Letters to the Editor
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My lunch with an antifeminist pundit
why does this woman think she is speaking for all women? Who gave her the divine insight into women's brains?
Let's ignore her instead of giving her publicity.
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traister do your research
"The MacKinnon quote about how "all heterosexual intercourse is rape" is old news."
Catherine MacKinnon never said that. If you googled a little, you would learn that the urban legend is that Andrea Dworkin said it. Of course, Dworkin didn't say it either. Google the Michael Moorecock interview with Dworkin to learn where that legend came from.
Meanwhile the rest of this interview is a travesty. You spend most of the time complaining about how women are oppressed by societal expectations, and spend very little time actually addressing the creepy neo-con politics that come next.
O'Beirne's publicist couldn't have picked a better stooge. I hope readers unfamiliar with the debate don't think it's a choice between you and O'Beirne.
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Kato writes a book for Republican housewives
and gets lots of virtual ink on Salon...
instead of having Rebecca get smacked down by an old pro...how about getting someone like Susan Faludi...who has been here before and has actually covered the ground in this "book" to interview O'Beirn?
Why send a girl to do a woman's job?
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Bulldozed
Once again, Rebecca Traister has proven that she and I do not inhabit the same planet. Why on EARTH would Salon give exposure to Kate O'Beirne without pairing her with someone who could challenge her repellent rhetoric? I can listen to one-sided O'Beirne rants on TV... I don't have to pay for the pleasure. Half of Traister's questions were the equivalent of "...But.... but! "
I watched the same "Kate on Kate" MTP episode that Traister leads with, and --- silly me --- I thought Kate Michelman held her own quite well. In the ensuing two weeks I've thought of the discussion four or five times, each time savoring points that Michelman made that I will use in my next discussion on the topics. I thought O'Beirne came off coarse, flatulent and Coulter-esque.
If you want a clue to the way the rest of the world perceives and responds to O'Beirne's book, check out its listing on Amazon: #75, but with 2 out of 5 stars based on 369 reviews. Read any five of them and you'll come away with more interesting responses than Traister managed.
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Wow, that was painful.
I may not agree with O'Beirne, but considering the way she steamrolled a sputtering Rebecca Traister, I think she wins. I think this illustrates precisely the problem with modern liberalism: so busy trying to be nuanced and understanding that they just get Killdozered by the Right. It happened to John Kerry, too. My kingdom for a liberal writer with some cojones!
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Here I am, tear me apart.
What liberals don't realize is that many of these right-wing pundits are not scholars or authors who are trying to have a reasonable discussion about issues. They're like chess masters. They know the opening, the middle game, the end game. They are not there for a friendly discussion; they are there to win. And not just to win but to vanquish with scorched-earth ruthlessness. For every move you make they have a pre-planned, pre-studied counter-move. For every statistic you have they have 20 statistics, all memorized, and it would take you a month just to figure out where all their statistics came from. They know all your arguments before you even open your mouth. And they have a hundred pre-packaged refutations for anything you might say.
It's time for liberals to understand what's going on. There is a culture war. It's just that we don't act like it. When some poor liberal goes up against O'Beirne it's like a minimum-wage security guard with a nightstick going up against a Navy SEAL with a submachine gun. The author of this article says that when Kate O'Beirne came up against a former head of NARAL that "it was a bloodbath." No shit it was a blood bath. That's what O'Bierne DOES. That's what she trains for.
When these "discussions" happen in a public venue it makes the liberal look dumb and inept. What we have to realize is that these things are not discussions. They are combat. The conservative hit-person is not there to discuss. He or she is there to kill you and mount your scalp on a hundred right-wing blogs. Here's what the American Enterprise Institute said about the match-up:
"Watching the Kate vs. Kate debate on Meet the Press this past Sunday--it was our own Kate O’Beirne vs. Kate Michelman, formerly of NARAL Pro-Choice America--how out-of-date the latter's rhetoric seemed, how diffuse and filibustering her language was, over against the precision, citation of telling facts, and self-confident argument of Kate O'Beirne."
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.23678/pub_detail.asp
Bloodbath indeed. The tragedy is that we liberals participate in it, we run to it. The early Christians at least had to be *thrown* to the lions. We liberals walk into the lions -- "here I am, rip me to shreads." If you're going to confront the lions you need to be a lion. And where are the liberal lions?
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Kate O'Beirne
She's smart, funny and totally clueless as to the modern middle class world of women. She is an upper class conservative cliche' who believes that every women's life is just like her own tidy neat one. Its great that she had the option of choosing not to work because her husband made enough money to support their family. However,for the vast majority of women, having both partners in the marriage work is not some feminist social statement, it because in our low wage economy it takes two working people to pay the bills. Conservatives like Mrs. O'Beirne simply refuse to believe this because its easier to blame feminism than to take on the corporate economy. And I'm holding my breath waiting for Kate to defend those welfare mother's staying home to bond with their children instead of being forced into government work programs only weeks after they have had their children to keep their benefits.
She, scorns claims of domestic violence and it effects on the family and women. I guess it interferes with her nice story book ideas of male and female relationships. Does she know anyone who has been in an abusive relationship or is she beyond those kind of people? I challenge her to spend one day in a domestic violence Court and not have her views change forever.
She doesn't think women want subsidized daycare, even though quality daycare in the year 2006, frequently costs more than most people's monthly mortgages and is a terrible struggle to pay. Tellingly her proof that women don't want daycare is some obscure right wing poll. She believes the daycare problem is easily solved by letting a relative provide day care for little Junior, clearly not recognizing that today, the relatives (granny and auntie) are ususally working themselves and aren't available.
Finally, she talks glowingly about the two parent family, and who isn't for that? But when a marraige doesn't work, when a partner is unfaithful, an addict, an alcoholic or abusive, or the parties just don't like each other she wants them to stay together for the sake of the kids! But again, her scruples are flexible, in the past Kate has attacked Hillary Clinton for doing just that. Kate is lost in the 50's and needs to join the real world. Donna Reed left us a long time ago. Oprah's audience would laugh in her face.