A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle, Assuming That the Woman Can Be Taken Care of By the Government

I’ve been mulling over this article, from the women-centric, “unabashedly intellectual, but not dry or condescending,” allegedly feminist Slate spin-off Double X for quite a few days, and I still can’t come up with exactly what I can say about it.  Have you ever had someone say something to you that was so offensive, so unabashedly insulting, that you are literally too shocked to respond?  Erika Kawalek says (bolding mine, of course):

I want to emphasize something about the difference between the state of affairs for women in America and in the rest of the civilized world. The competitiveness people bring to “dating” and “closing the deal” here is underpinned by intense economic competition and the desire—increasingly, the necessity—for basic social and physical security. There is a secret amongst the Canadian and European women living in the Big Apple. I know this because I am Canadian and my closest girlfriend is French, and when we resident aliens get together we really tear up this country and how it treats its women. (Our dating lives are fine and always have been.) When we talk about dating or the possibility of having family, with a man or on our own or with—gasp!—a coven of like-minded women (why not?), the conversation is framed entirely by the fact that we can count on our native countries to look after us should we—for whatever reason—not be able to make ends meet stateside. Now, we should be able to secure decent futures for ourselves, with or without male partners: We have Ivy League degrees, speak multiple languages, are savvy and entrepreneurial. We are also a lot more calm about dating and mating than the American women we know, who seem plagued by contradictory forces. . . .

I’m always baffled that women here don’t demand the same benefits on which we Canadian and European women rely. It would make dating and mating a lot easier, that’s for certain. American family values? Where are they?

So, the basic thesis of the article, the entire assumption of the argument, is that women can be, nay, should be, more equal by being parented by the state.  Kawalek argues that America is keeping women down by not providing, to all extents imaginable, any and all needs of any children they should choose to bear.  That the state is keeping us poor women from landing a husband by not offering to pick up any and all slack that he may leave behind (to say nothing at all about the slack that the woman should and could cover on her own).  The implicit, but clear, assumption underlying this article is that the woman is not capable of covering her own life’s costs. 

It’s notable that Kawalek’s suggestions about the security brought to Europeans is clearly, egregiously incorrect.  She never even considers the facts that these policies in no way correlate with higher marriage rates, indeed marriage rates in France, Canada, and almost all of Europe are far below ours.  The European fertility rates have dropped so far as to be considered a crisis, and Canada’s is similarly low, yet our American rates are still at replacement levels.  Men and women are simply not refusing to date and mate as a result of our smaller safety net.  Facts are, as usual, completely irrelevant to liberals when compared to what “should work” based on whatever theory happens to be in their heads. 

But I’m used to that.  I should be used to liberals assuming that women, like minorities, are completely incapable of things that men are expected to do with no problem (somebody, of course, has to be producing the wealth that is going to be taken away from them and provided to the helpless females in Kawalek’s world). 

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, said in his link to this article that the “dating secrets of Canadian and European women” referred to here “revolve around the state playing the role of the husband.”  I think Reynolds is too generous.  A husband expects some contribution and partnership with the wife.  Kawelek clearly wants a world where the state plays the daddy to the helpless child, dotingly covering any and all possible bumps in the road.  She, and her liberal cohorts, have so little respect for women, for me, for you or your wife or your mother or your daughter or your sister, that she thinks that it is only to be expected that we would need and demand that “help.”

Doesn’t this basically prove a lack of sexism?

Feminist Blog Women and Hollywood has their pants in a bunch over the fact that The Hollywood Reporter’s Top Ten Movies of the decade forgot to include a directors with special needs section any films with women directors. 

Here’s a list that caught my attention, The Hollywood Reporter’s Top Ten Movies of the Decade and not surprisingly, there is not a single female directed film on the list.  You can tell from the list that it was not a US based list so that opens is up much wider.  I seriously cannot believe that a single woman directed film in the last decade is not worthy of being on this list.

So, with the exception of a big deal director like Spielberg or James Cameron, who really looks at the name, and therefore, sex, of the director of a movie when naming it the best?  I’m looking over the list, and I can only name one director off the top of my head of any of the movies, and even that’s just a guess I can’t place a single one to a director off the top of my head. 

Now, I’m sure that a true movie buff of the sort that puts together top movies of the decade can note the directors better than I (I’ll admit that I haven’t even seen any of the movies on the list), but even so, do the nice folks at Women and Hollywood really think that the reviewer was sitting in the theater, judging the movie on the basis of whether or not the director had a penis? 

If the reviewers had specifically included a female directed movie just to include one, that would have been sexist.  If they simply made a list of the “best movies” (based on whatever criteria they wish to base it on), with no real consideration of who directed them, and the list happened to include only movies directed by male directors, well, that is exactly what I want to happen.  If a woman, or anyone, is going to get acclaimed for her directorial skills, I want it to be because she made a great movie as compared to all the other great movies, not because she made a great movie, for a girl. 

(via Double X)

Baby, we can share the kitchen, or why women don’t want to be “feminists,” revisited

Hanna Rosin can’t believe that some man would invade her domain. 

When did a certain group of men take over the womanly art of home cooking? And why can’t we who are married to them just sit back and call their conquest of the kitchen a feminist triumph? If you had told a mistress of the house in the 1950s that one day her husband would julienne a carrot, she would have wept with joy. Perhaps she would have even held out a little longer against all those canned monstrosities designed to lighten her daily load. And yet, fast forward half a century, and some of us are starting to regret our lost dominion over the kitchen.

Silly me, I guess I always though that we should just avoid ideas like “women belong in the kitchen.”  My husband and I share these sorts of duties; she should try the same.

Just another liberal myth. Anti-Abortion Does NOT Equal Anti-Contraception

Slate’s allegedly feminist site peddals the myth that attempts to demonize anti-abortionists:

The anti-choice movement’s hostility towards contraception is an open secret; most people on both sides of the debate know about it, but anti-choice activists also know better than to flaunt their hatred of contraception when trying to woo people on the issue of abortion.

 OK, this impression/myth/assertion frustrates me to no end.  I’m a life-long Catholic; I live in a very conservative part of the country; my family is very pro-life.  I have literally never met ANYone who is actually against contraception.  My mother, who is a single issue voter and completely single minded on the subject, had her tubes tied and has never expressed any objections to my use of the pill (and believe me, she would). 

I’ve met a few people who assert that it is not the choice for them and practice natural family planning (which, with modern science, is actually just barely under the pill in success-rates).  But, even in my (Catholic) pre-marital counseling, they only suggested NFP; they said that it was a choice, not a sin, to decide against it. 

 The only places that I have ever seen stories against birth control use come from leftist or “feminist” writers who are anxious to characterize anti-abortionists as “anti-choice” (my choice is the pill, thanks) or to paint every last person who values life as a clinic bomber.  

(This is, as I’m sure you know, but I’m guessing that Slate’s readers will conveniently not notice, not to say that anti-contraception-ists do not exist, only that they are extremely rare and not in any way representative of the anti-abortion movement in general, to the point that they are simply not worth worrying about.)