It's about time that we probe an assumption that has insidiously worked
its way into our culture -- the notion that women are the guardians of
goodness and grace, while all those male neanderthals are emissaries
from the dark side.
I will freely admit that men indulge in a number of vices, those
including gluttony, greed, and of course forgetting to put the toilet
seat down. Growing up in the halcyon days of the Patriarchy, I was
treated to my fair share of ribald humor. But nothing quite prepared me
for what I saw a couple weeks ago.
Strolling at the local mall I spotted a young lass, maybe 13 years old.
She was sporting a white T-shirt with an unusual picture. The shirt
depicted a girl cold-cocking a boy. Above the how-to diagram were etched
these words: "How to Drop a Boyfriend."
For the last decade, we've been hearing the mantra, "There's no excuse
for domestic violence." So how could anyone even think of wearing a
shirt like that?
Of course the Lavender Ladies have long scorned traditional notions of
feminine virtue. In her book Feminist Morality, Virginia Held haughtily
dismisses the ideal of the unselfish, nurturing, and non-aggressive
woman as "the whole female stereotype."
So now we must ask, What happens to common morality when selfishness,
aggressiveness, and all-around oafishness are held up as the cultural
ideal for newly-liberated women?
I'm not going to dwell on the abortion issue. That's because no one, not
even the most rabid feminist, will claim that baby-killing is a virtuous
action. Their excuse is that we must allow abortion so as to not put a
crimp on a woman's lifestyle options.
Let's agree to put that one in the "selfish" category.
And what about our epidemic of hyper-aggressive females?
Our society is reeling from stories of sexually-assertive school
teachers who prey on their male students. We find it incomprehensible
that teenage girls would form into gangs and lurk in the alleyways. And
research
now shows that female-initiated partner violence is more common
than the male variety.
Think of Xena the Warrior Princess with premenstrual syndrome.
Which brings me to another one of my favorite T-shirts: "Girls Lie."
Our society has become inundated with so many feminist prevarications
that it has difficulty separating truth from falsehood.
Here goes: the oppressiveness of marriage, the stifling effects of
childrearing, the gender wage gap, the epidemic of domestic violence
against women, the exclusion of women from medical research, the
shortchanging of schoolgirls, the catch-all insensitivity to women's
needs, and much, much more.
Which makes you wonder, How did the Nervous Nellies ever get through
college without a Take Back the Night rally to steady themselves?
This is my personal favorite: "Women have always been the primary
victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in
combat." That insight comes to us by way of HRC.
Now visit any of the radical feminist websites - they seethe with
anti-male diatribes and epithets. I've seen outright bigotry in my life,
but nothing that quite compares with the rants of Andrea Dworkin,
Catherine McKinnon, or Kate Millett.
Then there's the fairness gene - or lack thereof.
Feminists squawk and fuss about "gender equality," but once men become
an endangered species on college campuses, all of a sudden the message
shifts to "female empowerment." When men die five years sooner than
women, why does the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services fund
Centers for Excellence for the ladies, but not the lads?
And if the women's libbers want true equality, why aren't they burning
their bras so they can win the "right" to trek over to the post office
on their 18th birthday to register for government service?
And now for the dirty little secret - feminists are the most intolerant
people on the earth!
Last week the flap was over the
Screen Goddess calendar that was adorned
with 16 IT vixens. Naturally the Champions of
Choice became apoplectic. "Girls are often excluded from the possibility
of the profession by its cultural maleness," one woman shrieked.
And remember Larry Summers? He said there was a slight possibility that
discrimination was not the reason for the small numbers of female
physicists and rocket scientists. Even though he became a serial
apologizer, the red-fems tarred and feathered the poor man and sent him
packing from his Harvard U. presidency!
There's a lesson to be learned here: You can never appease a feminist.
Napoleon Bonaparte once observed, "Female virtue has been held in
suspicion from the beginning of the world, and ever will be." That's why
as feminism gains, virtue wanes.
Carey Roberts has
been published frequently in the Washington Times, Townhall.com,
LewRockwell.com, ifeminists.net, Intellectual Conservative, and
elsewhere. He is a staff reporter for the New Media Alliance.
