Rights and Lefts

Pre-post script: This is a long one. I didn't intend to do a real time review of an hour long panel discussion of feminism, but that's what I did.  So its long, its detailed, and yes, I use salty language.

On the other hand, I can't think you'll find a more through analysis of the deceptive techniques used by progressives, especially feminist progressives, to promote their toxic and illogical ideology.  Sadly, I'm not terribly kind to Karen Straughan, despite my general good will towards her. My appraisal is as honest and unbiased as I can be.

Original Opening:
So I've been trying to work my way through a video which includes Naomi Wolf discussing feminism in the context of libertarianism. Supposedly it will get pretty good when Karen Straughan starts rhetorically gutting her, but getting through the sheer vapidness of ms Wolf's comments, much less the giggling moderator are killing me. 

Since we are talking about libertarianism here, naturally they are talking about 'Rights', and the granting thereof. To give you an examples of the depths of shallowness on display, the Moderator conceded that women had been given the right to vote but then immediately followed up with her response to it... 'Gee, um, thanks? What good is that?'

That is far less of a paraphrase than I'd like.

Now, I haven't gone into much depth on this blog about how we've been quietly disenfranchised, that is had our votes taken from us, over the last few decades by any number of subtle maneuvers, but the concept of the Franchise, the ability to vote is one that should be of paramount importance when discussing participatory governance, for good or ill.   To simply dismiss the very real, even dramatic changes to our polity from women's suffrage as trivial or unimportant, no matter your political take on the subject, is the very nadir of political blindness. 

If you are a feminist or an antifeminist, you pretty much have to agree that women gaining the vote was one of the landmark decisions of the twentieth century, without which the rest of feminist progress would have come to a screeching halt, or at least progressed at a glacial pace. 

And this fat, giggling, feminist seems to think that it was some sort of mere token that she doesn't even care about? 

Ye gods!

But on to Naomi, and the topic of my post.  Now, it is blatantly apparent to me that Ms Wolf is nakedly lying about almost everything she says in her introduction.  She presents herself as some sort of proto-libertarian who just happens to write pro-feminist books and articles from time to time.  Its also equally obvious to me that she has all the intellectual heft of a zephyr, though that was hardly shocking given that her last book was essential a paean to her own pussy. This is not the stuff of serious intellectual rigor, people.

One of the few things Naomi says that wasn't just fertilizer was that she thought Feminism was a word with a million definitions, some of them wrong. 

Its a sort of PR bandaide designed to protect the cause, but it isn't a lie. Well, the last part is. That's the PR move, granting her the right to simply declare any potentially harmful definitions as 'wrong', and thus not part of feminism.

Here is the thing: If a word has a million definitions, its fucking useless to define anything. 

This is all part of the plan.  If a few feminists start castrating men, don't panic, it is all part of the plan.  If they get in trouble for it, well, they were following one of those awful "wrong" definitions. All part of the plan.

This is, for the record, a classic socialist playbook technique.  Orwell called it double-talk, the process of rendering words almost entirely meaningless so that no arguments could be made against the state, the cause, the movement.  Orwell knew what he was talking about, seeing as he was something of an insider.  

Anyway, Naomi moves on to start talking about Rights, and as she babbles on and on about how the state isn't the only party that can remove or grant rights, she reveals the utter vacuousness of her political thought. This, by the way, is a woman who once worked with Manbearpig on his presidential campaign, mostly by advising him to 'butch up'.  

Since you will actually learn anti-knowledge by listening to this woman talk, let me save you some brain cells and start by discussing 'rights'.  

Naomi Wolf begins by talking about this wonderful insight from second wave feminism about rights, and how they aren't granted by the state... necessarily... that came about in the seventies, and thereby utterly dismisses literally hundreds of years of political philosophy and discussion about rights. 

The concept of Rights goes back to the original conception of Natural Law, which dates back in its crudest form to at least Plato, making it officially Older Than Dirt, and was expanded by Aristotle and later Cicero, before making it to modern times and much deeper discussion via Hobbes and Cumberland and a fucking HOST of other people.

It may be simplest to express Natural Law as "The Right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". 

Its called Natural Law for a reason, in that these are 'rights' we inherit as thinking beings, rights that even dumb animals may lay some small claim to.  That they are rights does not, in fact, mean that you can't be deprived of them, merely that it is an injustice to do so... which is why we place so much value in them. 

When natural law must be interpreted into the Law of the Land, we start discussing Negative Rights and Positive Rights. America still stands more or less alone in the world for having 'Negative Rights', that is our rights are explicitly written as strictures on government, on society, banning them from certain activities. The Right to Free Speech is, in American legal philosophy a ban on the government from restricting speech.  In Europe, particularly with the European Union's Human Rights bills, they prefer Positive Rights, granting the individual specific permissions.  Their version of Free Speech, for example, comes with caveats, such as banning holocaust denialism and the like. 

The point of all this is to point out that we do have inerrant rights to act in certain ways.  Re: Naomi Wolf, Indian women have the right to not be raped in the streets of Delhi, or wherever.  However, just because women ARE being raped in the streets (she claims, as I have no particular knowledge of what specific incident she was going on about), doesn't mean that they are having their rights violated. 

I know, its a hard conceptual leap.  Bear with me for a moment longer. 

See: No one, not even in India, was suggesting that it was ok to rape women in the street. The 'Right' to not be raped still existed.  But a right isn't a guarantee or even a promise.  Its a fundamental conceit that allows us to judge wether existing strictures are 'free' or 'tyrannical', more or less.  A law enshrining street rape would be unjust, and at least to women, tyrannical. It would strip from them a right they have by natural law.

But recall what I was just saying about positive and negative rights? 

See: Naomi Wolf is saying that women have a Positive Right, one that supersedes the rights of men, to be free of the threat of Rape. That is a bold assertion, though it looks reasonable. 

I can assert that I have a Positive Right not to be murdered, but that won't stop a criminal from stabbing me in a dark alley one day.  If I demand that Right be enforced by the state, removing knives from everyone and lighting up the various alleys so that murderous thugs couldn't hide in them, I'm putting my personal Right ahead of other peoples assumed rights, like the right to actually possess knives or not pay outrageous electrical bills.  Oh, but wait: No one has asserted those Positive Rights, so they must not exist! 

This then is the great 'insight' of 1970's era second wave feminism? That they could take the concept of Positive Rights, a long understood and discussed phenomenon, and use them contra US principles of Negative Rights, to demand special treatment, thus squashing the rights of others who had not yet asserted their own Positive Rights to not be squashed? 

If I thought she even understood that much, that this was a deliberate abuse of the system, I would be impressed. Horrified, but impressed. 

This is the fundamental problem with Positive Rights in the first place.  One can ever assume more rights exist, that some demand of fairness or humanitarian impulse creates the need for NEW rights, such a 'free' healthcare, which imposes harsh burdens on other, less protected classes.  This is why the great experiment (the Constituition) eventually went with Negative Rights, protecting all the many unspoken facets of Natural Rights from burdensome governmental control. 

So, to go back to Naomi's assertions about the removal of rights in, for example, India... a right not to be raped is not the same as the right to demand someone else prevent your rape from happening in the first place.  

God damn... how long did it take me to untangle two minutes of concentrated stupid?  

The sad thing is, she probably makes more money in a single year than I'll make in an entire decade, proving once again that life isn't fair, and any attempt to make it fair is misguided and doomed to failure. 

And then, like a good little Leftist, Naomi Wolf proceeds onwards. Remember how she couldn't define Feminism, due to its millions of definitions? 

Yeah, I know, that was a billion years ago, an epoch of stupid lies between now and then, but trust me, she did and I mentioned it.

Anyway, without pausing long enough for people to catch on that she has no real idea of what Rights are and are not, she goes on to 'Air Quote' Feminism several times as an analytical tool.

How the fuck could you use it as an analytical tool if you can't actually define it??? 

Never mind that I'm sure I can define Feminism in a way that wouldn't be instantly horrific to Feminists NOR viewed as a big fat lie to, say, Mens Rights Activists... we're talking about progressives here.  They do not want it to be easily definable, so they can't be held to account for its flaws, failures or fuckups, yet somehow they expect us to use it to analyze... stuff. Political movements and laws and shit. 

I know thats the sort of stuff Naomi is babbling about because she goes on to repeat the tired old canard (un duck!) about women getting paid less then men for the same work. 

No, Naomi, they aren't getting paid less for the same work. They are getting paid less averaged across all job fields, including ones they aren't doing and have no interest in doing. You know, like working on an alaskan crab fishing boat or digging coal.   They are getting paid less because they don't work as many overtime hours, which reduces their 'averaged pay' over men who chose to take the hours they won't.  Not "Can't", but "Won't". Women don't want to pull sixty hour work weeks, so they miss twenty hours of overtime. Men WILL work those hours, so they do.   They are getting paid less because they can and do take time off for pregnancies, maternity leave (which, at least in America, is not remotely available for men (paternity leave)) and the like... which results in fewer raises and smaller paychecks... but is most DEFINITELY not the same as doing the same work. You are NOT WORKING when you take a paid maternity leave. You are a parasite, a leech, a bloodsucking vampire upon the economy, but you are not, by any reasonably definition, working.

Of course, if Feminism had a definition, we might be able to 'Analyze' this pay gap, right? 

Sigh. 

And onward with more stupidity.  Society somehow has the magical ability to take away some new 'Freedom of Thought' that Second Wave Feminists apparently discovered.  Amazing, seeing that every tyrant since the dawn of time would have loved to take away people's ability to think 'bad thought'. 

So how is society doing this? Because society teaches us that there is only one standard of beauty! 

Oh, the fucking pain. Ow. ow.owowoowowow. 

I suppose there is a method to her madness. By spewing so much nonsense all at once she ensures at least some of it will go unchallenged by the other speakers.  I mean, it takes far longer to unpack her stupidity than it takes her to spew and move on, which is why I'm doing it here. Well, that and my own mental well being. If I didn't say something, didn't argue with her, even at a remote distance, I would be forced to choke on my own bile until my brain melted and I started nodding dumbly to every bit of illogical nonsense she dropped like so many stinky turds, all over the floor.

Society doesn't teach "one" standard of beauty. Fashions and fads come and go like the wind. That is society teaching us standards of beauty, but all the fashions and fads the world over, until we reach a nearly universal consensus, all seem to revolve around a few basic principles. Always. 

How is it that the Ming Chinese and Parisian Fashion Houses of Today both taught almost exactly the same standard of beauty? Coincidence? Conspiracy? Why is it that Jews and Gentiles both agree that Thin is In, when they can't even agree on something as trivial as the Messiah?  How is it that northern European Women are favored in places as culturally remote as Korea and the kalihari over all other ethnic groupings?  Even a bushman wants a pale blonde, fucked up as that sounds. 

Because Society. Because Beauty Myth.  Because Fat Acceptance Demands IT!

Sigh. 

Did you know that Reality Has a Liberal Bias? That Progressives are Smarter and More Scientifical than Conservatives? 

I've been told that a lot, so it must be true. 

All evidence to the contrary.

I can only hope that I'm reading the expression on Antigone Darling's face correctly, that she's spent the last several minutes swallowing her own amazement at the torrent of bullshit as I have.  I can't see Karen's face during Naomi's LONG statement, but I did note she couldn't quite keep herself from trying to interject, to protest at one point.  Please, god, let there be some hope for the world!

Anyway: Karen finally gets her say around the 14 minute mark and she uses it to... sigh... point out that Feminism is built on lies and burying history. She's not wrong, but given the sheer volume of horse shit Naomi was spewing, the sheer mass of illogic, it seems a bit... weak.  Tear down Naomi, tear down and shame this very public, popular proponent of the lies. Call her the fuck out! But no... apparently that is a bit too direct, a bit too aggressive. 

So then the moderator steps in to protest the use of the word 'Henpecked' to describe men who were being beaten by their wives!

Really?

REALLY!!!!

So, if men are beaten by their wives, then publicly shamed, the real tragedy here is that some woman might be called a hen?  

I guess I can forgive her for not knowing that british women eagerly use that term for themselves, say.  I mean, dear fucking lord, its not even a remotely insulting term!  Demeaning? Nope, again.   

So, it looks like Naomi's Magical Fountain of Illogic will remain uncapped, as Karen is now forced to defend the use of the term Henpecked from the moderator, by contrasting it to cock fights.  Egads. 

Taking advantage of the distraction, and Karen's utterly unnecessary capitulation that 'gendered language about violence is wrong but unavoidable', Naomi pops off with another canard that all the feminists SHE knows care about the male victims of domestic violence, and how the change from 'wife beating' to 'domestic violence' is all about recognizing male victims...

So, we now have two ducks. 

Let me unpack this before Karen, at last, confronts Naomi's fucking lies. 

First of all, we have standard 'bubble talk'. She might as well have said she wasn't a racist because she has black friends, or something. Saying that a given movement has certain traits because you know some people in the movement that have those traits is horrifically fallacious on the face of it. Its a non-arguement that shouldn't pass muster in a high school debate club, much less in a national conversation.  Further, she's utterly lying about why the change in terms.  Wife Beating is wonderfully descriptive and evocative. So much so that when they started using it in the seventies and eighties, they very easily got a bunch of laws passed that made it (More) illegal to beat your wife. The problem was they weren't really making any progress in tightening the straps. Remember what I said earlier about how Progressives and Socialists HATE easily defined terms? Remember 'Double-speak'?  Well, Wife Beating is pretty much a self evident term, and trying to expand its definition for legal progress is fighting the natural human tendency to take things at face value. 

It does no good to appeal to Wife Beating laws to arrest a man for yelling at his wife. But if you can call it 'domestic violence', well, you've got a bunch more room to work.  Violence Against Women is even better, since it explicitly excludes male victims, but one step at a time. 

Not one feminist ever stood up and said they needed more comprehensive 'Domestic Violence' laws to protect the male victims who were excluded from protection under 'wife beating' laws.

So we have both a horrifically fallacious argument followed by an outright lie. 

So, while Karen disputes Naomi's false assertions, she again seems to stop short of just calling the bitch out, preferring in this case to refer to more anonymous feminist actions like the false statistics on DV put out by organization X,Y or Z... 

And she lets herself get cut off by Naomi, who basically says 'I don't know about that study', which as I've mentioned before is fairly standard socialist technique. That is why you have to pin them down to what they actually say, and call them on THAT.   Naomi then takes the ball and keeps running, pointing out that 90% of all violence is committed by men... and wisely she avoids citing her studies, preferring to refer to some sort of group consensus 'all studies', then white washing her comment by saying that talking about the gender of the perpetrator is pointless.

She may be dumb as a box of rocks, but her rhetoric-fu is strong, I'll give her that.  I'm sorry to the AVfM guys, but I'm seeing Karen getting overpowered rather than 'winning' in any meaningful sense.

So lets keep unpacking the lies and bullshit. 

Notice what happens here. Karen points out a study, naming the organization, and cites hard numbers and reveals a typical feminist tactic, specifically the rebranding of the nearly 50% male victims of DV as female victims, and Naomi simply hand waves it away before responding with her own study, which is never named or sourced, and the concreteness of the numbers is therefore suspect, though plausible.  Karen should have immediately called her to account, as Naomi's lack of familiarity with the study is irrelevant to the point. Maybe she will once she finally responds, but I doubt it.

As for Naomi's 'study', it has no bearing at all on Domestic Violence or violence against women.  Even assuming I wasn't familiar with her unnamed source, I can point out right here that it says, she says rather, nothing at all about who is being targeted by that violence. The answer, of course, is other men. She even mentions bar fights, for god's sake! 

So after having dropped this anti-male study-bomb into the conversation she then declares it verboten...  that's right, she can use it to talk bad about men, but since we shouldn't be talking about the gender of the perpetrators anyway...

Oh, wait. We SHOULD be talking about the genders of the perpetrators. That is, in fact, exactly what Karen was doing. She was pointing out that women are committing plenty of domestic violence, and always have been, and thus we need to seriously rethink our attitudes towards domestic violence!

Well.  Nothing like denying your opponents the chance to attack a weak point in your case, is there?  Lets see if she gets away with it. I should note that Naomi keeps talking, mostly towards the friendly moderator, and as she does it is clear that Karen is aware she's being steamrolled, by her body language. 

Naomi goes on and on, dominating the clock and talking about men becoming feminists and somehow magically teaching rwandans not to commit rapes and violence, going back to her magical 'analysis' line from earlier. 

Can I just say that sounds incredibly racist? 

Karen obviously has enough, and cuts in, stumbling over her apparent desire to rebut Naomi's rebuttal, and her need to attack the next point, the Man Up movement, which is where we see how Naomi's rhetorical tactics actually work.  Since she keeps piling on more and more bullshit, she never has to defend her rebuttals, their' buried in the mass of shit.

But the Moderator cuts Karen off to give Antigone a chance to speak.  On the one hand, the Moderator is clearly on Naomi's side, but then too, we're twenty minutes in and Antigone hasn't really said a word beyond her self introduction, and she clearly has something to say.  

Which is probably why progressives love panel discussions. Its easy to sideline a speaker in the name of fairness, while a straight up debate, even one without formal rules of logic (allowing rhetorical tricks such as Naomi's to pass without challenge) forces them to allow strong arguments to be heard. 

What, exactly does Antigone have to say?

No real rebuttal, actually, though I think she is mostly on Karen's side, if not actually aligned. She starts talking about how schools punish boys, drug boys.. while Naomi makes a bunch of 'I agree' comments, because only an complete moron would stand up and say, in a public panel debate, that she thinks it is a good thing.  Antigone also makes the point, the first person to do so, though I think by accident, that discussing India and Rwanda in a discussion about Libertarianism and Feminism in the United States is kinda out of her league. 

Like I said, its sort of an accidental point. 

Then she goes on and reveals a reasonably well educated mind, and the flaws of the american school system as she starts to rebut the moderators earlier comment about the vote. Not the way I did, mind you, but by talking about how women held property, taverns specifically, in Boston in 1740, before old white men took it away.  Oy vey.  As they say, the good lord giveth and the good lord taketh away. 

See: she makes a great point about women owning property, then backs it with mindless prog-babble about old white men.  Now, since I was unaware that women owned 60% of the taverns in boston, I can't say authoritatively that the colonial congress ever took their property away, but in general I am unaware that women ever had property legally stripped from them as a class in the history of Common Law.  The vote and property are not and were not linked in the constitution.

But that's not quite what I meant when I talked about the state of the educational system. I mean, apparently in public schools we now have in depth studies of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Mary Wollstonecraft.  

Now, when I went to school, we learned that suffragettes existed and totally did stuff, but we didn't learn much about their names and identities.  We also didn't learn a fucking thing about Eli Whitney except that he invented the Cotton Gin, and this totally made slavery uneconomical or something. 

See, that's because public schools generally suck at teaching the finer points of history. There is a good, god damn reason for that, seeing that we've got some six thousand years of fairly well detailed history, covering several thousand nations, city states and so forth, and the more recent we get the more comprehensive our records become.   So, while Lord Keynes might have been one of the most important men in the world after World War I, I never heard his name until I was old enough to get curious about economics on my own.  Why? Because there are probably five or six hundred men who could make similar claims about their relative historical importance at that time, and no one has time to learn them all.   Its called "Relevance". 

So, apparently, the leading lights of the Sufferage Movement are now given extensive study in public schools. Even Antigone seems to find it excessive. 

If you think I'm being dismissive because they are women: Name every US president, without looking it up.   I'm betting Antigone can't, but I assure you that presidents are pretty important to understanding US history. I wonder if she can name the president who was in office at the time the 19th Amendment was passed?   

I mean: I'm sure she can name him, but does she know which president she should name? 

Bah.  Back to the Video.

So, Naomi starts saying that the state never granted women the right to vote, because... um... women fought for it and took it?

Yeah.

Do you see why I call her stupid? 

That, right there, is pure, concentrated stupid.  

Let me explain, as if to a small child: If I give You and Apple, and You Take that Apple, the apple was both given AND taken.  

If you protest and protest and protest, and the State gives in to your demands, they STILL gave you the right to vote, regardless of WHY. 

This, folks, is the intellectual rigor demanded of progressives. These are your intellectual elites, running the country. Top Men are working on it, as we speak. Top Men. 

So fucking boned.

Karen and Naomi snipe at each other a bit before Naomi once again overpowers Karen's legitimate comments by reshaping them into rhetorical gibberish that makes her, magically, not-wrong.  

Then back to Antigone, who is clearly well educated on the suffrage movement in general, making the point, for example, that women in utah could vote until 1897, when the Federal Government took that vote away (note again that this is a Libertarian conference they are speaking at, so she gets cheers for the point).  She also talked about a declaration of sentiments, something I've never heard of (Wiki!!! Save me!), but from what she says it is clear she finds it needs a bit of a rewrite to remove the anti-male sentiment and replace it (easily) with anti-state sentiment.  Obviously Antigone is here far more for the Libertarianism than the other three women!  

So, Wiki is helpful. The Declaration of Sentiments was a foundational document for the Suffragettes, and was penned by Elizabeth Cady Stanton (there is some weird waffle language early in the wiki article about who organized the document...), and a decent overview of what it says.  

Let me say first that the title is pure emotionalism.  The longer title is marginally better, but who the fuck declares 'sentiments'.  Now, I could almost buy that this is a change in how we use language, reflecting that this is a century and a half, plus change, old.  But.. no.

A bunch of women, and a handful of men, got together to write out a screed that they then immediately sabotaged by declaring that this was how they felt.  Imagine Thomas Jefferson sending King George a 'Declaration of Sentiments regarding Independence'.  

Christ, they could have avoided the whole war! King George would have died laughing! Well, given that he was fucking mad, his prime minister would have died laughing, the British would have concluded, rightfully, that the Colonies were whinging unmanfuly and never bothered with all that nonsense about sending troops and what have you.  Then the colonies would have sulked for a bit and gone about paying british taxes. 

Yes, I went there.  I fucking mocked the shit out of a bunch of women for writing their great ode to freedom in the language of a petulant children.  I didn't force them to call it their 'Sentiments', and I didn't force them to wave it about proudly for three generations (Naomi's formulation...).  They did that shit themselves. 

As for the writing itself: the portion stolen more or less directly from the Declaration of Independence is tolerable, but the parts that Cady Stanton were forced to write out herself are border on intolerable gibberish.  I won't go into the list of grievances individually. Its a mixed bag, some are good, clear grievances, others are nonsense following from false premises.  If you want I may devote a whole post to parsing it later. 

Still: I Declare that I Feel!!!!

Lolwut?

Okay. So I was going to utterly ignore Naomi's long winded rhetorical bullshit... she repeats a bunch of her standard talking points, including Analysis and general mindless praise for the insights of the Suffragettes...  in other words hammering her empty points into the minds of the audience, still unchallenged... but she goes on to point out how bad women had it with regards to double standards in divorce.

Groan.

Yes, women have had it bad in divorce law in the past. I won't dispute that. Arguments could be made about divorce laws prior to the post-feminist era, but I'm not the one to make them.

No, lets talk about double standards in divorce. 

Did you hear about the man who set himself on fire on the courthouse steps to protest the double standards in divorce law? I bet you didn't, but it totally happened.  Do you think he was protesting because his ex-wife had it too hard in the courts? 

I hope to god Karen leaps on this. Not because its the worst thing Naomi has said thus far, but because it seems like 90% of the momentum behind the Men's Rights Movement is just how fucking unfair divorce law is for men. Lets watch and find out.

Well, Naomi is still going on and on. A man could divorce a woman for adultery. Naomi totally says this like its a bad thing.  She does point out a double standard, in that the man had to be cruel and vicious, or have abandoned her. Or, you know, Sodomy.  So, Naomi, a woman could divorce her husband because she gave him a blow job? 

Oh, you didn't realize Sodomy included hummers?  Yes, it totally does. You can look it up. 

I'm going to defend this particular double standard with my favorite peeve: The Tyranny of Biology. 

See: A woman who commits adultery is potentially committing paternity fraud on her husband. There is an insanely good chance that a man is going to spend twenty years caring for a child that is not his own if his wife is stepping out on him.   This is not an insignificant thing, and even women recognize it, which is why women tend to favor their daughters over their sons (since they will never truly know if their son's children are actually his, while they are absolutely certain their daughter's children are hers... genetics, bitch).  A man who steps out on his wife is not particularly at risk of stealing twenty years of his wife's labor from her if he knocks up his favorite mistress.  

This double standard is brought to you by Biology.  So, when you break down the two significant reasons Naomi actually names in her legal causes for divorce, you get 'Paternity Fraud' and 'Abandonment', which actually seem pretty damn equivalent to me!

How much longer is the stupid bobble head gonna talk though?

Oh, thank God! Some dude in the audience, unmic'd stands up and confront Naomi on a basic fundamental premise! Regardless of who had the power back then, these days the State is pretty much pro-woman.  

Oh, fine, back to Naomi for a moment: She pulls another rhetorical trick, after her nonstop rush of babble-logic she ends with 'I think we can all agree', which leads to polite head nodding, and explicit agreement from the moderator.  

No, Naomi, we can't agree. Mostly because you are talking out your ass most of the time, and lying the rest of it. 

Karen responds, I think to keep Naomi's mouth shut for a few seconds and makes a fairly strong point about child custody (I assume she heard the question much better than I did), complete with a reference to the Tender Years Doctrine. Nothing like dropping the names of acts into the conversation to prove your case! So much better than babble logic, but I may be biased. 

So the Moderator weighs in. Hey! She actually used the term Canard! I should like her more now, right?

Well, not so much. First there is the utter lack of depth in her commentary regarding the 'canard' of the state.  

Um... hey, you know... the state sort of...is. Its not a canard, nor a duck, it is an actual thing that needs to be addressed. Changed, certainly. But, sweetie (I say with some loathing, like a southern girl...), its still gonna exist even if you go full libertarian. 

Though I was amusing myself earlier in my review considering just how fun it would be to watch all these feminists deal with a 'pure' libertarian state, with no military and no police.  I mean, it would become a true anarchist state shortly after... and on that I believe Antigone is actually pro-anarchy, which lowers her intellect in my esteem by no small margin. 

And you should know how I feel about anarchy. Lady, you think we have a rape culture now? Wait until all these maligned, abused and undersexed beta males no longer have to worry about The Law. They've been playing Grand Theft Auto for a decade now, they know exactly what they'll be doing, you better believe. 

Moving on.

So Antigone then goes on to state that all Feminists should be Anarchists, and I lose a little more respect for her mind.  Maybe.  I can chalk it up to her self admitted difficulty with defining feminism, or perhaps it is an excessively subtle dig at feminism... but since I'm sure she is pro-anarchy, that just doesn't seem possible.  Don't get me wrong, I would love to see all feminists pushing for Anarchy. It'll never happen, but if it did... well, look up a paragraph.  I love seeing people hoist by their own petard.  She goes on and on about divorce laws and lawyers and mediation.  I'm no expert on state laws, but she never mentions the option of pro se divorce, which I know is legal in Washington State. I was unaware that any state had made it mandatory that you hire a lawyer for any purpose.  I'm just going to assume she is wrong about the point she is making.  A quick google search seems to confirm my point. So, while she may be right that MEDIATION is not legal everywhere, Pro Se appears to be universal in Common Law.  So, no mandatory lawyers, and the State did not intervene to ensure a hostile divorce.  I'm not sure what role Judges are supposed to play in preventing amicable divorces, though I guess they aren't involved in New Hampshire's Mediation process? 

She closes by repeating her canard (three ducks!), that all feminists should work on abolishing the state, earning amused laughs from the two feminists.  The Moderator, who at least seems to be heavily libertarian for reals, despite her pro-feminist stance, I don't doubt is completely sincere. She seems vapid enough to not see the contradiction between the two points. I can't see Naomi at that moment, but when the camera pans to Karen she doesn't seem amused.

Karen makes a minor non-sequitor in her counterpoint.  Instead of directly referencing the Feminist-Anarchist coalition based on the need for feminists to use the power of the state to compel men (something I know she knows), she choses to narrow it down to NOW and shared parenting laws. I mean, she is making a counterpoint, but rather than the broad swipe rejecting Naomi's, and Feminism's legitimacy in claiming to be pro-libertarianism, she focuses on something no one has really talked about yet.  

Naomi tries to reject her argument, apparently believing NOW doesn't oppose shared parenting. Lets see how it plays out...

So Naomi make her first bad play. I can see she wants to repeat her technique from earlier regarding the Domestic Violence studies, but she can't quite get over her disbelief that NOW, or Feminists of any stripe, would oppose Shared Parenting.  The best she can do is get Karen to agree to email the citations after the show, which does weaken Karen in the audience's eyes, as for once she doesn't have the hard, indisputable facts at hand.  

Raise your hands if you think Naomi Wolf is honestly going to read those citations beyond looking for a few isolated phrases to twist their meaning in future debates?  Yeah, me neither. 

Karen goes on to cite an activist on the ground, which is no more legitimate than Naomi's earlier 'every feminist I know' comment, but is much slicker. So, nearly thirty minutes into the... discussion? the panel, Karen begins scoring some points and Naomi seems to have run out of babble-logic, at least temporarily. 

Well, good.  Was it the interruption from the Audience? Was it the bizarro world suggestion of anarchist-feminists?  I don't care, but its good to see the light of reason and fact begin to shine down upon the benighted face of malicious stupidity.   There is nothing like having your opponent have to concede that they can't oppose your facts to strengthen your case.  Professing ignorance is, at best, a face saving gesture, its no defense.

Too bad I can't read Naomi's face. I might think she's botox'd up, but she lacks that slick, plastic shine that usually seems to accompany it.  Honestly, her expression never really changes. Its not fixed... more like she's doped up on horse tranquilizers, but she's too energetic when making her 'case'.   I guess its just very well schooled, or maybe I just naturally turn my gaze away from disgusting things... 

Karen asks "If feminists weren't opposing it, why don't we have it?"

Its an interesting question, rhetorically.  Naomi tries to counter with logic, as if she'd been following the rules of a formal debate or something, pointing out that other people could be opposing it.

Karen seems caught up in her case, though and she lets the comment go. 

I think the proper response would have been to ask 'Who are these 'other people' and why would they be opposing it?'

That's not quite as on point as I'd like it to be, but:  Does even Naomi try to say Feminism isn't a political force in our current government? She might, but I don't think anyone is buying it.  Its a short leap to buying that Feminism is opposing shared parenting, given that the current system defaults exclusively to women, often even in clear cases where the woman is a bad parent and the man is not, thus Shared Parenting would give more custody to men and eliminate many Child Support settlements, so we can draw a case for feminism to be the villains in this specific case. 

Naomi, however, is testing the edge of Ockham's Razor, and multiplying the agents unnecessarily.  That's a wicked blade to run your thumb against in a debate, and I'm sure Karen's smart enough to use it to cut her throat, but she'd pulling in numbers, talking over Naomi.

I can't fault her, given how this has gone. Let the feminist talk and she'll blather on for five minutes at a stretch, until you CAN'T rebut her points without looking tendentious. 

But still: Who are these mysterious opponents and where are they getting their political clout?  Is it the Jesuits?

 I bet it is the Jesuits. 

Anyway: Karen gets out her percentages regarding the popularity of shared parenting. 

Naomi rebuts with another "everybody I know" comment. This time I think her bubble gets her in trouble. I can hear Karen making dumbfounded noises even as Naomi talks about how everyone she knows in New York that is divorced ALREADY shares parenting fairly. 

Heh. 

Now, if you are an MRA, you are naturally biased, possibly to the point of bubbling (epistemological closure?) on the topic opposite of Naomi Wolf. However, as I am NOT an MRA, and I have no children, I am a reasonable stand in for the common man, or common woman.  So for the imaginary readers from New York, in Ms Wolf's neighborhood, let me mansplain it too ya. 

No one, from the smartest honor student in the class, to the dumbest drugged out crackhead in the streets, thinks that any man contesting for even equal parentage of his children, after a divorce, has a shot in hell of getting it.  Not unless they are blinded by ideology.  Poor folks don't much care, as there's no real money to be taken, can't squeeze blood from a stone and all that, and Papa Government cuts the checks anyways, but custody still isn't shared. Its the woman.  

The Reason Naomi Wolf can say this is that she is disgustingly rich and lives in an upscale neighborhood, probably in Manhattan, surrounded by other rich urbanites like herself.  Rich people divorce differently than most people. First, there is likely to be a prenuptial agreement in place, both sides have very, very powerful lawyers, and even a smaller slice of pie is pretty god damn big, big enough that fighting over the relative pennies of child support payments (Eddie Murphy paid 50k a month, as I recall... or more than many middle class families pull in a year, each month!), isn't worth the sort of hassle. 

Naturally its easy for rich people to share custody. Everyone lives in New York City, nobody had to relocate for a job, there are nannies and such to handle messy face to face meetings if necessary. 

In this moment, Naomi's success works against her utterly, as she basically falls back to citing her own experience which is, needless to say, too far removed from reality to be credible to almost anyone in attendance, or watching on youtube. 

Karen calls her on it, calls her, in fact a wealthy woman.

Curiously, Naomi tries to protest she is not.

Well, not so curiously. While Socialism and Communism has long been supporting "Class Warfare", being sold as a fight of the poor against the rich, the true enemy, the Bourgeoisie, is actually the Middle Class. However, it would never do to let the Proles know that! If they realized that they will still be kept far from the levers of power by the wealthy elites, they wouldn't fight nearly so hard!

So Naomi can't afford to see herself as wealthy, not publicly.  Of course, in terms of actual wealth she probably actually IS Bourgeoisie class, the Upper Middle Class, close to the levers of power but not holding them. I dunno, trying to group modern american classless classes against fourteenth century french Classes is an exercise in frustration, but my point remains the same. 

Naomi Wolf, who has been a published author, cited and writing for the New York Times as a guest opinion columnist, who has served as an advisor to presidential candidates, and undoubtedly lives in a million+ dollar condo in a very expensive neighborhood, doesn't want us to know she is rich. 

Its telling that she takes it as an Insult. 

In what world is pointing out someone's wealth an insult? 

Well, in a Progressive World of Class Warfare, when "The Rich" are demonized. You can't actually be Rich unless you... own a business or something, regardless of how much money you have.  

Naomi capitalizes on the fact that Karen can't possibly know how much money she is worth (3 million dollars, by the way... thirty seconds on Google).  Karen chokes, ironically as the Moderator, who must have SOME idea of just how pathetic Naomi's defense actually is (it SOUNDS good, at times), actually steps in and buys Karen a chance to redirect to the bubble instead of wealth. 

I can see that Karen's normal debates are slow paced internet/youtube duels, where she excels. The task of mustering her thoughts and resources on the fly is clearly tasking her, especially here.  I think this explains her occasional topic shifts, as she has to force the conversation into specific facts she has already mastered or memorized.  Its a good technique, and she has clearly used it to her advantage when she's had the chance, but it has its weaknesses, clearly.

Naomi, of course, looks smug. She put up a strong face, got a few zingers in and made Karen choke on her own argument, so she thinks she's won.

And if we were focused purely on style, she did win.  But, she's bubbled up. She doesn't know what she doesn't know, so to speak, and that's just how thin her defense is.  How can she possibly be a multi-decade leading figure in popular feminism and NOT be wealthy? How can she possible live in New York City of the post Guiliani era and NOT be wealthy? How can she have decades worth of books, including the risible self-worship text, and not have wealth? 

You don't need to know much more than what is in her introduction to just understand that this is a wealthy, powerful woman.  

Back to the vid.

Karen pulls back to NOW and WHY they oppose Shared Custody, and Naomi falls back to her 'I don't believe it' schtick, but Antigone weighs in, asking if NOW is a leading Feminist organization. 

Its a curious question, something I'd expect as a sort of defensive question, but Antigone isn't done. No one contests that NOW is the largest feminist organization (Karen, with her mastery of the facts of her case, providing), and Antigone brings in a curious factoid from her college days where NOW called all men's organizations pedarests. 

Ouch. 

Naomi continues playing the disbelief card, trying to chalk it up to a random internet lie, while Antigone basically dismisses NOW as toxic. 

Let me clarify, she doesn't dismiss NOW's role in Feminism, she dismisses the organization itself, saying 'I don't listen to them', several times.  Of course, Antigone is clearly undereducated on Feminism, but unlike most young women she doesn't use that as an excuse to boost feminism because its 'for women', so I'll save a bit of excoriation on her anarchy, a lighter mocking you could say.  

Naomi attempts a rally, calling on her Journalism Authority to claim she is uncomfortable with these un-cited statements and demanding the audience google.  I think that is a gamble play. Maybe she's hoping no one will actually do it, or at least won't speak up, maybe she thinks they won't find any of it. 

Then things get weird. A woman in the audience quotes NOW as begin against Forced Shared Parenting, and Naomi latches onto that additional word like a drowning man grabbing a piece of wood.

This is just the whole Progressive obfuscation trick all over.  Karen points out that no law would force shared parenting, though what 'forcing' would entail I'm not entirely clear on, but that doesn't matter. That word is in there and Naomi thinks it is enough to render everything, every fact, Karen has stated somehow invalid. 

You do see how this works, right?  Nothing means what it says on the tin, everything can be spun and spun and spun until you are right and they are wrong.  As far as the Audience goes, the woman with the google clearly buys Naomi's take, given how she stressed the word Forced when she read it off. 

So Naomi pulls out a 'lecture on accuracy and sourcing'. She's clearly spinning, as well as trying to draw on her credentials as a Journalist for some authority.  You can see Karen's frustration clearly here.  Naomi clearly knows her audience, pandering shamelessly to their libertarian natures with comments about citizen journalists and police states and the like, and with typical arrogance referencing the 'gatekeepers'... you know, like traditional journalists? Like Naomi Wolf?  

If nothing else, she's got some Huevos. 

Pretty much the entire point is to suggest that Karen just lied through her teeth because she didn't use the word 'Forced' from the beginning. Not, of course, that she says that outright. 

At least our champion of truth is undaunted. 

Hmm. 

I think she IS daunted, actually, Damitall.  But she soldiers on gamely, which is what I meant.  She starts talking about some group in Australia that did the same thing as NOW was, and the Moderator tries to cut in. Naomi does an audible put-upon sigh.

Then Antigone steps up to point out that 'that group is not NOW'.  Ouch. 

Its a fair point, but seriously unwelcome just now.   

Anyway, Antigone goes on to reference Shulamith Firestone, via Susan Faludi, and trying to ask the big picture question about 'what is feminism' and 'does this or that really represent all of feminism'. 

Sadly, my esteem for her took another hit when she praised Ms Firestone. Unlike Antigone, I actually know who Shulamith Firestone was and own a copy of the Dialectic of Sex. I'd say I read it, but that would be like saying Atlas picked up some heavy stuff one day, or that the Somme was a fight.  Like many feminist authors, it is quite evident both from her writing and her biography that Ms Firestone was a profoundly disturbed woman when she wrote her book, and her sad and pathetic death would strongly suggest she never did get better.   

Not that I expect Naomi to point out that Shulamith cites no sources at all in her naked assertions. Curious how that works, isn't it? 

No, Naomi, perhaps sensing a possible ally, heaps some praise on Antigone for her question and goes back to her useless point about a million feminisms, and of course nakedly panders some more by mentioning a million anarchisms and a million libertarianism's.  I'm not sure Antigone buys it, but she is the wild card in the panel so far.

And if she is a die hard anarchist, she probably knows that there are, in fact, only a few distinct schools of anarchy, and they are pretty well defined and labeled, as far as it goes.  I would expect her to know the difference, off hand, between an anarcho-syndicalist and Collectivist-Anarchy, which means she might not buy this 'everyone's interpretation of Feminism is valid' line of bullshit. 

Anyway: once again, given free reign, Naomi goes on and on, siting contra-factual data like it was going out of style, leaving off just enough details that its hard to pin her on any specific lie.  She was born in 1962, and at that time women were not free, doncha know? They couldn't go to universities, or at least not Her university  (yale).  A curious thing happens when you look up Yale's going Co-ed.

See, Naomi doesn't actually lie. In 1962, Yale was all male, just like she claims. However, Yale's 'sister school', Vasser, was All Female.  Both schools went Co-Ed in 1969, several years after Yale approached Vasser about going Co-ed. 

See? Not a lie. But it is a far, far cry from what she actually implied.  If she'd entered university in 1962 she would have simply gone to Vasser, instead. We might debate the merits of the value of a Vasser degree over a Yale degree, but it seems to me that, at least in 1962, they were pretty much equivalent.  If there WAS any difference in, say, job opportunities it would have been because 'woman' not because 'not-yale'. 

We could pretty much unpack everything she says about the gross injustices of 1962 for women in much the same way, but this is to miss two very big points. First, Naomi Wolf didn't actually experience ANY of that injustice she rants against. She was an infant, and there is no daylight between the obstacles she faced, as a woman, and the lack of obstacles her daughter faces today, as a woman.  

Second: While things were different in 1962 than they are today, we have yet to establish that things were in any way objectively bad for women, and that the changes gained by feminism are objective improvements.  Lets take Yale/Vasser for a moment.  Studies are increasingly showing that sex segregated schools do a much better job teaching both men and women than co-ed schools do. So Naomi Wolf's education might actually be worse than what she would have gotten in 1962.  Obviously, forcing or coercing schools into going Co-Ed is not a net improvement for anyone, by that light and thus are hardly a success for feminism!  

As an aside, I note that Naomi talks about her daughter extensively here, but has yet to mention her son. Likewise, I doubt she'll take feminism to task for convincing her to wait until she was 35 and 40 to have her children... 

Wait! Did she just say what I think she said?

She just said that it doesn't matter if you think feminism was successful or relevant but the lesson is meaningful? 

Da fuq!

Also... despite this being only three minutes after she claimed not to be wealthy (another reason not to mention Yale....), she forgets and talks about how women were denied Rhodes Scholarships in 1962... before quickly changing tack to explain that she got an education she couldn't afford. Hee!!!

So lets unpack the rhodes scholarship comment too!  See, maybe the rhodes scholarship was for men only, in 1962.  How many scholarships today are for women only? Just askin...

Since I am relistening to this particular screed: She claims women couldn't get credit in their own name, and they couldn't leave abusive relationships.

So women could obviously do credit worthy work in 1962, but they couldn't claim it. I call bullshit, but frankly this is taking me about four times longer than just watching the video alone would have done, so I'm tapped on research for the moment.  I don't doubt a lot of women have had credit for their work taken by men... but I'll bet millions more men have had women take credit for the work that the men did.  Goose and gander, meet sauce.

And did I miss a period in US law between the divorce law she cited regarding the suffrage fights and 1962 where there was NO divorce for women?  Because abuse (cruelty) was DEFINITELY one of the  reasons a woman could divorce her husband she mentioned earlier.   

Wait.. she didn't say women couldn't divorce, just that they couldn't leave... much worse.  So, in 1962, the law of the land was that you could chain your woman in the home and beat her all day long. Got it.  

Here we have a naked lie, buried in enough vague wording and blather that it slides by unchallenged. 

Ahh... so one of the good points about the current regime is that women can do what they want. Well, that's an unqualified success then! 

When do men get to do what they want?  ah... right... anarchy.   Get on it, Antigone! 

There is a subtle trick she pulls in the next line: "... that they'll have equal rights. At least under the law." 

See? The fight is never over, and Naomi Wolf still doesn't quite understand how rights work.  Obviously Feminism must continue its 'good work' because she has to add that qualifier, as meaningless as it really is. 

Then she says her daughter's options are so much bigger than her own, even when she began her career.  

Do you see that misdirection? All those horrible, horrible facts about 1962 that she went on and on about are now implied directly to have been true in, oh, 1985, when she graduated from Yale, or 1987 when she left Oxford.  Bet you didn't realize how horrible women had it in 1990, did you?  Well, now you know.  

Fuck. I hate this verbal tick she has where she voices air quotes around the word Feminism. She can't just seem to say the word straight, but has to stress that its this super inclusive idea or gestalt, rather than a clear political philosophy complete with seminal texts and official positions on the issues of the day, not to mention the distinct 'waves' of the movement.  I almost feel bad for Antigone here, who clearly thought she might learn what feminism was besides the dictionary definition.   Likewise you can clearly hear her forcing herself to add 'and men' to her descriptions of feminism. 

At least she admits that feminism is trying to bring about a revolution, though she ties it to the libertarian movement.

So, the moderator starts in with the same nonsense about the next wave of feminism being focused against the state, clearly buying into the program.  She repeats the Old Dudes canard, pretty strongly. 

Well, thats at least twice.  Fuck it, why not unpack it, squeeze that duck until it quacks.

Okay, so there are two (three really, but they've only been using two so I'll save myself the energy) elements to the old dudes canard. The first is a sort of ageism, the second is men. 

By far the very stupidest part of the canard is that old people are somehow evil.  I get where the general idea comes from, but that doesn't make it any less stupid. Most of the people who really pushed that old fucker idea are now quite old themselves, while some are merely sorta old, like Naomi Wolf, say.  I'm willing to be the Moderator is, herself, over the age of thirty though it is hard to tell, and thus officially 'old'. 

Now, I don't for a minute buy that age always equals wisdom. There are plenty of stupid and foolish old people out there. On the other hand, making it to a respectable age generally means you've learned a bit along the way, so its not the worst way to pick leaders. In fact, explicitly picking the youngest people to lead is objectively worse. 

And we all get old, so begin jealous of the old for having made the rules is a little naive. The current old people will die, and the current young people will get old and have their turn being those 'old dudes'.

Finally, the founders of our country were all, with few exceptions (Ben Franklin, say), pretty much younger than Naomi Wolf, who first dropped the duck on us.  I'll bet Jefferson, for example, was younger than the moderator, even if she isn't thirty yet.  Based on what Antigone said about her college days, I'm gonna say he was younger than she is now.  A large portion of the glorious leadership of the Revolution (viva la revolution!!!!) were under thirty when they fought and bled to make this country. So what if they took fifteen years to hammer out the actual constitution? Shit, by that metric you could put grade school kids in charge and they'd be official old by the time they finished! 

As for the man part? Well, I suppose if you want laws explicitly favoring women over men having all men in charge is a bad thing. That's entirely subjective, however.  If its objectively bad, well... I can only point out that they did a pretty damn good job running the world for a few thousand years. Clearly adding women to the mix has not ushered in an era of peace and prosperity to rival the heavens. By the most even and generous metrics, allowing women to run shit has resulted in a wash for all parties. The world has not become a better place. Worse?  Eh.  In my mind its not a question of wether or not the world has gotten worse since feminism, its wether or not women are the ones to blame.  My jury is still out on that one.  That does leave me in the sticky position of pointing out that adding women didn't make anything better, so taking them back out shouldn't make anything worse... logically. 

So, we've unpacked the duck. Next time someone talks about old white dudes, you've got at least two good points you can use to shame them with, right? 

Heh. I cut the moderator off a little too soon. 

So she points out that the logical end point of feminism is women running the state. Just puts that out there like its the most natural thing in the world.   Now, I know she's not endorsing that, because she seems to think Libertarianism means 'no state', which she is obviously for, but still.

Antigone points out that women are as evil as men, which is always fun to hear. I'm rather inclined to postulate they are more evil than men. Sure, every high school movie since the dawn of film has included a male bully or two, but no one ever made a 'mean guys' film... 

Anyway, Antigone goes on to correct the moderator and claims, as a good little anarchist should, that the divide was between wealthy people and poor people, then goes on to stress white males of the proper european heritage. Sigh.  Well, predictable, anyway.

Karen just starts talking. No, this is good. She can lead into a point as well as anyone I've seen, and she just wedges open a talking point as smooth as you please. Her delivery is still weak, but she makes the 'prosperity point', essentially cutting Antigone's oh-so PC point off at the knees before everyone starts head-knodding like little sheeplings.  Its got less to do with feminism, but I'm still pleased to see vacuous idea pushed aside, and so casually. 

And, of course, we see WHY I said earlier in the video why Karen should have just cut Naomi to the quick and called her out, because that is exactly what Naomi pulls on Karen here.  Naomi starts off with the same insincere 'with respect' bit she used earlier (unmentioned, so don't go looking for it), but then pulls back and corrects herself to 'brutal honesty mode' and flat out says Karen's facts are wrong. 

As predictable as the sunrise, which is why I advocate going for the jugular as early as possible. 

But Karen sticks to her guns.  I'll admit that if I'd been steamrolled as heavily as she was earlier I might have given up upon being called, essentially, a liar.  She seems to handle Naomi's accusations a lot better than I might have, but then I've got a more than healthy bit of rage, possibly on account of my overabundance of manliness.   Then too, I've never been quite in that position either... though I have reached the edge of my tolerance for prevaricators and fools, which is what I am using for my baseline response here.

Naomi declares nakedly that feminism was the invention of working class women, then reverses her earlier defensive technique, by suggesting she'll send Karen a list of sources to back her claim. Cute. 

One clear defense here would be to point out the founders of feminism. Betty Friedian, for example, was hardly 'working class'.  Likewise Simone de Beauvoir was a philosopher and intellectual... very much the opposite of the working class.   Now, I can guess Naomi would try to suggest they were merely influential on the movement, rather than founders and leaders... that the millions of definitions of feminism predate the codification of its principles from such notables and luminaries.  Then too, one goes back to the proto-feminists among the suffragette movement, most of whom were very well off.  

One could challenge Naomi to NAME one of these coal shoveling early feminists, but then she'd fall back on her 'to be sent later' sources, which takes them out of the argument, but I'd give that marks for style. 

Karen seems to have learned, as she keeps Naomi from going on another five minute rant, and clearly pissing her off in the process.  This simple refusal to swallow naked assertions is powerful stuff for the fans, clearly.  More objectively, it merely serves to stymie Naomi's presentation and crack her facade of cheerful bon homie.  Not that this is valueless. Karen may not score any converts in the audience in this exchange, but neither does Naomi, and the last Superbowl demonstrated that an excellent defense can beat a good offense handily.  That's a facile observation, yes?

Naomi does try to go on, clearly short tempered. Again, she packs a lot of vague complaints into a very short span of time. She mentions oppression by being raped by employers, and being oppressed by being unfit to marry if they were, well, sluts.  She has, as usual, quite the list, but I'm not going to relisten to her this time, so you're getting what leapt out at me.

First, keeping women out of the work place may or may not be terribly oppressive. Having worked most of my adult life, I think its safe to say that the ladies ain't missin' much! Heh.  However, keeping them out of the work place is an effective way of keeping them from being raped at work.  No need to be all Taliban about it, really.  See: Naomi is equating a crime with systemic oppression, something she, and feminists in general, do CONSTANTLY. I'd love to see someone call them out on this technique, but no one ever does.  If it was LEGAL to rape your secretary, that would be oppression. 

Then there is the almost obligatory slut defense.  Yes, holding a woman to account for her actions is oppression. This is a tired refrain from the MRM, but its an honest observation for all that.  Of course, Naomi deliberately packs it in after the office rape comment, so you can see what her defensive strategy is here.  I'd suggest that the number of women forced into prostituition by their unmarrigable status thanks to office rape is astoundingly low.  And why ARE women who have slept around considered unworthy of marriage by men?  Anyone? anyone? 

That's right, that fucking Tyrant, again... Biology.  Nothing like forcing men to pay for another man's baby because a woman couldn't be arsed to keep her legs together!  Hollah! 

Once again stealing a better line: Feminism is the words "I Want" in the mouths of women, nothing more. 

Karen tries to make the point about how men were oppressed by being pressed into service, and Naomi gives her a dust off, while the Moderator steps all over her point.  Honestly I think the 'well, men were oppressed too' is weak sauce. Not because of what I've said previously about the Tyranny of Biology and manhood, but because its just a weak argument.  Sure: its relevant and even on point, but it takes some serious rhetorical chops to make the point in a way that resonates with the audience. 

By itself its excellent material, as a counterpoint its just 'me too-ism', sad to say.  

Still, Karen manages to get a laugh from the audience, and possibly a modestly sincere clap from Naomi Wolf, so I'll give her a nice save... a style point if you will, and she definitely needs the style points.  

The Moderator moves to questions from the audience, and asks the panelists to keep it to a single sentence. Karen laughs at this, and I chose to believe its because she noticed that Naomi's technique involves clock domination and frantic shit-shovelling. Not that her own style is immune to being truncated. 

Naturally the Moderator immediately waffles on the point, which I could use to point out the difference between men and women... but I'd be stretching my case as I know plenty of dudes who put out a rule then immediately rescind it.  Feminization of modern men, or universal human spinelessness, you decide!

The first dude is obviously a feminist fan, going on about how bad his mom? Grandmom? Had it in the fifties, when she was studying biology in the university as an early feminist.  First: Great way to point out how feminism started with the coal shovellers and housemaids. Second: how oppressed was she, honestly, going to school to study biology? Seriously?  How many college classes are held after curfew??? Clue me in, I'm just a working class guy, but my few experiences with higher education suggests most classes for full time 'dorm bound' students are held during the day, if not all.  

Anyway, he goes on about how awesome it is that all the pharmacies he works with on the coasts have women in the positions of power, and how tragic it is that in Ohio, men still have positions of power. Now, I could be generous and assume he means that the coastal pharmacies are 'equally' male and female run, but he actually comes off as suggesting that men shouldn't be in positions of power over women in pharmacies at all. 

So, fuck you, Phil, you ball less bastard.  Yes, I know his name, as apparently the Moderator knows every single libertarian ever. 

At least his question isn't as fucked up as his story.  Phil actually asks, point blank, if we should move feminism out from the socialism it got 'tangled up with' in the sixties.  Well, full points for knowing that feminism is riddled with socialism, but I have to deduct one for not realizing Friedian was a card carrying communist.  

For the slow folks: Card Carrying, which comes from the membership cards members of the communist party were issued, complete with member numbers, so that is a description of Friedian that includes no literary illusions or idioms.  Betty Friedan may not have actually had a membership card, but she was a member of the Young Communist League, and twice tried to join the party, being turned away explicitly because she would be more useful outside the party itself, making her a crypto-communist!  Hah, I've always wanted to call someone that and really mean it, now I can! 

Naomi professes to love the question, but she outs herself for the fake she is, to howls of amusement, when she tries to answer it. Its a minor gaff at best. She's not there because of her strong libertarian credentials, but because Celebrity. 

Anyway, she goes on and on about her million versions of feminism, explicitly saying that no, the libertarians shouldn't try to separate socialism from feminism... but should instead make their own feminism.  Dear god, I've never seen anyone come so close to actually telling people they should become useful idiots quite so directly before!   

I also note she make NO effort to keep herself to a sound bite or single sentence. 

The next question should be interesting. A reasonably cute young woman* stands up and declares she rejects feminism, and she asks for each panelist to explain what that makes her.  Fun! 

Antigone say 'An Anarchist'.  She seems to mean it, maybe? She doesn't pass it off as a joke, so I'm gonna have to take another point from her on brains. 

Karen's answer, I think, was Individualist, which is marginally better in that at least it means something.

Naomi, however, takes the mic and runs for the hills again.  Not really, but she loves to talk. 

Antigone, however, makes a second point, one that is pretty critical of the current feminist doctrine, that just because she is a woman doesn't make everything 'cool' she does feminist, any more than being portugeuse makes anything cool she does about portuguese supremacy.  The strength of her delivery here makes me very, very curious about her professed ignorance during the panel, as it seems at odds with her stated understanding.  I'd say she was a crypto MRA, or at least a serious, if subtle, anti-feminist, but her actions in the debate were all over the map.  Lets take her at face value, then: Aside from her foolish, and increasingly vague, anarchism, she clearly has a problem with the current trends of feminism and has a very good rhetorical grasp of how to address it, when she has a mind to. This would imply that with a few reasonable, casual conversations, making a few relevant truths of feminism (such as its implicit connections to the organs of the State, power and authoritarian doctrines) she could be a powerful, and consistent ally. I'd suspect the proper way to address it would be to invite her to look up the relevant facts herself rather than just pile them on her...

And Naomi pulls a trick. Damn, I missed that. I should have known her initial take was too casual. She was just putting Amanda at ease.  Now she starts in with the 'generic check list of doom', all these little pet issues that no one could ever suggest were improper... women should be paid the same, women should be free from rape... suggesting that Amanda IS a feminist. So does that imply that Naomi believes Karen thinks women should be raped? 

This is part and parcel of her undefined movement technique.  Feminism doesn't stop women from being raped. Rape was a crime before feminism, its a crime now. 

I couldn't hear Amanda's response, but apparently she rejected the entire list outright. Naomi is stunned that Amanda thinks women should be raped... so there is clearly a communication issue.

Ah, so they bring back the Microphone, and Amanda basically puts Naomi in a corner.  You can hear her desperately trying to cut the girl off, to fem-splain that feminism will address her point, but Amanda just rolls right the fuck over her to the cheers of the audience! Damnit, girl! You needed to be up there backing Karen's play! 

Amanda's point is that adding laws to increase a woman's pay won't make women nearly as free as simply letting women negotiate her own contracts. Its a bit simplistic and naive, but compared to the vacuity of Naomi Wolf's statements it might as well be a pure chunk of Impervium. It's also the Libertarian point of view. Maximum freedom comes from fewer laws, not more laws.  

Naomi pulls out the 'Great Point' comment, because really: what can she saw without coming across as an antagonistic bitch? 

Antigone drops a Thomas Sowell reference and guts the pay gap myth like a pro. She's giving me a headache, honestly. Why didn't she pull that out earlier?  Then she pulls out the flensing knife and starts addressing the free from rape comment,  pointing out how Rape Culture is this very new concept with definite, unmistakable incredulity. Clearly she understands how Rights actually work. Damnit, again: Why wait so fucking long?

Naomi gamely offers to respond, then sits there gawping while she looks for her playbook... seriously, you can see the gears churning while she stumbles along looking for a quick answer. She settles on this idea that Rape is somehow far less prosecutable than, say, Murder thus rapists have some sort of defacto immunity.  The Moderator chimes in with some silly joke about murdering rapists...  Sigh.  Anyway: one thing that Naomi claims is that we have no record of how many rapists that are tried/investigated (she isn't entirely clear...) actually go to jail.  Dear god, that is the most idiotic statement I've ever heard.  We can provide very exact numbers of how many people are sentenced to jail for any fucking crime you care to mention, so if you have hard numbers (six percent, she claims) are prosecuted you can provide a hard percentage of those that went to jail. That's not even particularly hard math!  I didn't go to Yale and I could do it when I was ten or so. 

Karen begins with the logic about the difficulty of prosecuting rape, and Naomi goes straight for the Rape Apologist accusation before Karen's got more than a full sentence out.  Who didn't see that coming?  

I wish I could give this to Karen, I do. Personally, I don't really know how Naomi's Rape Apologist defense plays with the rubes. I HOPE they see it as the transparent ploy it is, but Karen just sort of rambles on a bit about states of mind before making an ugly segway to murder that may have been spurred by an audience comment I couldn't hear. 

I can't swear to it, but the Moderator seems to want to pull Naomi out of the fire by closing it all up, so she pulls for someone to give her an 'awesome question'.  Then again, she had already established the time limit for the question period, so...

So this distinguished... elegant, older gentleman stands up. Bowtie, careful erudition, very mildly effeminate in the manner of, say a British Upper Crust fellow.  But you know, he slides home the knife quite handily for all that... entirely apropos. Now, I can't swear it was his intent, but he asks for a very precise list of the specific inequities of the law suffered by women currently, and what is left for feminism to do.

Can you imagine a more irritating question, especially for a feminist who has spent the better part of an hour dodging all precision and going on and on about cultural oppression?  Its elegance lies in its obvious simplicity, its edge lies in the careful manner of its asking, leaving no room for wriggle. 

And.. once again Antigone decides to play both sides! Damn.  This should have been time to watch Naomi SQUIRM like a worm on a hook!  How does she even think  this is even her question to answer??? 

Bah.

Antigone starts in with some vague murmurs of research into reproduction, then finds her feet with contraception, specifically the FDA's rejection of non-hormonal birth control IUDs. It plays well with libertarians, and Naomi certainly encourages her.  Then she moves on to antidepressants, making I think  muddled case that Feminists should push to legalize marijuana, possibly as an alternative to xanax or something... to be honest, while she is passionate she misses the point that marijuana is a drug, so 'too many women on drugs' includes pot.   Normally I'd let a syntactic gaffe pass, but in this case it completely obscures her point. 

Let me point out that Antigone totally lands on the grenade that was coming straight for Naomi. At no point does Naomi address the question, and at no point does she have to duck the question. Antigone does her little bit on the FDA and just... 

That's it. The question is forgotten.  I think I cracked some teeth there, at the end from clenching my jaw. 

The Moderator ends the question period, and I can't even blame her for letting Naomi off, since it is clear she's already skated at that point.  

Naturally this is Naomi's chance for the last word.  Perhaps feeling like she's got a live issue, she goes back to the Rape Apology, and immediately leads in with 'as someone with sexual violence in my background'...

Full stop:  According to her Wiki, the only 'sexual violence' she has suffered... and I'm not claiming this is dispositive... is that in 1984 one of her professors may have made a pass at her, something she didn't bother to tell anyone until 2004, a full twenty years later.  The specific charge is 'Sexual Encroachment', which I can only assume is somewhere below sexual assault, and possibly below sexual harassment on the scale of 'sexual violence'.  The exact allegation is that he... touched her thigh. Once.  Look at the timing as well. I encourage you to read up on the case fully, the federal case she literally made out of a touch she did not report and even claims did not rise to the level of harassment.  

But look how very, very convenient it is for her to pull it out when she wants to hammer home this idea that Feminism is somehow a woman's defense against Rape.  The sheer malicious calculation of it all is staggering. 

Okay, back to her bullshit so I can end this monster and get some sleep.  Naomi does imply by her sentences that her sexual violence was rape, of course, but if you thought she was going to explain... and she talks about putting people in prison, men in prison... I can only assume she wanted her professor to go to prison for... maybe... touching her thigh. Yes, I'm gonna say it: Naomi Wolf, I don't for a fucking minute believe that your professor 'sexually encroached' on you. I think you deliberately made an accusation so flimsy that it would have to be ignored, so old that it was impossible to disprove, just for shit like this.  I think you are a fucking liar, and its liars like you that make it harder for real victims (who, honestly, I don't care about... but some people do, so there...) to be believed.  You are part of the problem. 

Anyway: this is another Libertarian Gaff (she was, apparently, the Keynote speaker. Given her utter lack of libertarian credentials and clear support of authoritarian states, etc, my mind is boggled. Also, any respect I have for organized Libertarians is now dead and buried.  Useful idiots, not much smarter than the anarchists...), which she apologizes for.  Maybe the pushback has thrown her off her game, maybe she just believes so strongly in having the power to jail men that she can't hide it even for the good will of the libertarian crowd, but apparently they forgive her and crack jokes about having guns to shoot men with, even Karen. Sigh.   Yes, I'm deliberately reading that in the worst light possible. Waddya gonna do? Shoot me?

Then she throws a little raw meat about PTSD at the audience, talking again about the rape victims (her only hard numbers, which are never challenged by Karen, which implies that they are correct, even if they aren't.  I'm always suspicious of statistics that are a little to mathematically precise (17% of men, 34% of women? What's half of 34, anyone?), but stranger things have happened. She basically slides in a comment about how the wars are deliberate attempts to pacify the population by increasing the average rate of PTSD or some nonsense, but given the audience it's successful.  

So, not surprisingly Naomi gets in the last word, and she makes sure its, well, rapey.  Its very much on point for organized progressive play booking.   Feminism is about rape, you guys. 

Because equality is getting a little hard to sell these days. 

Post Video Analysis:  Naomi comes out swinging for the fences, and on pure style points easily wins. She's got twenty years of polish and an Ivy League education, despite the fact that I believe she is a deeply, profoundly stupid person.  But she gets nothing at all for substance, and not just because I disagree with her politics.  In fact she spends most of the hour doing her best to chip away at whatever substance there is to feminism to avoid being pinned down. 

Karen does NOT win the debate.  For the first twenty minutes or so she's basically struggling to find an opening. She does rally before the halfway mark, holding Naomi's feet to the fire, but its not enough. She does manage to score some much needed style points late in the game, and she easily walks away with a prize for substance, but that just puts her in a sort of mirror position to Naomi. Pure Substance should matter, but when it comes to persuasion, and especially against an operator like Ms Wolf, you need at least a little pizzaz or, well, you get steamrolled.  Karen really needs to check her posture, and she needs to practice her delivery... maybe do fewer edits on her normal videos to get used to getting whole thoughts out without stammering through them.  A masterful command of facts is good, but you HAVE to look like you command the facts or people won't buy it. 

That leaves us with Antigone. She basically wins the panel, not because she has the best arguments, or the experienced delivery of Naomi, but because she manages to run a close second to both. Its a classic case.  While her posture isn't much different than Karen's, she manages to convey greater comfort, and being essentially outside the scrum between the other two women means she is rarely pushed out of her comfort zone.  Clearly her podcasting is much better practice for the debate/panel than Karen's Youtube videos. Does she have guests? Does she take calls? I don't know but I'd put even money that one of the two is true.   I may harbor suspicions that her side flipping was some sort of strategy rather than an honest appreciation of her positions, and clearly she intended to run away with the last word when she stole the feminism question at the end for an anti-FDA screed.  I don't want to speculate too much on girl-psyche, but as the youngest and prettiest panelist, she certainly has the credentials to pull a mean-girl trick and make both the other women stumble to make herself look better. If so, it worked masterfully. Of course, if so, that also means she is not to be trusted, as she would essentially be an opportunist, willing to throw any allies under the bus for her own sake. 

Since I'm pro-Karen in this case my first piece of advice is opposition research. If you know you're going to go up against Naomi Wolf, read up on her. A quick scan of her wiki page would give you angles to attack her vague assertions about herself, though I can suppose you might not have the energy to look into the history of Yale, for example.  That would depend in part on if can watch her do her routine elsewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if she had used many of these exact same vignettes in other recent discussions, referenced herself as a survivor of sexual violence at any time since 2004. 

In more general terms, practice. You're getting more and more public speaking engagements, so you can benefit from practice, polish there. Delivery of your facts can be smoother, quicker.  For panel discussions and debates though, you need to leave off the youtube war and get someone to play devil's advocate in person.  Someone who knows your arguments is best, since they can hit your weak spots and nerves as well, better, than your real opponents. If you can hold your own against someone like that you'll find Naomi and her ilk to be chumps ready for the butcher block. 

When I did debate, yon elder eons ago, I usually did my opponent's research first, trying to figure out how they might make the strongest case possible, then I made my case to cut that case down to size. I deliberately targeted the strongest, most compelling arguments they could make.  Sadly, against modern progressives and feminists, I don't think that advice is terribly helpful, since they don't rely on strong arguments nearly so much as waves of unchecked bullshit.  Clearly the best technique is to pin them down, force them to commit to hard definitions, and call them on their lies.  

* This is a relevant observation. Political movements have long understood the value of having attractive young women speaking for them, as energetic young men will flock to cute young women and work like dogs to impress them... all for the cause.  So having an attractive woman reject feminism bluntly could, in fact, lead to a few men jumping to impress her by also rejecting feminism. Of course, women can also change their stripes for a man they fancy, so this is one of those universal human spinelessness traits.  Gotta love it.