Free Republic

Progressive Carnevale by: Mytheos Holt, July 17, 2009 On July 8, 2009, the Center for American Progress (CAP) hosted their annual “Campus Progress National Conference” at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Headlining with such speakers as Obama Administration Green Job Czar Van Jones, Daily Show Correspondent John Oliver, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Former President Bill Clinton and featuring panels on subjects such as “Am I Hip Hop” and “Keeping the Faith: Moving Religious Communities From Tolerance to Advocacy on LGBT Issues,” the progressive gathering gave young activists the chance to bond with their elders. And...

THE Navy is facing a sex scandal involving claims male sailors took part in a contest to bed women sailors, assigning a dollar value to each conquest. Higher values were placed on officers or lesbians and scores were recorded in a book referred to as ``the ledger.'' Competitors were also encouraged to have sex in unusual places such as on pool tables. The allegations have been made against crew aboard HMAS Success, the largest ship ever built for the Australian Navy and the flagship of the fleet.

Andrew Breitbart takes on the elitist media, specifically the three female "feminists" who have been on the trash Sarah bandwagon from the beginning, and he does it with gusto: What a shock that Maureen Dowd devoted her New York Times column Sunday to attack Sarah Palin. It did not so much criticize Alaska's governor for prematurely stepping down from her official duties as to finish off what sister snipers Katie Couric and Tina Fey began last fall. The assassination of Sarah Palin - by media. For those who didn't pay attention, Mrs. Palin's unexpected stratospheric rise as a national political...

SYDNEY -- Tennis great Chris Evert has joined the chorus of complaints about the noise level in women's tennis, saying the "grunting" was getting out of hand. Evert stopped short of joining former rival Martina Navratilova in labelling the practice as cheating, but agreed it had reached unacceptable levels. Evert: "Grunting is one thing but the shrill sound that you hear with players nowadays, and especially they get louder when they hit a winner, that's the thing that I observe as a player," the former world No. 1 told reporters in Sydney on Monday. "It comes before they hit the...

A couple of Swedish parents have stirred up debate in the country by refusing to reveal whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child is a boy or a girl. Tax agency ready for June 1st ID card rush (29 May 09) Sweden rules 'gender-based' abortion legal (12 May 09) Swedish gays made to wait for church wedding (3 May 09) Pop’s parents [see footnote], both 24, made a decision when their baby was born to keep Pop’s sex a secret. Aside from a select few – those who have changed the child’s diaper – nobody knows Pop’s gender; if anyone enquires, Pop’s parents...

TV and movies are rife with tough, violent women nowadays. And it’s a scary thing. The movie tough girl look likes a starlet but fights like Rambo. I am reminded of the Greeks who invented the Amazon myth as a kind of horror story....The modern version is not just a horror story; it is feminist vicarious revenge, although, as usual, women are the losers in this gender horseplay. Misandry just ends in the frustration that women aren’t really men. Not only are feminists in the mood to caricature men as jerks and buffoons, now they are literally kicking men’s rear...

Thank you, Barbara Boxer, for hammering the final nail in the coffin of angry and irrelevant pseudo-feminism. If there were any life left in its wheezing and flailing body, her latest experiment in the utterly ridiculous effectively pulled the plug. The venomous brand of feminism that cuts men off at the knees to make women arbitrarily taller is no longer credible. When Boxer had the audacity – and some would argue, questionable mental clarity – to publicly scold a US Army general for calling her “ma’am” instead of “senator,” it telegraphed to the rest of the world the sheer inanity...

Dear editor: Calling all women. Where are you? Mr. David Letterman just unleashed a very cruel joke on one of our fellow sisters. I've been made to understand that any woman would never tolerate this ugly unjust treatment of any woman. Sarah Palin's daughter was verbally attacked and abused by the thoughtless, unkind man. Where is your outrage? Is your lack of support because it is Sarah Palin? Why? She's a woman and I might add, a very pretty lady. Or do you consider her a dumb conservative right wing loon? I'm absolutely appalled at the lack of support and...

The National Bureau of Economic Research released a study to be published soon in the American Economic Journal that shows women's happiness has measurably declined since 1970. It's no surprise that this has stimulated much comment. This study covers the same time period as the rise of the so-called women's liberation or feminist movement. The correlation demands an explanation. You can read the entire study at www.eagleforum.org/links. One theory advanced by the authors, University of Pennsylvania economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, is that the women's liberation movement "raised women's expectations" (sold them a bill of goods), making them feel...

Not long ago, I wrote of how the English language is being destroyed by the stupidity of feminism. Well, today I've found another perfect example of how feminism is making our language trite and silly. The example turns up in a report on new prehistoric discoveries near Stonehenge, in Hampshire, England. Apparently, a pair of Neolithic tombs was discovered in the English countryside and researchers are all excited. I can’t say I blame them for this is very interesting news. It isn't the discovery that served as a vehicle for a stupid feminazi trick, though, but the coverage. Tucked into...

Now Amanda Fortini at Salon has jumped on the anti-misogynist Letterman bandwagon, also calling out feminists who avert their eyes when conservative women are the targets. In an overall good piece just out: "If there was any question that a stubborn strain of old-school sexism persists in Obama's America, one has only to look at certain leaders of what the right wing loves to call the "liberal media" but which is sounding and acting, recently, more like the frat-house media. There, like a virus hiding in the body before, perhaps, staging a comeback, misogyny has found a place to lurk...

NORTH AMERICANS of my generation grew up with the 1970s children’s record Free to Be...You and Me, on which Rosey Grier, an immense former football star, sang ‘It’s Alright to Cry’. The message: girls could be tough, and boys were allowed not to be. For almost 40 years, that era’s Western feminist critique of rigid sex-role stereotyping has prevailed. In many ways, it has eroded or even eliminated the kind of arbitrary constraints that turned peaceable boys into aggressive men and stuck ambitious girls in low-paying jobs. Feminists understandably have often shied away from scientific evidence that challenges this critique...

Recently the Barna Research Group released a study on the religious practices of liberals and Christians. According to the report: "The research...discovered that liberals are more likely than conservatives to develop their own set of religious beliefs rather than adopt those proposed by a church or other entity. A greater percentage of liberals also indicated they are very open to accepting different moral views than those they presently possess." [1] Liberal "Christians" abhor "fundamentalist" Christianity so they cast it aside and adopt their own set of religious beliefs and values. Times have changed, after all, so they feel it's incumbent...

In the minds of many, evil is epitomized by Nazi Germany. An embittered Austrian corporal, a racist ideology, and an amoral eugenics movement all came together at the same point in human history, eventually spelling the deaths of six million Jews and others. Others view Communism as the far greater evil, a godless philosophy that eventually doomed many more millions of souls in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere. Yet these staggering numbers pale in comparison to the toll of unborn children whose lives are claimed each year by abortion. Each year 42 million of these procedures are performed...

I was raised by a working, single mother. She went to Stanford, majored in economics, became a public school teacher, wrote a book, and now works as a journalist. She didn’t give up her job when she had my sister or me, and she certainly didn’t give it up after she and my father divorced. I consider her the ultimate feminist—she’s worked her butt off, made a living on her own, and raised two perfect daughters (just kidding). She’s my hero. But if she had quit her job when I was born, retiring at age 31, would she still be...

Who is worse? The father molesting the daughter, or the mother who knows and looks the other way? The man raping the girl in the alleyway, or the passive bystander who neither stops the attack nor calls the police? The mother beating her children, or the husband who goes to work and leaves the children with her? Who is worse? The abuser, the attacker is worse. But we are revulsed and disgusted by the people who aid and abet and ignore the perpetrators, and rightly so. Last week, ten women were the subject of a cyber-rape. That is, without their...

Over the last four decades, American women have got almost everything the feminist movement promised. Lucky us! Are we happy now? No, we are not. All across the industrialized world, wherever egalitarian feminism has sprinkled its fairy dust, women report that they are considerably less happy and satisfied with life then were their benighted, patriarchy-oppressed, apron-wearing sisters of yore. “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,” a new study conducted by Wharton academics Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, finds that the happiness of Western women has been steadily declining over the exact period during which egalitarian feminism has supposedly been delivering...

Since writing The Thrill of the Chaste -- a recovery manual for grown-ups who missed the memo on abstinence -- I have addressed all kinds of people, from fishermen in Alaska to unwed moms in New York City, pornographers at "Sex Week at Yale" to hooting Catholic schoolboys in Drougheda, Ireland. But never have I been so affected by audiences as I was in Poland, meeting readers of the Polish translation of my book.   What struck me about the Polish readers -- most of them young women in their 20s and 30s -- was their consciousness of sin.  ...

Politico blogger Anne Schroeder Mullins forgot that she, too, is a woman yesterday when she decided to promote a vulgar, hate-filled rant about rape fantasies with conservative women by a guy named Guy Cimbalo. Playboy published the piece but scrubbed its Web site of the evidence a few hours later after harsh criticism across the political spectrum but especially from conservative bloggers. Now Politico has pulled a Playboy by letting Mullins replace her original post with a quasi-apology: The Playboy article linked to on this blog listed 10 conservative women "they love to hate" adding their reasons why. The blog...

Boston Vigil for Dr. Tiller Join the Boston community in sharing our grief and celebrating the life of Dr. George Tiller, a true hero for women across the country. Monday, June 1st 6pm St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral 138 Tremont St., Boston Across from the Park St. T stop Please help us spread the word via email, Facebook, Twitter, and texts. Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=88629078374&ref=nf Twitter hashtag: #BostonVigil and #Tiller (this one is attracting some unpleasant tweets, however) Dr. Tiller was shot and killed Sunday morning while serving as an usher at his church in Witchita, Kansas. Since the 1970s, Dr. Tiller...

Over the Memorial Day weekend, many college administrators attended a conference about the absence of men on today's college campuses and expressed concern about the negative experiences and unprecedented challenges facing college men today. The "2nd Conference on College Men" at the University of Pennsylvania featured sessions examining the implications of negative comments about men that are prevalent on college campuses and the sexist campus activism of participants in the nation's 500 college gender studies departments. The conference program, attended by about 100 professors and student affairs personnel, exposed some unpleasant facts: men are "overrepresented" in drug and alcohol abuse,...

American women are wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago. They’re more likely to work outside the home, and more likely to earn salaries comparable to men’s when they do. They can leave abusive marriages and sue sexist employers. They enjoy unprecedented control over their own fertility. On some fronts — graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security — men look increasingly like the second sex. But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, when Betty Friedan diagnosed her fellow wives and daughters as the...

Feminists are in essence an anti-intellectual lot. After all, the back flips they have to do to justify their anti-male crusade is an act worthy of Olympics style awards. Such are the illogical back bends that feminists must to do to justify their ideology that men become wholly unnecessary, biology and nature be damned. There are many intellectual outrages to education and tradition that feminists employ to make themselves feel superior. But I want to focus here on just one of these. The example I'd like to discuss today is the elimination of the masculine pronoun. For those not "up"...

Conservatives and Feminists Take Aim At Muslim Student Union Reenacting Stoning a Woman to Death during Speech by Ex Congresswoman IRVINE, CA – Members of the conservative youth group, Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), announced that they will graphically reenact the execution of a woman accused of adultery as prescribed by Islamic Law during a speech by Ex Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The protest will be held Wednesday May 13 at 6:00 pm outside the UC Irvine Student Center. Demonstrators, dressed in Islamic garb, will hurl over a hundred “rocks” at a woman dressed in a burka at the entrance of...

An Allen woman accused of killing her husband said she stabbed him in the heart after he turned up the volume of a Dallas Cowboys game, according to media reports. Kimberly Shanks A grand jury indicted Kimberly Shanks, 51, on May 7 for fatally stabbing Charles Shanks, 49, on Dec. 14. She will appear before a judge on May 27. Shanks admitted to killing her husband at their home in the 1400 block of Lone Star Court on Dec. 14 after he turned up the volume of a Dallas Cowboys game “knowing it would keep her awake,” the Star Community...

Imagine a world where ideology takes the place of truth and laws are rooted in dubious factoids from nowhere. That pretty much sums up the fact-challenged, hysteria-mongering domestic violence industry that is propped up by $1 billion of federal money each year. Industry ideologues are loathe to admit the fact, but they truly believe the cause of partner abuse is patriarchal oppression. Not convinced? Just take it on the authority of feminist Gloria Steinem who once made this randy claim, "The patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself." In her now-famous PBS interview,...

In their efforts to improve the situation of women around the globe, a handful in the international community believe there should be no honoring of motherhood in public policy since motherhood "traps" women in lowly domestic endeavors instead of using their talents in the workforce.

I welcome Tristram Hunt's contribution to bringing Friedrich Engels out of the shadow of Marx and to prevent his being forgotten by history (Feminist friend or foe?, G2, 29 April). In these turbulent times Engels still has much to say of relevance. Hunt rightly emphasises that Engels was a pioneering feminist and gives prominence to his book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. However, I take issue with his claims of hypocrisy. The article says Friedrich Engels condemned prostitution but enjoyed it himself. In his wild youth, while alone in Paris for a short period, Engels...

Expert: More women are in relationships with other women Some leave husbands or boyfriends for other women Researchers study whether women's sexuality is less fixed than men's Professor: Sexual fluidity is not something women can control Lately, a new kind of sisterly love seems to be in the air. In the past few years, Sex and the City's Cynthia Nixon left a boyfriend after a decade and a half and started dating a woman (and talked openly about it). Certainly nothing is new about women having sex with women, but we've arrived at a moment in the popular culture when...

Jessica Valenti, founder of the vaguely pornographic sounding Feministing.com, has decided that there is no such thing as virginity in America's young girls and the Today Show is entirely pleased with itself to give her a national TV venue from which to say so. Never mind how silly it all sounds. On April 22 Valenti and Today pushed the idea that sexually active girls should not be thought of as a problem, that an expectation of virginity is harmful, and that religion is a baneful influence on young women today. Valenti says that if young men can have their sexual...

Want to see left-wing social activism gone wild? Take a look at some of the views coming from Antonia Zerbisias, columnist for the Toronto Star's Living section. Zerbisias, posted on her Twitter site she wished renown conservative Michelle Malkin were shot. "Forget the Marxists. I wish the marksmen would take @MichelleMalkin. I'm thinking Dick Cheney. He's such a great shot," Zerbisias wrote on the social-networking site Twitter. ...more, with image...

In marked contrast to Spain, Germany has decided to tighten the rules on genetic screening of embryos. Measures to be accepted by parliament tomorrow will affect screening in three main areas: Firstly, doctors will be allowed to test for Down’s Syndrome, but not for diseases like cancer which the baby may be pre-disposed to suffer in later life. Secondly, paternity tests will only be carried out with the express permission of the baby’s mother.Finally, employers and insurance companies are to be banned from demanding genetic checks on workers or clients. This is a sensitive issue in Germany after recent scandals...

Why do the most deliberate and sustained attacks on the family so often come from the socialist side of the political spectrum? While modern industrial capitalism puts pressure on the family, this pressure is incidental to the main structures of the market economy. By contrast, the most profound attacks on the family, including easy divorce, abortion and same sex marriage, have come deliberately from Socialism, not as its unintended by-product. My purpose today is to show that the socialist ideal of equality has played an independent role in the breakdown of the family. Socialism, which has grown up in parallel...

Philip Swanton does not like wives and girlfriends 'offering advice' and interrupting the male bonding between customer and cutter. So a thick black indelible marker stripe bisects the floor of his shop in the Clifton area of Bristol, marked No Ladies Beyond This Line. Mr Swanton, 60, whose wife Kathryn (corr) works with him in the shop, says he has nothing against the 'Ladies', but just wants some space where men can do what men do. "Men like to come here and have their hair cut without the intrusion of a lady putting her oar in" he said.

Campus Feminists Protest Pro-Life Clinics by: Bethany Stotts, April 15, 2009 April 13th was the National Crisis Pregnancy Center Protest Day, an initiative designed by the Feminist Majority Foundation. As part of a “take action” agenda, the George-Soros-funded FMF encouraged students to • contact their Campus Health Center and if it “refers students to a local CPC, urge them to stop or, at a minimum, to disclose that these facilities are NOT comprehensive healthcare providers and that they do not provide” services such as abortion, family planning, condoms or birth control; • “Have your group demand a CPC-free campus! Kick...

The announcement that the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, has chosen a lesbian, pro-abortion president to lead the seminary has sent shock waves around the Anglican Communion. The appointment of Katherine Hancock Ragsdale highlights a week that also saw TEC bishop-elect Kevin Thew Forrester replace a reading from the New Testament with a reading from the Quran at St. Paul's Marquette, Michigan. One wonders what Episcopal boundaries and barriers have yet to be crossed that the dying embers of historic Christianity could possibly fan into life. That the Diocese of Massachusetts has a functioning transgendered priest complete with a...

I have a genuine question to ask Freepers. Why is it any time a woman stands up for equal treatment on FR is she called a "feminazi" and a liberal? If you review the last 50 posts or so to the "breaking news" thread about the shooting of three police officers in Pittsburgh Saturday, you will see that it was "hijacked" by a group of posters attacking "Canaan" who started it all by questioning a poster's use of the word "reporterette." Canann thought the word was sexist. Whether or not that was the case, or is the case, I thought...

1960s pioneer Steinem: Every woman stands for feminist movementCannot be posted, due to FR policy.

Look to your right, and look to your left,” Karen Shablin, a deeply pro-life activist from Feminist For Life, instructed her audience. “These people [may not] be here if their mother had exercised her choice.” Feminist For Life is an organization aimed at continuing the efforts of early feminists such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton to seek practical solutions to systematically eliminate the root causes for women to have abortions, according to the group’s website. Related: Abortion Activists Educate Students Activist Speaks Against Abortion Pope to U.S. Speaker Pelosi: Reject Abortion Support Shablin believes that abortions occur because...

*** “That was my least favorite thing I ever did in my whole life,” Washington writer Hanna Rosin says in a podcast conversation with three pals that accompanies her sure-to-be-controversial new feature, “The Case Against Breast Feeding,” on The Atlantic’s Web site. She’s talking about pumping breast milk – the grotesque ritual carried out behind closed office doors nationwide by beleaguered working mothers who are fully “committed” (as the lactation consultants put it) to the goal of long-term, exclusive breast-feeding. *** “It’s the moment that kind of brings together all the awfulness of being a modern mother,” she says. ***...

They called it history-making here in Minneapolis. Yesterday, Elissa Reinsma became the first female to compete in the state high school wrestling tournament. It was not a step forward. Some cultures spend a thousand years unlearning the brutality of men toward women.

From the day the founding Fathers risked their liberty and life by signing the Declaration of Independence, there has been those who have wanted to sink this great ship called the United States of America. Well 143 years later the good ship America took a torpedo hit that at the time seemed like just another glancing blow. What many still consider the greatest step forward in equality for the sexes, was more then just a glancing blow however. It was in fact a deadly strike that entered the very heart of the ship and has been smoldering since. The damage...

The troubling sexual politics of Obama's Council on Women and GirlsAmidst troubling reports of our nation's economic woes and pressing national security issues, one news story earlier this month received fairly little attention: President Obama's March 11 executive order establishing a White House Council on Women and Girls. While the Council's role is likely to be more symbolic than practical, its creation, and the accompanying rhetoric, suggests that the Obama White House is bringing a blinkered, outdated approach to gender issues—one that, far from transcending ideological divisions, takes us back to a narrow and dogmatic feminist ideology. According to the...

The scene is reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz scene when hordes of winged monkeys are poised on the castle parapet, ready to snatch up Dorothy and her three affable sidekicks. But this time it's not a harmless fairytale, it's a cabal of feminists determined to turn our society into a socialist paradise. These women dismiss any criticism with a "to the victors go the spoils" shrug. But the fact is, men played a major role in handing Barack Obama his White House victory. During the Democratic primaries, Barack beat Hillary in large part due to support from the male...

MANCHESTER, NH (July 9, 2021) -- The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church today has warned that the Diocese of New Hampshire must not in any way be ostracized because it has chosen to elect the church’s first openly non-celibate animal-loving bishop. "As presiding bishop, I am called to see to it that all perspectives are treated with respect,” said the Most Rev. Annie Thangohs. “We can, of course, disagree on the issue of animal-loving in the Christian life. I have seen, however, some distressing accounts in the secular press. I had hoped that we had removed that hateful term,...

According to an article in the Boston Globe, an informal poll taken among 200 teenagers has revealed that almost half of them blame the pop star Rihanna for her recent beating, allegedly by her boyfriend, Chris Brown. It's just one survey. But it's very bad news. And feminists are to blame. I don't say that to bash Gloria Steinem or whomever the most easily blamed feminist would be at this point. I say it so we can collectively get our heads out of the feminist fog in which we've been lost. I appreciate the kids wanting Rihanna to take some...

Washington D.C., Mar 19, 2009 / 09:09 pm (CNA).- A new report shows that Melanne Verveer, President Obama’s nominee to the new position of Ambassador-at-Large for Women’s Issues, has ties to groups such as Catholics in Alliance and the National Catholic Reporter. Though an “ardent supporter of abortion,” Verveer also worked for the predecessor to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.Jack Smith, editor of the Catholic Key newspaper for the Archdiocese of Kansas-City-St. Joseph, on Tuesday reported several of Verveer’s connections.She has worked as Chief of Staff to then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, for various pro-abortion “rights” politicians.As Executive Vice-President...

OK, so why did Madison's Bishop Robert Morlino pick a PR fight he will certainly lose, and which he must have known at the outset he would certainly lose? Well folks, you won't find out from the NCR article.Headlined, "Wisconsin parish worker fired for feminist views: Allowed no opportunity for defense nor to face accusers," Mike Sweitzer-Beckman's piece tells the story of Ruth Kolpack, long-time pastoral associate at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in Beloit, who was just minding her own business when Morlino called her in and fired her. Kolpack said that when she met with her bishop...

Here’s where the mainstream media’s Obamamania goes from the merely embarrassing to the downright cringe-inducing: New York magazine this week turns its worshipful eye on the First Lady, with a cover proclaiming “The Power of Michelle Obama” and a roster of no fewer than 16 writers laboring to elevate her to the iconic status already bestowed on her husband. By far the most sophomoric offering comes from Stacy Schiff, who delves into the “sexual politics” of the first couple. But as one has come to expect from that nebulous early ‘70s terminology, the reader is treated to a pastiche of...

It’s turning into Hypocrisy Watch Day here at FinkelBlog. Earlier, we noted John Kerry complaining that “partisan politics” had crept into the confirmation process for Obama nominees–despite having engaged in hardball tactics himself to block Bush nominees. Now it’s the president’s turn. Speaking at a “Women of Courage” event, Pres. Obama said “When women are more than half of our population but just 17% of our Congress . . . we need to ask ourselves some hard questions.” Your wish is my command, Mr. President. How’s this for a hard question? Are you proud of having used hardball tactics to...