Culture Fights Back Against Cultural Marxism

First it was My Little Pony. Now it's Degrassi. Social justice warriors are certain to not be amused.

The internet reached a fever pitch recently when the season 5 premier episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic -- a cartoon show ostensibly for girls, yet enjoyed by many men -- turned its guns on extreme social justice ideologies. In particular, Cultural Marxism.

In the episode, the main characters travel to a village where the residents have surrendered their "cutie marks" (emblems on their flanks representing their special talents and powers) in the name of friendship. The idea, the main characters are told, is that nobody -- or nopony as the show's lexicon seems to hold -- can maintain a friendship unless they're equal in all things. So in the places of their "cutie marks" they all sport an equal symbol.

The villagers -- who all live in bland identical minimalist houses -- aren't as happy as they try to seem. With each villager stripped of their special talents, pretty much everything in the village is mediocre. For one thing, the muffins are terrible.

Fans of Derpy Hooves will understand the significance. 

There's more afoot than there may seem. By the end of the episode it becomes clear that the episode's villain is really only out for herself. Her crusade against "cutie marks" and insistence that everyone be "equal" seems to be for the sake of gaining power for herself, nothing more.

I don't imagine that this episode will be very popular in daycares where children are forced to build identical LEGO houses so one child can build a better house than any other child.

So there's one blow up the gut of social justice warriors. Now, courtesy of Degrassi, comes another.
Batten down the hatchets, social justice warriors. It's not going to be smooth sailing from here on out.

Long a staple of Canadian television, it's hard to find a cultural property more socially progressive than Degrassi. It was among the first television programs to sympathetically tackle such subjects as HIV, disability, teen pregnancy, mental illness, homosexuality... far too many to name. All of this beginning in the 1980s.

Now the show is going to take a swipe at the concept of "safe spaces," -- the idea that social interactions must be strictly regulated in order to facilitate the comfort of specific groups -- and  not in a way that social justice warriors are going to enjoy. Judging from the above trailer, it doesn't look like the kids are down with this at all.

With a social justice ideologue holding the reins of power at their school as principle, it looks as if the kids are going to react quite poorly to the invasion of stifling, freedom-killing social justice ideology into their school. Some look like they're going to push back. Hard.

My Little Pony is incredibly popular among children. Degrassi's current home is on youth culture juggernaut MTV.

Social justice warriors have apparently managed to earn themselves some very powerful cultural adversaries.

Welcome to Degrassi, social justice warriors. Hope your Cultural Marxist ideologies (don't) survive the experience.

Thinking the Inadvisable: TV's Newest Most Uncomfortable Moment Ever

What went wrong? First impressions tend to be lasting impressions. Most of the time, anyway.

Barbara Kean seemed so grounded a character. That was the first impression. But that impression began to slip as the series wore on. Within a few episodes, it was gone entirely. Barbara was what you may call a girl with a history: drugs, lesbians, possibly even crime, and the series' writers only know what else.

But last night's episode of Gotham hit a pop fly into left field.

There were plenty of shocking and/or uncomfortable moments in the episode. In case you haven't seen the episode I'll refrain from spoiling most of them. But it's necessary to spoil one in particular: an extremely-uncomfortable exchange between Barbara and Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova).

Barbara -- still reeling from her discovery that James Gordon has moved on -- tells Kyle she's growing into "such a lovely young woman." She tries to touch Selina, but Selina shies away from contact.

She then takes Selina inside and offers her fancy clothes.

I instantly became a good deal more uncomfortable, but decided to sit on the particular thought that sprung to mind. Until I received a Tweet:

And she's a lesbian,maybe a pedophile too RT“@OutlawTory: Uh, I think I'm as creeped out by Babs right now as Selina is. #Gotham #nerdlife”
— Aѕнα (@ThiaBaybee) February 24, 2015

It turns out I was far from the only one to pick up this particular unwelcome vibe.

Why is this so interesting? Well it turns out that pedophilia isn't something that is associated with lesbians. A quick websearch turned up evidence of only a single study attempted into the subject. The study argued that pedophilia is more common among homosexuals than among heterosexuals, but this particular study strikes me as something not to be taken seriously.

At the risk of committing a genetic fallacy, it was published in the Regent University Law Review. What is the Regent University Law Review? "Regent University Law Review seeks to present academically excellent scholarship on relevant issues facing the legal community today from the perspective of a historic Christian worldview."

I'm not the type of person who is ordinarily dismissive of anything said by a Christian on the grounds that they are a Christian. That being said, socially-conservative Christians have hardly been welcome or accepting of LGBTQ people. So my first impulse is to take anything published in the Regent University Law Review which refers to "the homosexual movement" with a grain of salt.

The study garnered great interest on a number of fringe websites with track records I would consider questionable.

The other focal point of discussion on the subject of lesbians and pedophilia seems to centre around MRA (Men's Rights Activists) websites. While I have limited sympathies with MRAs (although I'd consider "men's studies academia" to be preferable to "men's rights activists"), this is not a discussion that I feel they've approached from a constructive perspective. From what I've seen, discussion of this subject on MRA websites has been more grievance-based than public interest-based.

That's just how I see it.

For their own part, MRAs seem to blame feminism for preventing any discussion of lesbians and pedophilia -- or, for that matter, homosexuality and pedophilia -- as a deliberate means of creating and/or maintaining an association between pedophilia and heterosexual men. In the case of toxic radical feminists, they may even be correct.

In the seeming absence of any serious study into the subject matter, no conclusion can currently be drawn.

A controversial 1999 study by Dr Harris Mirkin ponders, among some deeply objectionable ideas, one that is far more interesting.

The abstract of Dr Mirkin's paper reads as follows:

"There is a two-phase pattern of sexual politics. The first is a battle to prevent the battle, to keep the issue from being seen as political and negotiable. Psychological and moral categories are used to justify ridicule and preclude any discussions of the issue, and standard Constitutional guarantees are seen as irrelevant. The second phase more closely resembles traditional politics as different groups argue over rights and privileges. Feminist and gay/lesbian politics have recently entered the second phase, while pedophilia is in the first."

It stands to reason that in order for such issues to be considered "negotiable" there must be some sense of normalization. Discussion and good faith academic studies of these issues is necessary for that normalization. In the first phase, the battle to prevent the battle is waged by attempting to prevent discussion and study.

Let's make one thing crystal clear: pedophilia should never, ever be normalized. Ever. But key to preventing pedophiles from abusing children -- such as, say, through therapeutic means -- is a thorough understanding of it.

So while the goal cannot be to "normalize" pedophilia, serious study of it is obviously in the public interest, even though the subject alone is revolting and generally discouraging. I'd suggest that a problem that wreaks social and personal damage as deeply as pedophilia befits study through various methodologies, even if from limited perspectives, would be of tremendous societal benefit.

Dr Harris Mirkin credits feminism with the advancement of women's issues and LGBTQ issues from the first phase to the second phase.

In this he's definitely not wrong.

If "The Red Hood" episode of Gotham serves as a jumping off point tor second-phase discussion of pedophilia, an interesting detail is that Erin Richards, the actress who plays Barbara Kean, is a self-professed feminist.

Time, and how far Gotham is willing to take this uncomfortable moment, will tell just where this awkwardness leads.

Bad Company Nerdcast #1 - Did Gotham Botch the Joker Origin?

No, Conservatism Isn't Patriarchical

 

Ascension might be one of the more intriguing of recent science fiction offerings. Coming as this film does, late on the heels of Interstellar, it's hard to approach the mini-series without unduly spoiling it.

Essentially, the mini-series centers around the idea that the United States could have launched an interstellar space voyage based on the technology available to them in the early 1960s. The ultimate product of this idea is the USS Ascension: the idea of an intergenerational spaceship designed somewhat loosely as an O'Neil Cylinder -- a massive tubular spaceship which spirals its way through space as a means of generating artificial gravity. The ship is on a 100 voyage to a habitable world, carrying 600 people to establish humanity's first interstellar colony.

Accordingly, everything on board the ship is comparatively low-tech, analog technology. But as with all good sci-fi the technology is not the defining aspect of Ascension.

The micro-society founded aboard the ship is a highly segmented, hierarchical society. The ship's officers and their families live in the "upper decks," a very swanky habitat within the ship. They are charged with the tasks of administrating the ship. The rest of the ship's crew lives on the "lower decks," the USS Ascension's equivalent of steerage.

Between the two is the ship's artificial beach. It's one of the few places shared by people from the ship's two different classes.

The mini-series focuses heavily on one of the necessities of such an endeavour: population control. The USS Ascension requires a crew of 600. No more and no less.

Accordingly, reproduction becomes a privilege, not a right. Each year the ship's girls must apply for eligibility to legally marry and have children. Even upon selection for eligibility they are not permitted to choose their husbands -- their husbands are assigned to them by a calculation of the ship's computer, and based on genetics. Each year the computer selects a number of couples equal to the number of people who have passed away.

That's how the delicate balance aboard the USS Ascension is maintained.

One of the favourite aspersions the left enjoys casting on conservatives is that conservatives allegedly want to turn the clock back to the 1950s; to an era where men were wage earners and women were homemakers. Where men could control women via their income. This is the definition of a patriarchal society.

Yet Ascension confronts such attitudes with an entirely different concept: a patriarchal society that is not a conservative society, but is in fact a collectivist society.

There is no denying that the micro-society born aboard the USS Ascension is patriarchal. Nowhere is that patriarchy more deeply-rooted than in the eligibility process.

In one pivotal scene, the captain's wife, Viondra Deninger (Tricia Helfer) is administering the final selection of the ship's girls for eligibility. The final test is a measurement of body mass index. To describe it most simply if the girls are too fat they can't get married. One girl is denied eligibility because her body weight is considered ideal for a girl all of two inches taller.

Harsh.

It's far from the most exhaustive measure of genetic fitness. It seems that, over time, the USS Ascension's social system has not been selecting the overall most fit for the privilege of reproduction. Instead, the system has effectively evolved not necessarily to facilitate the coupling of those most genetically optimal, but to couple men with women who will maximize male pleasure.

In that sense, it almost resembles the survival plan proposed by Dr Strangelove (Peter Sellers) in the film of the same title.


That's how a feminist critique of the micro-society portrayed in Ascension would have it, and this is one time in which I don't think they'd actually be wrong. Almost as if to make the point, one of the items held in reserve for girls deemed eligible to reproduce is cosmetics.

And while the aesthetics of the society may closely resemble the late 1950s/early 1960s in pretty much all things, there's nothing conservative about this society. At its very core the micro-society of the USS Ascension is collectivist in nature; collectivist to a stunning degree considering the paranoia about communism in the United States at the time the project was launched.

One of the fundamental beliefs of conservatives is that the family is the bedrock of society. There's fierce debate within conservative circles about precisely what form of families should be permitted (I stand with those who contend it should be of any type formed between consenting adults) but one thing stands beyond contention:

If the family is the bedrock of society, then to reserve the creation of a family as a privilege is to make a society fundamentally unfree.

Genuine conservatives won't find much regard for the micro-society of the USS-Ascension. It has more in common with the model societies frequently imagined by those of a more progressive political bent -- including feminists who frequently rail against patriarchy everywhere that it isn't.

If they want to see what a patriarchy looks like, they need look no further than Ascension.

As the mini-series wears on a number of Shayamalan-esque plot twists emerge to tell one of the more nuanced stories in recent sci-fi history. If viewers approach the show expecting anything along the lines of Interstellar they will be very, very surprised.

At three one-hour sittings it certainly becomes a less demanding time investment than Christopher Nolan's space epic and in the end perhaps leaves the viewer with far more to ponder.

It'll also leave you humming "Rocket Man" for days.

He Talks Loser Talk

John talks loser talk/
he takes a defeat and whines about it

Apparently, the Globe and Mail hasn't tired of John Doyle. At this point they must be almost the only ones. Over the past month his work has become more politicized, more sanctimonious, and more contemptuous of basic little things like... facts.

In his most recent work, Doyle takes it upon himself to whine about the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council ruling on the namby-pamby complaints filed -- at Gillis direct request -- by people who were outraged that Sun News personality Krista Erickson wasn't deferential enough to "iconic" interpretive dancer Margie Gillis.

But even in the wake of acknowledging that the CBSC has no business punishing broadcasters if their on-air personalities are "obnoxious" (the CBC, with Marg Delahunty, wouldn't stand a chance), Doyle is still playing pretend.

He's still pretending that Gillis wasn't obnoxious, despite the fact that she was the one speaking over Erickson at will.

Not that Doyle seems to think that Canadian TV is any better for the alleged freedom to be obnoxious.

"Those who felt they could gain justice for Margie Gillis were naive. The obnoxious have triumphed on TV here," Doyle complains. "If being obnoxious was a disqualification, then Don Cherry and Kevin O’Leary would have disappeared from the airwaves many years ago. They didn’t. They prevailed."

It's laughable to think that Gillis should be able to go on any TV show of any kind, speak over the host at will -- as she did, regardless of the will on Doyle's part, and on the part of Gillis' disciples to simply ignore this -- and then later demand justice. Which is precisely what happened.

The 6,000+ complaints that were directed the CBSC's way over the Gillis interview weren't, by any means, spontaneous. They were, each and every one of them, organized and orchestrated by Gillis herself through her Facebook page. They were astroturf, nothing more, and nothing less.

At the end of the day, Doyle is so stunned by this setback for his personal crusade against Sun News that all he can manage is to regress: he regresses back to his argument that the Sun News audience is tiny, when in fact they are setting ratings records.

More people watch Sun News than read John Doyle's column. But that, along with the simple fact of who was speaking over who, is a fact that's simply too inconvenient for Doyle, so he ignores it.

It's just what he does.

Not Friends of All Canadian Broadcasters

In all fairness, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting's "Stop the CBC Smackdown" campaign has probably gone unnoticed by most Canadians. In fact, Friends of Canadian Broadcasting has probably gone unnoticed by most Canadians.

In the ad, FCB presents a fictional -- purely fictional -- scenario in which the government privatizes the CBC and sells it to an American pro wrestling promoter. The ad has Bret Hart offended, and rightfully so.

In every sense, the campaign is an example of FCB playing at dog whistle politics. They've assumed that most of their supporters look down on pro wrestling, and so they've singled it out as a means to ridicule any notion that the CBC may not continue as it always has. In other words, that there may be any sort of changes.

But in singling out pro wrestling, FCB very clearly forgot about one of Canada's pioneering broadcasters: none other than Bret Hart's father, Stu Hart.

For decades, Hart was Canada's most successful wrestling promoter -- which, unfortunately, isn't saying much in terms of financial success. But Stampede Wrestling was broadcasted across Canada, into the United States, and in markets around the world. It's left an indelible mark on this form of entertainment that apparently FCB hate so deeply.

If the mark of success is how many viewers his programs reached, and how many dreams it has helped create, than Hart was an incomparable success.

Some of the Canadian stars to emerge out of Stampede Wrestling include Bret Hart, Owen Hart and Chris Jericho. Other stars to emerge out of the company included the British Bulldog and Andre the Giant.

Not that the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting have any respect for this.

Nor did they have much respect for Pat Patterson, a Quebec-born wrestler who was openly gay within the industry. The homophobic crack from their Lance Fury character is deeply disrespectful.

I fully expect to hear some ridicule for even bringing these things up, and I'm prepared for it. Frankly, I don't care.

Children across the world grew up watching pro wrestling, and for people of my particular generation, Stampede Wrestling was a big part of that. It was one hour of every Saturday afternoon remembered with fond memories.

For an organization that purports itself to be a supportive pillar of broadcasting in Canada to so callously and contemptuously disregard the contributions of wrestling to Canadian broadcasting simply reveals the group for what it is: a sham.