| Labour activists admitted to ranking the women in terms of looks and wondering about their lingerie. Perhaps such improper musings...
Actually, I already knew the answer to that: yes. |
Posted on 06/01/2005 2:45:57 PM PDT by Pokey78
TWO YEARS ago I attended a meeting at a well-known bastion of the left-wing intelligentsia. There were a dozen representatives of the Malaysian media and three senior members of the Labour establishment. There were two Malaysian women, but the rest of those gathered were men. I was seven months pregnant and arrived slightly late and very out of breath. There were no chairs left, and slowly I huffed and puffed my way to the window sill, where I perched uncomfortably for the next 90 minutes. No one stood up to offer me a seat. When I remarked upon this afterwards to one of the Labour honchos, he shrugged off the criticism: “Chivalry is not part of Malaysian culture, I guess.” Forget the Malays, I exploded, what about the male Britons present? He responded with a shrug: “I thought you women were interested in equality.” This was more than bad manners. The incident was indicative of the Left’s attitude to women in positions of influence: they are an irrelevance to be overlooked, an irritant to be brushed aside. In my six years as deputy editor of The New Statesman, I came across many liberal misogynists. They felt that women had achieved equality and could therefore fend for themselves. These men believed that they had secured their own feminist credentials by seeing to the (alleged) narrowing of the gender pay gap, and supporting (even if only temporarily) all-women shortlists for political candidates. What did it matter if, when the political became personal, they treated women like dirt? The liberal misogynists’ champion, it emerges, is Bill Clinton. According to a book published this week, the former President and his inner circle wielded their power to discredit and destroy the women he abused. In Their Lives: the Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine, the lawyer Candice E. Jackson examines accounts of seven women who claim that they suffered from Mr Clinton’s attentions and were subjected to intimidation and harassment once they dared to complain. The catalogue of Mr Clinton’s conquests is well known, the crassness of his come-ons much reported. Yet until now no one had asked why it was that when Judge Clarence Thomas allegedly made his remarks about oral sex to a fellow lawyer, Anita Hill, feminist critics went for the jugular, while the former President, despite repeated allegations of far more serious sexual misconduct, went unchallenged by them. The campaign against the black conservative judge and the cover-up of the white President were orchestrated by the same powerful groups — feminists and the liberal media. Ms Jackson, who describes herself as a libertarian feminist, shows how, because Mr Clinton was pro-choice, pro-equal pay, pro-state-funded childcare, he could count on the complicity of women (and men) who would normally have delighted in blowing the whistle on a male sexual predator. As with the similarly priapic and disreputable Kennedy clan, Mr Clinton’s track record on social issues protected him from being outed as a serial misogynist. Are his British counterparts similarly shielded? Ask any woman MP, any female journalist on a left-of-centre newspaper, or a woman employee of the BBC or the British Council, and they will reply with a thundering “Yes!” Egalitarianism is so sacred in the contemporary liberal canon that its attainment overrides all other considerations. Using politically correct terms matters more than offering a pregnant woman your seat; fufilling the quotas is more important than being civil to a woman who has turned down your advances. There have been several embarrassing incidents where male Labour MPs have made inopportune advances to female colleagues, or cracked sexist remarks about them; but when these stories are published Westminster women simply raise an eyebrow: one down, so many more undetected, uncensured, and free to go on. Some Westminster men counter that affirmative action has fuelled the sex wars in politics. Tony Blair’s backroom boys will run down the list of Blair’s Babes and snort about over-promotion and tokenism. The new Labourites moan and groan, exhibiting the same difficulty in dealing with women that old Labour stalwarts still admit to. The new lot, like so many of the old lot, simply don’t like women. In 2002, the Fawcett Society published a revealing report about the party’s attitude to the second sex. At selection meetings, while listening to women candidates delivering their speeches, Labour activists admitted to ranking the women in terms of looks and wondering about their lingerie. Perhaps such improper musings should be expected of a party whose roots lie in the predominantly male trade union movement. Labour’s culture remains intrinsically macho. This runs counter to the public perception of the party — but then, Labour misogynists can carry on hiding behind the figleaf of their party’s feminist agenda. The secret of success in the new gender wars is to come from the approved corner. If you are a devout Muslim, liberals will see you as a potential wife-beater who longs to wrap your women in burkas. Christians fare little better — they are seen as dispossessing the daughters of Eve, whether by expecting wives to obey their husbands, or in barring women from bishoprics. But come from the secular liberal establishment and you can get away with maltreating women in a way that our supposedly unenlightened forbears would have found unacceptable. The big question is whether the Left can go beyond paying lip service to feminism and reach a position where liberal misogyny belongs as firmly in the past as the Clinton Administration.
She was pregnant at the time. It happens.
I am a right brain, male dominant thinker; I like logic, facts, and reason, with a strict sense of right and wrong. When I am not pregnant, I am a very rational person, to the point where my female friends don't understand how I can be so "detached" from issues and think so "coldly."
When I am pregnant, I'm working from the heart. My fuse is measured in millimeters, not inches, and I go right for the jugular if something irritates or threatens me. When I was carrying my son, I was subject to uncontrollable bursts of rage; I could literally feel the hormones pumping through my body. Several weeks after he was born, I was myself again.
After years of frothing at the mouth insistence that they be treated as 'one of the boys', now when she has to carry the load for herself it is a whole other game of cricket, is that the problem? And what of those poor sods that tried to continue to act in a chivalrous manner to women and were openly berated for their 'outdated and insulting' attitudes (You Chauvinist PIG!) as the grand concept of Feminism wound its insidious course through our culture down through all these years gone by?
I have absolutely _NO_ sympathy. You lot made your bed; sleep in it. Or as your hero Bubba Klintoon puts it; "Better put some ice on that."
Quit your bitching.
Should have shown up on time if she wanted a seat that badly.
She wants equality, yet still expects a divine right to have every male surrender his seat to her?
This is because you think of cooking as a female task for which you have awkwardly cultivated a taste. You need to apply masculine efficiency. I can cook a great meal in a given amount of time, washing pots and pans and countertops behind me as I go.
Instead of just sitting for 90 minutes on the uncomfortable window sill, why didn't she just tell one of the male Labour MP's that she is seven months pregnant and she is very uncomfortable and could he switch seats with her?
"Until now?" Excuse me? I seem to recall raising merry hell about it at the time and being laughed at by my liberal friends. I know where I was on the issue - where was the author?
If women these days could cook, you might have a point. But it's my experience that few can make anything for dinner besides reservations.
Why women waned to step down so far for equality I will never understand.
I give my seat up for older women (and of course pregnant women), but younger ones can enjoy their "equality."
;-)
| Labour activists admitted to ranking the women in terms of looks and wondering about their lingerie. Perhaps such improper musings...
Actually, I already knew the answer to that: yes. |
Agreed. Having a job and earning a paycheck takes a great lot of time and effort. And since we can't physically be at two places at one time, either the job effort suffers or the child raising effort suffers.
What really makes me very sad is the lie that women have been fed the past 40+ years that to have real self worth, and to prove themselves "equal" to men they must have that paycheck earning job regardless of its effect on the children. I have never believed that. I have told my wife of 28 years that she was given the most important job in the world, and I honestly believe that. Her job of transforming a house into a home and rearing, nurturing, and training our children is infinitely more important than anything I can ever do to earn a paycheck or accomplish for my employer.
The effects that I have had on the company I work for will vaporize by the next day or week after I'm gone. The effect that she/we will have on the children that we raised will have an effect that could span generations -- for good or bad. Nothing that she nor I will ever do in a paycheck earning capacity will ever surpass what she has been able to do in rearing honest, productive, God-fearing, hard working young adults. I've merely provided a living for the family, but she...she has made a home and a family.
FWIW, I understand that under tough circumstances women must work outside the home to provide for the family/children. (My mother, GOD bless her, is such a woman...she provided and we lived, without government social services, on $6K a year.). In those cases, my heart goes out to them because they have been dealt a double dose of hard responsibility. However in many cases it not a "must" case but rather a "want to" case. In the latter case, the children are the ones to suffer. In the professional office I work in, many in the latter case, most all dual-income families, have a child as a badge of accomplishment, then in 6-8 weeks return to work and deliver the child daily to the socialist indoctrination youth camp (day care). My heart breaks at the lessons these children will learn from this upbringing, or lack thereof....../soft rant
I can't disagree with you there. I think it's because the wife knows who is more than likely gonna have to clean all those dishes, whereas the man ain't tuned into thinking in those terms.
I was disturbed by my own inexplicably erratic behavior when I was pregnant and discussed this with him at length. He knew I wasn't myself, that I would attack without provocation and my responses to situations were out of proportion to the actual problems, and I felt terrible because of it.
I had a vicious battle with post-partum after the traumatic and premature birth of my daughter. My husband literally saved my life by simply listening. A few times, he took off from work and stayed home with me because I was so moody and out of sorts.
I hated myself during this time.
I give full credit to men who patiently ride out the hormonal storm that is pregnancy.
Tell you wife to read this post, admit that you had a rough go of it, give you praise for sticking by her, and both of you take a night out with a romantic dinner and some time alone. IMHO, she shouldn't begrudge you anything.
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Improper? They're men. This woman is trying to "improperize" male sexuality. What, has she got a pole up her butt?