Today’s Pervnado Chronicles

I’ve had to give up my daily Pervnado Bingo game, because it’s become too easy a game to win, and usually by around 9:30 in the morning it’s all over. And what fun is that? Among today’s roster is the owner of the Carolina Panthers NFL franchise, Jerry Richardson, who announced abruptly today that he will sell the team after credible allegations of Harvey Weinstein-level behavior.

More amusing to watch is how this phenomenon is playing out in its second act. First up is D.C. McAllister’s fine article over at The Federalist in which she notes that women shouldn’t be understood as helpless victims in the modern world, and moreover that most women actually enjoy their sexual attraction to men:

Here’s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty. Why? Because it is part of their nature.

Women want to be desired by men, to attract them, to be the only woman in the world for that man. Their beauty is an essential part of their allure, especially when men and women first meet. They have little else to go on because they don’t know each other, and beauty serves as a guidepost to greater interest. Outside of a woman looking for a mate, her beauty is a source of power because men and other women value it.

This is much the same point Claire Berlinski made in the Ricochet podcast I was part of on Friday. Of course it’s ugly when men are crude and boorish, though one wonders the extent to which extreme feminism hasn’t contributed to the decline of gentlemanship that would have kept this problem within reasonable bounds. But once it became open to question whether opening a door for a woman was on offense against feminist empowerment, we were bound to have a difficult period of adjustment that continues to the present.

Comes now news that an associate deputy attorney general in Texas—Texas!—has been forced to resign his position because he posted a link to this McAllister article on his Facebook page. The New York Times reports:

A top aide to Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas resigned on Thursday after posting a Facebook message that mocked the #MeToo movement against sexual assault and harassment.

The aide, Associate Deputy Attorney General Andrew D. Leonie, had posted on Facebook early Wednesday: “Aren’t you also tired of all the pathetic ‘me too’ victim claims? If every woman is a ‘victim,’ so is every man. If everyone is a victim, no one is. Victim means nothing anymore.”

Marc Rylander, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said Mr. Leonie had resigned “effective immediately.” . . . “The views he expressed on social media do not reflect our values,” Mr. Rylander said in a statement. “The O.A.G. is committed to promoting and maintaining a workplace that is free from discrimination and harassment.”

So now we’re in the position where commenting adversely on the extremes of the current moral panic is a firing offense—an accusation of bad behavior yourself is not required. Good to know. Perverse indeed.

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