Zardu Hasselfrau is actually a pretty good name for the space Hoff.

Geez ... crank up the cheese to 11 *promote Let's all hassle the Hoff!

I prefer listening to Milo's entertaining jibes compared to the tantrums and virtue signalling of the left. If you watch one Milo video, watch the full UMass presentation with Crowder and Hoff-Summers.

ps. Ignoring the right did wonders at the last election. ; )

Feel free to be specific, and not just coy and vague. Which parts were intended as 'tongue in cheek' - was it linking to right wing activist blogs? I am truthfully and honestly unsure, because we don't know each other - for some people, quoting CHS would be a joke, similar to quoting Anne Coulter, and for others it's a valid source. I still don't know which, if either, opinion you hold.

Trust me, I will happily and heartily chuckle at your wry, irascible tongue in cheek wit, if you can tell me which parts you thought you were being tongue in cheek about, and what your serious arguments are.

As to whether Christina Hoff Sommers is a feminist or not, I would guess that it's not as easy as just calling yourself a feminist. I can call myself a conservative, but the evidence is against me: I never vote conservative, I typically espouse progressive views, and I usually criticize flaws in conservative thought and policy, comparing it unfavorably to progressive thought. I think a reasonable person would have to say that I'm either being disingenuous if I call myself a conservative, or that I'm very very bad at it.

I don't get to decide what CHS calls herself, but as a rational person I have to look at her argument and see if it's based in feminism or in something entirely different, and make up my own mind about it regardless of labels.

As for the rest, I'm not sure, again, which parts you say are just straw manning it up and which parts we agree on. I thought we had some disagreements but you might have been tongue in cheek about all of it, for all I know.

For example, I thought we were in agreement on this: "so the situation is not some cut and dried situation,and there are extreme elements of any social movement,but those elements should not invalidate the message" - so I didn't comment on that part. It makes sense to me, and unless you were being tongue in cheek, we're in agreement.

I thought we came to an agreement (?) on the prevalence of rape and the need to look at the whole picture, but also agreed (?) that there are several other disheartening factors at work in the so-called justice system.

I thought, however, that we disagreed about your entire first point (both about how making discrimination illegal should eliminate the wage gaps, and about how no serious economists cite it). This is where I thought CHS was a poor rebuttal - regardless of her right wing activism, she's certainly not an economist; she's a philosopher by education, and not a particularly credible source on the economy. Again, if you were being tongue in cheek when quoting her I'll just erase that part and assume that we agree.

As for contradictory evidence, I can't swear that I'll be influenced by it, and I certainly won't accept it uncritically - we all have a hard time breaking down our own biases. But I'll happily and gratefully read it, as I assume you will too.

@Babymech
jesus holy christ...

were you truly unable to discern my tongue firmly planted in cheek?

and then take issue with pay gap discrimination?
ok-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Pay_Act_of_1963

/cue rainbow

which you may take issue that i used wiki as a reference,which is pretty much your counter-position to my links.

which is just utter weak sauce.

oh that study was by a conservative think tank and therefore they have an "agenda".nevermind that christina hoff sommers is a feminist,nevermind that you didnt refute the numbers..lets just stick with "agenda" to refute any and all statistics that do not coincide with your narrative.

should i gather by implication that christian hoff sommers is not a feminsist?even though she identifies as one? or is she just the "wrong" kind of feminist?

come on man,are you really that blinded by your own bullshit?

and then you proudly attempted to dissect the rest of my comment taking positions i never took,but was rather using to express that in much of our dialogue..i was fucking agreeing with you.

you literally wrote one big,massive and utterly useless straw man.while i was actually trying to have a conversation.i may have indulged in some smart assery but that is mainly due to my perception of you.that i respected you enough not to treat you like a precious little flower or some fragile snowflake.

maybe you see this is as a right/wrong dynamic.

but here is the cold,hard truth:context matters.
and if you insist on viewing this situation in such a narrow and myopic way,the larger context will ALWAYS be unavailable to you.

so until you are ready to evaluate,without bias,new information.that may possibly contradict your current narrative,then you will always be stuck in your own self-delusion.

you were challenged.
your response was lack luster and a straw man.
and i can only assume by your words that any contrary evidence or contradictory opinions that may conflict with your own will be met with similar straw men,presumptions,deflecting and goal post moving.

because if ya cant beat em,
berate and belittle them.

First of all, statistics aren't a game Not all of the internet is about being a tough guy winner, and sometimes some of us are just trying to explain ourselves.

Secondly, I'm not giving you links because I like links, but because I like sources. Not all sources are equal. A blog post by a conservative think tank employee and right wing activist isn't as neutral as the CDC or the US Census. Nothing is 100% 'neutral', but numbers gathered by the Labor Department are a little more transparent than a blog post by Christina Hoff Sommers. Say what you will about her, but her agenda is always very clear.

Thirdly, can you clarify your point about illegal discrimination? I don't think anybody talked about illegal discrimination, just the actual wage gap. Illegal discrimination is not necessary to establish oppression - nobody is illegally preventing women from becoming president, but we still have a historic gender gap in the oval office. Things can be shitty and in need of change even if it nothing currently illegal is going on (like the pew research polling you linked to shows). Illiteracy, for example, is a shitty phenomenon for citizens and bad for democracy, but it's not illegal; the wage gap is bad for citizens and for democracy, even when it is not illegal.

Fourthly, if you are willing to accept that there's a pervasive and destructive culture of rape of women by men outside of prison, I will also concede that there's a pervasive and destructive culture of rape of men by men in prison. In fact, I'll go ahead and concede that anyway. Which is fucking awful, but doesn't mean that feminists are wrong for railing against the situation outside of prison. The are two different sectors of society, and the factors that create a rape culture in one sector do not apply so much in the other. Still awful though.

fifthly, you ended on some stuff which might just have been random thoughts, because I don't see how they fit in anywhere:

"[the existence of self-perpetuating unjust power structures] does not automatically equate to men getting a free ride" - was not said by me, ever. We should get rid of injustice even if not all men get a free ride, I think

"in fact i would posit that this obnoxious behavior works against the very thing they are trying to convey" - can be said about all sorts of uppity oppressed groups

"this woman has received death threats and threats of physical violence from other feminists!" - doesn't make her right, and it doesn't make her wrong, and it doesn't 'ruin' all of feminism.

"at the end of the day this is actually a human issue,and a valid one and we all have a right to our own opinion,but not a right to impose it upon another. feel free to disagree." ...nobody can disagree with this because it means nothing. It's a Hallmark card. I tried to give you actual facts and you countered with "we are all humans so everything is like, always a human issue and like, opinions, man."

@Babymech

are we playing the numbers/statistic game?
oh goodie../claps hands
i love these games.
can i play?

since i actually agree that mens issues are different than womens in certain cases,and that you recognize that the "patriarchy" affects men as well as women.i see no reason to address something we both agree on.

so we can agree the base premise is "power vs powerlessness",and that women have a right to address this power structure,just like men do,because BOTH suffer under its influence.

but then you posted some tasty links for our enjoyment,and then made the specious claim that this somehow made your argument MORE valid.

ok..lets play by YOUR standards shall we?

1.the gender pay gap,which before 1962 may have been a valid argument,but since it is ILLEGAL to discriminate in that way in regards to pay,and if true would translate to waaay more women in the workplace (because corporations love them some dirt cheap labor).so why is this trope still trotted out?why is it given so much validity as being born as fact?when no serious economist ever sites this disparity,yet so many keep regurgitating this gap is being a real thing?

well,i will just let a feminist economist break it down for you:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html

see? just got me one of them fancy links you like so much.

2.political power in regards to gender.well,i cant argue the statistics.there ARE more men in politics,but what your link fails to do is ask a very basic question:why?why are there more men than women?

pew research addresses that question,and is fairly in line with your link:http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/01/14/women-and-leadership/

3.as for who suffers from the most sexual violence.well,according to your link which uses cdc numbers,women suffer far more,BUT (and is the statistic that the women in my video pointed out) when you include prison (which the cdc did not) that number flips on its head:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2449454/More-men-raped-US-women-including-prison-sexual-abuse.html

so the situation is not some cut and dried situation,and there are extreme elements of any social movement,but those elements should not invalidate the message.

just like this woman in my video is not dismissing feminism,she is disagreeing with feminisms more extreme authoritarian bullies,who because they scream louder and are more controversial..get more attention,but that does not make their position MORE important just because they are louder and more obnoxious.

in fact i would posit that this obnoxious behavior works against the very thing they are trying to convey.

we can all agree that we all want equality,fairness and justice and the current,and historical power structures,have always sought to retain and even further their own power.which has been traditionally held by men,but this does not automatically equate to men getting a free ride,quite the opposite.

so women absolutely have a right to challenge this power structure,just as men do.what they do NOT have a right to is imposing their ideologies upon me,or this woman in my video.

this woman has received death threats and threats of physical violence from other feminists! just because she had the audacity to disagree with their position.

at the end of the day this is actually a human issue,and a valid one and we all have a right to our own opinion,but not a right to impose it upon another.

feel free to disagree.

Just like Bacon - The Hoff makes everything better!

Christina Hoff Sommers alluded to Sarkeesian as part of an "army of critics, gender activists and... hipsters with degrees in cultural studies", who she said have unfairly attacked masculine video game culture.

Just in case anyone wants to hear what a real, level-headed feminist thinks about Sarkeesian and the current wave of Neo-Femmes that seem to not want only equal rights, but greater ones then men. Feminism today is not about equality, even though Sarkeesian paid brief lip service to it in this interview, it's about knocking men down a peg or two below women.

I'm all for equality. I love games with the option for a male or female protagonist. What I don't love, and will never support with my money by purchasing it, are the games that shoehorn a female character in with no regard to story or content.

One of the many core and wrong ideas in Feminism is that the sex of a person doesn't seem to play much of a role in anything. And in this case, Feminism is responsible for holding back medical science. Feminism is a blight on intellectual discourse. I'm not going to spend the time it takes to unravel a snake like Feminism here, but in brief, it's an untenable ideology.

One of its core philosophies is the idea of the Patriarchy, which is not only theoretical, but creates hypocritical scenarios in Feminist debate.

For instance, Feminists state that the Patriarchy supports and allows men to lead privileged lives. Yet when it is pointed out that men are sentenced twice as long for exact same crimes; men have zero protection of their genitals as babies; that there is FAR more funding for women's schooling, businesses, and health; or that in any emergency situation it is expected that men's lives are forfeit - the argument you'll get back is "See, Patriarchy hurts men too!". This rebuttal is in obvious contradiction to the idea that Patriarchy allows men to live privileged lives.

Another core idea is wage gap which has been disproven over and over for decades, even by some Feminsts:

http://www.topmanagementdegrees.com/women-dont-make-less/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-hoff-sommers/wage-gap_b_2073804.html

Feminism also focuses a great deal on "objectification", which presupposes that men are (always) sexually attracted to something *other* than the curves of a womans body. This is not only obviously off kilter for anyone with a basic understanding of evolutionary psychology, but has been scientifically proven false. Men are biologically wired to base mate finding on looks.

So the word 'objectification' actually becomes Feminist propaganda for the demonizing of male sexuality.

Furthermore regarding female objectification in society - we all often see the viral videos "How Women's Bodies Are Changed Beyond Recognition in Photoshop!" But consider that 80% of consumer dollars are spent by women. So in essence we have women complaining about women being objectified while women buy into objectification. What exactly do we expect advertising agencies to do?

I've even seen scenarios for men in which, if he found a woman attractive, then he's objectifying her; and if he found her unattractive, then he's shallow for only caring about looks.

Then there is argument from Feminists that Feminism helps to empower men as well. No, it doesn't. In fact much has been shown in the opposite: http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/g2eme/feminists_tell_you_that_the_solution_to_mens/

98% of workforce deaths are male. You never see Feminists rallying to take on these jobs on the front lines in combat, or in jobs that involve heavy machinery, working outdoors in inclement weather, inhaling toxic fumes, or apprehending dangerous criminals. Why not? After all, fair is fair! Let's remove the stigma around men being "losers" if they are stay-at-home Dads, while Moms can be the breadwinners for once.

It's clear that Feminism isn't about gender equality. You never see Feminists rallying about how He-Man set an unrealistic body image for boys, but the focus and attention on Barbie has been unreal.

Take into consideration, among everything else I've stated, that words like "mansplaining" are part of Feminist vocabulary, and I think you start to get a picture why no self respecting man has anything to do with Feminism.

There's much much more research, evidence, and articles I can cite, but the final point is that Feminism is a toxic and counterproductive movement.

Perhaps there will be "equality between the sexes" when the likelihood of men becoming estranged from their children and families after a divorce is the same as it is for women... Or when the expectation of "supporting" one's family is actually spending time with them and not simply being their "wallet"...

I'll see equality when the life expectancy between men and women is the same... Or when the risk of becoming homeless is the same... Or to become a victim of violence (or simply being suspected of violence or threatened with violence due to ones gender) is the same.. Or when the probability of dying by suicide is the same. . . Perhaps we'll all be equal then.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Susanna-Hoff-from-the-Bangles-shows-off-her-body-in-the-80s

Susanna Hoff from the Bangles shows off her body in the 80s has been added as a related post - related requested by deathcow.

YIKES! I don't think this is what BJ Thomas had in mind when he wrote this song. It's SO bad it's ... FANTASTIC. This solidifies to me why people are compelled to Hassle The Hoff. Worst music video I've ever seen.

*promote *length=3:31

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Hasselhoff-Hooked-On-A-Feeling-The-Literal-Version

*backup from Melanie Hoff's vimeo channel.