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, I'm beginning to
reconsider.
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 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.
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 -- it's the gutsy and shocking must-read
of the politically incorrect for 2006.
