Posted on 01/01/2002 3:03:51 AM PST by Dr. Good Will Hunting
In the hours after American Airlines Flight 63 landed safely thanks to the courage and strength of the flight attendants and passengers, there was a refreshing clarity about the sexes evident in the land.
Let's review: When Richard C. Reid leaned down and began touching lighted matches to his sneakers, it was a flight attendant who first attempted to stop him. She grabbed at his hands and he shoved her so hard that she landed, according to The New York Times account, four rows back. She yelled for help, and another flight attendant attempted to thwart Reid's shoe-lighting. Reid bit her on the hand hard enough to draw blood.
When she screamed, a number of male passengers, including the 6 foot, 8 inch NBA player Kwame James responded. Using anything at hand -- including plastic handcuffs, a dozen belts offered by other passengers and, eventually, sedatives from the plane's on-board kit -- four or five large men were able to subdue the "almost possessed" Reid.
The female flight attendants deserve high marks for their courage. But the episode does reveal that physical size and strength still matter in this world. It took the advent of real danger to reawaken our politically correct society to this truth.
Three years ago, my then-5-year-old son came home from kindergarten and looked at me sympathetically. "Mom, when you were a little girl, people didn't think women could be firefighters, did they?"
I knew immediately that his teacher, a lovely lady of decidedly liberal outlook, was instructing her charges on the wonderful progress of civilization.
"Well," I said, "I'm still not sure I think women firefighters are a good idea." I explained that women had been discouraged in the past from pursuing careers at all -- and this did not make sense. There is no reason that a woman cannot try a case, run a business or heal the sick.
But when it comes to tasks requiring physical strength, well, women are still smaller than men. And while many women have just as much courage, ingenuity and self-possession in emergencies as men, only the most unusual women have the strength to carry the average overweight American out of a burning building.
We've pretended for decades now that physical differences between men and women are insignificant, and where they exist, stand as a rebuke to men. Big dumb jerks. We don't need you to hold open doors for us! I can carry my own bag, bub! Except, it turns out, that when a 6 foot, 4 inch terrorist is swatting women away like mosquitoes, you do need men -- the bigger the better -- to overpower him.
What feminists have never understood, and have actually gone out of their way to distort, is that male strength has always been viewed, in Western culture, as a responsibility, not as a weapon with which to subjugate females. Women and men have traditionally taught their sons (in all but the worst families) that with physical strength must come mental and moral strength. Boys were taught the honorable use of their power -- not to intimidate but to prevent intimidation; not to bully but to protect. Despite reams of disinformation circulated by some feminists, husbands are the last people to beat or abuse women.
Perhaps the new climate of danger -- danger from evil men -- will quiet the anti-male agitation we've endured for so long. For the threat from evil men can only adequately be met by good men. Why not cheer when the manly virtues are called for and demonstrated?
Our admiration for Rudy Giuliani is not based upon his empathy -- though he showed plenty of it -- but rather for older virtues like command, authority, competence and leadership. The businessmen on Flight 93 who whispered their farewells to their wives and families, and then set down their cell phones to take on the terrorists were real men -- the best of masculinity. Were we proud of the female flight attendant who quietly boiled water to throw at the terrorists? You bet. But if it came to a fight, mano a mano, the men would have to take the lead.
As Peggy Noonan observed in Opinion Journal, Sept. 11 has brought old-fashioned virility back into style. God bless our men, who've taken so much undeserved abuse for decades, yet never stopped being men and gentlemen.
Thanks and happly holidays with the best for 2002!
Every single woman? Not every woman is a good mother (Andrea Yates and Susan Smith come to mind) or even an adequate mother, or can bear children. Where, in your worldview, does a woman who is unable to have children, fit, if at all?
So what you're saying is that the only role for women is to continue the species? Let me know where the breeding pens are.
I did, as well as my husband. I'm more of a city mouse, but I spent summers working on my grandparents' place. My hubby grew up on a dairy farm.
I've known plenty of farm wives with sick, injured or chronically ill husbands who pull the entire load on a farm. It would really enlighten people if they knew what goes into that gallon of milk, plastic-wrapped pound of bacon or just a loaf of bread.
It was not an easy life; survival required the fulltime contributions of the man and woman. Either of my grandmothers could run a plowshare behind a horse, or assist with rounding up and branding the calves, but they usually didn't. There was an implicit separation of labor that meant my grandfathers would do the greater part of the field and range work--the heavier and more dangerous work--and my grandmothers would devote endless hours to canning fruit, picklng meat, mending clothing, hauling water, and preparing meals.
My grandmothers' contributions were every bit as important and vital to the survival and success of the family, and they required just as much effort, but they were not of the same kind of work. And there was equality in the relationship that is unsurpassed by any feminist experiment.
I don't point this out to romanticize frontier life, but to show how exigent circumstances can bring out an equality that is inherent in the relationship between men and women. Exigent circumstances certainly don't guarantee that this inherent equality will emerge--and there are plenty of instances of the opposite result obtaining. But in many cases, my grandparents for example, equality emerged in wonderful and dignified consequence of each spouse caring for the other and doing what he or she was best fitted by ability, strength, and gender to do.
19th amendment, dear. No, it doesn't bother me, as such, but that the slide of America toward socialism started soon thereafter and the increase of women voting and holding office can be compatably graphed along side the increase of socialists policies from then to now.
If every time it rains the grass grows, one has a hard time disassociating the rainfall from the grass growth. 
I can see you weren't able to unhook your conditioning.
Of course the only role for a woman is not just to continue the species. Women are the only reason we have civilization. Women, with their emphathy, make the best medical people, the best of many areas of human activity.
It doesn't matter if every woman can't have children, 99.9% of them can. It doesn't matter if some are not good mothers, 99.9% of them are at least adequate. You can only use exceptions to prove the rule, not make another rule.
Women just happen to be the only way a human body gets built. Sorry, it ain't my fault. Talk to God. There is simply no reason to put them in harms way when men are suited to such jobs.
Watch out when calling for the repeal of the 19th. You need my vote to get/keep the feminazis out of office, including the male feminazis. ;)
I think you should be the one to tell Dr. Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor to President George W. Bush. She's in her 40's, unmarried, childless, and her biological clock is ticking loudly. Her job certainly puts her in harm's way, what with terrorists wanting to take potshots at her boss--and she's never far from her boss' side. Or are you going to designate her as The Rice Exception.
It isn't just commercials, it is all of the citcoms. If it is a white father, he is shown as weak and easily manipulated by his family. If he is a white single male, the only time his portrayed as having any backbone and or brains, he is also portrayed as being homosexual.
There are no strong father figures left on television.
It makes you wonder who is writing the citcoms.
I am sure you do have an appreciation for the male dominated, subservient type of woman who wrote the article. Is that the source of you hatred of women? You hate women because most of them will not bow down at your feet? They will not submit their bodies to your control?
Ray, I'm sorry I didn't answer this earlier. Home is where we are. We've made a home in a regular house, in a saiboat and in a RV--and in a year or two, in another, larger sailboat (& will leave you landlubbers behind). It's a place where we can be together, to enjoy love and laughs--and share pain, grief and tears--filled with things we like, and a place that we can share with family and friends.
All true, every single word!
Because people like you are so self-absorbed that murdering an unborn baby is less important that your sexual habits. I am a woman, and no I don't hate myself or others. I hate abhorrent selfish behavior.
There are billions of men who would appreciate help in those circumstances. I suppose you woud reject the help of a capable woman if your life depended upon here.
Better to die than be resuced by a woman?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.