May 7, 2012

What if the "War on Women" is a War of Women... on men?

A question that occurred to me while reading this Wall Street Journal column by Carrie Lukas.
[P]olicies sold as protecting women can be used to bludgeon men, and they should spur greater skepticism of the idea that women need bigger government to succeed.

The War on Women rhetoric may be intended to derail specific candidacies, but it also derails needed public-policy debates. With trillion-dollar deficits, we need to make tough choices about funding priorities. Calling attempts to control government's costs an assault on women will only make deliberations less productive.

22 comments:

Rusty said...

[P]olicies sold as protecting women can be used to bludgeon men,



No. Get out of town! Really?

Dan in Philly said...

Any rhetoric which divides the sexes weakens both. Women and men are extremely dependent on each other and any philosophy which states otherwise is harmful to those who believe it and the ones who are dependent on them.

A woman who believes she doesn't need a man to be happy will be much less happy than one who does. Ditto for a man.

Any politician who preaches division is practicing a very old trick - divide and conquer. Just as Caesar couldn't have conquered the Gauls without an army of Gauls, so too can those who wise to rule us conquer without help from large parts of us. And so you see division of women vs. men, student debt holders vs. non-debt holders, black vs. white, and so on. It isn't rocket science, but it is effective.

KCFleming said...

Democrats are always about balkanization. Divide and conquer. It's not unintended, it's the desired outcome.

Power is the endgame, no matter what.

Diversity Training Doesn't Work
"Diversity training doesn't extinguish prejudice. It promotes it.

...rather than changing attitudes of prejudice and bias, it solidified them.

A study of 829 companies over 31 years showed that diversity training had "no positive effects in the average workplace." Millions of dollars a year were spent on the training resulting in, well, nothing. Attitudes — and the diversity of the organizations — remained the same.

It gets worse. The researchers — Frank Dobbin of Harvard, Alexandra Kalev of Berkeley, and Erin Kelly of the University of Minnesota — concluded that "In firms where training is mandatory or emphasizes the threat of lawsuits, training actually has negative effects on management diversity.

kjbe said...

Yeah, but an once of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say.

paul a'barge said...

It was women who screwed America in 2008 and if Barack Hussein Obama (aka "Barry Soetero") is re-elected, it will again be women who have screwed America.

traditionalguy said...

The Obama Regime sees itself as a conqueror at war with America. And in war the Conqueror usually gets rid of the men and takes the women for himself. That works for the women since the conqueror has control over all of the goods and power. It becomes the conqueror's family.

Dems are saying to the American women, "you and your children don't need a jobless man. You just need our plan."

Fen said...

Hmmm... I have an idea - lets make a movie about heroes for boys who need better role models than Family Guy and Al Bundy. Maybe we'll tap into a neglected market and make some cash too? Like $250 million on opening weekend?

Nah. Nevermind.

Lyssa said...

So patronizing. And so many women allow themselves to be patronized too, and claim they are "strong and independant" for their government reliance.

Known Unknown said...

Hmmm... I have an idea - lets make a movie about heroes for boys who need better role models than Family Guy and Al Bundy. Maybe we'll tap into a neglected market and make some cash too? Like $250 million on opening weekend?


But women bought 40% of all the tickets sold!

Scott M said...

But women bought 40% of all the tickets sold!

Cap had some truly great lines, didn't he? Did you notice at the end the one congressman that was bitching about their having saved Manhattan was a Democrat?

You can almost hear the machinery screeching as it swings in a direction long-since unused, but it is swinging, if ponderously.

Bruce Hayden said...

The problem is that there really has been a war against males over the last couple of decades.

One of the places that you see this is in the school systems. More important a lot of times now to do the homework and work well in groups, than to actually do well on the tests. But, maybe even more egregious, is replacing recesses in lower school with Ritalin. If the normal is female, then running around like wild Native Americans to bleed off excess energy is abnormal, and must be medicated.

You see this sort of war on men a lot of places. One place that is near and dear to my heart is that you have to certify that your child support payments are up to date every year to maintain your bar membership in Colorado. But, not, of course, that you were current in visitation, etc. But, a Denver domestic court judge, at one point, stated that she never gave custody of their children to men if there were any alternative.

Jim said...

An example would be the provision in the ACA "Obamacare" that eliminates price discrimination between men and women. Since the average Man costs an insurer about two-thirds of the cost of an average Woman, insurers who sell individual policies offer Men the discount.

Under the ACA, Men will end up subsidizing Women's excessive health insurance costs. We need some death panels to equalize usage between the sexes because obviously, Women are being sold some needless procedures.

Wince said...

The word "prick" is used to objectify men. We need a Men's Studies Department.

The Crack Emcee said...

[P]olicies sold as protecting women can be used to bludgeon men,...

Hello "Family" Law! (And a shout out to Bruce Hayden for getting there first,...)

The Drill SGT said...

Ultimately, when the ecomony collapses or even society breaks down, who do you think is hurt most?

watch any mad Max movies?

Is it all very metro-sexual shared-child raising?

Or is it rape, pillage and survival of the strong?

Women live longer and suffer worst when the social net collapses. They should not be encouraging the ultimate collapse of society on the heads of their grandkids.

wyo sis said...

The key is family. A traditional family makes social engineering unnecessary and social engineering is bent on destroying the family. This doesn't seem to me to be a coincidence.

ricpic said...

The whole thrust of Barry and his minions is to block the tough choices required if we are to survive our extreme economic peril and therefore insure that the country founders. At this point one must be willfully blind not to see that.

Scott M said...

if we are to survive our extreme economic peril and therefore insure that the country founders.

LANCELOT: We were in the nick of time. You were in great peril.
GALAHAD: I don't think I was.
LANCELOT: Yes, you were. You were in terrible peril.
GALAHAD: Look, let me go back in there and face the peril.
LANCELOT: No, it's too perilous.
GALAHAD: Look, it's my duty as a knight to sample as much peril as I can.
LANCELOT: No, we've got to find the Holy Grail. Come on!
GALAHAD: Oh, let me have just a little bit of peril?
LANCELOT: No. It's unhealthy.
GALAHAD: I bet you're gay.
LANCELOT: No, I'm not.

Saint Croix said...

What if the "War on Women" is a War of Women...on men?

The "War on Women" meme is all about abortion. Feminists don't want to talk about abortion--because abortion is ugly--so they talk about birth control. But nobody's trying to outlaw birth control, so that's idiotic.

Abortion, on the other hand, is in danger. Republicans want to outlaw it. Feminists know this and so they invent the "War on Women" as a means to fight for abortion.

The idea is to engage in a vicious, personal attack. It's basically accusing Republicans of supporting violence against women. That's what war is, violence. So a Republican "War on Women," is a feminist charge that Republicans support violence against women.

And of course when we think of violence against women, we think of rape. Too much of feminism is women using rape to enact a political agenda. Want to invade privacy? Talk about rape. Want to censor speech? Talk about rape. Want a right to abortion? Talk about rape.

See, for instance, Jane Doe inventing a rape in Roe v. Wade, or Justice Ginsburg inventing a mythical rape victim in Carhart II.

Why are these women making up false claims of rape? To get sympathy for women and to win the political battle. Jane Roe (or her feminist lawyers) are using rape victims to get sympathy for all women. Justice Ginsburg is even more craven. She's using a mythical rape victim to avert our gaze from the baby who's being ripped to pieces.

The "War on Women" is insane hyperbole, designed to distract us from the subject at hand (abortion) and keep us from seeing the people who are actually being killed by violence (babies).

Poison and knives are weapons of war. The "War on Women" is designed to hide an actual a war on unwanted babies. So, yes, "the War on Women" is a big lie. Not so much an attack on men, but as a means of controlling men and having them ignore the violence that women are doing to their own children.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Feminism has evolved into an ideology (an ideology is simply a justification for power) for a particular class of people.

Feminism isn't about all females, because over half of all aborted fetuses are female.

It's not about girls, either, because no-fault divorce is bad for children. Fathers are at least as important as mothers. Maybe more. The worst outcomes seem to come from families headed by a single mother. Single fathers do better. Really, they do- daughters raised in a single parent household graduate high school at higher rates and have fewer illegitimate children if the parent is their father.

Feminism doesn't seem to be about women who don't work but raise children, because they are scorned.

So, who does feminism serve? A minority of people- adult women who have careers. It's an ideology designed to give these women maximum power and freedom throughout their lives.

The "Julia" meme was a perfect illustration of this point- it's not about government taking care of women but women using the power of government force everyone else to meet their needs. That's the appeal- power.

It's legitimate for everyone to be treated fairly, but we're past that point. It's fine for interest groups and classes to organize- but let's be honest about it. Feminism at this point clearly isn't good for everyone. There are always winners and losers, but why not admit it?

Freedom for some is servitude for others. Power for some is weakness for others. Simply being female is no justification for abuse of power, any more than being male is. We're all people and power should be used in the interests of everyone. Not just men, not just women.

Saint Croix said...

Simply being female is no justification for abuse of power, any more than being male is.

Yes, exactly. Feminism talks about equality but they have no interest in equality. Where is the man who has a choice about being a father? He's made a father against his will. Or (far worse) he has fatherhood stripped from him against his will. No legal say whatsoever.

Indeed, the first thing feminists try to do in any abortion debate is silence men. "It's my body, it's my choice." Pregnancy doesn't concern men, apparently. Human reproduction doesn't concern men. Fatherhood doesn't concern men. It's obscene to talk this way.

And no matter how many complaints men have, our complaints are nothing compared to the pure viciousness of defining a baby as a woman's property. Equality? Feminism has brought back the rhetoric and logic of Dred Scott. Human beings are defined as sub-human in the name of economic progress. You want to make more money? Abort your children and go to work. Feminists, like all Marxists, reduce everything to dollars.

Feminism isn't about all females.

Feminism is an identity that most women refuse to adopt. They want no part of it.

Why?

I think it's because feminism is synonymous with a hostility to men and to babies. And most women like men. They like babies. They want a family.

Women want equal opportunity (as do we all). But feminism has done such damage to the family, to the relations between men and women and parents and children, that it's been an utter disaster.

I believe it is women who will defeat the feminist movement, and who will lead the fight in recognizing the baby's right to life.

Saint Croix said...

Of course, Althouse calls herself a feminist. Sarah Palin calls herself a feminist, too. So it's not necessarily a bad word.

Feminism just means power for women. But power to do what?

Look at all the women Palin helped put in power in 2010. Haley, Ayotte, Martinez. Part of this is identity politics, I think. Palin is a student of the left and wants to disarm the "war on women" charge. And the quickest and easiest way to do that is have Republican women in positions of power.

But Palin also wants to win. What does she want to do? Respect the baby's right to life.

We will see more and more pro-life women on the right. And they will be vocal and emotional in a way that men have failed to do.

I still think Palin will be President one day. But if not her, one of the women she put on the map in 2010.