Liesure suits bad...
Farrah good!
Posted on 08/16/2006 5:55:37 PM PDT by CareyRoberts
Fact and feminism keep tripping over each other.
For decades, radical feminists have prostrated themselves upon the altar of androgeny, flatly declaring that all differences between the sexes are socially constructed. So when men earn more money than women, they say that’s proof of sex discrimination.
But men have the Y chromosome, while women don’t. And it turns out that one chromosome contains 78 very important genes. Those genes contain programming instructions that control a man’s brain structure, sex hormones, and a host of other functions.
These critical genetic differences play out in thousands of ways that influence risk-taking, sex relationships, and social roles. Steven Rhoads’ book, Taking Sex Differences Seriously, is an information-packed, must-read on this topic.
Women conceive babies, men can’t. Women are better at decoding facial expressions, hearing a baby’s whimper in the night, and simultaneously talking and listening. Fine.
But what happens when we insist that men and women are social equivalents, twisting like neutered cogs in a giant gender nirvana?
Last year I was talking with a woman who insisted female athletes are just as skilled as the men. A few months later, the US female Olympic hockey team played a boys’ high school team from Warroad, Minnesota. The small town boys prevailed 2-1 over the elite Olympians – and that was a non-checking game.
Then there are the women-in-combat zealots. They parade girls like PFC Jessica Lynch as living proof that women can handle the fierce demands of front line combat. You may recall that war heroine Lynch later admitted about her Iraqi mishap, “I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. I went down praying to my knees. And that’s the last I remember.”
What about women in the media? Remember, they were going to bring us a more balanced and empathic perspective on the world.
Well, that was before Oprah Winfrey predicted one in five heterosexual Americans would die from AIDS by 1990 and Meryl Streep duped the EPA to ban alar.
Let’s not forget Connie Chung’s scientific discovery that breast implants make women sick. Even though researchers could never prove the link between implants and connective tissue disease, the ensuing hysteria-driven lawsuits eventually forced Dow Corning into bankruptcy.
Of course there’s the ever-apoplectic Maureen Dowd, left to wonder why the New York Times circulation numbers tumble ever-downward. And rumor has it that once Katie Couric debuts at CBS News, she’s planning to sign up Cindy Sheehan as a political analyst for the upcoming November elections.
And women, it is said, will make the political arena more ethical and fair: “Research shows the presence of women raises the standards of ethical behavior and lowers corruption.” That quote comes to us by way of senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, which practically makes the claim self-refuting.
We were promised that women in academia would bring important new insights. But soon the ladies came to the sobering realization that Beethoven composed Ode to Joy to induce men into a sexual frenzy, and Newton’s Principia Mathematica is actually a rape manual.
We should all feel especially sorry for MIT professor Nancy Hopkins.
As a biologist, she no doubt learned how primates engage in sex-specific courtship rituals and hunting patterns. But then ex-Harvard president Larry Summers suggested that innate differences in the human species also might exist, causing the ever-delicate Dr. Hopkins to lapse into a swoon.
Smelling salts, anyone?
Those examples are mostly amusing. But there’s one variation on the woman-can-do-anything-a-man-can-do theme that’s downright dangerous. It’s the “mothers and fathers are interchangeable” mantra.
The reason is simple: little boys don’t identify with their moms the same way they bond with their dads. And girls learn different lessons from dads than from moms.
Want proof?
Look at inner city ghettos ravaged by Great Society programs that required dad to vacate the home before mom was entitled to collect her welfare check. Bereft of their loving fathers, boys looked to the media and gangs for their male role models.
Is anyone surprised when all manner of social pathologies take root and flourish?
It’s one of the conundrums of our time that while demanding fealty to the dogma of androgeny, feminists condemn the expression of masculine qualities by men and then turn around and demand that “liberated” women exemplify exactly those same attributes.
As my mother used to say, Who said women had to be logical?
It was many years ago since the embarrassing day when a young woman ...
..., with a baby in her arms, entered his butcher shop and confronted him with the news that the baby was his and asked what was he going to do about it? Finally he offered to provide her with free meat until the boy was 16. She agreed.
He had been counting the years off on his calendar, and one day the teenager, who had been collecting the meat each week, came into the shop and said, "I'll be 16 tomorrow."
"I know," said the butcher with a smile, "I've been counting too, tell your mother, when you take this parcel of meat home, that it is the last free meat she'll get, and watch the expression on her face."
When the boy arrived home he told his mother. The woman nodded and said, "Son, go back to the butcher and tell him I have also had free bread, free milk, and free groceries for the last 16 years and watch the expression on his face!"
Docters, please post comment on this:
I thought I read that Men's muscle fibers are not just bigger/can get bigger, but they are more flexable then womens. Something to that affect...I can't remember. Somebody back me up or set me strair.
LOL...the 70's....I always thought that women wearing ties (yeah, some were) as a statement was so hilarious....they were copying the very MALES they disdained.
The word is consistently misspelled in the article. The correct word is a n d r o g y n y." It is a mating of the Greek andro(meaning male) with gyne (meaning female).
"Androgeny" might mean something like "arising from the male." That "y" is a transliteration for a sound that more resembles the way we would say a French "u" or the closest we get in English -"ew."
The only thing that men can do that I envy, is their ability to pee outside with little bother.
Women? Jeez, you can't even train them to put the toilet seat up.
Yeah! :D
Male-style ties as a woman's fashion were around before women even got the right to vote.
I stopped reading after that second sentence...everybody knows wimmins don't have that prostrate gland thingie. Sheesh.
bump
I took my kids camping over Independence Day...
I was playing cards at our table with my 7 yr old daughter- while my 5 yr old daughter was "making a garden"
next thing I know- she starts crying..."Mommy"
I turn around and she is standing with her hands pulling down the front center of her shorts and the bottom half is all wet.....
"Mommy, I did it wrong"
no- girls can not do what boys can do......
Always knew that those were somehow connected.
Liesure suits bad...
Farrah good!
Wouldn't you like, just once, to be able to get out of the car and "check the tires" along the side of the road? I guess I'm not setting my sights very high when it comes to equality.
Seriously, the only thing I want is to be able to do what I want, and if it just happens to be a traditionally "male" role, I don't much care. I was a pall bearer for both of my grandmothers. The first time was out of necessity--a male cousin failed to show up; the second time was my dad's idea, because he thought it was neat the first time I did it. Both my grandmothers would have gotten a kick out of it, I'm sure, and they were no feminists by any stretch of the imagination.
There are plenty of men messing things up out there too.
I understand your point though. Funny how I more often agree/side with with men in a debate.
I hope that the rumor is true, because that would be hilarious.
Untrue...in my dating days, I knew a couple of gals who could hook their heels behind their necks.
To be fair, I don't go over to Palm Springs, nor up to San Francisco....so I don't know if any of the fellas can do this; but I doubt it.
Ah. Memories. That was the first poster on my wall.
Yes! I'm talking about the Farrah one!
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