Thanks Janice. I'm reminded of the multi-year sexual abuse of British girls and young women (and some British boys and young men) by British men of Pakistani origin, which attracted zero criticism from prominent British feminists.
And in fact it was worse than that, when a couple of Labour MPs actually raised it they were vilified by their "sistas" for bringing this up! Once these cases eventually came to be prosecuted the sheer numbers (average of 10 defendants and often ten times that victims) distorted the statistics on sexual crime for 5 years or so. But of course this was all used to "prove" "rape culture" in Universities in a campaign to get Universities in England to copy the kangaroo courts in the US. Feminists did not become ascendent without some clever political maneuvering, all outrage at the Taliban thousands of miles away but silent about the very same beliefs here.
And all powdered with the palliative phrase 'grooming gangs' as if the victims in this particular instance were simply undergoing a cosmetic makeover rather than being trawled from bus stations, plied with drugs and alcohol and serially raped by organised networks (often with the complicity of women, it should be noted) under threat of death. But woe betide a 12-year-old white boy who mentions Andrew Tate.
Yes, I remember, I think Sarah Champion was one of the MPs who raised concerns over double standards and cover-up. There's a beautiful BBC One miniseries based on the Rochdale case, "Three Girls".
"Reading Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women by Sunday Times war correspondent Christina Lamb. I was deeply moved by its “extraordinarily powerful account of women's suffering in war”. But it also left me with a profound sense of frustration with the narrow - you could almost say parochial - focus of most Western journalism on the subject of sexual violence whereby the casting-couch-type harassment experienced by famous actresses warrants more outrage than the rape, brutalisation and subsequent social ostracism of millions of women on the fringes of the Western media’s mental universe." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/life-in-the-shadows-of-metoo
Yes, I do in fact make a similar observation in this essay: "It should however not be overlooked that, alongside the stories - of villages where women and children are loaded en masse onto trucks and destined for horrific brutalisation - there is typically also a brief mention of the parallel fate of the village men; ending up as a pile of corpses riddled with bullets."
When men are victims of rape, it's at the hands of other men. That's the case in prison, where it's most common. There are some cases where women have sex with younger men, but that's the minority that gets reported on in the media because it's sensational. For every one of those, there's dozens of male teachers who target female students that don't get sensationalized.
Males are the majority of criminal perpetrators of male victims of rape. Focus on yourselves. That's nothing to do with feminists, who focus on helping female victims, who are the majority of victims. Look up the stats on how many rapists are convicted in the UK, and not just the Muslim rape gangs. Come on now. You men are pathetic.
And yet, women are the leaders when it comes to child abuse. But I guess that's the fault of men too.
Feminism is a political power and superiority cult. they only do good things to make themselves acceptable. The movement does some pretty despicable things itself. Sometimes worse than the men are portrayed to be.
If men don't want to die in wars, they need to stop starting them. Women aren't starting the problems in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, or historically Vietnam, WWI, WWII. And crying about Thatcher in Falklands isn't going to work. There is no comparison.
I can't imagine that you would have thought your comment appropriate had you actually READ my essay (see link above). Around 2000 words in which every sentence (with the single exception of the one you have picked up on) is about "what war does to women".
Crying about how feminists have to police every stupid thing men are doing from the UK to Afghanistan to tranknees, instead of calling out the Muslim men who actually committed the rapes.
You men are cowards. Zero integrity or shame. Nothing to say about the rapists. We have to what--police everyone everywhere?
Why didn't you just bring up cats or call me old, and call it a day? Are all of you moids just sharing that one brain cell or what? You people are getting boring.
This should bring males that justice that you're seeking! Don't ever give up. The girls of Afghanistan are in awe of your bravery.
BTW LOL: "Buchanan came last with 153 votes out of 47,409 cast."
What do Jewish and Muslim men say when you tell them you're against circumcision?
Thank you for this commentary, Janice, which reminds us that identity politics are actually about identity, not anything else. If you have the identity of a victim group, according to feminists, then your behavior, no matter what, is ultimately excusable. And if you have the identity of an oppressor, according to feminists, then your behavior, no matter how good, is always blameworthy. It's never been about the behavior, it's always been about the identity.
I continue to be baffled how universities - supposedly the very strongholds of critical thinking - can be the breeding ground for such a not only morally reprehensible, but simply stupid and stupidly simplistic world view.
Yes, it is an interesting puzzle that the academy was just about the first institution to fall to identity politics. That was one of the first clues I had that something very psychologically powerful and coherent was in play. I am currently working on a manuscript to explore what happened, and why, to our culture, why it fell so readily to identity politics.
I actually think it's hardly surprising that the academy is the first institution to fall to identity politics given that, well, it originated from within, what with all the leftist ideologues in the 60s and 70s. They are reaping what they've sown...
Good point, Katie. Identity politics did indeed originate in the Academy. However, all kinds of crazy ideas and ideologies originate in and are discussed in the student body - that is in the nature of the Academy and basically a healthy dynamic. What is surprising is that the Academy as an institution was captured by this craziness. The professors who saw through it were unable to stand against it, and that is what demands explanation.
Yes you are very right. There is nothing wrong with discussing radical ideologies as long as they are examined critically and factually, which as we all know, has not been the case. Being a university student myself, I never cease to be amazed at the way in which students have been stupefied by a postmodern sense of morality. One great recent example: in a philosophy class the problem of free will and moral obligations was brought up; the illustration provided was of an individual who if they were to take their free will to the extreme, would allow a child to drown in the interest of not wetting their pants to save them. Our professor was interested in knowing whether or not we would consider such a person to be free or merely a psychopath. I was amazed at how one student tried to defend the position of the "psychopath", employing the preposterous meta universal example of: "Oh maybe in some other universe there may be some deities of pants for whom it would be blasphemous to wet them." Later when discussing meaningful ways of living more than a few students professed their enthusiasm for a hedonic way of life that entailed little work.
In a nutshell, the thesis of my next book is that the historical role of the masculine was to deal with external reality (think hunting, building, production, science and technology, etc.). Men created spaces insulated from reality (the family home) in which the role of the feminine was to produce, love and nurture children.
When men were generally shamed in the sixties, this subordination to reality was lost from our culture, and we are now controlled by what I call the Matrisensus, which is the shadow side of the family archetype and driven by women (analogous to the way the Patriarchy is the shadow side of the societal archetype). The Patriarchy substitutes power-seeking for service, and so corrupts masculine culture, while the Matrisensus substitutes virtue-seeking for service, and so corrupts feminine culture. Since the sixties, we have been in the grip of the Matrisensus (a feminine consensus) which is founded in a corruption of the values of family, which are identity (you're either in our family or you're not), safety and fairness. The masculiine values of deference to authority, status based on merit, and group formation (teams, patriotism, etc.) are seen as oppressive in the Matrisensus.
I've just googled this despicable man you mention, and his pathetic hatred of the white race is deplorable and nauseating (if you ask me it's ironic self hatred given that by his logic he has benefitted off his own white privilege in becoming an author, activist, and over public white shaming intellectual). I read a quote on Wikipedia quoting his response to a reader who rightfully accused him of hating white people as: We do not hate you or anyone else for the color of her skin. What we hate is a system that confers privileges (and burdens) on people because of their color. It is not fair skin that makes people white; it is fair skin in a certain kind of society, one that attaches social importance to skin color. When we say we want to abolish the white race, we do not mean we want to exterminate people with fair skin. We mean that we want to do away with the social meaning of skin color, thereby abolishing the white race as a social category. Consider this parallel: To be against royalty does not mean wanting to kill the king. It means wanting to do away with crowns, thrones, titles, and the privileges attached to them. In our view, whiteness has a lot in common with royalty: they are both social formations that carry unearned advantages."
There are two problems with this sententious auto puff piece: the first being namely that the white race is not a social construct, as he likes to claim, but it is an ethnicity with biological characteristics grounded not only in science but equally through the entire progression of history till date, in which all of Western civilization was mounted and achieved by almost entirely white European cultures. Leftists will tell you that the former prevented all minorites from realizing their own civilizations, but you need only look before the discovery of the Americas and the enslavement of Africans, all the way to the Greco-Roman empires when anything beyond Europe was undiscovered, to find the absence of any significant minority led civilizations to speak for itself. Surely there must be some biological reason behind the recurrence of civilized traits and behaviors being limited to mostly the Caucasian race? And likewise, behind the abundance of destructive and primitive traits and behaviors largely present within minorities? I remember reading a comment on one of Janice's articles on Richard Bilkszto in which someone in the comments cited a study that showed a link between black people and narcissicism, which proves that "scientific racism" (as its opponents would have it), is very much an evidence based reality. And the comparison to royalty is absurd as well. Royalty is hardly so much of a casual social formation as it is a noble ancestry that supported civilization and culture in particular (who was it that commissioned some of the greatest European masterpieces). The same goes for the white race. Such prestige is not bestown randomly, it has a historical timeline of significance supporting it. To act as if minorities or the working classes, however much they suffered, contributed in as objectively meritorious ways to civilization and culture as the royalty and the artists, intellectuals, and artisans whose fine work they sponsered.
And regarding your mention of Mark LeVine, I coincidentally came across his article featuring that exact title for Al Jazeera. No suprise he's sold himself out to Islamic culture, and it only proves how much of an imbecile he is when he hypocritically praises a culture far more regressive and brute than the Western one he has had the great fortune to be born into.
To add one last observation: when I defended the concept of morality being innate and biological, I was met with the counter argument of student claiming (most apposite to this article) that in ancient times Islamic patriarchs used to murder their daughters and that this was seen as righteous. Apparently the concept of these individuals being psychopaths or religiously deluded fanatics (equally unfree) was lost on her.
I first came across this highly persuadive compilation of informative research in a very recent book entiltled "Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience", in which traditional philosophical/religious claims of human soul and a divine creator are put to rest by scientific research (a bit depressing but there are still humanist perspectives offered)More importantly though, the book dismisses the existentialist view of morality merely being a social construct dependent on the religious promise of a better life in the afterworld, providing much scientific evidence to prove to the contrary that, yes, morality and ethics are very much steeped and enshrouded in biology and evolution. A quote from the editors on the matter: "For one thing, science can explain why we are moral animals, moral to such an extent that no amount of science will end up debunking our hard-wired intuitions about ethics. There’s evidence that altruism, cooperation, compassion and affection are biologically installed, so we don’t require a higher power to force us to consider others’ needs. The very worry about moral foundations is testament to the reality of our moral natures, so learning they are modulated by such humble (or is it noble?) chemicals as oxytocin and vasopressin isn’t likely to render us morally incapacitated".
I should have referenced this book in class, but the title eluded me then. Still it's amazing how a professor who should be acquainted with the most modern advancements in philosophy was too dumbfounded to defend the concept of biology being innate, only agreeing with the student who mentioned some form of barbaric sharia law (interesting how many forms of uncivilized brutality happen to often be related to the Islamic faith) as proof of morality's subjective nature. He even mentioned, without deigning to explain, how there is "an argument against biology". God only knows what that could be. Religion? Oh wait, god is dead; the ever so trusty discipline of science has proven that.
It's very simple. Identity politics is the politics of identity, where an inherent, unchangeable characteristic (race, sex, etc.) is used to define a victim group and an oppressor group. This is inherently unhealthy. Feminism is the best example. Compare it to the politics of situation (not usually called that), where we focus societal attention and resources to assist people of any identity who are in a troublesome situation, such as poverty, unemployment or depression. This is healthy politics.
Men have been playing identity politics based on sex from the beginning. How did they figure out who to exclude based on sex from politics, education, economy from the beginning? Did you even think to look into that?
BLM is identity politics based on race. That lead to riots, political upheaval, legal changes that lead to vast changes in the past few years. There's been an increase in violent crime due to police defunding as a result. Did you think to look into that?
What's going on in Israel/Palestine? Zionist Jews run politics based on their identity, leading to Israel as a country, and billions of dollars in political lobbying, from AIPAC to the ADL, who decides who can even have bank accounts or platforms on the internet, or even jobs in law firms and Wall Street.
All politics is identity politics. Females play the least amount of identity politics. Race, and especially Zionist Judaism, is far more ruthless. You're not intelligent or educated enough to see that. All you see is women demonstrated for rights, and you think that's unhealthy. Tell the Taliban.
You're not smart enough to speak on politics, of any kind. Be quiet.
This is indeed interesting, thank you. As it happens, I'm currently reading "Intellectuals and Society" by Thomas Sowell, and there seems to be significant overlap with what Johnson writes. Sowell points out two main characteristics of intellectuals: what they say is not subject to external standards of verification but to internal standards among the "intelligentsia". In other words, it is their business to make claims that go beyond their actual expertise. And, importantly, they are "ultimately unaccountable to the external world".
No, they don't. One can find academic articles on the issue; it is of major concern to feminists even when the evidence is admittedly thin. Here's one:
Since the comment you were replying to has been deleted I lack some context, here, but thanks for the link to this absolute masterpiece of feminist dreck. I will be sharing this on my favorite Locals board where there is never ending astonishment surrounding the woke left's support of Palestinian terrorism.
After reading this article all the way through and struggling with it's obfuscating jargon and the crazed pseudo intellectual mazes of 'reasoning' within, I have come to a solid conclusion: This article raped me.
Of course you are with Israel, it's because you supported Israeli terror against Palestinian civilians. You lack basic human compassion for 7,000 slaughtered babies, women, children, and elderly in Gaza. You have one standard for Jews, and one standard for Muslims. That's how good of a person you are. You're as good as Hitler.
The link you're referring to is one of few articles I could find where the left's feminists supported Palestinians against Islamophobic Jews who occupy and terrorize Palestinian civilians on a daily basis. Janice, your argument is very weak.
What are very weak are your search skills, apparently. Did it even occur to you that the article Janice shared has citations to other articles and papers to support her position? That would be a good place to start looking, wouldn't it?
Invertebrates like ‘Daniel’ get to drop a crack like that and skate, and now that its left on the conversational sidewalk, everyone else has to deal with it!
You insult people, because you have nothing intelligent to say. You're islamophobic biggot. Plus, you're more likely than not an incel. Your hatred of women, feminists, Muslims, Palestinians, is obvious. You have no evidence to refute Daniel's comments, so you resort to attack.
You need to pull up your pants and be a man. Also put your glasses on and instead of spending time clutching your mothers pearls watch some news or learn how to read a newspaper, the evidence is all over the place.
"Boris, besides your bigoted racist contempt for Muslims, do you have any actual evidence that 40 babies were beheaded, an Israeli lie that was thoroughly refuted."
I don't like I.slam for the simple reason in their big "holy" book is a line which I have trouble accepting which nooks fwn to this.
"There is no one else worthy to be on Earth besides their people."
Everyone else is to be put to the sword or enslaved.
Never mentioned the particular method of killing babies.
I'm told one woman had her unborn baby cut from her stomach and they beheaded the baby.
There are Arabs who are Christian, I don't hate them or any others.
If anything you could call me sectarian, but there aren't any other religions I have major issues with.
So, you don't hate Arab Christians, but you hate Arab Muslims? In other words, you're islamophobic biggot. You see, I don't hate Christians. Some Christians are good, some are bad. Some humans are good, some are bad. No need for hate.
I speak as one who knows nothing about the situation and I am not trying to score points. I want to know exactly what you mean by your reply. Have pity on me, Ms Flamengo's commentary is the most reliable source of information about the war that I have.
Are you saying that soldiers of the Israeli Army are encouraged by their senior officers to rape Palestinians? (Men can be raped too.) Or are you saying that soldiers of the Israeli Army are not court-martialled for rape while on active service? Or that sentences handed down to soldiers of the Israeli Army convicted of rape are unduly lenient? If not, what are you saying?
Ken, if you read the link Janice posted, you will see there were rapes of Palestinian men and women in the occupied territories. The problem with Israel is biggotry. They hate Arabs. They teach their children to hate Arabs. Watch here what Israeli Jews teach their children https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJzt_WXZdMg&list=LL&index=5
Western women (feminist or not) who feel marginalized, victimized and oppressed by Adam, Mike and Ken could be in for a rude awakening when they meet Abdullah, Mohamed and Khalid.
Perhaps one of the reasons why they tread carefully around this issue is that they know that certain radical elements of these groups...to use modern parlance...”don’t play that shit.”
Somewhat tangentially, one of the few positives to come out of the Hamas atrocities is that no Israeli men or boys were harmed. At least that's what I conclude from reading a great many accounts, all of which are careful to recount the many "women, including grandmothers, and children" among the dead and injured but nary a man mentioned.
Well you see men are never really innocent are they? Somehow whatever befalls an individual man or men in general is at least partially their own fault, and frequently entirely their fault. Whereas women and children are always innocent and are therefore always victims. Just as men are frequently solely their occupation "soldier" ,"farmer" , "taxi driver" as individuals or a group. Occasionally some feminist steps out of line and points out this linking of women and children actually suggests they are the same. In my younger years there was even a vogue for rooting out "benign sexism", but always being the victim is just too useful.
Probably 20 years ago there was a programme here where celebrities spent a day being the opposite sex with the aid of make up and costume artists. One of the interesting observations made by the female to male celebrities was how "invisible" they were compared to being a woman. An observation also made by Norah Vincent in her book "My year as a man".
We have been 'othered' (their term) by them for decades, at least. They have, quite literally, tried to remove men from the language with 'herstory', 'womxn', latinx', etc. Yet, for some reason 'manspreading' and 'mansplaining' are ok. Curiouser and curiouser.
Some years ago a radical feminist magazine in Britain called Spare Rib published a reader's letter that began 'I oppose cruelty to any living thing, whether woman, child or animal'
I think that is Mr Franklin's point. Although anyone who can read a newspaper knows that the Palestinians have killed lots of male Israelis and Israelis have killed lots of Palestinian men, the feminists have not mentioned the deaths of males because, in the feminist religion, the deaths of men do not count.
And to be honest in our media here in Britain the men and boys barely get a mention,, which of course is true of the casualties in Ukraine and all such wars or even earthquakes and disasters. The disposable sex.
I have seen reports of men being killed. I suppose you are making some sort of ironic observation, but the point escapes me. Some persons on both sides have committed abominations. This isn’t both-sides excuse making. It’s just more of the same human failure. It’s exhausting.
"Believe the woman," even without other evidence. Don't believe video/audio documentation. Feminism strikes again. It's sort of like "words are violence" but actual violence isn't. These people are deeply unwell and intellectually incompetent.
No they're very clever. They hook into male and female preferencing for females and chivalry in particular, and have swept to power in many parts of our body politic.
My view is that the bulk of feminism (and woke ideology in general) is carried by a majority of true believers. Only a few (the "elite"?) is 'clever' and deliberate in the sense you allege. Interestingly, the goals of the whole movement are a kind of emergent property that is amenable to interpretation in terms of psychological motives, even though the individuals do not actually have to embody these motives.
Interesting that in the UK, at least, feminists are trying to get incels declared a terrorist group while at the same time being reluctant to label Hamas terrorists.
Its simple. Hamas being an islamist group is favored by a substantial political force in the UK. In many former mill towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire and the Midlands Labour politicians rely on the Muslim voting block. Although the recent introduction of identity checks at elections was introduced to reduce the block voting by "clans" this is still a potent force. While I'm afraid "incels" have no political clout. They effectively play the role of fictional bogey man for feminists to tilt at as "proof" of toxic masculinity.
The "rape culture" slur only works in places where rape is considered abhorrent. The charge of "racism" only works where people are afraid of being called racist. "sexist" is the same. People who actually are racist, sexist, or don't care about rape don't care about any of these slurs.
Feminist are turning the West into a Petri dish growing nihilistic men resistant to these charges.
Pretty soon, we'll all be Hamas in one way or another. And, like those of us who saw a "straight" line from the "white men" hatred to antisemitism, the "I told you so" won't be fun at all, particularly for those of us who have women around that we actually care about.
On the contrary, day in and day out, people are losing everything they have because certain interest groups think it fair and reasonable to destroy a person for saying something with which they disagree, or for being accused of an offence against them despite the absence of evidence.
I agree, but don't understand why this is contrary to what I am saying. The ability to destroy someone in the absence of evidence is proof of the power these slurs have. That power is waning, and with it the opprobrium reserved for people who actually do things like rape...
I'm a little surprised the normalization is coming from feminists (not that I should be surprised, they're histrionic and unprincipled), but I'm not at all surprised the normalization is occurring.
I see it as the rise of the modern version of the Nazi Party.
It would be useful to remember that the original Brownshirts had many homosexuals within it including their leader. They were well tolerated until the Nazis gained absolute power and then all the "deviants" were rooted out and executed when they were no longer needed.
The same will happen with radical feminism. They are gaining control over governments by taking over mid level bureaucracies and eliminating any men within and any control they may have within them and start dictating to the politicians what will happen that they want to happen.
Excellent comments, as usual. Your comments in the last paragraph are especially salient. There really does appear to be some kind of Freudian dynamic going, in these kind of circumstances.
Well might I offer my simple, two-cent psychoanalysis? Feminists are sadists. Their souls have been corrupted by their envy and resentment of successful men. They care about rape only in so far as it is an effective means to humiliate and degrade successful men. Hamas are also sadists, driven by envy and resentment of the highly successful Israelis. So the feminists recognize Hamas as compatriots, they embrace each other in the destruction of all that they hate.
This has been very evident here in the UK for a couple of decades. Where of course there have had islamist attacks (one killing fans of a teen pop concert in my home city) and for a decade grooming gangs (almost all Pakistani/Afghan ) preyed upon vulnerable young women and boys in plain sight of authorities in over 20 towns and Cities in England (our own Ministry of justice estimated over 10,000 victims from the then known cases). Half the victims were "in care" looked after (supposedly) by Childrens Services or under "Child Protection(supposedly monitored because of their vulnerability. In the latter case of the gangs a couple of Labour MPs, women, were silenced by their own party for raising what was happening in their towns'. You'd think that when these were finally starting to be prosecuted late last decade, causing a rise in rape prosecutions because of thee sheer numbers, feminists would have a field day as the perpetrators were uniformly from a self proclaimed "patriarchal" community. But silence of course, the spike in Rape stats being instead ascribed to a completely fictitious "epidemic" Rape culture in Universities. And of course the growth of more extreme forms of islamist lifestyle including "Sharia" strict clothing rules for women and "honour" violence(vendettas etc) goes unremarked upon by feminists engaged in trying to get "looking" and "unwanted compliments" included as "Rape Culture" amongst students. The total free pass given by the feminists (so vocal and often in print on "toxic masculinity" and the male gaze) on all these issues, including young men patrolling streets in towns near to me with large muslim, communities to ensure girls are modestly dressed, has confirmed the tactical nature of their concerns. So this on Hamas, in evidence here too, is no surprise at all. Cries of "Rape" and indeed "Domestic Violence" have long proven to be the levers to unlock male chivalry to accede to feminists demands, no matter how unrelated to sex or violence the issue is (e.g. more female CEOs would somehow affect rapes??)
However the obvious hypocrisy in evidence for a couple of decades rarely gets a mention. As you say Hamas and the other Islamist groups involved would even proudly declare themselves patriarchal.
‘It may also confirm the long-simmering suspicion that some feminists actually admire hyper-masculine (anti-Western) men who (so far) seem immune to feminist shaming.’…
So you mean Andrew Tate and Roosh V types might be on to something…
My father told me there were women like this but who knew we’d find them at the center of the erstwhile Proponents of Women and Women’s Rights.
What a God awful, hideous group of hags Feminists are, and by we men not calling them out on this (and so, so many other issues), we leave them a wide open field to poison our daughters and granddaughters minds and lives and by extension those of our sons and grandsons!
This is the "Saddam killed babies in incubators!" lie that preceded the invasion of Iraq. It turned out that no such event occurred, but only after the damage was done. Fool me twice, shame on me. Tales of mass rape abound during World War 1 to rile up young men to take up arms and get slaughtered in the meat grinder of The Somme while women at home kicked footballs and agitated for a vote they didn't earn with service - what a win.
Like Peterson, you are letting your dislike of Muslims and their culture colour your view. You are entitled to that view, but the depictions of beheaded Jewish babies are fanciful. Where Is the evidence? There is none of course, because Israel are blocking all international observers as they carpet-bomb Gaza where the average age of the population is 17 years old. It is Dresden all over again, and the February 1945 fire-bombing of that historic German city and its defenceless population was a war crime.
In think the point of this piece wasn't to compare atrocities or take sides, but to compare feminist responses to alleged atrocities. Going by the typical feminist mantra: "believe all women!", any claims made by the Israelis should be taken at face value, without skepticism.
Yes, you are correct here - but Janice does the piece no favours when she says: "It's hard to brush all of this aside as propaganda—perhaps especially the brutal glee shown by Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians alike." This equates Palestinians (2 million people) with Hamas: a group many oppose. Meaning civilians are terrorists. We saw the same thing during the Vietnam War, when any able-bodied person became VietCong in the eyes of the US Marines: man, woman, child. This was the logic of the My Lai Massacre. "Palestinians are human animals" (says an IDF spokesman) is a short walk to "Palestinians are animals" and such talk always, always precedes a genocide: from Auschwitz to Rwanda.
So I'm disappointed by this piece. Fiamengo's alignment with Zionist narrative hurts the point she is trying to make - and it's a solid point. It gets lost. She needs to remember that not everybody who follows her work is conservative. I am a former liberal who thinks they are now insane. And I will, once again, point out the fact that the Palestinian civilians, owners of that "brutal glee" have an average age of 17 years old. Doesn't that bother people? It might, and it might not.
There is little doubt that Palestinians are taught from a young age to hate Jews. There is little doubt that Palestinian leadership on behalf of their people have consistently expressed a goal to wipe out Israel, to ensure that only Muslims inhabit the whole area 'from the river to the sea'. There is no doubt that Israel was prepared to live alongside the Palestinians and other surrounding Muslim countries, and allowed them into Israel to work and earn money, but the converse has never been true. However, all this gets away from Prof Fiamengo's points.
Amnesty International's 2022/23 report regarding Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories begins with the following statements:
"Israel’s continuing oppressive and discriminatory system of governing Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) constituted a system of apartheid, and Israeli officials committed the crime of apartheid under international law. Israeli forces launched a three-day offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip in August during which they committed apparent war crimes. This compounded the impact of a 15-year ongoing Israeli blockade that amounts to illegal collective punishment and further fragments Palestinian territory." www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/
The report goes on to detail its findings regarding, among other issues, unlawful attacks and killings of Palestinians, Israeli authorities refusal to adequately investigate crimes under international law, restrictions on freedom of movement, forced evictions, arbitrary detentions, torture and other ill treatment, and the forced closure of Palestinian civil society organizations.
If you or I were were expelled from our homes and forced to live under such conditions in, for example in the densely populated 5x25 mile fenced Gaza strip, with no hope for anything better, I suggest hate -- and rage -- would be reasonable to expect.
I accept that there was a time when the Israeli government was willing to consider a two-state solution, but it's clear that period ended when Yitzak Rabin was assassinated by a Zionist militant in 1995. Since then, the continual expansion of settlements, and Netanyahu's own behaviour and statements, demonstrate the Israeli government's intractable opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state and intention to acquire all the Palestinian land it can.
For these reasons, at least, I do not share your confident views of the Israeli government's charitable treatment of, and intentions toward, the Palestinians.
Nothing to find here, except hate. Janice has an army of incels who appear to enjoy what Israel is doing. So far, 7000 murdered Palestinian babies. children, women, civilians... Read the comments, these incels, mysoginists, anti-feminists, they don't care. They are islamophobic biggots.
How about you learn to spell properly before you brand an entire Substack community as "incels, misogynists, and anti-feminists". Here you are talking hysterically about Israeli propaganda and the Palestinian truth and yet you spew slanderous accusations at individuals you don't even know without any evidence. If you want to defend the Palestinians why not set about rationally dismantling "Israeli propaganda" with factual sources and not insulting people. Also, who's to say that the Palestinians aren't churning out their own Islamic propaganda?
I follow Fiamengo, though I often disagree with her perspectives. The woman is insightful though I don't share her politics. Most men are not having sex, so incels are the future of masculinity. They should not be shamed. I dislike modern feminists tremendously though I would take a bullet for Camille Paglia. That said, I stand against evil. This means I oppose Israel and stand with Palestinians all day, every day.
Another Pagliite here. She's not so good on politics, international relations or psychedelics, but she more than makes up for it with her brilliant and entertaining insights into almost everything else.
Apart from the post, Paglia is a SHILL as is Christina Hoff Sommers. They are more concerned with rescuing fEMINISM than BOYS or MEN. "Factual fEMINISTS, "Educated fEMINISTS" my ass. As far as I'm concerned Christina Hoff Sommers is a flapper from the 1920's
There is no evidence of beheaded Jewish babies. That story has been debunked. It was a lie told by an Israeli soldier to a journalist. No journalist verified the story. It turned out to be a lie. Israeli propaganda manufactures lies on a daily basis. Jewish terrorists have kept millions of innocent Palestinians in concentration camps called GAZA and WEST BANK for 57 years of occupation. Nothing coming from the mouth of Israeli propaganda should be believed. Israeli society is infected with BIGGOTRY and ISLAMPHOBIA. They hate Arrabs and they humiliate and kill Arabs on a daily basis.
There's no evidence of rape, much less beheaded babies: only the Israeli Ministry Of Information with claims so outlandish they often pass for parody. Of course Jews have been shot - but there is not one confirmed instance of rape. International observers are banned - why? The "butchered human remains" displayed by Ben Shapiro are widely acknowledged to be deep faked, so you've answered your own question. If you have actual evidence, I am all ears but from what I can gather from the testimony of the released prisoners, they eat the same food as the captors, women are given sanitary products and they are treated under the rules of the Geneva Convention. I won't be fooled again after the Iraq lies, and the Libya lies. Sorry.
"No evidence of rape" you say. Except for the numerous videos, photos and statements of atrocities posted by Hamas themselves. They're quite proud of their work, yet you want to take that away from them.
Your response reminds me of the Babylon Bee satire: "Hamas Disappointed Liberals Don't Believe They Massacred Jews After They Went To All The Trouble To Livestream It: GAZA — Members of the terrorist organization Hamas were left frustrated after hearing many leftists in the United States and throughout the world were skeptical that Hamas had brutally massacred over 1,300 Jewish civilians after Hamas had put serious effort into livestreaming the atrocities. "What's a guy have to do around here to get credit for mass murder?" asked Hamas terrorist Durka Mohammed. "We provide video after video clearly identifying our victims as helpless women and children, we film the execution, we leave the bodies out for evidence...what more do you people want from us??"
You're very concerned about Israeli victims, but not at all concerned about Palestinian victims? Israel murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians in the past 57 years of occupation. They raped women, and some men (according to Janice's link), and they beheaded and burned alive thousands of Palestinian civilians. When Israel drops explosives on Palestinian civilians, you know what happens? Bombs incinerate people. And collapsed buildings behead them, crunch them into pieces. And yet, you don't seem to have any feelings for Muslim victims and you demand Muslims to apologize to Israel. Nobody should apologize to Islamophobic biggots like yourself who enjoy seeing Palestinian civlians suffer. Shame on you and your double standards. You're supporter of Israeli terror in Gaza and West Bank.
You are making straw man arguments. Nobody is saying they are not concerned about Palestinian victims. The experience of Palestinian civilians currently is horrific and it would be wonderful for this particular war to end. It's not only Israel that would need to stop fighting though.
Note that of all the Palestinians I have heard commenting on the terrible circumstances they are currently enduring, none mention the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, nor do they acknowledge the history of their own people's antisemitic decisions and actions. Yet Western media are giving huge attention to the current and historical plight of the Palestinians.
People seem to think Fiamengo's following is full of Zionist/ Shapiro Conservatives when this is far from true. It is testament to her message that she attracts diverse - divergent - opinion she wouldn't necessarily get along with herself, even if she sometimes gets it wrong as she has for me here. Your comment is spot on.
I'm not interested in your pontificating and nonsense, only the evidence. You sound like an irate campus feminist demanding i believe, sight unseen - and i do not. Where are these "numerous videos, photos and statements" of rape? Please do link.
You sound like a Holocaust denier. Nazi sympathizers and anti-Semites indulged in this for decades to cover up the most well-documented crime against humanity in history. The Oct. 7th attack is also well documented, though not all the evidence has been compiled or released. But there is enough evidence to know that sexual assaults happened.
Using the Western principle of the defendant's right to the presumption of innocence to defend jihadists is quite a bold move, considering that you are in essence defending terrorists who openly acknowledge what they did and are proud of it. I don't think you really care about men's rights or the problem of false allegations of rape. I believe you must hate Israel. I cannot think of any other reason why someone would defend Hamas on this.
Another video exists of a member of Hamas's elite Nukhba force in custody. He says (in Arabic of course): “the plan was to go from home to home, from room to room, to throw grenades and kill everyone, including women and children,” he said. “Hamas ordered us to crush their heads and cut them off, [and] to cut their legs.” He also says they were given permission to rape the corpse of a girl -- which is clearly a war crime.
There should be a trial of captured Hamas leaders so all the evidence comes out. If there were a trial, one of the pieces of evidence would be Hamas' own instruction manuals for the attack reportedly ordered the jihadists to rape (see report below).
Given that rape is a tactic often used in war, and is openly advocated by Islamists (as per the Hadith), and has been used by Hamas before, the reports of rape on Oct. 7th, and the fear that hostages have been raped, are entirely plausible.
"The gruesome task of identifying Israel's dead and the circumstances in which they were killed has fallen to military forensic teams at an army base in central Israel." Forensic evidence is still coming in. But we have testimony of rapes of both the living and the dead.
The Israeli news outlet Kan (https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/local/570470/) reported that some of the hostages being held in Gaza have been raped. Kan quoted from a report by Professor Hagai Levin, an Israeli epidemiologist, saying that the hostages included people ... who had “severe injuries following rape.”
“There was a couple tied to each other with their clothes down, and you can see definitely, that the woman underwent rape,” an Oct. 17 Reuters article quoted Itzik Itah, a ZAKA commander, as saying. “When she is naked faced down, and her clothes had clearly been taken off not by her, that’s a woman who underwent rape.”
What's implausible (not believable) are the claims by apologists and Leftists that these atrocities did not occur on Oct. 7th. Rather than deny the obvious, apologists engage in obsfucation and moral relativism.
We do not know for sure that Noa Argamani, still being held hostage, has been raped, but it's entirely plausible given who is holding her captive: jihadists who are instructed to rape as a tactic of war.
I don't have videos of the women being raped in the Congo during that war, or copies of forensic reports, but their first-hand testimonies after the fact are plausible. I have seen video testimony of the rapists and their victims in the Congo. No one there disputes it happened or that it was used as a weapon of war.
I have spent a lot of time in Israel and talked to people there on both sides. Rapes have occurred in that conflict. This is beyond all dispute. Hamas jihadists do not dispute the allegations. What's odd to me is that you dispute it. Again, not to defend men against false allegations. Are you doing this because perhaps you want Israel to cease to exist and you're willing to twist the truth for that purpose?
At this point, this is not just about Israel or Palestine anymore; this is about defending humanity against terrorism. If your position is against Israel, fine, but by defending known terrorists, Hamas, from entirely plausible allegations, you are defending atrocities.
The one claim I'll concede that was exaggerated was the claim of 40 babies beheaded. Babies and toddlers were killed by Hamas -- there is no doubt of that since the names of ages and photos of many of them have been published -- but there is no clear evidence that they were beheaded. Whoever reported that was referring to the well-known ISIL tactic.
You wanted videos. Many have been scrubbed by YouTube or suppressed to protect the identity of victim and their families, but we do have this Hamas-shared video of the captured woman with blood around her crotch as noted in the article above:
Report on Hamas' manual and testimony by captured jihadist:
"Shin Bet released video footage showing the interrogation of some Hamas terrorists captured after the attack, the Times of Israel reported on Oct. 24. One of the videos shows a man who says that Hamas ordered fighters to “kill everyone,” including women and children. “He said they were given permission to rape the corpse of a girl."
"The Israeli military released two instruction manuals that it said had been recovered from dead Hamas fighters. “Orders were there for how many to kill, how many to take as hostages. Orders were there to rape, all was written and ordered,” Maj. Gen. Michael Edelstein told reporters at the screening, the BBC reported.
"A day after we published our story, Reuters reported that “Rabbi Israel Weiss, former army chief rabbi, one of the officials overseeing the identification of the dead … said many bodies showed signs of torture as well as rape.”
You sound like an Islamophobic biggot and an apologist for Israeli war crimes. Israeli terror sympathizers and anti-Semites (anti-Palestinians) indulged in this for decades to cover up the most well-documented Jewish (Israeli) war crimes against humanity in history. You are comfortable watching 57 years of brutal Israeli occupation, persecution, humiliation, murders and Israeli bombardments of Palestinian civilians, half of victims being babies and children. And yet you demand Muslims to feel sad for Israeli victims? Why would Muslims feel sad for your victims when you don't feel sad for Muslim victims? Respect goes both ways. You appear to be comfortable watching 7000 babies and civilians being slaughtered by Jewish terrorists in Gaza in the past 3 weeks. Over 200,000 Palestinian civilians were brutally slaughtered by Jewish terrorists in the past 57 years of occupation.
Thus bullshit does not constitute evidence! Are you mentally ill? There is no proof this scene is even real and not staged, or that the "Hamas fighter" has not been coerced or tortured. Don't bother trying to shame me with "Holocaust denier". I do not care. Jews are not special. They are not God's Chosen People - just immigrants, squatting on somebody else's land. The IDF are openly claiming they will flood the Hamas tunnels with gas! Let that sink in. If they resort to Zyklon B, the circle shall be complete. I don't suppose you'll understand that reference. Since you know so little, Google is your friend.
Testimony is evidence, and there's plenty of it. Evidence is not the same thing as proof, you know. There is plenty of evidence that these things happened. But, you know what? That's not really a deciding factor for me because just the killing of several hundred unarmed civilians at a music festival is PLENTY enough for me to condemn the SHIT out of Hamas and all their supporters.
There is also testimony of Jewish terrorism against Palestinians for the past 57 years. And yet, you don't care, and you dont condemn it. And yet you expect Muslims to condemn what Hamas is doing. Double standard, indeed.
He believes Jewish testimonies, but does not believe Muslim testimonies. He is okay with Jewish terrorism, but is not okay with Muslim terrorism. Who is under occupation? For 57 years, Jews brutally keep Muslims under occupation in GAZA and WEST BANK. And yet he believes whatever Israel tells him because he is Islamophobic biggot.
Oh, so you basically mean a #BELIEVEALLWOMEN pile-on should carry the day if enough tearful females jump in? That's your reasoning in Janice Fiamengo's Substack? Now I really have seen everything.
Show us evidence of your bullshit and Israeli propaganda? You hate Palestinians because they are Muslims. Admit it. You're islamophobic biggot. Plus, incel, mysoginist, hater of other people, and you probably don't even have any friends. No you dont! You don't have friends. Nobody likes you.
You: "There is plenty of evidence that these things happened" - where exactly? Garish articles posted by those with an axe to grind? The IDF, who shoot doctors on camera and ban international observers? We should rely solely on testimony in rape cases in lieu of actual evidence? I thought this is the reason thousands of innocent men languish in the prisons? What rot!
This is not to mention all the "Queers For Palestine" like Owen Jones, who enthusiastically supports a group which would imprison or kill him for his sexuality.
After reading your writing here and thinking about it, I found myself reciting in my head the following passage from the enlightening essay In Front Of Your Nose, by George Orwell. He wrote it in 1946, but it could have been written yesterday.
'[We] are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.'
Thanks for this Janice. Yes of course, feminist outrage against much of what they have now defined (and sadly have convinced lawmakers to define) as 'rape', i.e. consensual, enjoyed sex later claimed to have been insufficiently consented to, can only be fake.
Thanks Janice. I'm reminded of the multi-year sexual abuse of British girls and young women (and some British boys and young men) by British men of Pakistani origin, which attracted zero criticism from prominent British feminists.
Mike Buchanan
JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS
http://j4mb.org.uk
And in fact it was worse than that, when a couple of Labour MPs actually raised it they were vilified by their "sistas" for bringing this up! Once these cases eventually came to be prosecuted the sheer numbers (average of 10 defendants and often ten times that victims) distorted the statistics on sexual crime for 5 years or so. But of course this was all used to "prove" "rape culture" in Universities in a campaign to get Universities in England to copy the kangaroo courts in the US. Feminists did not become ascendent without some clever political maneuvering, all outrage at the Taliban thousands of miles away but silent about the very same beliefs here.
And all powdered with the palliative phrase 'grooming gangs' as if the victims in this particular instance were simply undergoing a cosmetic makeover rather than being trawled from bus stations, plied with drugs and alcohol and serially raped by organised networks (often with the complicity of women, it should be noted) under threat of death. But woe betide a 12-year-old white boy who mentions Andrew Tate.
Yes, I remember, I think Sarah Champion was one of the MPs who raised concerns over double standards and cover-up. There's a beautiful BBC One miniseries based on the Rochdale case, "Three Girls".
"Reading Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women by Sunday Times war correspondent Christina Lamb. I was deeply moved by its “extraordinarily powerful account of women's suffering in war”. But it also left me with a profound sense of frustration with the narrow - you could almost say parochial - focus of most Western journalism on the subject of sexual violence whereby the casting-couch-type harassment experienced by famous actresses warrants more outrage than the rape, brutalisation and subsequent social ostracism of millions of women on the fringes of the Western media’s mental universe." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/life-in-the-shadows-of-metoo
Agreed. And let's not forget the rape and brutalisation of huge numbers of men, too.
Yes, I do in fact make a similar observation in this essay: "It should however not be overlooked that, alongside the stories - of villages where women and children are loaded en masse onto trucks and destined for horrific brutalisation - there is typically also a brief mention of the parallel fate of the village men; ending up as a pile of corpses riddled with bullets."
Thanks Graham.
When men are victims of rape, it's at the hands of other men. That's the case in prison, where it's most common. There are some cases where women have sex with younger men, but that's the minority that gets reported on in the media because it's sensational. For every one of those, there's dozens of male teachers who target female students that don't get sensationalized.
Males are the majority of criminal perpetrators of male victims of rape. Focus on yourselves. That's nothing to do with feminists, who focus on helping female victims, who are the majority of victims. Look up the stats on how many rapists are convicted in the UK, and not just the Muslim rape gangs. Come on now. You men are pathetic.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/britains-rape-charge-rate-still-shockingly-low
And yet, women are the leaders when it comes to child abuse. But I guess that's the fault of men too.
Feminism is a political power and superiority cult. they only do good things to make themselves acceptable. The movement does some pretty despicable things itself. Sometimes worse than the men are portrayed to be.
If men don't want to die in wars, they need to stop starting them. Women aren't starting the problems in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, or historically Vietnam, WWI, WWII. And crying about Thatcher in Falklands isn't going to work. There is no comparison.
Also I've no idea what your "crying about Thatcher in Falklands" reference is about.... certainly nothing I'VE said.
I can't imagine that you would have thought your comment appropriate had you actually READ my essay (see link above). Around 2000 words in which every sentence (with the single exception of the one you have picked up on) is about "what war does to women".
Crying about how feminists have to police every stupid thing men are doing from the UK to Afghanistan to tranknees, instead of calling out the Muslim men who actually committed the rapes.
You men are cowards. Zero integrity or shame. Nothing to say about the rapists. We have to what--police everyone everywhere?
You're useless.
Thanks Kat. It would appear your medications aren't working. Maybe the dosages should be reviewed?
YAWN
Why didn't you just bring up cats or call me old, and call it a day? Are all of you moids just sharing that one brain cell or what? You people are getting boring.
This should bring males that justice that you're seeking! Don't ever give up. The girls of Afghanistan are in awe of your bravery.
BTW LOL: "Buchanan came last with 153 votes out of 47,409 cast."
What do Jewish and Muslim men say when you tell them you're against circumcision?
Thank you for this commentary, Janice, which reminds us that identity politics are actually about identity, not anything else. If you have the identity of a victim group, according to feminists, then your behavior, no matter what, is ultimately excusable. And if you have the identity of an oppressor, according to feminists, then your behavior, no matter how good, is always blameworthy. It's never been about the behavior, it's always been about the identity.
I continue to be baffled how universities - supposedly the very strongholds of critical thinking - can be the breeding ground for such a not only morally reprehensible, but simply stupid and stupidly simplistic world view.
Yes, it is an interesting puzzle that the academy was just about the first institution to fall to identity politics. That was one of the first clues I had that something very psychologically powerful and coherent was in play. I am currently working on a manuscript to explore what happened, and why, to our culture, why it fell so readily to identity politics.
I actually think it's hardly surprising that the academy is the first institution to fall to identity politics given that, well, it originated from within, what with all the leftist ideologues in the 60s and 70s. They are reaping what they've sown...
Good point, Katie. Identity politics did indeed originate in the Academy. However, all kinds of crazy ideas and ideologies originate in and are discussed in the student body - that is in the nature of the Academy and basically a healthy dynamic. What is surprising is that the Academy as an institution was captured by this craziness. The professors who saw through it were unable to stand against it, and that is what demands explanation.
Yes you are very right. There is nothing wrong with discussing radical ideologies as long as they are examined critically and factually, which as we all know, has not been the case. Being a university student myself, I never cease to be amazed at the way in which students have been stupefied by a postmodern sense of morality. One great recent example: in a philosophy class the problem of free will and moral obligations was brought up; the illustration provided was of an individual who if they were to take their free will to the extreme, would allow a child to drown in the interest of not wetting their pants to save them. Our professor was interested in knowing whether or not we would consider such a person to be free or merely a psychopath. I was amazed at how one student tried to defend the position of the "psychopath", employing the preposterous meta universal example of: "Oh maybe in some other universe there may be some deities of pants for whom it would be blasphemous to wet them." Later when discussing meaningful ways of living more than a few students professed their enthusiasm for a hedonic way of life that entailed little work.
In a nutshell, the thesis of my next book is that the historical role of the masculine was to deal with external reality (think hunting, building, production, science and technology, etc.). Men created spaces insulated from reality (the family home) in which the role of the feminine was to produce, love and nurture children.
When men were generally shamed in the sixties, this subordination to reality was lost from our culture, and we are now controlled by what I call the Matrisensus, which is the shadow side of the family archetype and driven by women (analogous to the way the Patriarchy is the shadow side of the societal archetype). The Patriarchy substitutes power-seeking for service, and so corrupts masculine culture, while the Matrisensus substitutes virtue-seeking for service, and so corrupts feminine culture. Since the sixties, we have been in the grip of the Matrisensus (a feminine consensus) which is founded in a corruption of the values of family, which are identity (you're either in our family or you're not), safety and fairness. The masculiine values of deference to authority, status based on merit, and group formation (teams, patriotism, etc.) are seen as oppressive in the Matrisensus.
I've just googled this despicable man you mention, and his pathetic hatred of the white race is deplorable and nauseating (if you ask me it's ironic self hatred given that by his logic he has benefitted off his own white privilege in becoming an author, activist, and over public white shaming intellectual). I read a quote on Wikipedia quoting his response to a reader who rightfully accused him of hating white people as: We do not hate you or anyone else for the color of her skin. What we hate is a system that confers privileges (and burdens) on people because of their color. It is not fair skin that makes people white; it is fair skin in a certain kind of society, one that attaches social importance to skin color. When we say we want to abolish the white race, we do not mean we want to exterminate people with fair skin. We mean that we want to do away with the social meaning of skin color, thereby abolishing the white race as a social category. Consider this parallel: To be against royalty does not mean wanting to kill the king. It means wanting to do away with crowns, thrones, titles, and the privileges attached to them. In our view, whiteness has a lot in common with royalty: they are both social formations that carry unearned advantages."
There are two problems with this sententious auto puff piece: the first being namely that the white race is not a social construct, as he likes to claim, but it is an ethnicity with biological characteristics grounded not only in science but equally through the entire progression of history till date, in which all of Western civilization was mounted and achieved by almost entirely white European cultures. Leftists will tell you that the former prevented all minorites from realizing their own civilizations, but you need only look before the discovery of the Americas and the enslavement of Africans, all the way to the Greco-Roman empires when anything beyond Europe was undiscovered, to find the absence of any significant minority led civilizations to speak for itself. Surely there must be some biological reason behind the recurrence of civilized traits and behaviors being limited to mostly the Caucasian race? And likewise, behind the abundance of destructive and primitive traits and behaviors largely present within minorities? I remember reading a comment on one of Janice's articles on Richard Bilkszto in which someone in the comments cited a study that showed a link between black people and narcissicism, which proves that "scientific racism" (as its opponents would have it), is very much an evidence based reality. And the comparison to royalty is absurd as well. Royalty is hardly so much of a casual social formation as it is a noble ancestry that supported civilization and culture in particular (who was it that commissioned some of the greatest European masterpieces). The same goes for the white race. Such prestige is not bestown randomly, it has a historical timeline of significance supporting it. To act as if minorities or the working classes, however much they suffered, contributed in as objectively meritorious ways to civilization and culture as the royalty and the artists, intellectuals, and artisans whose fine work they sponsered.
And regarding your mention of Mark LeVine, I coincidentally came across his article featuring that exact title for Al Jazeera. No suprise he's sold himself out to Islamic culture, and it only proves how much of an imbecile he is when he hypocritically praises a culture far more regressive and brute than the Western one he has had the great fortune to be born into.
To add one last observation: when I defended the concept of morality being innate and biological, I was met with the counter argument of student claiming (most apposite to this article) that in ancient times Islamic patriarchs used to murder their daughters and that this was seen as righteous. Apparently the concept of these individuals being psychopaths or religiously deluded fanatics (equally unfree) was lost on her.
I first came across this highly persuadive compilation of informative research in a very recent book entiltled "Neuroexistentialism: Meaning, Morals, and Purpose in the Age of Neuroscience", in which traditional philosophical/religious claims of human soul and a divine creator are put to rest by scientific research (a bit depressing but there are still humanist perspectives offered)More importantly though, the book dismisses the existentialist view of morality merely being a social construct dependent on the religious promise of a better life in the afterworld, providing much scientific evidence to prove to the contrary that, yes, morality and ethics are very much steeped and enshrouded in biology and evolution. A quote from the editors on the matter: "For one thing, science can explain why we are moral animals, moral to such an extent that no amount of science will end up debunking our hard-wired intuitions about ethics. There’s evidence that altruism, cooperation, compassion and affection are biologically installed, so we don’t require a higher power to force us to consider others’ needs. The very worry about moral foundations is testament to the reality of our moral natures, so learning they are modulated by such humble (or is it noble?) chemicals as oxytocin and vasopressin isn’t likely to render us morally incapacitated".
I should have referenced this book in class, but the title eluded me then. Still it's amazing how a professor who should be acquainted with the most modern advancements in philosophy was too dumbfounded to defend the concept of biology being innate, only agreeing with the student who mentioned some form of barbaric sharia law (interesting how many forms of uncivilized brutality happen to often be related to the Islamic faith) as proof of morality's subjective nature. He even mentioned, without deigning to explain, how there is "an argument against biology". God only knows what that could be. Religion? Oh wait, god is dead; the ever so trusty discipline of science has proven that.
What do you mean by "identity politics"? Define it. What are you referring to here?
It's very simple. Identity politics is the politics of identity, where an inherent, unchangeable characteristic (race, sex, etc.) is used to define a victim group and an oppressor group. This is inherently unhealthy. Feminism is the best example. Compare it to the politics of situation (not usually called that), where we focus societal attention and resources to assist people of any identity who are in a troublesome situation, such as poverty, unemployment or depression. This is healthy politics.
Huh? Feminism is the best example?
Men have been playing identity politics based on sex from the beginning. How did they figure out who to exclude based on sex from politics, education, economy from the beginning? Did you even think to look into that?
BLM is identity politics based on race. That lead to riots, political upheaval, legal changes that lead to vast changes in the past few years. There's been an increase in violent crime due to police defunding as a result. Did you think to look into that?
What's going on in Israel/Palestine? Zionist Jews run politics based on their identity, leading to Israel as a country, and billions of dollars in political lobbying, from AIPAC to the ADL, who decides who can even have bank accounts or platforms on the internet, or even jobs in law firms and Wall Street.
All politics is identity politics. Females play the least amount of identity politics. Race, and especially Zionist Judaism, is far more ruthless. You're not intelligent or educated enough to see that. All you see is women demonstrated for rights, and you think that's unhealthy. Tell the Taliban.
You're not smart enough to speak on politics, of any kind. Be quiet.
Just to be clear, I am intelligent enough not to continue to interact with people who resort to ad hominem and insult.
This is indeed interesting, thank you. As it happens, I'm currently reading "Intellectuals and Society" by Thomas Sowell, and there seems to be significant overlap with what Johnson writes. Sowell points out two main characteristics of intellectuals: what they say is not subject to external standards of verification but to internal standards among the "intelligentsia". In other words, it is their business to make claims that go beyond their actual expertise. And, importantly, they are "ultimately unaccountable to the external world".
Yes, 'moral relativism' doesn't do it justice. It is moral preferentialism.
Thank you, Janice. The moral relativism of feminism regarding which rapists get a pass are among their more obvious failures.
No, they don't. One can find academic articles on the issue; it is of major concern to feminists even when the evidence is admittedly thin. Here's one:
https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/conflict-and-society/9/1/arcs090105.xml
Since the comment you were replying to has been deleted I lack some context, here, but thanks for the link to this absolute masterpiece of feminist dreck. I will be sharing this on my favorite Locals board where there is never ending astonishment surrounding the woke left's support of Palestinian terrorism.
After reading this article all the way through and struggling with it's obfuscating jargon and the crazed pseudo intellectual mazes of 'reasoning' within, I have come to a solid conclusion: This article raped me.
Of course you are with Israel, it's because you supported Israeli terror against Palestinian civilians. You lack basic human compassion for 7,000 slaughtered babies, women, children, and elderly in Gaza. You have one standard for Jews, and one standard for Muslims. That's how good of a person you are. You're as good as Hitler.
Oh, my. You are excitable, aren't you?
Obfuscation and mazes indeed
The link you're referring to is one of few articles I could find where the left's feminists supported Palestinians against Islamophobic Jews who occupy and terrorize Palestinian civilians on a daily basis. Janice, your argument is very weak.
What are very weak are your search skills, apparently. Did it even occur to you that the article Janice shared has citations to other articles and papers to support her position? That would be a good place to start looking, wouldn't it?
Where's your history?
Invertebrates like ‘Daniel’ get to drop a crack like that and skate, and now that its left on the conversational sidewalk, everyone else has to deal with it!
You insult people, because you have nothing intelligent to say. You're islamophobic biggot. Plus, you're more likely than not an incel. Your hatred of women, feminists, Muslims, Palestinians, is obvious. You have no evidence to refute Daniel's comments, so you resort to attack.
Hey Chrissy… you talkin to me boy!
You need to pull up your pants and be a man. Also put your glasses on and instead of spending time clutching your mothers pearls watch some news or learn how to read a newspaper, the evidence is all over the place.
If evidence is all over the place, shows us non-biased objective evidence. We're waiting to hear from you Chuck. Where is the evidence?
Chuck, I think Chris has her panties in a bunch.
Really?
Do you have any video footage of these terrible things happening?
Besides bigoted racist contempt for Jews, do you have any actual evidence?
His response to my questioning his post.
"Boris, besides your bigoted racist contempt for Muslims, do you have any actual evidence that 40 babies were beheaded, an Israeli lie that was thoroughly refuted."
I don't like I.slam for the simple reason in their big "holy" book is a line which I have trouble accepting which nooks fwn to this.
"There is no one else worthy to be on Earth besides their people."
Everyone else is to be put to the sword or enslaved.
Never mentioned the particular method of killing babies.
I'm told one woman had her unborn baby cut from her stomach and they beheaded the baby.
There are Arabs who are Christian, I don't hate them or any others.
If anything you could call me sectarian, but there aren't any other religions I have major issues with.
So, you don't hate Arab Christians, but you hate Arab Muslims? In other words, you're islamophobic biggot. You see, I don't hate Christians. Some Christians are good, some are bad. Some humans are good, some are bad. No need for hate.
Christianity,
"Love thy neighbour as you would your brother', or similar.
All the people who attacked Israel, what was their obvious goal?
Rape and kill as many people as you can find.
and they did.
In the I.slamic "holy book", what is said about anyone who is not of their faith?
You won't find such stuff in the Christian Bible.
I agree with you hatred is wrong, especially if it's detailed who you should hate in a "Holy " Book.
Do you have evidence of this?
I speak as one who knows nothing about the situation and I am not trying to score points. I want to know exactly what you mean by your reply. Have pity on me, Ms Flamengo's commentary is the most reliable source of information about the war that I have.
Are you saying that soldiers of the Israeli Army are encouraged by their senior officers to rape Palestinians? (Men can be raped too.) Or are you saying that soldiers of the Israeli Army are not court-martialled for rape while on active service? Or that sentences handed down to soldiers of the Israeli Army convicted of rape are unduly lenient? If not, what are you saying?
Ken, if you read the link Janice posted, you will see there were rapes of Palestinian men and women in the occupied territories. The problem with Israel is biggotry. They hate Arabs. They teach their children to hate Arabs. Watch here what Israeli Jews teach their children https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJzt_WXZdMg&list=LL&index=5
Western women (feminist or not) who feel marginalized, victimized and oppressed by Adam, Mike and Ken could be in for a rude awakening when they meet Abdullah, Mohamed and Khalid.
Perhaps one of the reasons why they tread carefully around this issue is that they know that certain radical elements of these groups...to use modern parlance...”don’t play that shit.”
Somewhat tangentially, one of the few positives to come out of the Hamas atrocities is that no Israeli men or boys were harmed. At least that's what I conclude from reading a great many accounts, all of which are careful to recount the many "women, including grandmothers, and children" among the dead and injured but nary a man mentioned.
One of our television commentators referred to ‘women and children and others’ amongst the victim! OTHERS!!
Well you see men are never really innocent are they? Somehow whatever befalls an individual man or men in general is at least partially their own fault, and frequently entirely their fault. Whereas women and children are always innocent and are therefore always victims. Just as men are frequently solely their occupation "soldier" ,"farmer" , "taxi driver" as individuals or a group. Occasionally some feminist steps out of line and points out this linking of women and children actually suggests they are the same. In my younger years there was even a vogue for rooting out "benign sexism", but always being the victim is just too useful.
Probably 20 years ago there was a programme here where celebrities spent a day being the opposite sex with the aid of make up and costume artists. One of the interesting observations made by the female to male celebrities was how "invisible" they were compared to being a woman. An observation also made by Norah Vincent in her book "My year as a man".
"Children" generally does not include boys older than thirteen who are apparently combatants by default.
We don't know what the "others" are. They may be camels.
We have been 'othered' (their term) by them for decades, at least. They have, quite literally, tried to remove men from the language with 'herstory', 'womxn', latinx', etc. Yet, for some reason 'manspreading' and 'mansplaining' are ok. Curiouser and curiouser.
Some years ago a radical feminist magazine in Britain called Spare Rib published a reader's letter that began 'I oppose cruelty to any living thing, whether woman, child or animal'
Not so. Soldiers shot in their beds. Young boys taken hostage.
I think that is Mr Franklin's point. Although anyone who can read a newspaper knows that the Palestinians have killed lots of male Israelis and Israelis have killed lots of Palestinian men, the feminists have not mentioned the deaths of males because, in the feminist religion, the deaths of men do not count.
And to be honest in our media here in Britain the men and boys barely get a mention,, which of course is true of the casualties in Ukraine and all such wars or even earthquakes and disasters. The disposable sex.
I have seen reports of men being killed. I suppose you are making some sort of ironic observation, but the point escapes me. Some persons on both sides have committed abominations. This isn’t both-sides excuse making. It’s just more of the same human failure. It’s exhausting.
The typical pattern...
http://adamjones.freeservers.com/effacing.htm
My last comment probably violated the spirit of this substance.
I think your wisdom is wishy-washy to the point of moral onanism.
"Believe the woman," even without other evidence. Don't believe video/audio documentation. Feminism strikes again. It's sort of like "words are violence" but actual violence isn't. These people are deeply unwell and intellectually incompetent.
No they're very clever. They hook into male and female preferencing for females and chivalry in particular, and have swept to power in many parts of our body politic.
My view is that the bulk of feminism (and woke ideology in general) is carried by a majority of true believers. Only a few (the "elite"?) is 'clever' and deliberate in the sense you allege. Interestingly, the goals of the whole movement are a kind of emergent property that is amenable to interpretation in terms of psychological motives, even though the individuals do not actually have to embody these motives.
Interesting that in the UK, at least, feminists are trying to get incels declared a terrorist group while at the same time being reluctant to label Hamas terrorists.
Makes no sense to me.
Its simple. Hamas being an islamist group is favored by a substantial political force in the UK. In many former mill towns in Lancashire and Yorkshire and the Midlands Labour politicians rely on the Muslim voting block. Although the recent introduction of identity checks at elections was introduced to reduce the block voting by "clans" this is still a potent force. While I'm afraid "incels" have no political clout. They effectively play the role of fictional bogey man for feminists to tilt at as "proof" of toxic masculinity.
The "rape culture" slur only works in places where rape is considered abhorrent. The charge of "racism" only works where people are afraid of being called racist. "sexist" is the same. People who actually are racist, sexist, or don't care about rape don't care about any of these slurs.
Feminist are turning the West into a Petri dish growing nihilistic men resistant to these charges.
Pretty soon, we'll all be Hamas in one way or another. And, like those of us who saw a "straight" line from the "white men" hatred to antisemitism, the "I told you so" won't be fun at all, particularly for those of us who have women around that we actually care about.
On the contrary, day in and day out, people are losing everything they have because certain interest groups think it fair and reasonable to destroy a person for saying something with which they disagree, or for being accused of an offence against them despite the absence of evidence.
I agree, but don't understand why this is contrary to what I am saying. The ability to destroy someone in the absence of evidence is proof of the power these slurs have. That power is waning, and with it the opprobrium reserved for people who actually do things like rape...
I'm a little surprised the normalization is coming from feminists (not that I should be surprised, they're histrionic and unprincipled), but I'm not at all surprised the normalization is occurring.
I see it as the rise of the modern version of the Nazi Party.
It would be useful to remember that the original Brownshirts had many homosexuals within it including their leader. They were well tolerated until the Nazis gained absolute power and then all the "deviants" were rooted out and executed when they were no longer needed.
The same will happen with radical feminism. They are gaining control over governments by taking over mid level bureaucracies and eliminating any men within and any control they may have within them and start dictating to the politicians what will happen that they want to happen.
Excellent comments, as usual. Your comments in the last paragraph are especially salient. There really does appear to be some kind of Freudian dynamic going, in these kind of circumstances.
Well might I offer my simple, two-cent psychoanalysis? Feminists are sadists. Their souls have been corrupted by their envy and resentment of successful men. They care about rape only in so far as it is an effective means to humiliate and degrade successful men. Hamas are also sadists, driven by envy and resentment of the highly successful Israelis. So the feminists recognize Hamas as compatriots, they embrace each other in the destruction of all that they hate.
This has been very evident here in the UK for a couple of decades. Where of course there have had islamist attacks (one killing fans of a teen pop concert in my home city) and for a decade grooming gangs (almost all Pakistani/Afghan ) preyed upon vulnerable young women and boys in plain sight of authorities in over 20 towns and Cities in England (our own Ministry of justice estimated over 10,000 victims from the then known cases). Half the victims were "in care" looked after (supposedly) by Childrens Services or under "Child Protection(supposedly monitored because of their vulnerability. In the latter case of the gangs a couple of Labour MPs, women, were silenced by their own party for raising what was happening in their towns'. You'd think that when these were finally starting to be prosecuted late last decade, causing a rise in rape prosecutions because of thee sheer numbers, feminists would have a field day as the perpetrators were uniformly from a self proclaimed "patriarchal" community. But silence of course, the spike in Rape stats being instead ascribed to a completely fictitious "epidemic" Rape culture in Universities. And of course the growth of more extreme forms of islamist lifestyle including "Sharia" strict clothing rules for women and "honour" violence(vendettas etc) goes unremarked upon by feminists engaged in trying to get "looking" and "unwanted compliments" included as "Rape Culture" amongst students. The total free pass given by the feminists (so vocal and often in print on "toxic masculinity" and the male gaze) on all these issues, including young men patrolling streets in towns near to me with large muslim, communities to ensure girls are modestly dressed, has confirmed the tactical nature of their concerns. So this on Hamas, in evidence here too, is no surprise at all. Cries of "Rape" and indeed "Domestic Violence" have long proven to be the levers to unlock male chivalry to accede to feminists demands, no matter how unrelated to sex or violence the issue is (e.g. more female CEOs would somehow affect rapes??)
However the obvious hypocrisy in evidence for a couple of decades rarely gets a mention. As you say Hamas and the other Islamist groups involved would even proudly declare themselves patriarchal.
Well said.
‘It may also confirm the long-simmering suspicion that some feminists actually admire hyper-masculine (anti-Western) men who (so far) seem immune to feminist shaming.’…
So you mean Andrew Tate and Roosh V types might be on to something…
My father told me there were women like this but who knew we’d find them at the center of the erstwhile Proponents of Women and Women’s Rights.
What a God awful, hideous group of hags Feminists are, and by we men not calling them out on this (and so, so many other issues), we leave them a wide open field to poison our daughters and granddaughters minds and lives and by extension those of our sons and grandsons!
This is the "Saddam killed babies in incubators!" lie that preceded the invasion of Iraq. It turned out that no such event occurred, but only after the damage was done. Fool me twice, shame on me. Tales of mass rape abound during World War 1 to rile up young men to take up arms and get slaughtered in the meat grinder of The Somme while women at home kicked footballs and agitated for a vote they didn't earn with service - what a win.
Like Peterson, you are letting your dislike of Muslims and their culture colour your view. You are entitled to that view, but the depictions of beheaded Jewish babies are fanciful. Where Is the evidence? There is none of course, because Israel are blocking all international observers as they carpet-bomb Gaza where the average age of the population is 17 years old. It is Dresden all over again, and the February 1945 fire-bombing of that historic German city and its defenceless population was a war crime.
I support the skepticism behind your message. We are never safe from being played.
In think the point of this piece wasn't to compare atrocities or take sides, but to compare feminist responses to alleged atrocities. Going by the typical feminist mantra: "believe all women!", any claims made by the Israelis should be taken at face value, without skepticism.
Yes, you are correct here - but Janice does the piece no favours when she says: "It's hard to brush all of this aside as propaganda—perhaps especially the brutal glee shown by Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians alike." This equates Palestinians (2 million people) with Hamas: a group many oppose. Meaning civilians are terrorists. We saw the same thing during the Vietnam War, when any able-bodied person became VietCong in the eyes of the US Marines: man, woman, child. This was the logic of the My Lai Massacre. "Palestinians are human animals" (says an IDF spokesman) is a short walk to "Palestinians are animals" and such talk always, always precedes a genocide: from Auschwitz to Rwanda.
So I'm disappointed by this piece. Fiamengo's alignment with Zionist narrative hurts the point she is trying to make - and it's a solid point. It gets lost. She needs to remember that not everybody who follows her work is conservative. I am a former liberal who thinks they are now insane. And I will, once again, point out the fact that the Palestinian civilians, owners of that "brutal glee" have an average age of 17 years old. Doesn't that bother people? It might, and it might not.
There is little doubt that Palestinians are taught from a young age to hate Jews. There is little doubt that Palestinian leadership on behalf of their people have consistently expressed a goal to wipe out Israel, to ensure that only Muslims inhabit the whole area 'from the river to the sea'. There is no doubt that Israel was prepared to live alongside the Palestinians and other surrounding Muslim countries, and allowed them into Israel to work and earn money, but the converse has never been true. However, all this gets away from Prof Fiamengo's points.
Amnesty International's 2022/23 report regarding Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories begins with the following statements:
"Israel’s continuing oppressive and discriminatory system of governing Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) constituted a system of apartheid, and Israeli officials committed the crime of apartheid under international law. Israeli forces launched a three-day offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip in August during which they committed apparent war crimes. This compounded the impact of a 15-year ongoing Israeli blockade that amounts to illegal collective punishment and further fragments Palestinian territory." www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/
The report goes on to detail its findings regarding, among other issues, unlawful attacks and killings of Palestinians, Israeli authorities refusal to adequately investigate crimes under international law, restrictions on freedom of movement, forced evictions, arbitrary detentions, torture and other ill treatment, and the forced closure of Palestinian civil society organizations.
If you or I were were expelled from our homes and forced to live under such conditions in, for example in the densely populated 5x25 mile fenced Gaza strip, with no hope for anything better, I suggest hate -- and rage -- would be reasonable to expect.
I accept that there was a time when the Israeli government was willing to consider a two-state solution, but it's clear that period ended when Yitzak Rabin was assassinated by a Zionist militant in 1995. Since then, the continual expansion of settlements, and Netanyahu's own behaviour and statements, demonstrate the Israeli government's intractable opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state and intention to acquire all the Palestinian land it can.
For these reasons, at least, I do not share your confident views of the Israeli government's charitable treatment of, and intentions toward, the Palestinians.
They are caged in an open-air prison! The average age of a Palestinian is 17 years old! Your comment is foolish and irrational.
Nothing to find here, except hate. Janice has an army of incels who appear to enjoy what Israel is doing. So far, 7000 murdered Palestinian babies. children, women, civilians... Read the comments, these incels, mysoginists, anti-feminists, they don't care. They are islamophobic biggots.
How about you learn to spell properly before you brand an entire Substack community as "incels, misogynists, and anti-feminists". Here you are talking hysterically about Israeli propaganda and the Palestinian truth and yet you spew slanderous accusations at individuals you don't even know without any evidence. If you want to defend the Palestinians why not set about rationally dismantling "Israeli propaganda" with factual sources and not insulting people. Also, who's to say that the Palestinians aren't churning out their own Islamic propaganda?
I follow Fiamengo, though I often disagree with her perspectives. The woman is insightful though I don't share her politics. Most men are not having sex, so incels are the future of masculinity. They should not be shamed. I dislike modern feminists tremendously though I would take a bullet for Camille Paglia. That said, I stand against evil. This means I oppose Israel and stand with Palestinians all day, every day.
Another Pagliite here. She's not so good on politics, international relations or psychedelics, but she more than makes up for it with her brilliant and entertaining insights into almost everything else.
Apart from the post, Paglia is a SHILL as is Christina Hoff Sommers. They are more concerned with rescuing fEMINISM than BOYS or MEN. "Factual fEMINISTS, "Educated fEMINISTS" my ass. As far as I'm concerned Christina Hoff Sommers is a flapper from the 1920's
Dead Israeli women raped hanging from trees bloody.
There is no evidence of beheaded Jewish babies. That story has been debunked. It was a lie told by an Israeli soldier to a journalist. No journalist verified the story. It turned out to be a lie. Israeli propaganda manufactures lies on a daily basis. Jewish terrorists have kept millions of innocent Palestinians in concentration camps called GAZA and WEST BANK for 57 years of occupation. Nothing coming from the mouth of Israeli propaganda should be believed. Israeli society is infected with BIGGOTRY and ISLAMPHOBIA. They hate Arrabs and they humiliate and kill Arabs on a daily basis.
So what are all these pictures and videos I'm seeing of people being gunned down and butchered human remains? Are they all deep fakes?
There's no evidence of rape, much less beheaded babies: only the Israeli Ministry Of Information with claims so outlandish they often pass for parody. Of course Jews have been shot - but there is not one confirmed instance of rape. International observers are banned - why? The "butchered human remains" displayed by Ben Shapiro are widely acknowledged to be deep faked, so you've answered your own question. If you have actual evidence, I am all ears but from what I can gather from the testimony of the released prisoners, they eat the same food as the captors, women are given sanitary products and they are treated under the rules of the Geneva Convention. I won't be fooled again after the Iraq lies, and the Libya lies. Sorry.
"No evidence of rape" you say. Except for the numerous videos, photos and statements of atrocities posted by Hamas themselves. They're quite proud of their work, yet you want to take that away from them.
Your response reminds me of the Babylon Bee satire: "Hamas Disappointed Liberals Don't Believe They Massacred Jews After They Went To All The Trouble To Livestream It: GAZA — Members of the terrorist organization Hamas were left frustrated after hearing many leftists in the United States and throughout the world were skeptical that Hamas had brutally massacred over 1,300 Jewish civilians after Hamas had put serious effort into livestreaming the atrocities. "What's a guy have to do around here to get credit for mass murder?" asked Hamas terrorist Durka Mohammed. "We provide video after video clearly identifying our victims as helpless women and children, we film the execution, we leave the bodies out for evidence...what more do you people want from us??"
https://babylonbee.com/news/hamas-disappointed-leftists-dont-believe-they-massacred-jews-after-they-went-to-all-the-trouble-to-livestream-it/
You're very concerned about Israeli victims, but not at all concerned about Palestinian victims? Israel murdered tens of thousands of Palestinians in the past 57 years of occupation. They raped women, and some men (according to Janice's link), and they beheaded and burned alive thousands of Palestinian civilians. When Israel drops explosives on Palestinian civilians, you know what happens? Bombs incinerate people. And collapsed buildings behead them, crunch them into pieces. And yet, you don't seem to have any feelings for Muslim victims and you demand Muslims to apologize to Israel. Nobody should apologize to Islamophobic biggots like yourself who enjoy seeing Palestinian civlians suffer. Shame on you and your double standards. You're supporter of Israeli terror in Gaza and West Bank.
You are making straw man arguments. Nobody is saying they are not concerned about Palestinian victims. The experience of Palestinian civilians currently is horrific and it would be wonderful for this particular war to end. It's not only Israel that would need to stop fighting though.
Note that of all the Palestinians I have heard commenting on the terrible circumstances they are currently enduring, none mention the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, nor do they acknowledge the history of their own people's antisemitic decisions and actions. Yet Western media are giving huge attention to the current and historical plight of the Palestinians.
People seem to think Fiamengo's following is full of Zionist/ Shapiro Conservatives when this is far from true. It is testament to her message that she attracts diverse - divergent - opinion she wouldn't necessarily get along with herself, even if she sometimes gets it wrong as she has for me here. Your comment is spot on.
I'm not interested in your pontificating and nonsense, only the evidence. You sound like an irate campus feminist demanding i believe, sight unseen - and i do not. Where are these "numerous videos, photos and statements" of rape? Please do link.
You sound like a Holocaust denier. Nazi sympathizers and anti-Semites indulged in this for decades to cover up the most well-documented crime against humanity in history. The Oct. 7th attack is also well documented, though not all the evidence has been compiled or released. But there is enough evidence to know that sexual assaults happened.
Using the Western principle of the defendant's right to the presumption of innocence to defend jihadists is quite a bold move, considering that you are in essence defending terrorists who openly acknowledge what they did and are proud of it. I don't think you really care about men's rights or the problem of false allegations of rape. I believe you must hate Israel. I cannot think of any other reason why someone would defend Hamas on this.
Here is a video of a jihadists revealing that he was instructed to murder and rape, not only women and girls, but also babies: https://twitter.com/emilykschrader/status/1712036369248186674
Another video exists of a member of Hamas's elite Nukhba force in custody. He says (in Arabic of course): “the plan was to go from home to home, from room to room, to throw grenades and kill everyone, including women and children,” he said. “Hamas ordered us to crush their heads and cut them off, [and] to cut their legs.” He also says they were given permission to rape the corpse of a girl -- which is clearly a war crime.
There should be a trial of captured Hamas leaders so all the evidence comes out. If there were a trial, one of the pieces of evidence would be Hamas' own instruction manuals for the attack reportedly ordered the jihadists to rape (see report below).
Given that rape is a tactic often used in war, and is openly advocated by Islamists (as per the Hadith), and has been used by Hamas before, the reports of rape on Oct. 7th, and the fear that hostages have been raped, are entirely plausible.
"The gruesome task of identifying Israel's dead and the circumstances in which they were killed has fallen to military forensic teams at an army base in central Israel." Forensic evidence is still coming in. But we have testimony of rapes of both the living and the dead.
The Israeli news outlet Kan (https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan-news/local/570470/) reported that some of the hostages being held in Gaza have been raped. Kan quoted from a report by Professor Hagai Levin, an Israeli epidemiologist, saying that the hostages included people ... who had “severe injuries following rape.”
“There was a couple tied to each other with their clothes down, and you can see definitely, that the woman underwent rape,” an Oct. 17 Reuters article quoted Itzik Itah, a ZAKA commander, as saying. “When she is naked faced down, and her clothes had clearly been taken off not by her, that’s a woman who underwent rape.”
What's implausible (not believable) are the claims by apologists and Leftists that these atrocities did not occur on Oct. 7th. Rather than deny the obvious, apologists engage in obsfucation and moral relativism.
We do not know for sure that Noa Argamani, still being held hostage, has been raped, but it's entirely plausible given who is holding her captive: jihadists who are instructed to rape as a tactic of war.
I don't have videos of the women being raped in the Congo during that war, or copies of forensic reports, but their first-hand testimonies after the fact are plausible. I have seen video testimony of the rapists and their victims in the Congo. No one there disputes it happened or that it was used as a weapon of war.
I have spent a lot of time in Israel and talked to people there on both sides. Rapes have occurred in that conflict. This is beyond all dispute. Hamas jihadists do not dispute the allegations. What's odd to me is that you dispute it. Again, not to defend men against false allegations. Are you doing this because perhaps you want Israel to cease to exist and you're willing to twist the truth for that purpose?
At this point, this is not just about Israel or Palestine anymore; this is about defending humanity against terrorism. If your position is against Israel, fine, but by defending known terrorists, Hamas, from entirely plausible allegations, you are defending atrocities.
The one claim I'll concede that was exaggerated was the claim of 40 babies beheaded. Babies and toddlers were killed by Hamas -- there is no doubt of that since the names of ages and photos of many of them have been published -- but there is no clear evidence that they were beheaded. Whoever reported that was referring to the well-known ISIL tactic.
You wanted videos. Many have been scrubbed by YouTube or suppressed to protect the identity of victim and their families, but we do have this Hamas-shared video of the captured woman with blood around her crotch as noted in the article above:
https://twitter.com/Jaquerie2/status/1712900092837994995?
And the Shani Louk video: https://twitter.com/angryopinionatd/status/1712209065013580122/video/2
Video testimony of the massacre and atrocities at the Nova dance rave by those who escaped: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9GbP1jN-wM
Report on Hamas' manual and testimony by captured jihadist:
"Shin Bet released video footage showing the interrogation of some Hamas terrorists captured after the attack, the Times of Israel reported on Oct. 24. One of the videos shows a man who says that Hamas ordered fighters to “kill everyone,” including women and children. “He said they were given permission to rape the corpse of a girl."
"The Israeli military released two instruction manuals that it said had been recovered from dead Hamas fighters. “Orders were there for how many to kill, how many to take as hostages. Orders were there to rape, all was written and ordered,” Maj. Gen. Michael Edelstein told reporters at the screening, the BBC reported.
"A day after we published our story, Reuters reported that “Rabbi Israel Weiss, former army chief rabbi, one of the officials overseeing the identification of the dead … said many bodies showed signs of torture as well as rape.”
You sound like an Islamophobic biggot and an apologist for Israeli war crimes. Israeli terror sympathizers and anti-Semites (anti-Palestinians) indulged in this for decades to cover up the most well-documented Jewish (Israeli) war crimes against humanity in history. You are comfortable watching 57 years of brutal Israeli occupation, persecution, humiliation, murders and Israeli bombardments of Palestinian civilians, half of victims being babies and children. And yet you demand Muslims to feel sad for Israeli victims? Why would Muslims feel sad for your victims when you don't feel sad for Muslim victims? Respect goes both ways. You appear to be comfortable watching 7000 babies and civilians being slaughtered by Jewish terrorists in Gaza in the past 3 weeks. Over 200,000 Palestinian civilians were brutally slaughtered by Jewish terrorists in the past 57 years of occupation.
Thus bullshit does not constitute evidence! Are you mentally ill? There is no proof this scene is even real and not staged, or that the "Hamas fighter" has not been coerced or tortured. Don't bother trying to shame me with "Holocaust denier". I do not care. Jews are not special. They are not God's Chosen People - just immigrants, squatting on somebody else's land. The IDF are openly claiming they will flood the Hamas tunnels with gas! Let that sink in. If they resort to Zyklon B, the circle shall be complete. I don't suppose you'll understand that reference. Since you know so little, Google is your friend.
Testimony is evidence, and there's plenty of it. Evidence is not the same thing as proof, you know. There is plenty of evidence that these things happened. But, you know what? That's not really a deciding factor for me because just the killing of several hundred unarmed civilians at a music festival is PLENTY enough for me to condemn the SHIT out of Hamas and all their supporters.
There is also testimony of Jewish terrorism against Palestinians for the past 57 years. And yet, you don't care, and you dont condemn it. And yet you expect Muslims to condemn what Hamas is doing. Double standard, indeed.
Testimony is evidence if the testimony is trustworthy. How are we to know whether the testimony is trustworthy?
He believes Jewish testimonies, but does not believe Muslim testimonies. He is okay with Jewish terrorism, but is not okay with Muslim terrorism. Who is under occupation? For 57 years, Jews brutally keep Muslims under occupation in GAZA and WEST BANK. And yet he believes whatever Israel tells him because he is Islamophobic biggot.
Oh, so you basically mean a #BELIEVEALLWOMEN pile-on should carry the day if enough tearful females jump in? That's your reasoning in Janice Fiamengo's Substack? Now I really have seen everything.
That is a truly idiotic straw man. I said nothing of the sort.
Show us evidence of your bullshit and Israeli propaganda? You hate Palestinians because they are Muslims. Admit it. You're islamophobic biggot. Plus, incel, mysoginist, hater of other people, and you probably don't even have any friends. No you dont! You don't have friends. Nobody likes you.
You: "There is plenty of evidence that these things happened" - where exactly? Garish articles posted by those with an axe to grind? The IDF, who shoot doctors on camera and ban international observers? We should rely solely on testimony in rape cases in lieu of actual evidence? I thought this is the reason thousands of innocent men languish in the prisons? What rot!
Screams before silence. Watch it.
You hateful fool. There is plenty of evidejce but Jew hating scum like you won’t acknowledge it.
This is not to mention all the "Queers For Palestine" like Owen Jones, who enthusiastically supports a group which would imprison or kill him for his sexuality.
After reading your writing here and thinking about it, I found myself reciting in my head the following passage from the enlightening essay In Front Of Your Nose, by George Orwell. He wrote it in 1946, but it could have been written yesterday.
'[We] are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality.'
Thanks for this Janice. Yes of course, feminist outrage against much of what they have now defined (and sadly have convinced lawmakers to define) as 'rape', i.e. consensual, enjoyed sex later claimed to have been insufficiently consented to, can only be fake.
On another note: Danny Masterson was FRAMED!