You can't have equality and extra help (feminist hypocrites whacked with the obvious!)

You can't have equality and extra help

Brigitte Pellerin, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Mopping up after an election campaign brings interesting surprises. For instance, you may be startled to hear Quebec has recently regressed socially. And I don't mean Mario Dumont's Action democratique du Qubec and its relationship (or lack thereof) with cultural minorities. No, ma'am. We're talking about an embarrassing decrease in the number of elected females.

Egad.

Here's how an article on the subject in Thursday's La Presse started: "They were 39 out of 125 MNAs, they are now, after this election, only 32. Women will, henceforth, be less well represented in the National Assembly" -- something various women's groups are said to find worrisome. So of course these groups want the government to institutionalize what federal Liberal leader Stphane Dion is clumsily trying to do, with what could only be described as no success at all: force political parties into gender "equality."

What for? According to a press release from six feminist organizations (available, in French, at ffq.qc.ca/communiques/comm-28-03-2007.html), the slightly smaller proportion of elected women is something to be deplored, but it's not clear why. I see that we're not getting closer to having equal numbers of males and females in various elected assemblies. But why am I supposed to care? Why do we "need" women in politics?

According to something called the Inter-Parliamentary Union (ipu.org), Rwanda ranks first in the world with 48.8 per cent women representation in the national legislature, whereas Canada is 48th with 20.8 per cent. The United States, where we all know women are routinely persecuted by a political class bent on systemic gender inequality, is 68th with 16.3 per cent. So is the theory that we'd be better off if we were governed more like Rwanda?

More broadly (so to speak), is there something about women that makes us particularly attuned to the exigencies of governance? Does gender affect bank rates? Foreign policy? Environmental regulations? If so, why don't women voters prefer women politicians? And if we're legislating quotas for perspectives, then we should also make the proportion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, etc. representatives match their share of the general population, assuming we even know it. And once we get there, shouldn't we also worry about religious representation? What about race? Oooh, dear.

To me equality means not caring whether my elected representative is male or female or black or gay or Methodist or whatever. And democracy means letting people elect whoever they think represents their views. I believe enforcing equal representation of women in politics would be wrong, undemocratic, and possibly even counterproductive. I suspect I am not alone.

I just watched the first five episodes of the short-lived 2005–2006 TV series Commander in Chief, with Geena Davis in the role of Mackenzie Allen, the first female U.S. president. It's sort of semi-interesting to see how Hollywood script-writers think President Allen would deal with mega-macho male politicians (Donald Sutherland's character is so evil he's almost funny) doing their darnedest to undermine her authority even at the expense of the country they have sworn to serve. Will she be strong in defence of U.S. interests or will she be too dainty and frail to use force in any way? Gosh, what unbearable suspense.

The show's ratings were terrible, despite reasonably clever writing and decent acting. Viewers, including those of the female persuasion, were just not interested. We all know that female politicians are like their male counterparts. They have similar goals, and they go about achieving them pretty much the same way.

I'm all for women going into politics. I would object if there were barriers to entry based on gender. But there aren't. If you're a woman thinking about running for office, go for it. Many have done it, some splendidly. Yes, it's difficult -- it's especially hard for parents of young children. But electoral politics is a challenge for everybody. Most candidates lose in every riding in every election.

All those years feminists demanded that men treat women like equals. Now women have the same civic rights as men; they can vote, run for office, be appointed senators -- heck, they can be head of state, as Her Majesty demonstrates, er, majestically. Why would anybody want legislation to force the election of more women?

If you want to be treated like an equal, behave like one. Get out there and fight like a man. If you can't stand it, either work to change how politics is done or stay where you are. It makes no sense to ask for equality with special help. That's not equality, and it sure ain't democracy.

If we were really socially advanced, we would care about our representatives' ideas, not their gender.

Brigitte Pellerin's column appears Tuesday and Thursday.

It's all about Equal Outcomes.

Bending rules in order to benefit certain "favorite groups" so that they can succeed more than they otherwise would is necessary to create a "Fair Society".

In Bizarro-World.

I remember in the mid 80’s. The pay scales were changed at the company I worked at to bring new female electronic technicians’ pay in line with the guys who had years of experience. The solution? The guys stopped getting raises.

Some very strong women worked very hard to achieve the rights women now share equally with men. We aren’t talking about preventing men from getting raises or stupid stuff like that. If men AND women are not willing to take the time (and financial loss) entailed in raising a family, then they shouldn’t bring children into the world. Something has to give. But if women are being prevented from entering the political arena by ‘cultural issues’ we don’t have our finger on, then we need to look into that. Not by forcing ‘rep by gender’, but by investigating what’s stopping them. My guess would be that, with more single mom’s, their sense of responsibility will force them to stay tied to ‘steady’ jobs. Politics becomes the arena of the wealthy, of those who can ‘afford’ to take the risks, as it was in aristocratic times. This would be a step back, for sure. The ‘reforms’ of the family have ‘thrown the baby out with the bathwater’ and women are AS tied as they once were, if not more so... they no longer have men to help them.

While, as the loving & conscientious father of children of both genders I'm as opposed to misogyny as I am to misandry, to me your comment contains more than a whiff of viewing all women as 'victims'.

Certainly, if you mean as individuals, 'investigate' to your heart's content.
However, if you mean further - well beyond - wasting of hundreds of millions of tax dollars already doled out to anti-family, openly gender bigoted radical feminists with an obvious vested interest in not coming up with any viable answers, count me out.

One tires of the uncritical whining about the supposed sorry lot of "single moms" along with the 'poor me' and/or self-entitled attitude of so many.
As someone who believes in legitimate equality - where possible - between the sexes, I'd argue that members of both genders must logically & reasonably be roughly equally responsible & accordingly held accountable when it comes as being parties primarily at fault for marital breakdowns.
Yet, it can be easily documented which gender initiates the vast majority of divorce actions.

Plus, most women with children seemingly chose as much of their own free will as it's tough to imagine rape victims or those ignorant of birth control methodology form any significant maternal demographic.
In short: if women "... no longer have men to help them", that's just one side of a readily self-apparent 2-way street.

Indeed, I agree with you. The ‘reforms’ towards genuine equality have gone so far overboard as to have become the evil themselves. In what universe is it good for children to be raised by one parent? No, women today are not victims: they are the authors of their own unequal situations, if they did but understand it. And this is not to be addressed by a study group of biased researchers paid out of a misguided public pocket, but by an entire cultural shift towards ‘loving and conscientious’ families, parents working together to build lives, raise children. The ‘female’ voice can be equally as respected in this scenario as in the other — more so. In fact, a woman who has come through the child-raising years with family intact is in the best position to enter politics and work in the best interests of women and other constituents.

If - as seems to be the case - I've misjudged your initial comment, I apologize.

I tend to have a short fuse if I perceive any conservative to be effectively doing the left's work for them by employing any of its principal 'weapons of choice' - e.g. promoting needless acrimony between the sexes / demonizing all heterosexual males, especially fathers - in its on-going campaign to undermine & then abolish the traditional family.

To me the feminist whining covered in the article is a back-handed slap at stay-at-home mothers and thus indicative of the 'blurring of conventional gender roles' weapon which leads straight - so to speak - to 2 mommies/daddies being no different (preferable?) to a child being rightly raised by his/her natural mother & father.

I've got no problem with female MP's per se.
Cheryl Gallant & Lynne Yelich are plainly 2 of the finest large or small 'c' conservative now sitting in Parliament.
Plus, with repective electoral pluralities last time out of 17,000+ (!) & 7,000+, both pretty much eradicate the lies of there being any voter bias against females and/or principled conservatives.
Numerous defeated women candidates (or the likes of Peter Kent) who chose to run as red-Tories should rightly be asking themselves what ever made them think voters would opt for 'liberal-lite' when the real thing remained available rather than claiming 'discrimination'.

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