I was about to send Alice to the Moon, but I can't, I signed that damn pledge . . .
Posted on 06/15/2016 5:26:29 PM PDT by Daniel Clark
Damning Dad: Father’s Day Pledge is appalling
by Daniel Clark
Happy Father's Day, you sadistic, sociopathic brute! That's essentially how the holiday is being observed here in Pittsburgh, a city that is plunging into full-blown, banana-brained liberalism at warp speed.
Since 2014, political and business leaders have been signing onto the "Father’s Day Pledge to End Gender Violence," along with popular local sports figures like Pirate manager Clint Hurdle, and longtime backup Steeler quarterback Charlie Batch. If you don't understand what "gender violence" means, that's understandable, because liberals are still in the process of making it up. If they really sought to end such a thing, it might occur to them to simply avoid creating it and save themselves a lot of trouble.
The pledge, drafted by an outfit called Southwest PA Says No More, starts out nonsensically, and becomes increasingly ill-defined from there. It begins, "I will work to end gender violence and pledge to: Not use violence of any form in my relationships." It's hard to imagine any man taking such a pledge who would have any reason to do so. Even if he did, who'd believe him? After all, he'd have probably spoken similar words before.
Loath as feminists may be to admit it, most men do not assault women. Those who do would not be dissuaded from violence by having taken the pledge, and would likely react violently to being asked to do so in the first place. To the average American dad, a pledge not to beat up mom is unnecessary to the point of being meaningless. You might as well ask him to sign a promise not to transgobulate any pindeazels. Mind you, the words themselves are practically irrelevant, because liberal activists can be counted on to expand and reshape their definitions in order to produce the desired outcomes.
The pledge requires fathers to "speak up if another man is abusing his partner or is disrespectful or abusive to women and girls." This is nothing more than an attempt to enlist new recruits into the liberal speech police. Within one sentence, violence is subsumed by the somewhat broader category of abuse, which is then conflated with "disrespect" -- a term that is characterized primarily by verbal offenses.
To the countercultural Left, everything that is traditional is disrespectful toward women. If you address a gathering of women as "ladies," you have disrespected them, which is the equivalent of an act of misogynistic violence, as it is now being defined in this pledge.
The Southwest PA Says No More website explains the importance of "primary prevention," which it defines as "stopping violence before it occurs." Among examples of primary prevention, it lists, "Challenging stereotypes about what men and women are supposed to be like." So, if you butt into a married couple's conversation because the husband is joking about how much his wife talks on the phone, you may assume that you've prevented him from committing an act of violence against her, based on the longstanding feminist principle that men are guilty until proven innocent, and probably even then.
The next item in the pledge is to "Be an ally to women who are working to end all forms of gender violence." Okay, so we've established that "violence" encompasses lots of things that are not remotely comparable to actual violence. We also know that "gender" is no longer synonymous with one's sex. Nowadays, there are no fewer than eleventeen genders, instead of just two, and if you dispute that, you are probably guilty of "gender violence" already.
If a man says he identifies as a woman, then referring to him with masculine pronouns would be an example of "gender violence," would it not? Surely, the authors of the pledge would consider that to be disrespectful, which is presumably the same as being violent. To confront the disrespectful person would just as certainly fall under the rubric of "primary prevention."
None of this does any good for women who are or may become victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault. It only serves to validate the liberal prejudice that treats all men, and especially men from traditional nuclear families, as criminal suspects. Father's Day, then, is no longer an occasion to celebrate fathers, but is instead an opportunity for them to atone for their sinister existence.
Like the rest of liberalism, the Father's Day Pledge to End Gender Violence is completely untethered from reality. In a way, that's too bad. It would be nice if we could at least believe it was true that "Southwest PA Says No More."
-- Daniel Clark is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.
They can go to hell, I don’t need a pledge so as not to commit unjustified violence and I resent the implication.
Would that EVERY father would take a pledge to arm themselves and pledge to protect his family and himself, from the perpetrators of violence toward them.
I was about to send Alice to the Moon, but I can't, I signed that damn pledge . . .
I don’t need a pledge either - my wife made it for me.
“No children - your dad has never hit me or anything like that. And if he ever did, we would all be out of here.”
See, liberals need a pledge like this. They think that words, or a pledge, can replace what is learned from a functional family unit, and a marriage based on mutual respect.
But in the end, their “pledge” is just so many words to them, like the Constitution is just so many words to them.
They love things like this because it somehow makes them think they are moving the needle towards their utopia, when all they are doing is mouthing platitudes.
Many years ago I found out the key to a happy marriage is NEVER let her set up “the rules” to where you can’t win.
That seems to be women’s first inclination.
He married and while I think he loved his children his marriage was far from perfect. Like Americans of that generation, he did what was right to preserve the union, preserve the family, and put himself last. I miss him everyday of my life and hope - if I'm damned lucky - to meet him in paradise. And if I don't, it will not be his fault.
Happy Father’s Day, daddy.
No, it means that immediate and frequent psychiatric help is needed for the poor, deluded him/her/it.
This father is going to hang out with one of his adult kids all day long; loving him, laughing with him, shooting with him, having a meal together and just being a normal Dad-American on Father's Day.
If a transgendered man assaults a woman on a day he considers himself to be a woman, has he committed gender aggression? Why is that different from a man assaulting a woman when he thinks he is a man?
These holier than thou drug-addled a******s can just ESAD!
"My dear wife, I will do my best to love you as Christ loved the church."
(Too old fashioned?)
Since women sometimes abuse and even kill their children, can we expect the flip side on mother’s day? I jest, of course.
I do not need to take a pledge for something that I have been doing my whole life. I am not going to be made to feel guilty of others violence.
Although I am guilty of using the term “ladies”. I am still not sure why this a derogatory term, my ex would give me crap about it all the time and she was a lady.
“That’s no lady - that’s my wife!”
I was just watching some old Western T.V. show. The guy was making a big deal of how his wife was not just a woman - “But a lady - a REAL lady like from back East!”
I love the term ‘lady’. I also love the term ‘gentleman’. They denote men and women with class and dignity and courtesy. I wish there were more people in the world that terms accurately described.
“If they really sought to end such a thing, it might occur to them to simply avoid creating it and save themselves a lot of trouble.”
Excellent
2 years ago? Way too long ago to care.
“White privilege” = having white skin and refusing to commit apologize and commit suicide.
“Gender violence” = having a penis that isn’t strapped on or sewn on, and refusing to apologize and self-castrate.
How touching. I lost my dad in 2006. In my family, he was the stable one. My mother was not kind and was an abuser. My dad was the kind and nurturing parent. With that, this article is upsetting to me.
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