Category Archives: Gender

Fem Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action, Business, Feminism, Gender, Labor

Everyone is shocked—shocked—that “[a]mong the most distressing” information buried in the “jobs report for August” was the following, as reported by Economix’s Catherine Rampell:

The share of men actively participating in the labor force — that is, working or looking for work — was at an all-time low. Just 69.8 percent of all men over age 16 were in the labor force in August, compared to a long-term average of 78.3 percent since the Labor Department began tracking these data in 1948. The share has been falling pretty steadily over the last six decades but has declined sharply in the last few years.

All manner of explanation is floated for the increasing marginalization of men in the US labor force. Nary a mention is made of the gender-centric policies that govern both state and big-business bureaucracies.

Every one of us knows men who slog under these conditions. All too well do we know too that the ladies are getting a leg-up.

In certain fields—say, electrical engineering—women are so rare that no matter how mediocre an engineer the woman is; the men around will be expected, if implicitly, to valiantly compensate for her intellectual deficiencies. Their reward? She-devils that not only get credit for work they have not done, but begin to believe their own hype.

Understand, this is not to say that there are no outstanding females in the applied sciences; of course there are. But many more are the outstanding men who’re being sidelined to showcase what are, on average, mediocre women.

Speaking of a performative contradiction, Catherine Rampell, the reporter, should look to her left, on the perch at the Economix blog. What is the ratio of men to women among the “Featured Contributors”? Two to three.

See if you can spot the trend wherever you go. I do.

The ‘Vagina Monologues’ Revival

Democrats, Feminism, Gender, Reason, War, Welfare

The current column, “The ‘Vagina Monologues’ Revival,” is now on WND.COM (with a different title):

“Remember the ‘Vagina Monologues,’ a stage performance that premiered in 1996, in which an orifice took center stage?

The playwright responsible for these soliloquies from down under was Eve Ensler. Ms. Ensler had insisted that the survival of womanhood hung on encouraging a vulgar dialogue with and about “this much mumbled-about body part.”

The 2012 Democratic National Convention underway has the feel of a “Vagina Monologues” revival.

With exceptions.

The weepy women dominating the event prove that Democratic distaff has come a long way since Ensler’s troupe took to the stage to pan priapus. No longer content to converse with an orifice in the confines of the theatre, these women want to force the conversation on the entire country, in dissembling, devious ways. …

… Speaking of a sovereign disregard for the truth, Bill Clinton—the only white man at the Charlotte Convention Center—wowed the women (Y chromosome comment above obtains here too), in an address that sent chills up Chris Matthews’ rutting leg. …

… For pudding, there was Sandra Fluke (which explains why NBC chose to end the second day of the convention with NFL football). The vagina-centric activist is regarded as another arrow in the Democratic quiver.

Sandra demands that Sugar Daddy Sam compel Americans who toil in the insurance industry to provide her with contraceptives.

It would appear that Georgetown Law School had not read the lady her constitutional, natural rights. Fluke has every right to work to purchase her own Trojans (or is it Trivora?) She has no right to rope other Americans into supplying her with these prophylactics. …”

The complete column is “The ‘Vagina Monologues’ Revival,” now on WND (with a different title).

Also available from WND or from Amazon is the prophetic “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid.”

Read the editorial reviews.

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UPDATED: A Leg Up For Ladies

Affirmative Action, America, Feminism, Gender, Human Accomplishment, Labor, Law, Regulation, Sport

Like the “good” conservatives that they are, the women at Fox News support Title IX regulations. I heard quite a few celebrate the fact that the US has sent more women than men to the 2012 London Olympics.

“There are to be 269 women and 261 men on the team.”

This skewed outcome is a result of gender-based affirmative action.

Writes Phyllis Schlafly:

Title IX regulations, which impose gender quotas on sports for institutions that receive any federal money. …
Title IX regulations have forced educational institutions to eliminate men’s teams until the number of men and women on sports teams is the same ratio as the number of men and women enrolled in academic classes. In the numerous colleges that are now 60 percent female in academic enrollment, Title IX requires that men’s teams be eliminated until only 40 percent of the athletes are men.
Title IX quotas have caused the elimination of all but 19 men’s college gymnastics teams. This deprives boys of the scholarship incentive to take up gymnastics as a sport in high school and takes away the competition needed to improve their skills in college.

Granted, they are sweet. Look at these eager young faces; the lithe, lean bodies, the unabashed pursuit of victory, the brutal regimen required to become the best, the irrepressible spirit that compels athletes to submit to the grueling grind. It is all so very exhilarating.

But c’mon: if you are a basketball fan, for example, how can you settle for the inferior game the women play? For me, the high point of the competition is the American-dominated, testosterone-fueled, always magnificent, 100-meter men’s dash.

Forget it ladies: You are not in this league.

UPDATE (July 15): In reply to thread on Facebook:

“Yes, MM, sports is important. I have been a runner for the last 22 years—and not because my (Israeli) high- and middle school instilled the love of the effort in me. And, as to who would I rather watch play: Kobe Bryant for the U.S. men’s basketball team? Or the equivalent woman star (whose name no one, but her parents, cares about, b/c she is incapable physiologically of matching the thrill of watching Bryant)? The answer is obvious. The reality cannot be tweaked by central planning. Not should it be legislated away.

Just Another Day In Afghanistan

Gender, Islam, Media, Middle East, Military, Propaganda

Those vested in the US “mission” in Afghanistan—we don’t have a legitimate one—will spin the execution of an innocent woman by the Taliban in the province of Parwan, as a Taliban-specific atrocity. In that case, the Taliban represents the rest of tribal Afghanistan’s (mostly Pashtun) people quite well.

CNN buried the truth according to Christine Fair, with the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, in a little-watched, Sunday morning segment, which was further pruned for the online article (“Taliban shoot woman 9 times in public execution as men cheer”):

“It’s really important to not see this exclusively in terms of the Taliban, but this is a set of practices that actually have existed and continue to exist throughout Afghanistan.”

Honor killings are as endemic to Afghanistan as the opium trade, only much older. Dare I say that these “customs” are as old as Sharia?

And, as Faire pointed out (and this writer has with respect to honor killings elsewhere), women are active in mediating these killings against other women, daughters included.

Here’s what a “Palestinian” woman, Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud, did to her child, after the girl – who had been raped and impregnated by her brothers – refused to commit suicide.
Plastic bag, razor, and wooden stick in hand, the mother entered her sleeping daughter’s room. “Tonight you die, Rofayda,” the wicked witch announced, before wrapping the bag tightly around the girl’s head. The murderess Qaoud then spent the next 20 minutes slicing away at Rofayda’s wrists, ignoring pleas of “No, mother, no!” Just to be sure, this alleged mother struck her daughter on the head with the stick after the poor child passed out.
Yet members of Qaoud’s community are nonplussed – they see the woman as driven by devotion to both community and family.

(“THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL FEMINIST”)

Presidents Barack Obama—who followed George Bush and the Republicans to Afghanistan—has run out of excuses for this nation-building expedition. A tribal society is never going to apprecaite the joys of gay marriage, the ballot box, and female emancipation.