January 13, 2006 by s.z.

Women (and Men) Who Make the World Stupider

Everyone (i.e., Jesus' General and the Amazon reviewers TBogg cites) is either reviewing Kate O'Beirne's book, or making fun of Jonah's review of it  (i.e., Amanda Marcotte, Sadly, No!, and TBoggForum).  And while that's all well and good (and really, really funny), what people are forgetting is that the expert on feminism, old-timer Carey "Pops" Roberts, has also reviewed Kate's crappus opus.

And since this is a serious blog that shuns such cheap amusements as posting the Cinemax adventure that folks actually imagine when they hear that Jonah went to a women's college (btw, it's an erotic thriller called Basic Stinks), we will provide you with selections from Mr. Roberts' review of Kate's book. 

As editor of National Review Online, O'Beirne showcases her formidable research and writing skills in exposing how the feminist movement has polarized relations between the sexes and made life worse for most American women.

Oooh, so Kate is now "editor of National Review Online" -- Jonah is going to be so pissed! 

And Kate must indeed have formidable research skills if she can expose how the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to attend college, etc. have made life worse for most American women. 

In my town, billboards feature a newly-engaged woman showing off her sparkling diamond ring, nearly shouting the words, "Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, YES!"

If a jewelry store billboard claims that that giving a woman a diamond will bring her to orgasm, then feminism must indeed be wrong about everything.

Despite the fact that married women are healthier, happier, and more economically-secure than their single sisters, feminists are hell-bent on obliterating this bedrock institution.

Damned feminists, trying to obliterate diamonds!

Ms. O'Beirne takes on the notion that women should delay childbearing until after their careers are established. She cites research that among women earning more than $100,000, nearly half — 49% — are childless. So much for having it all.

As Kate points out, women can either make over $100,000 a year, or they can have children -- but unlike men, they can't do both.  And somehow, this must be the fault of feminism.

Feminists go around cherry-picking wage statistics and then claim that society undervalues women's work.

O'Beirne shows little patience for such loopy logic. "They sell women short. They hold that women aren't smart enough and tough enough to flourish when given an equal chance to compete with men," O'Beirne thunders.

[...]

There's retired Air Force brigadier general Wilma Vaught who argued for moving women into direct combat: "There's been an acceptance of the fact that women...are in harms way and they are being killed." The families of the nearly 40 female soldiers killed in Iraq no doubt would find those words consoling.

So, Kate's premise is that women are smart enough and tough enough to flourish when given an equal chance to compete with men, but the military shouldn't allow them to be placed in harms way because they are too delicate and special to be forced to face the same perils as men.

Oh, and Carey, why don't you care about the families of the more than 2000 male soldiers killed in Iraq? As a masculinist, shouldn't you spare them (and the dead male soldiers themselves) at least a passing thought?

So after 30-plus years of liberation feminista-style, are American women better off? O'Beirne has serious doubts.

Now, thanks to the Sisterhood's mantra that men are redundant, many of the nation's most eligible bachelors — 22%, to be exact — have turned their back on marriage, leaving millions of women desperate to find a good man who's willing to commit. 

I think that Mr. Roberts is talking about a study that questioned 1000 unmarried (allegedly straight) men aged 25-34 about their opinions of marriage ("State of Our Unions 2004: The Marrying Kind"); the study found that some men want to get married now, some think they may want to get married sometime, and some don't ever want to get married.  

A small but significant subset of our sample of unmarried men, some 98, or 22 percent of the total, agreed with the statement that "marriage is good for some people but personally it is not for you." We consider this group to be relatively hardcore marriage avoiders.

Somehow Carey deduced that these men are eminently eligible, and it's feminism's fault that they don't want to marry -- and their refusal to get hitched is is a deserved slap in the face for women, who should to be unhappy because they were bitchy to Pops.

Yeah, women, who are all desperate to get married (the study only involved men, but you can just assume that it's only men who are unwilling to commit), now never will, thanks to feminism, because it told men that women can live without them (and since this is obviously untrue, these unmarried women are all totally miserable and stuff).

Anyway, while Kate reportedly has a husband, I suspect that Mr. Roberts is divorced (and very, very bitter).  But since he is so concerned about those pathetic women doomed to a life of spinsterhood, I think that he should have to remarry.  And I think we can even find him an NRO editor he can pair up with: I suggest Kathryn Jean Lopez, who is single, eager, and an anti-feminist.  I imagine that she and Carey could be very unhappy together.

But if he doesn't go for her, there is always Byron York, who, while not a woman, probably got invited to the prom by high-school boys at least as often as Kate did, and therefore isn't a feminist either.

                                 

                         Byron                                    Kate

P.S.  Those interested in Kate's theory of what makes women into feminists might also be interested in this exchange from an American Enterprise Online discussion on "What Women Think about Modern Manhood":

KARINA ROLLINS: Why are there so many wimpy male journalists?

MONA CHAREN: Because they’re liberals. Not to say there aren’t some conservative wimps. But conservatives never really bought into the notion of androgyny or into feminism, and so conservative men never felt the need to abandon their manliness. Liberal men, on the other hand, thought that was being enlightened. So, since most journalists are liberal, a lot of them are wimpy.

KATE O’BEIRNE: It goes back to how these journalists spent their high school years, which I assume was being stuffed into lockers by other males.

Does anybody doubt that at least 90% of the "journalists" employed by National Review were stuffed into at least one locker during their high school years?

3:54:07 AM