Free Republic

[W]ives don't need income to wield power in their marriages. And mothers don't have much reason to fear losing power if they're not bringing home an equal share of the bacon. A Pew Research Center study released a couple of weeks ago found that when it comes to decision making in the home, wives in a majority of cases either rule the roost or share power equally with their husbands, regardless of how much money the women earn. ... [C]onsumer research shows that with the exception of what car to buy and when to buy it, men rarely claim strong...

On September 3rd, the Republican Party formally introduced Governor Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate. Unlike Hillary Clinton, a familiar face in American politics, Palin had not yet created a public persona. She presented herself in a beige-colored, collared blouse, a short strand of pearls, a black skirt, and black heels. Sporting her now signature Kawasaki 704 frames, with hair swept-back and styled carefully over her forehead, Palin made her first impression. “Because she is a relative unknown, style is a lot of what we know about Palin right now,” writes Booth Moore, Los Angeles Times fashion critic. Many...

With winds of change rivaling Hurricane Ike, John McCain’s historic VP pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has blown away the left’s mask of “inclusive tolerance,” exposing an ugly and desperate countenance below. Flummoxed and frantic, their shameful attacks on Palin and her family have revealed that liberal Democrats, the mainstream media, and those malicious hacks in the “progressive” blogosphere are willing to navigate the deepest, darkest sludge of slash-and-burn politics to see their man, Barack Obama, elected President. The way the media have dispensed with the hold-harmless tradition of “hands-off the kids” and gone after the Palin children is...

Extreme Pro-Abortion Feminist Heather Mallick Scheduled to Speak at Catholic St. Mary's University By Kathleen Gilbert CALGARY, Alberta, October 2, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - St. Mary's University College in Calgary, a Catholic institution, has invited Heather Mallick, a virulently pro-abortion and anti-Catholic author and columnist to address students as part of their 2008-09 speaker series. Ms. Mallick is scheduled to deliver her talk, "A Liberal Arts Education: Worth Its Weight in Gold" to St. Mary's students on January 22, 2009. Mallick, a well-established feminist column writer, has an undisguised antipathy toward Catholic teaching and morals, particularly concerning abortion and sexuality. In...

Asylum from Rape Petition Feminists all over the world need to be pressuring governments to define rape as torture and persecution. Please sign this U.K. petition, and then post or email the link to help spread the word: Hat Tip to The Reclusive Leftist. And a heartfelt thank you to my friend [I guess I can say that as she hasn't banned me yet, hehehe], Dr. Violet Socks.

THE ROOTS AND PROGRESS OF “FEMINISM” What is it that the prototypical male pig Rush Limbaugh believes, something about feminism being created to enable ugly women to gain societal acceptance? That’s rather harsh, unless one considers the founders of modern American feminism. By “modern” I don’t refer to the first wave of feminists such as the racist, abortionist Margaret Sanger or the anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre who, as fruitcakey as they were, at least were not offenses to the human eyes. I rather refer to such people as Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug who, if they didn’t shatter camera lenses...

To All Female Sarah Palin Haters From Hillary or Bust: With the latest Sarah Palin hatefest happening among female comics (Sandra Bernhard wants Palin to be raped by a gang of black men; a confused Margaret Cho hates her but wants to have sex with her), I have had it. Listen to me, crazy liberal Palin-hatin’ women, and listen to me good: Keep it up. Because if this sort of misogyny, from women, by women, against Sarah Palin continues, I will not only vote for Palin this November, I will vote for her in 2012 if Hillary is not the...

In an effort to catalog and document this recent outbreak of PDS, I am attempting to gather some choice quotes [especially from reporterettes and Hollowood bimbos] and put faces to the smears. My hope is that this could act as a prophylactic for those at greatest risk to the condition. So many have suffered. Its time that we take action to stop the spread of this horrendous condition.

Just a few Fridays ago I got the good news about the addition of Sarah Palin to the 2008 Republican ticket. I was so excited I fired off a few rounds from my assault rifle and then hopped in the car and drove back to my office at UNC-Wilmington. I wanted to talk to some of the feminists in my department about this great breakthrough in the struggle for gender equality. Of course, none of the feminists were in the office in the hours after Sarah Palin’s introduction as John McCain’s running mate. Maybe they were off celebrating the great...

I have a message for the self-styled guardians of womanhood who have decided that Sarah Palin is public enemy No. 1 - please stop talking. You're embarrassing yourselves and women all over the country. You are making otherwise thoughtful, careful, intelligent, tolerant and modern American women of every political bent look and sound ridiculous. As a woman myself, I'm begging you to stop. Put the pen down, close out the blog, push the E! microphone away. Your trash-talking is disturbing and humiliating. In fact, it's setting back the true cause of feminism - the advancement of women - far more...

The National Organization for Women endorses the Obama-Biden ticket. NOW ought to change its name to WOW. Such stunning independence. A working woman with five children, the governor of a sovereign state, isn't a sufficient accomplishment. Who knew? Actually, Sarah Palin is a triumph for the "third stage" of feminism. The first stage of the modern woman's movement saw the destruction of the "feminine mystique." It's been almost 50 years since Betty Friedan argued that women lived in a "comfortable concentration camp" in the suburbs, prisoners with lots of rooms but no identity to call their own. She overstated the...

"Groundbreaking." "A landmark." "A classic." Those are the words now commonly used to describe Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique," first published in 1963. Friedan "pulled the trigger on history," wrote futurist Alvin Toffler; feminist admirers refer to it as "The Book." "The Feminine Mystique" sold more than 2 million copies when it came out, and remains a staple in women's studies classes today. But after nearly half a century, does it live up to its reputation? Rereading it, I find it to be both better and much worse than I remembered. Striking, certainly, is the famed opening passage, where Friedan...

How to destroy Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin? That’s the quandary of the left, of the campaign Democrats and the bloggers and other commentators who camp with them. She sailed through the first two tests — her introduction to the nation as John McCain’s running mate and her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention — with an easy self-confidence that alarmed adversaries expecting a deer-in-the-headlights revelation of the former small-town mayor’s unpreparedness for the duties ahead. One of her greatest tributes came from an independent-thinking feminist and Democrat, Camille Paglia, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia....

John McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate has energized the right. Conservatives view her as one of their own and are enthralled by her life story. She is a Washington outsider who, unlike the Democratic presidential nominee, impresses as being sincere, fresh, and new. Moreover, in juxtaposition with both Barack Obama and Joe Biden, her deeds suggest that she is an actual reformer rather than a person whose change message is wholly rhetorical. Her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention was a testament to her savvy and appeal. Palin’s inspired talk yielded two of...

Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.

To them, Todd Palin isn't even thereBy Kathryn DeBrecht Since the selection of Governor Sarah Palin as John McCain’s Vice Presidential running mate, the liberal left has been in a tizzy. After years of championing women’s rights, liberals and feminists are now attacking the one woman who shattered one of the highest glass ceilings in our nation. Liberal pundits and pols alike are questioning how this mother of five (one with special needs) will be able handle the job of Vice President and role of mother at the same time. Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn complained “Her first priority...

One of my favorite writers, Jonah Goldberg (from the National Review), has a terrific article this week that is definitely worth your time. Entitled “Feminist Army Aims Its Canons at Palin,” it’s everything I wish I could have written about the constant barrage of attacks on Governor Sarah Palin by the feminist gaggle. Quoting his piece: Gloria Steinem, the grand mufti of feminism, issued a fatwa anathematizing Palin. A National Organization for Women spokeswoman proclaimed Palin more of a man than a woman. Wendy Doniger, a feminist academic at the University of Chicago, writes of Palin in Newsweek: “Her greatest...

Ever since the surprise announcement of Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, as Senator McCain’s choice for his Vice Presidential running mate, we have noticed a meltdown from the left, particularly so-called feminists. This could not be more evident than in shown in the Chicago Sun Times op-ed by Black female columnist Mary Mitchell’s Palin should be laughingstock to all feminists article published September 13, 2008. How sexist for this so-called feminist to begin her hit piece with, “ Sarah Palin makes me sick. I hate that she was able to steal Barack Obama's mojo just by showing up wearing rimless glasses...

"I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail." -- Bob Herbert, NYT, 9-13-08 Bob Herbert's item in today's New York Times, She's Not Ready, is not so much political analysis as a howl of MSM shock and outrage. No-o-o-o-o!, Herbert seems to cry. I can't believe this is happening to us! Meanwhile, with condescension worthy of Charlie Gibson, ABC's David Wright suggests that Palin has been in need of a "chaperone" on the campaign trail. View video.

Rush Limbaugh is correct when he observes that traditional 60's and 70's style feminists (as well as the sections of the Democratic party that still have two brain cells to rub together) are VERY worried about someone like Sarah Palin, because they recognize the threat she presents to their ideology. There was an issue recently (I think a few days after her rollout at the RNC, that she was criticized for something she wore. I thought that particular angle, just the clothes, portrayed and symbolized much more than the cloth they were cut from. This has been discussed endlessly, but...

It is beyond shocking that the women who have claimed for decades that women can and should compete openly in a man’s world, breaking glass ceilings while multi-tasking on a variety of projects they choose . . . have now become knuckle draggers like the men they first claimed oppressed them over 50 years ago. You know, the men who said a woman’s place is in the home, and keeping her barefoot and pregnant would ensure that she stayed there. Irony of ironies, one of the women who inspired the modern feminist movement was Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, with...

Whether or not Sarah Palin helps John McCain win the election, her greatest work may already be behind her. She’s exposed the feminist con job. Don’t take my word for it. Feminists have been screaming like stuck pigs 24/7 since Palin was announced as McCain’s running mate. (Are pig metaphors completely verboten now?) Feminist author Cintra Wilson writes in Salon (a house organ of the Angry Left) that the notion of Palin as vice president is “akin to ideological brain rape.” Presumably just before the nurse upped the dosage on her medication, Wilson continued, “Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa...

"I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name ... yet has such a curious appeal for the right."  That delicious tidbit comes from a Canadian feminist named Heather Mallick, who writes for the tax-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Mallick is a career "journalist" for the CBC and other major Canadian media....

** EXCERPT ** >>snip<< First, there is a particular class and professional bent to the practitioners of feminism. Sarah Palin has as many kids as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she has as much of a prior political record as the once-heralded Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, who was named to the Democratic ticket by Walter Mondale in 1984 — and arguably has as much or more executive experience than Barack Obama. Somehow all that got lost in the endless sneering stories about her blue-collar conservatism, small Alaskan town, five children, snowmobiling husband and Idaho college degree. Second, feminism now often equates to...

How I wish I'd been the proverbial fly on the wall watching the changing expressions on Barack Obama's face as Sarah Palin delivered her already-legendary speech at the Republican convention last Wednesday. I imagine his pre-speech expression as alert, but relaxed paternalism, like a chief surgeon set to supervise a lowly resident's clumsy initial attempt at an appendectomy. Then puzzlement as the surgeon realizes that he's to be the patient, and finally horror as, strapped to the table and, before a nation of fascinated onlookers, he is subjected to ... a palinoscopy! Oh, she got through to him all right....

I grew up in the wake of the feminist revolution during the 1970s. More and more middle-class women were going out to work while humming the new feminist anthem "I am Woman" by Helen Reddy. Of course, throughout the centuries poor women had often been compelled to work for financial reasons, but they didn't represent the new "girl power" idea that the bra burners espoused. Toiling to put food on the table isn't nearly as exciting as working for the cause. My own mother went back to work when I was in elementary school. She was fortunate that my father...

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist...

Opinion: Biden selection is bad news for America's fathers By Mike McCormick and Glenn Sacks Special to the Mercury News Article Launched: 09/02/2008 08:51:19 PM PDT When Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama announced his selection of Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., as his vice-presidential candidate, one of the two pieces of Biden legislation he saluted was the Violence Against Women Act of 1994. Biden, who has long been the principal architect of federal domestic violence policy, spearheaded two subsequent re-authorizations and calls the act "what I'm most proud of in my entire career." Biden means well, but he has consistently...

Fascist Feminism Ever since Alaska governor Sarah Palin stepped onto the world stage as John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate, she’s been the object of merciless, vicious attacks — mostly by women. This intragender war marks the official unmasking of fascist feminism. Feminism, which took root in the late 19th century as an equality movement for women’s suffrage, has evolved into a militant, totalitarian train of entitlement, misandry, superiority, and privilege. To maintain the façade of pursuing equality, the National Organization for Women, self-designated voice for the “slighted” gender, presents a neverending, monolithic image of female victimhood. To achieve this monotony,...

Note to mainstream media: Sarah Palin is NOT a feminist The mainstream media seems confused these days. It appears that because Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin is a woman, she is also a feminist. And not just a feminist, but THE feminist - a sign that all is right in the world when it comes to gender equity. But how could that be, you ask? How could anyone paint Palin - whose policies make it all too clear that she's about as anti-feminist as they come - as feminism's second coming? Well, by pithy misleading headlines - that's how! The...

Can someone please tell me what the hell happened? This presidential election was supposed to be a high-water mark for feminism. Hillary Clinton entered the primaries as the first female front-runner in our nation's history. Better still, she wasn't running as a Woman Candidate. Yes, Hillary had an established track record of championing so-called women's issues, including children's health care, affordable day care, family medical leave, and, of course, reproductive rights. But her focus on strength and experience pretty much precluded her playing the gender card. Forget your garden-variety female pol's struggle to prove herself tough enough to hang with...

Thanks to Sarah Palin, the culture war has now become a civil war—on the left. Mika Brzezinski bravely opened a new front in the conflict during today's Morning Joe, repeatedly going after two women MSMers for their column suggesting Palin is taking the working-mom thing too far. And, mirabile dictu, Mika even admitted to sensing MSM unfairness to Republicans. View video here.

Ms. Steinem: That chromosome AK Gov. Sarah Palin and NY Sen. Hilary Clinton share is the same one that you and Palin - and all women - share as well. But it is Palin – whom Cindy McCain described as a “reform-minded ... hockey-mommin' ... basketball shootin' ... moose huntin' ... fly-fishin' ... pistol-packing ... mother of five” in her speech to the RNC – who more closely resembles the typical American woman, not you. ...It’s obvious from your op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that it’s been a long time since you’ve hung out with women who ... can...

Governor Sarah Palin has grown up in a world full of open doors. She was born on February 11, 1964. By the time she entered middle school, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 had been passed which prohibited discrimination against women in educational activities (including athletics) receiving federal funds. By the time she entered high school, the Supreme Court had decided Roe v. Wade. By the time she graduated from college, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibited employment discrimination based on sex and the Equal Pay Act which prohibited women from being paid...

If any pundit should celebrate Sarah Palin, you might think it would be Judith Warner. The author of "Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety" is the Times' resident expert on the challenges women face in balancing career and family. But think again. Politics trumps female solidarity. Warner's column on Palin is perhaps the most vitriolic and condescending I've read. The Mirrored Ceiling is a few days old, but Warner's fury still rings fresh. Excerpts [emphasis added]: * It turns out there was something more nauseating than the nomination of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate this past week. It...

Hypocrisy is only bad when it is improperly used. —George Bernard Shaw I never thought I would live long enough to see the day when the Republican presidential candidate would cite membership in the PTA as evidence of executive experience, when the far right would laud the full-time working mothers of newborns, when social conservatives would stare down teenage pregnancy and replace their pursed-lip accusations of promiscuity with hosannas about choosing life. The Republican Party has undergone a surprising metamorphosis since Sarah Palin was chosen as its vice presidential candidate. In Palin I recognize a fellow traveler, a woman whose...

EU wants to ban 'sexist' TV commercials Adverts which use sex to sell or promote gender stereotypes could be banned by the EU. By Chris Irvine MEPs want TV regulators in the EU to set guidelines which would see the end of anything deemed to portray women as sex objects or reinforce gender stereotypes. This could potentially mean an end to attractive women advertising perfume, housewives in the kitchen or men doing DIY. Such classic adverts as the Diet Coke commercial featuring the bare-chested builder, or Wonderbra's "Hello Boys" featuring model Eva Herzigova would have been banned. The new rules...

Gov. Sarah Palin's commando muscle-flex in St. Paul Wednesday night eviscerated the argument that she might not be capable of handling the vice presidency and five children at the same time. Indeed, we were left with the distinct impression that on a slow day, she could clean up America, balance our budget with a little help from eBay, and win the Iditarod -- all with 10 kids tied to her back. What Sarah Palin did not do, however, is put an end to the latest national conversation about "trying to have it all." Because the question we're all asking isn't...

From the “you can only be a real woman if you are a rabid liberal” group otherwise known as the feminist movement, their de facto leader Gloria Steinem unleashed a barrage of criticism today against VP hopeful Sarah Palin in an op-ed piece in the L.A Times. Ms. Steinem once again proves her bona-fides as a liberal of the most radical old school left as if the next bra-burning session were just minutes away and she was behind schedule. To cast doubt on Mrs. Palin’s abilities, Ms. Steinem touts Joe Biden’s 37 years as senator and expresses doubts about Mrs....

Sarah Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Hillary Clinton. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger. By Gloria Steinem ...

Palin is a true feminist role model By Chrystia Freeland Published: September 2 2008 19:37 | Last updated: September 2 2008 19:37 During the Democratic primaries, Gloria Steinem, pioneering feminist and Hillary Clinton supporter, argued that the contest had revealed that gender was “probably the most restricting force in American life”. She illustrated her point by imagining a female version of Barack Obama and contending that no woman with such a slender biography would be considered seriously for the presidency. It is now clear that Ms Steinem was right – although proof comes not from the treatment of the Democratic...

There's something about outspoken conservative women that drives the Left mad. It's a peculiar pathology I've reported on for more than 15 years, both as a witness and a target. Thus, the onset of Palin Derangement Syndrome in the media, Democratic circles and the cesspools of the blogosphere came as no surprise. They just can't help themselves. Liberals hold a special animus for constituencies they deem traitors. Minorities who identify as social and economic conservatives have left the plantation and sold out their people. Women who put an "R" by their name have abandoned their ovaries and betrayed their gender....

"There is a special place in hell for women who do not help other women," former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once remarked. Where, then, are the liberal women when it comes to Alaska Governor Sarah Palin? Palin became the first woman to grace a Republican ticket on Friday, August 29, when Senator John McCain selected her as his running mate. The following day, a diarist at the mainstream left-wing Daily Kos (Barack Obama himself appeared as a Kos diarist back in 2005) suggested without any evidence whatsoever that Sarah Palin's son, Trig, recently born and with Down syndrome, was...

Romanticized Pedophilia and Polygamy Raden Adjeng Kartini: Debasing Her Memory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kartini.....( added) Having just read the Prologue (available... not without irony, at a website whose name ends with “..Trashy Books”) to Sherry Jones “The Jewel of Medina,” one hopes (against hope) that perhaps the whole “fatwa” imbroglio has been manufactured by Random House to jettison this idiotic “novel.” There are so many layers of irony and tragedy to this story, epitomized most of all by the feckless Ms. Jones who not only romanticizes pedophilia (as observed aptly by Diana West), and polygamy, but seems utterly unaware that she is doing...

I contemplate divorce every day. It tugs on my sleeve each morning when my husband, Will, greets me in his chipper, smug morning-person voice, because after 16 years of waking up together, he still hasn't quite pieced out that I'm not viable before 10 a.m. ..snip.. Maybe one day, marriage -- like the human appendix, male nipples, or your pinky toes -- will become a vestigial structure that will, in a millennium or two, be obsolete. Our great-great-great-grandchildren's grandchildren will ask each other in passing, "Remember marriage? What was its function again? Was it that maladaptive organ that intermittently produced...

- Angus & Co., WE SALUTE YOU!!! I'm not sure regarding the exact date, but at least I know Ac/Dc formed in Sydney back in 1973 (- does anyone here on the greatest Conservative site on the Internet happen to know the exact date?) AC/DC is one of my favorite rock bands and all of Australia indeed ought to be very, very proud of them. AC/DC are admirable out of many reasons. Three of them stands out from my point of view: 1. Their conservatism; while most bands that have been around for some time, sooner or later, tend to...

This morning, I read the magazine What Is Enlightenment that Glenn picked up for me from a local health food store because the cover had a number of articles about men including "Constructing the New Man," "19 Powerful Women Tell the Truth about Men," and "A Scandalous Look at Scandinavia: Where women are women and men are too." Uh, okay, I thought, this can't be good, it's a magazine from a crunchy organic healthfood store with what I assumed would be a somewhat biased picture of the male gender complete with articles describing how men should be more like women....

Feminism Past and Present: Ideology, Action, and Reform CAMILLE PAGLIA Feminism is back in the news. After a long period when feminist debate has been mainly confined to Web sites and to books that, however well reviewed, did not find a readership beyond that of other feminists, the current presidential campaign has restored gender war to the center ring. There has been an explosion of international publicity and acrimony over the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Hillary is not, as is too often alleged, the first woman to run for president: she has a long line of strong-willed precursors beginning with...

From The Sunday Times August 3, 2008 Where have all the real men gone? Top American columnist Kathleen Parker is causing a furore with her new book Save the Males, in which she argues that feminism has neutered men and deprived them of their noble, protective role in society I know. Saving the males is an unlikely vocation for a 21st-century woman. Most men don’t know they need saving; most women consider the idea absurd. When I tell my women friends that I want to save the males, they look at me as if noticing for the first time that...

How do you think Hillary's feminist supporters would feel if they knew Obama's father figure, Frank Davis, wrote a book called: "Sex Rebel:Black (Memoirs of a G*** Gourmet)" Where G*** is a particularly vile word for that certain part of the female anatomy? Frank M. Davis did in 1968 under the pen name Bob Greene.