Letters to the Editor
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Kate O'Beirne
I find the cabal of female antifeminist pundits (Coulter, Crittenden, O’Beirne) transparently hypocritical and stupid to the point of hilarity. Come on: they’re all from well-to-do families, are married to rich guys (except for Coulter, whom I suspect is a drag queen, anyway), are well-educated and have or have had careers of their own, yet are compelled to hector women that to aspire to anything beyond being a housewife is wrong and to do so will ultimately cause the fall of Western Civilization. These are women who have obviously benefited from the feminist movement, yet they have chosen a career path (yes, career path) to trash the very thing that makes their fifteen minutes of fame possible. How can anybody with any brains take the shit these jackasses spew seriously? To paraphrase the great underground cartoonist Shary Flenniken: Women who disparage feminism should have their credit cards taken away from them.
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Why wasn't she photographed in a burqa..?
Or the Americanized version, some ugly Laura Bush polyester pants suit with a pair of those fucking bow shoes... little shoes with tiny bows on them. And one of those modified string-tie neckties. And helmet hair. And a buttermilk Texas accent.
Now yall git back in the kitchen and make babies, y'hear..? Jesus said so.
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WOW
<<Like, wake up and grow up, girls!>>
Wow! There is at least ONE SANE WOMAN in America!
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O'Beirne
O'Beirne just comes across as smug, self-important jerk who says nothing of resonance or import to the majority of woment in this country.
And, she's a bore. Don't even waste time reading this one.
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Do I Sense Intolerance?
Hmmm, 45 responses, and it is only 10:30 A.M. Exceptionally ironic: Liberals, the sensitive, open minded, compassionate, and tolerant, spewing high speed vitriol at someone for being "different" than they are. Now, I am a conservative (not a political conservative, rather a person who wholeheartedly believes and practices conservative ideas, my wife also), but I subscribe (paid subscription) to Salon. I do this to gain a better understanding of those who have beliefs unlike my own, and in some (small) ways to validate my beliefs. Tell me, how many of you subscribe to Free Republic, or any other of the so-called "conservative" ideology sources. Anyone? It (Free Republic) won't even cost you any money. Or do you hate them so much that you will not even attempt to understand them? (Horrors! they might be right sometimes!)
Your responses largely validate Mrs. O'Beirne's arguments. It would appear from what you have written, that feminists are rather hateful types, that will not concede a point, even when it is true. Even more disturbing is that many of you seem to think it is not important to "win" as it were. A intellectual victory is indicative of truth and reason. But one thing I know for certain, is that in politics and social engineering, truth and reason are easily dispatched in light of getting one's own way, especially by those who dwell in the victim/emotional realms.
I am not feminized male, nor are our two adult sons. My wife likes it that way. She is not a battered, repressed woman, and we (boys and I) like it that way. She is an independent (private) teacher, who is successful in every respect (you are beginning to like her) who stayed at home and home schooled our two (fully scholarshipped) sons (now you hate her/think less of her - she has even been called a "breeder"). Mainstream feminism is every bit as harmful to women, in the long run, as any patriarchal system has ever been, to whit, those who subscribe will be battered by it (should they "get out of line"), and likely end up sad and lonely, leaving behind them other sad and lonely people. And it will batter those ("breeders") who disagree with it.
By the way, divorce is the single most egocentric, hateful act that any two people can perpetrate on their children. No, no, no, you can't stay with a pathological abuser, but I would be willing to bet my next paycheck that only a tiny fraction of divorced is based on this. The rest is purely despicable. Did I say purely despicable? I meant purely despicable.
Finally, a quote from another reader:
"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?"
The apparent truth is, there aren't too many. The (political) conservatives have Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, O'Reilly etc. The libs have Al Franken. A clown, a comedian. Or worse, Kennedy, a drunk, womanizing clown. These are the "lions" (i.e. prominent) liberals. How sad. Get rid of these people, and you will help yourselves.
Seek real, non-objective truth. It has less to do with what you think is right, and more to do with what is right. In truth, truth is not objective, but then, that's just my opinion.
Best,
Poco
P.S. I am not a republican.
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she has some points
as an African-American mother of two children who works part-time, and who grew up in the feminist 1970s, I have to say that O'Beirne does say many things that actually do resonate with most mothers, politics aside.
And the sooner the left recognizes the realities of motherhood, the better. I am speaking as a feminist, and sadly what I see is that we have our heads up our a**es, wishing the world was the way we want it to be, lost in theory, and clueless about its real practices.
Reality... when you have an infant and you breastfeed, it is a demanding and physically exhausting job that, guess what... only the mother can do. And babies need it all day, and most of the night. The father at that point is mostly another set of hands, probably easily replaceable by a competent homecare assistant.
Then while you're sitting there with swollen breasts and your little tyke securely attached, you need money to support this little unit, hence comes the father's real participation... bring in some money.
That was certainly a shock to my feminist priniciples.
And if you have more than one child, you have to repeat this process over again.
At some point, unless you're in a really lucrative career, you look at the cost of childcare (most of which is pretty lousy, and your kids get sick all the time), factor in the stress, commute, etc., and it doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes to work... other than perhaps for personal satisfaction, or to keep your finger in the pot until your kids get old enough to go back to school, and then your hours are freed up.
But when the kids get sick at school, who usually takes off from work to care for them? Usually the mother. Who ends up doing the majority of the cooking and cleaning, even if they are working a full-time job? It's usually the mother.
In this sense, feminism while it didn't fail, was certainly shortsighted, and blindsided many women of my generation, who were expecting something different.
There are all sorts of alternative scenarios certainly. But we cannot gloss over the realities of what kids and women really need. That would be antifeminist.