January 17, 2006 by s.z.

Women Who Make the World Uglier By their words and deeds, I mean. First up is Phyllis Schlafly with "Why Johnny isn't going to college."  (The reason, per Phyllis, is that Johnny is too macho to attend a college that doesn't have a varsity wrestling team.  Seriously.) This year's spectacular Rose Bowl game attracted a phenomenal 35.6 million viewers because it featured what we want: rugged men playing football and attractive women cheering them on. Americans of every class, men and women, remained glued to their television sets and nearly 95,000 spectators watched from the stands. The runaway success of this game proved again that stereotypical roles for men and women do not bother Americans one bit. Yeah, and the fact that this week 27.23 million viewers watched a "CSI" rerun proved again that infantilism ("deriving sexual pleasure by pretending to be a baby") does not bother Americans one bit.  (Okay, the Parents Television Council reviewer said it bothered her quite a bit, but she watched it, so she must be lying about that.) Meanwhile, feminists are censoring out hundreds of traditional manly college sports teams. If your favorite college once had a wrestling, baseball or track team, check again: there's a good chance it has been eliminated.   And if your favorite college no longer has a traditional manly cock fighting team, it was probably eliminated due to feminists. In the entire state of Washington, there is no longer a single major college wrestling team, despite wrestling's huge popularity in high schools. Wrestling is one of the least expensive sports, requiring almost no equipment and having a low risk of injury, but feminists are working to eliminate all masculine sports. The few colleges that have held firm against feminist pressure continue to attract males. Penn State, for example, has kept its superb programs in football, wrestling, baseball and track, and enjoys a 55 percent to 45 percent male-to-female enrollment. Yes, it "enjoys" having more male than female students -- and if it adds some more superb manly sports, it could probably enjoy having even fewer female students. Mean-spirited feminists recently demanded the resignation of 79-year-old football coaching great Joe Paterno because he spoke in sympathy of an opposing team's player accused of sexual assault. There was nothing offensive in Paterno's comments and 89 percent in an online AOL poll sided with him, but just a few feminists with a fax machine will smear anyone in their war against football. Here's the portion of the remarks to which the mean-spirited feminists objected: "There's some tough - there's so many people gravitating to these kids. He may not have even known what he was getting into, Nicholson. They knock on the door; somebody may knock on the door; a cute girl knocks on the door. What do you do?" What you don't do, Joe, is commit sexual battery on the girl (which is what Nicholson is alleged to have done), even if she is cute, and even if she knocked on a man's door, and even if she wore a short skirt.  Is that clear? And Phyllis, while I don't think that Joe should be fired for his remark, I found it danged offensive.  And if you think that a woman deserves to be raped for knocking on the door of a football player, then I find you danged offensive too. The lack of college sports teams and camaraderie makes many high school boys wonder, "Why bother going to college?" If the lack of a wrestling team is going to put them off the idea of higher education, then maybe they shouldn't bother going to college.  Seriously. The Rose Bowl proved that public demand is for all-male sports, not female contests. Boys do not want to go to a college that eliminates the macho sports, and that is true even if the boy does not expect to compete himself. These boys who are in search of the macho sports eliminated by today's sissy colleges should join the military (I hear they're looking for recruits).  In the army, they could even compete themselves! The effects of the feminists' attack on men's sports are now coming home to roost. By the time this year's college freshmen are seniors, the ratio will be 60 percent women to 40 percent men, and women are now crying that there are not enough college-educated men to marry. Yes, large numbers of American women will not be able to find husbands, all because those damned feminists insisted that the women's volleyball team get a couple of thousand dollars of university funds. Congress should tell colleges they will lose federal funding if they discriminate against men's sports. The American people clearly want male football, baseball, track and wrestling, and colleges that cut these sports should be cut out of the federal budget. And the American people also clearly want "CSI."  Now, find a way to tie that into our need for more marriageable men, and then get back to us, Phyllis.  Now, here's Suzanne Fields to tell us why we're losing the War Against Terror Tigers. (It's because we keep wasting time trying to figure out how to stop the rise of terrorism, when we should instead be breeding.) The yearning to be regarded as nice is surely the point of the growing opposition to the war in Iraq, which is morphing into opposition to doing anything about terrorists, those abroad and those among us. If we think nice thoughts, maybe they will go away.  We "make nice" when we make excuses for the tiger's violent behavior, seduced by the idea that we should correct the "root causes" of his search for dinner at our expense. We think we can change the nature of the enemy if only we understand what makes the enemy violent, foolishly imagining that we can repeal the law of the jungle with our own good intentions. We can afford to make nice once we get the tiger in a cage, but in the wild he's a predator, and we have to be aware that he's stalking us. I think that what Suzanne is trying to say is that Muslims are, like tigers, amoral animals -- and anybody who advocates doing anything other than shooting them, is only doing so because they want to be regarded as "nice" by other losers. We've been seduced by lavish social welfare spending, prey to the blandishments of secularism and multiculturalism, and undermined by low birth rates (abetted by abortion on demand) that threaten survival. All these things have contributed to making us soft and selfish, shifting our focus to the good life that will come to a bloody end in the tiger's supper dish. [...] The birth dearth puts us at a growing disadvantage because the most intolerant cultures usually engage in a riot of reproduction. Between 1970 and 2000, the Muslim world accounted for 26 percent of the increase in the world's population while the Western countries accounted for under 9 percent. During those same years, the developed world -- the euphemism for the West -- declined from just under 30 percent of the world's population to just over 20 percent, while the Islamic world grew from 15 to 20 percent. The implication of these statistics is clear.  Yes, the implication is clear: to further our national security, we must outlaw abortion, and order every American woman to bear as many children as she can.  Maybe we should institute a Department of Breeding, to fall under Homeland Security.   Oh, and we also have to eliminate all social welfare funding, so that those children will grow up lean, mean, and vicious, and ready to fight the Muslim horde.  Thanks, Phyllis and Suzanne, for those enlightening columns, and for doing your bit to make the world an uglier place. 3:41:45 AM

Africa, Just Say No to Sex K.Lo brings us Laura Bush's testimonial about abstinence: GOOD SENSE FROM LAURA BUSH, IN AFRICA [Kathryn Jean Lopez]Via Bill Sammon: "I'm always a little bit irritated when I hear the criticism of abstinence, because abstinence is absolutely 100 percent effective in eradicating a sexually transmitted disease," Mrs. Bush said, before tying her answer in with one of the major themes of her trip, women's rights in Africa. "In a country or a part of the world where one in three people have a sexually transmitted deadly disease, you have to talk about abstinence, you really have to," she said. "In many countries where girls feel obligated to comply with the wishes of men, girls need to know that abstinence is a choice." Posted at 02:35 PM Thanks for that good sense, Laura. Now, let's hear from the experts: Much of the HIV prevention work in developing countries now focuses on sexual abstinence until marriage, but remaining faithful to her husband won't help a woman to stay safe from HIV if he is the one who infects her. In fact, this is one of the most common ways in which women are infected in many places. So, Laura, is your message to African women, "Abstain from sex with your husbands, or you deserve to get sick"? And then there's this: In many countries - especially less socially stable regions - there is a greater likelihood of women's first sex being forced or in some way coerced. Rape can be a devastating experience for any woman, and can also carry the risk of HIV infection. Sexual violence against women is more common in some parts of the world than in others. South Africa, for example, has one of the highest rates of sexual violence, coupled with a huge HIV prevalence. In some parts of Africa there is a belief that having sex with a virgin can 'cure' HIV infection - leading to the rape of young women and children by HIV+ men. Laura, maybe you can tell African women, "Abstain from being raped. It's 100% effective in preventing STDs." Anyway, while I think that promoting abstinence isn't a bad thing, relying on it as the main weapon to combat AIDS is criminally stupid.  Remember that $15 billion in global AIDS relief that President Bush promised in 2003? Well, it had moral strings attached: recipient countries have to emphasize abstinence over condoms, and must condemn prostitution (even though is some countries, educating prostitutes about AIDS prevention is one of their most effective methods of combating the disease). It seems that $1 billion of that $15 billion in aid was reportedly earmarked for abstinence education. Religious groups which de-emphasize or even oppose the use of condoms receive the bulk of the total grant money -- and now, in some countries, the supplies of condoms are very limited, and condom use has been stigmatized, which experts predict could lead to disaster. But at least the people are becoming more moral (or dying)! Now, here's some info from the Global AIDS Alliance (emphasis added): What's more, focusing on abstinence and monogamy ignores the reality facing young women and girls in Africa and other impoverished regions, who are often infected by wandering husbands or forced to have sex in exchange for food or shelter. Among 15- to 24-year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa, studies show, more than three times as many young women are infected with HIV as young men. Preaching about abstinence and faithfulness to girls and women in risky situations "can't be made sense of on any level," Jacobson says. "It's not only contrary to public-health best practices, it's contrary to common sense and contrary to human rights principles." The emphasis on morality is being driven by social conservatives who have made spreading the gospel of abstinence and monogamy to Africans their primary mission. "Condoms promote promiscuity," says Derek Gordon of the evangelical Christian group Focus on the Family. "When you give a teen a condom, it gives them a license to go out and have sex." At a congressional hearing in April, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., threatened to cut funding for organizations that promote condoms. "The best defense for preventing HIV transmission is practicing abstinence and being mutually faithful to a non-infected partner," Hyde declared. And under a proposal being pushed by Hyde and his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill, Tobias would be given the power to divert even more money toward promoting abstinence. "All [conservatives] can think about is making Africans abstinent and monogamous," says a Democratic staffer. "It's the crassest form of international social engineering you could imagine." So, Laura, thanks so very much for your empowerment message to African women -- I'm sure they'll find it really helpful.  <extreme sarcasm>   But at least Kathryn benefited from it.  And I'm sure your daughters are fine examples of chaste, abstinent living -- or is your message only for poor, dark-skinned people? (Sorry, everybody, but I'm always a little bit irritated these days when I hear the Bush women dispense advice to the little people.) 1:31:01 AM