The right decision

The people have spoken and the conclusion has been reached that Britain should leave the European Union. This is undoubtedly the right decision; Britain will once again become a nation state, and no longer a vassal of an unaccountable supranational authority. Although the margin of victory was relatively slim, there were clear majorities for Leave in Wales and all but one of the English regions. In contrast, Scotland, Northern Ireland and London all voted Remain by significant margins.

As a result of this decision both the Conservative and Labour parties are in turmoil and there have been spectacular falls in both the stock market and currency exchanges. Superficially this might be interpreted as confirmation of the fears expressed by the Remain campaign, but this turbulence should be relatively short lived as a more realistic appraisal is reached on Britain's future, free from the shackles of a European Union that is incapable of reform. There should be no haste to invoke the Article 50 procedure, but neither should this be delayed for too long after a new prime minister is in place.

Although there was some scaremongering and exaggeration by both campaigns, nevertheless the main issues and arguments were presented effectively, allowing the British electorate the opportunity to reach an informed decision. In this respect the BBC for once acted impartially, and the Electoral Commission ensured fairness by requiring a remain or leave answer, rather than a yes/no response which studies have found to be biased in favour of the former.

Both sides played to their perceived strengths, the economy for Remain and immigration and sovereignty for Leave. Credit should be given to David Cameron for allowing the referendum in the first place, for the huge effort he put into his renegotiations with the EU and for effectively and vigorously presenting the arguments for Remain. Unfortunately for him, the adamant refusal of EU leaders to give him meaningful concessions meant that he always had one hand tied behind his back when making his case. However, it has to be said that Nigel Farage, Michael Gove and above all Boris Johnson did a brilliant job in the TV debates in presenting the case for Leave.

This decision has been a massive body blow for the politically correct class who are in a collective rage that their agenda has been thwarted and their values rejected. For them the EU was a mechanism whereby they could impose a politically correct straightjacket on public behaviour and discourse, without there being any danger of their measures being repealed or removed through the democratic process. Shamefully, some are now agitating for a second referendum which demonstrates the degree to which they hold the public in contempt. The electorate would have noted, in the final TV debate, the venom with which Sadiq Khan denounced the perfectly reasonable Leave arguments as the 'politics of hate'. Had Remain won by the same margin we can be sure that they would now be crowing about how the British public had rejected the politics of 'hate', 'division' and 'isolation'.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is now threatening a second referendum on Scottish independence. The British government should demonstrate a firm response to this special pleading, by stating beforehand their refusal to recognise the outcome of any unlawful referendum she might call, and threaten to impose direct rule on Scotland as a last resort in any subsequent stand-off. To do otherwise would be to undermine the use of genuine referendums, legislated for by the British parliament, in deciding a constitutional issue which allows it to be settled for at least a generation. At the time of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, voters would have known that there was a good chance of the UK electorate subsequently deciding to leave the EU.

The British nation now stands on the threshold of a new era in which democracy has been restored and debate reclaimed on a wide range of issues. It is a time for great optimism.

Toxic feminists 3 - Catharine MacKinnon

Strident feminists are engaged in a war against male heterosexuality and their greatest cheerleader has been Catharine MacKinnon. She was born shortly after the last war into a Minnesota legal family, her father was a judge and congressman. She has a PhD from Yale university and is a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

Mackinnon became influential in feminist politics in the late 1970s with the publication of Sexual Harassment of Working Women in which she coined the term 'sexual harassment'. She claims that this behaviour is a form of discrimination against women because of the alleged power inequality between women and men. Her framework on this subject was incorporated into US law later in the decade. She subsequently developed an overarching theory of inequality, in which she argued that women live in a state of subordination, with pornography, sexual harassment, prostitution, child sexual abuse, domestic violence and rape as key elements in a patriarchal system of male domination.

Mackinnon's most influential work is Toward A Feminist Theory Of The State published in 1989. A lot of the book is devoted to an unintelligible and impenetrable critique of Marxism vis-à-vis the objectives of feminism. With regard to power politics, she argues that as the legal system has largely been framed by men this results in a power imbalance between men and women to the serious detriment of the latter. She claims that 'over and over again, the state protects male power through embodying and ensuring existing male control over women at every level' and 'the state, through law, institutionalizes male power over women through institutionalizing the male point of view in law.' This is, of course, a travesty of the true position.

MacKinnon's view is that male sexuality amounts to 'rape culture', that male sexuality inherently degrades women, that participation in male sexuality is morally and socially equivalent to rape, thus concluding that all men are effectively rapists-in-waiting.' She spells out her agenda on sexual relations between men and women as follows ' rape and intercourse are difficult to distinguish, the major distinction between intercourse(normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot get anyone to see anything wrong with it'. She further argues that heterosexuality 'institutionalizes male sexual dominance and female sexual submission' and 'women are socially disadvantaged through socialization to customs that define a woman's body as for sexual use by men'. It is clear from these statements where MacKinnon is coming from and the nature of her agenda.

It would be an exaggeration to claim that currently the British state has fully accepted the MacKinnon theory on sexual relations between men and women. Nevertheless, many of the more committed feminists who are influential in our politically correct establishment have much sympathy with her views, and appear to be pursuing an agenda for policing the bedroom activities of heterosexual males using MacKinnon's theories as their justification.

We appear to be gradually moving towards the kind of regime which operates in many American colleges in which heterosexual activities can be deemed coercive if there are considered to be power differentials between the parties, whether real or perceived. In such a regime affirmative sexual consent standards are imposed, which define sexual assault to include any sexual contact where a woman has not given positive, specific and unambiguous consent, which if lacking can then define as criminal any normal and natural heterosexual male approaches and advances towards women. Nobody is expecting that those in same sex relationships would have to go through all the rigmarole imposed on heterosexual men in continually seeking consent. So this agenda is clearly and openly discriminatory and deliberately so.

Should this scenario come to pass (very likely given the politically correct establishment's continuing craven submission to feminist stridency) our society would have moved from one in which male homosexual activities were prohibited by law, to one in which male heterosexual activities are seriously circumscribed by an all embracing criteria of what constitutes sexual assault against women.

There should be no toleration of sex pests who seek sexual favours from women on the slightest acquaintance. However, MacKinnon and her cohorts fail to acknowledge that in any relationship someone, usually the male, has to take the initiative and they should never be demonised for this, or placed in a situation were they may be criminalised for doing so. In providing the blueprint for how the politically correct state should regulate, control and attempt to stifle normal male heterosexuality Catharine MacKinnon has certainly met the test to be considered as a malignant feminist.