Our dear friend W.F. Price of The Spearhead celebrated Columbus Day yesterday with a post suggesting that “American girls” are too weak-minded to deserve college educations.
Price’s misogyny is nothing new, but what, you may wonder, is the connection to Columbus Day? Well, you see, Price ran across a column in the Daily Nebraskan by a female student named Shelby Fleig that was, well, rather critical of Mr. Columbus, pointing out, among other things, that he kidnapped and enslaved many of those he encountered in the Americas.
Fleig’s piece is a tad simplistic at times — at one point it says that when Columbus arrived in the Americas he encountered a “civilization close to 14,000 years old,” which is just plain wrong; there were people in the Americas around 14,000 years ago, but there were no civilizations anywhere on earth that far back. Still, the piece certainly reflects reality far more closely than anything you’ll find on The Spearhead on any given day.
To Price, though, the column is such an unpatriotic abomination that he considers it evidence that education is wasted on women. No, really.
Little Ms. Fleig certainly has it in for her forefathers, but is it really her fault? Probably not. She, like most other college girls, is simply parroting what’s been fed to her by her profs. Girls are good at that, which is why teachers like them so much — they’re easy.
If you’re the father of an American girl, is this really what you want your daughter to absorb over the course of four years? Does it add any value whatsoever to the family or to the nation?
I’m not sure what specifically Price is objecting to about Fleig’s account — aside from its mild profanity (the word “bullshit”) and its less-than-reverential tone towards an icon of American history. But he offers no rebuttal, perhaps because he really can’t. While Fleig may be a bit ahistorical in her judgment of Columbus, it’s a fact that he kidnapped and enslaved hundreds of natives and committed other atrocities. It’s a fact that he paved the way for conquest and genocide. History isn’t pretty.
But Price is only getting started, telling fathers of “American girls” that
Your money would be much better spent sending her to sewing or baking school. Let’s face it: Ms. Fleig isn’t going to discover the cure for cancer. Despite being an attractive young woman, she isn’t going to colonize Mars, either (at her size, she’d be too expensive to launch out of the Earth’s atmosphere).
Yep, he goes there. No manosphere screed is complete without a bit of gratuitous fat-shaming.
In all likelihood, the best she could hope for is a nonprofit or government job fully funded by her father’s and brother’s tax bills.
Because girls can’t handle real jobs. Because jobs at nonprofits or with the government aren’t real jobs. Because nonprofits are funded entirely by the government. And because only men pay taxes.
And yet she represents 60% of college students. What an enormous, unsustainable waste. It’s impolitic to point it out, but from a cost-benefit point of view, in most cases higher education is entirely wasted on women, and as in Ms. Fleig’s case is often counterproductive.
So that’s Price’s thoughtful and logical rebuttal to Fleig’s article: a post that addresses none of her arguments, posits the natural inferiority of women, and attacks her for her apparent weight.
Let’s see what the highly erudite Spearhead readers have to say about it in the comments.
Gender Foreigner suggests that women, born to obey, are simply obeying the wrong people:
Women don’t know how to think: they know how to obey. So, let’s tell them what to do. What they lack is MEN to obey instead of girls to obey. Barefoot, pregnant in the kitchen, obeying masculine will. As long as they do that they will feign civility.
Dire Badger, for his part, acknowledges that Columbus did a lot of terrible things, but argues that this doesn’t matter because reasons. He also uses profanity, though Price doesn’t step in to rebuke him for that.
[I]n the end, individual racial and cultural atrocities mean NOTHING the moment the last person that witnessed them dies…. but things like achievements in literature, art, science… the true immortality that keeps building as part of a cultural intellectual inheritance. The only meaning that such atrocities have is to teach us NOT TO DO THEM AGAIN. Anything else is beating the dead victim horse for no benefit whatsoever, and merely punishes the people that had NOTHING to do with the original atrocity.
In short, columbus opened up america for expansion. He sailed the ocean blue in a way that hadn’t been achieved for nearly 400 years since the vikings.
As for the rest? FUCK YOU. Get over it already, you pussy.
In a followup comment, he adds:
Columbus rediscovered America by a monumental navigational goofup… funny story… What he did afterwards doesn’t concern me except as an object lesson. I honor the accomplishment but have no reason to diminish it by sorrow over a bunch of people who would still be more than 400 years dead if Columbus had never existed.
Schlomo, meanwhile, is mad at Fleig for not blaming Columbus’ mom for the whole thing:
What irks me is that feminists constantly blame only men– and then mostly white men– for all evil in the world. They don’t look at women’s roles in raising boys to be exploiters; or in bedding “bad boys” (thus rewarding their brutality); or in serving as Nazi prison guards, etc.
White females helped run plantations in the Old South and ran them alone during the Civil War. Ergo, it’s a lie that gals are innately “better” than guys. After all, they became queens of men feminists now demonize… and sometimes were the evil-incarnate leaders of countries themselves.
Nowhere, of course, do feminists praise men for the creating the Magna Carta or washing machines or hi-fi systems. No kudos, either, for males who wiped out polio and provided potable water. Also, no credit for inventing penicillin or making cars safer. Always and everywhere feminists blame-blame-blame. You never hear them collectively apologize for THEIR shite, like their hysterical historical foresisters’ White Feather campaigns… or sleeping with the enemy.
Where is the condemnation of Sacagawea for helping Whitey conquer her “people”?
It’s like domestic violence: fembots never talk about the equal evil women do.
Wilson, meanwhile, decides that Fleig is the truly evil one, not Columbus, based on a bunch of TRUE FACTS about her he’s pulled from his own posterior:
Conquest through genocide is not actually immoral, since there is no “social contract” being violated, though the greed of it may be questionable. Fleig would support a genocide against whites, so she is in no position to judge anyway, and her motivations–spite, malice, nihilism, betrayal–are much more evil than Columbus’s straightforward and productive ambition
But Fleig does have one defender amongst the Spearhead regulars, a fella named Dragnet, who happily declares that “corn-fed” gals like her please his penis. No, really, that’s his argument.
Being from the Midwest myself, I find her buxom, corn-fed heft absolutely delightful. I have had more than a few liaisons with her similarly endowed Midwestern sisters–to this day my manhood rises in salute.
What I wouldn’t give for more women on the east coast to be built like Miss Fleig. There’s a well-built, fulsome hardiness to the women of the Midwest that you really don’t find out East. God bless them all.
Well, I’m glad these superior-brained, independent-minded men have put us all straight on these important historical issues.
By the way, don’t we have another Yoyo who’s normal?
Okay I just got to that “Genocide is not actual immoral.”
To the people who have been here longer, how do you deal with the overpowering urge to start screaming “WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH YOU PIECE OF $%&# ?>***+ OH MY GOD F!@< YOU!"?
Because I mostly read this blog at night and I might have woken my neighbours up doing that.
Katz — I thought the nym looked familiar, but couldn’t recall if the previous user of the Yoyo nym was this person or not. So you’re probably right.
Skybison — scream into
Pecunium’speople’s inboxes. Also, whiskey.1. Yes, gender studies is political. EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL. From Wikipedia:
“Politics (from Greek: politikos, meaning “of, for, or relating to citizens”) is the practice and theory of influencing other people on a civic or individual level.” There is politics all throughout academia- law and political science courses come to mind; there are office politics and family politics- hell there is even politics in running a youth sports organization.
If you interact with people in any way, there will be politics involved.
2. NO. Just No. How academically rigorous a Gender Studies class is depends on many factors- how good the school/program is, the teacher and what level of class it is. A Feminism 101 course open to everybody is vastly easier than a 400 level Feminist Theory course for people majoring/minoring in Gender Studies.
@ Kittehs
“Confusion is our forte!”
This is because confusion is a powerful weapon of the Furrinati. Every time we post cute animal pictures/videos we cause confusion. This makes Ceiling Cat purr with delight.
The Cat practicing Confusion Magic:
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/08/33/0d/08330dbfe3f2e2f94fe429d002c4d76a.jpg
@skybison
Just remember when the Furrinati take over Ceiling Cat will reward the faithful human servants with such tasks as giving treats, cuddles and playtimes while Basement Cat will laugh at the MRAs as they scoop out the litterboxes/clean yards.
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/36/63/5a/36635a7c28b3616ab0dbd306ccc68eea.jpg
One of my pet peeves is people who show up and bestow upon us their opinions about everything, whether it was related to the conversation or not. Starting with the common “I don’t consider myself a feminist” proclamation: Unless someone mistakenly said you were a feminist, why is it even relevant?
Ceiling Cat doing teh magic! ::dies of cuteness squees::
katz – we have Yoyo of Oz (yay!) whose icon thingy is red, and Yoyo of Serious whose icon thingy is pale green. I’m pretty sure they’re not the same person.
::draws self up, puffs out chest::
Mars Bars are the most overrated sweet ever made.
Was it Falconer who offered eyeball locating services in the past? Because mine have rolled under the couch again as a result of all the yoyo-ing.
Kittehs, are you OK now? Hopefully your yarn shopping helped to purge the memory of the scary drunk guy.
It was Son of Falconer who was the eyeball-catcher. The lad could have his career all mapped out with this great skill.
I’m fine, Cassandra, thank you. 🙂 Talking nonsense here helped straight away (so boo sucks to all the You Should Be Serious people). Plus, yarn!
There was a whopper of a squall while I was in the yarn shop. Leonie was all apologetic about the computers going off and not being able to check stocks of the yarn I wanted. I told her it was no problem, I was not setting foot outside the door while the rain was horizontal.
Isn’t horizontal rain a sign of the apocalypse? See, if only we hadn’t posted all those kitty pictures and we’d been more sympathetic to MRAs this wouldn’t have happened. We brought WeatherMageddon on ourselves, really.
WeatherMageddon sounds like a wonderful name for something. A cat, probably. Sort of like we’ve just turned Mafeking into a swear word at work. Boss always says “Mafeking has been relieved” when he brings in the groceries. Yesterday I asked if that meant ma-feking coffee was available.
If the apocalypse is on us, it’s been practising for a while here. We had quite a few bouts of horizontal rain this winter.
Oh, and yarn! I shall make a latticework beret with this, I hope. Sir’s feeling smug ‘cos when I was wondering aloud this morning what colour to use (I was tossing up between green and red) he said pink. I didn’t fancy the idea (I already have a pink beret) and of course guess what colour I ended up finding?
http://www.woll-e.com/media/images/popup/Sulka_08.JPG
If it’s anything like this I look forward to it.
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/cb/ee/4e/cbee4e3ec5a677518ec72a278e97d8ce.jpg
THE CATPOCALYPSE!
Fear not, minions, we will have been taken up in the Catture, recognised as true devotees of the Furrinati.
Oh, and if anyone thought the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are scary, wait till you see the Two Kittehs of the Catpocalypse performing dressage!
http://youtu.be/TTVUrl77YRE
I reckon equestrian dressage could benefit from a few seconds of felinesque fisticuffs in each routine.
LOL yes!
What the fucking fuck?
Even back in the 70s, “a feminist” wasn’t the big scary butch lady in overalls with safety pin earrings so many conjured up in their fevered imaginations.
Then, as now, the great majority of feminists are women like most other women, men like other men. We have partners, husbands, wives, kids, jobs and ordinary stuff to do every day that has to be done in every house and every life. Some of us do, and lots of us don’t, have emotional or mental health or abusive issues to deal with – just like other people.
And, just like the rest of womankind, some of us are good looking. A few of us are downright beautiful. Fancy that!
Given the similarity in name to a regular but with a different icon and the general babbling incoherence – troll? Of course the usual “trolling or just stupid?” question could also apply.
Honestly Cassandra. I voice my opinion and experience and I get called a troll. I’m surprised I haven’t been compared the the spearhead.
I’m on YOUR side. I just don’t happen to think exactly like you.
Do you just see everyone who isn’t down with you on everything as a troll? There’s nothing I wrote that indicates I am associated with those you snark and mock. I’m on your side for gods sake.
I mentioned by pretty feminist friend to show that my previous stereotypes are rather wrong, jeez Louise. Like another commenter here, I used to roll my eyes at feminism before actually stumbling into the manosphere shitter, and now that I actually look at feminist blogs to see the other side I’ve become more open minded towards it and realized I was wrong. But looking at the way you act maybe I should take that back, it i didn’t know that most people here who tried to engage with me were cool.
And womens studies should really be called feminist studies, then. A studies course I envision would cover all sides and perspectives, and both the social science and hard science aspects. So womens studies majors would need to take courses in human biology just as they take social science courses. These courses don’t just cover feminist theory but also the other side of things: as repulsive as it is: the non and antifeminist views. True academics aren’t afraid to challenge their ideology and assumptions. I’m sure many of these profs do, but looking at cases like the ‘group of 88’ from the duke lacrosse hoax (look it up) many dont.
…you keep using “hoax” when referring to the case. It makes me wonder.
Because there’s one little detail at the heart of the case…
It’s been one for a few years. Besides, it’s beside the point. I’m using it as an example, since its well known. Albeit, there’s a lot of academics not anything like the group of 88. But it’s always good to wonder how much these studies departments aremotivated by ideological narrative instead of (trying to, since we’re only human) dispassionate examination of facts. Sorry, but in academia, the academic must trump the activism even if many are both.
Ooooh, let me guess, a less than perfect rape victim? *googles* Yep, and how is that relevant to anything?
Yoyo: fuck off, you tedious scold.
No. But the stench of disingenuousness coming off you is making cartoon stink lines.