WOMEN
October 173rd | Essay Three
This is an essay about self-deluded men who call themselves heroes, martyrs, and victims while targeting the neighbors for mass sexual atrocities.
This is an essay about self-deluded women who call themselves feminists while appeasing male perpetrators and betraying female victims.
This is an essay about other, better women with the moral clarity and courage to denounce not only men who hurt women, but also the women who appease the men who hurt women:
This is fundamentally an essay about women who are or are not able to discriminate between good (which can be nuanced) and evil (which is absolute — and in which category gang rapes and mass torture, mutilations, executions, and abductions surely figure).
1 | Heroes, Martyrs, and Victims
Let’s be clear about Hamas: They‘re a drug-fueled, ultra-violent group of hypermasculinists who hate women and aim to butcher their way to a Clockwork Orange version of theocratic fascism.
Since 2007, this billionaire has helped rule Gaza — a quasi-state whose regime oppresses and terrorizes, impoverishes, and sacrifices Palestinians — but he thinks he’s a hero:
This dour old totalitarian millionaire and wannabe martyr prides himself on loving death, and claims to speak for women while clearly hating mothers and children:
This callous millionaire is spokesman for a cross-border gang-rape and mass-murder operation targeted at babies, children, women, and the elderly — but he thinks he’s the victim:
2 | Women Who Appease Rapists
I suspect that faux feminists’ appeasement of jihadist rape culture is less about victims’ nationality or race and more (or perhaps entirely) about feckless women’s kneejerk betrayal of sisters when push comes to shove.
Among these faux feminists, presumably some are motivated by hatred (expressed as victim-blaming) — but all reveal primal female fear of male aggression.
3 | Pants on Fire
Do professional feminists know what Hamas did to girls and women on October 7th? Why you silly — of course they know! They’ve chosen to appease the perpetrators.
Watch CNN’s interview with Sarah Hendriks, a Deputy Executive Director at UN Women and, as per her pukeworthy UN Women and LinkedIn bio (which she wrote), a “visionary leader.”
Note how Sarah’s tone drips with sanctimony — and note her praying hands! — as she dishes out (sorry for the image) word salad slathered in bullshit.
Sarah dares not name October 7th’s perpetrator. Well of course! — she’s sitting pretty in Doha (capital of Qatar, which lavishly finances Hamas) and knows quite well how the terrorist group punishes anyone who calls them out. She knows that an operative could find and punish her, too, so even when journalist Bianna Golodryga presses her to name Hamas, she zips her lip. Because she’s afraid.
4 | Game Face
In this era when every professional’s background is a matter of record — which even if you factor in PR, will give you some sense of a individual’s broader credibility — Advocate Adila Hassim, who in January argued South Africa’s lawsuit against Israel in UN Court, presents an impressive resumé coupled with a nonexistent biography.
What I could find via Google was a puff piece posted on January 11th (the very day that Ms. Hassim slimed the State of Israel with the G word) defending her cagy refusal to reveal personal details.
The piece presents a woman too good to be true — as if like Athena or Aphrodite, she was born a full-grown goddess of wisdom and beauty gifted with apparently impeccable humanitarian creds and only the purest, most unbiased of motives.
The part that sent my bullshit detector into overdrive was the writer’s appeal to “sacred boundaries” and “domains one holds sacrosanct” as grounds for Ms. Hassim’s “appropriately obscur[ing]” her “private world” — not prying into which would be [the writer opines] “the most ethical course.”
I beg to differ. Adila Hassim (whose name is Arabic) is not in fact a private individual: She has just been given a world stage on which to accuse the State of Israel of the worst possible crime! It’s inappropriate and unethical that someone entrusted with this much power to shape hostile world opinion should expect to have her motives — which may or may not be pure — accepted at face value.
I suspect that hidden under Adila Hassim’s attorney robe, she’s carrying a huge ideological axe against Israelis — but that she’s using her high official status, her virtuous public persona, and the concealment of her bio to cloak from view malicious personal motives.
5 | Stockholm Syndrome
Does Greta Thunberg know what Hamas did to girls and women on October 7th? Why you silly — of course she knows! She has chosen to amplify the slogans of sadistically evil men.
Greta has squandered her credibility by turning her attention from environmental activism to a political conflict about which she knows zilch. I wonder if her idealism would extend to sharing the fate of 22-year-old German-Israeli Shani Louk (z”l)? Would Greta submit to being raped and mutilated and to her corpse being paraded and spat on—I mean, if her assailants wore Hamas headbands and shared her latest cause?
No? Then our Greta isn’t that stupid after all. She understands something about self-preservation. But if she understands that much, why isn’t she using her celebrity to declare re jihadist rape culture: “Not in my name!”
Greta doesn’t do that because when her handlers shove a mic in her face and point her toward a camera, she parrots their lies and bloodthirsty jingles. The truth is that I pity this apparently ill-educated, naïve young woman who hasn’t a clue that people are using her to serve their own ends.
Either that or she has chosen to appease her duplicitous new friends.
6 | Forked Tongues
Do female Ivy League presidents (resignee) Claudine Gay, Sally Kornbluth, and (resignee) Liz Magill know what Hamas did to girls and women on October 7th? Do they know that on their own leafy campuses, emboldened racist mobs are taunting and physically intimidating Jewish students while gloating over gang rapes and mass murders targeted at Jews a world away?
Why you silly — of course they know! They’ve chosen to appease campus bullies.
Perhaps in her personal life, one or more of these university heads has been on the receiving end of violence and has survived by placating her abuser — which would go a long way toward explaining her sacrificing bullied students to appease their tormentors.
7 | Profs 4 Hamas
Re these five faculty ladies who cream their panties for Hamas, there really is no question about their capacity for hatred or their affinity for violence against women and children:
- Jemma Decristo, UC Davis Assistant Professor of American Studies, went on social-media platform X three days postmassacre to threaten the kids of Zionist journalists (her language) — and embellished her sentiments with a machete, an axe, and blooddrop emojis.
- Mika Tosca, Associate Professor of Climate Science, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), took to X eleven days postmassacre — and echoing Islamist rhetoric, name-called Israelis pigs, savages, and irredeemable excrement.
- Victoria Huynh, Lecturer in Asian Studies, UC Berkeley Department of Ethnic Studies, emailed her undergrads 17 days postmassacre, prodding them to join pro-jihad demonstrations by bribing them with higher grades and extra credit.
- Samantha Pearson, now former (sacked) Head of the University of Alberta (Canada) Sexual Assault Centre, declared 41 days postmassacre that Hamas doesn’t rape.
- Sima Shakhsari, Associate Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota (and Leila Khaled fangirl) — who also works with rape survivors — has claimed that Hamas didn’t rape.
8 | Majorettes and Flag-Twirlers
And what of privileged young women who study at elite American universities?
Rachel Birney, a PhD student at the University of Southern California (USC), loves Hamas so much that she hates even kidnapped babies:
Tara Tarawneh, an undergrad at UPenn (whose [resignee] president Liz Magill notoriously threw her university’s Jewish students under the bus), has said that when she saw images of the massacre, “I remember feeling so empowered”:
And what overall of the West’s placard-carrying, flag-waving handmaidens of the Revolution who march alongside young brethren and choose to celebrate jihadist savagery? The handmaidens have taken to carrying lemon drops in their jeans pockets, so hoarse do they make themselves baying for the blood of Jews.
Pop Quiz
Pop Quiz for Rachel, Tara, and their peers:
- Would you marry a particular man if you knew that he had raped and/or tortured and/or murdered even one woman your age? If he had carved a live fetus out of a live woman, stabbed the fetus and shot the mother? And if they were Israeli, would that make a difference to you?
- Would you want a particular man to father your children if you knew that he had mutilated and shot, or raped and beheaded, even one child — or raped the corpse of even one child? And if that child were Israeli, would that make a difference to you?
- Would you introduce your handsome young man to Gran if you knew that he had abducted or put a bullet into the skull of even one old lady? And if she were somebody’s Savta instead of your Jadda, would that make a difference to you?
If you’ve answered yes to even one of the above questions (designed to test your self-respect as women), you’ve given your hearts to psychopaths.
Essay Question
I look at the photos of dead babies and I’m not seeing dead Arab babies or dead Jewish babies — I’m seeing dead babies. What about you? (And yes, that’s the question worth 51 points on the Ethics 101 final; f**k up your answer to that one and you’ve failed the test.)
L.A., Philly, Tehran
Rachel and Tara apparently think they’re promoting Palestinians’ rights to dignified personal lives — whereas in truth they’re promoting the imperial ambitions of a proto-Caliphate that (being totalitarian) cares not a fig for individual lives or dignity and (being fascist) holds girls and women in contempt.
And judging from how this proto-Caliphate maltreats its own daughters (who are champing at the bit for freedoms that jihad’s cheer squads in the West seem absurdly eager to chuck)—it won’t treat Palestine’s girls any better.
Tehran’s daughters and their male allies — who must summon deep courage unimaginable to Westernized softies — are protesting a theocracy ruled by mirthless old men and enforced by Morality Police who hate and beat and kill girls for their youth and beauty and unbridled dreams.
Whereas for Rachel and Tara, in America, it takes no courage at all to join campus rabble hating on Jews. Although it might take courage — I’m sure it would — to stand out from the crowd, advocate for a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel, and denounce jihadist rape culture.
So what should partisan young women do if they truly care about Palestinians?
- They should distance themselves from their male counterparts’ affinity for violence. Because why does this even need saying: Angry young men who lionize gang rapists and spew bloodthirsty slogans are not the allies of women and girls.
- They should cross the quad and defy their rowdy classmates by holding up (not tearing down) posters of kidnapped babies and children—and of raped girls their age (images of whose desecrated bodies exist because the rapists took pictures).
- And they should chant: “Not in our name!”
But they can’t. They won’t. Maybe because no one who has indoctrinated them in Fanon’s theory of violent decolonization as catharsis has bothered to teach them about fascism — toward which they’re heading in a handbasket.
9 | Institutional Betrayal
Prof. Jennifer Freyd has coined the term institutional betrayal to describe the amplified trauma experienced by rape victims when law enforcement and the courts refuse to believe them or take seriously their concerns for personal safety. Instead, these institutions tend to protect aggressors while shaming and silencing victims.
In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, we are seeing play out in real time institutional betrayals of victims when institutional courage is called for.
Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, Chair of Israel’s Commission on the Oct. 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women and Children, has said: “The evidence is undeniable, yet we find ourselves fighting a dual battle: one against these atrocities, and another against global silence [using] the same denial mechanisms inflicted on individual rape victims.”
This denialism is happening at a moment when fascism (always hostile to women and children) is resurgent worldwide.
Hamas acts as a spearhead for advancing Islamist imperial designs on the Middle East and the West. On October 7th, the group acted out an ISIS-style scenario by unleashing ferociously sadistic sexual violence on girls and women — and on some males, who were sodomized and castrated. And they’re sexually abusing hostages.
The currently scrambling West is evidently unprepared, psychologically and politically, for the Clockwork Orange version of Islamism. And Western feminism is not in the least equipped to tackle jihadist rape culture!
But implications for the world’s girls and women are dire if women’s rights activists remain so cowed by reports of sexual atrocities that they cave to atavistic female fear of male rage.
In the wake of October 7th, caving is what we’ve seen so far from nonplussed global feminists: a freeze, flight, or fawn response to threat when what is required — what must be birthed by feminists worthy of the name — is the steely courage to fight back.
10 | Fifth-Wave Feminism
For obvious reasons, Israelis targeted by jihadists for gang rape and sexual mutilation don’t have the privilege of freezing (paralyzed inaction), fleeing (ignoring or denying or minimizing the atrocities), or fawning (appeasing the perpetrators).
Faced with global feminism’s disgraceful moral failure to react with clarity and courage, Israeli women’s organizations and some brave allies have picked up the gauntlet: gathering eyewitness testimonies, forensic evidence, and digital evidence.
This data will help bring the rapists to justice for war crimes and crimes against humanity via the International Criminal Court (est. 2002) — a precedent for which was set by the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (1994–2015).
Israeli feminists are also helping create trauma-informed protocols for treating atrocity survivors and witnesses. Re freed hostages, psychiatrist Renana Eitan attests to the need: “The physical, sexual, mental, [and] psychological abuse of these hostages who came back is just terrible. We have to rewrite the textbook.”
These initiatives suggest that a necessary fifth-wave feminism focused on acknowledging ALL sexual-trauma victims and holding ALL perpetrators to account is in the process of birthing itself — and that Israel is its matrix.
