Book of Lives by Margaret Atwood: 3-star review - "Despite the success of The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood has in recent years been viewed with unease by some feminists. Her critics may feel vindicated by this memoir. Atwood returns, in one long section, to their chief complaint, concerning a 2015 scandal at the University of British Columbia. A professor faced discipline for allegedly assaulting a student with whom he’d been having an affair. Atwood signed an open letter that called for due process to be followed; MeToo activists declared this a betrayal. Here, Atwood sticks to her position, saying “no freedom of opinion [was] allowed. Dogma set in. A cult had been born.” She tells us the case inspired her to write The Testaments (2019), the unimpressive sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. To my mind, professors sleeping with students is grossly inappropriate even if it’s consensual, but Atwood is harder to shock."
What a misogynist who supports men sexually assaulting women.
It's no great offence to call a woman beautiful - "Donald Trump may be no Byron, but I imagine Catherine, Princess of Wales, was still gratified to have the US president appear to greet her with the words, “You’re beautiful. So beautiful”. My informal poll suggests 10 out of 10 women prefer that address to “Good to see you” or “What’s new?” He was even channelling the national bard, James Blunt. Yet these innocent words have caused a rumpus, with some accusing the president of breaching royal protocol, or being “cringey” – although there’s nothing in any royal rule book that prohibits open admiration and Trump is that rare, poetic soul who sees beauty everywhere: his “big beautiful wall”, “big beautiful bill”, “beautiful military equipment”, not to mention “beautiful sleeping gas” that could be used on terrorists. It would be plain rude if he didn’t eulogise our big (tall) beautiful princess... we perhaps reached peak pulchritude hysteria last April where the director of a vehicle recovery firm was found guilty of discrimination, having requested a female employee attend a meeting with a client who liked “pretty women”."
Male boss did not sexually harass HR worker because he put hand on her shoulder in a 'fatherly' way, tribunal rules - "Putting a supportive hand on a female colleague's shoulder in a 'fatherly' way is not sex harassment, a tribunal has ruled. Employment Judge Robin Havard said the gesture may instead signal support and is not done in a way to humiliate or intimidate the recipient. The ruling came in the case of HR worker Yvette Rankmore, who took to a city council to a tribunal after her male boss placed his hand on her shoulder while offering advice. Ms Rankore admitted that it was a 'fatherly type gesture' - but said she did not consider that it was 'appropriate' in the workplace. However, the tribunal, who heard Ms Rankmore did not say anything to her boss about the incident, dismissed the HR worker's claims and said that the behaviour of the male boss was not carried out with the intention of violating Ms Rankmore's dignity... The employee said Mr Carlson acted the same with other people, and another council worker confirmed in evidence that he would 'put an arm on someone's shoulder in a supportive way when showing someone how to do something'... in August 2024, Ms Rankmore lodged a formal resolution application and said she felt as if the informal process had not led to a 'satisfactory outcome'. Her concerns were not upheld and she again appealed the findings, but a subsequent hearing found both formal and informal investigations had been 'robust and appropriate'. The advisor took the council to a tribunal, alleging sex and sexual harassment, among other claims. In her written evidence, she said Mr Carlson was putting his arms around her and 'rubbing' her back. The panel said that they were 'concerned' that Ms Rankmore had 'exaggerated' Mr Carlson's conduct by making it sound 'more intimate'."
@KyleNutt: How dating has changed.. #shortfilm
That's what happens when normal human interaction is framed as sexual harassment and assault
This is the video showing asking a girl (a stranger) in a diner on a date vs swiping in the dark at home on dating apps. It's part of a series of 4
Jess Phillips: MeToo pushed teenage boys towards Andrew Tate - "Toxic masculinity is spreading because the MeToo movement did not bring teenage boys into the debate, allowing influencers such as Andrew Tate to dictate the agenda, Jess Phillips has said after the Gisèle Pelicot case."
Men are refusing to give lifesaving CPR to a women - because they're afraid to touch their breasts - "One in three Britons are afraid to give women CPR because they are worried about touching their breasts, a study reveals. The same proportion of men (33 per cent) also fear being accused of 'inappropriate' touching when giving women chest compressions... Previous research found only 68 per cent of women are likely to receive bystander CPR compared to 73 per cent of of men... A defibrillator can make a critical difference, as when used within the first three minutes it can increase the chances of someone surviving a cardiac arrest by up to 70 per cent. The defibrillator has pads that need to be placed on bare skin on the chest area. However, when hearing this instruction, 38 per cent of people agreed that their levels of discomfort would rise. Nearly half of the male respondents (46 per cent) stated they would feel less comfortable using a defibrillator on a woman knowing that they might have to remove her clothing, including a bra, versus 31 per cent of females surveyed."
Time to blame sexism
Examining the Impact of Layperson Rescuer Gender on the Receipt of Bystander CPR for Women in Cardiac Arrest - "Approximately half (48.1%) of the cohort knew how to perform CPR, but only 7.9% had ever performed CPR. When the rescuer was identified as a man, survey participants ranked fear of sexual assault or sexual harassment and fear of touching women or that the touch might be inappropriate as the top reasons (36.2% and 34.0% of responses, respectively). Conversely, when the rescuer was identified as a woman, survey respondents reported fear of hurting or injuring as the top reason (41.2%). "
Diddy's sex-trafficking acquittal marks death of #metoo - "So much of the Diddy trial focused on the performer’s distinct sexual depravity — most notably those lotion-filled “freak-offs” described in nauseating ad nauseam. But this was a case equally defined by a pathological consumption of drugs. Indeed, as the proceedings revealed, Diddy had a constant supply of narcotics on hand: marijuana, ecstasy, Klonopin — which he fed to girlfriends like Cassie and their revolving door of hired and acquired paramours. Drugs complicate, well, everything and they complicated the Diddy case even as they took a backseat to sex. So much of the proceedings — along with the roots of #metoo — were wrapped up in consent, and nothing warps consent more than days-long binges of narcotics. This helps explain why Combs was exonerated on the most serious charges of “sex trafficking” and racketeering conspiracy. His defense claimed the debauchery — the freak offs — were merely amped-up versions of old-fashioned swingerism, set — much like with Weinstein — against a backdrop of luxury yachts and five star hotels. Despite observers who insist there can never be consent when abuse is involved, Diddy’s lawyers reiterated that consent was ever-present and implied. Folks freaked-off because they were being loved or paid — whether in cash or via career boost. Such combustible overlaps shadow many of the highest-profile #metoo-styled cases, which is why so few of them have resulted in actual jail time. Indeed, Weinstein is a rare movement outlier — imprisoned likely for life when men like Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose merely languish behind the bars of ruinous disgrace and irrelevance. Such a future is unlikely to await Diddy, who as the New York Post noted on Wednesday could emerge from the trial as a “martyr.” And why not (besides his clear cravenness)? In the near year since his arrest, article after article has appeared detailing some former friend, colleague, or interviewer recounting Diddy’s alleged sexism or hypocrisy or penchant for violence. Yet besides Cassie, almost no one stepped forward. Many, as in many other #metoo cases, claimed fear — of his power, his proximity to guns and those who use them. Only Shyne, the Belize-born rapper who served nearly a decade in jail for that infamous 1999 nightclub shooting, had the guts to speak out. And perhaps only because he is now back in Belize serving as the Opposition Leader of its House of Representatives. As they say on billboards across New York City’s subway system — “if you see something — say something.” But when it came to Sean “Diddy” Combs, almost no one said anything. For years, decades even. And the results speak for themselves: Diddy is likely to walk free, exonerated by a soft-on-crime New York City judicial system failing their soft-on-crime citizens."
'Believe All Women' Movement Publishes Extensive List Of Exceptions | Babylon Bee - "Included in the list are the following:
Bill Clinton's accusers
Joe Biden's accusers
Potiphar's wife
Delilah
Conservative women
Women who accuse Democratic candidates
Sarah Sanders
Any woman the left suddenly decides they don't like anymore
Nikki Haley
Dana Loesch
Women the Democrats no longer have a political need to exploit
Melania Trump
Cersei Baratheon
Any woman who argues for pro-life causes
The full list goes on for another 8,000 pages, explaining exactly which women the left doesn't believe while still proclaiming that everyone should "believe all women." "This new list lets us be consistent with our rallying cry," said Hillary Clinton. "We can now simultaneously say that we believe all women, while conveniently ignoring or silencing women whose stories conflict with our narrative." The list is available online in a 587 MB PDF download, or a hard copy of the binders full of women can be purchased from Hillary Clinton's official site."
Sean Bean Thinks Intimacy Coordinators Spoil Sex Scenes - "The presence of an intimacy coordinator on set "would inhibit me more because it's drawing attention to things," the Game of Thrones alum, 63, told The Sunday Times. "Somebody saying, 'Do this, put your hands there while you touch his thing.'" Bean continued, "I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise." He then compared comparing love scenes today to ones he shot with Joely Richardson for 1993's Lady Chatterly's Lover. "Lady Chatterly was spontaneous," he shared. "It was a joy. We had a good chemistry between us, and we knew what we were doing was unusual. Because she was married, I was married. But we were following the story. We were trying to portray the truth of what D.H. Lawrence wrote.""
Meme - "never get approached by men
just curious, what actually makes a guy approach a woman? I’m 25f and I’d consider myself attractive (I think I’m fairly pretty, I take care of myself and feel good about how I look), but I never get approached. I’ll notice guys making repeated eye contact with me, but it never goes beyond that. Honestly, both of my past relationships started because I made the first move. So I’m wondering… what makes a guy actually go for it and approach someone? Also, is there a way to give off “I want to be approached” energy? I’m not really into dating apps, and I’d love to meet someone in person. i’m not against making the first move but i would love for someone to approach me for a change"
"Unless a woman gives me an irrefutable sign she wants my attention I will never in a million years approach her because nowadays we are taught that women want to be left alone and we are perceived as a nuisance at best, and a threat at worst"
Meme - "Mr. Sinclair, once again it seems you have an opinion to share"
"I've got the truth to share. Miles Morales's VA being bad at flirting does not make him a sexual predator like all of you are making him out to be."
Im a woman who never gets approached by men : r/AskMenAdvice - "I’ve experienced this in reverse towards me. My buddy and I were talking with a group of women at the bar about 15 years ago. They were the only other people in the bar at the time. After awhile one of the girls asked for my number. I politely declined saying I wasn’t interested. She was ok with and wasn’t upset (I’m pretty sure she was used to rejection, nice girl but I believe most men would not find her attractive). Her friend on the other hand started to lay into me HARD. ‘How dare you reject my friend. She’s a great person.’ She’s this and that. You’re a piece of shit. You think you’re so much better looking than her, well you’re not.’ Just giving me the business for about 2 minutes. The girl I had rejected had to get her to shutup. I was dumbfounded; I wasn’t being mean or anything! Shit was wild."
Im a woman who never gets approached by men : r/AskMenAdvice - "once got the response, "I didn't give you consent to talk to me.""
Im a woman who never gets approached by men : r/AskMenAdvice - "Lol, I got told by a trio of hogs that I was too old for them when I was cutting it up on the dance floor and happened in their direction. Not sure what gave them the slightest idea I was interested in them."
Im a woman who never gets approached by men : r/AskMenAdvice - "Sometimes you don't even have to approach. I remember this girl just happened to be next to me, her friend approved her and asked her to go somewhere with her, I my friend had returned from the bathroom so I walked up to him and I overheard the friend of the girl telling her that she had saved her from the creepy guy. Looking back I think that girl was a jealous closeted lesbian."
Im a woman who never gets approached by men : r/AskMenAdvice - " Just read through all the reddit posts of women asking if they should call the police and get a restraining order because the Amazon delivery guy told her she was attractive. We one upon a time had a very defined social etiquette and everyone knew the proper response to various dilemmas, but I would say social media has completely broken down the order we once had. It's like we're back in cave people times, trying to figure out the new rules."
Im a woman who never gets approached by men : r/AskMenAdvice - "Its legit weird, like women these days find their self worth in rejecting "unworthy suitors" and every part of society is there to make a hard situation even harder. Society has created a framework where literally every single person in a 50ft radius is trying to cockblock a dude that approaches a woman. Other dudes are looking to knock you down a peg at any opportunity to bolster their own chances. You have the woman herself, looking for any reason to just reject and shittalk because thats what she sees hot girls doing and it makes them feel powerful for once. You have her friends doing the same thing; either spitefully, enviously or just power tripping as well. You have any bystander that might happen to notice a moment of awkwardness between two strangers ready to step in because they are primed to think "Oh she might be getting harassed." You have any establishment employees nearby doing the exact same thing because they have to keep women in the club or else no one goes, so they have to immediately kick out any potential "creep" without any concern for the male's side of the story. Literally everyone is just looking for a reason to fuck up a man's attempt at walking up, on top of being told nonstop that approaching a woman is the worst thing you can do in 99% of environments. It already was a nerve wracking experience for most, now its kinda ridiculous."
Im a woman who never gets approached by men : r/AskMenAdvice - "For sure. I go to the gym quite a bit and a lot of the girls there dress like they're trying to get a boyfriend or something. They're wasting their time because men have been programmed to never approach a girl at the gym, else she will put you on social media as a creeper. It's not worth the risk, not to mention potentially losing your membership."
Im a woman who never gets approached by men : r/AskMenAdvice - "To add to this, especially for people saying "nothing bad will happen", I live in a city of around 300k people in Europe. There are specific women facebook groups and discords (mainly moved to discords now), where women share pictures and information of men that have approached them or looked at them the wrong way. I'm a guy, so I only see it when my female friends show it, but there are different channels and there's a specific "this guys asked me out, do you know him" channels where they post pictures, most often secretly taken, of the guy that asked them out. It doesn't matter if they agreed to go on a date. And then women come together to gather information and most often trashtalk the guys. Their numbers, addresses, work places, etc. And these discords have thousands to a couple tens of thousands of members, who were verified through social media to be 18+ women, as these are extremely careful groups. Ofc you can fake accounts if you try hard enough, but still. But it reads like a conspiracy theory. In my city I'd estimate 5% of people are in at least one of them. But that's total population. It aligns with my experience with my female friends, but smth like 1/4 women in the city, aged 20-40 are in at least one of those groups. Not to mention that includes both single and taken women. So if a guy approaches a women in my city, there's a roughly 25% chance that his picture with his name and personal info will be put on one of those servers for others to find quickly later on. Cause it's there so that a woman can quickly find all information there is about a man as long as she knows his name. With ratings from strangers and discussions if you're hot or if you look like a creep attached to your info. And while it's a nice thing for safety, it's not just that. If you're looking for a job and you're on there, 100% you will be checked out. And you can find these type of groups in almost every area in the West. Men just don't know about them."
J.K. Rowling on X - "The literary crowd that had a hell of a lot to say about Harvey Weinstein before he was convicted has been strangely muted in its response to multiple accusations against Neil Gaiman from young women who'd never met, yet - as with Weinstein - tell remarkably similar stories."
A note on Neil Gaiman's politics - "He concluded, "I still don't think of myself as a hugely political writer," but explained a bit about his personal politics, saying that "in British terms, I am somewhere in the fuzzy middle, of 'why can't we all be nice to each other?', and 'I really don't like people exploiting other people" – yet in American terms, he said, "that puts me so far to the left of any political party that my politics out there are considered irrelevant"."
Weird what shape being nice and not exploiting others takes
Meme - "23F here, none of the men in my age group are dating. What is happening?
I've known these men since highschool, none of them misogynistic and all of them well-educated and most likely liberal, yet... They just aren't dating. From when they were in highschool, to college, and now trying to begin a career... I am also sure if they have a chance at getting a girlfriend they would do it, yet they don't. My personal theory is they are scared of rejection, being seen as creeps, or maybe they don't think they are worth dating when I think they are. I think this is a big problem in Gen Z, we don't know how to date."
Millennials, the Sex Recession & College Campuses (aka "Is There a Connection Between the Campus Crisis and the Millennial Sex Drought?") - "The modern-day college campus, once a haven for higher learning and intellectual thought, has more recently morphed into a breeding ground for radical new beliefs about sex and race, including those that are, by definition, prejudiced. To understand the current sex drought affecting millennials, widely reported just about everywhere, we should take a closer look at the spread of discriminatory ideas like 'white privilege,' 'white tears' and the notion that our society more broadly is a 'white supremacy’ and a ‘patriarchy’ run by so-called 'cishet white men.'... seemingly ever other week, there is yet another story in the news of men being pilloried for allegations of sexual harassment or assault—men who are indicted publicly without due process. In the cases of Brett Kavanaugh, whose Supreme Court confirmation turned into an international spectacle after multiple women came forward with accusations despite no corroborating evidence, and Aziz Ansari, whose bad date turned him into a pariah over night, it’s not difficult to see why young men would be terrified to pursue sexual or romantic contact with women these days. Mind you, we must also reckon with Title IX’s overreach that led to a rash of campus sexual assault complaints and subsequent hearings that threw due process out the window. And yet, a man’s reputation can be tarnished by much less than allegations of sexual assault these days. Earlier this year, Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of international political theory at King’s College London, was professionally reprimanded after making a joke, while in an elevator at a conference, about wanting to be let off at the ladies’ lingerie department. The unfortunate and perhaps predictable side effect is that men now avoid women in business settings. Women are seen as a potential liability; out of fear of having a #MeToo moment, men on Wall Street have taken up strategies enforcing gender segregation—like banning dinners with female colleagues and not meeting in rooms without windows—as a way of safeguarding themselves from future accusations of sexual harassment. What could we expect young men to be thinking about sex and the dating world based on those examples alone? This is a sentiment echoed by my colleagues who see patients in clinical practice. Sex and relationships are difficult enough to navigate without having to worry about a current or former partner coming out of the woodwork in a few months or years to say that the consensual sex you had was actually non-consensual. Taken to an extreme, some have begun asking their female sexual partners to record “consent videos” or sign contracts prior to having sex. Although most women would not lie about sexual assault, we can’t neglect that some do. For female students who are constantly being fed messages from their professors that society is an oppressive patriarchal rape culture filled with men seeking to harass, objectify and hold them back at every opportunity, no wonder they graduate from a three- or four-year program hating men. This brainwashing then follows them into the outside world, as these ideas are no doubt exported upon graduation. When hostility and disdain for men is normalized, how could this not have harmful implications for dating and sex?"
Meme - "When the Feminists Said they hate being approached by men coz they're all creeps and now they're complaining that dating is dead because Men don't approach them anymore and have gone their own way..."
The Men: "Hold on. This whole operation was your idea."
How universities teach students to shame - "the death of the 20-year-old Oxford student Alexander Rogers, who killed himself within a week of being shamed by university friends. According to the coroner, he too had become the subject of rumours after a post-pub tryst. While no formal allegation was registered, the woman involved told mutuals afterwards that it had left her feeling “uncomfortable”. An ex-boyfriend of hers was then involved in a physical confrontation with Rogers, while others told him he had “messed up” and they would be distancing themselves accordingly. Shortly afterwards, the third-year material sciences student wrote a goodbye note describing an “unintentional but unforgiveable” act. It’s usually an oversimplification to assume a suicide is caused by a single precipitating event. Still, the coroner in this case at least seemed to think that the social punishment exacted immediately beforehand played a substantial role. He cited an independent review commissioned by Corpus Christi — the college attended by Rogers — describing a “normalised” culture in which “students could rush to judgment without knowledge of all the facts, could shun those accused, and a ‘pile-on’ might occur where a group would form a negative view about another individual”. According to the report, “this culture was not limited to Oxford University — it is an issue for the higher education sector as a whole.” When I was an undergraduate, it was the Nineties, and the balance of social power was still mostly in males’ favour, especially if they came from public schools... These days, a brief perusal of online resources for undergraduates suggests things have changed quite a bit. Guilt at the relative privilege of most Oxbridge students has apparently been supercharged by powerful ideological forces that were rippling across the country anyway, and now every college seems to resemble a rest home for the nervously exhausted in some kind of expiation. At my old college, for instance, there are weekly “Welfare Teas”, “peer supporters” and “college parents”. There’s a BAME officer, an LGBTQ+ Officer, a “Womxn’s Officer”, and two “Class Officers… for anyone who identifies with class issues”. There’s also a JCR “gender expression fund… for anything to do with your gender expression, from binders, packets and the like to haircuts, clothes and makeup”. One assumes it doesn’t stretch to manly sporting attire for archaic souls whose gender identity is rugger bugger... a Cambridge student I met in 2023 who said her entire college year group had turned on her after she was discovered to have written a mildly gender-critical blog post; an Oxford student who told me she had defended me against accusations of “transphobia”, and was excommunicated by her peer group as a result. It’s tempting to rail against the fanaticism of aspiring young witchfinders, and the cowardice of those who fall in silently behind them, especially when the consequences are as grave as in Alexander Rogers’ case. But just as I now look back on the sometimes parodically boorish student behaviour of the Nineties as exacerbated by the wider “lad” culture, glorified at the time in magazines and on telly, so, too, it seems clear that the whispering and pointing now rife among students would not be so popular had influential adults not sanctioned it. In many ways, here too young people are just doing what they think they are supposed to, by diligently copying other people. In particular, the current intake has lived through the group hysteria surrounding #MeToo at a formative age, a movement which started with good intentions but ended up as a trivial revenge project for unsatisfactory sexual encounters. Even as I write, there are women lost in their own projections, confidently opining online that Alexander Rogers must have done something illegal, despite no detailed knowledge about the case. This gamete-divided Manichaeism reigned uncontested in the progressive media for years. In 2020, for instance, a Guardian commentator was telling us with arresting confidence that “[f]or women… ‘bad sex’ almost always involves considerable pain and/or violence”. Any resulting damage to the psyches of boys and girls listening in was treated as negligibly important collateral. Then, in the run up to university, present-day students will have participated in endless classroom discussions about things such as “toxic masculinity” and “white privilege”. Ironically, this seems to have been especially likely to be the case if they went to places like Eton. And now that they are finally on the home stretch in higher education, they are bound to encounter at least a few lecturers or tutors who delight in rooting out politically suspect language from young mouths and minds, and who approach every topic, no matter how abstract, with an eye to playing hunt-the-victim. That is still the case in every university I know. Over the years, in other words, they will have learnt that — without having done anything deliberate to earn it — many of them carry a deep moral taint that requires constant vigilance in order to suppress it, and frequent acts of atonement. While public sympathy is rightly with Alexander and his family, please do spare a thought for the young friends of his who believed they were doing the right thing in confronting him. We raised them that way. And now they have to live with the consequences."
I ordered my male junior into my office and had sex with him on my desk... that's the moment the balance of power shifted - "After a year of frenzied flirting, I was unable to control my desire any longer. I shut myself in my office, switched off the lights, closed the electric blinds, summoned Henry and had sex with him on my desk. It was a wild impulse; a moment of utter recklessness that could have cost me my job and my marriage of three years. I also had a baby, who was just 18 months old, and Henry was in a relationship. But far worse was the fact that at 25, Henry was 15 years my junior – and I was his boss... Henry knew everything about me – my sexual fantasies, what it was like to have sex with me . . . That’s when I realised how much power I’d given him. Even though he’d started the whole thing and I had the messages to prove it, as his boss I should have known better. In reality, though, the moment I replied to his sexts, the balance shifted in his favour."
Women are always the victims
Age gaps are only bad when the man is older
Meme - David Harsanyi @davidharsanyi: "Ignored her testimony? It was a massive story. Every major outlet tried to corroborate her story. The FBI investigated and found nothing. (Though agents sent affidavits accusing Hill of misleading the public in her testimony, which contradicted what she had told law enforcement officials.)"
Sheldon Whitehouse @SenWhitehouse: "Ignoring her testimony brought Clarence Thomas onto the Court.
Ignoring Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony brought Brett Kavanaugh onto the Court."
"On this date in 1991: University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill. Hill testified that she was "embarrassed and humiliated" by unwanted, sexually explicit comments made by Thomas when she worked for him a decade ago."
