It's hardly news that women have been steadily moving ever further left politically at a pace – "radically" – that far outstrips men, whose views tend to be stable. Especially Gen Z. According to a Gallup poll, women age 18-29 have over the last 25 years stretched a left-leaning gap from their male peers from 12 points to 23 points, nearly double. And although they have passionate "feelings" about their leftist ideals, they tend as a collective to fall short on logic, respect for free speech and intellectual coherence, more so than men. And that is bad news for our society, because women are numerically dominant in just about every social, professional and cultural institution we have. Not to mention politics.
I'm writing this column at a beach house in Maine. It's primary season in the U.S. so one sees a lot of political lawn signs. Even a few, in this upscale, genteel, American flag-forward community, for Graham Platner, the controversial poster boy for toxic masculinity, but now successfully elected Dem Senate-race candidate, with a definitive 72 percent of votes cast.
The Dems, it seems, are so desperate to gain control of the Senate, they are willing to overlook Platner's Nazi tattoo (over-inked now to disguise the Totenkopf), his slagging of former Marines brothers-in-arms, his seriously insalubrious sexual history, and fake working-class identity.
At a recent campaign event in Portland, Platner was received with enthusiasm. Some present held hand-made signs reading "We are your Grahamily!" A New York Post article on the event was illustrated by a photo of a woman holding up one such sign with her own added hearts and "we've got your back" written under "Grahamily." She is likely the interviewed fan who shrugged off concern over the "deaths head" Nazi-linked tattoo as no big whoop.
Would there be any red line for this woman, tattoo-wise? Oh yes. An "Israeli flag," definitely a red line. "Yeah, because I don't want genocide." Grahamily, meet Hamamily. An Israel-themed tattoo, she says, "would show that he was being inconsistent..." Another Portland female attendee conceded, in response to a reporter's question about Platner's sexual history, that Platner had "clearly shown some very poor judgment," but that was all in the past, you see. In the same past as, you know, the Holocaust, emblemized by the Totenkopf tattoo that was considered, emm, aaawkward by pesky conservative critics.
Strangely, the past was not considered by female Democrats an admissible defence for Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh during the shamefully partisan special 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, when Christine Ford Blasey was afforded the opportunity (under oath) to amplify her accusation of Kavanaugh as the perpetrator of a sexual trauma she allegedly suffered at a party 35 years earlier, a trauma she never mentioned to anyone in the intervening years, and whose particulars, such as whose house the alleged trauma took place at, or how she got there, she could not recall.
Pro-Blasey Ford demonstrations – overwhelmingly female - against the embattled Kavanaugh were organized by women's advocacy and anti-sexual-violence groups. To no avail, thankfully, as Kavanaugh was narrowly confirmed. Would he be today? I think not. Susan Collins, Platner's GOP opponent, pivotal vote to confirm Kavanaugh is now considered a tough hurdle for to overcome.
For a while, during the campus "rape culture" frenzy, and the #MeToo era, it seemed like feminists really cared about victims of sexual violence. Logical. But then came October 2023, and Hamas's horrific pogrom in southern Israel. And where were the anti-sexual-violence feminists when the reports emerged of Hamas's revolting sexual sadism, proudly documented on the terrorists' own GoPros? Omertà! They were too busy shopping for kiffeyihs and Islamist solidarity hijabs. Ah! So it wasn't actually sexual violence or actual rapists that disturbed feminists. Rape victims sporting an "Israeli flag," so to speak – these girls and women had crossed a "red line" by being Zionists. It would have been "inconsistent" to side with them.
Do children's birthday parties still feature entertainers who blow up sausage balloons and then twist them into different animal shapes? The infinitely malleable sausage balloon is a perfect metaphor for political activism as practised by females. Bill Clinton was tethered to a slimy trail of sexual misconduct and credible rape allegations, but feminists – following allegedly arch-feminist Hillary's example - shrugged them all off, because he was a Democrat.
In response to Donald Trump's crude "grab 'em by the pussy" remark, feminists en masse wore pussy hats and took to the streets. That turned out to be a short-lived stunt, because critics pointed out that the hats—which referenced anatomical features and traditional "pink" associated with women—alienated trans-identified men, gender non-binary individuals, and women of color whose anatomies were not represented by the imagery. (Hoist by their own "intersectional" petard, one might observe with a dash of Schadenfreude.)
And now Platner. Here's Jodi Kantor, leading #MeToo reporter at The New York Times, furiously manipulating her feminist sausage balloon into a what-about-Trump pretzel on CNN: No no, these are not "classic" #MeToo accusations against Platner that have come forward, she says, except, ok, for that "one allegation of crossing a line physically," but normally, when Graham Platner acts creepy and mean and coercive to women, it's...it's ..so they were "mostly made in the context of consensual relationships" – yah, "consensual," that's the ticket, and anyway, look over there at Orange Man. "President Trump bragged about grabbing women against their will," so he's your #MeToo guy!
Oh Jodi, Jodi, Jodi, how sad that it has come to this. Your rhetorical balloon just popped; it couldn't take the strain of your dumb comparison. Yes, Trump's brag was misogynistic, and nobody ever said it wasn't, including conservative women, but Platner's credibly recounted actions are surely worse than words, aren't they, Jodi? Jodi? Bueller?
If Platner wins his race, and same with Islamism-linked candidates in the House, we have women to thank. Or curse. Expect more of them. A lot of women suffer from "main character syndrome," which means they think their actions are more significant than they are. They see themselves as stars in a movie. Remember Renee Good in Minneapolis driving into the ICE agent and getting shot to death? Her understandably shocked girlfriend, Rebecca, was overheard on a video screaming, "Why did you have real bullets?"
Such women live in a world created in their own imagination, where they can take stupid risks, but the director yells "Cut!" before anything bad happens to them. But there are enough of them to change the real world for the worse. So much worse.
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