fwiw, i've explained in many places that the accusations against zappa regarding misogyny are simply not well grounded.

zappa does not tend to present women as less intelligent than men at all. in fact, the women in his universe are refreshingly real, in contrast to the women in much of the rest of the counter-culture. in zappa's universe, women have names, they have defined goals, they speak for themselves and they act independently of anybody's authority, often to the frustration of the men in his universe.

zappa also had prominent female members of his band, like ruth underwood.

what zappa's message really was was misanthropic. it was satire, of course. but, the core idea of his early work was not that women were stupid but that hippies were stupid. what critics tended to do was to isolate little pieces of his work, take them out of context and then present them in skewed and unrepresentative ways. it was really a hit/smear job, to the core - because his politics were threatening, and he had a really dedicated cult following.

it is no doubt true that very few of his critics really listened to much of his work. if they did, they'd realize that he presented male hippies as equally dumb.

rock music didn't really let women in as equals until the punk era. you're not going to find much 60s or 70s rock music that is more feminist than this, for example:

but, i'm going to request that you focus less on the female character and more on the satirical attack of toxic masculinity embedded in the male character.

joseph mccarthy was neither allen dulles nor j. edgar hoover

he was never inside; always on the outside.

a loose cannon.

the media was exceedingly critical the whole time; edward murrow's eventual smack down was only effective because it was the establishment position on the matter.

so, the russia fiasco is fundamentally incomparable to the red scare. the red scare was carried out mostly by conservatives at the fringe of the political spectrum, and received little support from the deep state establishment; indeed, the red scare was scary precisely because it was seen as a possible vehicle for an authoritarian uprising - and ignored by most because that couldn't happen here.

the russia fiasco is being pushed by the most resilient members of the deep state in order to take down a sitting president - a sitting president that they installed, themselves.

i understand that "mccarthyite" is more of an english word at this point, with a specific meaning. so, something doesn't have to be much like the red scare to be mccarthyite. but, it's still recent enough to bring up the history in the minds of those that know it.

generally, the cia wants you to shut up and buy shit, not cower in the corner waiting for the apocalypse. the russia narrative is a necessary evil, to stop people from putting together the actual pieces: namely that the cia fed assange the information to prevent hillary from winning. but, it's extremely uncharacteristic.

and, i wouldn't expect a parallel to this any time soon - or even to really find a good one in american history.

but, i mean, i've argued in this space that we ought to abolish parties altogether....

i think that being a card-carrying member of a political party is kind of a comical anachronism in 2018 - almost as comical as going to a religious service every week.

it's just not how people interact with politics.

i'm going to vote for my self-interest, not based on some archaic concept of tribal allegiance.

more people should do what this guy is doing.

that said,  he's not doing this right. if i were to do this, i'd vote for the least electable candidate, which would be tga.

https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2018/02/24/hes-a-green-backer-voting-in-the-ontario-pc-race-should-we-care.html

i'd probably get along with your mom better than i'd get along with you, too.

stated tersely, i believe that the third wave will, in the long run, be seen as almost entirely reactionary.

i'm somewhere in between.

but, i'd absolutely identify as second-wave before i'd identify as third-wave

i'd fall just short of the idea that the third-wave of feminism was the undoing of it. in a lot of ways, it was. i'm not buying into the idea that patriarchy can be relabelled as feminism via the power of magical thinking, so i'm broadly going to reject the idea that perpetuating patriarchy via pretending that you're in charge (which might even be the fucking kink) is somehow some kind of end to it.. i've said this before: it is your mom's feminism, for the precise reason that your mom was a feminist, and you're not. you're not even close to one. but, it's not the case across the board. this theory of "intersectionality" is just burkean conservative rebranded with an orwellian flair, but the premise of needing to expand the definition of feminism beyond the middle class was certainly long overdue.

and, yes, i'm as frustrated as the next transwoman about radical feminism's exclusionary basis, but the fact is that i'd be hard-pressed to find much of anything else that i disagree with radfems about.

i have and will continue to argue these points where necessary. it's too big a topic to lay down without prodding.

but, i'm more critical of the third wave than i am supportive of it. and, all i can say is that i hope that the next generation has better skills of analysis and independent thought in being able to deconstruct the corporatocracy's attempts to reassert patriarchy via popular media, from the truly disgusting catastrophe that is brittney spears to the pawning off of rape culture as entertainment.

why are we still talking about submission as a fetish in 2018?

50 shades of patriarchal bullshit.

don't rot your brain with this nonsense.

and, you wonder why i don't trust this party...

as i suggested months ago, the bc ndp never seriously opposed this pipeline. the ndp does not have provincial wings; the whole thing was theatre, so it would seem like bc would get something from it.

and, alberta can hardly be a large enough consumer of bc wine for this threat to have had any serious substance. it would have been more likely to hurt notley, in the long run.

now, the ndp will almost certainly lose the next election in both provinces; they never had a serious chance in alberta, and they've just stabbed their base in the back in bc.

the greens should pull the plug and force an election as soon as possible.

but, again - wynne is right. as is almost universally the case when she starts arguing with horwath.

the reason i'm posting this is that it demonstrates the point about how little influence the premier has. the fact is that the prime minister has signed a deal that benefits alberta at the expense of ontario, and there's absolutely nothing that we can do about it, here, at the provincial level, except figure out a way to adjust.

if the deal gets signed, the jobs are gone and they're not coming back. so, let's talk about what happens next, not project fantasies to confuse workers with.

and, she has every right to ask the feds for the funds, too.

although, if this keeps happening, we're going to have to start asking how long we're planning on sticking around in this country for, given that the feds are so singularly focused on alberta and simply don't seem to care about our interests here in ontario at all.

https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/02/22/ontario-needs-funds-to-help-weather-pacific-trade-pact-wynne-says.html

and, yes, we made the right choice in rejecting mulcair, although i would have preferred to see trudeau win a minority government, so that the ndp could hold him more accountable. that's what i wanted to see in endorsing the liberals.

the majority took everybody by surprise, because nobody expected him to sweep the east like that (and because quebec was a shit shoot).

i'm not going to actively fight the ndp in this election unless i have to, because i might need to shift at the last minute.

but, this statement is no doubt true to any left-leaning voter: kathleen wynne is as good of a premier as you can reasonably expect, or are ever going to get. horwath is certainly no improvement, from a left-of-centre perspective. and, the conservatives are always a step backwards. so, any shift in leadership at this exact time is going to lead to you being worse off.

you're probably not a robot like i am.

but, you have plenty of time to work this out.

it would be nice if an ideal option existed, but it doesn't. wynne remains the optimal & most rational choice.

(but, please continue voting ndp in ridings where the liberals are uncompetitive)

the truth is that i just don't know.

http://www.historymuseum.ca/virtual-museum-of-new-france/population/slavery/

i'm really, honesty not any more french than this guy is welsh.

it's like 1/32nd or something. if that. it may have been an adopted name.

surnames are a bad way to guess ethnicity.