicious threats.
Sheesh! If it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have no luck at all.
“Perhaps Whoopi Goldberg will say that it wasn’t a “Grope-Grope?””
That, and “Sheesh! If it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have no luck at all” are the triggers of my two biggest laughs of today. (They won’t be surpassed.) Paul, please keep populating this blog with such triggers!
Everything else aside, Jack, the question of what kind of hate is good and bad and what kind of bigotry is permissible vs. impermissible has been knocking around this blog and around generally for years. Whenever a high-profile issue of rape, harassment, or violence against women hits the news the poisoned candy example (do you dare take from a bowl of candy where only one piece is poisoned?) gets trotted out to justify women treating all men as potential rapists and harassers and to put men back in their place, and anyone who dares say its unfair or wrong gets called a sexist. Any converse application of that principle – stay away from blacks because you never know who’s a mugger, stay away from Muslims because some are terrorists, stay away from Hispanics because some of them are drug dealers, stay away from gays because you never know who’s got AIDS, is immediately shouted down as racist, xenophobic, or whatever. We just accept it, because there’s too much effort involved in trying to refute it.
Until recently it was often a question of just getting a good pair of ear plugs and letting ranters rant. Now it’s getting to the point where ranters are saying go after those you dislike or those who step out of line, and if those people get hurt, well, that’s the price they pay for being on the wrong side politically. Maybe this latest round of accusations of sexual misconduct has just overreached and is about to sink under its own weight. It was all well and good while actors somewhat past their prime, Hollywood moguls near retirement age anyway, and Republicans were getting accused, but now one of their own has been caught with his hands in the cookie jar, and they’re faced with either taking down a Democratic Senator when the chamber is precariously split and a lot is at stake, or, as they usually do, walking things back and covering for their own, leaving the other side to laugh and say you people are hypocrites, and maybe we shouldn’t believe this moral panic you tried to create after all, since qui bono? Maybe this craziness from this summer overreached too, and is about to die, or that might just be that the cold months are about to sit in and it’s a lot less fun to riot and fight in the snow, or maybe, although they won’t admit it, enough people read some of these unhinged rants and said maybe this kind of thing isn’t what’s best for either the nation or for me. We’ll see.
Getting back to the topic of Toni Van Pelt, a name that I feel really good about myself for mustering the willpower to not mock, kind of puts a face to something I’ve known… But maybe not known how to put into words, for quite a while now.
“Feminists” aren’t bad people, generally. The vast majority of feminists really do believe in equality of the sexes. They’re people, men and women, who were told that feminism is just about equality, they believed it, and they went on with their life. They can even be forgiven that, because despite people identifying as “feminist” being less than 20% of the American population and 13% of the British population, basically every talking head on mainsteam news is, and they refuse to comment on anything that puts feminism in a negative light. Therefore, they can be forgiven for not knowing about Toni Van Pelt, head of NOW, who hates men, and thinks we’re all criminals. They can be forgiven for not knowing Nancy Silberkleit, who inherited Archie Comics and called her male co-workers “penis” at meetings. They can be forgiven for not knowing about Mary Koss, who nudged the CDC in a way that defined rape as something that only happens only to women, and only by men (men are now “forced to penetrate”), they can be forgiven for not knowing Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM (Society For Cutting Up Men) manifesto, who shot Andy Warhol because… reasons. They could be forgiven for not knowing Robin Miller, editor of Ms. Magazine, who said “I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honourable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.” Or Best selling, sex negative feminist Andrea Dworkin, who said “I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.” Authors open up a whole new barn door, how about Sally Miller Gearhart, author of six toxic sludgepools, who said “The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race.” or Marilyn French, who penned more than 30 ill-concived tomes who wrote “All men are rapists and that’s all they are”. And So. Many. Others.
And what sticks out about this list is that these women aren’t small potatoes wackadoos hanging out yelling at people on corners in New York City, they are leaders. Published, best selling authors, editors, government officials, and CEOs. If feminism was a church, these are it’s cardinals.
And these people exist, these things happened, and they’re held up like folk heroes and legends by a small but influential slice of the feminist pie. It’s why I think that feminism has too much baggage and is too toxic for mainstream acceptance: While I know that the vast majority of feminists are probably fair-weather, coffee-shop types, I can’t easily tell which are the ones that sleep with a SCUM manifesto under their Pillow.
When the Alt Right first started getting traction, I thought I could almost belong there, they seemed to stand for a whole lot of things that I do: Free Speech, an opposition to social justice extremism, prudent fiscal policy, skepticism… Among others. It took me a while to realize that it was either being slowly co-opted by really shitty people, or it was always made up of really shitty people trying to put lipstick on a pig to gain mainstream support, but long before Charlottesville, I released that the movement was toxic, and even the people in Charlottesville who weren’t all in on the Nazi iconography had to be able to look around at the fuckwits they were walking beside and see that those aren’t the kind of people you want to associate yourself. with. They should have known better.
“Feminists” need to go through a similar process, it’s harder, because the toxicity is more diluted in feminism, but it’s still there, and it’s irredeemable.
”it was either being slowly co-opted by really shitty people, or it was always made up of really shitty people trying to put lipstick on a pig to gain mainstream support […] ‘Feminists’ need to go through a similar process,”
Perhaps that’s already happened, but it’s gone sideways?
Christina Hoff-Sommers explained in “Who Stole Feminism, How Women Have Betrayed Women” that 1st Wave Feminism was “equity” based, seeking equal legal rights for women AND men.
2nd Wave is “gender” based.
“(G)ender feminists seek to counteract historical inequalities based on gender. Sommers argues that gender feminists have made false claims about issues such as anorexia and domestic battery and exerted a harmful influence on American college campuses.”
3rd Wave, whatever that is, has crossed the Rubicon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Stole_Feminism%3F
Comment of the Day. I am now officially two behind.
“…Toni Van Pelt, a name that I feel really good about myself for mustering the willpower to not mock…”
HT, I think I know the answer (or possible answers) to my question, but I want to read the answer given by you: What is mockable about that name?
has this woman ever heard of the trope ThenLetMeBeEvil?
If all men would be treated as guilty of sexual harassment, they might as well all engage in it.
You know the fallacy in that, I assume. Even if that was the case, sexual harassment would still be wrong.
“If all men would be treated as guilty of murder, they might as well all engage in it”?
Uh, no.
To be fair, Wonder Woman is more often portrayed as opposing the Amazons’ “no men “ rule.
And yes, Van Pelt should resign.
I am a woman who was shocked and horrified by her comments. It’s bigoted, hateful and totally unacceptable. I didn’t realize that NOW had been taken over by the anti-male victimhood cult of identity politics.
I believe that many women, feminists included, are against this aspect of third wave ‘feminism’ but we are temporarily afraid to speak out at this present time except anonymously. Unfortunately it’s recently become very dangerous to dissent because of the online SJW mobs who mobilize to destroy the livelihood of anyone who dares to publicly voice such heretical thoughts. Their fury is especially intense for dissident feminists because they see us as apostates and traitors.
So you are not alone in your outrage. It’s painful to see a ‘leader’ in her position undermining the hard work of American women and men who worked together to achieve equal rights for all.
Because that’s what feminism should still be about– everyone having equal rights and an opportunity to participate in society. It’s about the right to vote, the right to own and inherit property, and the right to pursue happiness. It’s about freedom and due process. It’s about having an equal opportunity to compete for educational and career opportunities, and to participate in the free marketplace of ideas.
I do damn her comments, and I will always be against bigotry and sexism whether it’s against women or men. Just as I trust that American men will continue to support equality and freedom for the millions of women across the world who still do not have basic rights. American men earned this trust and deserve honor because they are the ones who voted for American women to have the right to vote.
Let us remain united and true to our values and our shared vision, and not allow professional victims to divide us with the hateful rhetoric of identity politics.
Very encouraging comment. I’m adding it as a Comment of the Day.
including . . ., LGBTQIA discrimination, and . . .
Interesting. I remember lesbian friends complaining bitterly about the nasty rejections they’d received from N.O.W. A friend of mine wrote her thesis on the organization. I notice that they now brag about having such diversity but looking at them in the 70s when the gay rights movement was gaining ground, the National Organization for Women was always — certainly through its first three decades — classist: middle-class, college grad, professional . . . thoroughly homophobic, (and a great deal more racist than they would admit to now). The mover and shakerette Betty Freidan {“The Feminine Mystique’) was at the forefront of keeping the gay women at bay with the excuse that “The Lavender Menace” would detract from the group’s purpose. Rita Mae Brown and friends resigned from the organization early on. This woman-hating attitude had the fortunate result of lesbians not assimilating themselves into the wider group, but instead forming their own enclaves and embarking on objectives of empowerment that are reflected in every aspect of society today. It also helped gay women get along better with gay men than many NOW members and their leaders ever tried to do with straight men. Thus were gay brothers supported through the AIDS crisis of the 80s and in turn, queer activities, fundraising, entertainment, education, politics, businesses, etc. thrived cooperatively, fluidly in communities ever more by choice than ghetto, helping to protect one another.
The lesbians still yell about the same things as NOW does, but they are strong with it. In NOW, however, such phrases as ” I think trans politics are largely distracting us from the work at hand,” though put politely — and others not so polite mouthing the same bathroom invasion and rape arguments that the openly homophobic areas of the country have advanced — says that essentially N.O.W. continues to be the National Organization for Mainly Straight, White, Middle-to-the-Left-of-the-roadies. Again they are behind the times they think NOW leads. NOW is, in fact, stuck firmly in Then.
There’s one giveaway. It says they don’t even have the intelligence to pay attention to what they are saying. Yazzie apparently got away with her pattern-cut “racial injustice . . . and economic inequality,” immediately thereafter declaring the NOW members to be feminists. She stuck LGBTQIA in the middle. Has she looked at that or just copied it from some SJ manifesto? Does she know what all the initials stand for? Does one of these initials not belong? {besides T for Trans, which clearly divides the membership on several levels.} Is she really exhorting the NOW membership, all of a sudden and very much against the grain, to be a strong defender of men and men’s rights ? Or does she just think G stands for Girls rather than Gay Men? Good luck with that, Madam Vice Prez.