As Long As We're Talking about Modern Shibboleths

Let's talk about men and women being equal in every way:

The Problems of Women in Combat – From a Female Combat Vet
:

Because most women wouldn’t even qualify to be in the military if they didn’t have separate standards. Men and women are different, but those pushing women into combat don’t want to admit that truth. They huff and puff about how women can do whatever men can do, but it just ain’t so. We’re built differently, and it doesn’t matter that one particular woman could best one particular man. The best woman is still no match for the best man, and most of the men she’d be fireman-carrying off the battlefield will be at least 100 lbs heavier than her with their gear on.

Read the whole thing.

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

Has the Sexual Revolution Been Good for Women?

This is an interesting overview of some of the gender issues in culture and politics:

Of all the political gambits that ought to be torn from the playbook once and for all, the idea that a national “war on women” is afoot has got to top the list. It’s an ideological whopper that demands more scrutiny than it has so far gotten — because underneath it are solid rocks of myth, especially myths about the sexual revolution and its real fallout. Let’s turn over a few of these to see what facts they hide.

(Via SoCon Or Bust.)

In Memoriam

With Mike Wallace's recent passing here is an opportunity for a two-fer: a remembrance of Mike Wallace and of Margaret Sanger:

Mike Wallace's classic interview with Margaret Sanger makes the rounds after Wallace's death...:

Margaret Sanger was many things admirable: a vibrant personality, a brilliant organizer, a canny reader of the temperature of the times, a woman who built powerful institutions in a man’s world. But she was also many things ugly and even despicable: an egotist who frequently clashed with others; a free-love advocate who had a dizzying number of affairs and who hurt many men as a result; and a eugenicist who argued that “birth control is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defective.”

Read the whole thing.

(Via New Advent World Watch.)

Thought and Prejudice

In this instance I'm struck by the reflexive approval of most, if not all, things homosexual. When I started on a reasoned argument (rant) about why homosexual unions should not be elevated to equality with marriage, my daughters, bless them, were embarrassed and demanded we stop talking about the subject. It didn't help this was in a public place (a restaurant for Sunday Brunch).

Their aversion to disagreements with the homosexual agenda puzzles me. They have or are getting a University education. Shouldn't reasoned disagreement be the heart and soul of their intellectual life? Even if they strongly disagree with me, I'm wanting reasoned arguments and facts. They seem to recognize no value to these things independent of achieving the results they have chosen to endorse. Is this how far the intellectual rigour has fallen at Universities?

Ok, rant mode off. Here is an interesting article about how research itself is produced and disseminated in a doctrinaire fashion to promote the ideology of the day:

Who could possibly have predicted this?:

Research showing the risks of lesbian and gay parenting is ignored in the race to make a political case

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Are We Being Manipulated

by the MSM when it comes to gender?

Down the Memory Hole

This Classical Values post, and the video below, raise some good points about the disparate treatment of men in post-modern Western culture.  Add to this disproportionate differences in homelessness and suicide, the disproportionately greater expenditures on women's medical issues, and you have a sense that if these factoids didn't favor women, they would be considered a

Read the whole thing.

(Via Lex Communis.)

Lies, Damned Lies

and Statistics, in that order. I blame today's outburst on Mark Shea's particularly excellent output today.

Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship - ChronicleReview.com:

By CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS

"Harder to kill than a vampire." That is what the sociologist Joel Best calls a bad statistic. But, as I have discovered over the years, among false statistics the hardest of all to slay are those promoted by feminist professors. Consider what happened recently when I sent an e-mail message to the Berkeley law professor Nancy K.D. Lemon pointing out that the highly praised textbook that she edited, Domestic Violence Law (second edition, Thomson/West, 2005), contained errors.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It.)

Palinphobia

(Look it up.) As long as I'm not commenting on affairs American, here's Domenico's musings on the Palin thing:

Sarah Palin and the end of feminism: "

I realize now I think I haven’t written anything about Sarah Palin— at least here; I’ve been very vocal on the subject on Twitter and Plurk— but I will say that I think she’s the best thing to happen to this election season. It is evidence of the apathy about the whole GOP slate until this point that both Republicans and Democrats have reacted to her like she’s running for President, not Vice-President.

What’s so exciting about Sarah? Is it that she’s good-looking? I suppose that’s part of it. But I think the greater part is that she represents so much of the hopes and dreams of conservatives (and the fears of libverals). She has a normal American family: five kids, a rugged blue-collar husband, beautiful kids, a son in the Army, a life lived open to all life, even when it’s a greater burden than expected. In her politics, too, she is a candidate unlike many we’ve seen in recent years: pro-life, fiscally and socially conservative, opposed to corruption in government no matter the party involved. Even in the so-called Troopergate scandal, Palin is accused of using the power of her office to remove a law enforcement officer about whom she has personal knowledge of his alleged acts, despite the niceties of regulations. In other words, even if she’s broken the ethics rules—which is by no means certain at this point—it’s an action with which most Americans can sympathize.

Meanwhile, many folks are trying to understand the reaction to Sarah Palin, from both sides of the aisle. Genevieve Kineke, an expert on both authentic Christian feminism as well as its deformed secular counterpart, says that what enrages the Left is not her motherhood, but the fact she doesn’t reject fatherhood. The piece is entitled ‘The End of Feminism.’

Genevieve considers that the aim of radical feminism over the years has been to undermine fatherhood.

The motherhood of Mary is instructive for all mothers, in that she received the seed of God and that she restored our relationship with the Creator, thus placing motherhood within a constellation of family of relationships. The enemies of motherhood strategically attack it — not primarily because of its capacity for life but because of the truth it contains: motherhood is the bridge to fatherhood, and fatherhood is the icon of God Himself. The war on motherhood is of a transitive nature: fatherhood is the true enemy.

And so, when we are presented with the image of a woman who not only does not choose to take the life of a child the world considers flawed and a burden on society—despite their vaunted rhetoric of choice—but she also does not present the men in her life as obstacles. Instead she shows reliance upon her husband. Contrast that with feminist icon Hilary Clinton: Is there anyone who seriously doesn’t believe that Hilary has actual contempt for Bill? It’s a given in the national political narrative that their marriage is a convenient sham left in place for the sake of her career.

Pope Benedict XVI long ago diagnosed this particular disease, when as Cardinal Ratzinger, he said that the root cause of nearly every ill facing humanity is a crisis of fatherhood. After all, at its root, wasn’t that the crisis in the Garden of Eden? A crisis of trust in the father? A crisis of fatherhood that transmitted itself to Adam’s own children, Cain and Abel.

I guess this goes a bit far afield from the political discussion about Sarah Palin, but her candidacy does raise some interesting questions on larger issues.

Photo by er3465.

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(Via Bettnet.com - Musings of Domenico Bettinelli.)

Just So We Hit All the Sore Spots

Here's a post (via Free Mark Steyn!) that notes the progress of the liberal project (as Mark Shea says so often) from "what could it hurt?" to "how were we supposed to know?"

ProWomanProLife » Who’s laughing now?: "

Feb
08
2008

Who’s laughing now?

Published by Brigitte Pellerin at 3:15 pm under Feminism, Policy, Politics, Women's rights

Remember when we were debating same-sex marriage some of us tried to point out that once you start messing with the definition of marriage there’s no telling where it’ll end? That polygamy would be next? Because once you decide that a marriage is simply the recognition of a loving relationship, there’s no reason to get hung up on the number of people involved in said loving relationship?

I remember. We were laughed at. We were told tut-tut, of course not, because polygamy is illegal.

Oh yeah?

Hundreds of GTA Muslim men in polygamous marriages — some with a harem of wives — are receiving welfare and social benefits for each of their spouses, thanks to the city and province, Muslim leaders say.

Mumtaz Ali, president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, said wives in polygamous marriages are recognized as spouses under the Ontario Family Law Act, providing they were legally married under Muslim laws abroad.

“Polygamy is a regular part of life for many Muslims,” Ali said yesterday. “Ontario recognizes religious marriages for Muslims and others.”

[…]

However, city and provincial officials said legally a welfare applicant can claim only one spouse. Other adults living in the same household can apply for welfare independently.

Once again, I wonder where the feminists are… Why aren’t they up in arms about this? Do they think polygamy is good for women?"

(Via ProWomanProLife.)