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Understanding Feminists and Their Fantasies
Phyllis Schlafly Reports ^ | DECEMBER 2002 | Phyllis Schlafly

Posted on 02/28/2003 2:02:35 PM PST by Remedy

The feminist movement has had an immense effect on American culture, laws, education and social relationships. A principal tenet of the doctrine of Political Correctness, feminism is the prevailing dogma on university campuses and in the book industry. The feminists are powerful enough in the media, in schools and colleges, and in politics and government to intimidate most of their opposition, especially men.

The best book that methodically challenges the feminist ideology is Carolyn Graglia's Domestic Tranquility. She does a brilliant job of refuting the feminist ideologues' tiresome tirades. Check out any library under "women" and you will find that Mrs. Graglia's book is pitted against hundreds of feminist volumes. Phyllis Schlafly's The Power of the Positive Woman, published in 1977, is long since out of print and was censored by the libraries when it was in print.

But refuting feminist ideology is not enough. It is necessary to have intelligent critiques of feminist behavior, hypocrisies, language, and political and social activism. We need exposés of the ripple effects of their ideology in the laws that were changed during the last generation, in their proposals that were defeated, in debates in legislatures, in the scripting of television programs and movies, in the social experimentation in our armed services, in day-to-day social relationships, and in the changing attitudes and roles of men and women.

A few brave women have tackled limited parts of this movement; e.g., Suzanne Fields' wonderful columns in the Washington Times, some delicious dissections of feminist hypocrisies by Ann Coulter, Christina Hoff Sommers' dissertations on the feminists' war against boys, and several books exposing the double standards in the military. Criticisms of feminism are conspicuously absent from the writings of otherwise prolific male authors and commentators, and the few who have tried it have suffered career-damaging retaliation.

Years ago, I subscribed to a newsletter of timely jokes written by a successful practitioner of clean one-line comedy. I got tired of the abundance of jokes about dumb wives and wrote the author that I would cancel my subscription unless he gave equal time to jokes about feminists, whose antics and remarks are far funnier. He never answered me -- he didn't dare face the wrath of the feminists, knowing they have no sense of humor.

My new book called Feminist Fantasies (just published by Spence Publishing Company in Dallas) is the first book that tackles the feminists where the rubber meets the road -- on the battlefields of television and radio talk shows, in legislative hearings, and in college courses. The book consists of 92 of my essays on feminism written over the past thirty years chronicling how the feminists spewed their anti-family message in the media, in state capitols, and on university campuses. These essays show how their destructive dogmas took root in our culture and led many young women down the primrose path to a lonely, barren life.

The St.Louis Post-Dispatch ran a four-column news article this year about an aging feminist, a 30-year member of the National Organization for Women, who is still pouting because in the 1960s she was called a stewardess instead of an airline attendant. She showed the reporter her scrapbook of treasured pictures -- not of any grandchildren, but of Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and Florence Kennedy. Pathetically, she fantasizes that the Equal Rights Amendment will make her happy.

Feminist Fantasies provides a unique look at feminism from the battlefield where the action is -- where I've been for the past thirty years. It takes you inside the controversies of the feminist movement from its heyday in the 1970s through its second and third waves. No other book explains how feminist dogma has been translated into political strategy and tactics, federal and state legislation, litigation to invite judicial activism, movie and television scripts, newspaper features, military regulations, college courses and school textbooks. No other book provides a reasoned criticism of feminist follies in every aspect of the culture.

Feminist Fantasies shows how the feminists captured the media, including its famous talking heads, and converted television into a maker of social trends rather than a reporter or a mirror of real life. I trace the feminist campaign to reinvent the family in their own image through television talk shows and sitcoms, movies made by Hollywood and for television, music from opera to rock, newspaper news and editorials, art, advertising, and business magazines.

Feminist Fantasies tackles the contradictory goals of feminism: equality plus preferential treatment. It explains the feminists' devious devices to achieve power in the workplace through deceitful sloganeering such as "comparable worth" and "glass ceiling." It exposes how the feminists define equality as access to tax-funded abortions and same-sex marriages. It tells about their campaigns to restructure the American legal system, to pursue their global goals, to enforce double standards, and to use academia to locate and train recruits for their cause. It describes the feminists' identity crisis.

Feminist Fantasies should be must reading for every young woman. It's a vaccine against the contagious disease of feminism. I dare the Women's Studies departments of colleges and universities to use it to balance the scores of feminist books customarily assigned to brainwash female students. The foreword by Ann Coulter underscores this book's importance.

This book shows how the longtime feminist goal of a gender-neutral society was the motivation behind the campaigns for the Equal Rights Amendment and for the feminization of the military. Feminist goals are incompatible with the combat readiness we need in times of war, a priority that has taken on a new urgency because of events since 9/11. The brave firefighters who charged up the towers of the World Trade Center, and our Special Forces who dared to enter the caves in Afghanistan, need our help to defend themselves and their work against the feminists who despise macho men.

The feminists' goal is to eradicate from our culture everything that is masculine and remake us into a gender-neutral society. We see their handiwork in textbook revision and in the constant haranguing by the language gestapo to force us to use such gender-neutral idiocies as he/she. We see this in the war on boys through abolishing recess, overprescribing Ritalin, and the zero tolerance policies that forbid them to play cops and robbers. We see this in the sex integration of Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel, which was a battle not for sex equality but to eliminate macho men. We see this in the implementation of Title IX, which is used not to give women equal opportunity in colleges but as a vehicle to abolish wrestling teams and other sports in which men outperform women.

The feminists showcased their goal in the New York Times Sunday Style section on November 3, 2002. The headline was "She's Got to Be a Macho Girl," and the subtitle was: "In a role reversal, teenage girls are the aggressors when it comes to boys." The article boasted about "the trickle-down effects of feminism" which have taught teenage girls to initiate sex "in a more aggressive manner." One high school senior pontificated: "No one is a stay-at-home mom anymore. Women don't have to wear skirts. We are empowered and we can do whatever we want."

The feminists constantly intimidate men with their assault on the English language. When Mitt Romney, campaigning for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, called the histrionics of his Democratic feminist opponent "unbecoming," the feminists exploded in tantrums of accusations that he had used a sexist word. Actually, since unbecoming means unattractive and creating an unfavorable impression, the word is most apt to politely describe a feminist politician. As Harry Truman used to say, if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

Feminist Fantasies offers hope and moral support to women who want to liberate themselves from feminist dogmas and build a traditional family. The book does not recite platitudes on how to be a good wife and mother. Instead, it provides intellectual ammunition to help young women refute their contemporaries who disdain marriage and motherhood. My lectures on hundreds of college campuses, which attract large crowds, prove that students have never heard the facts and arguments about feminism that I have the nerve to present to hostile audiences.

Understanding feminism requires knowledge of how the feminists coopted our culture and built their political power. Feminist Fantasies tells this never-before-told history through critical commentaries that contemporaneously addressed feminist issues during the past thirty years. No other book in print deals head-on with feminism like Feminist Fantasies.


How the Feminists Built Their Power


If you wonder how the feminists are able to wield so much clout with politicians, the explanation is in a new book called Guide to Feminist Organizations. As Midge Decter says in her foreword, this book is long overdue, and we thank Capital Research Center and author Kimberly Schuld for providing such a useful tool.

By setting forth the facts about 35 feminist groups, this guide clarifies how the radical feminists built their political power so that they are falsely touted by the media as the voice of "women," even though all polls show that the big majority of women reject the label "feminist." The feminists did it by organization, networking and lots of money, much of which came from leftwing foundations, corporations headed by weak-kneed executives, and grants of taxpayer funds.

The feminist groups detailed in the guide include the noisy activist organizations, the decades-old women's groups that had respectable reputations until they were captured by the feminists, the think tanks that grind out dubious data to fortify feminist follies, and the abortion-propaganda groups masquerading under the euphemism "women's health." Networking keeps them "on message" and well-funded. Feminist organizations even demand that government fund their ideologies and themselves, and transfer to feminists the power they think that men now enjoy.

These groups may appear to have different missions, but they have a common ideology: Women are victims of an oppressive patriarchal society, and all men are guilty both individually and collectively. Women's problems are not personal but societal, and require constitutional, legislative or litigious remedies.

First among these activists is the National Organization for Women (NOW), which spent $5,292,025 in 2000. Loud and brassy, NOW lobbies for feminist and pro-abortion legislation, organizes protest rallies, initiates lawsuits, and always backs Democratic Party candidates and proposals. The NOW agenda supports all abortion rights including partial-birth abortion, gay and lesbian rights, worldwide legalization of prostitution, and unrestricted access to pornography in libraries. According to the guide, "NOW revels in attacking Christianity and traditional values, conservative ideas and men," with Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell and Promise Keepers their favorite targets.

NOW gave unquestioning support to Bill Clinton despite his shabby sexual shenanigans. Tammy Bruce, former president of the Los Angeles NOW, spilled the beans about how Clinton bought NOW's support with taxpayer grants for "tobacco control" from the Department of Health and Human Services: "California NOW and National NOW received three-quarters of a million dollars ($767,099) during the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky scandals."

The League of Women Voters abandoned its former credibility and became a federally funded lobby to expand the size of government so that it can accommodate expensive feminist programs. The League, which spent $4,620,246 in 2000, supports gun control, abortion access, universal health care, more environmental regulation, and increased power for the United Nations.

The American Association of University Women turned itself into a vehicle to promote off-the-wall feminist hypotheses that aren't taken seriously even in the academic world. AAUW spent $9,512,044 in 2000.

The feminists use the YWCA to teach radical feminism to the next generation. The Girl Scouts went feminist after they took Betty Friedan on their board; they dropped "loyalty" from the oath, began a condom-friendly sex-ed program, and made belief in God optional.

Most of the activist feminist organizations have 501(c)(3) sister groups with interlocking directors. They pursue the same agenda, including government-funded daycare, paid entitlements for family leave, unrestricted access to abortion, comparable worth, lesbian rights, affirmative action, universal health insurance, and anti-male implementation of Title IX. As the Guide states, "It's hard to see where NOW political lobbying ends and NOW Foundation education activity begins."

Funding for feminist foundations comes from many sources that ought to know better. NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund has raked in corporate donations from a long list topped by ABC, AT&T, American Express, Chase Manhattan, Colgate-Palmolive, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, New York Times Foundation, Revlon, Saks, and New York brokerage houses; from Ford, Rockefeller and other wealthy foundations; and $1,678,252 in government grants since 1996 given by the Clinton Administration. NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund boasted income of $7,318,269 in 2000.

Such vast amounts of money are used to develop political clout and enable the feminists to raise and spend millions of dollars in political campaigns. EMILY's List, which contributes only to Democratic pro-abortion feminist candidates, spent more than $20 million in the 2002 election cycle and is the largest political action committee, twice as large as the union that is second largest.

This political money has translated into a stranglehold on the Democratic Party and sycophantic cheerleading for radical feminist politicians such as Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and their clones running in 2002. Follow the money and you will understand why Democratic Senators don't dare to cast any vote or make any off-hand remark that could be construed as interfering with the feminist or pro-abortion agenda. EMILY's List website boasts that Tom Daschle said, "The reason I'm here today as Senate Majority Leader can be said in two words: EMILY's List." Rep. Nancy Pelosi said, "I know that I would not ... be the Democratic Whip of the House without the work that was done by EMILY's List."


Hooray for Hootie!
At last we have a real man who can resist the histrionics of the pushy feminists. It's so refreshing to know that somewhere there is an American man willing to stand his ground -- on any issue -- and tell the feminists he is not going to knuckle under to their nagging, extortion, pressure tactics or media tantrums.

William Johnson, known to friends as Hootie, is the president of the Augusta National Golf Club located in northeastern Georgia which has hosted the world's most famous golf tournament, the Masters, ever since 1934. A pushy outfit called the National Council of Women's Organizations (NCWO) has been trying to force the all-male golf club to alter its admissions policy and admit women. The feminists are not appeased by the fact that women can play golf on the Augusta National course; they demand to be members of the club.

Hootie responded by saying the club will not submit to pressure to change its admissions policy from an "outside group with its own agenda." Calling NCWO's tactics "offensive and coercive," he added, "We will not be bullied, threatened or intimidated. We do not intend to become a trophy in their display case."

Bully for Hootie! He probably read the Supreme Court's decision in Boy Scouts v. Dale, wherein the high court upheld the right of private associations to set their own membership rules.

The New York Times says that Hootie "counterpunched with harsh words and a complete resistance to bowing to the demands." The reporter must have been shocked, shocked that any man has the nerve to counterpunch against the feminists (even though the feminists have been claiming for years that they want to be treated like men instead of ladies).

The NCWO manifested its malicious streak by going to Coca-Cola, IBM and Citigroup to demand that they terminate their corporate sponsorship of the Masters tournament unless the Augusta National Golf Club changes its policy. The NCWO got easy help from its feminist friends in the media who then targeted only Hootie, but not the NCWO, as "defiant" and "angry" (words of the Associated Press), and as "defiant" and "combative" (words of the New York Times).

Hootie then announced that the club would cancel commercial advertising on the televised 2003 Masters tournament in order to protect the corporations from the feminists' wrath. The Masters tournament already gets the highest television ratings, and its fans will cheer the delightful prospect of watching a sports event without any commercials.

Maybe Hootie suspected that the corporate executives wouldn't have the stamina to stand up to the feminists. He's probably right. Most corporation executives get wobbly in the knees when the feminists start chanting their mantra "discrimination" and accusing the men of "sexism."

The feminists tried to use Tiger Woods, who won the Masters in 2002 for the third time, as a prop in their publicity stunt to advance their special-interest agenda. When asked what he thinks about Augusta National's rules, Tiger replied with the good sense that has made him a star and a role-model: "They're entitled to set up their own rules the way they want them."

British golfers also kept their eyes on the ball. A spokesman for the Royal & Ancient Golf Club, which runs the British Open at Muirfield where women are excluded as members, commented, "We take the Open to the best links in the British Isles. We don't engage in social engineering."

Under the Clinton Administration, the feminists made athletics one of the arrows in their campaign to emasculate America. They co-opted Title IX for their own agenda, sabotaging its original purpose of ensuring equal educational opportunity for women and turning it into a weapon to force the abolition of scores of college men's wrestling, track and gymnastics teams.

The feminists have been crowing that recent achievements by women athletes are the happy result of Title IX. But when a reporter asked for a comment on Title IX from Jennifer Capriati, one of the best women tennis players in the world, she replied, "I have no idea what Title IX is. Sorry."

The name of the National Council of Women's Organizations is a misnomer because it's not a "women's" council, it's a feminist council. The all-women's organizations I belong to wouldn't belong to it.

The NCWO has typical feminist goals such as Senator Barbara Boxer's current passion: ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). NCWO members are probably hoping to be named to CEDAW's Article 17 Committee of "experts" to monitor compliance so they can harass Hootie with UN backing.

NCWO's extremist feminist goals also include affirmative action for women, ratification of the long-defunct Equal Rights Amendment, pro-abortion and pro-gay rights legislation, government wage control camouflaged as "pay equity," the Clintonista feminists' use of Title IX, and government babysitting services. Its goals parallel those of the National Organization for Women and Eleanor Smeal's Feminist Majority, two of its member groups.


Phyllis Schlafly, the president of Eagle Forum, was named one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century by the Ladies' Home Journal. In a ten-year battle, Mrs. Schlafly led the pro-family movement to victory over the principal legislative goal of the radical feminists, the Equal Rights Amendment. She is America's most articulate and successful opponent of the radical feminist movement, and she has lectured or debated on over 500 college campuses. She is the author or editor of 20 books on subjects as varied as politics (A Choice Not An Echo), family and feminism (The Power of the Positive Woman), child care (Who Will Rock the Cradle?), nuclear strategy (Strike From Space and Kissinger on the Couch), education (Child Abuse in the Classroom and Turbo Reader). Her monthly newsletter called The Phyllis Schlafly Report is now in its 36th year. Her syndicated columns and daily radio commentaries can be read and heard live on Eagle Forum's website: www.eagleforum.org. Mrs. Schlafly is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Washington University, received her J.D. from Washington University Law School and her Master's in Political Science from Harvard University. The mother of six children, she was the 1992 Illinois Mother of the Year.


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Author sees women's groups tied up in Democrat politics -- The ... Miss Schuld said that her research showed many feminist groups are losing members. Nevertheless, she says, their influence is increasing, largely because of the power they wield with the press and with Congress.

...liberal philanthropists, such as "the Ford Foundation, Lucille Packard, George Soros, Ted Turner and Warren Buffett have given millions of dollars in grants" to the groups.

...30 percent of the revenues of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates come from tax dollars.

FOXNews.com "The MO of these feminist organizations is to threaten with lawsuits and threaten with embarrassment. They don't care about women, they care about their own power."

Another breeding ground for lawsuits is on college campuses, where schools are required under federal Title IX statutes to give women equal access to athletic programs in public institutions that receive federal funding.

 



59 Socialists in Congress – 2002 by Chuck Morse - Sierra Times ... On the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party, The Progressive Caucus is affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, which, in turn, is the American affiliate of the Socialist International. Congressional Caucus members, I would contend, should actually be called Socialists rather than Democrats. Unlike their European counterparts, these homegrown American Socialist Congressmen try to refrain from showing their true authoritarian colors. Such displays would be too risky in an America that is still steeped in traditional freedoms. There are still enough of us out here who would boot them out of office if they revealed too much of their true stripe.

Socialists, like Communists, Nazis, Klansmen, or other political groups, rightfully enjoy the same constitutional protections as the rest of us. Unlike their more radical aforementioned counterparts however, the socialists believe in changing the system by "boring from within" rather than through illegal violence and sedition. As such, they prefer legislation, often filled with deceptive legalese and passed through Congress by duplicitous means, as their choice of arms in their quest toward revolutionary goals. Socialists are gradualists rather than extremists. They are slowly chipping away at our G-d given rights.

Freedom loving Americans would be well advised to keep a close eye on socialist Congressmen. While they may talk like the rest of us, especially when sojourning in their respective districts, they operate from a different paradigm. If they decide to support a war against Iraq, for example, or any other intervention overseas, their motives would more likely be based on an agenda that seeks to entangle the US in a new world order than in protecting the interests of sovereign America.

As a matter of principle and as an article of faith, socialists support a socialist world government as an ultimate goal. The method they employ is the gradual transfer of constitutional responsibilities from elected American legislatures to international agencies accountable to no one. Socialists are apt to support such things as international standing armies, an international tax, the transfer of American capital to third world dictators, and the surrender of congressional responsibilities to the UN, the WTO, the IMF, UNESCO and now the International Criminal Court. Whenever communistic protocols emerge out of a UN sponsored conference, as is always the case, and whenever such un-American protocols are rejected by a still largely patriotic Congress, the socialist congressmen and their allies will more than likely try to foist the protocol on the American people through a back door.

Socialists believe in sovereignty eroding entanglements abroad and big-state socialism at home. They support high taxes on working people with the money transferred to bureaucracies staffed by their friends. They support a welfare state that oppresses poor people, especially minorities, who then become their constituents. They support left-wing judges who are willing to subvert the democratic power of Congress by making laws from the bench. While they support mandatory public education, mandatory labor unions, mandatory racial quotas, land-grabbing environmental regulation, and thought control in the form of hate speech legislation, they turn around and become downright libertarian when it comes to pornography, abortion, sex, drugs, homosexuality, and other agendas that debauch the citizenry.

 

Landmark Legal Foundation The National Education Association concealed its use of millions of dollars in tax-exempt teachers' dues and fees for political activities, primarily for Democratic candidates and causes, according to a complaint filed yesterday by the Landmark Legal Foundation.

In its complaint to the Labor Department, the foundation claims the NEA — the country's largest labor union — did not report to its 2.7 million members tax-exempt revenue it spent to recruit and support candidates running for local, state and federal elective office since at least 1994.

Most of the expenditures were coordinated with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Democratic Party campaign organizations, the AFL-CIO and Emily's List, the nationwide network of political donors helping to elect Democratic pro-choice women, the complaint said.

Why The Democrats Are The Way They Are -- Phyllis Schlafly Nov. ... Women are victims of an oppressive patriarchal society; all men are guilty both individually and collectively; and men who abuse women are not anomalous but typical.

EMILY's List, which contributes only to Democratic pro-abortion feminist candidates, put $20 million into political campaigns in 2000 and another $20 million into campaigns this year.

That's twice as much as the second largest political action committee. Such a vast amount of money explains why Democratic Senators don't dare to confirm a judge who is pro-life.

Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism by F. Carolyn ... The principal targets of feminist fire in the on-going "gender wars" are not men but traditional wives and mothers, says a lawyer-turned-housewife in a powerful critique of contemporary feminism.

Family First - Book Review of "Domestic Tranquility".Moreover, she defends the traditional mores that led society to reserve sexual intercourse for the married, on the grounds that most women don't get much from out-of-context intercourse, while the social costs have been enormous. These arrangements are risky for women, she emphasizes, so long as no-fault divorce is the law.

None of this is precisely new, but it comes at a time when society is ripe for an honest re-evaluation of the social experiments that have made marriage optional and unstable, illegitimacy and abortion rampant, and have sent mothers of infants and toddlers into the paid work force.

The conflict between traditional motherhood and the feminist goal of economic parity is at the heart of "Domestic Tranquility."

With the exception of Betty Friedan, who found taking care of her family mindless, the great feminist revolutionaries and theoreticians were, by choice, childless. And either by their own admission (Gloria Steinem) or the revelations in recent biographies (Simone de Beauvoir), we now know they were textbook examples of emotional damage whose relations with men were often so pathetic as to make a healthy reader cringe.

AFA: Dangers of the laissez-faire family The idea that freedom entails doing "what's right for me" has had a powerful and destructive impact on the family. It has spurred an epidemic of divorce and out-of-wedlock child-bearing. It has also given rise to the widely held notion that no family form is inherently better than others. All are merely "life-style choices," which vary with the preferences of the adults involved.

Now there's a new book that eloquently challenges this view. The book, by economist Jennifer Roback Morse, is entitled Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work.

In Morse's view, the family's central role is to provide young children with a stable, loving environment. Children raised in such an environment learn to trust adults. By forming indelible attachments with their parents, children develop the capacity to form lasting attachments with other people. Childhood trust is also the foundation of many important qualities of character, including self-control, the ability to keep promises, and the ability to cooperate with others.

The laissez-faire family is problematic because it creates conditions under which the cycle of trust is likely to be broken. Families are likely to endure and flourish, however, when parents' commitment to each other, and to their children, is founded on self-sacrificing love.

Love is costly, but its costs are well worth bearing. For love allows us to make the most of our flawed and limited condition as human beings. Love enlarges us in an unexpected way: It changes what we consider a cost and a benefit. When we love, we redefine our concept of the good to include the other person. We come to see that what benefits a loved one benefits us, even if it requires sacrifice on our part.

Books in Review: Blessed Be Those roots, he argues persuasively, turn out to be planted not in the misty terrain of prehistory but in the well–mapped soil of the early nineteenth century, when neopaganism itself was born, along with other manifestations of Romanticism, in reaction to the rationality–obsessed Enlightenment. Davis surveys the archaeological remains of the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age cultures where feminists claim to have found signs of Goddess worship—caves in Western Europe, the Catal Hayuk settlement in Turkey, prehistoric Malta and the Balkans, and Minoan Crete—and finds little hard evidence to support their theories. Whereas anthropologists of a generation or so ago tended to assume that every painting or carving of a female image at an ancient site depicted an object of worship, their present-day successors are far more cautious about such ascriptions.

At any rate, such commonplaces of today’s Wiccan practice as casting the circle, drawing down the moon, the ubiquitous epithet "blessed be," and "skyclad" ceremonial nudity all seem to be pure Gardnerian inventions. A lover of archaisms, Gardner even coined the name "Wicca," which he erroneously believed to be a cognate of the Anglo–Saxon word wis for "wise" (wicca is actually the Anglo–Saxon word for a male wizard—wicce, "witch," is its feminine equivalent—deriving from wigle, meaning "divination"). Gardner probably borrowed the Wiccan Golden Rule, "An ye harm none, do what ye will," from his friend the black–magician and sexual ritualist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), whose maxim was "‘Do what thou wilt’ shall be the whole of the law." (Crowley, an early avatar of Marilyn Manson, was famous for baptizing a frog Jesus Christ and crucifying it onstage during one of his orgiastic rites.)

Bachofen’s ideas influenced not only Friedrich Engels, who incorporated the defeat of the matriarchy into Marxism, but Carl Jung and later, Joseph Campbell, who viewed the myth of the powerful earth or moon goddess as a universal human archetype. James Frazer used Bachofen’s suppositions about matrilineality and the early supremacy of agricultural goddesses in his famous Golden Bough, as did Jane Ellen Harrison (1850–1928), who contended in her 1903 book Prologomena to the Study of Greek Religion that all the goddesses of Greek mythology had been just one goddess during pre–Hellenic, matriarchal times. The Prolegomena and The Golden Bough were the chief sources for Robert Graves’ White Goddess (1947), arguably the most influential work of Goddess theology of all time. Graves painted an idyllic picture of prehistoric Mediterranean life in which the Triple Goddess (virgin, mother, and crone) was the sole deity, women ruled, and human beings of both sexes were in tune with nature, poetry, and the life–force.

The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity The answer can best be elucidated with a further question: what happens if religion does not maintain control of masculine initiation rituals? Then, quite literally, all hell breaks loose. Mr. Podles sees the masculine as a force of immense danger that threatens destructive violence. "As the muscles grow and harden, the adolescent male feels the power of his body and uses it to frighten other people.... This attraction to power can be disciplined and sent into socially useful channels, or at least channels that do not threaten to destroy society immediately. But the common element in the deformations of masculinity that result from an exaggeration of some masculine characteristics is their more or less explicit worship of power in crime, Satanism, fascism, Nazism-all of which are practical forms of nihilism" (p. 195).

 

1 posted on 02/28/2003 2:02:35 PM PST by Remedy
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To: Remedy
save
2 posted on 02/28/2003 2:10:38 PM PST by Barset
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To: Lorianne
?
3 posted on 02/28/2003 2:13:25 PM PST by Remedy
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To: Remedy
Phyllis is right about Mrs. Graglia.....a brilliant woman. If anyone is looking for a speaker on the subject, she's the one.
4 posted on 02/28/2003 2:22:09 PM PST by anniegetyourgun
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To: Remedy
BTW, I don't like to correct anything by Phyllis, but she might have considered including the National Education Association and it's auxilliary, the PTA. After all, they both have the same agenda....and it has nothing to do with education.
5 posted on 02/28/2003 2:24:55 PM PST by anniegetyourgun
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To: Remedy
Sad. She really is grasping.

First off feminism is not a monolithic moster. Secondly, various aspect of feminism SHOULD be the subject of objective critique and review ... just like any other political movement. No problem there.

But Mrs. Schaffley's arms flailing hyperbolic emotionalism is not objective or relevant. Over and over in her diatribes it is clear that in her view women are not capable of independent thought. They've been "brainwashed" and duped and she wishes to re-educate them. No where does she allow that women can think and vote and organize and petition on their own behalf, or differentiate positions other than her black and white views.

She really is retro in her view of women in more ways than she can possibly imagine. Sad, she seem intelligent herself yet she refuses to allow other women the benefit of the doubt. To her women are all blank slates that have been written over by the enemy and who need reprogramming. She has a dim view of other women's powers of will and intelligence and an inflated view of her own powers of observation.
6 posted on 02/28/2003 2:27:36 PM PST by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne
I disagree...she's quite intelligent and believes in women for the strong human beings they were created to be. And sadly, many women have been duped by the Left and their so-called feminists. The 'feminist movement' of today is monolithic and largely populated by lesbians and other men-haters. They look nothing like the true feminists of days gone by, such as Susan B. Anthony.

BTW, Mrs. S always votes, encourages women to vote, thinks, encourages women to think, and has herself organized women to petition for positions that will benefit women.

7 posted on 02/28/2003 2:36:15 PM PST by anniegetyourgun
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To: Remedy
I hate Dykes.

I hate Dykes.

See how they run.

See how they run.

They all ran after the government grants.

Those flabby old horrible elephants.

Did you ever see such a sight in your life

As ugly Dykes.

Ugly Dykes.
8 posted on 02/28/2003 2:36:27 PM PST by ricpic
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To: Remedy

The feminists are powerful enough in the media, in schools and colleges, and in politics and government to intimidate most of their opposition, especially men.

I hereby dub these estrogen crazed LEFTIST man haters;

CLITTEROTI
9 posted on 02/28/2003 2:38:07 PM PST by pyx
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To: Lorianne
"To her women are all blank slates that have been written over by the enemy and who need reprogramming. She has a dim view of other women's powers of will and intelligence and an inflated view of her own powers of observation."

On the contrary....IMHO YOUR statement very nearly describes people like Gloria Steinem, et al (the "feminists"). Mrs. Schaffly is representative of that woman who has had it all....and done it masterfully, to her family's (and other womens') benefit.

10 posted on 02/28/2003 2:44:04 PM PST by goodnesswins (Thank the Military for your freedom and security....and thank a Rich person for jobs.)
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To: anniegetyourgun
I said I think she is intelligent. I don't think she believes other women are. If she encourages women to vote then she cannot really complain when they don't vote her way. This is silly, like complaining about the way Democrats vote and how much political clout they have. So what? If you're of a different persuasion it's incombent on YOU to convince more people to your point of view. Mrs. Schaffley doesn't do a very good job of convincing women to her point of view when (in my veiw) she is constantly insulting them and questioning their intelligence.

Her tactics furthemore are vey emotional and hyperbolic, not rational and objective. She could make a number of calm, rational and very good arguments against apects of feminism but she chooses a slasher cat fight style. Make a unfounded swipe and then run to the next unfounded swipe and the next (Coulter is similar). Apparently her strategy is you can't fight a moving target. That would work for a while, until you're just routinely ignored.

Look at the article. It jumps all over the place and has no restraint. She throws every conceivable anti-feminist slogan from the past in there willy nilly. It's tiresome to follow and impossible to reasonably discuss the thousands of slasher points in one article! The book must be even worse. It just makes her look desperate; like she can't defend any one point well enough so she overcompensates by making thousands of little sound-bite type barbs.
11 posted on 02/28/2003 2:50:37 PM PST by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne
First off feminism is not a monolithic mo[n]ster.

One look at Janet Reno disproves your statement. Most of the wacko feminists I've observed are hairy-legged, mannish-looking types usually on the prowl for some doe-eyed bimbo.

Mrs. Shaffly is a true paragon amongst conservatives. She does appear to strike fear into the hearts of the Godless feminazi types, however.

12 posted on 02/28/2003 2:52:41 PM PST by LuisBasco
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To: Lorianne
It's NOT an "article".....it's a REPORT....HER Report....HER mouthpiece....so she can jump in any direction she wants. It's NOT a senior college term paper or something that today's PC journalists would write. (Or could write, for that matter.)
13 posted on 02/28/2003 2:59:47 PM PST by goodnesswins (Thank the Military for your freedom and security....and thank a Rich person for jobs.)
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Verbal Plunder: Combating the Feminist Encroachment on the Language of Theology and Ethics As much as I hate to endorse anything to do with Freudianism, it seems to me that some feminists suffer from acute pronoun envy.
14 posted on 02/28/2003 3:02:25 PM PST by Remedy
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To: goodnesswins
I agree. She adopts the very same attitude about women as many of those she opposes. To them it's a tug of war over women's minds and allegiance (to stark black and white concepts) with the presumption that women are not capable of crafted their own ideas and priorities in between the black and white factionalism of NOW and Ms. Schaffley's positions.

In fact, some astute writers have written that the original goals of feminism have been so uniformly assimilated into mainstream society and accepted by virtually everyone that what is left one either side are the extremists and their extreme views. The extreme feminists and the extreme traditionalists are left to battle out the extreme polemical points which the middle rejected 15 years ago. Basically, we've all moved on with our lives and Mrs. Schaffley and NOW are left on the battlefield. No one really cares who wins. It won't have an impact on the larger society.

Where Mrs. Schaffley "could" make a difference is in appealing to the many Conservative and Conservative leaning feminists who agree with some (perhaps not all 4 million) of her talking points. For example pro-Life feminists, pro-Family feminists, pro-heterosexual feminists, pro-gun feminists, pro-fiscal restraint feminists, etc. Of course, she can't do that as long as she refuses to acknowledge they exist.

15 posted on 02/28/2003 3:02:46 PM PST by Lorianne
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To: Remedy
Phyllis Schlafly has long been one of the most intelligent, dedicated and courageous defenders of truth and principle in America. It is always good to see her articles. They offer a common sense approach to our cause, whch we could use far more of.

For more on the Feminist delusion, see The Feminist Absurdity.

Thank you for publishing Mrs. Schlafly's perceptive analysis. If anything, she understates the terrible harvest of Feminism.

William Flax

16 posted on 02/28/2003 3:04:17 PM PST by Ohioan
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To: Lorianne
While you may disagree with her style (and perhaps her position on the issues?), your initial characterization of her was gross and unfair. Especially to a woman who has championed the cause of women (and men, because what matters is what's good for both sexes) in medicine, public policy, and education through many decades.

While I wouldn't say this is the best of her writings, it's the totality of her career that is stellar. Her contribution to the good of women by far exceeds that of Betty Friedan, for example. The latter having turned from many of her original silly notions, and yet still remains a bitter woman filled with regrets and deep sadness. The former, still resolute and fulfilled. Both leave a mark, to be sure. But only one leaves this earth having contributed something worthwhile rather than something destructive.

17 posted on 02/28/2003 3:05:16 PM PST by anniegetyourgun
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To: goodnesswins
it's a REPORT....HER Report.... so she can jump in any direction she wants

Um, I never hinted she can't jump in any direction she wants, so I don't have to refute your strawman argument.

IMO she needs a good editor.

18 posted on 02/28/2003 3:06:53 PM PST by Lorianne
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To: LuisBasco
Irrational emotionalism.
19 posted on 02/28/2003 3:09:02 PM PST by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne
I have never heard of a man referring to himself as a maleist.

What's the difference between a woman and a feminist?

Concerned Women for America used Women vs Feminists.

20 posted on 02/28/2003 3:10:32 PM PST by Remedy
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