Category Archives: Feminism

‘The Economics of Ann Romney’

Democrats, Economy, Elections, Family, Feminism, Gender, Morality, Republicans

“Ann Romney is economically a hell of a lot smarter than Hilary Rosen,” concludes Kevin D. Williamson, in a neat column wherein, taking into account “scarcity of economic resources and scarcity of parental time,” and weighing these against the utmost top dollar the lovely Mrs. Romney might have commanded, Kevin calculates that Ann Romney would have been stark raving mad to have abandoned her gorgeous kids to the deprivations of daycare.

Not when the much-maligned Mr. Romney was bringing in “about $6,400 an hour at Bain Capital.”

Nice, if reductive, column, for after all, it is indeed likely that the Romneys would have made the same decisions were Mitt less successful. Values are irreducible.

“Democratic operative Hilary Rosen — who sneered that [Ann Romney] ‘has actually never worked a day in her life'”—wishes she were a quality babe who could attract a catch like Mitt Romney.

(Tinny ideologues should note that I do not support Romney, but this does not rob me of objectivity, as it does the robotic ideologue. I appreciate many of Mitt Romney’s qualities.)

UPDATED: Go Ape On Affirmative Action (Satire Lost on Most)

Affirmative Action, Critique, Feminism, Gender, Intelligence

I want working for government to be one of the most dangerous jobs ever (unfortunately, the honest work of fishermen earns that distinction). So here’s my Swiftian suggestion:

Yes to radical affirmative action in the secret service. Not only should women and minorities be well-represented among the parasites’ security details; but they should be overrepresented.

Adjust admission tests, physical and cognitive, to rule out all so-called (wink-wink) cultural or gender bias. In other words, make the tests easier, or admit the desired gender and race with lower scores. Drop the IQ requirements by two standard deviations! And a bull’s eye on the target be damned. The new-intake shooters don’t need to drop an attacker; they can settle for grazing him.

ALSO, support the super obese for the secret service too! Smother the sons-of-guns in mountains of protective flesh, female, male or other.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, would approve. Sen. Collins “suggested Sunday that the problem [of prostitute abuse] could have been averted if more women were on duty.”

UPDATE: In reply to reader on Facebook. Satire is lost on most of my readers. Follow the link to find out what “swiftian” means: A Modest Proposal.

Heroism Stripped

Aesthetics, Britain, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Pop-Culture, Sex

An anonymous sage said that “expectations tend to be self-fulfilling”: Expect nothing and you’ll get nothing. In the West, if kids so much as dial 911 in an emergency, they are decorated for bravery. So, it’s hardly surprising that evincing narcissism, self-adoration and bad taste has been elevated and recast as heroic, honest and gritty.

Going by the MailOnline’s sensibility, the au naturel uglies below are really “brave mothers and daughters [who] bare all – and reveal their hopes and fears about ageing” [sic]. I give you your new heroines. Scroll down for an eyeful.

Gender Junk, Again

Conservatism, Feminism, Gender, Racism, Reason

It is impossible to distinguish the conservative from the liberal perspective on the gender issue. This was the theme of “The Tarts and ‘Tards’ of Hollywood.” Duly, Fox Business hammers away today at the glass ceiling fallacy, this time “the ceiling keeping women out of the C-Suite” is said to still “hover over the sharp-elbowed world of Wall Street.”

As with alleged racism, this is the post hoc, backward reasoning error in thinking, whereby discrimination or disadvantage is inferred from the absence of women—or any other group with grievances—from a certain sector.

Recall that, “Another of Obama’s economic prescriptions for a deepening depression was to sign a pay equity act, during which he carped that women still earn just ’78 cents for every dollar men earn?women of color even less.’ Such false assertions rely on comparisons of ‘the average wage of all women working fulltime with the average wage of all men working full time.'”

From “Barack Against The Boys”: “Scholarly reams have been written disputing this phony calculus, as it omits vital variables: How long the woman has been in the work force, her age, experience and education; or whether her career has been put on hold to marry and mother. Just as women are more likely than men to have had an interrupted career trajectory, so too are they more inclined to enter lower-paying professions: education instead of engineering, for example.”

“Nonetheless, allow me to dispel distaff America’s claims of disadvantage with a decisive argument:

If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men would have long-since priced themselves out of the market. The fact that the wily entrepreneur doesn’t ditch men in favor of women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women.”