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Socialism
& Carey Roberts is a social commentator on
political correctness. He has been widely published
in newspapers and through the internet. You can
contact him at E-Mail. Bias Suit Reveals the
Truth Behind the 'Boy Crisis'
Growing up in a family with two sisters and no
father, Mikey had a strong need to hang out with
other African-American guys. It’s that old
thing about men needing to learn about masculinity
from other men. As chance would have it, a few years later his
mother Carole, now a successful consultant, was
hired by the school to do a diversity assessment.
Her report acknowledged the sudden death of her son
and then pointedly noted, “The ultimate
question is finding a way to encourage black males
to succeed academically in a way that does not
demean the ethnic trust and respect they so
desperately need.” [www.miltonps.org/CCT%20Report/9_04+Milton+Report+Final.doc
But it turns out the problem of male achievement
at Milton H.S. is not limited to minorities. Last month Doug Anglin, a white 17-year-old
senior at the school, filed a civil rights
complaint with the U.S. Department of Education.
His allegation: Milton High discriminates against
boys. At his school, girls outnumber boys 2 to 1 on
the honor roll, and about 60% of Advanced Placement
students are female. Only 36% of teachers are men.
And in one class, students are expected to fancy up
their notebooks with glitter and feathers. Ignoring the statistics and oblivious to the
heartfelt plea from the diversity consultant,
school administrators seem to view the “boy
problem” more as an inconvenience than a
crisis. In a recent Boston Globe interview, Milton
High principal John Drottar would only concede,
“We’re aware of it. We’re looking
into it.” [www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/01/26/schoolboys_bias_suit
Twenty years ago the boy crisis did not
exist. True, boys didn’t do as well as girls in
reading and spelling, but they compensated for that
with higher science and math scores. Similar
numbers of men and women graduated from college.
All in all, things seemed pretty equal back
then. But everything changed in 1992 when the American
Association for University Women released its
intellectually-dishonest, self-serving report, How
Schools Shortchange Girls. The document charged
that girls were treated as second-class citizens in
the nation’s schools, which made them suffer
from a crippling crisis of self-esteem. But some had their doubts. One New York Times
reporter interviewed Diane Ravitch, former
assistant secretary of education. Ravitch shook up
the educational establishment when she revealed,
“The AAUW report was just completely wrong.
What was so bizarre is that it came out right at
the time that girls had just overtaken boys in
almost every area.” Smarting under criticisms of bias, the AAUW
commissioned a second report in 1998 called Gender
Gaps: Where Schools Still Fail our Children. This
time the AAUW decided to come clean with the truth:
“National data indicate that girls
consistently earn either equivalent or higher
grades than boys in all subjects at all points in
their academic careers.” But that admission could not undo the damage.
Because four years before that Congress had been
stampeded into passing the Gender Equity in
Education Act, which singled out girls as an
“under-served population.” The Act pumped
tens of millions of dollars into advocacy research
and feminist-inspired programs, all based on the
fraudulent claim that girls were lagging in an
all-encompassing patriarchal society. This past week the front cover of Newsweek
magazine announced “The Boy Crisis.” The
article did not admit that boys are lagging because
our schools have been turned into feminist
re-education camps. Rather, we’re told the
problem is with male grey-matter, what Newsweek
dubs the “boy brain.” But the boy brain theory doesn’t explain
why two decades ago, boys were doing just fine. And
why has the number of boys saying they don’t
like school sky-rocketed 71% from 1980 to 2001?
Well, that question stumped the Newsweek
reporters. It’s one thing to acknowledge the God-given
neurological differences between the sexes. But
somehow the boy brain theory reminds me of the
KKK-types who once claimed that since the brains of
certain races were slightly smaller, those people
had puny intellects. Four months from now Carole Thomas will
commemorate the ninth anniversary of the death of
her only son. Let’s hope we come to recognize
that Mikey’s story was not merely one of a
life brimming with promise that was cut short by a
terrible fate, but rather an object lesson in why
boys are falling behind in a glitter and feathers
world. Women Who Make Things Worse
for Other Women
As editor of National Review Online,
O’Beirne showcases her formidable research and
writing skills in exposing how the feminist
movement has polarized relations between the sexes
and made life worse for most American women. In my town, billboards feature a newly-engaged
woman showing off her sparkling diamond ring,
nearly shouting the words, “Yes, Yes, Yes,
Yes, YES!” Despite the fact that married women
are healthier, happier, and more
economically-secure than their single sisters,
feminists are hell-bent on obliterating this
bedrock institution. Feminists want you to believe that the urge to
conceive and nurture children is a patriarchal
construction. Can you guess who came up with this
gem? “Motherly love ain’t everything it
has been cracked up to be. To some extent it’s
a myth that men have created to make women think
that they do this job to perfection.” Yep, that comes to us by way Ruth Bader
Ginsburg, member of the U.S. Supreme Court. And shame on all those stay-at-home moms who are
shirking their civic responsibility to
“contribute as professionals and community
activists,” according to University of Texas
professor Gretchen Ritter. Worse, “Full-time
mothering is also bad for children.” Why?
Ritter explains, “It teaches them that the
world is divided by gender.” Child psychologist Sandra Scarr takes the
argument farther, claiming a child’s desire to
be with his mother is actually a psychiatric
disorder. Scarr calls it EMA Syndrome –
exclusive maternal attachment syndrome. Ms. O’Beirne takes on the notion that women
should delay childbearing until after their careers
are established. She cites research that among
women earning more than $100,000, nearly half --
49% -- are childless. So much for having it
all. But feminists are not satisfied to merely lay a
guilt trip on women who are contemplating marriage,
motherhood, and child-rearing. They patronize and
insult the intelligence of women by making the most
ludicrous of claims. Like the old chestnut about the gender wage gap.
Feminists go around cherry-picking wage statistics
and then claim that society undervalues
women’s work. O’Beirne shows little patience for such
loopy logic. “They sell women short. They hold
that women aren’t smart enough and tough
enough to flourish when given an equal chance to
compete with men,” O’Beirne thunders. Then there’s the bogus statistic that men
commit 95% of all domestic violence. As a result,
former women’s studies professor Daphne Patai
notes that “years of exposure to
feminist-promoted scare statistics have succeeded
in imbuing many young women with a foreboding sense
of living under the constant threat of predatory
men.” And that’s promoting female
self-empowerment? There’s retired Air Force brigadier general
Wilma Vaught who argued for moving women into
direct combat: “There’s been an
acceptance of the fact that women…are in harms
way and they are being killed.” The families
of the nearly 40 female soldiers killed in Iraq no
doubt would find those words consoling. The NRO editor goes on to quote this nihilistic
statement by representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) at
last year’s March for Women’s Lives:
“I have to march because my mother could not
have an abortion.” And Ms. Waters is supposed
to be a role model for smart, ambitious women? And sometimes rad-fems come across as vindictive
shrews. A female dean at Vassar College who had
this to say about men falsely accused of rape:
“They have of a lot of pain, but it is not a
pain that I would necessarily have spared them. I
think it ideally initiates a process of
self-exploration.” So after 30-plus years of liberation
feminista-style, are American women better off?
O’Beirne has serious doubts. Now, thanks to the Sisterhood’s mantra that
men are redundant, many of the nation’s most
eligible bachelors – 22%, to be exact –
have turned their back on marriage, leaving
millions of women desperate to find a good man
who’s willing to commit. [marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/SOOU/TEXTSOOU2004.htm
As a result of affirmative action programs,
professional women have been put under suspicion
that they owe their position to something other
than merit. And the very fabric of maternal virtue has been
indelibly stained by the feminist message that
“the only thing a woman can do with a child is
abort.” Throughout her 200-page exposé, Kate
O’Beirne shows how feminists have used
deception, manipulation, intimidation, and
old-fashioned propaganda to victimize men and women
alike. Women
Who Make the World Worse and how their radical
feminist assault is ruining our schools, families,
military and sports – it’s the gutsy
and shocking must-read of the politically incorrect
for 2006. Comic Relief from the
World Health Organization
Take the AIDS epidemic. After all these years of
seeing the epidemic spread unchecked, I’m
beginning to wonder if the world health body views
AIDS as its stealth population control
strategy. If that statement seems a bit harsh, consider
the WHO’s “safe sex” campaign which
pushes this Russian-roulette message: “Go
ahead and enjoy no-fault sex with multiple
partners, just so long as you use a condom.”
As we know, condoms fail 15% of the time.
[www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/1207roberts.html]
And if you want a real belly laugh, check out
the WHO Sex Work Toolkit, designed to make
prostitutes feel good about themselves as they
service their AIDS-infected clientele. Just in case
you were worried, the Toolkit comes with this
disclaimer: “In no event shall the World
Health Organization be liable for damages arising
from its use.” [who.arvkit.net/sw/en/index.jsp
Then there’s the malaria epidemic that
claims the lives of millions each year. Spraying
tiny amounts of DDT on the walls of houses is
highly effective in killing malaria-infected
mosquitoes. But the WHO won’t allow household
spraying because – you guessed it -- that
might offend the environmentalists. And last July the WHO added two
abortion-inducing drugs – RU-486 and Mifrepex
– to its list of “essential
medicines.” At least WHO won’t have to
worry about providing so many vaccines and vitamin
pills to little kids. Here’s the most recent laugh-getter from
the World Health Organization. Can you imagine the
world body doing a study that cherry-picks its
participants and relies on flawed methods in order
to reach a pre-determined conclusion? That’s exactly what the WHO did with its
recent “Multi-Country Study on Women’s
Health and Domestic Violence Against Women.”
[www.who.int/gender/violence/who_multicountry_study/en/index.html
Every study I’ve seen shows that domestic
violence is an equal opportunity problem. Professor
Murray Straus of the University of New Hampshire
interviewed over 8,000 men and women in 16
countries around the world. He found high rates of
assault “perpetrated by both male and female
students.” [pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/ID16.pdf] And recent reports from Canada [www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/85-224-XIE/85-224-XIE2005000.pdf
But that rendition of gender equality
didn’t sit too well with the lavender ladies
at WHO’s department of Gender, Women, and
Health. They solved that problem by designing a
study that – you guessed right again –
only interviewed females. Then the WHO asked radical feminist
organizations around the world to conduct the
surveys. That’s like doing a study on
persons’ opinions about wearing animal fur,
and letting PETA run the show. Since the interviewers knew nothing about how to
do surveys, they were put through a 3-week
indoctrination – er, training – program.
The training was based on a manual called
“Researching Violence Against Women”
[www.path.org/files/GBV_rvaw_front.pdf
Of course they ensured the survey not ask any
questions whether the woman had ever injured her
husband or boyfriend – that might get a little
embarrassing. To top it off, they did a little
definitional hocus-pocus, absurdly claiming that
“abuse” is the same as
“violence. To no one’s great surprise, the survey
found that there’s plenty domestic violence
around the world, and of course it’s those
brutish men who are at fault. Predictably the WHO
apparatchiks blamed it on the all-powerful
patriarchy: “Violence against women is both a
consequence and a cause of gender inequality,”
laments the report. Then they got the boss to give a
headline-grabbing endorsement. “This study
shows that women are more at risk from violence at
home than in the street and this has serious
repercussions for women’s health,”
according to WHO director Lee Jong-wook. Of course Dr. Jong-wook never mentioned that men
are twice as likely as women to die from
violence-related causes. That fact didn’t
quite fit into the punch-line. As if that wasn’t enough, the WHO had the
arrogance and chutzpah to bill the fraudulent
survey as a “landmark study.”
[www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr62/en
It may be true that laughter is the best
medicine, but this time the joke’s on us --
the U.S. taxpayer. In order to support this misguided comedy
routine, each year the United States sends the WHO
$95 million for assessed dues, and another $45
million for so-called “extra-budgetary”
contributions. That money is funneled through the
Office for Global Health Affairs in the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services. Eventually
your hard-earned money winds up in the Swiss bank
account of a UN bureaucracy that lacks fairness,
accountability, or intellectual honesty. Winner of the Covented 2005
Award for Political Incorrectness
No wonder George Orwell once said, “In a
time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a
revolutionary act.” This year three stalwart truth-tellers stood up
to a tsunami of prevarication to make the short
list for the 2005 Award for Political
Incorrectness. Our second runner-up this year is…Michael
Kinsey, opinion-page editor of the Los Angeles
Times. You may recall last February when Susan
Estrich, former presidential campaign manager for
Michael Dukakis, threw a temper tantrum because
only a fraction of the LA Times op-eds were written
by women. Mr. Kinsey curtly replied that if more female
editorialists wanted to be published in his
newspaper, then they would need to write better
articles. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0223roberts.html
Bravo, Mr. Kinsey. The first runner-up is Mr. Ken Bode, ombudsman
for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Last
month Mr. Bode reviewed the PBS program Breaking
the Silence and concluded the incendiary show was
little more than an anti-father cant.
[www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/1214roberts.html
Well done, Mr. Bode. And the winner of the 2005 Award for Political
Incorrectness is…(pan of vast audience with
expectant expressions)… Phyllis Schlafly. This past year Mrs. Schlafly took on the federal
government’s deepening alliance with radical
feminism. In the process she debunked many of the
Left’s pet explanations for family break-down.
To do justice to Schlafly’s contributions, I
have quoted from several of her columns. In January she started off the year with a
column about “Children Made Fatherless by
Family Courts.” The article revealed that
“fathers are systematically discriminated
against by family courts which nearly always award
physical custody to the mother even when the father
has committed no fault.” [www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/jan05/05-01-12.html
Schlafly continued in the same vein in her
February column about the “Fatherphobia of
Family Courts.” In that article she took
divorce courts to task for ignoring a
“mountain of social science research” by
failing to award joint physical custody to fathers.
[www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/feb05/05-02-02.html
In March she highlighted the plight of National
Guard Spc. Joe McNeilly who was called up for
service in Iraq. Upon completion of his tour of
duty, McNeilly was greeted with the news that a
family court, during his absence and without his
knowledge, had awarded full custody of his
10-year-old son to his mother. [www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/mar05/05-03-02.html
In May she turned up the heat, exposing how
“Federal Incentives Make Children
Fatherless.” Schlafly warned, “Follow the
money. The less time that non-custodial parents
(usually fathers) are permitted to be with their
children, the more child support they must pay into
the state fund, and the higher the federal bonus to
the states for collecting the money.”
[www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/may05/05-05-11.html
Mrs. Schlafly doesn’t mince words, does
she? And it only gets better. In her June column on “How to Celebrate
Father’s Day,” Schlafly took aim at the
feminist Big Lie: “For 30 years, feminist
organizations and writers have propagated the myth
that women are victims of an oppressive patriarchal
society and that marriage is an inherently abusive
institution that makes wives second-class
citizens.” [www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/june05/05-06-15.html
Then beginning in July, Schlafly took on the
hotly-debated Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)
which came up before Congress this past fall for a
five-year renewal. In “Time to Defund Feminist Pork,”
Schlafly wondered why the US Congress funnels
“a billion dollars a year of taxpayers' money
into the hands of radical feminists who use it to
preach their anti-marriage and anti-male ideology,
promote divorce, corrupt the family court system,
and engage in liberal political advocacy.”
[www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/july05/05-07-20.html
Mrs. Schlafly’s pièce de resistance
came in October. While our elected officials were
buckling under the feminist intimidation tactics,
Schlafly released an exposé with the
sizzling title, “Time to Defund Feminist Pork
– the Hate-Men Law.” First Schlafly ridiculed the feminist urban
legends such as “a woman is beaten every 15
seconds” and Super Bowl Sunday is the
“biggest day of the year of violence against
women.” She deplored how VAWA rides
“roughshod over the constitutional rights of
men.” Schlafly then scolded our elected officials in
Washington: “Shame on Members of Congress who
lack the courage to stand up to feminist
outrages.” [www.eagleforum.org/psr/2005/oct05/psroct05.html
For 30 years the Leftists have waged a tenacious
assault on society’s bedrock institutions,
including fatherhood and families. As the rest of
us silently stood by, feminists branded dads with
epithets such as deadbeat, abuser, and patriarchal
oppressor. And now Phyllis Schlafly has shed the light of
truth on their evil scheme. The Leftist-Feminist
Brief Against Nominee Roberts Everyone from Sandra Day O’Connor to the
nattering nags at NOW had decided that the
now-vacated seat was destined to be filled by a
woman, regardless of her training, experience, or
judicial temperament. Why? Because “something is lost when there
is only one female in the room,” according to
a weepy-eyed article in the Chicago Tribune. And
what is that unique “something”? The
article answers, it’s that “special bond
that mothers have with children.”
[www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0507210100jul21,1,3231904.story?coll=chi-news-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
That tender maternal bond no doubt explains why
Sandra O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg have
consistently voted to uphold abortion laws
throughout their Supreme Court careers. Bush’s nomination of a white male
represents more than a slap in the face to the
affirmative action mentality. Mr. Roberts, you see,
does not believe that true meaning of the
Constitution lurks somewhere in the decrees of the
International Criminal Court. Rather, his approach
to interpreting the U.S. Constitution hews to the
notion of “What you see is what you
get”– WYSIWYG in computer parlance. When the U.S. Constitution was drafted,
Americans were still smarting from the memory of
King George’s boot-heel tyranny. The bitter
after-taste of that experience compelled our
forefathers to strictly limit the powers of the
nascent federal government. And they did it right
up front, enumerating its responsibilities in
Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. But the notion of enumerated powers of the
federal government has become eroded. And now
we’re paying the price. Look at the draconian
policies of government bureaucracies such as the
Office of Child Support Enforcement or Child
Protective Services, and you realize that’s
exactly what the delegates to the 1787
Constitutional Convention were seeking to
avoid. Roberts’ constructionist views of the
Constitution represent a direct threat to the
Leftist creed, which seeks to highjack the federal
government in order to impose its classless,
genderless vision on the rest of us. To a Leftist,
individual differences are an anathema that need to
be rooted out by government fiat. But it’s the feminist Left that’s
really having a hissy-fit. According to the
National Organization of Women, Roberts has long
promoted an “anti-woman, anti-civil rights,
and anti-worker agenda.” This guy must really be a monster. Yes, just see
for yourself. In a 1999 radio interview Roberts voiced his
opposition to the Violence Against Women Act:
“We have gotten to the point these days where
we think the only way we can show we’re
serious about a problem is if we pass a federal
law, whether it is the Violence Against Women Act
or anything else.” Obviously the Supreme Court
nominee doesn’t appreciate that Big Sister
government should be the cure-all for our social
ills. In NCAA v. Smith, Roberts argued against Title
IX, the law that shuts down men’s athletic
teams because not enough women have been signing up
for synchronized swimming. What’s wrong with
imposing Soviet-style gender quotas on college
sports programs, so long as they bring about gender
equality? But it’s Roberts’ discomfiture with
abortion that has most provoked the Sisterhood. As
Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts once argued in a
brief to the Supreme Court that “we continue
to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should
be overruled.” Then there’s the matter of Roberts’
wife Jane, who served for four years as the
executive vice president of Feminists for Life, a
pro-life group. But folks are trying to pretend
that does not reflect in any way on nominee Mr.
Roberts’ views on abortion. Both John and Jane
are active members in their local Catholic
parish. Years ago the feminist Left came to realize that
they would never achieve their socialistic goals if
they had to rely on normal democratic processes. So
their solution was to impose an abortion litmus
test on the nominations process, seize control of
the judiciary, and short-circuit the notion of
government of the people, by the people, and for
the people. We should all be shedding crocodile tears over
the impeding demise of judicial activism and the
socialistic schemes that march under the red banner
of progressive government. Chivalrous Men and the
Victim-Princess Complex
My first reaction was to think,
“Here’s some Neanderthal guy trying to
peddle outdated gender stereotypes.” But Healy
points to the fact that the Disney Corporation has
assembled a Princess brand consisting of eight
animated film heroines including Cinderella, Snow
White, Pocahontas, Belle of Beauty of the Beast,
and others. In 2003 the Princess line racked up an
astonishing $2.5 billion in sales, up from a mere
$300 million in 2001. And that’s just for starters.
“We’ve gone beyond the dress-up and toys,
and begun to look at the brand as a lifestyle,
filling out all the other things girls need in
life,” according to Mary Beech, Disney’s
director of franchise management. Things girls need
in life? Healy, proud dad of a three-year-old girl, notes
with an equal mix of astonishment and horror,
“The ease and rapidity with which a princess
obsession can take hold of a young girl’s
psyche is mind-blowing.” Eventually those little Jennifers and Bethanies
grow up, go to college, and enroll in their first
Women’s Studies course. There they learn that
the kiss by their Prince Charming really represents
non-consensual sexual assault, that Belle’s
Beast is a closet bodice-ripper, and that the fable
of the Princess talking to the Green Frog at the
side of the well is an allegory of serial rape. But the Women’s Studies gurus explain they
can still make their dreams of tiaras and
sequin-studded dresses come true: “Join the
Sisterhood, and we’ll turn you into a real
princess!” According to the feminist fable, women were kept
under heel for so many millennia that members of
the fairer sex need to play “catch-up.”
So now women should be the beneficiaries of an
ever-expanding array of legal protections,
government programs, commercial products, and
lifestyle options. That’s the Victim-Princess
Complex. What princess who has just been betrayed by her
Handsome Green Frog could resist that offer? Before long these Wicked Witches of the North
have cast a spell on their Little Pretties. These
young women soon graduate from college believing
that women are paid less for the same work, that
women were routinely excluded from medical
research, and a multitude of other tragedies that
have befallen womankind. Victimization has become a
mainstay of their self-identity. It’s not just the feminist propaganda mill
that endlessly replays the woman-as-victim mantra.
Chivalrous men, acting out their fantasies of the
White Knight in Shining Armor, are guilty as
well. Pick up a copy of your local newspaper and you
will see articles – usually written by male
reporters and columnists – that reinforce the
notion of the downtrodden female. Accounts of women
who are stressed-out, undervalued, and abused form
the staple of daily news reporting. Recently I attended a conference where a speaker
blandly made the claim that 60 million women around
the world had “disappeared.” He
didn’t bother to offer any details or proof.
And he certainly didn’t say anything about men
who were never heard from again. I imagine that catering to women’s
insecurities makes these men feel gallant and
proud. But chivalry is defined as being
“considerate and courteous to women.”
Slanting and distorting the truth –
that’s chicanery, not chivalry. Yet there’s a downside to the
Princess-Victim Complex. Myrna Blyth, former editor of Ladies Home
Journal, reveals how women’s magazines turn
female victimization into a hard sell for the
latest beauty products or weight control program.
Blyth decries how these magazines promote
“narcissism as an advanced evolutionary stage
of female liberation. Me, me, me, means you’re
finally free, free, free.” But the problem goes beyond self-absorbed
narcissism. In his Nation of Little Princesses article,
Christopher Healy quotes a father who observes,
“Well, that’s the magic of Disney:
It’s addictive. It’s like crack for
5-year-olds.” So the Victim-Princess Complex begins to
resemble a dysfunctional habit in which the
negative feelings of being a victim require
ever-larger “fixes” for women to feel
good about themselves. And those fixes come with a
hefty price tag. Princesses “only find true
happiness once they’re married off with royal
expense accounts,” Healy laments. These women are undoubtedly the most prosperous,
pampered, and protected group in the history of the
world. But they would still have you believe that
women aren’t getting a fair shake. What is the truth of feminism? A fairytale come
true, or a royal deception that appeals to the most
primitive instincts of men and women alike? Earlier this summer the U.S. Senate apologized
for its earlier failures to approve anti-lynching
legislation. The resolution was supported by
liberal senators such as Mary Landrieu of
Louisiana, Joe Biden of Delaware, and others. The apology notes, “at least 4,742 people,
predominantly African-Americans, were reported
lynched in the United States between 1882 and
1968.” The resolution is well-intentioned, but it
air-brushes out one essential fact: Virtually all
of the victims were male, many of whom were accused
of ravishing well-to-do white women. Men so charged were summarily dragged away by
the mob and strung from a tree. Once the crowd had
gathered, men were stripped of their clothes and
their dignity. Many had their bodies riddled with
bullets. In the most gruesome cases, the men were
burned at the stake. The hysteria that surrounded these incidents was
stoked by inflammatory headlines about “big
black brutes” and “monsters in human
form.” Newspaper articles featured caricatures
of Black men with insatiable sexual appetites for
white virgins. As Philip Dray notes in his book
At the Hands of Persons Unknown, “the
cumulative impression was of a world made
precarious by Negroes.” The fear of marauding male predators reached a
fever pitch during the early part of the last
century. In 1910 Congress passed the White Slave
Traffic Act, which forbade the interstate transport
of white women “for the purpose of
prostitution or debauchery, or for any other
immoral purpose.” That law was used to prosecute championship
boxer Jack Johnson for taking his white girlfriend,
Lucille Cameron, to Chicago for “immoral
purposes.” Even though the two soon married,
Johnson was convicted in 1913, but fled to Europe
to avoid serving time for a crime that he knew he
had not committed. Rape hysteria became a flashpoint in
America’s broader race relations problems.
Those relations reached their nadir during the Red
Summer of 1919, when race riots broke out in more
than 20 cities. In Washington DC, news of the sexual assault of
an officer’s wife triggered the spectacle of
hundreds of uniformed sailors and soldiers who
chased and beat Blacks, all within view of the US
Capitol building. The report later turned out to be
a hoax. The slaying of innocent Black males continued
for many years. One of those innocents was Emmett Till, who one
day pulled up to the grocery store in Money,
Mississippi. On a dare, he took the hand of the
cashier, a local beauty by the name of Carolyn
Bryant, and asked, “How about a date,
baby?” Mrs. Bryant was offended by the
overture and word soon reached her husband. A week later, the mutilated body of Emmett Till
floated to the surface of the Tallahatchie River.
He had been shot through the right temple and his
skull had been struck with an ax. That was August 1955. Emmett Till was 14 years
old. In 1991 Clarence Thomas was nominated to the
Supreme Court. He came to the post with a Yale Law
School degree and broad legal experience. But then
he was ambushed by Anita Hill, who claimed that
Thomas had made sexually inappropriate remarks
several years before. Smarting under the allegation, Thomas complained
to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was the
victim of “a high-tech lynching.” Mr.
Thomas was saying that the fear of male sexuality
that fueled the lynching of Black men decades
before was the same hysteria that now drove people
to obsess over Anita Hill’s over-blown
allegation. On June 9, 2005 Sen. Joe Biden introduced the
Violence Against Women Act, a bill that aims to
thwart sexual and physical assaults of women. A
reading of the proposed law describes a world made
precarious by men. Sadly, the Act appeals to the
same chivalrous instincts as when the zealotry
surrounding virtuous womanhood swept our nation a
century ago. Only four days later, on June 13, the Senate
expressed its “deepest sympathies and most
solemn regrets” to the victims of lynching and
their descendants. And why did the Senate resolution forget to
mention men in its apology? Because the last thing that presidential hopeful
Biden wants is for persons to draw historic
parallels between the Violence Against Women Act
which portends the widescale curtailment of
men’s civil liberties, and the injustices that
befell wrongly-accused Black men generations
ago. Another Scandal Brewing
at the U.N.
The problems at the United Nations are legion:
the Oil-for-Food scandal, the sexual escapades of
the U.N. peacekeepers, the laughingstock that the
Human Rights Commission has become, the U.N.’s
utter failure to stem the AIDS epidemic, and many
others. But there’s another scandal that people are
trying to keep under wraps -- the fact that dozens
of agencies and offices sprinkled throughout the
vast U.N bureaucracy have become base camps for
ideological feminism. Feminists view every human issue through the
lens of gender and power. So whatever the problem
-- poverty, disease, or a shortage of parking
spaces – the standard refrain of the
Sisterhood is “Down with the
patriarchy!” At the U.N., benign male-bashing has become
distant memory. What now passes as normal feminist
discourse at the United Nations ranges from
outright gender prejudice to high-octane bigotry
that resembles an Andrea Dworkin rant. The bias begins at the top. At a 2003
International Women’s Day observance, Louise
Frechette issued this categorical imperative:
“all our work for development -- from
agriculture to health....must focus on the needs
and priorities of women.” [www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/dsgsm189.doc.htm
Ms. Frechette, by the way, is Deputy
Secretary-General of the United Nations and reports
directly to Kofi Annan. Carol Bellamy, former UNICEF director, once made
a similar plea for Africa: “Women are the
lifeline of these southern African communities.
They put the food on the table, and they're the
ones that keep families going during such
crises.” As a consequence, according to the
UNICEF press release, “Women and children must
be at the center of response to Southern Africa's
humanitarian crisis.” [www.unicef.org/newsline/2003/03pr21southernafrica_printer.htm
Last December the UNAIDS published its report,
Women and AIDS. It is not possible to describe the
gender vilification that oozes from this document,
but suffice it say that it reads like a
master’s thesis from a Women’s Studies
program. [www.washtimes.com/commentary/20041205-123305-3151r.htm
The U.N. refugee program issued the following
plea on its website: “The United Nations High
Commissioner for Refugees...One million women and
children...homeless, hungry, helpless...Their only
help is you.” (unhcr.org/
Does that mean men are never homeless, hungry,
and helpless? Or that their plight simply deserves
less sympathy? When it comes to domestic violence, the U.N.
subjects men to the most pernicious stereotypes. It
has been shown that women are fully the equal of
men when it comes to partner aggression.
[www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
More disturbing is the casual way that the U.N.
regards the lives of men. In years past, the rallying cry for the World
Health Organization was “Health for All.”
But now, the WHO’s goals have become somewhat
more modest: “Make Every Mother and Child
Count.” [www.who.int/whr/en/
Should we now conclude the lives of men no
longer count? One WHO report offers this explanation why women
outlive men in countries around world: “as
many societies have undergone economic and
industrial development, a variety of social and
cultural factors have combined to allow women's
inherent biological advantage to emerge.”
[www.who.int/frh-whd/GandH/GHreport/gendertech.htm
“Inherent biological advantage”? I
thought a certain European war taught us a lesson
about the evil that lurks when persons make claims
about persons’ inborn genetic advantages. In 2000 the U.N. Security Council passed
Resolution Number 1325 which makes the claim, never
supported by hard numbers, that, “civilians,
particularly women and children, account for the
vast majority of those adversely affected by armed
conflict.”[www.un.org/events/res_1325e.pdf
Apparently the Security Council had forgotten
about places like Srebrenica, Afghanistan, Rwanda,
Cambodia, and elsewhere where millions of innocent
civilian men were specifically targeted for
elimination. [www.gendercide.org/gendercide_and_genocide.html
The UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics
and Human Rights advocates that quality health care
and essential medicines be provided
“especially for the health of women.”
[portal.unesco.org/shs/en/file_download.php/11445d5a75d2306d7437f0626f35e1c1Draft_EN.pdf
So why not quality health care and essential
medicines for men? Ignoring the life-and-death needs of men,
categorically blaming males for the woes of women,
and claiming women are a biologically-superior
species – these are the hallmarks of a
morally-bankrupt organization that is destined to
go the way of the League of Nations. VAWA: Making
Divorce Easy, Profitable and Fun
In case you’re wondering, here’s the
meaning of VAWA: the Violence Against Women Act is
a $1 billion-a-year law that turns every marital
tiff into a hate crime against women. The linchpin of the VAWA marriage wrecking-ball
is a series of state-level laws enacted at the
behest of local N.O.W. chapters. These laws define
“violence” in the broadest possible
terms. For example, the Illinois Domestic Violence
Act defines any action that causes a person to
experience “emotional distress” to fall
within its umbrella of abuse. Then the VAWA propaganda mill revs up to bombard
women with a series of perverted messages that
amount to a how-to divorce manual: 1. Wife-battering is rampant, and “the
patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal
threat of violence in order to maintain
itself,” as Gloria Steinem once put it. And
since women are powerless, they are obviously
incapable of inflicting violence on their
partners. 2. Remain on constant alert for the dead
give-aways of impending domestic violence, such as,
“My partner acts one way in front of others,
and another way when we are alone.”
[www.aardvarc.org/dv/abusequiz.shtml
3. If you think there’s a slight
possibility of being abused, call 911. That will
instantly bring a couple squad cars roaring to your
rescue. VAWA encourages police departments to
institute “mandatory arrest” policies, so
just huddle in the corner of the room and put on
your pouty face -- that will take care of it. 4. If a 911 call sounds too messy, get a
judicial protection order. Restraining orders are
the handy, “no-fuss” solution to the
problem of husbands who can’t remember to put
the seat down. If you don’t know how to do
this, a VAWA-funded Court Advocate will be there to
help you fill out the forms. 5. Once the bum is evicted, file a petition for
divorce and temporary custody of the kids. This is
by far the cheapest and sure-fire way to win
permanent custody and guarantee yourself many years
of tax-free child support payments. 6. If you have second thoughts about pursing the
domestic abuse case, don’t worry. Thanks to
VAWA, many state attorneys have implemented a
“no-drop” policy. That way you don’t
have to testify in the case, even if you know in
your heart that you started the whole incident. 7. If your house is getting run-down, check out
your local women’s shelter. Don’t worry,
they don’t ask for proof that you were
actually battered. You can get free room and board
while you start tallying up your child support
checks. 8. Finally, if you need help finding a good
divorce lawyer, VAWA-funded organizations such as
AARDVARC will connect you to pre-screened lawyers
in your area. [www.aardvarc.org
See girls, this is easier than you could have
imagined! Recently Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) proposed that
VAWA be renewed for another five years – what
better way to nail down the feminist vote and steal
the Democratic nomination from Hillary? But this
time around Mr. Biden’s bamboozle is hitting
some unexpected snags. Word is beginning to leak out that VAWA
represents a grotesque violation of men’s
civil rights. Worse, people are hearing that VAWA
is based on a bald-faced lie – that in truth,
women commit half of all domestic violence.
[www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0629roberts.html
Normally Senate hearings feature witnesses who
voice the full gamut of opinions. That’s
democracy at work. But at Tuesday’s Judiciary
Committee hearings, only hand-picked apparatchiks
who were willing to spout the VAWA party line were
invited to speak. A few men who claimed to be DV victims had
requested to testify at the hearings, but they were
sent away since obviously they were liars. In
politically-correct society, only people who tell
the truth enjoy the right to free speech. And in the House of Representatives, VAWA
operatives plan to skip the committee hearings
altogether. They plan to bundle VAWA into a larger
Department of Justice bill and steam-roller a floor
vote by the end of the month. That’s warp
speed by Washington standards. Clearly, someone wants to keep the Senators and
Representatives from hearing the truth. Andrea
Dworkin was right. Our elected officials in
Washington don’t have a clue what the Violence
Against Women Act is really about. When Justice Harry Blackmun sat down to write
the majority opinion in the fateful Roe v. Wade
decision in 1973, he was confident that six other
Supreme Court justices would join him. Still, he
knew that proving that the right to abortion lurked
somewhere in the U.S. Constitution would be a
formidable test of his legal acumen. First he had to hold that the Bill of Rights
enunciates a right to privacy. But the Bill of
Rights never mentions privacy rights. So Blackmun posited that the right to privacy
could be extracted from the “penumbras and
emanations” of the Bill of Rights. Most people
have only the vaguest notion of what
“penumbras and emanations” mean, so that
was good. In the end Blackmun came up with this
justification: “in varying contexts the Court
or individual justices have, indeed, found at least
the roots of that right.” “Individual justices”? “At least
the roots”? Not even a second-year law student
could get away with that far-fetched reasoning --
but that’s what Justice Blackmun wrote. And exactly how do privacy rights, whether they
exist or not, translate into the right to
abort? Here Blackmun’s thinking became even more
obtuse, his logic more tortured. Blackmun finally
concluded that a woman who is deprived of the right
to kill is likely to suffer from
“psychological harm.” So the landmark Roe v. Wade decision is not a
legal treatise based on sound principle or rigorous
logic. Roe really comes down to a chivalrous
exercise in emotional hand-holding for women who
are having second thoughts about their
pregnancy. Abortionists know full well that Roe is
intellectually flawed, legally indefensible, and
morally repugnant. Given that, don’t expect to
hear much in the way of reasoned discourse and
sensible analysis over next few months. So mark my words, a torrent of fear-mongering
mantras will become the rallying cry of the
rad-fems who want to stack the Supreme Court with
more left-leaning justices who believe in the need
for a “living, breathing
Constitution.” Indeed, within hours of O’Connor’s
announcement, Sen. Ted Kennedy took to the senate
floor to issue this sharp-edged ultimatum: “If
the president abuses his power…then the
American people will insist that we oppose that
nominee, and we intend to do so.” Note that Mr. Kennedy studiously avoided the
words “litmus test,”
“filibuster,” or “smear
campaign.” Those words don’t play very
well on the six o’clock news. Over the July Fourth weekend, feminists flocked
to Tennessee, home base of Senate Majority Leader
Bill Frist, to try out their new applause lines.
Make note of these high-octane slogans, you will be
hearing them countless times over next few
months. N.O.W. president Kim Gandy ridiculed President
Bush’s likely Supreme Court candidate as
“a hard-right extremist justice.” And
Feminist Majority head Eleanor Smeal warned Frist
to not “turn back the clock on women’s
rights.” [www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=9136
That same weekend, Senator Kennedy used almost
identical words in his Washington Post editorial:
“This process shouldn't just be about whether
the next justice would help roll back women's
rights by overturning Roe v. Wade, the law of the
land.” [www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/03/AR2005070301024.html
A quick check of feminist websites reveals a
similar foghorn of slash-and-burn rhetoric and
estrogen-driven hysteria. The Feminist Majority issues this dire warning:
“If Roe is reversed, women will be returned to
the days of unsafe, back-alley abortions.” To
make sure the point isn’t lost, the FM website
adds an image of a wire coat hanger superimposed on
the Supreme Court building. Nice touch. The National Abortion Rights Action League
features a picture of President Bush with this dark
warning: “Don’t let his choice end
yours.” That statement appears right under
this chiseled inscription: “Equal Justice
Under Law.” Equality, of course, is exactly
what fathers who have no say about the lives of
their unborn children are clamoring for. And the website of the National Organization for
Women warns, “Justice O’Connor
Resigns…Women’s Lives on the Line.”
The N.O.W. doesn’t clarify, however, whether
this cautionary statement is meant to apply to the
lives of expectant mothers or of baby girls. Undermining the integrity of the US
Constitution, applying a litmus test to Supreme
Court candidates, and kindling an atmosphere of
hysteria and fear – all this in the name of
protecting a woman’s right to kill. Back in 1988 Mr. Biden was running against
George Dukakis for the Democratic presidential
nomination. But then it came to light that Mr.
Biden was lifting lines from the speeches of Robert
Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and others. Where I come from, folks call that plagiarism.
That, along with other previous peccadilloes, drove
Biden from the nomination race. [www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/biden.htm
Time erases all bad memories, as they say, and
now Mr. Biden is letting on that he wants to join
the 2008 presidential race. But Mr. Biden has another stain on his ethical
resume’. This fib is far worse because it has
the potential to rend the very foundations of the
social order. For the last 15 years, Biden has been
saying that women, and only women, can suffer from
domestic violence. Try telling that to the three young children of
Clayton Carter, who watched in horror as he was run
over by his wife with their Ford SUV. This past
week Marquetta Jordan pleaded guilty to voluntary
manslaughter in Washington DC. And consider Herman Winslow, who was shot and
killed by Lena Driskell when their yearlong romance
came to an end. “I did it and I’d do it
again,” Driskell yelled when the police came
to her Atlanta home on June 10. When women kill their husbands and
ex-boyfriends, the media never use the term,
“domestic violence.” That’s because
according to Mr. Biden, only men commit DV. Clayton Carter and Herman Winslow are just two
of the 835,000 men who are assaulted each year by
their wives or girlfriends, according to Department
of Justice statistics. [www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles/172837.pdf
Indeed, women are just as likely as men to
commit partner aggression, and men suffer 38% of
all DV-related injuries, according to the research.
[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10989615&dopt=Abstract
But Biden’s silver-tongued oratory and
cloak room arm-twisting counted for more than the
truth, and in 1994 President Clinton signed the
first Violence Against Women Act into law. That
compelled the Department of Justice to create a new
bureaucracy, the Office on Violence Against
Women. A lie is never static. A lie must always grow in
order to stay one step ahead of the skeptics. So the billion-dollar-a-year VAWA has spawned
even more falsehoods. It wasn’t enough to say
that women were the exclusive victims of DV. Soon
we learned that violence against pregnant women was
the leading cause of birth defects, that half of
all homeless women are on the streets because of
partner violence, and other propaganda-like
factoids. [www.mincava.umn.edu/documents/factoid/factoid.html
Recently a hyperventilating Catherine MacKinnon,
law professor at the University of Michigan,
compared partner aggression to the tragedy of 9/11:
“Just like terrorist attacks, acts of violence
against women are carefully planned, targeted at
civilians, and driven by ideology.” Eventually a lie becomes so bloated, so
distorted, and so grotesque that people begin to
have their doubts. Indiana University law professor Linda Kelly
recently exposed the neo-Marxist underpinnings of
the DV industry. Kelley explained, “the
‘discovery’ of domestic violence is
rooted in the essential feminist tenet that society
is controlled by an all-encompassing patriarchal
structure.” [www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/304/kelly.pdf
Earlier this year the non-partisan National
Academy Science delivered this stinging critique of
VAWA-funded programs: “the design of
prevention and control strategies…frequently
is driven by ideology and stakeholder interests
rather than by plausible theories and scientific
evidence of cause.” [nap.edu/catalog/10849.html
Fox News columnist Wendy McElroy lambasted VAWA
as a “hand-me-down from the Clinton
administration based on gender myths, anti-male
bias and an infatuation with Big Government.”
[www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0112.html
And earlier this month columnist Phyllis
Schlafly offered this wish to America’s
fathers: “Congress can help us celebrate
Father’s Day this year by refusing to
reauthorize the costly VAWA boondoggle.”
[www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7713
For years the Democrats have clung to their
receding power base by playing on the fears and
vulnerabilities of racial minorities. Now the Dems
are misleading women with the same red-meat
rhetoric by saying they live under the constant
threat of being beaten and bloodied. Thanks to DV-induced hysteria, laws make it
possible to evict husbands from their homes simply
on the word of the woman. So it’s no surprise
that so many eligible bachelors are refusing to
marry. And it’s no coincidence that single
women are far more likely than their married
counterparts to vote Democratic. An ever-growing climate of fear, an
unaccountable federal bureaucracy, and a
fading-away of the institution of marriage -- all
that bodes well for Senator Biden’s
presidential aspirations. The Politics of Social
Destruction at the US
At a meeting of the United Nations Population
Fund, Fransen told his surprised audience that to
“increase mortality” was one way to limit
population growth in Africa. Fransen then made the
jocular comment that “AIDS was helping to do
the work of population control in Africa.”
[www.lifecoalition.com/UN4.html
With that mindset lurking at the UN, is it any
surprise that the global campaign to stem the
spread of AIDS has been a colossal failure? Fed up with the shenanigans at the United
Nations, the US House of Representatives has now
issued an ultimatum to Kofi Annan. Implement 46
designated reforms by 2007, or else we’ll
slash the US dues payment by half. That would cost
the UN a cool $221 million. Secretary-general Annan must contend with more
than long-standing corruption and inefficiency in
the sprawling UN bureaucracy. He must also deal
with the threat of an ideological take-over. And to
an organization prone to ideological excess,
that’s no joking matter. First, a little background. Five years ago, the
UN unveiled its Millennium Development Goals. The
MDGs spell out eight strategies to lift the
world’s neediest out of grinding poverty. The
strategies include common-sense ideas such as
universal primary education, reducing child
mortality, and combating AIDS. [www.un.org/millenniumgoals/index.html
And two of the strategies were specifically
crafted to help women: improve maternal health, and
“promote gender equality and empower
women.” (No one bothered to explain what
“empowerment” meant, but it sounded good
at the time). But mere equality wasn’t enough. Like
rapacious vultures, the radical feminists demanded
more. Predictably, they soon began to argue that
setting up abortion chop-shops in every town and
hamlet would be a necessary pre-condition to
achieving the Development Goals. This past March the UN Economic and Social
Council convened a meeting to discuss the MDGs.
There Ms. France Donnay, chief of the Reproductive
Health Branch of the UN Population Fund, made the
claim that “reproductive health and rights are
at the core of life for every human
being.” So first we’re told that AIDS is a viable
population control strategy. And now we learn that
in order to protect life, we must first kill the
innocent unborn. Jan Fransen and France Donnay make
for an impressive duo, n’est pas? Taking its cue from the damsels of destruction,
last month the European Union released a report
pressuring the UN to expand abortion services.
According to its May 24 document, “The EU
further recognizes that the MDGs cannot be attained
without progress in achieving the Cairo goal of
universal sexual and reproductive health and
rights.” Note the tell-tale words, “universal”
and “rights.” That means
government-financed abortions on demand for women
and teenage girls. And millions of
biologically-disenfranchised dads. And there’s more to the story. The fem-socialists at the UN have come up with a
diabolical strategy that goes by the chilling name,
“gender mainstreaming.” According to its
proponents, gender mainstreaming is “the
process of assessing the implications for women and
men of any planned action, including legislation,
policies or programs, in all areas and at all
levels.” [www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/pdf/e65237.pdf
The United Nations Development Fund for Women
(UNIFEM) is now proposing that gender mainstreaming
should become the “overarching framework”
for the Development Goals. But to the radical
feminist, gender equality is always about “Me,
Me, Me.” So in practice, gender equality is just another
excuse to afford more legal preferences and
government programs for women. And gender
mainstreaming has become the Sisterhood’s ploy
to hijack the MDGs and turn them into another
platform to advance its destructive agenda. As Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for
America warned, these militant radicals are hoping
the UN leadership will take their gender agenda and
“force it into the mainstream through
international programs and policies.”
[www.cwfa.org/articles/7655/BLI/nation/
So now the stage has been set for a show-down at
the UN headquarters in New York City. On September
14-16, delegates from around the world will gather
for the Millennium+5 Summit to gauge progress in
reaching the Development Goals. [www.un.org/ga/59/hl60_plenarymeeting.html
These Gender Warriors go about spreading
calumnies about the mistreatment of women at the
hands of selfish patriarchs. Their aim is to shame
and intimidate men so they eventually acquiesce to
their divisive and destructive agenda. US House of Representatives, I hope you’re
taking note. A Government Program
is No Substitute for a Bear-Hug
But kids see it differently. Mary Kay
Shanley’s book, When I Think About My Father,
recites these love-words from Amanda, age 6:
“At the end of the day when I go to bed, Daddy
tucks me in. We talk together about our day. He
reads me a story to help me sleep. We pray
together. That is my favorite part.” Research confirms with Amanda’s endorsement
of fatherhood. It turns out that kids with hands-on
dads have greater levels of self-esteem and social
competence, get higher grades in school, and do
better on a broad range of social and psychological
indicators. Even in high-crime, inner-city
neighborhoods, over 90% of children who grow up in
two-parent families avoid becoming delinquents. Sadly, government social welfare programs have a
dismal track record in this area. It’s not
that they have just ignored the essential role of
fathers. The problem is, they have offered
inducements to actually remove dads from the lives
of their kids. This pattern can be traced back to the 1960s.
Under Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, welfare
benefits came with a catch: first, kick dad out of
the house. As a result of this exclusionary
“man-in-the-house” rule, the number of
children growing up in fatherless homes rose
dramatically. Before long, people began to notice that poor
fathers were “abandoning” their children.
So beginning in 1975, the Congress passed a series
of child support laws that targeted so-called
“deadbeat” dads. The reforms may have been well-intentioned, but
they missed the mark on one key point: many
low-income dads couldn’t pay their child
support because they were on Skid Row. But that
fact didn’t stop the federal Office for Child
Support Enforcement, with a budget of $4 billion,
from hounding indigent fathers and sending
thousands to debtor’s jail each year.
[www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0310roberts.html
But the government was not done with its task of
dismembering the traditional family. In 1994 the Congress passed the Violence Against
Women Act, a $1 billion-a-year feminist windfall
that claims to combat domestic violence. One of
VAWA’s tools is the issuance of restraining
orders. The dirty little secret that feminists never
like to admit is that they have stealthily
broadened the scope of violence. For example, the
National Victim Assistance Academy came up with
this all-encompassing definition: “Domestic
violence is a pattern of coercive behavior designed
to exert power and control over a person in an
intimate relationship through the use of
intimidating, threatening, harmful, or harassing
behavior.” [www.nvaa.org/assist/chapter9.html
As a result of this definitional
sleight-of-hand, “domestic violence becomes
whatever the woman says it is,” according to
columnist Phyllis Schlafly. [www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7713
So when these “battered” mothers seek
a restraining order, they also petition for divorce
and custody of the children. Once again, the kids
are left without a father. The effects of these federal programs are
predictable -- and tragic. In 1960, five million
American children lived in fatherless homes. By
1980, that number more than doubled to 11 million.
And now, 16 million children live only with their
mothers. The National Fatherhood Initiative issued this
sobering warning: “Children who live absent
their biological fathers are, on average, at least
two to three times more likely to be poor, to use
drugs, to experience educational, health,
emotional, and behavioral problems, to be victims
of child abuse, and to engage in criminal
behavior.” So consider the 16 million boys and girls who go
to bed each night without getting a bear-hug from
daddy, and it’s easy to see why a 1999 Gallup
poll found that 72% of Americans believe that
“the physical absence of the father from the
home is the most significant problem facing
America.” On Father’s Day, it’s traditional to
honor our fathers – those home-grown heroes
who sacrifice their moments of quiet reflection,
their comfort, and even their health to support and
protect their families. This coming Sunday I will
remember my own dad, thankful for all the good
times we spent together. Perhaps this Father’s Day should also be a
day of reckoning. It’s time to ask, Why does
the US taxpayer continue to subsidize government
programs, to the tune of billions of dollars a
year, that end up separating fathers from their
families? The Sun of Feminism Shines
Brightly in Socialist Europe
Karl Marx taught that if women desired to free
themselves from the shackles of patriarchy, they
first had to wrest control over the means of
reproduction. Now birth rates in Europe have
plummeted, choking off the inflow of young workers
and imperiling the financial viability of the
social welfare state. The situation is especially acute in Germany,
where the population is projected to decline from
the current level of 82 million to 70.8 million
persons by 2050. The fertility fall-off stems from
a disintegration of family relationships – 83%
of Germans say their main reason for not having
children is their inability to find a partner or
stable relationship. [news.yahoo.com/s/afp/germanypopulationeconomy
In Europe, gender equality programs march under
the flag of what the European Union bureaucrats
call “gender mainstreaming.” So blithely ignoring its impending demographic
time-bomb, the German Ministry of Education and
Research has announced a new gender mainstreaming
program designed to entice even more women out of
the home and into the workforce. [www.bmbf.de/en/474.php
Advocates of gender mainstreaming claim they are
merely trying to promote equal rights for the
sexes. But in practice, this grand-sounding concept
doesn’t quite work out that way. For example, men in Austria live 76 years, while
women enjoy a full 82 years of life. But that
six-year disparity in life expectancy didn’t
stop the government from establishing the
Bundesministerium fur Gesundheit und Frauen –
Ministry for Health and Women. [www.bmgf.gv.at
In Austria, some deaths apparently are more
equal than others. In sun-drenched Spain, gender equality meant
passing a law that requires husbands to “share
domestic responsibilities and the care and
attention” of children. Like most countries,
the most laborious and dangerous occupations in
Spain are virtually all-male. One only hopes that
in this new era of gender enlightenment, the
Spanish senoras will soon be casting off their
mantas to help out as hod carriers and to work the
olive groves in the sweltering heat. [www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,2763,1454802,00.html
In Norway it was announced that women compose
only 11% of members of corporate boards of
directors, those bastions of male power and
privilege. So minister Laila Daavoey recently
decreed that henceforth all companies would be
obliged to meet a 40% female board quota – or
else face closure. [www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12770128%255E1702,00.html
Once those companies shut down, I’m sure
the E.U. will be more than happy to subsidize the
checks for all those unemployed workers, male and
female. But it’s Sweden where the Sisterhood has
made the most progress toward true gender equality.
There, almost half of the entire workforce and 45%
of the members of Parliament are female. Given these signs of an imminent gender
paradise, one might expect the Swedish fems to
embrace the now-deposed patriarchs and break into a
heart-warming round of Kumbaya. But funny,
that’s not what happened. One of the more colorful Swedish politicos is
one Gudrun Schyman, an alcoholic who got caught not
paying her taxes and was forced to resign as a
leader of the Left Party, the former Communist
Party of Sweden. Schyman apparently forgot that in
socialist societies, paying taxes is more
inevitable than death. That scandal didn’t stop Schyman from
hatching her ultra-radical Feminist Initiative,
which is now threatening the coalition government
of the ruling Social Democrats. The FI’s
shrill manifesto makes Schyman sound a lot more
like David Duke than Mother Theresa. [www.transnational.org/forum/
meet/2005/Schyman_FeministInitiative.html
Early last month a group of Stockholm women put
the Feminist Initiative message to the test. One
night they showed up at a local strip club wielding
baseball bats and umbrellas. Police ended up
arresting 16 women after the melee. [www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=1393&date=20050508
And to think all these years, I had thought that
women were genetically incapable of inflicting
violence. In 1620 a small band of Pilgrims fled Europe in
a pluckish effort to escape tyranny and secure
their religious freedom. That experience weighed
heavily on the minds of our nation’s
forefathers as they forged a new country based on
limited government, free markets, and individual
liberties. Nearly 400 years later, a new totalitarianism is
blossoming in Europe. Under the seductive guise of
gender equality, this ideological tyranny resorts
to over-heated rhetoric, intrusive government, and
intimidation tactics. Maybe Europe hasn’t progressed as far as
we’d like to think. Equality for Men and
Fathers - What a Concept!
Joining the sport at age 10, May endured
ridicule and strange looks for over 15 years.
Synchronized swimming, after all, is for girls. But
he succeeded in shrugging off the stereotypes and
eventually became recognized as one of the elite
synch swimmers in the country. In 2001 he swept the
first-place spots in the solo, duo, and team
categories at the Nationals in Texas. But his career suffered a painful set-back when
the estrogen barrier slapped him down. Last summer
the U.S. Synchronized Swimming Federation decided
to not allow him to participate in the August
Olympics. Come and cheer the girls on to victory,
they said, but don’t dare jump into that pool.
[www.livingroom.org.au/olympics/archives/male_synchronized_swimmer_not_allowed_to_compete_in_olympics.php
The reason for the Federation’s
Olympic-sized refusal – unstated but widely
believed to be true – is the belief that
discrimination against men is simply a non-issue.
“Since men have all the power,” persons
glibly ask, “How is it possible for a male to
be the victim of discrimination by another
man?” This simplistic analysis ignores the fact that
power appears in many forms and guises. Social commentator David Shackleton once made
this observation: “Men’s power has been
overt, and has lain primarily in the physical,
economic, and political realms, while women’s
power, fully the equal of men’s, has been
covert and has operated in the moral, emotional,
and sexual realms.” So men, traditionally viewed as the head of the
family, tend to be physically stronger and to be
the primary wage-earners of the family. But women are no shrinking violets. Women
command the power to establish social norms
(“Who left the toilet seat up?”), to set
hubby’s weekend schedule (“Here’s
the honey-do list, dear”), and on occasion, to
shame their partner (“I’m sending you to
the doghouse!”) And dare we forget to mention sexual allure?
Truth be told, some women intentionally cultivate
their sexual power to tantalize and influence men.
One of these days pick up a copy of Cosmo, a how-to
manual for wordly women who know what they want,
and know how to get it. So David Shackleton would argue that whatever
power that women may lack in the corporate
boardrooms and in the halls of Congress, they more
than make up for at home. Over the past 40 years our society has undergone
an extreme make-over in order to promote political
and economical equality for women. That’s
fine. But as Bill May found out, equality still
eludes men. And we’re not talking about just
synchronized swimming. If men had equal rights, what would that look
like? Here are just a few examples, for
starters. First, our society will begin to value and
respect fatherhood -- and I’m not talking
about a Wal-Mart tie on Father’s Day. We will
realize that solving many of our most vexing social
problems – delinquency, drug abuse, teenage
pregnancy, and others -- will require recognition
of the essential role of fathers in promoting safe
and stable families. And in case of divorce, a fit
father shouldn’t have to fight a biased legal
system so he can stay involved in the lives of his
kids. Second, men will have equal say in matters of
reproduction. Currently men are at the mercy of
their partners because there is no effective male
birth control pill, and because men have no say in
decisions about keeping their unborn children. Third, we will promote equality in health.
Currently men die five years sooner than women, and
that’s not because of biology. Despite that
disparity in life expectancy, the federal
government has five offices of women’s health
-- but no office for men’s health. For years the notion of gender equality was seen
as a one-way street, intended to benefit women, but
turning a blind eye to the social disparities of
men. Mere mention of the words “men’s
rights” was a sure-fire strategy to attract
amused expressions and derisive remarks. But for those who believe in fairness, as I
believe most Americans are, we need to ask this
simple question: Equal rights for men and fathers
– who could possibly be against that? Feminist Cover-Up Means
Billion-Dollar Taxpayer Shake-Down
A number of years ago University of Delaware
professor Suzanne Steinmetz published an article
called the “The Battered Husband
Syndrome.” After culling the findings from
five surveys on domestic violence, Steinmetz
reached an unexpected conclusion: wives were just
as likely as their husbands to kick, punch, stab,
and otherwise physically aggress against their
spouses. Steinmetz’s conclusion was so startling
that she quickly became a media darling, appearing
on the Phil Donahue show and having her work
featured in a front-page story in Time
magazine. But the radical feminists were none-too-pleased
with Steinmetz’s revisionism, and they knew
something had to be done. So they placed Steinmetz
on their hit list. The fem-thugs began by calling University of
Delaware faculty members, deriding Steinmetz’s
work as “anti-feminist.” Then they
leveled threats against Steinmetz and her children.
Sponsors of her speaking engagements started to
receive threatening phone calls. Finally, a bomb
threat was called in to a meeting where Steinmetz
was scheduled to speak. [www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/304/kelly.pdf
Bullying tactics like these may be acceptable in
totalitarian states, but are an anathema to an open
democracy that cherishes tolerance and freedom of
speech. The intimidation campaign succeeded in forcing
professor Steinmetz to leave her teaching post. But
the feminists’ Mafia-like tactics ultimately
backfired when they were exposed for all to see in
Phil Cook’s 1997 book, Abused
Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence. So the Sisterhood turned from intimidation to
propaganda -- the old-fashioned, in-your-face type.
Here are just a few of their neo-Leninist
tactics: No wonder that John Leo, columnist for US News
and World Report, once described the feminist DV
cover-up this way: “news stories on domestic
violence are carefully crafted, consistently
unreliable, and often just wrong.” There’s a good reason for this spate of
Ms.-information. The rad-fems want to hoodwink the
public and politicians that there’s an
epidemic of violence against women out there, and
it’s spiraling out of control. Predictably,
the cure for that epidemic is a new federal program
that carries a hefty price tag. The name for that federal program is the
Violence Against Women Act, first signed into law
by President Clinton in 1994. Thanks to VAWA,
American taxpayers now cough up $1 billion a year
– that’s billion with a “b” --
to help stop family violence. But the truth is, VAWA is a Trojan Horse. If its
goal was to help families, it would promote couple
counseling and reconciliation. If its purpose was
to assure gender equity, VAWA would also provide
services for victimized men. If its aim was to
thwart partner aggression, it would feature anger
management classes for abusive women. VAWA is not about helping families. This law is
about demonizing men and sowing fear in the hearts
of impressionable women. VAWA seeks to escalate the
battle of the sexes into a gender war. No wonder so
many eligible bachelors are now saying,
“Thanks but no thanks.” History teaches that the family is one of the
strongest bulwarks against the centralization of
governmental power. The proponents of VAWA seek to
weaken and ultimately reconfigure the traditional
family. That’s their socialist vision of the
future. VAWA Law Polarizes the
Sexes, Weakens the Family
If Mr. Wilson’s analysis is correct, then
American society is closer to anarchy than most
people realize. That process of family and social disintegration
is spurred by the Violence Against Women Act –
VAWA for short -- the $1 billion-dollar-a-year law
that was passed five years ago at the behest of the
radical feminists. VAWA comes up for renewal later
this year in Congress. When you look closely, it becomes clear that
VAWA has an agenda that reaches far beyond the
protection of women. VAWA-funded educational programs push the
time-worn storyline of the violent man and a
brutalized woman. But that stereotype is false. The
truth is, members of the fairer sex are just as
likely to commit domestic violence as men.
[www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
But once society comes to believe that members
of the male sex are a menace to women, it becomes
easy to enact laws that strip men of their
Constitutional rights of due process and equal
treatment under the law. Again, that’s where VAWA steps in. One of the tools promoted by VAWA is the use of
restraining orders. At first blush, the idea sounds
common-sensical: a woman who is being abused should
be able to get her husband removed from the
house. But in many states, judges crank out restraining
orders like Confederate one-dollar bills, not
pausing to verify the woman’s claims or even
to hear the man’s side of the story. A 1995 Massachusetts study found that 60,000
restraining orders were issued each year. In fewer
than half of those cases was there even an
allegation of physical violence. In the other
cases, the woman simply claimed she felt afraid, or
maybe there had been a marital spat. [www.salon.com/mwt/feature/1999/10/25/restraining_orders/
Recently the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court became concerned that this epidemic of
restraining orders was fraying the fabric of
judicial impartiality. The Court opined that judges
must “resist a culture of summarily issuing
and extending these orders.” Elaine Epstein, former president of the
Massachusetts Bar Association, was even more
candid: “Restraining orders are granted to
virtually all who apply…In many
[divorce] cases, allegations of abuse are
now used for tactical advantage.” Tactical advantage? Ms. Epstein was referring to
the fact that while hubby is barred from the house,
the wife quickly files for a divorce, and cleverly
requests temporary custody of the kids. That paves
the way for near-automatic award of sole custody
once the divorce is finalized. So careful about raising your voice, Pop, or you
might be thrown out on your ear -- and end up
losing your kids for good measure. Is this beginning to sound like Carl
Wilson’s Stage Five of societal dissolution?
In fact, has anyone noticed that Constitutional
protections of due process are being shredded by
this near-hysteria over domestic violence? And there’s more to the story. Columnist Phyllis Schlafly recently probed the
financial incentives that drive our nation’s
child support system: “Follow the money,”
she warned. “The less time that noncustodial
parents (usually fathers) are permitted to be with
their children, the more child support they are
required to pay into the state fund.”
[www.townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/ps20050509.shtml
So last month, family advocates in California
set out to challenge these perverse incentives by
introducing the Shared Parenting Bill. Their aim
was to encourage equal participation of fathers by
granting them joint custody of their children in
the event of divorce. [cspaonline.org/index.php
Who could ever be against that? The ladies from NOW, that’s who. Their
argument? Changing the practice of awarding sole
custody to mothers would expose the kids to all
manner of abusive dads. That smear conveniently ignored an interesting
fact: it’s mothers, not fathers who are far
more likely to abuse and neglect their children,
according to the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services. [faq.acf.hhs.gov/cgi-bin/acfrightnow.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=70&p_created=1001611491
So two weeks ago, the California Assembly
Judiciary Committee killed the Shared Parenting
Bill. And divorced children were rendered
fatherless by a spiteful gender stereotype. The fragmentation of society into warring
factions – shades of Mr. Wilson’s Stage
Six. The Violence Against Women Act represents a
frontal assault on both fatherhood and on the
integrity of the traditional family. That’s a
troubling harbinger for the dissolution of
democratic society. Whatever Happened to
Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice?
One wag quipped, “What do you suppose would
be the reaction if a group of men got together on a
college campus and started talking this way about
women?” Another opined that Catherine
MacKinnon and her crew sound “exactly like the
KKK.” Of course, feminists flamed the article, trying
to make the case that female bigotry is a
justifiable, even courageous act of
self-empowerment. Scary. A few years ago Dale O’Leary wrote an
article with the provocative title, “Radical
Feminism as a Psychological Disorder.” Ms.
O’Leary concluded that women who are deeply
committed to feminist ideology “are seriously
psychologically troubled.” [www.dvmen.org/dv-108.htm
O’Leary viewed the culprit as a
dysfunctional father-daughter relationship.
“The Radicalized Feminist is filled with rage
against ‘patriarchy’ which is Fatherhood
writ large, because she is filled with rage against
her own father,” O’Leary explained. But a look at the childhood stories of several
feminist icons paints a different picture. Take Betty Friedan, who grew up amidst
upper-class privilege in Peoria, Illinois. But her
well-coifed mother turned out to be a compulsive
gambler whose spendthrift ways left the family
mired in debt. Worse, mom constantly ridiculed
Betty, belittling her long nose and unkempt manner
of dress. Betty eventually came to identify with
her hen-pecked father, who had always expressed
pride in his daughter. Gloria Steinem’s father worked as an
iterant antique dealer, and her childhood years
were spent traveling around the countryside in a
dome-shaped trailer. Steinem’s mother suffered
from a severe depression that sometimes turned into
violence. After her parents divorced at age eight,
Gloria became her mother’s primary caregiver.
Steinem would later reminisce that her happiest
childhood memories were when her father took the
family on summer vacations to Clark Lake, Michigan.
[www.theglassceiling.com/biographies/bio32.htm
Then there’s Andrea Dworkin, the woman
whose name is almost synonymous with loathing for
men. (In my previous column, I incorrectly stated
that Dworkin wrote The SCUM Manifesto. In fact,
Valerie Solanas was the author.) Throughout her
childhood, Andrea was locked in an internecine
conflict with her mother, a hypochondriac who
forced her husband to work three jobs in order to
pay the medical bills. Dworkin also had a positive
relationship with her father, a man she credited as
introducing her to “the world of
ideas.” Two common themes emerge from the childhood
accounts of these feminist leaders. Friedan,
Steinem, and Dworkin all suffered at the hands of
mothers who were abusive and pathological. And they
had supportive, involved fathers. Yet all ended up directing their anger at dad.
Why? Probably because they wanted more patriarchal
protection from their dysfunctional moms. (I can
see the flames coming now.) That would appear to be an unlikely genesis for
a movement that set out to crush Patriarchy. But I
never said logic was the Gender Guerillas’
strong suit. The Sisterhood exploits women’s
vulnerabilities by playing on an easy sense of
me-mania. Psychologists call this narcissism, the
personality trait that was inspired by Narcissus,
the Greek god who saw his reflection in a pool and
fell in love with himself. Open up any woman’s magazine, and
you’ll see advertisements that unabashedly
appeal to self-entitlement. Everything from hand
soap to resort vacations is peddled with tag lines
such as, “Take time for yourself,”
“You deserve it,” and “It’s all
about you.” Myrna Blyth, former editor of The Ladies Home
Journal, knows this all too well. In her book Spin
Sisters, Blyth remarks pointedly, “narcissism
is an advanced evolutionary stage of female
liberation. Me, me, me, means you’re finally
free, free, free.” Not all ladies read the women’s magazines,
of course, or believe everything they read in them
if they do. But left unchecked, narcissism can turn into a
serious character flaw. Psychologist Julie Exline
explains how narcissists lose the ability to
forgive: “they will often hold grudges on
principle. Over time, such unforgiving tendencies
may prevent the healing of wounded
relationships.” [www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=20723
Exline concludes, “As part of that
self-admiration, narcissists typically have a sense
of entitlement in which they feel superior to
others and expect special, preferential
treatment.” Expecting special, preferential treatment --
that description fits most feminists I’ve met
to a “T.” Four decades after Friedan’s Feminine
Mystique swept the nation, the feminist movement
has turned out to be a Trojan Horse that caters to
women’s sense of privilege, preference, and
power. This ideology has now ended up reinforcing
the worst stereotypes about vindictive women who
can’t rein in their own emotions. That’s hardly my definition of
liberation. A Rash of Feminist Hate
Speech
The 40 women in the audience, many wearing
scissors around their necks, laughed and clapped,
then broke into a light-hearted song about
castration. This event, advertised as the Patriarchy Slam,
took place at the University of New Hampshire on
March 10. [www.rense.com/general63/dur.htm
Some might be tempted to explain away this event
as an aberration, perhaps some strange Wiccan
initiation ritual performed at the end of a long
New England winter. For years, disdain for men has been nurtured in
Women’s Studies programs around the country.
Required reading for these courses typically
includes the works of Andrea Dworkin, author of
such books as The SCUM Manifesto. SCUM is an
acronym for “Society for Cutting Up
Men.” How’s this for warm-hearted commentary on
gender reconciliation: Every man is “the
inevitable rapist or exploiter of another
woman” and “Hatred of women is a source
of sexual pleasure for men in its own right.”
Those insights earned Dworkin the status of a
feminist cult-hero. But on April 9 Andrea Dworkin unexpectedly left
this earthly existence. Five days later arch-feminist Catherine
MacKinnon, grief-stricken over the passing of
bosom-buddy Andrea, showed up on the Stanford
University campus. There MacKinnon launched into a
paranoid rant about the ever-lurking patriarchy:
“Just like terrorist attacks, acts of violence
against women are carefully planned, targeted at
civilians, and driven by ideology.” Under normal circumstances, anyone making such
irrational claims would be quietly led away to a
padded cell. But Stanford Law School dean Kathleen Sullivan
only saw fit to add to the loonier-than-thou
atmosphere: “There are many other prominent
feminist theorists in our times, but none of their
philosophy is as sweeping and profound as
MacKinnon’s.” Then on April 16 MacKinnon published an article
in the New York Times in which she extolled the
mentally-deranged Dworkin as “an inspiration
to so many women.” Seeking to turn her into a
feminist martyr, MacKinnon argued, “How she
was treated is how women are treated who tell the
truth about male power.” [www.nytimes.com/2005/04/16/opinion/16mackinnon.html?ex=1271304000&en=626a94afad2e2a76&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
But Boston Globe columnist Cathy Young took
sharp exception to MacKinnon’s fig-leaf
eulogy. “To put it plainly: Dworkin was a
preacher of hate,” Young countered, and
“if she deserves ‘credit’ for
anything, it’s helping infect feminist
activism…with anti-male bigotry and
paranoia.” [www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/18/the_misdirected_passion_of_andrea_dworkin
Anti-male bigotry and paranoia can have harmful
consequences for women, as well. Last November 17 Desiree Nall, a student at
Rollins College in Winter Park, FL was cornered in
a campus bathroom and raped. The police placed the
campus on “high alert,” warning female
students to stay indoors. Women were in a panic. An
investigation ensued, eventually costing
$50,000. But the case began to unravel when Nall, a local
women’s rights activist, gave inconsistent
details about the incident and refused to assist
with the composite sketches. Two days later, Nall
called the police and admitted the whole thing was
a hoax. Police officers later speculated that Nall
was trying to “make a statement” about
sexual violence. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0420.html
Equally worrisome is how some persons dismiss
feminists’ malicious antics as harmless
fun. A few days ago Jeffrey Zaslow wrote an article
in the Wall Street Journal about girls who
wear T-shirts with the slogan, “Boys are
Stupid, Throw Rocks at Them.” Festooned with
the light-hearted title, “Girl Power as Boy
Bashing,” the article implies that hate speech
is somehow a legitimate expression of female
empowerment. [http://mensnewsdaily.com/blog/nononsensedating/2005_04_21_nononsensedating_archive.html
Sometimes I feel a little silly stating the
obvious, but girls wearing clothes that preach
violence and hate is not normal. It’s no coincidence that feminist hate
speech revolves around the issue of domestic
violence. That’s because years ago the
rad-fems highjacked the federal Violence Against
Women Act, and have relentlessly milked the issue
to inflame the fears of women. This, despite the
fact that women are just as likely as men to commit
domestic violence. [www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/304/kelly.pdf
The Violence Against Women Act, which
underwrites the radical feminist cause to the tune
of $1 billion a year, is set to expire on September
30 of this year. As of this writing, no renewal
legislation has been introduced, and time is
running short. Is it possible that the end of feminist hate
speech is at hand? New Catholic
Patriarch may Derail Hillary's White House
Plans
The former Soviet Union once tried to divorce
job productivity from wages. Of course, that
removed persons’ incentive for hard work, and
economic mayhem was the result. But Hillary is a
lawyer, not a historian. By interesting coincidence, Sen. Clinton’s
bill was introduced the very same day that,
half-way around the globe, Cardinal Joseph
Ratzinger was elected as the new pope. Within hours
he assumed the name Benedict XVI. During the 1980s pope John Paul II worked
courageously and relentlessly behind the scenes to
topple Polish Communism. Now Cardinal Ratzinger is
picking up where John Paul left off, publicly
denouncing the scourge of socialism. Faced with a man of towering intellect and
unswerving moral courage, the Leftist media has
responded by doing what it does best: cavil,
criticize, and complain. All but calling the pope a
religious bigot, columnist Andrew Sullivan warned,
“And so the Catholic church accelerated its
turn toward authoritarianism, hostility to
modernity, assertion of papal supremacy, and
quashing of internal debate.” The pontiff is a man of rock-solid conviction
who decries what he calls the “dictatorship of
relativism.” Of course Benedict XVI views
abortion as a social and moral abomination,
repeatedly referring to it as a “grave
sin.” And same-sex marriage is out, as
revealed by this 1998 statement deploring the trend
that “heterosexuality and homosexuality
[would] come to be seen as simply two
morally equivalent variations.” At this rate, maybe the concepts of Right and
Wrong, Good and Evil, will soon be restored to the
public discourse. Which brings me to Hillary’s ill-disguised
aspirations to reclaim her throne in the White
House and welcome the long-awaited
feminist-socialist utopia. Last June, when Senator John Kerry and President
Bush were running neck-and-neck in the presidential
race, Cardinal Ratzinger issued a letter that
prohibited priests from giving the Holy Communion
to a Catholic politician who is “consistently
campaigning and voting” for permissive
abortion laws. Some priests felt that defending a woman’s
“right to choose” represented a higher
moral principle than protecting the lives of unborn
innocents, so they chose to ignore that
instruction. But that letter served to re-awaken
the consciences of millions of Catholics, who on
Election Day abandoned the Democratic Party in
droves. When to comes to radical feminism, the pontiff
doesn’t mince words, either. Last July 31 he released a Letter to the Bishops
of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men
and Women. Representing a brilliant and incisive
critique of feminist theory, the Letter zeroed in
on its two fundamental flaws. [catholicinsight.com/online/church/vatican/menwomen.shtml
First is the tactic of provoking gender
conflict. Feminists try to convince women to
“make themselves adversaries of men,”
explained the Cardinal, which “leads to
opposition between men and women.” Second is the concept of androgeny, what
Ratzinger denounced as the “obscuring of the
difference or duality of the sexes.” This
flawed theory of gender “has inspired
ideologies which...call into question the family in
its natural two-parent structure of mother and
father.” If that analysis didn’t give Hillary
heartburn, the Letter’s conclusion must have:
that feminist “distortions” and
“lethal effects” were undermining the
“natural two-parent structure” of the
family. Senator Clinton, it might be smart to stop
giving away those autographed copies of “It
Takes a Village to Raise a Child.” But the German-born pontiff was not advocating a
nostalgic return to the paternalistic days of
kinder, kuche, and kirche. Instead he wrote about
the need for an “active collaboration of the
sexes” in order to bring the “feminine
values” of faithfulness and caring to the
forefront. Last week, shortly before the Cardinals
commenced their deliberations, then-Cardinal
Ratzinger was invited to deliver the homily. In his
remarks, he specifically singled out liberalism,
collectivism, and Marxism as sources of perversion
and error. [www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=2062
Liberalism, collectivism, and Marxism –
that pretty much sums up Hillary’s whole
political philosophy. Un-constitutional
VAWA Law Helped by a Propaganda Ploy
For the past decade, Americans have been
subjected to the relentless message, There’s
no excuse for domestic violence against a
woman. OK, but what about Piper Rountree who was
convicted six weeks ago for the ambush-slaying of
her former husband, University of Richmond
professor Frederic Jablin? Are cases of
female-on-male violence so rare as to be an amusing
oddity in the newspaper obituary columns? Here’s the shocker: Women are just as
likely as men to commit domestic violence against
their intimate partners. Chances are you’ve been heard the Urban
Legend that follows the predictable line, male =
abuser, female = victim. So I’m going to
repeat my statement, this time with emphasis:
Research shows that women are equally likely to
commit partner aggression against their boyfriends,
husbands, and ex-husbands. We’re not talking about a handful of
studies. Over 100 research reports have shown this
to be true -- you can see for yourself by visiting
this website:
www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm Here’s how attorney Linda Kelly recently
put it: “men and women commit violence at
similar rates.” [www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/downloads/304/kelly.pdf
Psychologist John Archer reached an even
stronger conclusion in his article in the
Psychological Bulletin: “Women were slightly
more likely than men to use one or more acts of
physical aggression.” [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10989615&dopt=Abstract
It’s not a casual toss of a pillow or a
playful jab at the chops. According to Dr. Archer,
38% of all persons who suffer domestic violence
injuries are male. So why don’t we read about these cases of
female-on-male violence more often in the
newspapers? Because men are far less likely to
report the incident to the police – nine times
less likely, according to one landmark study.
[www.ejfi.org/DV/dv-22.htm#pgfId-1378765
To understand the DV urban legend, we need to go
back to 1991, when senator Joe Biden of Delaware
introduced VAWA for the first time. [www.vawnet.org/SexualViolence/PublicPolicy/VAWA-SVPubPol.pdf
First, the proposed law flaunted the intent of
the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteen
Amendment. Knowing that men are equally likely to
be victims of domestic violence, how could anyone
in good conscience propose a law that would confer
greater protections and services, but only for
women? Second, Biden’s proposed bill violated the
principle of federalism enshrined in the Tenth
Amendment, and thus infringed on state
sovereignty. Not surprisingly, Biden’s bill was soon
relegated to the legislative deep-freeze. That
didn’t please the rad-fems. So someone came up
with the idea of a publicity stunt. In January 1993, a daring group of women called
a press conference in Pasadena, California. Sheila
Kuhn of the California Women’s Law Center made
the statement that would provide the boost the
feminists were desperately looking for: Super Bowl
Sunday was the “biggest day of the year for
violence against women.” That stunning claim quickly appeared on Good
Morning America, in the Boston Globe, and
elsewhere. The Oakland Tribune would report the
Super Bowl causes men to “explode like mad
linemen, leaving girlfriends, wives, and children
beaten.” How’s that for dispassionate news
reporting? Some remained unconvinced, however, including
reporter Ken Ringle of the Washington Post. In his
article “Debunking the 'Day of Dread' for
Women,” Ringle showed the feminist claim was a
preposterous fraud. [www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/superbowl.asp
The
Super Bowl Hoax, as it was later dubbed, no
doubt will become a classic in the propaganda
textbooks. And it clearly did succeed in triggering
a surge of letters and phone calls to Congress. The
following year the Violence Against Women Act was
signed into law by President Clinton. Less than five months from now on September 30,
VAWA is set to expire. That means the
Sisterhood’s billion-dollar-a-year gravy-train
will dry up. Renewal legislation has not yet been
introduced, apparently because the Republican
majority hasn’t warmed up to the idea of
dishing out mega-bucks to the GOP’s avowed
political foes. As the clock ticks down to September 30, the
rad-fems are beginning to panic. Armageddon-Day
strategy memos are circulating on the Internet.
Decisive action soon will be needed to galvanize
public support. Get ready for a reprise of the Super Bowl
Hoax. Gender: Good
Riddance, Farewell
There’s a strategic reason for that
dogmatic assertion. As long as people believe that
men and women are biological clones, the rad-fems
can claim that the under-representation of female
CEOs and politicians can be blamed on the Glass
Ceiling, not on the informed lifestyle choices that
women make. And that in turn justifies the gender quotas,
government set-asides, and all the other
appurtenances of a feminist society. The feminist thought police do not take kindly
to persons who challenge widely-held beliefs. So
when Harvard president Lawrence Summers suggested
innate sex differences, not gender socialization
patterns, might account for the shortage of female
scientists, the Lefties were aghast. But scientists insist Summers has a point, that
the brains of men and women are anatomically and
functionally different [www.usatoday.com/tech/science/mathscience/2005-02-27-sex-intellect_x.htm?csp=36
The Summers’ dust-up has broadened into a
broad-based examination of sex and gender. That
argument is now being waged on two other
fronts. First is the Great Op-Ed Debate, that non-stop
catfight that has been trying to answer the vexing
question, Why do women represent only a small
fraction of newspaper opinion writers? Of course, there were the pundits like Amy
Sullivan who predictably played the victim card.
Sullivan blamed the problem on women who “have
been raised to feel ill-at-ease in the
rough-and-tumble, male-dominated world of political
expression.” [www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0504.sullivan.html
Others searched for more plausible
explanations. Gail Collins, the woman who runs the editorial
page of the New York Times, admitted in a
round-about way, “There are probably fewer
women, in the great cosmic scheme of things, who
feel comfortable writing very straight opinion
stuff.” And Maureen Dowd, whose writing style is
perpetually stuck in full-attack mode, sounded more
like a purring kitten when she admitted, “I
wanted to be liked, not attacked...This job has not
come easily to me.” But it was Catherine Seipp who finally came out
and stated the obvious: “The uncomfortable
fact is that women just seem less interested in
politics than men.” Why? Because “that
typically female emotional-reaction-as-argument is
one big reason why the op-ed pages are still mostly
male.” [www.nationalreview.com/seipp/seipp200503170749.asp
By remarkable coincidence, the Great Op-Ed
Debate was being waged just as the journal
Nature was about to release the startling
results of a study that would profoundly challenge
the basic feminist assumptions of gender. That research, published late last month, found
the inborn differences between men and women are
far greater than previously suspected. Men and
women differ by two percent in their genetic
make-up [www.rense.com/general63/galaxyofgeneticdifferences.htm
And here’s the jaw-dropper: That two
percent sex difference is greater than the
biological gap between humans and chimpanzees. In
other words, the built-in differences between men
and women are akin to the dissimilarities between
man and ape. Now we know why millions were so engrossed by
that long-running TV series about Tarzan, Jane, and
Chita. First Larry Summers. Then the Great Op-Ed
Debate. And now breakthrough research on the
genetic differences between the sexes. It’s high time that we accept the obvious:
Men and women are not the same. Vivre la
difference! Men saddled with crushing child support
obligations, forced to live on scraps or else fall
into a desperate sea of mounting debt. A few of
them are white-collar guys who once held
respectable jobs and lived in comfortable
houses. Time marches forward, and the cases only become
more bizarre. Steve Barreras paid $20,000 to support his
daughter, a girl he had never met. In fact, she
didn’t even exist. His ex-wife Viola Trevino
took another family’s daughter to court and
claimed the child as hers. New Mexico governor Bill
Richardson has now ordered an investigation. In Michigan, Terrace Hale had $300 garnished
from each paycheck for three years. The money went
to support a woman he's never met to raise a child
he's never fathered. Now, Marilyn Stephen, director
of the Michigan Office of Child Support, refuses to
give Mr. Hale’s money back. Then there are those cases of adolescent boys
who were victimized twice. First by their adult
female rapists, and then by an inflexible child
support system that came knocking [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0310roberts.html
The voice of justice and outrage asks, How could
this happen in America? The answer can be found in our nation’s
30-year crusade to extract child support payments
from mostly minority, low-income fathers, men who
now bear the contemptuous epithet, “Deadbeat
Dads.” Last year professor Stephen Baskerville of
Howard University probed the allegations that have
been leveled against these “deadbeats.”
His must-read article, “Is There Really a
Fatherhood Crisis?,” reached some surprising
conclusions [www.independent.org/tii/
media/pdf/tir_08_4_baskerville.pdf
Charge #1: Most marriages break up because
fathers “have chosen to abandon their
children,” as president Bill Clinton once put
it. Not true. Margaret Brinig and Douglas Allen
found that women file for divorce in 70% of cases.
Likewise, Arizona State University psychologist
Sanford Braver reports in his book Divorced Dads
that two out of three divorces are initiated by
women. Charge #2: When women do leave the marriage,
it’s to escape domestic violence and
abuse. False. The number one reason cited by divorcing
moms, according to Braver, is “not feeling
loved or appreciated,” and not anything to do
with violence. Charge #3: Dads don't pay their child support
because they don't care about their kids. Absurd. A 1998 Rutgers and University of Texas
study concluded: “many of the absent fathers
who state leaders want to track down and force to
pay child support are so destitute that their lives
focus on finding the next job, next meal, or next
night’s shelter.” The problem is not dads
who are dead-beats, the problem is men who are
dead-broke. Charge #4: Kids don’t really need their
dads, anyway. Absolutely false. This is the most scurrilous
myth of all, because the truth is the polar
opposite, and the harmful effects on children are
so great. “Virtually every major social
pathology has been linked to fatherless children:
violent crime, drug and alcohol abuse, truancy,
unwed pregnancy, suicide, and psychological
disorders,” notes Baskerville. It is no coincidence that all four of these
myths place fathers in a bad light. And that suits
the Divorce Industry – that veritable army of
lawyers, family court judges, custody evaluators,
and child support enforcers -- just fine. These myths have become so ingrained in our
thinking that basic Constitutional protections are
being casually tossed aside. One brief on child
support from the Left-leaning National Conference
of State Legislatures made this stunning
recommendation: “The burden of proof may be
shifted to the defendant,” which of course
means, “Fathers can be assumed to be guilty
until proven innocent.” Of course, it’s divorce that triggers the
monstrous child support machinery to lurch into
motion. The rise of no-fault, unilateral divorce
does not trouble the Sisterhood. In fact, they
welcome it. Over the past 50 years, the National Association
of Women Lawyers has spearheaded the adoption of
no-fault divorce legislation throughout the
country, laws that made marital dissolution that
much easier. The NAWL now notes with satisfaction,
“the ideal of no-fault divorce became the
guiding principle for reform of divorce laws in the
majority of states.” A growing divorce rate. Disenfranchised dads.
Children lacking paternal guidance and protection.
An ever-expanding child support apparatus. Careless
disregard of Constitutional protections. A growing
totalitarian mindset. That’s the Matriarchy at work. Hillary Plays the Female
Supremacist Card
Do a Google search on “Hillary
Clinton” and “scandal,” and your
computer’s memory chip will choke, gag, and
cough. Here’s just a partial list to wet your
whistle: And just three months ago, Senator
Clinton’s former finance director David Rosen
was indicted on charges that he had lied to the
Federal Election Commission about HRC’s
campaign expenses. Whatever else Mrs. Clinton may claim to be, she
is first and foremost a fem-socialist. Mao’s
Little Red Book instructs revolutionary-wannabees
to vilify and malign their opponents. To Saint
Hillary, the enemy is that vast penile conspiracy
called the Patriarchy. Which means men are all
considered fair game. So at a recent address to the Vital Voices’
Women’s Global Leadership Summit, Hillary
attempted to deflect attention away from her
besmirched ethical resume’. Here she goes
again: “Research shows the presence of women
raises the standards of ethical behavior and lowers
corruption.” Note Hillary’s effort to prop up a dubious
claim by using the word “research”
without bothering to mention the source of her
information. Hillary, supreme mistress of irony that she is,
made those remarks about the impeccable ethical
standards of women just two days after Martha
Stewart wrapped up her five month stint in the
slammer. Maybe Hillary forgot that Stewart had lied
to federal investigators about her use of insider
information to dump her biotechnology stocks. One of the dogmas of radical feminism is that a
woman can do anything a man can do. The logical
extension of that belief is that women should
represent 50% (or more) of all politicians, CEOs,
scientists, and so on. But in January, Harvard president Larry Summers
committed a capital heresy. He suggested that
innate biological differences might be part of the
reason for the predominance of men in elite science
departments. That remark triggered a firestorm of protest.
But the venomous denunciations backfired when
persons around the country came to view Summers as
yet another victim of Leftist intolerance. A few weeks later Charlotte Allen wrote a column
in the Los Angeles Times that commented on the dire
shortage of female intellectuals. Allen blamed the
problem not on sex discrimination, but rather
because “Ideological feminism has ghettoized
and trivialized the subject matter of women’s
writing.” [www.iwf.org/articles/article_detail.asp?ArticleID=726
Predictably, that statement provoked another
raging-hormones debate that is beginning to
resemble catfight [www.slate.com/id/2114926
Then last week a 5-foot tall female police
officer – a grandmother at that -- was
assigned to accompany accused rapist Brian Nichols
into an Atlanta courtroom. Nichols proceeded to
wrest away her gun and went on a murderous
rampage. Now we are beginning to get an idea why there is
a shortage of female scientists, intellectuals, and
police officers. Perhaps it’s time to expand the discussion.
Why, 85 years after women were granted the right to
vote, do we have only 14 females serving in the
U.S. Senate? To answer that question, consider a bill
recently proposed by Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan
Collins of Maine. They introduced the
“Pregnancy Recovery Education Program for
Women in the Military” act to help military
moms during the 12 months following delivery. And why should we spend $2 million for this
latest example of feminist pork? According to the
two senators, these downtrodden women
“continue to serve actively while still
physically recovering from pregnancy and the
physical trauma of giving birth.” So much for those lean, mean, fightin’
machine G.I. Janes. Last week female attorney Devvy Kidd reached the
point of exasperation with this
you-can-never-do-enough-to-please-a-woman
mentality. “Throw out all female members of
Congress!” she demanded [www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43354
No doubt taking aim at Her Royal Highness, Kidd
charged, “these hormone-driven legislators are
breeding generations of women who are not being
‘empowered;’ they are being turned into
whining, gimmee-gimmee females.” With utter disregard for the truth and common
decency, female supremacist Hillary Clinton
continues to stereotype and malign men, thinking
this will somehow shore up her support with the
female electorate. Soft Totalitarians on the
Loose at the UN
But Mr. Brown is actually quite fortunate. Because if Middle Americans knew how radical
feminists are working tirelessly behind the scenes
to spread their socialistic views of gender
equality, he would be facing a public relations
problem of tsunamic proportions. The Gender Warriors now operate with impunity
from three base camps within the UN
bureaucracy: 1. Commission on the Status of Women – This
committee orchestrated the 1995 Beijing Declaration
and Platform for Action. The CSW organized the
10-year progress review of Beijing that concluded
this past Friday in New York City [www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw
2. Convention on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) –
Originally adopted by the UN General Assembly in
1979, this Trojan Horse treaty now has 179
signatory nations [www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/index.html
3. Inter-agency Network on Women and Gender
Equality – This is the group that rides herd
on the countless UN agencies and initiatives
designed to promote women’s issues
[www.un.org/womenwatch
Gender feminists are now working to expand their
agenda to encompass the full range of specialized
UN agencies. For an eye-opening look at the
bullying tactics they use, pick up a copy of Dale
O’Leary’s book, The Gender Agenda. This is just a partial list of the UN
organizations that now specialize in gender
issues: Still, the Sisterhood seeks to maximize its body
count. Watch for these upcoming search-and-destroy
missions in the coming months: First the femmes want to gender mainstream the
rest of the UN. In case you hadn’t heard,
gender mainstreaming is “the process of
assessing the implications for women and men of any
planned action, including legislation, policies, or
programs, in all areas and at all levels.”
Note the all-encompassing phrases, “any
planned action” and “in all areas and at
all levels.” Second, in order to focus its efforts, the UN
has established what it calls Millenium Development
Goals [www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
Now the feminists want to “mainstream”
the gender perspective to the six remaining
Development Goals. That may happen as early as this
coming September at the MDG Summit. Third, the rad-fems have designs on the
International Criminal Court. The ICC now claims
jurisdiction over a long list of so-called
“crimes against humanity,” including
forced pregnancy and sexual violence. “Forced pregnancy” is fem-speak for
not providing free abortion services, and no one
has yet to define “sexual violence.” But
once they fortify their power base, the
Women’s Initiatives for Gender Justice no
doubt will tell us what they have in mind
[www.iccwomen.org
In the past, totalitarianism was enforced by the
GULAG, goon squads, and economic reprisals. That
was “hard” totalitarianism. Now we face a new threat, what Italian
politician Rocco Buttiglione likes to call
“soft totalitarianism.” Buttiglione sees
this trend unfolding at the European Union, which
regulates the smallest details of life down to the
permissible curve of bananas. Soft totalitarianism has a kinder, gentler face.
It pretends to advance the cause of equality. It
claims to be working for a gender utopia. But in practice, soft totalitarianism relies on
government-sponsored bribery (known as the welfare
state), top-down imposition of laws, rampant
distortions of fact, and mass re-education
[www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0309roberts.html
The end result of both forms of totalitarianism
is exactly the same – concentration of power
in the government, economic stagnation, undermining
of the family, and curtailment of individual
liberties. At the UN, the color of jackboots is lavender
and pink. Something Amiss in the
United Nations' Gender Health Agenda
Indeed, Dr. Brundtland was a well-known advocate
for women’s rights and health needs. In 2003
she presented this analysis to the 59th U.N.
Commission on Human Rights: “Millions of women accept poor health
status as their lot in life and bring up their
daughters to do the same. Why? Because they have
been ascribed an inferior status and are victims of
a persistent devaluing of women's contribution to
society.” [www.who.int/dg/speeches/2003/commissionhumanrights/en/
Around the same time, other women came into
positions of authority and power within the United
Nations. Now, a feminist perspective permeates many
of the U.N. services. This article examines the sex-specific health
programs at the World Health Organization and other
key agencies of the United Nations. Overall Health Status of Men and
Women On practically every indicator, the health of
men lags in comparison to women. In almost every country around the world, men
have a shorter life expectancy than women. The
disparity ranges from 4.0 years in Israel, to 5.4
years in the United States, to a disturbing 12.6
years in the Russian Federation [www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus04.pdf
More males than females die from all three major
categories of death, according to the World Health
Organization [www.who.int/whr/2001/main/en/annex/index.htm
Communicable Diseases Males: 9,252,000; Females: 8,495,000 Non-communicable Diseases Males: 16,998,000; Females: 15,856,000 Injuries Males: 3,415,000; Females: 1,647,000 Suicide is of particular concern. The WHO
reports that globally, the suicide rate is 24 per
100,000 for men, compared to only 3.5 per 100,000
for females. The WHO report concludes, “The
rate of suicide is almost universally higher among
men compared to women by an aggregate ratio of 3.5
to 1” [www.who.int.whr/2001/main/en/chapter2/002g.htm
The lifespan gender gap is expected to worsen in
the future. According to the WHO Global Burden of
Disease study, women's life expectancy in
industrialized countries is expected to increase to
about 90 years by 2020. As for men, “far
smaller gains in male life expectancy were
projected than in females.” Against this background of widespread health
disparities affecting men, the World Health
Organization has established a wide range of
sex-specific programs. These initiatives include a
WHO Department of Women’s Health
[www.who.int/frh-whd/index.html
Similar WHO programs do not exist for
men. The justification for this omission may be found
in the 24th General Recommendation of the U.N.
Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW), which counsels that:
"special attention should be given to the health
needs and rights of women belonging to vulnerable
and disadvantaged groups” [www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/
Apparently, dying 5-12 years earlier than women
does not qualify men as being vulnerable or
disadvantaged. War-Related Health Problems In 2000, 233,000 men died of war-related
injuries, compared to only 77,000 women, according
to the WHO World Report on Violence and Health
[www5.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/main.cfm?p=0000000682
A recent example occurred in Afghanistan. Over a
10-year period, the Taliban terrorized ethnic
villagers. As documented in numerous reports from
Amnesty International, the most egregious
violations of human rights were directed against
civilian men, who were often maimed, tortured, and
killed [web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/COUNTRIES/AFGHANISTAN?
OpenView&expandall
The Taliban also mistreated Afghani women, who
were prohibited from obtaining employment and
attending school. On April 7, 2000, the U.N. Security Council
registered its concerns about the perilous
situation in Afghanistan. Kofi Annan,
secretary-general of the United Nations,
euphemistically alluded to the “separation of
men from their families”. In this case,
“separation” really meant “never
heard from again.” Secretary-general Annan then issued this ringing
denunciation of the mistreatment of women: “The Security Council condemns the
continuing grave violations of the human rights of
women and girls, including all forms of
discrimination against them, in all areas of
Afghanistan, particularly in areas under the
control of the Taliban. It remains deeply concerned
about continued restrictions on their access to
health care, to education and to employment outside
the home, and about restrictions on their freedom
of movement and freedom from intimidation,
harassment and violence. The Council notes the
recent reports of modest progress regarding the
access of women and girls to certain services, but
considers that such incremental improvements, while
welcome, still fall far short of the minimum
expectations of the international community, and
calls upon all parties, particularly the Taliban,
to take measures to end all violations of human
rights of women and girls” www.un.int/usa/spst0012.htm
Apparently, the mobility restrictions that the
Taliban had imposed on women were more disturbing
to Mr. Annan than the mass executions of men. Following this same logic, the UN Security
Council passed Resolution 1325 on October 31, 2001.
The Resolution makes this extraordinary claim,
“civilians, particularly women and children,
account for the vast majority of those adversely
affected by armed conflict.” The resolution clearly contradicts the
information presented above from the WHO World
Report on Violence and Health. When war strikes, civilian populations are often
left homeless. The United Nations High Commissioner
on Refugees once made the following plea on its
website: “The United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees...One million women and
children...homeless, hungry, helpless”
(unhcr.org/
The UN High Commissioner had nothing to say
about men who were homeless, hungry, and
helpless. Other Types of Violence Overall, violence accounts for 14% of deaths
among males, and only 7% of deaths among females
(www5.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/main.cfm?p=0000000592
For example, the discussion on Child Soldiers
makes no mention of the fact that most children
forced into military combat are male [www5.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/main.cfm?p=0000000682
- Box 8.3 A similar bias appears in the Report’s
treatment of domestic violence. Despite the fact
that over 100 studies that show that women are as
likely to initiate partner aggression as men
[www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
Even though violence is a problem that
disproportionately affects men, the WHO
disingenuously presents the information in such a
way as to imply that women are in fact at greater
risk. Gender Agenda Gone Awry Thanks to the determined efforts of Eleanor
Roosevelt, the United Nations ratified the
acclaimed Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
1948. This Declaration is the international
covenant that defines and affirms essential human
rights. Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights addresses the right to life: “Everyone
has the right to life, liberty and security of
person.” And Article 2 of that Human Rights
treatise specifically prohibits discrimination on
the basis of sex. But the preferential provision of health
services to groups at lesser risk is a clear-cut
case of discrimination. Something has gone terribly wrong. The health
programs of the World Health Organization and other
agencies are violating the U.N.’s most
cherished founding principles. Under the guise of
promoting gender equality in health, sexism now
carries sway at the UN. Orwellian State at the
UN Women's Conference
No doubt you are wondering why your local
newspaper didn’t cover this historic event.
The reason is, the sessions were so mired in
fem-speak and harsh rhetoric that the ultra-liberal
New York Times decided to take a pass. Ditto
for the Washington Post and Boston
Globe. Ten years ago in Beijing, the Commission on the
Status of Women conference gave its speakers free
rein. But then Madame Hillary let loose with her
keynote rant, making nonsense claims such as
“Women are 70% of the world’s poor”
[www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/inter/hill.htm
This time around the conference planners learned
their lesson. Everything was scripted, right down
to the snappy slogans and approved list of
grievances. Once you heard UN secretary-general
Kofi Annan give his welcoming speech, you knew you
were going to be hearing a lot about “gender
equality and women’s empowerment.” Of course, it’s all a ruse. When the Sisterhood speaks of
“equality,” equal opportunities for men
and women are the last thing they have in mind. In
fact, “equal opportunity” appeared to be
on the conference organizer’s list of banned
expressions. Feminists don’t like the O-word
because it implies women might need to operate on
an even and fair basis with men. So when feminists claim to be in favor of gender
equality, they are really referring to a genderless
society. “Gender equality” means
“genderless society.” Get it? To achieve their gender-free utopia, the
rad-fems employ tactics that are hallmarks of
totalitarian societies: revamping the traditional
family, mass re-education programs, gender quotas,
and discriminatory laws that promise to
“re-engineer” society [timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1037397.cms
Mind you, the feminist rendition of “gender
equality” is always a one-way street. Around
the world, men have a higher death rate than women
[www.who.int/whr/2001/main/en/annex/index.htm].
The victims of worksite deaths are almost always
male. Men’s suicide rate is three and a half
times higher. [www.who.int.whr/2001/main/en/chapter2/002g.htm
But the problems of men will just have to
wait. Then there’s the mantra of
“women’s empowerment” -- that one is
even more disingenuous. Feminists think of
“empowerment” in the neo-Marxist sense
– inducing women to become angry and
resentful, thus driving a wedge between the sexes
and undermining marriage, the most fundamental unit
of society. Propaganda is a slippery slope. Once you tell an
untruth, you have to come up with more falsehoods
in order to be consistent. These are a few examples of the lies that filled
the halls of the United Nations this past week: Eduardo Sevilla, acting president of the UN
General Assembly, alleged that women are
“discriminated against more than any other
minority.” That statement contains two
absurdities. First, women represent a majority of
the world’s population. Second, Sevilla’s
remark flatly ignores the ethnic-cleansing that has
been directed against minority populations in
Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, and elsewhere. Then Munir Akram, president of the UN Economic
and Social Council, repeated the old myth about
women being the main victims of war. Apparently Mr.
Akram never got around to reading the UN’s
recent Report on Violence on Health, which
documented that 310,000 men, and only 77,000 women,
died of war-related injuries in 2000 [www5.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/main.cfm?p=0000000682
Next the ever-shrill Noeleen Heyzer, executive
director of the UN Development Fund for Women
(UNIFEM), stepped to the podium and claimed that
“violence against women has become routine as
a weapon of war.” That hyper-inflated remark
ignores the fact that women are just as likely to
commit domestic violence as men [www.mediaradar.org/mr_un_emperor.php
Several speakers fell back on the old stand-by,
the gender wage gap, even though that shibboleth
has now been thoroughly debunked [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0112roberts.html
Really, how can so many well-educated,
highly-placed UN officials say so many stupid
things? After listening all day to the ideological
slogans, factual distortions, and emotional
harangues, one almost begins to believe they are
true. That’s how brainwashing works. The history of 20th century Europe offers a
cautionary tale of social movements that promised a
better future, but in truth were fueled by lies and
anger. Looking back, no one doubts the sinister
nature of those movements. Now in 2005, the face of modern-day evil is
beginning to emerge. That face wears the mask of
radical feminism. And slowly but surely, that
divisive ideology is taking hold at the United
Nations. The Pink Pussy-cat Bares Her
Fangs
On January 9, former Indiana representative Tim
Roemer announced he was running for the top post of
the Democratic National Committee. Many believed
Roemer was exactly the boost the wilting Democratic
Party needed – someone with a moderate
ideology, fresh ideas, and Midwestern roots. But
there was a slight problem: Mr. Roemer is a
Catholic, and his resume’ revealed a pro-life
voting record. That was more than the pro-abortion jihadists in
the Democratic Party could stomach. With cat-like stealth, “they” put
together an “opposition research memo,”
pol-speak for a smear campaign. I put
“they” in quotation marks because no one
was willing to admit who perpetrated the hatchet
job. Next, Nancy Keenan, incoming president of NARAL
Pro-Choice America (that’s a feel-good name,
isn’t it?) powered up the feminist buzz-saw.
She ordered NARAL’s state affiliates to
pressure the 447 DNC delegates to toe the
pro-abortion line. Roemer is as feisty a politician as you will
get. But the NARAL activists turned his abortion
views into a single-issue litmus test, and soon he
was forced to withdraw. An angered Roemer later
commented they “tried to make abortion the
radioactive anvil that hung around my
neck…They threw two kitchen sinks at
me.” Then just five days after Roemer announced his
DNC candidacy, Harvard president Lawrence Summers
made a comment that “innate differences”
between the sexes may account for why top science
positions are filled mostly by males. Sitting in
the audience was one MIT professor Nancy Hopkins.
Upon hearing his remarks, Hopkins nearly swooned
and had to exit the room. The Fearsome Felines became so enraged over
Summers’ suggestion that they mounted a
campaign designed to embarrass and humiliate the
Harvard president. Summers soon confessed to his
ideological revisionism and commenced a round of
self-criticism. But that wasn’t enough, and
now the N.O.W operatives are calling for a complete
ideological cleansing. Dismayed by the Soviet show-trial atmosphere at
Harvard, civil-liberties lawyer Harvey A.
Silvergate remarked, “The modern university is
the culmination of a 20-year trend of irrationalism
marked by an increasingly totalitarian approach to
highly politicized issues.” [12.11.184.13/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi_3/documents/04431348.asp
The missteps of Roemer and Summers were bad
enough, but after all, they were made by members of
the male oppressor class. What really stirs up a
cat fight, though, is when a woman – a woman!
– hisses at the Sisterhood. That’s what happened on February 13, when
the Los Angeles Times ran a piece by Charlotte
Allen. Commenting on the dearth of female
intellectuals, Allen explained, “Ideological
feminism has ghettoized and trivialized the subject
matter of women's writing.” [www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/editorials/la-op-femintellectuals13feb13,0,438376.story
The feminist catechism does not take well to
apostasy, and it fell to one Susan Estrich to
deliver the ex-communication. Estrich is the
ultra-liberal University of South California law
professor who likely would have been John
Kerry’s first nomination to the United States
Supreme Court. First, Estrich broadcast a thermonuclear e-mail
accusing the Times of “blatant sex
discrimination” and calling for a quota for
female columnists. Worst of all, she branded Miss
Allen a “feminist-hater.” Off with her
head! Then in an exchange of e-mails with opinion-page
editor Michael Kinsley, Estrich pulled out every
intimidation tactic in the book. She threatened to
approach the LA Times advertisers. She accused the
Times’ male editors of “unconscious
discrimination” -- how’s that for the
mother of all guilt trips? And then showing incredibly bad taste, she
suggested that Kinsley’s health “may have
affected your brain, your judgment, and your
ability to do this job.” But Kinsley refused
to give in to Estrich’s sourpuss demands. Estrich made a slight miscalculation, though
– she cc’ed her hot-head threats to the
Examiner. This past Saturday the Examiner published
the entire acerbic exchange [www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005/02/19//opinion/op-ed/01aaaoped19estrich.txt
Now, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak.
Let’s just say that Susan Estrich is no longer
on anyone’s short list for the U.S. Supreme
Court. Anyone who has had dealings with the rad-fems
knows how they rely on every type of psychological,
social, and legal manipulation to get their way.
Give them an inch, and they take a mile. In the
past, these machinations took place behind closed
doors, so the public remained in the dark. But now,
their storm-trooper tactics have come out of the
closet, for all the world to see. Hooray for editor Michael Kinsley and all the
other men and women who Just Say No to the feminist
bullies. But Gallagher’s problems go beyond this
ethical faux pas. While I support traditional
marriage, there’s a fundamental problem with
Maggie Gallagher’s approach. In a February 2000 column called “False
Valentines,” Gallagher decried the problem of
partner co-habitation. In that article she hijacked
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ageless sonnet of
romantic love, and turned it into a feminist
screed. Here’s Maggie’s rendition of “How
Do I Love Thee?”: “Let me count the ways.
I love thee while scrubbing your dishes and washing
your floors… and while you claim your freedom,
your leisure, your paycheck, and my paycheck as
your own.” Do I detect something other than dewy-eyed
glances in that Valentine’s Day rant? Gallagher has now toned down her rhetoric, but
her fundamental worldview remains the same: Blame
the man first -- and let the woman off easy. In her 2004 column, “Be a Man, Get a
Wife,” Gallagher takes on the topic of
out-of-wedlock births. She issues this harsh
indictment: When a man declines to marry, he is
saying, “I reserve the right to find someone
better in the future, which includes the right to
break up this family, the right to make love and
children with another woman in the future.”
[www.uexpress.com/maggiegallagher/?uc_full_date=20040113
OK, but what about the femmes fatales who seduce
their boyfriends and then commit paternity fraud by
intentionally naming the wrong man as the father?
Gallagher never talks about that. In “The New Advocates for Marriage,”
Gallagher laments the decline of marriage in the
African-American community. But once again, the
finger of blame is pointed at the male sex.
According to Mrs. Gallagher, the problem is “a
catastrophic lack of marriageable men. Men with
jobs. Faithful men. Family men.”
[www.townhall.com/columnists/maggiegallagher/mg20040616.shtml
But Gallagher refuses to acknowledge the fact
that welfare policy over the last 40 years has
consistently favored low-income women over men. And
now we’re paying the price for that one-sided
approach. The marriage movement faces many challenges, not
the least of which is that many men have come to
believe that marriage is a raw deal. And we’re
not talking about just a few malcontents. Last year Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David
Popenoe of Rutgers University did a national survey
of single heterosexual men, ages 25-34. They found
that 22% of America’s most eligible bachelors
– that’s two million potential husbands
-- have no desire to get married. Ever.
[marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/SOOU/TEXTSOOU2004.htm
Why? Because, in the words of the Rutgers’
researchers, “Many men also fear the financial
consequences of divorce” and “Some men
express resentment towards a legal system that
grants women the unilateral right to decide to
terminate a pregnancy” [marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/SOOU/TEXTSOOU2002.htm
So this past December, amidst great hoopla and
fanfare, Maggie Gallagher released her latest white
paper, “What’s Next for the Marriage
Movement?” The document, co-signed by over 100
scholars, therapists, and others, announces 86
sweeping goals to “recreate a marriage
culture” [www.marriagemovement.org/what_next.php
So what does the 26-page report say to reassure
gun-shy men who fear they might be put through the
ringer by biased child custody awards or draconian
child support laws? Or the obvious unfairness of
abortion laws that disenfranchise fathers? Zip. Zilch. Nada. Even more revealing, Mrs. Gallagher’s
manifesto repeatedly uses the phrase, “mothers
and fathers.” But never, “fathers and
mothers.” The message is clear: “Move
over, guys. Mom is now running the show.” Of course, women have always wielded the
advantage over men in the domestic realm. They
serve as the social and emotional hub of the
family. They usually decide how the family budget
will be spent. They have the stronger biological
ties with the children. Indeed, the word
“matrimony,” with its female
connotations, suggests this institution has long
revolved around meeting a woman’s needs. So designating the father as the titular head of
the family seemed to compensate in small measure
for this power imbalance. But without a murmur of
debate, Gallagher and her merry band have opted to
reverse that time-honored arrangement. There is no more important challenge in modern
America than the strengthening of marriage, and I
wish Mrs. Gallagher’s group well. But as long
as their concerns are ignored and belittled,
Gallagher’s approach is bound to further
alienate the millions of disaffected men who feel
they have no other choice than to remain on a
Marriage Strike. For years, the Gender Warriors have been on the
war path over this issue. Their argument is simple:
On average, female employees receive 76 cents for
every one dollar paid to male workers. And that
difference equals discrimination. It’s time to blow the whistle on that
nonsense. And a just-released book by Warren
Farrell does exactly that. Why Men Earn More is
chock-full of government wage data and research
findings which shows the feminist-driven “pay
gap” is an ideological con-job. I feel a little silly making such an obvious
statement, but I guess it needs to be said: the
work patterns of men and women are different. First, the sheer amount of work. According to
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, full-time men clock
an average of 45 hours a week, while women put in
42 hours. Men are more than twice as likely as
women to work at least 50 hours a week –
that’s why most CEOs are male. Only in a socialist economy do employees get
paid the same, regardless of the number of hours
worked. Second, men tend to gravitate to the
socially-unrewarding but lucrative fields like
computer programming, tax law, and engineering. And
women select professions such as teaching, nursing,
and social work that pay less, but offer more job
flexibility. Third is job desirability. Recently the Jobs
Rated Almanac rated 250 jobs based on income, work
environment, physical demands, stress, and so
forth. These were the five worst jobs: seaman,
ironworker, cowboy, fisherman, and lumberjack. Does it come as a surprise that all of these
jobs are male-dominated? The only way these
companies can attract men to do the dirty work is
to increase their paychecks. Finally is the difference in job hazards. Men
represent 92% of all occupational deaths. Why?
Because if you look at a list of the most hazardous
occupations – fire fighting, truck driving,
construction, and mining – they have 96-98%
male employees, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Shouldn’t men who risk their lives
on a daily basis be paid something extra? Warren Farrell then takes aim at the dishonest
depiction of the wage gap issue by the media. He
cites one shrill headline that read, “Study of
TV News Directors Finds Discrimination Against
Women.” And it’s true that the female TV
news directors were paid 27% less than the men. But take a closer look, and it turns out the
male directors had an average of 14.8 years of news
work experience, while female directors had only
5.6 years. In other words, the men had almost three
times more work experience, but were paid only
about a quarter more. This study of TV directors raises some lingering
questions. First, why did the female directors have
an average of 9.2 years less work experience than
their male counterparts? And were qualified male
candidates being passed over because of their
sex? It turns out that TV directorships aren’t
the only place where something fishy is going
on. Why Men Earn More presents information about
beginning salaries for newly-minted college grads,
broken down by their college major. In Table 5 we
learn that women who major in computer programming,
physics, agricultural engineering, or computer
systems analysis receive substantially higher
salary offers than men. By “substantial,”
I mean men in these fields are paid $4,000 to
$7,000 less in the first year alone. That’s a
lot of pin money. And in Table 6, we learn about the 10
occupations in which women with bachelor’s
degrees receive starting offers that are at least
10% higher than men: Investment banking, portfolio
management, urban planning, financial analysis,
distribution, finance policy, fundraising,
religious occupation, communications production,
and dietetics. For example, if you are a female dietician, your
starting salary is $23,160. But your male
counterpart is only offered $17,680 – a
whopping 30% difference. This information comes as a bombshell. I’m going to predict that when word of
these disparities leaks out, American companies
will be faced with a tsunami of complaints,
grievances, and lawsuits from men alleging wage
discrimination. Because men deserve equal pay for equal
work. Pronouncement of
Bias at the Washington Post
Take the December 18 murder of pregnant Bobbie
Jo Stinnett, whose baby was cut from her
mother’s still-warm uterus. When news of the
gruesome homicide began to trickle out, the
Washington Post newsroom was astir. Why? Because the feminist catechism teaches that
women are the eternal victims at the hands of those
brutish men. But in this case, the alleged killer
was a woman, Lisa Montgomery. Normally, the solution would be simple: bury the
story. That’s exactly what the Washington
Post did, relegating the account to page A18 on
December 19. But that didn’t entirely solve the problem,
because that very same day, the Post was set to
launch a three-part series on Maternal Homicide.
The series, by reporter Donna St. George, was based
on the stories of mothers who had been murdered by
their boyfriends or husbands. But the strangling of Bobbie Jo Stinnett by a
deranged woman threatened to sabotage the
over-arching message of the WP series: that
pregnant women need stronger laws to protect them
from the male menace. In order to reach this conclusion, reporter St.
George had to work the numbers. First, St. George
produced the shocking statistic that 295 pregnant
or new mothers are killed each year in the United
States. But when you peered through the
blood-spattered accounts, the following facts soon
came to light: 1. Slightly less than half of these deaths
involved women who were actually pregnant. Most
involved women who had given birth up to 12 months
before, mutilating the obvious meaning of the word
“maternal.” 2. According to St. George, 70% of the women
were killed by their intimates, and the remaining
30% died in car accidents and the like. So crank the numbers, and that
“epidemic” of 295 maternal deaths turns
to be only about 100 pregnant women who were killed
by their intimate partners. This is not to downplay
the tragedy of those 100 women, but rather to put
it in proper perspective. Each year, over four
million women give birth in the United States. So
we’re talking about an infinitesimal risk
here. Interestingly, the series drew flack from
critics representing the broad spectrum of
political opinion: Slate editor Jack Slater, Fox
columnist Wendy McElroy, domestic violence expert
Richard Davis, Men’s News Daily editor Mike
LaSalle, radio talk show host Glenn Sacks, and
Howard University professor Stephen Baskerville
[www.mediaradar.org
It may be tempting to dismiss the Maternal
Homicide series as a journalistic aberration, a
bad-hair day for Donna St. George and her editors.
But it is not. Research shows that women are just as likely to
commit domestic violence as men [www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm
Still, the Post attempted to maintain at least
the semblance of journalistic objectivity. But five months ago, the Washington Post
editors completely took leave of their senses. On
August 24 last, the Post ran a piece that plumbed
the depths of tabloid journalism. Get ready for this nasty headline on page C1:
“Man of Your Nightmares: When Good Husbands Go
Bad.” And if the casual reader didn’t get
the drift, the page C5 continuation was festooned
with the smear, “What Darkness Lies in the
Hearts of Men?” One can only hope that no newspaper ever
subjects female malcontents like Lisa Montgomery,
who now awaits trial in a detention center in
Leavenworth, Kansas, to such journalistic
abuse. So esteemed reader, we need to decide. Did the
Post’s Maternal Homicide series merely
represent a well-intentioned but flawed
presentation of a complex social issue? Or published just a few weeks before the
controversial Violence Against Women Act is set to
be re-introduced in the U.S. Congress, does this
series reveal a covert editorial intention to set
the stage for this feminist-driven legislation? Men: Stand Aside.
The Rad-Fems are Set to Win the Culture War
Future historians will note the Culture War took
an important turn in the November 2 elections.
Sensing their political standing was on the wane,
the Leftists decided to pull out all the stops in a
last-ditch effort to reverse the course of history.
Of course they lost the gamble, and now the
Leftists are seething with bitterness and rage. But in another sense, the battle has only just
begun. To this point in time, most Americans have
been bystanders in the conflict, hoping the
struggle for America’s soul would somehow
leave their own lives unscathed. There is more to the Culture War than radical
feminism, of course. David Horowitz at the Center
for the Study of Popular Culture has charted the
broad outlines of that multi-faceted conflict. But
probe the inner workings of the Leftist movement,
and there you will find a feminist heartbeat,
pumping hard and strong. We have now passed the point of no return. Too
many unborn children have been felled at the
abortionist’s hand. Too many infants are
warehoused in day care centers. Too many women have
been ridiculed for heeding their maternal
instincts. And too many men have been unfairly
stereotyped and falsely accused. Feminist philosophy now envelopes the mainstream
media and the academy. The divisive voice of the
Sisterhood can be heard as well in our workplaces,
schools, and even in our homes. Not even our religious beliefs are immune.
Feminists view religion in general, and
Christianity in particular, as hopelessly
patriarchal. So they have sought to marginalize
religion, forcing persons to think twice before
they exclaim, “Merry Christmas!” There is little about contemporary feminism that
can legitimately be viewed as promoting gender
equality. Now, the quest for equality has been
replaced by neo-Marxist rhetoric of female
“liberation” and
“empowerment.” Last week columnist Lyndia Lovric at the
Winnipeg Sun launched this salvo: “One of the
biggest lies perpetuated by modern-day feminists is
the contention that feminism is about equality.
Feminists aren't interested in equality. What they
want is revenge.” [www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Winnipeg/Lydia_Lovric/2004/12/27/798107.html
Visit the websites of the National Organization
for Women [www.now.org] or the Feminist
Majority [www.feminist.org
What worries me most is the feminist hegemony at
the United Nations. There, feminists rely on a
“top-down” strategy to impose their
ideology on countries throughout the world. It
began with CEDAW, the Convention on the Elimination
of Discrimination Against Women. Now fem-socialist
ideology permeates many of the UN agencies
[www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0916roberts.html
To put this in historical perspective, a mere 20
years ago, 70 countries around the world considered
themselves to be Communist, socialist, or social
democratic. Then in 1991 the Soviet Empire
imploded. Now socialism is receding in all corners
of the globe. But I predict the struggle to counter feminism
will be more difficult than the fight against
Communism. Why? Because while socialism relied on
political, economic, and military tactics, feminism
targets the chinks in persons’ emotional
armor. It preys on women’s sense of fear and
anger, and on men’s feelings of guilt and
shame. Have you ever wondered why the Leftists are so
intent on enacting speech codes and so-called
“hate speech” laws? Because freedom of
speech poses the most formidable obstacle to the
continued metastasis of Political Correctness. And
therein lies the secret to winning the Culture
War. So here’s a New Year’s Resolution for
all of us. I admit, it’s deceptively
simple: Speak out. Call your elected officials. Write a
letter to the editor. Sound off. Complain. Be
heard. Talk to your friends and neighbors. Exercise
your First Amendment rights. Our consciences are insisting that we cannot
afford to remain as silent onlookers while the
Culture War continues to rage. Me? I’m doing
this for the sake of my kids and grandchildren. Winner of the
Coveted 2004 Award for Political Incorrectness
Item #1: The French Parliament passed a law that
bans insults of women and homosexuals. No more
calling a woman "mal baisée" (sexually
frustrated), or referring to the cleaning lady as a
"femme de ménage." [www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5092004-110633,00.html
Item #2: To the north, the Canadian government
features a report on its website that proposes to
categorize any sort of anti-feminist commentary as
a form of hate speech [www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/pubs/0662882857/200303_0662882857_e.pdf
Item #3: A couple weeks ago Nick Griffin, leader
of the British National Party, was arrested for
"incitement to commit racial hatred." His offense?
He was caught saying that Islam is a "vicious,
wicked faith." [www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=vn20041215035457785C995640
Item #4: In Sweden, Pastor Ake Green was
recently sentenced to one month in jail. His crime
was delivering a sermon that described
homosexuality as a “cancer of the
society” [www.cbn.com/CBNNews/CWN/091004sweden.asp
Of course these comments -- which disparage
ideologies, not individuals -- pale in comparison
to the ad-hominem attacks that have gushed out of
the Left since it lost in the November 2 elections.
But no one seems to consider its invective to be
hateful. Any student of 20th century European history
knows that totalitarianism is knocking on America's
doors. So it's time to honor a stalwart American
who this past year demonstrated undaunted courage
and true grit to turn back the forces of PCism. This year’s Award is based on three counts
of bravery. First, this man showed great fortitude as a
candidate for governor. A week before the election,
a major liberal newspaper with the initials
“L.A.T.” published allegations from six
women that he had groped them. Some of the
incidents went back three decades, and the women
were so traumatized by the event that they
hadn’t been able to file a formal complaint
for all these years. Political Correctness dictates that any
politician so accused must promise that if elected,
he will pour millions of dollars into the local
Women in Perpetual Recovery from Sexual Assault
fund. But this man would have none of that. He
issued a brief apology, and four days later went on
to win the election. Second, last July he chided the Democrats for
legislative foot-dragging, using the derisive
moniker “Girlie-Men.” Despite the
wailings of the Easily Offended, a month later he
tagged candidate John Kerry with the same label.
And during his televised speech at the Republican
National Convention, the “G-M” phrase was
repeated in front of millions [www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts102704.htm
Don’t worry, “girlie-man” is not
a sexist put-down. When young lasses chide their
boyfriends for being wishy-washy, they call them
“girl.” Women say it all the time, so why
not a male politician? Finally, our 2004 Award Winner took on the
hot-button issue of Paternity Fraud. Political Correctness dictates that fathers must
pay their child support obligations -- even if they
aren’t the real dads. That rigid mind-set has
given rise to the welfare scam of the decade. Paternity Fraud is when mothers of newborn
infants – usually single and low-income women
-- list the wrong man as the father of the baby. If
she happens to name an unsuspecting bloke with a
decent job, she is assured of legally-enforceable
child support payments for the next 18 years. Laws in many states make it difficult, if not
impossible, for such men to shed the yoke of a
child support order -- even if they provide DNA
evidence showing they are not the biological
father. Sounds incredible, but it’s an
injustice that envelopes many thousands of men
nationwide [www.reason.com/0211/co.cy.dad.shtml
But in late September this man defied PCism for
a third time. He signed a bill that will allow men
to go back to court with their DNA results and show
that they were framed. The new bill takes effect
January 1 [washingtontimes.com/national/20041005-013052-2404r.htm
So roll the drums and open the
envelope….Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger,
please step forward. You are the winner of the 2004
Award for Political Incorrectness. Take a bow, Mr. Schwarzenegger. Thunderous
applause. Encore, encore. When the Sisterhood
Rules the World: Th Sad Tale of UNICEF
So let’s ask the more serious question,
What if the Gender Warriors ruled the world? I could take numerous cases where that scenario
has already happened, where the Sisterhood has
swept into power and recast entire organizations.
Examples that spring to mind are the New York
Times, National Public Radio, the American
Psychological Association, Amnesty International,
the National Institutes of Health, and others. But let’s take one example where feminists
have been around long enough to really leave their
mark: UNICEF. When I was a kid, people knew there was
inefficiency and waste at the United Nations. But
everyone would still look to UNICEF as the one
agency that was really making a difference, helping
children to stay healthy and get a grade-school
education. That was true until the day Jim Grant, visionary
UNICEF leader, died. So in 1995, President Bill Clinton – no
doubt at the urging of Hillary -- nominated Carol
Bellamy as Grant’s replacement. Bellamy is as
doctrinaire a feminist as you will find. While
serving as a state senator in New York, Bellamy had
voted against a bill that would have granted legal
rights to an infant who managed to survive a
botched abortion. Once she settled into her tony digs on New
York’s Upper East Side, Bellamy quickly became
bored with UNICEF’s mundane programs that
doled out measles vaccines and oral rehydration
tablets. She wanted to launch UNICEF into the
uncharted realm of gender ideology and social
engineering. Feminist dogma teaches that correct ideology
should prevail over good science. Take the
breastfeeding issue, for instance. Breastfeeding is known to be healthier and safer
than bottle feeding, especially in low-income areas
of the world where sanitation is poor. But the
feminists charged the UNICEF breastfeeding program
portrayed women “as the human equivalent of
milking cows.” So no more of “breast is
best.” Bellamy advocated favoring girls over boys, a
practice the United Nations euphemistically refers
to as “positive discrimination.” She
pushed through her pet Go Girls! program, which
ignored the fact that in some parts of the world,
the schooling of boys lags behind girls. At an April 3, 2003 press conference, a
hyper-inflated Carol Bellamy issued this
chauvinistic claim: “Women are the lifeline of
these southern African communities. They put food
on the table, and they’re the ones that keep
families going during such crises.” But four months later, Bellamy had her
comeuppance [mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/03/roberts082803.htm
In August 2003 the Catholic Family and Human
Rights Group (C-FAM) issued its explosive report,
“Women or Children First?” The
expose’ documented how UNICEF had become
involved in back-door support for abortion programs
around the world. The account concluded that under
Carol Bellamy, “Radical feminism has come to
define the current UNICEF, even to the possible
detriment of UNICEF’s original mandate to help
children” [www.c-fam.org/pdfs/unicef.pdf
The Americans weren’t the only ones
disturbed with UNICEF’s new direction. Earlier this month the leading British medical
journal Lancet landed another direct hit. The
editorial highlighted UNICEF’s failure to
develop a coherent strategy for child survival, and
how this shortcoming was contributing to the 10
million child deaths each year [www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=17686
Taking aim at UNICEF’s new-found obsession
with promoting girls’ and women’s rights,
Lancet leveled this blistering critique: “The
most fundamental right of all is the right to
survive. Child survival must sit at the core of
UNICEF’s advocacy and country work. Currently,
and shamefully, it does not.” Thankfully, Carol Bellamy’s term of office
will expire in 2005. The fact of the matter is, we will never know
how many children around the world became the
collateral damage of radical feminism. And there is
no doubt it will take many years to restore the
luster to UNICEF’s once-lofty reputation. Radical feminists argue that men have run the
show for too long, and now it’s their turn to
rule the roost. But they would be well-advised to not showcase
Carol Bellamy’s UNICEF, where the feminist
dream turned into a children’s nightmare. For years, the Sisterhood lectured us how
tedious and thankless it was to be “just”
a mother. It stifled women’s individuality and
put a cramp in their career aspirations. Oh
dear. But it wasn’t enough to just lament the
demands of motherhood. Someone had to be blamed.
And sure enough that “someone” was the
patriarchy [www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts112404.htm
In her 1986 feminist classic Of Woman Born,
Adrienne Rich made the claim that the
“patriarchy could not survive without
motherhood.” Yes, that’s what she really
wrote. According to Ms. Rich, it wasn’t enough
for women to rule the world by rocking the cradle
– women should also aspire to run the world by
rocking the levers of political power. But if moms were going to break through the
Glass Ceiling, who was going to mind the kids? So
wives began to coax and plead with their primary
breadwinners to become involved dads. Men began to
attend Lamaze classes, push baby strollers, and
burp junior. And lo, dads discovered the Joy of
Parenting. But there was still a tiny fly in the ointment
– the sticky issue of which parent would gain
custody of the kids in the unfortunate event of
divorce. Knowing that half of all marriages fall
apart, this is hardly an issue that should be
relegated to the divorce lawyers. In the past, custody was routinely awarded to
the mother on the basis of the “best interests
of the child” doctrine. But like Robin
Williams of Mrs. Doubtfire fame, divorced dads said
that argument was deeply flawed. They pointed to a growing body of research which
showed that continued involvement of the father was
essential for a child’s welfare. For example,
the March 2002 issue of the Journal of Family
Psychology featured an article by Dr. Robert
Bauserman, who reviewed 33 studies on this critical
topic. He reached this reassuring conclusion:
Despite the divorce, children enjoyed better family
relationships, self-esteem, and emotional
adjustment when dads were allowed to remain
involved in the kids’ lives. So child advocates began to push the idea of
equal parenting. That approach made sense because
it would bypass the acrimony surrounding custody
battles. Looking back, it seemed like such a great idea:
Women would be freed from the drudgery of full-time
mothering, dads could stay in the picture, and kids
would maintain their relationships with both
parents. A winning proposition for all – who
could argue with that? But in one of those strange twists of history,
the feminist establishment did an abrupt
about-face. All across the United States, local
chapters of the National Organization for Women
came out in opposition to equal parenting. For years women had been bewailing the monotony
of motherhood. Now those same women were arguing
against the common-sense notion of keeping dads
involved, thus relieving some of the pressures on
working moms. How could this possibly happen? Because in the
Matriarchy, mothers enjoy the singular authority to
make decisions about their children. In other
words, Mothers Rule. And the mendacious matrons at
the N.O.W. saw joint custody as usurping that
prerogative. I have known some of these fathers who have been
evicted from their children’s lives. I have
felt their heartbreak, their profound sense of
betrayal. But these dads would not be deterred. They began
to organize, they wrote letters, they lobbied their
legislators. But progress was slow. Groups like the National
Association for Counsel of Children came out
opposed to equal parenting. Why? Because its
members makes their money by milking long,
drawn-out custody disputes, which can run $100,000
in legal fees. So recently fathers’ groups in 41 states
began to file class action lawsuits
[www.indianacrc.org/assocsites.html]. The
claims argued that divorced fathers and mothers
should be assumed to be equally fit parents –
what is called a legal presumption of joint
custody. Until the essential role of fathers is
recognized and antiquated laws are changed,
millions of American children will be deprived of
the steady hand of a loving father. Those children
will go to bed at night, wondering when they will
be able to see their daddy. That’s the Matriarchy at work. Kofi's Resignation Won't
Cure the AIDS Epidemic
Take the report, Women and AIDS, which was
released by the UNAIDS two weeks ago [www.unaids.org/wad2004/EPI_1204_pdf_en/Chapter2_women+aids_en.pdf
The past 20 years I have held a front row seat
in the unfolding AIDS drama. I have seen persons
being handed the death sentence that they had
contracted the HIV virus. I have witnessed the
terrified look of AIDS patients coming in to check
their plummeting CD counts. This is a disease that plays for keeps. If we
are going to beat AIDS, we need to use an approach
that is based on hard science, not trendy ideology.
And that’s where the UNAIDS report goes
wrong. The first step in stopping AIDS is compiling
accurate statistics on the spread of the disease.
But if you look at the 2004 UNAIDS annual report,
you will find the HIV infection rates for women and
children -- but not for men [www.unaids.org/bangkok2004/GAR2004_pdf/GAR2004_table_countryestimates_en.pdf
Last week Cliff Kincaid revealed how the UNAIDS
has been cooking its statistics. For example, they
once reported that 15% of the population in Kenya
had HIV. But later the UNAIDS cut that number to
just 6.7% [www.aim.org/aim_column/2261_0_3_0_C/
Bottom line: All those impressive-looking AIDS
statistics coming out of the UNAIDS are suspect,
especially the ones that apply to men. The Women and AIDS report contains a number of
demonstrable falsehoods. Here are two of them: 1. “Men tend to have better access to AIDS
care and treatment…through drug trials.”
Now go to the website clinicaltrials.gov
2. “Violence against women is a worldwide
scourge, and a massive human rights and public
challenge.” But Linda Kelly recently wrote in
the Florida State University Law Review, “Over
the last 25 years, leading sociologists have
repeatedly found that men and women commit violence
at similar rates.” [www.papa-help.ch/downloads/kelly.pdf
But the problem with the UNAIDS publication is
not limited to its factual errors. Of greater
concern is that the report sets up the boogeyman of
patriarchy, and then casually lays the blame for
the epidemic at the feet of men. The report lectures ad nauseum, “men tend
to hold the upper hand” and “the balance
of power in many relationships is tilted in favor
of men.” But a recent Washington Post
editorial, “A Female Pandemic?,” took
exception to this one-sided approach, because
“high-risk groups are stigmatized, and hence
often ignored.” The bias of the UN report is confirmed by its
refusal to admit that women also contribute to the
spread of AIDS. For example, the report never
admits the fact that one-third of all heterosexual
transmission of HIV is female to male. Nor does the report reveal the slightest concern
with HIV-infected prostitutes, those Typhoid Marys
who infect hundreds of male partners in a single
month. Maybe that’s because radical feminists
have no problem with women selling their bodies,
just as long as they are paid equitably. The UN report is not only palpably unfair to
men; it’s also dangerous to women. The report
claims, “Women and girls often lack the power
to abstain from sex.” [www.washtimes.com/commentary/20041205-123305-3151r.htm
Once you start preaching the mantra of female
powerlessness, you are telling individual women
there is nothing they can do to stop the spread of
AIDS. That message is not only perniciously false,
it is the hallmark of the totalitarian mindset. Over the past three decades, feminists have
developed a well-honed strategy: Make women feel
angry and fearful, induce guilt and shame in men,
and create an environment of hysteria. On November 30 Peter Piot, director of the
UNAIDS, came to Washington, DC to unveil the Women
and AIDS report and to sound the drum-beat of
female victimization. But US Ambassador Randall
Tobias, who spoke at the same meeting, would have
none of that. It was good that Ambassador Tobias ignored the
UNAIDS report. But side-stepping this radical
feminist screed is not enough. The House
Republicans and the Bush administration need to
come out and repudiate the Women and AIDS document,
a bonanza of gender bigotry. © 2005 Carey Roberts
Feminism
Archive
Six days after graduating from Milton High School,
Mickarl Thomas tragically died in a single-car
accident. Affectionately known as Mikey, he was the
co-captain of his Boston-area football team and the
only black male in his honors classes.
]]
Who is harmed more by the radical feminist creed:
men or women? I have long believed that men are
more victimized. But after reading Kate
O’Beirne’s recent book, Women
Who Make the World Worse and how their radical
feminist assault is ruining our schools, families,
military and sports I’m beginning to
reconsider.
].
Feeling a little bored, maybe suffering from
after-the-holiday blues? The World Health
Organization never fails to provide a moment of
levity in our otherwise hum-drum lives.
]]
] and Australia [www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17051698%255E1702,00.html
] likewise reveal that women are equally likely
to assault their male partners.],
which, not surprisingly, had very little to say
about domestic violence against men.]
Leftists believe the Truth is an intellectual fraud
designed to prop up the existing
techno-patriarchal-capitalist power structure.
That’s why the neo-Coms will tell you with a
straight face that Saddam Hussein was a courageous
freedom fighter, and that the New York Times
usually gets the story right.
]]]]]]]]]
President Bush surprised everyone, including wife
Laura, with his nomination of John Roberts to the
Supreme Court of the United States. It seems the
First Lady has been taking law classes during her
spare time, making her qualified to advise the
President on the importance of gender in judicial
selections. “I would really like him to name
another woman,” she explained on NBC’s
Today show.
]
I recently came across an article sporting the
irresistible title, A Nation of Little Princesses.
Author Christopher Healy explores the archetype of
the princess, which he asserts “is one of the
longest-lived in all of literary history.”
[www.freepress.net/news/print.php?id=5557
]
Can you imagine the German Bundestag issuing a
formal apology for the Nazi atrocities, but then
leaving out the fact that Jews were the primary
victims?
In a long-awaited decision, President Bush finally
named tough-talking John Bolton as U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations. And not a day too soon, as
the U.N. General Assembly is set to reconvene in
September.
]
But not men or children?]]).]
But the WHO report Violence and Health dismisses
that fact with this disingenuous remark:
“Where violence by women occurs, it is more
likely to be in the form of self-defense.”
[www5.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/main.cfm?p=0000000682
]]]]]]
Man-hating feminist Andrea Dworkin once admitted to
The New Republic, “Senators don't understand
the meaning of the legislation that they
pass.” Dworkin was referring to the Violence
Against Women Act (VAWA), a law that is now up for
reauthorization in the U.S. Congress.
]
Yes, abusive men are lurking behind every bush.]]
The niggling nannies of N.O.W. fell into a swoon
last week, courtesy of Sandra Day
O’Connor’s July 1 announcement to give up
her seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Over the last
20 years O’Connor has provided the crucial
swing vote that kept the abortion issue in
play.
]]
Ol’ Joe Biden has been waiting 17 long years,
hoping the American public would forget.
]]]]]]]]
Jan Fransen has come up with a new solution to the
old problem of population control: AIDS.
]]]]]
At that time, feminists are hoping to push through
their gender mainstreaming plan.
For the better part of the last 40 years, policy
experts and childrearing gurus relegated fathers to
the parental minor leagues. Dads were seen as
well-intentioned but inept Homer Simpsons who might
be able to teach junior how to swing a baseball
bat, but little else.
]]]
Despite the resounding rejection of the European
Constitution by French and Dutch voters, the fact
is, old Europe still genuflects at the altar of
socialism and collectivism. So it comes as no
surprise that feminism has taken root there as
readily as mushrooms sprouting on a pile of
barnyard manure.
]]]]]]]
Bill May didn’t get into synchronized swimming
to make a political statement. “When I first
joined,” he once explained, “I thought,
‘This is a great sport and it’s
fun.’” But as things turned out, his
greatest barrier would not be a lack of talent.
]
Sometimes it seems the Gender Warriors will stop at
nothing to get their way.
]
In his book, Our Dance Has Turned to Death,
sociologist Carl Wilson traces the seven steps of
societies in decline. Near the end, the country
reaches Stage Five where the affection between
husbands and wives is replaced by suspicion and
hostility. Stage Six is marked by selfish
individualism that fragments society into warring
factions. [www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/decline.html
]
]]]]]
Last week’s column, A Rash of Feminist Hate
Speech, triggered a spirited debate. [www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1396094/posts
]
]]]
A woman named Mary took the open microphone.
“Hello, my name is Mary
Man-Hating-is-Fun,” she explained. “Ever
since I learned to embrace my feminist nature, I
found great joy in threatening men’s lives,
flicking off frat brothers and plotting the
patriarchy’s death. I hate men because they
are men.”
]]]]]
After a brief flirtation with compassionate
conservatism, Hillary Rodham Clinton has returned
to her neo-Marxist ways. On April 19 Senator
Clinton introduced the so-called Paycheck Fairness
Act, a law that would pressure employers to fatten
women’s paychecks, regardless of the number of
hours worked or job qualifications.
]]
What do you get when you mix equal parts of gender
myth, a casual disregard of Constitutional
protections, and old fashioned political pork? VAWA
– the Violence Against Women Act --
that’s what.
]]]]
But many in Congress were opposed to Biden’s
bill because it ignored key provisions of the
United States Constitution.]
But Ringle’s expose’ came too late -- the
genie was out of the bottle.
In the Nature vs. Nurture debate, feminists rabidly
insist that all psychological and social
differences between the sexes are caused by the
social environment. That ideologically-loaded
belief is captured in that innocent-sounding word,
“gender.”
].
Referring to the spatial abilities of the sexes,
Judith Kleinfeld of the University of Alaska notes,
“The average difference between males and
females on psychological tests of these abilities
is huge.” [www.nationalreview.com/comment/kleinfeld200501250746.asp
]].
Sorry, Ms. Sullivan, that argument may have played
in Peoria 50 years ago, but not in 2005.]].
I have seen their shell-shocked eyes and
unbelieving expressions.
].]:
If you’re looking for a paragon of female
virtue, don’t waste your time in Chappaqua,
New York. Of all American politicians, there is no
one who is more ethically-challenged or
morally-tainted than Hillary Rodham Clinton.
]].].
News Flash – UN top brass have begun to
realize that the American public is growing tired
of the non-stop scandals oozing like putrid
swamp-fill from the world body. Appearing on Fox
News Sunday this past weekend, UN chief of staff
Mark Malloch Brown was forced to admit, “In a
very real way, we seem to have lost touch with the
great middle in America.”
].].].
]].].].
Out of the eight Goals, two are specific to
women:
].].
In 1998, Gro Harlem Brundtland was named as the
first female director-general of the World Health
Organization. Many hailed her appointment as a
long-overdue opportunity to introduce a new ethic
of female compassion at the highest levels of the
United Nations.
].].
These variations cannot be accounted for by
biological differences.]:].]
and a Global Commission on Women’s Health.].
- Table A.5]. This represents a 3:1 sex
disparity.].).).
But the WHO Report on Violence and Health slants
the issue in a way that downplays the effects of
violence on men.].],
the chapter on domestic violence portrays the
problem as a male-on-female phenomenon.
For sheer propaganda value, it doesn’t get any
better than the United Nations women’s
conference in New York City.
].].]].].].
Propagandists care little about the facts, because
the ends always justify the means.
Following their November 2 electoral melt-down, the
Sisterhood and the rest of the radical Left lapsed
into bitterness and despair. Sensing that Middle
America is turning a cold shoulder on their
socialist agenda, the rad-fems have now unleashed a
last-ditch campaign of intimidation, accusations,
and threats.
]]].
Maggie Gallagher is in hot water over her $21,500
contract with the Department of Health and Human
Services, money received while her editorials were
singing the praises of the Bush
Administration’s marriage initiative. Sounding
slightly clueless, Gallagher explained, “Did I
violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it? I
don’t know. You tell me.”
]]].].].
There is no better example of how radical feminism
hoodwinks women than the gender “wage
gap” controversy.
I doubt that many will be shocked by the revelation
that political correctness has taken hold at the
Washington Post.
].].
But the radical feminists would never let that fact
get out. So the Post’s coverage of this issue
has long followed the “man = batterer, woman =
victim” formula.
If you want to understand the Culture War, you need
to appreciate the ideology, methods, and goals of
radical feminism. And to understand feminism, you
must understand Marxist philosophy and the history
of the Soviet Union. On this last point, I
recommend Joshua Muravchik’s highly-readable
book, Heaven on Earth.
]],
and you will see the feminist utopia will not be a
world that takes kindly to men.].
The chilly winds of Political Correctness blow ever
stronger.
]].]].
Now, people say it’s only a matter of time
until the Bible is banned as a form of hate
speech.].].].
Women often swap jokes that start with the line,
“What if women ruled the world?”
Here’s one of my favorites: “If women
ruled the world, men would learn phrases like,
‘You’re beautiful,’ ‘I’m
sorry,’ and ‘Of course you don’t
look fat in that outfit.’”
.]]].
Feminists possess an uncanny ability to work both
sides of an issue. Take motherhood, for
instance.
].
A band of House Republicans has done the
once-unthinkable and called for the resignation of
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. But giving Annan
the boot is only the first step. Because the entire
United Nations bureaucracy has become a haven to
aging do-gooders who care more about ideology than
results.
].
UNAIDS is the United Nations program charged with
stopping the HIV threat.].
Is that because the lives of men count for
less?],
which lists all the AIDS studies sponsored by the
National Institutes of Health, and you will see
that the reverse is true.]
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Martha Stewart Plays the Chivalry Card
).
First Officer Charles Lightoller was later called to testify before Congress. One Senator inquired why women had been favored over men, even while many of the lifeboats bobbed half-empty in the icy waters. Lightoller’s response: “The rule of human nature.”
I don’t know whether chivalry is based more on human nature or cultural conditioning. But there is no doubt that chivalry is as deeply-rooted in men as is the maternal instinct in women. Even though feminists will rebuke a man who holds a door for a lady to pass, chivalry is still alive and well in our society.
Take the case of Martha Stewart.
Acting on an insider tip, Stewart sold all 3,928 shares of her ImClone stock in 2001. A few days later, the stock took a nosedive. Stewart’s pre-emptive move saved her the tidy sum of $51,000.
During the subsequent probe, Stewart made the mistake of lying to the federal investigators. The homemaking maven was charged on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice.
Every day Martha Stewart emerged from the courtroom, surrounded by her white knights in shining armor (ahem, lawyers). No matter how badly the case was going, she was always beautifully coifed, with a scarf serving as her fashion accessory. The Martha Stewart case, involving an attractive woman with a comely smile and a vaguely helpless demeanor, was more than the men in the media could resist.
Over the course of the trial, I read countless editorials about the case. All of them asserted Ms. Stewart’s innocence – she was being singled out, lying to a federal agent was no big deal, poor Martha didn’t know any better, and so on.
And all of the columns were written by men, none of them who had spent a day in law school. The articles called to mind the chivalrous noblemen of yore who steadfastly defended the virtue of their womenfolk.
But the jury of four men and eight women saw things differently. On March 5, claiming a victory for the little guys, the jury found Stewart guilty on all four counts.
Afterwards, Stewart’s lawyers requested leniency – a term of probation and community service working with poor women. The obvious sexism of that offer apparently didn’t disturb anyone.
Last Friday Judge Miriam Goldman sentenced Stewart to five months behind bars. In announcing the sentence, Goldman noted, “I believe that you have suffered, and will continue to suffer, enough.” Kinda makes your heart melt.
Media coverage of Goldman’s sentence reveals how chivalry can bias the news. On December 27, 2001, Stewart had received a message from her stockbroker warning that “ImClone is going to start trading downward.” Stewart later stole into her assistant’s computer and sanitized the message to read, “Peter Bacanovic re: ImClone.” Jurors later said that incident was the defining moment in the trial.
But this past weekend, the media didn’t even mention that critical event. Indeed, they glossed over the details about Stewart’s well-document efforts to obstruct justice.
The lead story in the liberal New York Times quoted one supporter, Daniel Stone, who said, “If she serves any time at all, it's going to be a real pity” (www.nytimes.com/2004/07/17/business/17marthas.html). The NYT article didn’t mention the fact that the American public does not like white-collar criminals being sent home scot-free.
Studies have repeatedly found that when men and women commit the identical crime, women are less likely to be arrested, charged, convicted, and incarcerated. Legal experts say that Stewart was extremely lucky in receiving only a judicial slap on the wrist, the minimum allowable under federal sentencing guidelines.
Was it luck? Or was it the chivalry of the countless reporters, editors, and columnists who rallied to Martha’s defense?
Kerry Embraces the Radical Feminist Agenda
Indeed, earlier this year Democratic pollster Celinda Lake began to spread the word that the Democrats would never retake the White House unless they began to reach out to the critical male vote. But the powerful feminist faction within the Democratic Party was none too happy with that idea.
Liberal John Kerry has closely aligned himself with the feminist cause. So when it became clear that Kerry would be named as the Democratic presidential candidate, Lake gave up on her crusade.
Of course the Democrats have every right to target women. But what is interesting is how the Kerry campaign plans to court the female electorate.
That strategy became apparent on the first day that John Kerry campaigned with his new running mate John Edwards. On July 7, an upbeat Kerry boasted that his team has “better vision, better ideas,” and – get this -- “we’ve got better hair.” Men, of course, have little interest in a candidate’s hairdo.
A look at the Kerry website (www.johnkerry.com/issues/women) reveals that Kerry believes that women will fall for all manner of obsequious pandering. This is what John Kerry is telling American women:
1. “We need a president who will put the American government and legal system back on the side of women.”
The truth is, practically every federal government agency has an office devoted to women’s issues. But none – that’s right, none -- has an office designated for men. The Congress and Supreme Court have enacted and upheld countless laws intended to help women, including the Violence Against Women Act, abortion rights, sexual harassment rules, and many others.
2. “John Kerry will increase funding for breast and cervical cancer research.”
The American Cancer Society reports that 230,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004, compared to 216,000 women told they have breast cancer (www.cancer.org/downloads/MED/Page4.pdf). But at the National Cancer Institute, funding for breast cancer outstrips prostate cancer by more than a 3:1 margin (www.nci.nih.gov/public/factbk97/varican.htm). Mr. Kerry, please help us to understand why any fair-minded woman would want to make that research disparity even worse?
3. “We must ensure that women earn equal pay for equal work.”
On average, men work 2,147 hours a year, compared to 1,675 hours for women (www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=56). Men work in the more hazardous occupations such as construction and mining. And men have more work qualifications than women.
The myth of gender wage discrimination has been debunked by the Women’s Freedom Network (www.womensfreedom.org/newslet.htm) and the Independent Women’s Forum (www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=575). Anyone who still claims that women are paid unfairly is being intellectually dishonest….or is a die-hard socialist (mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/03/roberts120903.htm).
American women are arguably the most privileged of any group in history. But the Kerry-Edwards website makes it sound like women are on the verge of being shipped back to their suburban concentration camps: “But today, women are witnessing an unprecedented erosion of their basic rights.”
This past Monday, Kerry’s strategy to advance the radical feminist agenda was unveiled at a so-called “She Party” (rhymes with Tea Party – get it?). The featured speaker was the feminists’ “secret weapon:” none other than Peggy Kerry, sister of John.
And Peggy didn’t beat around the bush. “There are three things my brother is going to do when he’s elected president,” she promised. John will restore $34 billion in funding for the UN Population Fund for abortion services. Then he will assure the Senate ratifies the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Third, Kerry will “appoint pro-choice judges to the Supreme Court.”
There’s no doubt that the Democrats’ appeal to the massive white male electorate will continue to decline. So the question is, what will American women think of John Kerry’s sexy new hairdo?
Outing the Feminist "Great Lie"
Strong words, indeed. So what is the genesis of the feminist attempt to induce antagonism between men and women?
It can all be traced back to the feminist Creation Myth, which goes like this:
Once upon a time, in a land far away, men and women lived in a state of communal bliss. There were no sexual prohibitions, no division of labor, no ownership of property, and most of all, no patriarchy. It was a pure feminist utopia.
Over time, men and women began to pair off, babies were born, and families began to emerge. The development of stable families gave rise to a division of labor between the sexes: Men did the hunting and fishing, and women did the gardening and child-raising.
But the pivotal point in history was the emergence of the concept of private property. Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex, which is required reading in every Women’s Studies program, explains it this way:
“Private property appears: master of slaves and of the earth,
man becomes the proprietor also of woman….Here we see the
emergence of the patriarchal family founded upon private property. In
this type of family, woman is subjugated.” (www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/debeauv3.htm
)
You say, Where on earth did Beauvoir get these fantastic ideas?
From Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts012704.htm
).
And how did Marx and Engels come up with this crackpot theory? From an obscure book called Ancient Society, written in 1877 by an American anthropologist named Lewis Henry Morgan, who had spent a few weeks studying the Iroquois Indians in upper New York State.
Subsequent anthropologists have refuted Morgan’s methods and
conclusions (www.aaanet.org/gad/history/051tooker.pdf
).
For example, the part about primitive society being a sexual
free-for-all – that can be credited entirely to Morgan’s
wishful thinking.
But that didn’t keep feminists from anointing Morgan as their patron saint. After all, he served a useful purpose.
Radical feminists accept Morgan’s fable as if it were the Revealed Truth. Once we understand that, the rest of feminist theory begins to make sense.
As feminists see it, the moral of Morgan’s account is that once patriarchy took over, women became the mere slaves of men, had no rights, and endured unrelenting physical and sexual abuse.
That’s what is known as the feminist Great Lie. This is how
columnist Wendy McElroy explains the Great Lie: “Victims of men,
of the class structure, technology, government, the free market, the
family, the church, Western values…everywhere and always women
are painted as victims.” (www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0422.html
).
True, life may not have been easy for women, but men had their share of problems, too. If women were in fact the object of untrammeled social oppression, we would have expected women’s life spans to have been dramatically shorter than men’s.
But the historical record tells a different story. According to research conducted by Ingrid Waldron at the University of Pennsylvania, the life expectancies of men and women over the past several centuries have traced similar trajectories.
Suicide statistics also debunk the feminist enslavement theory.
Public health authorities in England and Wales first began to
enumerate the causes of death in the late 1800s. As early as 1890, it
was found that men’s suicide rate was 2.9 times higher than
women’s (http://10.1911encyclopedia.org/S/SU/SUHL.htm
).
Judging by suicide statistics, we might conclude that it was men, not
women, who were more confined by rigid social roles.
1960s-style feminism had the laudable goal of encouraging equal opportunities for women. But now, feminism has morphed into an ugly ideology of female empowerment and gender retribution.
Most fairy tales have a happy ending. But the Marxist-feminist fable has set the stage for protracted gender conflict. And that, sad to say, poses a grave threat to the timeless institution of marriage.
Women Fleeing the Feminist Fold
It’s now 2004 and Americans are the guests on a remake of To Tell the Truth. The object of the game is to answer the question, What is the real face of feminism?
Many people think of feminism as a movement that promotes gender equality and opportunity. And for many years, I counted myself in that group. To deny women the opportunity to get a good education and pursue a career -- that seemed abhorrent and contrary to the American Dream.
Then the voices of the skeptics demanded a hearing.
As early as 1972, Phyllis Schlafly posed this question: “The claim that American women are downtrodden and unfairly treated is the fraud of the century…Why should we lower ourselves to ‘equal rights’ when we already have the status of special privilege?” That editorial launched the movement that eventually defeated the Equal Rights Amendment.
But I still counted myself a true believer.
In a 1992 article in the Washington Post, Sally Quinn compared the leaders of NOW to the apparatchiks of the Communist Party in the former Soviet Union. She concluded, “many women have come to see the feminist movement as anti-male, anti-child, anti-family, anti-feminine.”
That broadside made me blink.
Two years later Christina Hoff Sommers released her stunning expose’, Who Stole Feminism? Ms. Sommers methodically dissected and debunked the feminist claims about domestic violence, rape, and women’s health.
That was more than I could ignore, so I began to do my own research. I went to my local library, combed through government reports, and surfed the internet. I soon learned that Schlafly, Quinn, and Sommers were right: the feminist claims were actually Ms.-Information.
Around that time, millions of women began to reach the same conclusion. In 1992, a Gallup poll found that 33% of American women considered themselves to be feminist (http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~lhuddy/neelyhuddy.pdf). But seven years later, the Gallup poll reported that number had plummeted to 26%. And one CBS poll noted that 22% of women said that being called a feminist would be an “insult.”
But substitute the word “women” for “feminist,” and you come up with a very different story. A 1998 Pew survey found that 67% of females (and 66% of males) were favorable to the “women’s movement.”
So a large majority of American women do not consider themselves to be feminists, but still support the women’s movement. An obvious and startling conclusion emerges: Women no longer believe that feminism represents their interests or needs.
A recent article in the National Review paints a similar picture of waning feminist influence (www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200408060855.asp). Feminist thinking holds that a bride taking her husband’s last name “signifies the loss of her very existence as a person under the law,” as former NOW-head Patricia Ireland once put it. But alas, most women have a mind of their own. According to marriage records in Massachusetts, the percentage of surname keepers dropped from 23% in 1990 to 17% in 2000.
What’s more, a growing number of women’s organizations have set out to counter the feminist agenda, including the Concerned Women for America, Independent Women’s Forum, Women’s Freedom Network, and the Clare Booth Luce Foundation. And several women’s websites now feature anti-feminist commentary, such as ifeminists.net and ladiesagainstfeminism.com.
But there are still a substantial number of persons in our society who cling to the belief that feminism is about promoting equality, fairness, and gender enlightenment.
So guest celebrity, our time is up. Which face of feminism is real, and which is the impostor? Is feminism about promoting equality of rights and responsibilities? Or does it aim to foment gender discord and marital break-down?
The modern rendition of To Tell the Truth is no mere game show. It’s not about a few hundred dollars in funny money. It’s a real life drama that spells enormous consequences for our culture, our families, and our children.
Olympic Media Misfire
But at USA Today, the presses were churning out a very different message.
On the front page, USA Today featured a story on “U.S. gymnasts look bound for glory.” Despite its title, the article turned out to be only about female gymnasts. No mention of the men.
In the Sports section, the first page was graced by photos of swimmer Katie Hoff and volleyball players Kerri Walsh and Misty May. Again, the male athletes were nowhere to be seen.
Swimmer Michael Phelps, seeking to eclipse Mark Spitz record of seven gold medals, is arguably the most talented American athlete competing in this summer's Olympics. But at USA Today, gender counted for more than talent, so his story was buried on page 4F.
And the miraculous Iraqi soccer win? That piece was neatly tucked away on page 2C, below the fold.
Overall, women's sports ruled. And men's athletics were practically an afterthought.
How did USA Today's coverage of the Olympics become so biased? That question can be answered in two words: Christine Brennan.
Christine Brennan, the person who organized the articles, is the well-known sports reporter at USA Today. Brennan is an ardent proponent of female athletics and she's a doctrinaire feminist.
Brennan does not hesitate to ridicule men's athletics. She has referred to college wrestling as “malarkey” and football programs as “bloated.” Once Brennan wrote a smark-alecky column why men should swoon over women's figure skating (www.usatoday.com/sports/comment/brennan/2002-02-08-brennan.htm).
Of course, Brennan believes that female athletes should be paid the same as men, despite the fact that professional women's sports is a proven money loser. Look at what happened to the now-defunct Women's United Soccer Association. And the Women's National Basketball Association is barely staying afloat.
But when women choose to not fill the stadiums and arenas, Brennan blames the sports editors who don¹t create new beats to cover female athletics. “The sports world is changing, and we¹re barely reflecting this. There is no excuse for this,” the hyperventilating Brennan exclaimed (www.makeithappen.com/wis/readings/covlack.html).
But above all, Brennan is an unabashed supporter of Title IX. In a 2002 interview, Brennan described Title IX as mandating “proportionality and equality for men and women in terms of having opportunities to play sports." (www.jomc.unc.edu/carolinacommunicator/archives/july2002/brennan.html)
If you're looking for an example of loopy feminist logic, it doesn't get any better than that.
Because the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools doesn't say anything about “proportionality.” Proportionality is fem-speak for “quotas.” Proportionality is the highly controversial term that the Clinton administration used to justify the elimination of hundreds of men's swimming, golf, and wrestling teams.
According to the Independent Women's Forum, males are twice as likely as females to participate in colleagiate intramural and club sports (www.iwf.org/pdf/fairness.pdf ). And at ESPN, male viewers outnumber females three to one. So how can anyone expect that women will want to participate in sports in numbers that are “proportional” to their college enrollments?
I'm an unabashed fan of women's tennis and figure skating. I love the artistry and grace.
But many of the Olympic sports have little to do with artistry or grace. Cycling, rowing, running, and swimming all come down to one thing: speed. And events like shot-putting and weight-lifting are tests of brute strength. Despite Ms. Brennan's good intentions, she would have to admit that in those departments, men outclass the women.
Radical feminists believe that women should achieve complete statistical uniformity with men. Experience proves that feminists are willing to resort to heavy-handed tactics such as propaganda-like media coverage and heavy-handed quotas to reach that goal.
But the truth is, if women don't get involved in athletics in similar numbers as men, that has nothing to do with discrimination or patriarchal oppression. That's about women exercising their right to free choice.
Lady....Or the Tramp?
In 1970 Greer published The Female Eunuch. The book claims that the sexual repression of women robs them of the dynamic energy they need to attain gender independence and selfhood. Hence, sexual license is the sure path to female liberation.
Many years and several abortions later, Greer finally renounced her advocacy of sexual debauchery. But in typical feminist fashion, she recanted her own promiscuity not by way of offering an apology, but rather by blaming it all on men.
As an international best-seller, The Female Eunuch influenced the sexual mores of an entire generation of women. Thanks to the likes of Madonna, Britney, and Janet Jackson, Greer’s free love philosophy is beginning to permeate our culture.
Just look at the way women are parading around these days. The examples I’m about to describe are not what I read about, saw on TV, or heard third-hand from the neighborhood gossip. These are incidents I have personally observed during the past several months.
At the office, well-educated women don the sheerest brassieres and tight-fitting sweaters. Do they really need to prove to their co-workers that they don’t suffer from inverted nipples?
A singles event is held at a community fair. Each participant is given a number to post on his or her lapel, so interested persons can make contact. One young lady decides to cut to the chase – she pastes the number directly over her crotch.
The epidemic of immodesty has even spread to teenage girls.
At a girls’ high school soccer game, a close-fought game ends. Rather than walking to the nearby dressing room, the girls strip down to their sports bras in front of hundreds of shocked onlookers.
For its Fall fashion line-up, J.C. Penny’s is now selling T-shirts for girls sporting these slogans: “I’m hot,” “What’s with those twins?,” and “Pick me up, coffee shop.” Right across the aisle, pubescent girls can buy thong, hipster, or bikini underwear – all three for just $12.60.
And then there are untold numbers of women who can’t seem to find a single top in their wardrobe that covers their brassiere. Or they don’t realize that if they wish to don a fluorescent pink bra, a thin white T-shirt really won’t do.
I could give other examples, but I think you get the point.
What makes this discussion surreal is way these women use a combination of narcissism, victimology, and pop psychology to justify their newly-found lewdness.
The other day I came across an internet discussion in which a woman with a DD cup admitted to coaching her soccer team wearing a tank-top shirt. Referring to her half-exposed breasts as “a symbol of my embraced femininity,” she feigned amazement that so many women were asking her to cover up. (www.ifeminists.net/interaction/forum/viewtopic.php?t=648)
Going on the offensive, she went on to say that she had discovered a new variety of sexual harassment, in which “women are sexualized and degraded by other women who fear their confidence.” To make her case bullet-proof, she wrapped herself in the mantle of victimhood: “I just don’t feel that I should be subject to disrespect because of jealousy.”
So why are we allowing a growing number of sexually-precocious women to degrade our public morality? It seems we are being seduced by the mantra of moral equivalence and non-judgementalism. As a result, decency is being evicted from the public arena.
Professional men don’t parade around the office wearing underwear so tight that co-workers can figure out their religious upbringing. And men don’t walk down the street with their flies open, proclaiming this as a symbol of their “embraced masculinity.”
Now, the Axis of Eve, a women’s rights group, is planning a mass panty flash at the upcoming Republic National Convention. Event planner Natasha Eve is organizing this stunt to demand “accountability in government.”
Please, Ms. Eve, keep your drawers on. People have better things to do than looking at women’s underwear.
Will the NASCAR Dads Tilt the Election?
In 2000, 60% of the white male electorate voted for Bush -- now there’s a real gender gap (www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/epolls/US/P000.html). So as President Bush puts the final touches on his Thursday night acceptance speech, no doubt he will be thinking how to strengthen his appeal with the NASCAR Dads.
So let’s ask, What has Bush done over the past four years to help struggling men?
Men are usually the primary breadwinners, so we should first examine Bush’s track record in reviving the economy. Shortly after taking office, Bush had to deal with some formidable challenges: the downturn of the stock market, the corporate accounting scandals, 9/11, and the War on Terror.
So last year Bush passed the Jobs and Growth Act which reduced personal income taxes and created new jobs. And in the past year, the economy grew an impressive 4.8%.
Giving a boost to male breadwinners – that’s a biggie. So score three points in the plus column.
In recent years, men have faced an unprecedented effort by radical feminists to marginalize their social and legal standing in society. A prime example: thanks to the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, fathers lost the legal right to participate in decision-making on keeping their own child.
Last year, Bush signed a law banning the gruesome procedure known as partial birth abortion. Although the law did nothing to address the reproductive disenfranchisement of dads, it was a step in the right direction.
One point.
But in other areas, Bush has kowtowed to the radical feminist agenda.
Take the Violence Against Women Act. VAWA spends $1 billion of taxpayer money each year based on the faulty assumption that only women are victimized by domestic violence. Sadly, Bush has done nothing to rectify the obvious unfairness of VAWA.
Subtract one.
The second area of concern is the child support program, administered by the Office for Child Support Enforcement.
If you want to see how an expensive do-gooder program can actually make things worse, you will find no better example than the OCSE. According to a recent Census Bureau report (www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p60-225.pdf), the percentage of mothers who received child support has dropped in recent years. In 1994, the figure was 76.1%. Eight years later, it was down to 74.7%.
The reason for this decline is simple. When you start putting thousands of low-income fathers behind bars for child support arrearages, it becomes pretty hard for these guys to earn money and make payments. The Bush Administration has done nothing to blunt the squeeze-blood-from-a-turnip mindset of the OCSE bureaucrats.
Take away another point.
Shortly after George W. Bush won the 2000 election, his Administration issued a Statement on Responsible Fatherhood. The document acknowledged the fact that “research shows that a large portion of fathers who do not pay child support are themselves poor.” (www.whitehouse.gov/news/usbudget/blueprint/bud12.html).
Fatherhood advocates were hopeful they would see an end to the midnight raids on so-called “deadbeat” dads.
True, Bush did continue the Fatherhood Initiative (http://fatherhood.hhs.gov/fi-overview.shtml) which the Clinton Administration had started. But under the rubric of “responsible fatherhood,” the Bush Administration has linked fatherhood promotion with child support collection.
Think about it: first you’re going to talk about being a caring, involved dad. And then you’re going to throw him in jail if he loses his job? PLEEEEAASE.
Sorry, the mixed-message Fatherhood Initiative doesn’t win my vote.
So let’s tally up the numbers. Four points in the plus column, two in the minus. Final score: two points.
If we did a similar tally on John Kerry’s radical feminist platform, the number would fall in the negative range (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts072804.htm). Overall, Bush comes out ahead. But not very much to get excited about.
So white males likely will continue to vote overwhelmingly in Bush’s favor. Or on second thought, maybe they’ll decide to sit this election out.
In Honor of the Heroes of Flight 93
Shortly after gruesome screams of “Get out of here!” were heard, the hijackers assumed the controls of the Boeing 757, cruising in the airspace near Cleveland, Ohio.
At 9:38 the aircraft executed a U-turn and headed towards its new destination: the White House, located less than 60 minutes to the southeast.
Over the next 25 minutes, there would be many tales of faith and courage. But as Jere Longman has documented in his book, Among the Heroes, none of these stories could surpass the valor of four men: Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett, Richard Guadagno, and Todd Beamer.
Jeremy Glick was an all-around natural athlete. In 1993 he had won the national judo championship. Positioned in the back of the plane, Jeremy telephoned his wife Lyz at 9:37. He said that he and three other guys were thinking about attacking the hijackers. His last words to her were, “Okay, stay on the phone, I’ll be right back.”
Who were the three other guys?
One of them was Tom Burnett, a former star high school quarterback. At 9:27 he called his wife Deena on his cell phone. As she began to recount the unfolding events at the World Trade Center that September 11, the sinister intentions of the terrorists became clear. Tom told his wife they were hatching a plan, and added, “If they’re going to crash this plane into the ground, we’re going to have to do something…It’s up to us. I think we can do it.”
Richard Guadagno was certainly involved in the counter-attack. A federal law enforcement officer, he had received training how to respond to a hijacking. The night before, he had packed a small pickax into the bag that he would carry on board Flight 93.
Todd Beamer, who had once aspired to play Major league ball, was now a father of two boys. At home he had a pet saying. When it was time for his boys to go outside, Todd would exhort them with the call of “Let’s roll.”
At 9:45, Beamer reached for the Airfone, dialed “0,” and was connected to the GTE operator. When he explained their plan to jump the hijackers, the operator asked him whether he was certain. Beamer answered, “At this point, I don’t have much choice. I’m going to have to go out on faith.”
Seven minutes later the insurrection began. Beamer stopped his conversation with the GTE operator and uttered the war cry, “You ready? Okay, let’s roll!”
Hearing a ruckus in the first class area, one of the hijackers in the cockpit asked what was going on. “Fighting,” came the response.
By 9:58, the men had reached the cockpit door and began shouting, “In the cockpit, in the cockpit.” One man yelled “Hold.” Another screamed in English, “Stop him.”
At ten o’clock the pilot began to sharply rock the aircraft’s wings, hoping to confuse and dislodge the counter-attackers.
A final rushing sound could be heard on the cockpit recorder. And then dead silence. It was three minutes after ten.
We will never know exactly how many passengers arose from their seats to overpower the hijackers. In addition to Glick, Burnett, Guadagno, and Beamer, other likely men were Mark Bingham, a former rugby player, and Louis Nacke, a guy with a weight-lifter’s physique who reportedly would never back down from anyone.
The fiery demise of Flight 93 outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania gives reassurance that in these politically-correct times, the warrior heart still beats steady and strong. Male daring-do may have gone underground, but is still very much alive and well. But three years later, the bravery of these men remains unheralded.
I dedicate this essay to Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett, Richard Guadagno, Todd Beamer, and to the other men who won that first fight in the modern war against terrorism. Thanks to you, our nation’s White House, a worldwide symbol of freedom and democracy, still stands today.
Kobe Bryant: Alice-in-Wonderland Justice
Radical feminists were in a frenzy that the judge had decided to allow DNA evidence which painted Bryant’s accuser as a floozy. Sasha Walters of the Chicago-based Rape Victim Advocates exclaimed, “This decision will be seized on by defense attorneys around the country. It will take us back to when the emphasis in a trial was on the actions of the victim.”
University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos shot back, “If you are not Kobe Bryant, you could find yourself in a case where you may well have to negotiate a plea in order to avoid spending the rest of your life in prison.”
But Walters and Campos both missed the larger issue. Because over the past 20 years, radical feminists have been working behind the scenes to do an extreme make-over of the laws of rape.
Rape, of course, is a horrific crime. And the act of rape is just as terrible as making a false accusation of rape.
False allegations of rape occur more often than most people think. One study found that 41% of women who had reported rape to the police later admitted the allegation was false (www.anandaanswers.com/pages/naaFalse.html). And a 1996 Department of Justice report concluded, “in about 25% of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI,…the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing” (www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/dnaevid.txt).
So the purpose of our legal system is to determine the truth of the allegation, and to mete out punishment where punishment is due.
For years, the law defined rape as “forced sex without consent.”
All that changed in 1979, when New Jersey passed the so-called N.O.W. act. Under that law, “sexual assault” was defined as "an act of sexual penetration with another person [when] [t]he actor uses physical force or coercion."
Imagine that being parsed in front of a sympathetic jury. With such an expansive and ambiguous definition, many, if not most instances of non-marital intercourse could be construed to constitute rape.
It wasn’t long until that line of thinking made inroads into the laws of other states.
In 1996 the Cato Institute surveyed the damage caused by the 1979 New Jersey law. The report concluded that greatly expanded definitions of rape represent “dangerous moves to eviscerate the presumption of innocence in sexual assault cases” (http://mensightmagazine.com/Library/femjuris.htm).
Bruce Fein, an expert on constitutional law, is even more pointed in his critique. He has compared the due process violations of men accused of rape to the “unilateral and summary pronouncements of guilt like the Queen of Hearts in ‘Alice in Wonderland’.”
How did the evisceration of rape law play out in the Kobe Bryant case?
First, many have criticized District Attorney Mark Hurlbert for filing a case that was deeply flawed from the very beginning. Hurlbert reasoned that dropping the case would have sent the wrong message to future rape victims. But did he stop to consider that pursing a weak case against an innocent man might also be sending a bad message?
For months, the DA repeatedly referred to the accuser as the “victim,” a word that carries a strong presumption of Kobe’s guilt. Finally, Bryant’s attorney had to petition the judge to order the DA to stop using the V-word.
And why not refer to the accuser by name, as is the usual practice in legal contests? The reason is, Colorado has a law that prohibits releasing the name of the accuser, presumably to protect the woman from further embarrassment. But isn’t a man who is accused of rape entitled to the same consideration? Doesn’t that double standard violate the principle of “equal treatment under the law”?
Worst of all are the rape shield laws, which presume a woman’s sexual history cannot be counted as evidence in a rape trial. But the accuser’s concurrent sexual activities had an important bearing on this case. Rape shield laws war with the presumption of innocence, and ultimately encourage the filing of false accusations.
As part of the withdrawal agreement, Bryant was required to offer an apology to the accuser. But given the scurrilous campaign of radical feminists to undermine the constitutionally-protected right of due process, perhaps it is they who owe a letter of apology to Mr. Bryant.
New Media Claims Bragging Rights in Rathergate Flap
When people believe that their news is no longer balanced or objective, they begin to look elsewhere. That “elsewhere” has come to be known as the New Media, the thousands of internet sites that have sprung into existence in the past 10 years.
And it was the internet bloggers who hammered away at the obvious forgeries in the fake memos. They tracked down the source of the documents. And it was they who insisted that Rather come clean with an apology.
But Mr. Rather was not the person who did the legwork on the ill-fated 60 Minutes II show. That task fell to producer Mary Mapes. She’s the one who researched the story and obtained the four fake memos.
One would expect a 60 Minutes producer to be highly objective in
her work. But recently Mary’s father, Don, appeared on KVI radio
in Seattle. When asked about the 60 Minutes brouhaha, Mr. Mapes
described his daughter as “a typical liberal. She went into
journalism with an ax to grind, and that was to promote radical
feminism.” www.talonnews.com/news/2004/september/0917_cbs_producer_pressure.shtml
)
So much for journalistic objectivity.
It’s no secret that the fem-liberal worldview permeates the Old Media. The Sisterhood doesn’t even bother to deny it any more. Here’s Susan Winston, former executive producer of Good Morning America: “We were feminists. We were liberals, and most of us still are.”
The feminist-driven media rigidly cleaves to three rules in its coverage of gender issues:
1. Portray women as deserving virtually limitless rights, with no corresponding responsibiliti
2. Whenever possible, present men as bumbling fools. If they also can be shown to be abusive clods, so much the better.
3. Never depict men as victims or being treated unfairly.
Take articles about missing persons. People don’t normally consider this to be a gender issue.
But a recent Fox News article carried this provocative headline:
“Missing Women Grab Headlines, But What About the Men?”
(www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,122398,00.html)
The article rattled off the list of women whose disappearances have
gripped the nation in recent years, and then posed the question,
“But where are all the missing young men?”
Another story at MSNBC raised the same unsettling question
(www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5325808
).
Missing men, especially those who are Black, seemingly don’t
rate as much media attention as young, white females.
How can any journalist in good conscience write a story on missing persons, and then spin the article to pander to the only-women-count mindset?
The New York Times is one of the most dependable sources of
Ms.-Information. Previous columns have documented how The New York
Times has portrayed men in a negative light (http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/03/roberts062103.htm
,
biased its coverage of gender health issues
(http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/03/roberts052103.htm
),
and worked covertly with pro-feminist legislators in the Senate to
influence national legislation
(http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/03/roberts052703.htm
).
Author Warren Farrell has come up with a novel theory to explain the media’s neglect of men. He calls it the Lace Curtain, which he describes as the tendency of the media to view gender issues only from a female or feminist perspective. His book, Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say, documents the head-numbing experiences of male authors who have hit the estrogen ceiling.
And in his recent book Arrogance, reporter Bernard Goldberg recounts how CBS talk shows routinely invited radical feminists to appear as gender “experts.”
Some people like to dismiss the New Media as a flaky source of news and commentary. Jonathan Klein, former vice president of CBS News, recently derided the internet bloggers as “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”
No doubt the fem-liberal establishment got a chuckle out of that remark. But they need to face up to this sad but obvious conclusion: When it comes to men’s and gender issues, the Old Media’s coverage can no longer be said to be accurate, balanced, and fair.
Wonderful, Wacky World of Fem-Speak
To get around in Femlandia, you must master a little Fem-Vocabulary, Fem-Statistics, and Fem-Logic. Are you ready?
There are three key words in Fem-Vocabulary. Pay close attention now, because these words have different meanings from their English counterparts:
1. Feminist: In the English language, “feminine” refers to a woman who is polite, modest, and comely. But in Fem-Speak, “feminist” has the exact opposite connotation: demanding, angry, and unkempt.
2. Equality: In English, equality refers to open and equal opportunity. But in Fem-Speak, equality refers to statistical uniformity that is enforceable with rigid quotas. Feminists will apply this term to women’s issues and concerns, but then will refuse to discuss it in relation to men.
3. Gender: This word actually has three meanings:
1. Male or female biological sex
2. Social differences between men and women that are learned, as in
“gender roles”
3. Pertaining to the radical feminist ideology
Gender is one of the most popular words in Fem-Speak because no
one knows for sure which interpretation you are using (www.sydneyline.com/Language%20Wars.htm
).
Just ponder the phrase, “gender equality.” Consider the
many permutations of meaning this innocent-looking expression
contains!
In Fem-Speak, it is perfectly acceptable to use words and expressions with female derivations, such as Mother Earth, mother-tongue, mother lode, ladybug, sister city, “necessity is the mother of invention,” and so on.
But Fem-Speak prohibits any word or phrase with a male connotation, such as mankind, manpower, middleman, or “man the ramparts.” Breaking this linguistic convention is a violation of what feminists call “speech codes,” and can invite the imposition of legal sanctions.
And did you catch my use of the word “master” in the first paragraph of this travel guide? My friend, that is a word you should never use in Femlandia. Not only does it have masculine implications, but it also contains allusions to the dreaded hierarchy.
Once you grasp the basic vocabulary, you are now ready for a lesson in Fem-Statistics. Fem-Statistics is easy once you understand this one basic rule: Always give percentages in multiples of 10 -- like 30%.
So what if the actual number is, say, 53%? No problem, you can round up or round down -- whatever makes your statement sound better.
And what if that number doesn’t feel right? Again, no problem. Use whatever number you want! Remember that in Femlandia, truth is deemed to be a linear, socially-constructed concept. So feel free to be creative.
Now on to Fem-Logic.
Fem-Logic can be described as any discussion that presents information out of context, introduces irrelevant concepts, and eventually reaches a conclusion that bears no relationship to common sense. And if you want to elevate the statement to the level of Revealed Truth, just preface your comment with the two magic words, “I feel.”
This can be illustrated by way of example.
A couple weeks ago I heard some people talking about athletics. One man was arguing that men are biologically stronger and faster, which gives them an inherent advantage in sports such as sprinting. But the persons from Femlandia said he could not possibly be right, because his reasoning did not comport with the Fem-Speak definition of equality.
So after a few moments of thought, one person responded: “I feel that women surpass men in endurance sports. We may not run as fast, but we run more efficiently and have more pelvic strength.”
Did you get that?
In Fem-Speak, it’s perfectly fine to simultaneously espouse opposite views. For example, you can talk about women being strong and independent. And then you can turn around and argue that women are victims who require constant governmental help and legal protection. Femlandists see no contradiction in those two statements.
Finally, a word of counsel. In Femlandia, you should never question or doubt the truth of a denizen’s statement. For these persons are said to possess A Woman’s Way of Knowing.
Fem-Speak is a rich, emotive language, filled with subtlety and nuance. And with luck, fellow traveler, all of us will soon be thinking in Fem-Speak.
Women Victimized by Feminist Fables
But then radical feminism came along. The High Priestesses decreed that truth was a cynical ploy designed to dupe women to submit to male hegemony.
Feminist philosopher Joyce Trebilcot once ridiculed the “apparatuses of ‘truth,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘science.’” And feminist theorist Elizabeth Fee stated bluntly: “Knowledge was created as an act of aggression.”
Not even Cartesian logic was safe from the onslaught. “We might begin to question the import of Descartes’ stress on logic and mathematics as the ideal types of rationality,” explained Linda Gardiner, editor of the Women’s Review of Books.
Told to ignore reason and common sense, women found themselves vulnerable to the machinations of the mischievous matriarchs. Under the guise of female liberation, these feminist Pooh Bahs set out to indoctrinate women into a three-tiered mythology.
It all begins with the Mother of all Myths: the belief that a
cabal of men, termed the Patriarchy, has been scheming all these
years to keep women down. We won’t dwell on the fact that
history fails to support such a sweeping indictment (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts080404.htm
).
Suffice it to say, in the feminist worldview all the ills of the
world can be traced back to the dreaded Patriarchy.
The Great Myth of Patriarchy in turn spawned the Four Lesser Myths.
First is the claim that men “have all the power.” Must be nice to have the whole world waiting at your beck and call.
Next is Gloria Steinem’s doozy: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Steinem was telling a generation of American women that barren spinsterhood would be good enough. Of course, Steinem later found her bicycle and married airline pilot David Bale – but let’s not worry about minor details.
Third, there’s the feminist belief in the moral superiority of women (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts052704.htm). That concept is captured in the chauvinistic expression, “A woman can do anything a man can do, only better.” To the Sisterhood, that statement is not a joke, it is a central tenet of the gender catechism.
But here’s the biggest whopper of all: the claim that feminism seeks to bring about gender equality. Let’s look at the record. What have feminists done to rectify the fact that men have shorter lifespans? Or are victims in 93% of all workplace deaths? To the radical feminist, gender equality is only a one-way street.
The Four Lesser Myths of male omnipotence, female autonomy, feminine superiority, and gender equality create the foundation. Upon that base, feminists have constructed an ever-expanding superstructure of equivocations, half-truths, and outright falsehoods.
The list is much too long to recount, but encompasses the full range gamut of issues including health care, education, the law, family relationships, and domestic violence. Like the Super Bowl hoax – the myth that domestic violence rises 40% on Super Bowl Sunday. Even though that hoary chestnut was refuted long ago by the Washington Post, the alarming statistic continues to be recycled.
So exactly how do the feminist fables victimize women?
Precisely because so many intelligent, caring women have come to accept the lies. They now believe they are victims. You might say they’ve been brainwashed. These women walk around with an attitude of entitlement, wondering why men aren’t interested in them any more. They are lonely people.
And as long as women remain in the victim mode, they will always be vulnerable to the argument that they need more legal protections and services. Thanks to the Sisterhood, female dependence on men has shifted to female reliance on government largesse. Is that progress?
But for a number of women’s groups, the feminist misrepresentations have reached the point of outright embarrassment. So they have launched campaigns to tell the world, “Look! The Empress has no clothes!”
The Concerned Women for America sponsors extensive grass-roots activities that counter the feminist doctrine. And the Independent Women’s Forum has launched a national campaign to alert students to widespread liberal bias on college campuses (www.iwf.org/campuscorner/default.asp). The program is appropriately dubbed, “She Thinks.”
A feminist who thinks – what a thought!
Achieving Feminist Class Consciousness
).
Sometime visit the Women and Marxism website (www.marxists.org/subject/women/
).
There you can read exactly what V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao
Tse-Tung had to say about women’s liberation.
Vladimir Lenin was the mastermind behind the early Soviet propaganda campaign. In his book The Birth of the Propaganda State, Peter Kenez concludes the Soviet state achieved its early successes because of the “ability of the political system to isolate the Russian people from information and ideas that would have undermined the message.”
And that message was the gospel of class consciousness. The Marxist mantra was repeated endlessly: the worker was exploited by the evil capitalist, and the peasant was oppressed by the greedy landowner.
This indoctrination strategy worked for several reasons. It motivated the workers and peasants. It channeled their anger towards the capitalists. And it vilified and demoralized the opponents of Communism.
Lenin also pushed the class consciousness theme in his speeches to
women, but with a new twist. On the occasion of the 1921
International Working Women’s Day, Lenin proclaimed that women
were doubly oppressed -- both because they were victims of
capitalism, and because they were slaves “overburdened with the
drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking and stultifying toil in
the kitchen and the family household.” (www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/mar/04.htm
)
“Drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking, and stultifying toil”? An apt description of life in the Gulag, perhaps, but not of housework in the relative comfort of the home.
But lack of historical accuracy did not deter the early feminists. Pick up a copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex or Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics. You will read exactly the same arguments: Men are the unending oppressors of women and marriage is a legalized form of slavery.
To achieve their vision of women’s liberation, the Matrons of Mischief pursued the age-old strategy of divide and conquer.
First, the Sisterhood canonized the strong, self-assured, independent woman. This ideal became government policy when the Clinton administration launched its “Girl Power” program and UNICEF later started its “Go Girl!” initiative. To this day, programs to prevent osteoporosis carry the slogan, “Strong Women, Strong Bones.”
But these campaigns carry an underlying message: “If you’re a strong woman, why would you ever need or want a man?”
And when the Marlboro Woman message didn’t completely sink in, feminists went to Plan B: male-bashing. Male chauvinist pig. Misogynist. Insensitive. Over-bearing. Abusive. Batterer. And many others.
At first, men thought the caricatures were funny. Then they tried to ignore them. But the end result has been to make men feel guilty and shameful.
The steady drum-beat of those inflammatory messages served to turn the battle of the sexes into a gender war.
The next step would be to conquer. And what was the target? Nothing less than the institution of marriage.
Robin Morgan, who would later become the editor of Ms. Magazine, referred to marriage as “A slavery-like practice.” Germaine Greer argued, “If women are to effect a significant amelioration in their condition, it seems obvious that they must refuse to marry.” Kate Millett extolled the destruction of the traditional family as “revolutionary or utopian.”
Persons who are interested in comprehending the scope of this
relentless assault should peruse the Heritage Foundation report, Why
Congress Should Ignore Radical Feminist Opposition to Marriage
(www.heritage.org/Research/Features/Marriage/bg1662.cfm
).
So what is the ultimate objective of this campaign of feminist
class consciousness? Surprisingly, feminists have made little effort
to disguise their goal. In her book Red Feminism, Kate Weigand makes
this stunning admission: “this book provides evidence to support
the belief that at least some Communists regarded the subversion of
the gender system as an integral part of the larger fight to overturn
capitalism.” (print.google.com/print/doc?isbn=0801864895
)
Subvert the gender system to overturn capitalism. Karl Marx would be pleased.
Rise of the Feminist Propaganda State
1. On April 20 last, sports pages around the country featured a picture of the Catherine Ndereba of Kenya with upraised arms, the “winner” of the Boston Marathon. She won not by virtue of being the fastest runner, but because the female runners had started the race 29 minutes before the men.
That day the Boston Globe ran an article carrying the headline,
“New Rule Engenders Equal Footing.” (www.boston.com/sports/specials/marathon/articles/2004/04/20/new_rule_engenders_equal_footing/
)
If giving women a half hour head-start is an “equal
footing,” then would someone please explain inequality to
me?
2. Fox News ran an article in late August about American military
women in Iraq (www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,130106,00.html
).
This was the lead sentence: “Today, equality of the sexes
includes dying in combat.”
The article highlighted the statistic that 24 female soldiers had died in Iraq. As of that time, one thousand American troops had perished -- 24 female and 976 male. If we do a little math, it turns out that only 2.4% of combat deaths are female. That’s equality of the sexes?
In both stories, the reporter massacred the obvious meaning of “equality.” But where was the outrage? The fact that no one murmured a word of protest says something about the mental anesthesia that grips our collective awareness.
In his recent book The War Against Men, Professor Richard Rise of Texas A&M University notes, “the female propaganda machine is relentless.” My last four columns have traced the outlines of this machine:
First, erect an elaborate mythology that begins with the Great
Myth of Patriarchy. Then embellish it with a series of urban legends
that “men have all the power,” “marriage is a
legalized form of slavery,” and so on. Remember that emotional
impact, not historical accuracy is what counts (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts100604.htm
).
Then introduce a gender perspective to the mass media. Portray men
as unworthy and women as entitled. Never allow men to be depicted as
victims. There’s nothing subtle here -- the key is the sheer
mind-numbing repetition of the Ms.-Information (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts092204.htm
).
Take the claim that women suffer from wage discrimination, for
instance. On the average, women are paid 76 cents for every dollar
that men earn. Groups such as the National Center for Policy Analysis
have found that when differences in work hours and other factors are
taken into account, the gender wage gap disappears (www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba392/
).
But during last week's presidential debate, one of the candidates couldn’t resist the urge to dust off the old canard that women receive unequal pay for equal work. Score one for the rad-fem PR campaign.
Third is the tactic of inciting gender conflict. V.I. Lenin
employed the concept of class consciousness to instigate class
warfare. As an offshoot of Marxist-Leninist thought, it is no
surprise that radical feminism now seeks to promote gender
consciousness in order to drive a wedge between men and women. Women
have been put upon all these years, so isn’t turn-about fair
play? (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts101304.htm
)
In the final phase of the propaganda campaign, everyday speech
becomes sprinkled with ideologically-loaded words like
“gender.” Male-derivative words like “chairman”
are banned, but female expressions like “Mother Earth”
continue in use. Once persons internalize the terminology and logic
of Fem-Speak, you could almost say they have become brainwashed
(www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts092804.htm
).
So when mainstream media outlets such as the Boston Globe and Fox News use the word “equality” to denote its exact opposite -- and nobody seems to mind -- you know that we’re in trouble.
Almost sixty years ago George Orwell wrote a prescient essay titled "Politics and the English Language." Deploring the way language was being used to manipulate and deceive, Orwell wrote: “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
Who can doubt that the feminist propaganda campaign has now reached Orwellian proportions? Welcome to the world of Fem-Prop.
Girlie-Man, Next Leader of the Free World?
It started back in July when the Democrat-controlled state legislature stalled the vote on a critical budget bill. The partisan foot-dragging prompted Gov. Schwarzenegger to chide the legislators for being “girlie-men.”
Despite howls of protest, Schwarzenegger refused to apologize. Then he repeated the charge in early August, this time tagging candidate John Kerry with the emasculating moniker.
By the time the Republican Convention rolled around, the California delegates – male and female -- had donned pins reading “Girlie Men” with a red slash through them. In his televised speech before millions, Schwarzenegger couldn’t resist repeating the now-famous phrase.
Worse, Kerry’s own supporters began to admit the truth of the
charge. In his New York Times column, “How Kerry Became a
Girlie-Man,” Frank Rich confessed, “It’s Mr.
Kerry’s behavior now, not what he did 35 years ago, that has
prevented his manliness from trumping the president.” (http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1207620/posts
)
And Michael Moore began accusing his fellow Democrats for being
“a bunch of crybabies” for complaining “how lousy a
candidate Kerry is and how he can’t win.”
It wasn’t for lack of trying that Senator Kerry couldn’t shake the caricature. Riding high after winning primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, he challenged President Bush to “Bring it on.” And when he rode that thundering Harley-Davidson onto Jay Leno’s set, the black-leather crowd was duly impressed.
Of course, Kerry didn’t help things when he admitted he intended to fight a “sensitive” war on terror. Or that he wanted to bring the terrorist threat down to the level of a mere “nuisance.”
But it’s the Teresa factor that really tests Senator Kerry’s cojones. As we all know, Teresa Heinz Kerry is worth more than $700 million, which prompted columnist Ann Coulter to deride Kerry as a “poodle to rich women.”
Let’s consider Teresa’s last name. Some political wives, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, choose to retain their maiden names. That’s fine.
But Heinz is not Teresa’s maiden name – it’s her ex-husband’s name. By calling herself Teresa Heinz Kerry, Teresa is revealing her loyalty to former Republican Senator John Heinz.
Naomi Wolf had this to say in a recent New York magazine article: “Teresa is publicly, subliminally cuckolding Kerry with the power of a dead man.” Strong words, indeed.
Most revealing, though, were Senator Kerry’s comments during the third presidential debate. Referring to the wives of the two candidates, moderator Bob Schieffer posed this question: “What is the most important thing that you’ve learned from these strong women?”
After paying tribute to his now-deceased mother, Senator Kerry had this to say:
“And my daughters and my wife are people who just are filled with that sense of what’s right, what’s wrong.”
Feminists believe that women are morally superior to men, so that comment played well with one of Kerry’s key constituencies. But what does that say about Mr. Kerry’s own moral compass?
And then things fell apart. Kerry admitted:
“They also kick me around. They keep me honest. They don’t let me get away with anything. I can sometimes take myself too seriously. They surely don’t let me do that.”
“Kick me around”? Last I heard, kicking is a form of domestic violence. If a female candidate ever said that, the cops would have shown up at her doorstep with an arrest warrant in hand.
Maybe Mr. Kerry didn’t mean that kicking comment literally. But still, is this the voice of a self-confident male who is in marital relationship with equal say and mutual respect? Or is this the whine of a hen-pecked husband?
If elected President, is this a man who will command respect from our allies and adversaries? Will they regard him as a man of his word?
This man John Kerry curtsies and bows to anyone wearing a skirt. And now he aspires to be the next leader of the most powerful nation on earth?
All Hail to the Panderer-in-Chief
It was a reprise of the timeless story of the two hopeful suitors competing for the affections of the fair maiden.
When the reluctant maiden declined to offer her hand to the first suitor, along came the second gallant knight, proffering more gifts than the first. Determined to not be outdone, the first man upped the ante. Eventually, both men had promised all their worldly possessions.
Pandering, of course, is the stock-in-trade of any political campaign. Still, it was impressive to watch the two presidential candidates pulling out all the stops to woo the female vote.
Of the two campaigns, the Bush people devised the more creative strategy. They took Bush’s middle initial and, like Michael Jordan peddling his footwear, turned it into a brand name: “W Stands for Women.”
This is the first time in memory that a presidential candidate has linked his persona – his own name -- with a particular voting block. But why women? Why not “W Stands for White Men”?
In contrast to Bush’s name brand approach, the Kerry campaign used the more traditional tactic: convince people how awful things are, and then promise them a brighter future.
But attracting the white female vote women is a daunting task. After all, how do you reach out to persons who already have the most rights, protections, and discretionary income of any group in history? What more can you promise to the manicure-and-hairdo set?
So the Kerry campaign set out to test the limits of reinventing the truth.
John Kerry’s condescending message was this: “Things are actually much worse for women than you realize. If you vote for my opponent, you will soon be sent back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.”
But it was the wage equity issue where candidate Kerry was
downright insulting to women. Everyone knows that persons who work 41
hours a week (which is the average for men) are going to get higher
wages than their female co-workers who clock only 32 hours (www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=56
).
And it’s obvious that men who work in the more dangerous jobs
– like construction and asbestos removal – should be paid
more than women who work in safe, climate-controlled environments,
such as school teachers and telephone operators.
But by harping on the so-called “wage disparity” issue – while offering no specifics on how to solve a problem that doesn’t even exist – Senator Kerry revealed a disdainful regard for women’s intelligence.
Soon the pandering became so obvious that women began to complain. After all, we live in the Age of the Empowered Woman. And empowered women don’t need anything that a man might have to offer.
So in late September columnist Cathy Young, returning to the
courtship theme, decried that the two political parties are treating
women “with a condescension that, in a better world, would cause
a suitor to be sent packing.” (www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/27/a_new_condescension_greets_women_voters/)
Both political parties took note. Neither of them was willing to blink first, but a solution had to be devised. And so it happened.
It occurred during the third presidential debate. Here’s the question that moderator Bob Schieffer asked the two candidates: “What is the most important thing you’ve learned from these strong women?” In case anyone missed the point, Schieffer repeated the “strong women” phrase two more times.
Within days, the “strong women” mantra was appearing in the stump speeches of the candidates’ wives. This way, if women felt guilty about all the political bouquets being thrown their way, they could comfort themselves with the knowledge that indeed, they were “strong women.” How Orwellian.
With both candidates going to such an effort to target their messages to the female voter, you’d think that women would have had no trouble making a decision. But through the very end of the campaign, 62% of all undecided voters were female.
Privileged or victim? Underpaid or compensated fairly? Strong or in need of constant blandishments by powerful men?
With so many fibs and half-truths floating around, it was no wonder that women had trouble making up their minds.
NASCAR Dads and Soccer Moms Join Forces, But at What Cost?
Indeed, white men represent a sizeable chunk of the U.S.
electorate -- 45 million voters to be exact. Back in 2000, 60% of
them voted for George W., while only 36% gave the nod to Al Gore
(www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/epolls/US/P000.html
).
Those additional 11 million male voters spelled the critical
difference for Mr. Bush in that tight contest.
But Mr. Bush attracted only 49% of the white female vote in that electoral nail-biter. So soon after he was sworn in as President, wooing the women became a key element of the Bush re-election strategy.
That meant that, with the exception of the abortion issue, the Bush campaign was reluctant to ruffle the feathers of the radical feminists. As a result, the Gender Warriors left over from the Clinton Administration continued to have free rein throughout the federal government.
And that’s exactly what they did:
Most disappointing was the area of child support reform. Early in his term, President Bush brought in fatherhood advocate Wade Horn to head the Administration on Children and Families. But Horn’s program was co-opted by the advocates of responsible fatherhood– “responsible” being a code word for more draconian child support.
Those developments set the stage for the 2004 presidential race.
Despite Celinda Lake’s dire warning, the Democratic Party was not willing to risk offending the Sisterhood. So the 2004 Democratic platform flatly ignored the issues of men, while kow-towing to such feminist demands as protecting abortion rights and remedying the so-called gender “wage gap.”
And what about the Republicans? Not surprisingly, their gender message also targeted the female vote. Millions of placards, lapel pins, and bumper stickers told us, as if we didn’t get it the first time, “W Stands for Women.”
In the end, 62% of white males and 55% of white females voted for
George W. Bush. Two core constituencies -- NASCAR Dads and Soccer
Moms – came together on November 2 to re-elect President Bush.
(www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html
).
This new-found coalition made all the difference in that closely-fought presidential race. But Republican glee should be tempered by a sobering fact: their victory came at the price of neglecting the issues of white males. This is what I mean:
What does that portend for the future of families, which create the foundation of society?
Meanwhile back in Massachusetts, a small band of NASCAR Dads put together a statewide ballot initiative. The initiative asked voters whether they believed fathers should get shared custody of their children in the event of divorce.
That common-sense idea was overwhelmingly approved by 85% of
voters (http://fathersandfamilies.org/site/legislation.php
).
In contrast, candidate John Kerry managed to garner only 63% of the
popular vote for the presidential race in his home state.
One of these days, some smart politician is going to come along and will realize that championing the issues of men, as well as women, is not only a winning campaign strategy, it’s also good for America.
The Untold Story of Betty Friedan
In the book, Friedan claimed she had lived in a “comfortable concentration camp” of New York City suburbia. And for years afterwards, Friedan claimed that her awareness of woman’s rights did not coalesce until the late 1950s when she sat down to write the book in her stately mansion in Grand View-on-Hudson.
But based on his analysis of Friedan’s personal papers at the Smith College library, historian Daniel Horowitz has dramatically refuted that claim.
In his book, Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique, Horowitz acknowledges that Friedan had a brilliant mind, was a prolific writer, and pursued her cause with a single-minded devotion.
But Horowitz also reveals a dark side to Friedan’s social activism: Betty Friedan was a long-time participant in the American Communist movement.
Here is Betty Friedan’s true story (page numbers from the Horowitz book are in parentheses):
Horowitz also documents Friedan’s numerous relationships with Communist Party operatives, including her romantic involvement with physicist David Bohm while a student at Berkeley (p. 92). Bohm would later invoke the Fifth Amendment while testifying in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and leave the United States shortly thereafter.
It is important to note that Horowitz did not intend to write his book as an exposé. Indeed, throughout the book, Horowitz is clearly sympathetic to Friedan’s feminist objectives.
But this much is clear: beginning in 1940, Betty Friedan became a committed and articulate advocate for the American socialist movement.
It is true that after 1952, her views become less strident. but Friedan’s basic outlook still reflected the socialist worldview of capitalist oppression and female victimization.
Take this quote from Frederick Engel’s famous 1884 essay, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State:
“The emancipation of women becomes possible only when women are enabled to take part in production on a large, social scale, and when domestic duties require their attention only to a minor degree.”
Engel was saying that equality of the sexes would only happen when women abandoned their homes and become worker-drones.
Friedan copied that sentence into her notes sometime around 1959, while she was doing her research for The Feminine Mystique (p. 201).
That revolutionary passage would become the inspiration and guiding principle for Friedan’s book, and eventually for the entire feminist movement.
It's Boo-Hoo Time at Abortion Central
The 2004 presidential election was not just a setback for the Democratic Party. Candidate Kerry repeatedly promised to appoint pro-abortion judges to the Supreme Court and to eliminate the so-called gender “wage gap.” So Kerry’s defeat also represented a repudiation of the rad-fem agenda.
Of course, the feminist Mafia tried to put a good face on the debacle. Ann Lewis, editor of the Democratic party’s Women’s Vote Center, consoled the party faithful: “Congratulations for all you did: the telephone calls, letter writing and contributions, the woman-to-woman conversations and door-to-door canvasses.”
Over at the Planned Parenthood Federation, the ladies were in an absolute tizzy. Already counting the days until they lose their precious right to abortion-on-demand, they vowed to step up the work of its Post-Roe Service Delivery Task Force. Co-chair Chris Charbonneau advised, “Women should lobby state legislators to eradicate laws that date from the 1800s and early 1900s and that call abortion murder.”
N.O.W. president Kim Gandy issued a press release liberally
sprinkled with bold-face demands: “We must fight back against
Bush’s regressive policies on every issue…We must demand
our senators block every Supreme Court nominee.” [www.now.org/issues/election/elections2004/041103letter.html
]
“Fight back” on “every issue”? What is this, Mrs. Gandy, guerilla warfare?
To gauge the mood of the female electorate, a group of
women’s organizations called Votes for Women 2004 polled 1,000
voters. The results were released this past week [www.votesforwomen2004.org/Election%20Poll%20Analysis%2011-04.pdf
]
-- and the news was grim.
Compared to 2000, support for democrat Kerry declined among a broad range of women: white women, married women, and older women. Even working women were less likely to vote for Kerry in 2004 than Gore in 2000. So much for all those women being kept down by the Glass Ceiling.
Only 2% of persons said that lesbian and gay rights were on their list of top concerns. I guess the N.O.W. is going to have to retool its euphemistically-named campaign for “equal marriage.”
But what most rankled the Sisterhood was the finding that only 2% of all respondents cited abortion as the issue that made them decide whom to vote for President. And 14% of women actually said the candidates were too focused on the abortion controversy. In other words, abortion has become a losing issue.
The poll found that many did not believe that women’s issues were adequately addressed during the campaigns. But now that you mention it, the poll didn’t bother to ask whether the campaigns adequately addressed the issues of men – I wonder why not.
But it was the analysis of the “gender gap” issue which reveals how the feminist movement relies on Soviet-style propaganda to advance its neo-Marxist agenda. The notion of the gender gap has been used for years to browbeat politicians into passing pro-feminist legislation.
But on November 2, the gender gap reversed itself. That day, 55% of males voted for the Republicans, while females were almost evenly split -- 51% favored Kerry and 48% gave the nod to Bush.
Radical feminism survives by churning out an unendless series of
myths and falsehoods. So predictably, Feminist Majority president
Eleanor Smeal issued a press release this past week with the
misleading headline, “Gender Gap and Women’s Votes Pivotal
in Close 2004 Election.” [www.feminist.org/pdfs/gender_gap_release.pdf
]
But an honest summary would have said the exact opposite: “Men’s Votes Pivotal in Close 2004 Election.”
So now the Sisterhood finds itself on the losing side of its own issues, is witnessing the widescale erosion of its voting base, and must now resort to dis-information tactics to staunch the exodus.
Anyone have a hankie?
Patriarchal Power or Marxist Mischief?
For wife Maria Shriver is known to be of the liberal Democratic persuasion. Sure enough, Maria put Arnold in the doghouse -- and that meant no sex for a fortnight [cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2004/10/19/676764-ap.html].
According to socialist-feminist theory, a vast anti-female conspiracy known as the “patriarchy” controls the social order. When you ask a feminist to explain that mind-boggling statement, she invariably points to the fact that the great majority of elected officials are male. And according to the Marxist analysis, those callous male patriarchs look out only for their own kind, leaving women neglected and downtrodden.
But when we examine the record, a different picture emerges. Take our federal entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. All three of these programs were conceived of and enacted by men. They are paid for mostly by male taxpayers.
And who are the principal beneficiaries of this governmental largesse? In all three cases, it’s women. Under Social Security and Medicare, women come out ahead because they outlive men. In the case of Medicaid, women edge out the men because of eligibility criteria that favor custodial parents, who in most cases are mothers.
Medical research reveals a similar pattern. Beginning in the 1970s, Senator Edward Kennedy became a tireless advocate for breast cancer research. As a result, the National Institutes of Health now budgets three times more money for breast cancer research than for prostate cancer [www.nci.nih.gov/public/factbk97/varican.htm].
Then add the Violence Against Women Act, aggressive child support enforcement policies, and sexual harassment laws. The conclusion is clear: chivalry is alive and well within the halls of Congress. Our elected patriarchs unabashedly cater to the needs of women.
But the public arena is not the only venue where the matriarchy reigns. Women often rule the roost at home, as well.
And it’s not just Gov. Schwarzenegger who cowers in the face of matriarchal might. During the recent election campaign, Laura Bush recounted how husband George was ordered by mother Barbara to take his feet off the furniture – a story told much to the delight of her female audiences. And we know who wears the pants in the Heinz-Kerry household [www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts102704.htm].
It’s true that in traditional families, the husband was considered the head of the family. But appearances can be deceiving. Consider the old saying, “The man is the head of the house, but the woman is the neck. And it’s the neck that turns the head.”
In truth, the husband’s role can be compared to the Queen of England. Even though the Queen is the titular head of the government, her role is more ceremonial than substantive.
There are those who argue that the sexes have always been equal, they only exercised their power in different ways. David Shackleton, writing in the July-September issue of Everyman magazine, explains that men’s power in the political, economic, and physical arenas has always been balanced by women’s power in the moral, emotional, and sexual realms.
Teresa Riordan makes a similar point in her recent book, Inventing Beauty. Surveying women’s use of false bosoms, push-up bras, and lipstick, Riordan argues that women “have shrewdly, cannily, and knowingly deployed artifice in their ceaseless battle to captivate the inherently roving eye of the male.” [oddnews.orb6.com/stories/nm/20041014/oukoe_life_feminisim.php]
So much for the stereotype of the powerless female.
It can be said that “patriarchy” is one of the most potent words in the English language. Its mere mention induces spasms of guilt and shame in men. Among women, the word incites anger and vindictiveness.
That powerful mix of emotions is the fuel that has allowed radical feminists to advance their cause. To this day, the Sisterhood talks about the patriarchy as if it is still going strong, inflicting misery on all those hapless women.
For the last 30 years or so, the neo-Marxists have relentlessly pummelled the frail strawman of patriarchy. After a while you begin to wonder, is their agenda to promote gender equality and reconciliation? Or do they have something more nefarious in mind?
The Grinches Who Would Steal Marriage
As early as 1971, the Declaration of Feminism declared war on this bedrock institution: "Marriage has existed for the benefit of men; and has been a legally sanctioned method of control over women....We must work to destroy it.”
So radical feminists sounded their hysterical alarm, and began
their relentless assault on this sacred union (www.heritage.org/Research/Features/Marriage/bg1662.cfm).
Some feminists went so far as to compare marriage with illicit sex work. Andrea Dworkin warned the sisterhood that “Like prostitution, marriage is an institution that is extremely oppressive and dangerous for women.” Attorney Catherine MacKinnon issued this analysis: “Feminism stresses the indistinguishability of prostitution, marriage, and sexual harassment.”
In recent years, however, a broad coalition has emerged to rescue and resuscitate this beleaguered institution. Who are the lead characters on the stage of this Christmas pageant?
In Act I, we see the government coming to the rescue. Beginning this past January, DHHS Secretary Tommy Thompson began to announce a series of initiatives to promote healthy marriages.
But Steven Baskerville reveals that only one-quarter of the funds
are actually targeted at improving marriages(http://users.rcn.com/baskerville/gov_as_family_therapist.htm
).
The remaining amount goes to child support enforcement programs,
designed to wring more money out of the pockets of low-income,
unemployed fathers.
Act II, enter the marriage counselors, the marital Mr. and Mrs. Fix-Its. But are they hurting more than they are helping?
William Dougherty, a family therapist at the University of
Minnesota, would answer that question with an emphatic
“yes.” Dougherty accuses some marriage counselors of
actually pushing for a break-up withcomments such as, “You
deserve better.” And critizing the pro-female bias of many
therapists, he notes that “men also get seriously disadvantaged
in some couples therapy.” (www.smartmarriages.com/hazardous.html
)
But don’t lose hope, because the curtain is about to rise on Act III.
On cue, here come the marriage enrichment programs, those groups that would charge $500 to help you find your marital bliss.
The lead actor in the marriage enrichment business is an outfit
called Smart Marriages. This past summer, a Smart Marriages
conference featured a speech that answered the question, “What
are Men For, Anyway?” (www.smartmarriages.com/pittman.keynote.html
)
The conference brochure included this insulting description:
“One more time, with feeling and through the movies, we'll
explore men's roles and their usefulness. Or lack of.”
And if that’s not disturbing enough, pay a visit to the website of John Van Epp, PhD at www.nojerks.com/. You will see that Dr. Epp conducts seminars on “How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk.” Last I heard, Dr. Epp had no plans to offer a program on “How to Avoid Marrying a Bitch.”
Fortunately, there is at least one marriage enhancement program
that is not afraid to present a male-friendly perspective. Secrets of
Married Men (www.secretsofmarriedmen.com/
)
offers practical advice on how men can cope with the many stressors
and demands of marriage.
But the sad fact is, most marriage enrichment programs are designed for -- and pander to -- women. They convey the message that at best, men are irrelevant, and at worst, men are “the problem” in bad marriages.
So as the curtain falls on our Yuletide pageant, we will ask ourselves, which is worse: The Grinches who demonize and disparage marriage? Or the Grinches who, in the name of reviving marriage, demonize and disparage men?
The Unfolding AIDS Scandal at the UN
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
As we know, there is no vaccine or drug that can stop AIDS. But
there is one proven strategy. That approach, which is backed by the
Bush Administration, is known as "ABC." A stands for Abstinence, B
means Be faithful, and C refers to Condoms [www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2003/wt030406.html
].
The ABC concept has been implemented in Uganda over the past 15 years. There, a massive public education campaign was mounted. Billboard signs admonished would-be adulterers, "No Grazing." And religious organizations were tapped to play key roles (sorry about that, ACLU).
The results were impressive: the HIV infection rate in Uganda
dropped from 15% to 5%. In 1991, 21% of pregnant women had the deadly
HIV virus. Ten years later, that figure had dropped to 6%
[www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0415roberts.html
.
But the experts at UNAIDS don't believe in the ABCs. Why? Because they had a strategy with a name that appealed to erotomaniacs everywhere: Safe Sex. The Safe Sex advocates argue that since sexual activity is a fact of life, the best we can do is offer condoms.
But two years ago the truth began to emerge.
Speakers at the 2002 Barcelona AIDS conference began to openly
admit the failure of the Safe Sex approach. The UN Population
Division offered this dispiriting assessment: "Much effort has been
spent on promoting the prophylactic use of condoms as part of AIDS
prevention. However, over the years, the condom has not become more
popular among couples." [nationalreview.com/comment/comment-sylva073002.asp
]
Why did Safe Sex fail? Well, knowing that the condom failure rate is 15%, ask yourself this question: If an intimate partner of yours had AIDS, would you trust your life to a condom?
And why didn't the UN embrace the proven ABC strategy? The answer: it's a little too....puritanical. Abstinence is something a Bible-thumping preacher might push -- but not the respectable public-health types at the UNAIDS.
If the gospel of Safe Sex didn't sell, why not try the orthodoxy of The Sisterhood?
So just last week the UNAIDS published its report, "Women and
AIDS" [www.unaids.org/wad2004/EPI_1204_pdf_en/Chapter2_women+aids_en.pdf
].
If you are interested in getting a glimpse into the radical feminist
mindset, you will find it there. You will learn how women are subject
to discrimination, domestic violence, and all manner of mistreatment
- at the hands of their male chauvinist oppressors, of course.
For example, the report tells us the amazing fact that "women and girls provide the bulk of home-based care" -- but what does that have to do with stopping AIDS? Feminists who believe that all heterosexual intercourse is a form of rape will be heartened by the document's sweeping claim that "Women and girls often lack the power to abstain from sex."
And what if you are a woman who is looking for concrete suggestions on how to avoid becoming infected with the deadly HIV virus? Don't go to UNAIDS, because you will find nothing there in the way of practical advice.
If fact you may become convinced that since women are so utterly powerless in the face of global patriarchy, taking any action to protect yourself would be futile.
Every day, 8,500 men and women die from the modern Black Death that we call AIDS. Most of those deaths could be avoided if the UN took a practical approach that is based on science, not ideology. And pitting women against men is hardly the answer.
The UN is engulfed in a growing array of scandals: the Rwanda slaughter that left 800,000 dead; sexual abuse by peacekeeping forces in the Congo; the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Then there's the ever-deepening Iraqi oil-for-food scandal - just this week we learned that Kofi Annan's son Kojo was on the take to the tune of $2,500 a month.
Now add to that list, the devastating toll of the AIDS epidemic.
Kofi's Resignation Won't Cure the AIDS Epidemic
Take the report, Women and AIDS, which was released by the UNAIDS
two weeks ago [www.unaids.org/wad2004/EPI_1204_pdf_en/Chapter2_women+aids_en.pdf
].
UNAIDS is the United Nations program charged with stopping the HIV
threat.
The past 20 years I have held a front row seat in the unfolding AIDS drama. I have seen persons being handed the death sentence that they had contracted the HIV virus. I have witnessed the terrified look of AIDS patients coming in to check their plummeting CD counts.
This is a disease that plays for keeps. If we are going to beat AIDS, we need to use an approach that is based on hard science, not trendy ideology. And that’s where the UNAIDS report goes wrong.
The first step in stopping AIDS is compiling accurate statistics
on the spread of the disease. But if you look at the 2004 UNAIDS
annual report, you will find the HIV infection rates for women and
children -- but not for men [www.unaids.org/bangkok2004/GAR2004_pdf/GAR2004_table_countryestimates_en.pdf
].
Is that because the lives of men count for less?
Last week Cliff Kincaid revealed how the UNAIDS has been cooking
its statistics. For example, they once reported that 15% of the
population in Kenya had HIV. But later the UNAIDS cut that number to
just 6.7% [www.aim.org/aim_column/2261_0_3_0_C/
]
Bottom line: All those impressive-looking AIDS statistics coming out of the UNAIDS are suspect, especially the ones that apply to men.
The Women and AIDS report contains a number of demonstrable falsehoods. Here are two of them:
1. “Men tend to have better access to AIDS care and
treatment…through drug trials.” Now go to the website
clinicaltrials.gov
,
which lists all the AIDS studies sponsored by the National Institutes
of Health, and you will see that the reverse is true.
2. “Violence against women is a worldwide scourge, and a
massive human rights and public challenge.” But Linda Kelly
recently wrote in the Florida State University Law Review, “Over
the last 25 years, leading sociologists have repeatedly found that
men and women commit violence at similar rates.” [www.papa-help.ch/downloads/kelly.pdf
]
But the problem with the UNAIDS publication is not limited to its factual errors. Of greater concern is that the report sets up the boogeyman of patriarchy, and then casually lays the blame for the epidemic at the feet of men.
The report lectures ad nauseum, “men tend to hold the upper hand” and “the balance of power in many relationships is tilted in favor of men.” But a recent Washington Post editorial, “A Female Pandemic?,” took exception to this one-sided approach, because “high-risk groups are stigmatized, and hence often ignored.”
The bias of the UN report is confirmed by its refusal to admit that women also contribute to the spread of AIDS. For example, the report never admits the fact that one-third of all heterosexual transmission of HIV is female to male.
Nor does the report reveal the slightest concern with HIV-infected prostitutes, those Typhoid Marys who infect hundreds of male partners in a single month. Maybe that’s because radical feminists have no problem with women selling their bodies, just as long as they are paid equitably.
The UN report is not only palpably unfair to men; it’s also
dangerous to women. The report claims, “Women and girls often
lack the power to abstain from sex.” [www.washtimes.com/commentary/20041205-123305-3151r.htm
Once you start preaching the mantra of female powerlessness, you are telling individual women there is nothing they can do to stop the spread of AIDS. That message is not only perniciously false, it is the hallmark of the totalitarian mindset.
Over the past three decades, feminists have developed a well-honed strategy: Make women feel angry and fearful, induce guilt and shame in men, and create an environment of hysteria.
On November 30 Peter Piot, director of the UNAIDS, came to Washington, DC to unveil the Women and AIDS report and to sound the drum-beat of female victimization. But US Ambassador Randall Tobias, who spoke at the same meeting, would have none of that.
It was good that Ambassador Tobias ignored the UNAIDS report. But side-stepping this radical feminist screed is not enough. The House Republicans and the Bush administration need to come out and repudiate the Women and AIDS document, a bonanza of gender bigotry.