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Not Liberating After All (Wendy Shalit On Feminists Ending Up In Bed With Hugh Hefner Alert)
Opinionjournal.com ^ | 09/21/05 | Wendy Shalit

Posted on 09/20/2005 9:30:45 PM PDT by goldstategop

It was all supposed to be so liberating. But it wasn't, as Ms. Levy argues forcefully in "Female Chauvinist Pigs." It was merely the academic groundwork for what she calls "raunch culture," now so ubiquitous that we take it for granted. Young women wear shirts emblazoned with "Porn Star" across the chest. Teen stores sell "Cat in the Hat" thong underwear. Parents treat their daughters' friends to "cardio striptease" classes for birthday parties. This is liberation?

Ms. Levy is baffled. "Why," she wondered, "is laboring to look like Pamela Anderson empowering?" Why did female Olympic athletes pose for Playboy before the summer 2004 Games? Why did Katie Couric feel the need to point to her cleavage and gush "these are actually real!" when she guest-hosted "The Tonight Show" a couple of years ago?

Some sort of pervasive pressure, apparently, requires "everyone who is sexually liberated . . . to be imitating strippers and porn stars." Ms. Levy describes the perfect distillation of this impulse--a social group called CAKE that hosts steamy, hooking-up parties in New York and London. CAKE makes big bucks advertising "feminism in action"--it claims to be the place where "sexual equality and feminism finally meet"--but its events are indistinguishable from those held at the Playboy Mansion.

(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Miscellaneous; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: ariellevy; femalechauvinistpigs; feminism; feminists; raunchculture; sex; wendyshalit
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What a long strange trip its been for feminism. From proclaiming women's equality to lauding uninhibted sexuality and ending up in bed with Hugh Hefner. Today's women can't exactly be called "ladies." The raunch culture has made them catty hookers. Yes, Virginia - today for women - equality is all about getting naked in the Playboy centerfold! So much for Wendy Shalit's hopes of a rebirth of feminine modesty...

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
1 posted on 09/20/2005 9:30:50 PM PDT by goldstategop
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To: goldstategop; eyespysomething
Parents treat their daughters' friends to "cardio striptease" classes for birthday parties.

I don't know what this means, but I assume it's another reason I don't have daughters.

2 posted on 09/20/2005 9:33:05 PM PDT by SittinYonder (Nemo me impune lacessit)
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To: SittinYonder
I assume it's another reason I'm glad I don't have daughters ... gotta hate it when you leave words out.
3 posted on 09/20/2005 9:34:43 PM PDT by SittinYonder (Nemo me impune lacessit)
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To: goldstategop

You can't write satire like this.


4 posted on 09/20/2005 9:36:08 PM PDT by Minus_The_Bear
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To: pissant; Army Air Corps; King Prout

OK guys, it's all yours!


5 posted on 09/20/2005 9:36:50 PM PDT by Translates
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To: SittinYonder
And the clothes for sale for tween and teen daughters look like hookers' evening wear! Its too much to expect girls to dress like young women who don't look like complete sluts...

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
6 posted on 09/20/2005 9:37:08 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: goldstategop
My brother has two daughters who are in their early teens. They wear clothes that shock me. I know it upsets him, but his household is run by three women who are into fashion, so he clenches his teeth and says nothing.

I couldn't do that. When we saw them a couple of weeks ago I let into both the girls for the clothes they wear, but they were unfazed.

Later, for the gazillioneth time, I told my wife I am grateful that when she births children she births boys.

7 posted on 09/20/2005 9:41:53 PM PDT by SittinYonder (Nemo me impune lacessit)
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To: goldstategop

May they find contentment and fulfillment in it. To each one's own.


8 posted on 09/20/2005 9:43:47 PM PDT by GSlob
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To: SittinYonder

Tom Clancy once wrote how it's God's revenge against a man when the man becomes the father of a daughter. All those moments of thinking lustily about women earlier in his life come back to terrify him once he has a daughter; he now has to protect his daughter against --- gasp --- other males.


9 posted on 09/20/2005 9:43:58 PM PDT by Vision Thing
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To: Vision Thing
Yes - other men screwing his daughter. After the passage of time, you forget the innocent little girl who bounced on your leg and called you Daddy. All of a sudden she's a grown woman dating men that you as a father, are in the dark about.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
10 posted on 09/20/2005 9:46:20 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: goldstategop

It was all about women being just as scummy as men and now they are so enjoy it


11 posted on 09/20/2005 9:48:08 PM PDT by skaterboy (Be good)
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To: SittinYonder

I know it upsets him, but his household is run by three women who are into fashion, so he clenches his teeth and says nothing

Brother is pretty sad


12 posted on 09/20/2005 9:49:32 PM PDT by skaterboy (Be good)
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To: goldstategop
There was a funny scene in the movie Clueless. Boy rings doorbell. Boy meets father. Father says, "If you do anything to hurt my daughter, I've got a .45 and shovel. I'm sure no one will miss you."
13 posted on 09/20/2005 9:50:03 PM PDT by Vision Thing
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To: skaterboy
If women are no different from men - why shouldn't they be chauvinist pigs and screw around? They've earned it.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
14 posted on 09/20/2005 9:50:07 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives On In My Heart Forever)
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To: goldstategop

Hasn't been all that strange . . . there was never any question in the feminist movement that sexual equality COULD be mandated by holding men to what was then perceived as the sexual standard for women--making men responsible for their promiscuity (as in paying for the care and upkeep of their progeny out of wedlock). No--the fems wanted equal access to promiscuity--abortion, in particular. Sorry--that, and that alone, is the soul of the feminist movement.


15 posted on 09/20/2005 9:52:37 PM PDT by Mach9 (.)
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To: goldstategop
Feminism was founded on false pretenses in the first place and it's only natural that it would fall apart when it encounters the real world.

First, women are sexual beings and the vast majority of them desire men as their sex partners. Feminism denied this fact. Remember the old slogan, "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"?

Then when reality intruded on their ideology they modified it to recognize that women were indeed sexual and did desire men, but they decided that women should be just as in your face about their sexuality as men are.

It just doesn't work that way though. Men are biologically programmed to want to spread their genes around and historically the men who were the most promiscuous had the most children. We've evolved to treat sex as something very desirable, but not emotionally binding. Women haven't evolved the same way. Women need providers for their children and because of this they generally reject sex unless it's accompanied by a relationship.

If they want their feminist philosophy to truly serve the interests of women they need to recognize these facts.

16 posted on 09/20/2005 9:58:42 PM PDT by elmer fudd
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To: SittinYonder

If your wife knows the difference between style and fads, you shouldn't have a problem.


17 posted on 09/20/2005 9:58:51 PM PDT by skr
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To: SittinYonder

Oh right. Cardio striptease. Sure. I knew that. :^O


http://www.cardiostriptease.com/


18 posted on 09/20/2005 10:04:51 PM PDT by claudiustg (Vote for one Democrat, vote for them all...)
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To: goldstategop
" A girl wanting to keep her virginity was bad, for sexual reticence amounted to asserting a separate standard, a Victorian one at that."

I'll never forget the group of five or six "women's libbers" on Phil Donahue in the early 70s.

"Nice girls DO!" they declared emphatically.

They pouted and whined about "The Double Standard." "The Double Standard" meant that girls were expected to save themselves for marriage, but men were supposed to be "experienced" and worldly.

Double standards are always cruel and unfair, and this one had to go, no question, but....

What would our culture be today if, instead of lowering the standards for women, those same "Women's Libber's" on the talkshows had demanded that society RAISE the standards for men?

That would be difficult though, and liberalism has no interest in anything unless it's easy and it feels good, and it costs them nothing.

19 posted on 09/20/2005 10:11:03 PM PDT by oprahstheantichrist (...or false prophet at the very least.)
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To: goldstategop
(To the tune of Julie Andrews' song from "Camelot"):

"Where are the simple joys of maidenhood?

Shall I dress like they do at age fourteen?

Shall I wear all the daring things

Like navel jewels and nipple rings?

Oh, how should a maiden best be seen?...

(snip)

Shall I wear a microminiskirt?

Maybe that would not be wise

For it shows the tiny, purple veins

On my upper thighs..."

-- Laura Ainsworth - My Ship Has Sailed

20 posted on 09/20/2005 11:44:37 PM PDT by HHFi
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