Hyper tied up, today, but may I strongly recommend you take 20 minutes (I know, that’s long in blog-reading) to watch Dr. Helen explore the values and victimhoods of the modern feminist movement as it exists on college campuses. She speaks with a spokesperson for (NeW), the Network of enlightened Women, which works to counter the extreme rhetoric of these collegiate feminists, and their nearly all-encompassing grasp within the colleges, with little or no organized opposition.
Really interesting, really timely. Campus-feminism is the Big Kahuna of the School of Grievance-and-Victim-ology, and they have become accustomed to brooking no dissent. Students who disagree with professors and literature preaching the feminist hard-line have learned to either pretend otherwise or to simply shut up and try to stay out of the destructive line-of-fire.
As we have seen with Sarah Palin, conservatives who dare to voice a different point of view about what defines both feminism and womenhood must “be destroyed,” and college students can risk their whole collegiate careers when they challenge the status quo. This organization, NeW, seeks to bring a sense of “balance” to the topic, celebrating both the opportunities open to women, but also the value and validity of motherhood as a lifechoice.
They’re also talking about the destructive aspects of hooking up, and the quaint notion of “respect” and “gentlemen.”
“Ladies” and “gentlemen.” You never hear people described as such, anymore. That’s our loss.
PJTV has been doing some really great stuff, lately.
***SOAP BOX ALERT***
Like everything else, teaching our kids how to be young men and women and everything that entails, begins at home.
I hope I’m not the only mother who is grooming her daughters to be good wives, if they can find decent young men, and my sons, with the help of their dad, to be great husbands. My 5 year old son opens doors for me and allows me to pass through before him, saying ‘ladies first.’ My daughters are educated, yet feminine, not feminist, no matter how you define that, they know how to cook, and they know how to be affectionate and loving based on what they see at home.
I feel really, really sorry for those who have to diminish the role of women as women first, in order to feel like they are worth something.
Ahhh, okay, I’m done. Sorry.
I can’t say I’ve ever rubbed up against ultra, hardcore feminism. (Sounds a bit rude, eh?) But my entire life has been one in which it has been viewed as normal for women to work, to exercise civil rights, to have a crack at top jobs, so we have some form of feminists from the suffragettes onward to thank for that.
I suppose a bit of humourless, po-faced attitude is a price worth paying. (Plus, they are reacting to some unreconstructed sexist attitudes which exist & are unpleasant). I have seen a few people on the blogosphere who are a bit students union-y but I don’t see them having much impact. For the most part, the changes around me that feminism has wrought are beneficial & not obvious, if you know what I mean, as they are taken for granted.
I do think it’s never likely that women will be exactly equally represented with men at the very top because of the plain fact of childbirth & care. But I view having children as a choice, which should be exercised responsibly (which is why despite not being opposed to the welfare state as I imagine most people here are, & the fact I would keep most/all welfare benefits, I am critical of people having children when on welfare).
So with contraception available, if women want to have children they can but they shouldn’t treat it as some form of entitlement to have employers etc. beholden to them. It is a choice that you make or don’t make & then live accordingly.
Few links from the real front line of the war for women’s rights.
Terrorism Against Women In Pakistan
Reaction against that sort of thing (from the left, naturally)
[You know what's interesting? George Bush did more than any American president to free women in the Middle East from the daily oppression they encounter. And the left never gave him an ounce of credit for it. In fact, while Bush was in office, little mention was made of the oppression of women in Afghanistan and elsewhere. To mention it would have necessitated mentioning what Bush was doing; that would have disrupted the narrative. The oppression of women is certainly a valid concern. It's too bad that some only voice their concern for same when it is politically expedient. But then, political expediency has always been part of the feminist movement. That's why Bill Clinton was allowed "one free feel" while Clarence Thomas was not allowed one mildly risque joke, stolen from a book. Organized feminism (and I used to give money to NOW) lost all credibility with me when they decided that the "strong, independent woman" was permitted to get a case of the vapors and faint like shrinking violets over a risque joke at work, and was allowed to call a painting of a nude, "rape, to me." -admin]
Whowwwhow!
I’m not going to get into this debate Anchoress cause sinner vic likes wo men libbers even if my wife of almost forty years thinks that she detest much of what they stand for.
I’ll close by saying that I agree with a priest who said in the pass that there’s good in everything we might think is bad but then on occasions we must really, really search deep within ourselves for “IT”
God Bless,
Peace
Well, there were a fair few left-wing supporters of intervention- you wouldn’t call the Hitch a conservative, would you?
People like those I identified in that link arose as a response to the fact that too many people on the left weren’t showing solidarity with women abroad. But they did so for impeccably liberal reasons- & put themselves in opposition to the paleos, who I think were more conservative, but whom I consider to be wrong on all issues apart from unlimited immigration.
But again, these left-wing types who see clearly the nature of Iran, Afghanistan etc, by doing this, do not necessarily commit themselves to supporting a Bush-esque foreign policy. The likes of Malalai Joya, an Afghan feminist of truly heroic stature, do not support the western military presence at all because it props up people like Karzai, & his cronies who are essentially the dregs of humanity.
So I am torn between the liberal humanitarians (you, the Hitch, & others who may be left- or right-wing) & those who argue that intervention doesn’t actually help these people, whose lot is barely better if at all than it was in 2000. I have veered on the edge of support for the “decent left” because I am so outraged by Islamism & other forms of oppression. I see what they are trying to do, it is merely a question of whether they are managing it with the strategies they now follow.
This has been moving me away from the hawks, whose reaction to Obama’s moves I have not generally found agreeable.
Domestically it is much easier to make up my mind, the likes of Joan Smith.
Some people do simply have an axe to grind against Islam, & I think they put some feminists etc off who should be allied to the Muslim women & those in general who are ground down by fundamentalists. But you will observe that Hindu & Sikh fundamentalists can be just as bad. This “honour” killing was carried out by a Sikh.
I have a Sikh pal who was raised in a completely patriarchal, social con environment but became a left-wing western feminist. She does not have any problem at all with feminists & finds most of them supportive of human rights worldwide, saying that the caricature of them palling around with tyrants provided they’re not white is generally false.
I suppose you’d say she hasn’t really improved, eh?
Certainly those I have known from hardcore patriarchal backgrounds who rejected them generally didn’t go down the Ayaan Hirsi Ali route of allying with right-wing forces.
It was only a tiny number of people who strapped explosives to themselves. But more are beating their wives & trying to subject their daughters to their will. I appreciate the work of Ophelia Benson on this matter as she is unflinching, often disturbingly so but that’s only because this world is disturbing in its true nature. But she is a resolute foe of the Catholic Church as well.
Also worth noting. One of the most hardcore theocracies is Saudi Arabia, which has been left untouched since 9/11. Yet Osama Bin Laden is a Saudi, & just about every Islamic fundamentalism on earth has Saudi men & money behind it.
These jihadist bookshops are filled with Saudi books, & in general it all leads back to the oil men. You would certainly call the House of Saud a blot on humanity.
I would have e-mailed this to you but could not find it on the site.
link
So far not a peep from the feminists on this poor girls suffering.
Behind every great Saudi man is a Saudi woman. Or several Saudi women.
Sure, it’s “normal for women… to exercise civil rights” including such civil rights as being legally able to evade the military draft without any penalty. Women had civil rights such as these long before the “feminists (and) the suffragettes” to whom commenter Dry Valleys mistakenly credits were ever around.
Feminism has never been about equality of the sexes. Rather, it’s always been about adding to women’s privileges.
[...] NeW Women on Campus -PJTV [...]
A Mother’s Plea: Dr. Mitu Khurana
Worth noting is that reactionary attitudes to women prevail in parts of India- even female infanticide is not unheard of because boys are viewed as more valuable than girls.
You have also got plagues like female genital mutilation.
We should be thankful we live in the west. Now, undoubtedly some sexism does exist. But on nothing like the scale that less happy lands know.
What is interesting to me is the virulent hatred and contempt being displayed on the left toward Sarah Palin. She is a wife, mother, political force and Christian and yet, these so-called feminists despise her in a way that is absolutely pathological. Bernard Goldberg put forth his explanation of this on O’Reilly last night – they hate her because she reminds them of the vast middle of America (flyover country) who did not go to elite schools and are, in the view of the so-called elites, a bunch of savages. They hate us AND they fear us to the depths of their souls because in the very deepest regions of their beings (this is my take on it) they know that they are our equals or maybe even inferior human beings to us.
The women’s movement was supposed to be about choice – but those women who chose to be wives and mothers are viewed as traitors by the hair armpit crowd!
Gayle Miller #10
here is a very interesting article on the attacks on Palin…..I think you will find much that you agree with. Like the author, I too am a “recovering liberal” converting about10 yrs ago and found this article riveting!
You mention “Ladies” and “Gentlemen” not being mentioned nowadays. I’m reminded of a joke about a man writing to the IRS:
“I am a gentleman, so I cannot say what you are. My secretary is a lady, so she cannot write it. You, being neither, know what I mean.”
My guess is that the terms are not hear often anymore because there is nobody to whom they apply.