Some Good Friedan 'Dialogue'

I put 'dialogue' in quotes, of course, because the Men's Rights Activists don't really make for good intellectual discourse. But, bless their angry little hearts and their dense, impenetrable heads, they do try their damnedest. This article gives a nice tribute to Friedan, but it's really the comments that I wanted to share. Here are some of the MRA's comments that particularly make me chuckle:

Woman who have embraced feminism are largely bitter, soulless, materialistic skanks! It should come as no surprise that the two people most responsible for destroying the moral fiber of America, Freud and Friedan and degenerate talmudic jews.
Viva La Raza Blanco!!
Posted by: Ian Santiago | February 09, 2006 at 10:10 PM


Friedan was an evil talmudic-bolshevik and I hope that she burns in hell.
(the rest of the comment not presented because, in typical MRA fashion, it's exhaustivly long and boring).
Posted by: Ian Santiago | February 09, 2006 at 12:09 PM

All feminists from Western nations should be exiled to Saudi Arabia and that would cure them of their nonsensical philosophy.
V.L.R.B!!
Posted by: Ian Santiago | February 09, 2006 at 07:17 PM


Wow! People don't know her history. She is a known communist and everything she said about her husband beating her and having to slave in the kitchen was all lies.
She came from a very wealthy family and never cooked and cleaned in her life. She had maids and even had other people raise her children.
She was also a stout anti-lesiban, so much for women's progress as she shut out many women.
She also try to defect to the USSR, but they rejected her as a radical. No! She wasn't a feminist, she was a hard core socialist and just wanted women to join her in that political cause.

[link]

I have no respect for liers that use it for their ends. Sorry. She deserves nothing but the dirt on her grave.
Posted by: Joe Williams | February 09, 2006 at 06:40 AM

Notice how, in the last comment, Joe is trying to invalidate Friedan's ideas because she's never done any "women's work?" He's just proving why we celebrate women like Friedan for providing opportunites outside of traditional sex roles. What a dork! Thanks for proving our point Joe-"all women should be barefoot and pregnant"-Willams! Here's a response that made my heart swell

Joe, how is it that a woman must cook and clean in order to have validity? So what if she came from a wealthy family? How does that diminish what she stood for? Who questions a man's motives just because he comes from wealth and enjoys the perks that come along with it? How many successful men are the primary caregiver for their children? Think about it.

Posted by: Damoon | February 09, 2006 at 08:24 AM

I Should Have Read the Fine Print

We all know the good benefits of being a feminist, right? Fornication, education, etc. But I was never fully aware of the consequences like suicide:

Dear Friends,

This article is written mostly for my sisters in Christ who are struggling with the fruit of feminism. What is the fruit of feminism?

* Discontentment
* Broken marriages
* Depression
* The murder of preborn babies by abortion
* Couples living together without marriage
* Fornication and adultery
* Homosexuality
* Suicide
* Neglected and abused children
* Unemployment and loss of jobs for men

I guess I didn't read the fine print. When should I plan to do myself in? I think I'll try to squeeze it in between my next abortion* and abusing the neighborhood children.

*note: I am my aborted fetus' mom.

Dietary Masochism

Just another reason to never, ever, never substitute low-fat cream cheese for the real thing. Never. It's just painfully disgusting. Why would anyone do that to themselves?

From the Common Cold to Gene Therapy

Uh-oh. Gene therapy resulting from the forced evolution of viruses?

In a project that could benefit human health, scientists forced the evolution of a common virus so that it can avoid the human immune system, making it potentially useful as a delivery vehicle for gene therapy.

You know what this means? That's right, the anti-evolutionists can't have any.

Evilution for Dummies

South Carolina Senator Mike Fair is proposing a few changes to his state's Evilution curriculum . Just to keep the people informed like a good newspaper should, thestate.com set South Carolinians straight on exactly what evilution all about by defining The Terms:

Evolution: The theory developed by scientist Charles Darwin nearly 150 years ago and detailed in his book “The Origin of Species.” It says man developed from lesser species over millions of years through a series of genetic mutations. Darwin theorizes that through a process called natural selection, simple cells mutated into more complex cells and eventually mutated into animal life. Darwin’s theory says man evolved from animals, with man’s closest kin being lesser primates such as apes and monkeys.

Creationism: In the Bible, the book of Genesis says God created the heavens and the earth and all the animals within it. And on the sixth day, the Bible says, God created man in his own image.

Intelligent Design: This theory has gained popularity in recent years as an alternative to teaching evolution. The theory of intelligent design doesn’t dispute much of what evolution concludes about the origin of man. But intelligent design says natural selection cannot explain certain features of the universe and of living things. It says the universe has a clear and obvious design, and thus a designer.

Now don't get us wrong, we appreciate the gesture, but since when did journalistic research translate to pulling "facts" out of one's ass? Here, let me help. It's easy. Step 1: Go to Wikipedia. Step 2: look up the word of interest. Step 3: report. Thus:

Evolution: the process by which populations of organisms acquire and pass on novel traits from generation to generation. Its action over large stretches of time explains the origin of new species and ultimately the vast diversity of the biological world...The idea of biological evolution has existed since ancient times, notably among Hellenists such as Epicurus and Anaximander, but the modern theory was not established until the 18th and 19th centuries, by scientists such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin.

Creationism: In Abrahamic religions, creationism or creation theology is the origin belief that humans, life, the Earth, and the universe were created by a supreme being or deity's supernatural intervention. The intervention may be seen either as an act of creation from nothing (ex nihilo) or the emergence of order from pre-existing chaos...Many who hold "creation" beliefs consider such to be an aspect of religious faith which is compatible with (or otherwise unaffected by) scientific views...

Intelligent Design See Creationism.

Choice Feminism: I Choose to be Judgmental

Reflecting on how the late Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique," helped resolve her struggle between career and family, Joan Walsh concludes that we have no choice but to be Choice Feminists. However, Linda Hirshman has a different interpretation of Friedan's ideas:

Instead, Hirshman argues, feminism should rebuke the affluent educated women who are increasingly (in what numbers is disputed) abandoning careers for family life. She even cites Friedan as an example of how radical the feminist movement once was on these questions, a radicalism she thinks the movement should return to. She notes that in her movement-inspiring 1963 book "The Feminine Mystique," Friedan went so far as to compare housework to animal life...

Unfortunately, Hirshman lamented in her must-read American Prospect piece, "Homeward Bound," after Friedan's bold rejection of animal labor for women, "liberal feminists abandoned the judgmental starting point of the movement in favor of offering women 'choices.'" Feminism has to get back to "judging," Hirshman insists, and it should judge the choice to stay home as flat-out wrong. As Hirshman writes: "To paraphrase, as Mark Twain said, 'A man who chooses not to read is just as ignorant as a man who cannot read.'"

Of course Walsh is right that a woman should be allowed to lead her life however she damn well pleases without criticism. But I think both Walsh and Hirshman are missing the point. We should not blindly adopt Choice Feminism because there is cause for public criticism of certain life choices that counter the progress of feminism. Rather than condemn the stay-at-home moms, we should chastise:

1) the men who willingly start families then refuse to take on any domestic responsibility and demand that their wives be detained in culinary servitude without any remote possibility of reaching compromise between bread-winning (i.e. having fun) and diaper-changing for both of the supposed partners.

2) and THE WOMEN WHO MARRY THEM!!

What self-respecting woman would reproduce with a man who would have so little respect for her that he wouldn't even do his share of the laundry? Single parenthood notwithstanding, the solution to the struggle for balance between career and family might just be to recruit more help; you know, the paternal help that created the little varmints in the first place. In fact, I suggest that this should probably be written straight into matrimonial vows just to make sure there is no misunderstanding. "I promise to love and honor you, cook dinner 3-4 nights a week, scrub the toilet every other weekend, pick up the kids after school...till death do us part."

From an older-ish article by Louise Story:

"My mother always told me you can't be the best career woman and the best mother at the same time," Ms. Liu said matter-of-factly. "You always have to choose one over the other"

Back to Walsh:

Then I found myself in my early 30s with a baby I loved to distraction, a career I treasured almost as much (yes, almost), and a marriage falling apart due to my volcanic anger at being unable to manage both gracefully, and all my feminist certainties dissolved for a while.

I rest my case. No one can manage both, and if they can, it probably isn't gracefully. But women shouldn't have to choose between 'one or the other.' It should be possible to have both with a little bit of ethically mandated assistance. It takes two people to make the rabid little critters, it should take two to clean the baby turds off of the carpet.

My feminism is about choice: A woman can choose to marry a dimwit-deadbeat dude who considers the her full potential to lie somewhere between the frying pan and the bedroom. And I can choose to stand in judgement of their anti-feminist lifestyle.