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.
And, she's surprised by leftist misogyny??
If she's that naive, maybe she deserves to be ignored.
bwahahaha. i had no idea. . . . .
'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.'
Ahh, the Metrosexuals and the Women who love them.
Talk about being way off base - if you're Muslim, liberals will shut their eyes, stick their fingers in their ears and scream "LALALALALALALA!!!!" at the top of their voices so they won't see or hear you beating, mutilating the genitals of, or gang-raping and honor killing your women.
Given Christina's insights, thus far; the 'bigger question' might be 'why' the speculation on the possible civility and humility ie 'good' of those on the "Left" is even raised.
The Left - ARE what they ARE. . .they cannot be, what they are not.
In simple terms..."Men, you may now start cooking your own meals." Men think equality is women being able to do what men do as well as what they do as women...yet men think they are superior to us because they can do what men do.....
Then why do men comprise such a majority of the world's greatest chefs?........
I have to say, your username suits you well!
Because the women are off running the kids to school and back, doing the laundry, and cleaning the house to spend 10 hours a day cooking. ;-)
I think that is at least partially it. Women are scarce in the high levels of all career paths because taking those jobs requires a great time input, making it difficult for a woman to fit in pregnancy and child-rearing.
I think the test is whether they'd give a seat to an obviously ill man. If not, then they're just plain rude to everyone.
I would suspect that this is the case, although they might be able to excuse it to themselves more easily on equality grounds if it were a woman they were ignoring.
"Exploded"? Geesh! Her "pi$$ed-off-ometer seems to be set a bit too tight.
"In simple terms..."Men, you may now start cooking your own meals." Men think equality is women being able to do what men do as well as what they do as women...yet men think they are superior to us because they can do what men do....."
Yeah so?
Men and women, apples and oranges.
With liberals, what you say is far more important than what you do. That should be pretty obvious to anyone who isn't intellectually dishonest.
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