Calvin & Hobbes: Bill Watterson's Comment on the 26th Amendment

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

Complete androgyny is the Left’s ultimate goal even if some of their useful idiots don’t know it yet

We're entering a sexless world where men and women are meaningless categories 

says Benny Huang (a tip o' the hat to Maggie's Farm's Bird Dog).

Using the “wrong” pronoun in casual conversation can cost you big bucks these days—even when it happens to be the right one. Gresham-Barlow School District in Oregon was forced to cough up $60,000 to a teacher who prefers the pronoun “they” because she “identifies” as neither male nor female. The teacher, Leo Soell, was granted damages in order to compensate her for the emotional distress of being “misgendered.” For the uninitiated, “misgendering” is nothing more than using the correct pronoun to refer to a person who prefers to be called something else. In the old days we just called it good grammar.

 … “Civil rights” is no longer about parity between men and women or the moral equivalence of same-sex relationships vis-à-vis opposite-sex relationships. Even the idea that men can be women (and vice versa) has lost its novelty. Now it’s about the abolition of sex itself.

For everyone’s sake I hope we have finally reached peak insanity.

There are a million variations on the concept of gender identity with exciting new ones being introduced all the time. Besides men who think they are women (and vice versa), there are also genderqueer, two-spirit, and intersex people. There are transmasculine people, who are not the same as transmen, just as there are transfeminine people, who are not the same as transwomen.

Most of my female readers will be shocked to learn that they’re actually ciswomen. A ciswoman is a woman who believes she’s a woman. Nearly every woman you’ve ever met is a ciswoman, which makes you wonder what the superfluous prefix is for.

Answer: to drive home the idea that there are different kinds of women, some of whom are male. We call those transwomen. Ciswomen and transwomen are two equally valid categories of women with neither group considered more deserving of the “woman” title than the other.

This whole movement, I am convinced, can only lead to complete androgyny—that ambiguous gray area between the masculine and feminine spheres. It is the Left’s ultimate goal even if some of their useful idiots don’t know it yet. We’ll get there one Lifetime television special at a time.

 … Feminists absolutely abhor masculinity, except among women. They attack all symbols of masculinity as exclusionary, misogynistic, and chauvinistic. They seek out boys clubs to annihilate them, often by the brute force of slanderous rape claims. See the Rolling Stone rape hoax or the Duke Lacrosse rape hoax. Nor do feminists care for femininity, except among men. Anything that is soft, pink, or glittery sends them into fits of rage—which kind of makes me wonder why they’re called “feminists” in the first place.


In order to understand just how we got here and where we’re going, allow me to invoke a metaphor. Think of men as forks and women as spoons. Within the last hundred years or so we have come to see the two utensils as different in form and function but nonetheless a complementary matched set. But then along came the feminists who declared that spoons can do anything that forks can do! That statement isn’t technically true (and neither is its inverse) but we accepted it because every time we disputed it we were accused of hating spoons. We defended ourselves from the charge only to have our pleas fall on deaf ears.

Then came the homosexuals who decided that forks and spoons weren’t really complementary at all. Two forks or two spoons were just as good as the traditional fork-spoon combo because, in the final analysis, they’re all just tableware. This assertion was a tougher sell because most people could see that forks and spoons are inherently different. The homosexuals dismissed these substantive differences by comparing them to superficial differences such as the color of the eating utensils. So now when we sit down to eat we no longer expect to find a fork and spoon on the table and we blush with embarrassment to think that we ever did.
 
Then came the transgenders who proclaimed that sometimes a fork can actually be a spoon and vice versa. Looking like a fork, with all the defining characteristics of a fork, doesn’t necessarily mean that a utensil is a fork. Utensils are now free to “identify” as one or the other. Cut off the tines if that’s what it takes, or just leave them on—it doesn’t matter. From the moment the fork decides it’s a spoon that’s what it is. Each utensil’s word is final. All of us will be forced to use the fork as a spoon, to refer to it as a spoon, and to store it alongside the other spoons in the silverware drawer. If some of the other spoons don’t like it they need to get with the times.

As crazy as that sounds, we’re not done yet. The next step is to abolish the concepts of forkness and spoonness altogether. From now on we will all use sporks! Sporks are wonderful things because they’re interchangeable. No more messing around with two separate utensils when one will do the trick.

Call me old fashioned but I don’t want to eat all my meals with a spork. Sporks remind me of meals I’ve eaten at sketchy fried chicken restaurants. I want to live in a world in which all the forks are forks, all the spoons are spoons, and everyone knows the difference. They’re both beautiful in their own way and they both serve a purpose. Sporks are a lousy substitute.

If Hillary loses, America fails the progress test; It’s basically the Obama con job all over again, using sex rather than race

Hillary Clinton would have you believe she's the underdog in this race simply because she's a woman

writes Benny Huang (a tip o' the hat to Maggie's Farm's Bird Dog).

Hillary Clinton breathed new life into her “girl power” campaign when she complained last week in a New York Magazine interview about latent sexism. According to Mrs. Clinton, she’d encountered people at campaign events who told her

“I really admire you, I really like you, I just don’t know if I can vote for a woman to be president.”

Yeah—said no one ever. It’s as if someone said to her “You’re awesome, I love you, but I’m just too sexist to check the box next to your name.” We’re supposed to believe that sexism is now so pervasive that even her supporters are affected. I’m sorry, but I’m not taking Hillary’s word for it.

But she wasn’t done fishing for pity. “Unpacking this, understanding it, is for writers like you,” she told the interviewer, Rebecca Traister. “I’m just trying to cope with it. Deal with it. Live through it.” Oh, okay. So now Hillary wants a medal for bravery too. It must be hard remaining stoic in the face of all the imaginary slights she is forced to endure on a daily basis.

Her anecdote has got to be one of the most self-serving I have ever heard, just too perfect to be genuine. Stories like this one cast her as the underdog taking on the sexist establishment. Who would ever guess that she is the establishment and arguably the most powerful woman who’s ever lived? Poor Hillary, she’s up against tough odds; you know, with the Democratic superdelegates lined up to vote for her and corporate America bankrolling her campaign.

In order for her candidacy to be a notable “first,” Hillary Clinton must be seen as smashing through the proverbial glass ceiling. Otherwise, where’s the accomplishment? The solution is to invent sexism where it doesn’t really exist; hence the invented quote she relayed to New York Magazine. She’s trying to turn the 2016 election into a test of how far we have progressed as a nation in terms of women’s rights. If she loses, America fails the test. It’s basically the Obama con job all over again, using sex rather than race.

 … If the New York Magazine interview is any indicator, the sex-based campaign is back like Freddy Krueger. I guess when all you’ve got is the woman card, you just keep playing it over and over again. Every moment she spends discussing the historic “first” that awaits us if we just have the courage to elect her is a moment she doesn’t have to spend talking about her email server, Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, the Lolita Express, her speeches to Wall Street execs, or her voting record.

 … But let’s unravel what [Nancy] Pelosi’s saying. Apparently Hillary has a great record on national security—except for the biggest national security vote of her life when she signed on to a “grotesque mistake.” But no matter! The important thing here is that we elect a woman, regardless of her voting record. Girl power!

 … For the remainder of the campaign, Hillary is going to stick with what she knows—identity politics. She’s come so far and the future’s looking bright for her. Only two things stand between her and the White House—the FBI and a very weak candidate named Donald Trump. From now until November—and likely for the rest of her political career—Hillary Clinton will do nothing but play that tattered woman card, ceaselessly and without shame.

This Will Be the Longest Day

The story of D-Day. Ed Driscoll reminds us of Ronald Reagan’s two great speeches on the 40th Anniversary of D-Day…