Socialism & Feminism Archive 2005 Carey Roberts is a social commentator on political correctness. He has been widely published in newspapers and through the internet. You can contact him at E-Mail. Achieving Feminist Class Consciousness Radical feminism can be traced back directly to Marxism-Leninism. The feminist ideology, framework, and utopian aspirations all have their origin in the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts012704.htm ). Sometime visit the Women and Marxism website (www.marxists.org/subject/women/ ). There you can read exactly what V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung had to say about women’s liberation. Vladimir Lenin was the mastermind behind the early Soviet propaganda campaign. In his book The Birth of the Propaganda State, Peter Kenez concludes the Soviet state achieved its early successes because of the “ability of the political system to isolate the Russian people from information and ideas that would have undermined the message.” And that message was the gospel of class consciousness. The Marxist mantra was repeated endlessly: the worker was exploited by the evil capitalist, and the peasant was oppressed by the greedy landowner. This indoctrination strategy worked for several reasons. It motivated the workers and peasants. It channeled their anger towards the capitalists. And it vilified and demoralized the opponents of Communism. Lenin also pushed the class consciousness theme in his speeches to women, but with a new twist. On the occasion of the 1921 International Working Women’s Day, Lenin proclaimed that women were doubly oppressed -- both because they were victims of capitalism, and because they were slaves “overburdened with the drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking and stultifying toil in the kitchen and the family household.” (www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/mar/04.htm ) “Drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking, and stultifying toil”? An apt description of life in the Gulag, perhaps, but not of housework in the relative comfort of the home. But lack of historical accuracy did not deter the early feminists. Pick up a copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex or Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics. You will read exactly the same arguments: Men are the unending oppressors of women and marriage is a legalized form of slavery. To achieve their vision of women’s liberation, the Matrons of Mischief pursued the age-old strategy of divide and conquer. First, the Sisterhood canonized the strong, self-assured, independent woman. This ideal became government policy when the Clinton administration launched its “Girl Power” program and UNICEF later started its “Go Girl!” initiative. To this day, programs to prevent osteoporosis carry the slogan, “Strong Women, Strong Bones.” But these campaigns carry an underlying message: “If you’re a strong woman, why would you ever need or want a man?” And when the Marlboro Woman message didn’t completely sink in, feminists went to Plan B: male-bashing. Male chauvinist pig. Misogynist. Insensitive. Over-bearing. Abusive. Batterer. And many others. At first, men thought the caricatures were funny. Then they tried to ignore them. But the end result has been to make men feel guilty and shameful. The steady drum-beat of those inflammatory messages served to turn the battle of the sexes into a gender war. The next step would be to conquer. And what was the target? Nothing less than the institution of marriage. Robin Morgan, who would later become the editor of Ms. Magazine, referred to marriage as “A slavery-like practice.” Germaine Greer argued, “If women are to effect a significant amelioration in their condition, it seems obvious that they must refuse to marry.” Kate Millett extolled the destruction of the traditional family as “revolutionary or utopian.” Persons who are interested in comprehending the scope of this relentless assault should peruse the Heritage Foundation report, Why Congress Should Ignore Radical Feminist Opposition to Marriage (www.heritage.org/Research/Features/Marriage/bg1662.cfm ). So what is the ultimate objective of this campaign of feminist class consciousness? Surprisingly, feminists have made little effort to disguise their goal. In her book Red Feminism, Kate Weigand makes this stunning admission: “this book provides evidence to support the belief that at least some Communists regarded the subversion of the gender system as an integral part of the larger fight to overturn capitalism.” (print.google.com/print/doc?isbn=0801864895 ) Subvert the gender system to overturn capitalism. Karl Marx would be pleased. Women Victimized by Feminist Fables Not too long ago, people knew the difference between truth and falsehood. Truth was based on verifiable facts and rational logic. And falsehood was the opposite of truth. But then radical feminism came along. The High Priestesses decreed that truth was a cynical ploy designed to dupe women to submit to male hegemony. Feminist philosopher Joyce Trebilcot once ridiculed the “apparatuses of ‘truth,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘science.’” And feminist theorist Elizabeth Fee stated bluntly: “Knowledge was created as an act of aggression.” Not even Cartesian logic was safe from the onslaught. “We might begin to question the import of Descartes’ stress on logic and mathematics as the ideal types of rationality,” explained Linda Gardiner, editor of the Women’s Review of Books. Told to ignore reason and common sense, women found themselves vulnerable to the machinations of the mischievous matriarchs. Under the guise of female liberation, these feminist Pooh Bahs set out to indoctrinate women into a three-tiered mythology. It all begins with the Mother of all Myths: the belief that a cabal of men, termed the Patriarchy, has been scheming all these years to keep women down. We won’t dwell on the fact that history fails to support such a sweeping indictment (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts080404.htm ). Suffice it to say, in the feminist worldview all the ills of the world can be traced back to the dreaded Patriarchy. The Great Myth of Patriarchy in turn spawned the Four Lesser Myths. First is the claim that men “have all the power.” Must be nice to have the whole world waiting at your beck and call. Next is Gloria Steinem’s doozy: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Steinem was telling a generation of American women that barren spinsterhood would be good enough. Of course, Steinem later found her bicycle and married airline pilot David Bale – but let’s not worry about minor details. Third, there’s the feminist belief in the moral superiority of women (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts052704.htm). That concept is captured in the chauvinistic expression, “A woman can do anything a man can do, only better.” To the Sisterhood, that statement is not a joke, it is a central tenet of the gender catechism. But here’s the biggest whopper of all: the claim that feminism seeks to bring about gender equality. Let’s look at the record. What have feminists done to rectify the fact that men have shorter lifespans? Or are victims in 93% of all workplace deaths? To the radical feminist, gender equality is only a one-way street. The Four Lesser Myths of male omnipotence, female autonomy, feminine superiority, and gender equality create the foundation. Upon that base, feminists have constructed an ever-expanding superstructure of equivocations, half-truths, and outright falsehoods. The list is much too long to recount, but encompasses the full range gamut of issues including health care, education, the law, family relationships, and domestic violence. Like the Super Bowl hoax – the myth that domestic violence rises 40% on Super Bowl Sunday. Even though that hoary chestnut was refuted long ago by the Washington Post, the alarming statistic continues to be recycled. So exactly how do the feminist fables victimize women? Precisely because so many intelligent, caring women have come to accept the lies. They now believe they are victims. You might say they’ve been brainwashed. These women walk around with an attitude of entitlement, wondering why men aren’t interested in them any more. They are lonely people. And as long as women remain in the victim mode, they will always be vulnerable to the argument that they need more legal protections and services. Thanks to the Sisterhood, female dependence on men has shifted to female reliance on government largesse. Is that progress? But for a number of women’s groups, the feminist misrepresentations have reached the point of outright embarrassment. So they have launched campaigns to tell the world, “Look! The Empress has no clothes!” The Concerned Women for America sponsors extensive grass-roots activities that counter the feminist doctrine. And the Independent Women’s Forum has launched a national campaign to alert students to widespread liberal bias on college campuses (www.iwf.org/campuscorner/default.asp). The program is appropriately dubbed, “She Thinks.” A feminist who thinks – what a thought! Party-Poopers at the UN Birthday Bash Nearly 170 heads of state came to New York last week for the United Nations’ 60th anniversary. So organizers planned a gala birthday celebration fitting for the occasion. But soon after the World Summit started on Wednesday, it became obvious the party was destined to go bust. First, a little background. Originally, the focus of the Summit was going to be the Millennium Development Goals – MDGs – an ambitious blueprint for the eradication of world poverty by the year 2015. But then secretary-general Kofi Annan began to hype the event as a “once in a generation opportunity for the world to come together and take action on grave global threats that require bold global solutions.” Before long everyone was thinking how they could leverage the conference to further their particular agendas. Case in point: the rad-fems don’t like the MDGs because they don’t affirm the right to kill one’s unborn young. So using bully tactics that would put any big-city politician to shame, the feministas began to strong-arm delegates at the preparatory conferences to insert statements about the importance of “reproductive rights” -- UN-speak for abortion-on-demand -- into the final reports. They doggedly pursued this strategy at the secretary-general’s Advisory Body in January, with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in March, the Commission on Population and Development in April, at a closed-door meeting on HIV/AIDS in May, and at a month-long ECOSOC meeting in July. [www.c-fam.org/FAX/Volume_8/volume_8.html ] Sometimes their methods became downright Machiavellian. For example, in June the UN General Assembly held meetings with hundreds of non-governmental organizations. But all the pro-family and pro-life groups that applied to attend were turned away. Ominously, Louise Frechette, who serves as Kofi Annan’s right-hand woman, hailed these closed-door meetings as “a significant new step in the way the United Nations relates to civil society.” [www.c-fam.org/FAX/Volume_8/faxv8n27.html ] By late July the feminists had laid their trap. UN commissions, non-governmental organizations, and Mr. Annan himself were all on record demanding that the MDGs support abortion rights. They only had to wait for the steel jaws to snap tight on the delegates who attended the UN Summit in September. But then the Bolton bombshell hit. Within days of his appointment by President Bush, Ambassador John Bolton called for hundreds of changes to the Summit’s draft agreement, demanding that it focus on reforming the inept UN bureaucracy and countering international terrorism. That came as bad news to the hairy-leg ladies who care only about abortion services for 12-year-old girls. So as the September 14 opening for the Summit neared, the negotiations became bogged down with scores of disagreements on 27 key issues raised by Ambassador Bolton and others. Once it got underway, the World Summit featured a mind-numbing 25 hours of speeches by 151 presidents, prime ministers, and kings. As the meeting headed towards its Friday wrap-up, it became painfully evident that the event was destined to be little more than a social gathering of aging apologists for the New World Order. Finally Canadian prime minister Paul Martin blasted the delegates whose speeches were filled with “too-often empty rhetoric.” At the end the delegates wearily approved a 40-page resolution that is long on heart-warming platitudes but woefully short on specifics. [daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/LTD/N05/511/30/PDF/N0551130.pdf?OpenElement Apart from the decision to establish a new Human Rights Council, the delegates failed to agree on details for countering terrorism, stopping the spread of AIDS, or reforming the UN Security Council. Even Mr. Annan himself ended up agreeing the final document was “watered down” and “disappointing.” [www.un.org/News/ossg/sg/stories/articleFull.asp?TID=49&Type=Article ] And no one had the courage to stand up to the Women of Woe, who succeeded in pushing through language about “achieving universal access to reproductive health by 2015” and promoting gender mainstreaming “in all political, economic, and social spheres.” Gender mainstreaming, if you hadn’t heard, is UN-speak for imposing the radical feminist agenda on the rest of us. Lamentably, the final declaration is silent about the importance of families in promoting social development. And to no one’s great surprise, it makes no mention of the needs of men, including shorter lifespans, a three-fold higher suicide rate, and laws in many countries that discriminate against fathers. So after many months of preparation and countless hours of late-night negotiations, the high-powered UN World Summit was unable to produce a detailed plan for making the world a safer, healthier, or fairer place to live. Although no one in the mainstream media dared to say it publicly, it’s hard to conclude the much-ballyhooed event was anything other than a colossal failure. And we’re entrusting these people with the job of eradicating poverty and bringing about world peace? How We will Cure the Radical Feminist Cancer? A malignancy spreads by invading its neighboring cells, taking over their internal control processes, and inducing the cells to assume grotesque shapes and sizes. This is an apt metaphor for radical feminism, which seduces intelligent, caring young women; plies them with warmed-over Marxist slogans; and turns them into gender crusaders who seemingly have lost all semblance of reason and compassion. By its own admission, radical feminism seeks to curtail or destroy the most cherished values of democratic free market societies: the traditional family, limited government, and the culture of life itself. Even the notion of truth itself has come under attack by postmodern feminism, which claims that truth is simply another tool for the patriarchal subjugation of women. “A set of subjective views has emerged as sacrosanct, beyond criticism,” Howard Schwartz concludes in The Revolt of the Primitive. “The result is that a vicious bias has triumphed over fact.” Left to itself, feminism will eventually collapse under the weight of own logical inconsistencies, social intolerance, and reluctance to assure the continuation of the species. But our generation would still have to answer to our children and grandchildren who one day will ask, “Why did you sit by and do nothing?” Thirty-five years after bra-burners captivated the nation’s campuses, radical feminism has become firmly entrenched in our society. In order to cure a cancer, you have to attack the root of the problem. The Sisterhood operates from three strongholds: the academy, the government, and the mainstream media. And this is where we need to apply the tincture of truth. 1. The Academy. Women’s studies programs serve as the base camp for feminists to recruit a new crop of well-educated women. Noting the factual errors and myths that pervade women’s studies courses, Christine Stolba issues a cautionary note that “revolutions often end up devouring their own children.” [www.iwf.org/pdf/roomononesown.pdf ] The cure? Students need to file lawsuits demanding that these universities establish men’s studies programs to serve the dwindling male student body. After all, Title IX of the Civil Rights Act was intended to benefit men and women alike. 2. The Government. Over the past 15 years our elected officials have enacted a bevy of laws intended to appease their female constituents. Problem is, many of these laws weaken the nuclear family, violate men’s civil rights, and make women beholden to government hand-outs. Case in point: the controversial Violence Against Women Act, which comes up for its five-year renewal in Congress later this month. The treatment of choice: Male voters need to start demanding that their politicians answer to their concerns and needs. And lawmakers need to consider whether their chivalrous instincts are unfairly biasing the laws they enact. 3. The Media. Our feminized society is seemingly addicted to stories that serve up a daily diet of victimization and gender grievance. Recently I came across this 72-point headline in USA Today: “Abuse Found in Military Schools.” The article goes on to recite this shocking statistic: “The report cited 2004 Pentagon data showing 50% of women at all three academies were harassed, mostly verbally but dozens suffering physical abuse.” [http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-25-academies-women_x.htm?csp=1 ] But exactly how did the Pentagon researchers assess abuse and harassment? Was bruising a female cadet’s feelings considered abusive? Was it exactly 50% of women, with identical percentages at all three military academies? What is the title of this report, so the reader can verify its conclusions? Why wasn’t anyone interviewed to provide balance to the doubtful claim of rampant harassment? And come to think of it, how many male cadets experienced any form of abuse? The answer to these important questions is left to the reader’s imagination. Bottom line, this article bears all the telltale signs of a journalistic snow job. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/1020roberts.html ] But that didn’t stop the USA Today editors from running the article on the front page of its August 26 edition. The treatment? The public needs to contact editors and tell them we’re sick and tired of being force-fed with feminist agitprop. Once we challenge the feminist cultural hegemony and remind them how many privileges and advantages the average American woman enjoys, the gender warriors may come to realize that much of their sense of oppression is self-inflicted. Thanks to the advances of medical science, cancer is now a curable disease. Still, surgery is always painful, and recovery may be slow. But this we know for certain: acquiescence to the rad-fems’ ever-escalating demands is the formula for the continued unraveling of the social order. Restraining Orders for Abusive Grandmas? The women's shelter activists have devised a nuclear first-strike weapon in their jihad to stop domestic violence. Insiders call it the TRO -- the "temporary restraining order." Here's how the ploy works. A woman who feels in the slightest way abused goes to a judge to request a restraining order (called an Order of Protection in some states). This is usually done at an "ex-parte" hearing, meaning the hearing is done in secret and the judge does not bother to invite testimony from the alleged abuser. The judge seldom demands any hard evidence to back up the woman's testimony. Because abuse is defined broadly in most states, the woman's request is given a rubber-stamp approval. Ten days later the woman goes back and requests that the temporary restraining order be made permanent. That decision has a devastating impact on the family: the father is permanently vacated from his house, the mother is awarded full custody of the children, and he is ordered to begin child support payments. Obviously this Kafkaesque system is ripe for abuse. And that's exactly what Arlene Soucie of Illinois, proud grandmother of two, recently found out. In November 2002 Mrs. Soucie's daughter-in-law decided to leave the family home, and opted to take along her nine-month-old grandson for good measure. "With the slow process of the court system, my grandson was concealed for 3 months. We missed his first Thanksgiving, first Christmas, first New Years, and his first birthday," Mrs. Soucie sadly writes. Finally the father, who works in law enforcement, was granted formal visitation rights. That's when the nightmare began. Somehow the mother got irate because dad and grandma wanted to see junior from time to time. And someone told her that under the Illinois Domestic Violence Act, causing a woman to feel even "emotional distress" is considered a form of abuse. "In October 2003, my son and myself were placed under an Order of Protection. We did nothing to break the law, we did not harass, stalk, intimidate, or try to annoy. Our only purpose was to pick up the child and deliver him back at the appointed time." Apparently the mother told the judge she found dad and grandma picking up the child to be "distressing." "The mother has learned the system and uses it to her advantage," laments the disillusioned grandmother. The abuse of restraining orders has now become widespread. In Massachusetts, 30,000 restraining orders are issued each year. Half of those do not involve even an allegation of physical violence. Elaine Epstein, former president of the Massachusetts Women's Bar Association, notes that "allegations of abuse are now used for tactical advantage" in divorce hearings. "Everyone knows that restraining orders and orders to vacate are granted to virtually all who apply," she admits. The June 2005 issue of the Journal of Family Violence features an analysis of all of the requests for restraining orders that came to the Massachusetts Gardner District Court in 1997. Author Steve Basile found that only 10% of requests from women were deferred or turned down. In contrast, 34% of requests from abused men were deferred or denied - a three-fold sex bias. In Washington state, attorney Lisa Scott writes, "Originated to immediately protect victims of severe abuse, protection orders have become 'weapons of mass destruction' in family courts. Whenever a woman claims to be a victim, she is automatically believed. No proof of abuse is required." In Colorado, Dr. Charles Corry explains how one judicial district employs a so-called Fast Track system in which "men are not allowed to consult a defense attorney before being pressured and cajoled to enter a guilty plea." Some judges seem to delight in turning family breadwinners into homeless vagrants: "Your job is not to become concerned about all the constitutional rights of the man that you're violating as you grant a restraining order. Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back, and tell him, 'See ya around,'" boasts judge Richard Russell of New Jersey. Early next month lawmakers return to Washington from their August recess. One of their first orders of business will be to take up the Violence Against Women Act. VAWA is the controversial bill that fuels the ever-expanding use of restraining orders around the country. And as they ponder their votes, let's hope our elected officials don't forget about all the grandmas and grandpas out there who are looking forward to birthday cake and ice cream with their grandkids this coming year. Winner of the Covented 2005 Award for Political Incorrectness Leftists believe the Truth is an intellectual fraud designed to prop up the existing techno-patriarchal-capitalist power structure. That’s why the neo-Coms will tell you with a straight face that Saddam Hussein was a courageous freedom fighter, and that the New York Times usually gets the story right. No wonder George Orwell once said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” This year three stalwart truth-tellers stood up to a tsunami of prevarication to make the short list for the 2005 Award for Political Incorrectness. Our second runner-up this year is…Michael Kinsey, opinion-page editor of the Los Angeles Times. You may recall last February when Susan Estrich, former presidential campaign manager for Michael Dukakis, threw a temper tantrum because only a fraction of the LA Times op-eds were written by women. Mr. Kinsey curtly replied that if more female editorialists wanted to be published in his newspaper, then they would need to write better articles. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0223roberts.html ] Bravo, Mr. Kinsey. The first runner-up is Mr. Ken Bode, ombudsman for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Last month Mr. Bode reviewed the PBS program Breaking the Silence and concluded the incendiary show was little more than an anti-father cant. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/1214roberts.html ] Well done, Mr. Bode. And the winner of the 2005 Award for Political Incorrectness is…(pan of vast audience with expectant expressions)… Phyllis Schlafly. This past year Mrs. Schlafly took on the federal government’s deepening alliance with radical feminism. In the process she debunked many of the Left’s pet explanations for family break-down. To do justice to Schlafly’s contributions, I have quoted from several of her columns. In January she started off the year with a column about “Children Made Fatherless by Family Courts.” The article revealed that “fathers are systematically discriminated against by family courts which nearly always award physical custody to the mother even when the father has committed no fault.” [www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/jan05/05-01-12.html ] Schlafly continued in the same vein in her February column about the “Fatherphobia of Family Courts.” In that article she took divorce courts to task for ignoring a “mountain of social science research” by failing to award joint physical custody to fathers. [www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/feb05/05-02-02.html ] In March she highlighted the plight of National Guard Spc. Joe McNeilly who was called up for service in Iraq. Upon completion of his tour of duty, McNeilly was greeted with the news that a family court, during his absence and without his knowledge, had awarded full custody of his 10-year-old son to his mother. [www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/mar05/05-03-02.html ] In May she turned up the heat, exposing how “Federal Incentives Make Children Fatherless.” Schlafly warned, “Follow the money. The less time that non-custodial parents (usually fathers) are permitted to be with their children, the more child support they must pay into the state fund, and the higher the federal bonus to the states for collecting the money.” [www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/may05/05-05-11.html ] Mrs. Schlafly doesn’t mince words, does she? And it only gets better. In her June column on “How to Celebrate Father’s Day,” Schlafly took aim at the feminist Big Lie: “For 30 years, feminist organizations and writers have propagated the myth that women are victims of an oppressive patriarchal society and that marriage is an inherently abusive institution that makes wives second-class citizens.” [www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/june05/05-06-15.html ] Then beginning in July, Schlafly took on the hotly-debated Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) which came up before Congress this past fall for a five-year renewal. In “Time to Defund Feminist Pork,” Schlafly wondered why the US Congress funnels “a billion dollars a year of taxpayers' money into the hands of radical feminists who use it to preach their anti-marriage and anti-male ideology, promote divorce, corrupt the family court system, and engage in liberal political advocacy.” [www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/july05/05-07-20.html ] Mrs. Schlafly’s pièce de resistance came in October. While our elected officials were buckling under the feminist intimidation tactics, Schlafly released an exposé with the sizzling title, “Time to Defund Feminist Pork – the Hate-Men Law.” First Schlafly ridiculed the feminist urban legends such as “a woman is beaten every 15 seconds” and Super Bowl Sunday is the “biggest day of the year of violence against women.” She deplored how VAWA rides “roughshod over the constitutional rights of men.” Schlafly then scolded our elected officials in Washington: “Shame on Members of Congress who lack the courage to stand up to feminist outrages.” [www.eagleforum.org/psr/2005/oct05/psroct05.html ] For 30 years the Leftists have waged a tenacious assault on society’s bedrock institutions, including fatherhood and families. As the rest of us silently stood by, feminists branded dads with epithets such as deadbeat, abuser, and patriarchal oppressor. And now Phyllis Schlafly has shed the light of truth on their evil scheme. PBS Propaganda Piece I’ve never heard of a Public Broadcasting Service documentary being slammed by two ombudsmen in the space of one week. But that’s exactly what happened to PBS’ ill-fated program, Breaking the Silence. The program, billed as an exposé of divorce courts, said that custody of abused children is often awarded to the abusing parent. Government reports reveal that mothers are more likely than dads to abuse and neglect their children [faq.acf.hhs.gov/cgi-bin/acfrightnow.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=70 ], and that mothers in fact are awarded child custody about 85% of the time – so the documentary producers did have a point. But the ombudsmen peered behind the green velvet curtain and said this time around, the Great Wizard was trying to pull a fast one. First Ken Bode, ombudsman for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting came out on November 29 with a report that charged the Breaking the Silence claims were “slanted” against fathers, “incendiary,” and plain “wrong.” [www.cpb.org/ombudsmen/051129bode.html ] That would be bad enough if we were talking about a Leftist love-in like NOW with Bill Moyers. But in this case we’re talking about a factual documentary. Then three days later Michael Getler, ombudsman at the Public Broadcasting Service, dropped the second bombshell, noting “there was no recognition of opposing views,” and concluded the show was an “advocacy, or point-of-view, presentation.” [www.pbs.org/ombudsman ] But the problem with Breaking the Silence is not just flawed and unethical journalism. Bode’s greater concern was the fact that the program “has been a launching pad for a very partisan effort to drive public policy and the law.” What was Mr. Bode talking about? Turns out a rogue outfit called the Mother’s Research and Reference Center [www.mrrc.info v] was in cahoots with PBS insiders and got advance copies of the program. Then the MRRC organized demonstrations and private screenings of the documentary for state legislators, judges, and local activists. The idea was to convince them to pass laws to make it almost impossible for dads to get even shared custody of their kids after divorce. At KVPT in Fresno, abuse professionals were made available to speak with distraught viewers. But the counselors probably didn’t have much to say about all those female teachers who have been making headlines for jumping in bed with their male teenage students. Or the mother who chopped off the leg of her 20-month-old son last week. [www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,17507324-421,00.html ] Remember, the party line says fathers, not mothers, are the child abusers. And in Alaska, PBS affiliate KAKM, forgetting it was a tax-exempt organization, promised they would provide free publicity for the activists. According to the local organizer, “The local PBS station has said they will help us advertise and promote our event because we will then in turn promote viewing of their screening date on 10/20.” That tidbit came to light last Tuesday, courtesy of Fox News columnist Wendy McEloy [www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,177893,00.html v], who invited readers to see the smoking gun for themselves at www.mrrc.info/Articles/DemonstrationInfo.html But the Mother’s Research and Reference Center didn’t appreciate all the publicity, so within days they yanked the incriminating paragraph. And a few days later, all 17 pages that documented MRRC’s mischief-making around the country evaporated in cyber-space. Well, not exactly. Because someone beat them to the punch and made a mirror of the original web page, which can be seen at www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/1207archived.html . Sorry girls, you’ve just been caught with your hand in the cookie jar. The rad-fems have devised a remarkable plan for family destablization: fabricate a bizarre accusation, get the media to believe it, whip the populace into a frenzy, and then pressure chivalrous legislators to pass laws that do away with fathers. In the 1980s, it was the myth of the deadbeat dad who callously abandons his family. Now we have a draconian (and costly) child support system that tosses destitute dads in jail when they fall behind on their payments. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0310roberts.html ] In the 1990s, it was the ersatz epidemic of men who assault and batter their wives. Thanks to that canard, we have the billion-dollar-a-year Violence Against Women Act that makes divorce easy, profitable, and fun. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0720roberts.html ] ersatz And now we have a bogus documentary that smears fathers as child abusers, with the aim of keeping dads out of their children’s lives after divorce. That’s the stuff of old-fashioned, in-your-face, Soviet-style propaganda. That’s what PBS did on October 20, 2005. So next time you want to get good, solid reporting about a controversial topic, you might do better by picking up a copy of the National Enquirer in the check-out line. Fem-Think and the Civil Rights of Men I have never met Ben Stein and harbor no ill-will towards him. But last week the former TV game show host wrote an article that somehow reminded me of the Holocaust deniers. Referring to the precarious situation in Iraq, Mr. Stein posed this question: are “we already eager to surrender to the man who murdered women and children”? [www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9051 ] Women and children? If there’s anything we know about Iraq under Saddam Hussein, it’s that men suffered the most horrific cruelties. Remember the stories about Saddam’s infamous meat cutter machine? About alleged Army deserters who had their ears cut off? The children forced into combat? And the 600 civilians gunned down in Basra for not having ID cards? [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0506roberts.html ] The victims were almost all male. I have to assume Mr. Stein is a reasonably decent fellow. So how did he get lured into this sad example of re-writing history to satisfy the agenda of the politically correct? The answer can be traced back to Fem-think, which insists that in patriarchal society, women are not only the biggest victims, women are its only victims. Despite the absurdity of that proposition, the gender warriors endlessly advance that idea. Repeat a lie a thousand times, and people begin to believe it. And now a major human rights organization, Amnesty International, has become beholden to that mindset. Fem-think at AI goes back 10 years when Amnesty began to release reports that highlighted the human rights violations of women. [www.renewamerica.us/columns/roberts/050604 ] Before long an unmistakable gender bias began to emerge. The 2001 AI report, Afghanistan: Making Human Rights the Agenda makes this statement: “During 2000, at least 15 people were executed in public, including one woman who was stoned to death.” Why highlight the tragic demise of one woman, and gloss over the deaths of the 14 men? Kosovo is another example of a recent civil conflict that killed thousands of innocent civilian men. One report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe documented the widescale abductions, torture, and executions, and noted, “young men were the group that was by far the most targeted in the conflict in Kosovo.” [www.osce.org/kosovo/reports/hr/part1/ch15.htm ] But don’t forget, the notion of male victimization is just another example of patriarchal revisionism. So when the matter of the sex-specific slaughter in Kosovo was raised at a recent meeting of the Canadian section of Amnesty, the issue was met with derision and contempt. And a resolution calling for the group to “condemn all large-scale gender selective human rights violations of men and women” in Kosovo was soundly defeated. No doubt the correct-thinking AI delegates reasoned, “We certainly can’t approve that, it might distract from the good work we’re doing to highlight the human rights violations of women.” As human rights activist David Buchanan recently put it, Amnesty International has “flinched from clearly documenting large-scale patterns of male-specific conflict during armed conflict.” [www.gendercide.org/g_and_g.htm ] But Amnesty International is not content to merely ignore widespread violations against men. Or to sanitize reports of sex-specific atrocities. Now it has decided to actively suppress men’s basic human rights. Female-on-male domestic violence is just as common as the male-initiated variety. [www.mediaradar.org/ja_sex_differences.php ] But that didn’t stop AI from unveiling a campaign called Stop the Violence Against Women, its one-sided focus being only on the female sex. Now Amnesty chapters in Sweden and Ireland have published reports on domestic violence that are filled with tiresome feminist slogans about patriarchal oppression. And if anyone still doesn’t get the message, last Friday Amnesty celebrated its International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, designed to kick-start the perpetually downtrodden into a frenzied “16 days against gender violence.” [web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/index-eng ] In the United States, AI has gone on record supporting the Violence Against Women Act. The concern with this controversial law is not just that ignores half the domestic violence problem, the real problem is that it tramples on men’s civil rights. The Violence Against Women Act discourages the provision of treatment services to abused men. The law bribes local law enforcement agencies to implement mandatory arrest policies that are targeted to men. VAWA encourages prosecutors to adopt “no-drop” policies, even if the woman wants to drop the complaint. VAWA also encourages judges to hand out back-door restraining orders based only on the woman’s say-so. Referring to the widespread abuse of these orders, the Independent Women’s Forum recently expressed the concern that “their issuance and enforcement has troubling implications for civil liberties.” [www.iwf.org/specialreports/specrpt_detail.asp?ArticleID=815 ] So as Fem-think spreads and as we slide towards the Feminist World Order, what will come of the civil rights of men? UN Resolution 1325: The World Body goes on a Loony Streak Ten years ago a recrudescence of age-old ethnic tensions spilled over into the worst bloodbath that Europe had witnessed since World War II. The United Nations report duly noted the grisly details of the Srebrenica massacre: “The mortal remains of close to 2,500 men and boys have been found on the surface, in mass graves, and in secondary burial sites. Several thousand more men are still missing…Numerous eyewitness accounts, now well corroborated by forensic evidence, attest to scenes of mass slaughter of unarmed victims.” Apparently that report never made it to desks of the UN bigwigs in Turtle Bay. Because a few years later the Security Council came out with a resolution that made this surreal claim: “women and children account for the vast majority of those adversely affected by armed conflict.” [www.un.org/Docs/scres/2000/sc2000.htm ] Were the framers of the UN Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security blissfully unaware of the Srebrenica carnage? Was the Bosnian massacre a quirk of history? Or is it possible the UN Security Council got it all wrong? Last year political scientist Adam Jones came out with Gendercide and Genocide, a gem of a book that combs the historical record and comes to conclusions that will certainly jolt the smug complacency of the politically-correct. [www.gendercide.org/g_and_g.htm ] The tome documents historical cases when women were targeted for gendercide, including the practice of female infanticide, the witch-hunts in Europe, and war rapes. But, horrific as they were, it turns out those events are exceptions to the rule. Professor Jones recites the grim litany of human tragedies that have plagued our planet over the last 100 years. The Armenian genocide of 1915-1916. Stalin’s Great Terror. The 1971 liberation war in East Pakistan. Cambodia under Pol Pot. The Kurds in Iraq. Delhi, India after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. The tale of horrors continues to the present era: Peru, 1990. Sri Lanka, 1991. Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991. Rwanda, 1997. Colombia, 1998. Kosovo, 1999. Kashmir, 1999. And of course, Srebrenica. The pages of history reveal an awful truth: in each case, it was innocent civilian men who were targeted for elimination. Jones concludes that “noncombatant men have been and continue to be the most frequent targets of mass killing and genocidal slaughter.” Why are men being targeted for this gender carnage? First, chivalrous social mores seemingly place a higher premium on the lives of women. As Leo Kuper put it, “While unarmed men seem fair game, the killing of women and children arouses general revulsion.” Second, civilian men in the 15-55 year-old age range are prime recruits for civil conflicts, so wiping out the male population becomes a pre-emptive military tactic. Some persons dismiss these facts, noting that since the perpetrators were men, the deaths of their male victims are somehow less consequential. Professor Jones evinces little patience for that attitude, branding it “bigoted and dangerous.” Consider the practice of female genital circumcision, a procedure that is performed by women. Has anyone ever dismissed the barbarity of this ritual with the riposte that “after all, it’s women who are brutalizing their own kind”? Likewise during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, Hutu women played a prominent role in the brutalization of the Tutsi populace. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the former Rwandan minister for family and women’s affairs, personally handpicked the “nicest” Tutsi women to be taken away and raped by the Hutu militiamen. Nyiramasuhuko was later tried for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal. Did anyone in his right mind discount the anguish of those women who were raped at the behest of Ms. Nyiramasuhuko because she was female? Of course there are those who arrive at a vastly different interpretation of world events. Hillary Clinton once told an astonished audience, “Women have always been the primary victims of war” for the reason that “Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.” [clinton4.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/1998/19981117.htm ] Yes, imagine those cold-hearted cads, allowing themselves to be tortured and murdered, subjecting their mothers, wives, and daughters to such inconvenience. UN Resolution 1325 foreshadowed the pro-feminist hysteria that envelopes the United Nations to the present day. Just last month the UNESCO approved a resolution that proposes the UN should pay greater attention to the health of women -- but ignored the dire health problems of men. To make sure the irony didn’t pass unnoticed, UNESCO anointed its resolution with a grandiose title: the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. [portal.unesco.org/shs/en/file_download.php/b0f1e8f1dc4a4e8990faff370608cac2declaration.pdf ] Yes, human rights and sexism are comfortable bedfellows at UNESCO. Earlier this week UN ambassador John Bolton likened his first three months on the job as being “caught in a time warp, with discussions they could have had in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s.” Bolton then called for a “revolution of reform” at the world body. But given all the foolishness and falsehoods that regularly emanate from the UN, maybe it’s a little too late to be talking of reform. Purveyors of Deceit: Why PBS must Yank "Breaking the Silence" Scott Loeliger thought he had found the woman of his dreams when he married African-born Sadia. But after she assaulted Scott and spent a night in the Santa Clara County jail, Scott began to have his doubts. Just seven months after the birth of their daughter Fatima, their marriage was on the rocks. After the divorce was finalized, an enraged Sadia stormed into Scott’s home, assaulted his female roommate, and removed a screaming Fatima. As a result, the court awarded custody of the girl to her father. In 1997 a child abuse investigator in Tehama County, California interviewed 7-year-old Fatima and wrote, “she has been hit with her mothers shoe which left bruises on her arm, a wire hangar which also left brown marks on her arms or hands, and her mother has hit her with her open hand.” After Sadia attacked her babysitter one day, the frightened woman reported the assault to the local authorities. She later testified in court that Sadia would “pick up anything near her to hit Sara [Fatima’s cousin] if she is angry enough” and concluded, “I am afraid for the children and I am afraid for my life.” A year later the Tulare County Juvenile Court ruled that Sadia was guilty on eight counts of child abuse and had the children removed from her care. But a vindictive Sadia refused to accept the verdict. So she launched a campaign to alienate Fatima from her father. As Superior Court Judge Edward King noted in his 2003 decision, “the Court finds that the mom manipulated the minor’s attitude toward her dad and undermined the relationship they had developed over a three-year period. In fact, the mom destroyed that relationship in less than three months.” We know all this from a series of shocking documents that were revealed last week by columnist Glenn Sacks. Legal transcripts, court findings, and child abuse reports all pointed to a simple yet disturbing truth: Sadia Loeliger was a serial child abuser who would stop at nothing to take Fatima away from her father. [www.glennsacks.com/pbs/loeliger.php ] A year or so after Judge King handed down his decision, Sadia brought her story to Dominique Lasseur, an acclaimed New York City producer. Lasseur’s company was the beneficiary of a $400,000 plum from the Mary Kay Ash Foundation to produce an exposé how divorce courts often award custody of children to abusive fathers. And Sadia, a minority woman who could tell a compelling story in front of the camera, fit the script perfectly. So when the Public Broadcasting Service unveiled Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories on October 20, Sadia Loeliger was depicted as a sympathetic underdog doing heroic battle against a legal system that was biased against women. Not a word was mentioned about the eight counts of child abuse, about the babysitter’s frightened testimony, or about the alienation campaign. So was Dominique Lasseur simply duped by Sadia’s guile and charm, another unwary victim of her manipulative lies? It turns out that beginning in April of this year, Scott Loeliger repeatedly warned Lasseur about his ex-wife’s long history of child abuse. He pleaded that the footage about his daughter be cut. And he provided documents and photographs to back up his claims. [www.glennsacks.com/pbs/loeliger-producers-warned.php ] But Mr. Lasseur figured that in the court of public opinion, the self-assured testimony of an immigrant mom, pitched to a group of dewy-eyed women and set against appropriate background music, would prevail over the cold truth of child abuse reports, depositions, and court decisions. Loving dads who go through a divorce often face a hellacious struggle trying to stay involved in their kids’ lives. And Sadia Loeliger’s campaign to alienate a young girl from her father reveals one reason why. To date, PBS has refused to comment on the incriminating documents. Tight-lipped PBS execs will only concede, “The stories profiled in Breaking the Silence: Children's Stories document a statistically small but serious problem in our family court system.” This past Thursday, Ken Tomlinson was pressured to resign from the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because of his campaign to restore balance and fairness to the beleaguered network. In a September 22 speech to the Media Institute, Tomlinson commented, “This thing of balance is not rocket science – and that is why I had so little tolerance for public broadcasting’s inability to achieve balance.” Fairness, balance, and the truth – that’s what public television is supposed to be all about. The Laura Bush We Don't Know The First Lady recently weighed in on the faltering support for Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. Asked on NBC’s Today show if sexism might be at the root of the criticisms of Miers’ legal qualifications, Mrs. Bush coyly replied, “I think that’s possible.” Excuse me, but somehow that remark struck a nerve. Because every time a woman hits a hiccup in the long march for female emancipation, it seems that someone trots out the specter of knuckle-dragging males trying to send their womenfolk back to the Cuissinart. If male sexism is rampant throughout the hinterlands, then why did the CWA -- the Concerned Women for America -- come out expressing wonderment that a woman who has never written a single article on constitutional law is now being considered for the high court? [www.cwfa.org/articles/9148/LEGAL/scourt/index.htm ] Are the CWA members male cross-dressers who have failed to connect with their inner feminine? But now that Laura Bush has raised the issue of sexism, maybe it’s time to turn the spotlight in the other direction. Don’t get me wrong, Mrs. Bush. I have a great love for books and a high regard for teachers and librarians. But during last year’s Presidential campaign, you seemed to revel in jokes at your husband’s expense. Remember that story about George stretching out his feet on the living room table, and Barbara ordered him to put them down? That one brought down the house -- but somehow I can’t imagine Bill regaling audiences about the time he ordered Hillary to remove her panty-house from the shower stall. And then at last April’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, it seems you ordered the Commander-in-Chief to sit down so you could crack crude jokes about you and other well-appointed ladies waving greenbacks at male strippers. Sexist? Probably not, but certainly in bad taste. Then there were your high-profile efforts to promote the rights of women in Afghanistan. Of course that’s important and good. But when you paid that visit to the Women's Teacher Training Institute in Kabul, were you mindful of the arrests, torture, and executions that the Taliban had visited on many thousands of innocent civilian men? Somehow it doesn’t make sense to call attention to the right of girls to get an education, but ignore the right of defenseless men to not be pulled out of their homes in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. This past July you gave a speech in South Africa that decried violence against women. [www.state.gov/g/wi/50199.htm ] But what about violence against men? Surely one of your advisors warned you that the domestic violence issue has become distorted by the rad-fems whose aim is to convince women that they live under the constant threat of being brutalized by their husbands and boyfriends. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0629roberts.html ] Then there’s your gender health initiative. As you know, the health of men is in pretty sad shape these days. Men die an average of five years before women. As a result, elderly widows soon end up in a nursing home, left to wonder how things might have turned out differently. When they find out those facts, most women I know say, “What can I do to improve the health of men, and especially the men in my life?” But instead, you opted to promote your Women’s Health and Wellness Initiative. [www.whitehouse.gov/firstlady/women.html ] Even more mind-boggling is your endorsement of the Heart Truth, the women’s heart disease awareness program that features fashion queens in showy red dresses. [www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/hearttruth/index.htm ] It’s well-known that men have a far higher risk of dying from heart disease than women. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/0202roberts.html ] Just last week I heard about a local man – a husband, a breadwinner, and father of three -- in his 40s who just had a triple coronary bypass operation. But you don’t hear about women that age with life-threatening heart disease. That’s because heart disease is a disease that affects older women. Although no doubt well-intentioned, your women’s health program carries a message that is demeaning to fair-minded men and women alike: men’s medical necessities command less social priority than women’s fashion statements. Maybe your flirtation with radical feminism wouldn’t be so bad, Mrs. Bush, except for the fact that you showcase these programs as examples of Enlightened Womanhood. Caring and intelligent women everywhere happen to think otherwise. The First Female President: The Fantasy and the Reality The first female president has taken office, courtesy of ABC’s latest series, Commander in Chief. In the first show, vice president Mackenzie Allen takes over the Oval Office when the president suddenly dies from an aneurysm – but not before confiding to Allen that she had been put on the ticket as a political stunt to get him elected. While TV viewers were treated to the fantasy of a female president on Tuesday night, American voters saw the reality of female politicians when they woke up the next morning. That’s when Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco appeared before a Senate panel investigating the Katrina disaster. The day before, former FEMA head Michael Brown, in his appearance before the panel, charged that Blanco had failed to order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, contributing to the overall breakdown of law and order. But when Blanco waltzed into town on Wednesday, she requested chivalrous lawmakers to not ask any embarrassing questions. Instead of being treated like any other accountable public official, she was feted like royalty. That’s a double standard in my book. It turns out the sharpest critics of female politicians are women themselves. Columnist Carol Platt Liebau recently hit on governor Blanco’s lachrymose response to Katrina, acknowledging “a visceral concern on the part of many voters about the way that a female President would act under pressure or in a crisis.” [www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=9308 ] Then Liebau took senator Dianne Feinstein to task for her outrageous conduct during the hearings for Supreme Court candidate John Roberts. Before casting her vote, she applauded Roberts for his “brilliant legal mind.” But Feinstein ended up voting against Roberts because when she asked him talk to her “as a son, a husband, a father,” he “gave a very detached response.” So let me get this right: here’s the preening third-term senator from California who is dinging the future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for an answer she deemed was too logical and thoughtful. To paraphrase Brad Paisley’s current hit song, “What was she thinking?” Next is the problem of female politicians being out of step with the electorate. During last week’s final vote on Judge Roberts, only 22% of the Senators voted “nay.” But six of the 14 female senators – nearly half -- opposed his nomination: Barbara Boxer, Maria Cantwell, Dianne Feinstein, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Mikulski, and Debbie Stabenow. Appears the female senators far more liberal than the overall Senate. Then there’s the truth-in-packaging issue. Some female politicians project an altar-girl image of enlightened centrism, all the while lobbying behind the scenes for radical leftist legislation. Take Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow. Widely viewed as a political moderate, it turns out her voting record ranks her up there with leftist die-hards like Edward Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry. Americans have other doubts about female politicians, concerns that have nothing to do with sexism. Many female politicians view issues through the rose-colored lens of personal relationships and gender. Carol Platt Liebau describes the concern as “the stereotype that women’s decision-making is more often based on personal experience than on rational analysis,” a perception that Dianne Feinstein’s recent grandstanding did little to dispel. Another example: men lag behind women on almost every indicator of health status. But this past week senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland issued a press release that proudly announced, “Mikulski Fights for Women’s Health Care with Federal Funding for Research, Treatment.” [mikulski.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=246499 ] Why isn’t Mikulski also fighting for men’s health? Are men political lepers whose health is simply unworthy of mention? The rap on female politicians actually runs much deeper than their stance on specific pieces of legislation. Hold on to your hat while you read this scorching blast from Devvy Kidd: “The feminization of Congress and our state legislatures is destroying constitutional government, running America into oceans of unpayable debt and breeding generations of helpless women, whining for mother government to take care of them and their every need.” [www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43354 ] Now how’s that for political incorrectness? Finally there’s the Hillary question. Well, on second thought, that one will have to wait for later. There’s no inherent reason why a woman can’t serve as our chief of state. Indeed, Margaret Thatcher comes to mind as a courageous woman who turned around a failing British economy. But look at the current top tier of American female politicians. There isn’t a single one in the bunch who comes close to qualifying for the US presidency by virtue of her experience, temperament, and proven commitment to serving the needs of all Americans. That’s the sad reality. Women Still Unequal before the Law Bad news to the Lavender Ladies at N.O.W.: Women are still lesser to men in the eyes of the American legal system. What’s worse, it’s women who are bringing this upon themselves. Three recent events show this to be true. First was last week’s trial of Pfc. Lynndie England at Ft. Hood, Texas. Leash-lady, as you recall, was the woman who brought dishonor and shame upon the United States military by posing with naked Iraqi prisoners, then giving the thumbs-up in a full-frontal display of sadistic bravado. During the trial Pfc. England’s lawyer trotted out the sob story that she was an impressionable young lass who fell under the diabolical sway of her boyfriend, Charles Graner. “What mattered to her was her relationship to Cpl. Graner,” according to attorney Jonathan Crisp. And – get ready for this -- “She has had and has a great deal of difficulty functioning in life in general.” Yes, the poor dear obviously can’t be held responsible for her actions. Then there’s the debate over who will replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court. The argument now seems to be revolving around whether the nominee will be a woman or a member of a minority group. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein have joined forces with first lady Laura Bush -- all of whom fancy themselves to be constitutional law experts -- to lobby for the chick pick. Not all women are ready to jump on the female-at-any-cost bandwagon, however. Columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez fumes that the gender quota argument represents a tacit acceptance of the Neanderthal view that “A woman is not going to make it on her own. She won’t rise to the top. She can’t compete with the boys.” [www.nationalreview.com/lopez/lopez200509231057.asp ] These two cases are merely laughable or absurd. The first represented a futile legal ploy to keep Spc. England from spending time behind bars – on Tuesday she was sentenced to three years in jail. The second is an example of a pro-feminist cabal trying to stack the Supreme Court with yet another abortionist. But in the third case, the notion of female inferiority has been adjudicated by an appeals court and is now chiseled into law. The case involved a manager at the National Education Association who developed the nasty habit of regularly venting his spleen. The male employees didn’t take the incidents seriously, in fact they tended to laugh the whole thing off. But the women were less capable of tolerating the abuse. The women couldn’t take the incidents like a man, so they sued for sex discrimination. The problem with their discrimination claim was the manager was an equal-opportunity yeller -- he berated male and female subordinates alike. So to make their case, the women came up with a controversial legal theory called the “reasonable woman” standard. The reasonable woman standard posits that if females experience “disparate impact,” then that’s sex discrimination. Sure enough, on September 2 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the ladies. To conclude that they had suffered from sex discrimination, the black-robed justices wrote this Orwellian opinion: “There is no legal requirement that hostile acts be overtly sex- or gender-specific in content.” [www.littler.com/nwsltr/asap_MaleTantrums_9_05.htm ] That’s right. So a person who has never experienced a racial slight can now claim he is a victim of racial discrimination. And husbands can successfully sue for workplace sex discrimination, since they are less likely than their wives to take parental leave. There’s no limit to this looking-glass logic. If we continue in this direction, we will soon find ourselves with differing standards of justice for every identity group. Maybe this bizarre ruling will serve as an object lesson to those who wonder why the most prominent words inscribed on the frieze of the U.S. Supreme Court building are “Equal Justice Under Law.” Under old English law, when a wife over-spent the family budget, it was the husband who went to debtor’s prison. And during the 1800s, if an American woman committed a crime, it was her husband who did time. The rationale was, if a woman didn’t enjoy full legal rights, then she couldn’t be held accountable for her actions. After all, rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. But times have changed. Women now enjoy the same legal rights as men. That also means they should stop expecting to receive special treatment under the law. So 85 years after passage of the 19th Amendment, these three cases reveal a sad truth: some women are not yet ready to assume the duties and obligations that necessarily accompanied their hard-won legal rights. Equal rights and unequal responsibilities. That’s hardly the American way. Jim Crow Days for Men Rosa Parks, hailed as the mother of the modern Civil Rights movement, passed away last at the age of 92. In an interview, Ms. Parks explained why she had refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus: “The more we gave in, the more we complied with that kind of treatment, the more oppressive it became.” Thanks to her courage, many of the Jim Crow laws that dated back to the 1890s were eventually overturned. And as Americans reflected on how Rosa Parks’ actions 50 years ago helped to restore the rights of Blacks, another recent report revealed how the constitutional rights of another segment in our society are being systematically eroded. “Time to Defund Feminist Pork – The Hate-Men Law” is the title of the hard-hitting exposé by columnist Phyllis Schlafly. [www.eagleforum.org/psr/2005/oct05/psroct05.html ] With surgical precision, Mrs. Schlafly dissects the Violence Against Women Act and reveals how lawmakers have been duped into believing they are doing something good for women. Some persons ask, Who could possibly be against protecting women? That chivalrous attitude has allowed VAWA to escape the scrutiny of civil rights advocates since it was first signed into law by President Clinton in 1994. For starters, we should ask why VAWA-funded programs only serve women? After all, we live in a society that abhors sex discrimination. And male victims need our help. “Studies by the leading domestic violence researchers found that half of all couple violence is mutual, and when only one partner is physically abusive, it is as likely to be initiated by the woman as the man,” explains Mrs. Schlafly. Then there’s the word “violence.” Most people think of violence as someone battering and bloodying their partner. But in VAWA lala-land, violence has morphed into abuse, a much broader and ill-defined term. So under many state laws, everything from name-calling, controlling the household finances, and even making certain facial expressions now qualify as abuse. So men, think twice about furrowing a brow and telling your wife to not over-spend the credit card limit. She could take out a restraining order and send you packing. Abuse of these orders is not an isolated problem. In Massachusetts, about 30,000 domestic orders are issued every year. One analysis by the Massachusetts Trial Court found that fewer than half of these restraining orders involved even an allegation of physical abuse. [www.iwf.org/pdf/young_domviol1.pdf ] There’s more. Once Joe is out on the street, Jill files for divorce and custody of the kids. “What VAWA does is to promote divorce and provide women with weapons, such as the restraining order and free legal assistance, to get sole custody of their children,” Schlafly warns. And sole custody equals many years of tax-free child support checks. Another troubling piece of this law – clearly unconstitutional -- is its “mandatory-arrest” provisions. Let’s say you get into a marital tiff, your wife or girlfriend calls 911, and the cops come running. But in the meantime, things cool down and she asks police to leave. Fine, but don’t forget your toothbrush, because you will be going out in handcuffs. It gets worse. Let’s say your wife, who was well-lubricated that evening, later realizes she took the first swing and wants the complaint to be dropped. Sorry, VAWA bribes local law enforcement agencies to implement “no-drop” policies that require prosecution, even though reconciliation has taken place. This issue came to light a few years ago when former football star Warren Moon was arrested for allegedly assaulting his wife. Afterwards Mrs. Moon requested the charge be dropped. But because the police were required to prosecute the case, Warren was taken to trial. At that time Felicia Moon was forced to admit that she, not Warren, had started the fight by throwing a candlestick. Is this beginning to sound like a totalitarian nightmare? It’s no surprise that this $1 billion-a-year anti-father juggernaut eventually takes its toll on families. Highlighting the fact that almost 40% of our nation’s children now live in a home without their own father, Schlafly urges Congress to “conduct an investigation to find out how much of this fatherlessness is the result of bad government in the hands of a small radical group that is biased against marriage and fathers.” Currently the U.S. Congress is mulling the fate of a five-year extension to the Violence Against Women Act, a law that has caused the basic civil liberties of hundreds of thousands of fathers and men to be casually disregarded. And come to think of it, where has the ACLU been all this time? Rise of the Feminist Propaganda State Remember that famous line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”? Mr. Orwell, here are two more examples to add to your collection: 1. On April 20 last, sports pages around the country featured a picture of the Catherine Ndereba of Kenya with upraised arms, the “winner” of the Boston Marathon. She won not by virtue of being the fastest runner, but because the female runners had started the race 29 minutes before the men. That day the Boston Globe ran an article carrying the headline, “New Rule Engenders Equal Footing.” (www.boston.com/sports/specials/marathon/articles/2004/04/20/new_rule_engenders_equal_footing/ ) If giving women a half hour head-start is an “equal footing,” then would someone please explain inequality to me? 2. Fox News ran an article in late August about American military women in Iraq (www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,130106,00.html ). This was the lead sentence: “Today, equality of the sexes includes dying in combat.” The article highlighted the statistic that 24 female soldiers had died in Iraq. As of that time, one thousand American troops had perished -- 24 female and 976 male. If we do a little math, it turns out that only 2.4% of combat deaths are female. That’s equality of the sexes? In both stories, the reporter massacred the obvious meaning of “equality.” But where was the outrage? The fact that no one murmured a word of protest says something about the mental anesthesia that grips our collective awareness. In his recent book The War Against Men, Professor Richard Rise of Texas A&M University notes, “the female propaganda machine is relentless.” My last four columns have traced the outlines of this machine: First, erect an elaborate mythology that begins with the Great Myth of Patriarchy. Then embellish it with a series of urban legends that “men have all the power,” “marriage is a legalized form of slavery,” and so on. Remember that emotional impact, not historical accuracy is what counts (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts100604.htm ). Then introduce a gender perspective to the mass media. Portray men as unworthy and women as entitled. Never allow men to be depicted as victims. There’s nothing subtle here -- the key is the sheer mind-numbing repetition of the Ms.-Information (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts092204.htm ). Take the claim that women suffer from wage discrimination, for instance. On the average, women are paid 76 cents for every dollar that men earn. Groups such as the National Center for Policy Analysis have found that when differences in work hours and other factors are taken into account, the gender wage gap disappears (www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba392/ ). But during last week's presidential debate, one of the candidates couldn’t resist the urge to dust off the old canard that women receive unequal pay for equal work. Score one for the rad-fem PR campaign. Third is the tactic of inciting gender conflict. V.I. Lenin employed the concept of class consciousness to instigate class warfare. As an offshoot of Marxist-Leninist thought, it is no surprise that radical feminism now seeks to promote gender consciousness in order to drive a wedge between men and women. Women have been put upon all these years, so isn’t turn-about fair play? (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts101304.htm ) In the final phase of the propaganda campaign, everyday speech becomes sprinkled with ideologically-loaded words like “gender.” Male-derivative words like “chairman” are banned, but female expressions like “Mother Earth” continue in use. Once persons internalize the terminology and logic of Fem-Speak, you could almost say they have become brainwashed (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts092804.htm ). So when mainstream media outlets such as the Boston Globe and Fox News use the word “equality” to denote its exact opposite -- and nobody seems to mind -- you know that we’re in trouble. Almost sixty years ago George Orwell wrote a prescient essay titled "Politics and the English Language." Deploring the way language was being used to manipulate and deceive, Orwell wrote: “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Who can doubt that the feminist propaganda campaign has now reached Orwellian proportions? Welcome to the world of Fem-Prop.

Martha Stewart Plays the Chivalry Card

First Officer Charles Lightoller was later called to testify before Congress. One Senator inquired why women had been favored over men, even while many of the lifeboats bobbed half-empty in the icy waters. Lightoller’s response: “The rule of human nature.”

I don’t know whether chivalry is based more on human nature or cultural conditioning. But there is no doubt that chivalry is as deeply-rooted in men as is the maternal instinct in women. Even though feminists will rebuke a man who holds a door for a lady to pass, chivalry is still alive and well in our society.

Take the case of Martha Stewart.

Acting on an insider tip, Stewart sold all 3,928 shares of her ImClone stock in 2001. A few days later, the stock took a nosedive. Stewart’s pre-emptive move saved her the tidy sum of $51,000.

During the subsequent probe, Stewart made the mistake of lying to the federal investigators. The homemaking maven was charged on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Every day Martha Stewart emerged from the courtroom, surrounded by her white knights in shining armor (ahem, lawyers). No matter how badly the case was going, she was always beautifully coifed, with a scarf serving as her fashion accessory. The Martha Stewart case, involving an attractive woman with a comely smile and a vaguely helpless demeanor, was more than the men in the media could resist.

Over the course of the trial, I read countless editorials about the case. All of them asserted Ms. Stewart’s innocence – she was being singled out, lying to a federal agent was no big deal, poor Martha didn’t know any better, and so on.

And all of the columns were written by men, none of them who had spent a day in law school. The articles called to mind the chivalrous noblemen of yore who steadfastly defended the virtue of their womenfolk.

But the jury of four men and eight women saw things differently. On March 5, claiming a victory for the little guys, the jury found Stewart guilty on all four counts.

Afterwards, Stewart’s lawyers requested leniency – a term of probation and community service working with poor women. The obvious sexism of that offer apparently didn’t disturb anyone.

Last Friday Judge Miriam Goldman sentenced Stewart to five months behind bars. In announcing the sentence, Goldman noted, “I believe that you have suffered, and will continue to suffer, enough.” Kinda makes your heart melt.

Media coverage of Goldman’s sentence reveals how chivalry can bias the news. On December 27, 2001, Stewart had received a message from her stockbroker warning that “ImClone is going to start trading downward.” Stewart later stole into her assistant’s computer and sanitized the message to read, “Peter Bacanovic re: ImClone.” Jurors later said that incident was the defining moment in the trial.

But this past weekend, the media didn’t even mention that critical event. Indeed, they glossed over the details about Stewart’s well-document efforts to obstruct justice.

The lead story in the liberal New York Times quoted one supporter, Daniel Stone, who said, “If she serves any time at all, it's going to be a real pity” (www.nytimes.com/2004/07/17/business/17marthas.html). The NYT article didn’t mention the fact that the American public does not like white-collar criminals being sent home scot-free.

Studies have repeatedly found that when men and women commit the identical crime, women are less likely to be arrested, charged, convicted, and incarcerated. Legal experts say that Stewart was extremely lucky in receiving only a judicial slap on the wrist, the minimum allowable under federal sentencing guidelines.

Was it luck? Or was it the chivalry of the countless reporters, editors, and columnists who rallied to Martha’s defense?

Kerry Embraces the Radical Feminist Agenda

Indeed, earlier this year Democratic pollster Celinda Lake began to spread the word that the Democrats would never retake the White House unless they began to reach out to the critical male vote. But the powerful feminist faction within the Democratic Party was none too happy with that idea.

Liberal John Kerry has closely aligned himself with the feminist cause. So when it became clear that Kerry would be named as the Democratic presidential candidate, Lake gave up on her crusade.

Of course the Democrats have every right to target women. But what is interesting is how the Kerry campaign plans to court the female electorate.

That strategy became apparent on the first day that John Kerry campaigned with his new running mate John Edwards. On July 7, an upbeat Kerry boasted that his team has “better vision, better ideas,” and – get this -- “we’ve got better hair.” Men, of course, have little interest in a candidate’s hairdo.

A look at the Kerry website (www.johnkerry.com/issues/women) reveals that Kerry believes that women will fall for all manner of obsequious pandering. This is what John Kerry is telling American women:

1. “We need a president who will put the American government and legal system back on the side of women.”

The truth is, practically every federal government agency has an office devoted to women’s issues. But none – that’s right, none -- has an office designated for men. The Congress and Supreme Court have enacted and upheld countless laws intended to help women, including the Violence Against Women Act, abortion rights, sexual harassment rules, and many others.

2. “John Kerry will increase funding for breast and cervical cancer research.”

The American Cancer Society reports that 230,000 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004, compared to 216,000 women told they have breast cancer (www.cancer.org/downloads/MED/Page4.pdf). But at the National Cancer Institute, funding for breast cancer outstrips prostate cancer by more than a 3:1 margin (www.nci.nih.gov/public/factbk97/varican.htm). Mr. Kerry, please help us to understand why any fair-minded woman would want to make that research disparity even worse?

3. “We must ensure that women earn equal pay for equal work.”

On average, men work 2,147 hours a year, compared to 1,675 hours for women (www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=56). Men work in the more hazardous occupations such as construction and mining. And men have more work qualifications than women.

The myth of gender wage discrimination has been debunked by the Women’s Freedom Network (www.womensfreedom.org/newslet.htm) and the Independent Women’s Forum (www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=575). Anyone who still claims that women are paid unfairly is being intellectually dishonest….or is a die-hard socialist (mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/03/roberts120903.htm).

American women are arguably the most privileged of any group in history. But the Kerry-Edwards website makes it sound like women are on the verge of being shipped back to their suburban concentration camps: “But today, women are witnessing an unprecedented erosion of their basic rights.”

This past Monday, Kerry’s strategy to advance the radical feminist agenda was unveiled at a so-called “She Party” (rhymes with Tea Party – get it?). The featured speaker was the feminists’ “secret weapon:” none other than Peggy Kerry, sister of John.

And Peggy didn’t beat around the bush. “There are three things my brother is going to do when he’s elected president,” she promised. John will restore $34 billion in funding for the UN Population Fund for abortion services. Then he will assure the Senate ratifies the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. Third, Kerry will “appoint pro-choice judges to the Supreme Court.”

There’s no doubt that the Democrats’ appeal to the massive white male electorate will continue to decline. So the question is, what will American women think of John Kerry’s sexy new hairdo?

Outing the Feminist "Great Lie"

Strong words, indeed. So what is the genesis of the feminist attempt to induce antagonism between men and women?

It can all be traced back to the feminist Creation Myth, which goes like this:

Once upon a time, in a land far away, men and women lived in a state of communal bliss. There were no sexual prohibitions, no division of labor, no ownership of property, and most of all, no patriarchy. It was a pure feminist utopia.

Over time, men and women began to pair off, babies were born, and families began to emerge. The development of stable families gave rise to a division of labor between the sexes: Men did the hunting and fishing, and women did the gardening and child-raising.

But the pivotal point in history was the emergence of the concept of private property. Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex, which is required reading in every Women’s Studies program, explains it this way:

“Private property appears: master of slaves and of the earth, man becomes the proprietor also of woman….Here we see the emergence of the patriarchal family founded upon private property. In this type of family, woman is subjugated.” (www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/debeauv3.htm )

You say, Where on earth did Beauvoir get these fantastic ideas? From Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts012704.htm ).

And how did Marx and Engels come up with this crackpot theory? From an obscure book called Ancient Society, written in 1877 by an American anthropologist named Lewis Henry Morgan, who had spent a few weeks studying the Iroquois Indians in upper New York State.

Subsequent anthropologists have refuted Morgan’s methods and conclusions (www.aaanet.org/gad/history/051tooker.pdf ). For example, the part about primitive society being a sexual free-for-all – that can be credited entirely to Morgan’s wishful thinking.

But that didn’t keep feminists from anointing Morgan as their patron saint. After all, he served a useful purpose.

Radical feminists accept Morgan’s fable as if it were the Revealed Truth. Once we understand that, the rest of feminist theory begins to make sense.

As feminists see it, the moral of Morgan’s account is that once patriarchy took over, women became the mere slaves of men, had no rights, and endured unrelenting physical and sexual abuse.

That’s what is known as the feminist Great Lie. This is how columnist Wendy McElroy explains the Great Lie: “Victims of men, of the class structure, technology, government, the free market, the family, the church, Western values…everywhere and always women are painted as victims.” (www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0422.html ).

True, life may not have been easy for women, but men had their share of problems, too. If women were in fact the object of untrammeled social oppression, we would have expected women’s life spans to have been dramatically shorter than men’s.

But the historical record tells a different story. According to research conducted by Ingrid Waldron at the University of Pennsylvania, the life expectancies of men and women over the past several centuries have traced similar trajectories.

Suicide statistics also debunk the feminist enslavement theory. Public health authorities in England and Wales first began to enumerate the causes of death in the late 1800s. As early as 1890, it was found that men’s suicide rate was 2.9 times higher than women’s (http://10.1911encyclopedia.org/S/SU/SUHL.htm ). Judging by suicide statistics, we might conclude that it was men, not women, who were more confined by rigid social roles.

1960s-style feminism had the laudable goal of encouraging equal opportunities for women. But now, feminism has morphed into an ugly ideology of female empowerment and gender retribution.

Most fairy tales have a happy ending. But the Marxist-feminist fable has set the stage for protracted gender conflict. And that, sad to say, poses a grave threat to the timeless institution of marriage.

Women Fleeing the Feminist Fold

It’s now 2004 and Americans are the guests on a remake of To Tell the Truth. The object of the game is to answer the question, What is the real face of feminism?

Many people think of feminism as a movement that promotes gender equality and opportunity. And for many years, I counted myself in that group. To deny women the opportunity to get a good education and pursue a career -- that seemed abhorrent and contrary to the American Dream.

Then the voices of the skeptics demanded a hearing.

As early as 1972, Phyllis Schlafly posed this question: “The claim that American women are downtrodden and unfairly treated is the fraud of the century…Why should we lower ourselves to ‘equal rights’ when we already have the status of special privilege?” That editorial launched the movement that eventually defeated the Equal Rights Amendment.

But I still counted myself a true believer.

In a 1992 article in the Washington Post, Sally Quinn compared the leaders of NOW to the apparatchiks of the Communist Party in the former Soviet Union. She concluded, “many women have come to see the feminist movement as anti-male, anti-child, anti-family, anti-feminine.”

That broadside made me blink.

Two years later Christina Hoff Sommers released her stunning expose’, Who Stole Feminism? Ms. Sommers methodically dissected and debunked the feminist claims about domestic violence, rape, and women’s health.

That was more than I could ignore, so I began to do my own research. I went to my local library, combed through government reports, and surfed the internet. I soon learned that Schlafly, Quinn, and Sommers were right: the feminist claims were actually Ms.-Information.

Around that time, millions of women began to reach the same conclusion. In 1992, a Gallup poll found that 33% of American women considered themselves to be feminist (ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~lhuddy/neelyhuddy.pdf). But seven years later, the Gallup poll reported that number had plummeted to 26%. And one CBS poll noted that 22% of women said that being called a feminist would be an “insult.”

But substitute the word “women” for “feminist,” and you come up with a very different story. A 1998 Pew survey found that 67% of females (and 66% of males) were favorable to the “women’s movement.”

So a large majority of American women do not consider themselves to be feminists, but still support the women’s movement. An obvious and startling conclusion emerges: Women no longer believe that feminism represents their interests or needs.

A recent article in the National Review paints a similar picture of waning feminist influence (www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200408060855.asp). Feminist thinking holds that a bride taking her husband’s last name “signifies the loss of her very existence as a person under the law,” as former NOW-head Patricia Ireland once put it. But alas, most women have a mind of their own. According to marriage records in Massachusetts, the percentage of surname keepers dropped from 23% in 1990 to 17% in 2000.

What’s more, a growing number of women’s organizations have set out to counter the feminist agenda, including the Concerned Women for America, Independent Women’s Forum, Women’s Freedom Network, and the Clare Booth Luce Foundation. And several women’s websites now feature anti-feminist commentary, such as ifeminists.net and ladiesagainstfeminism.com.

But there are still a substantial number of persons in our society who cling to the belief that feminism is about promoting equality, fairness, and gender enlightenment.

So guest celebrity, our time is up. Which face of feminism is real, and which is the impostor? Is feminism about promoting equality of rights and responsibilities? Or does it aim to foment gender discord and marital break-down?

The modern rendition of To Tell the Truth is no mere game show. It’s not about a few hundred dollars in funny money. It’s a real life drama that spells enormous consequences for our culture, our families, and our children.

Olympic Media Misfire

But at USA Today, the presses were churning out a very different message.

On the front page, USA Today featured a story on “U.S. gymnasts look bound for glory.” Despite its title, the article turned out to be only about female gymnasts. No mention of the men.

In the Sports section, the first page was graced by photos of swimmer Katie Hoff and volleyball players Kerri Walsh and Misty May. Again, the male athletes were nowhere to be seen.

Swimmer Michael Phelps, seeking to eclipse Mark Spitz record of seven gold medals, is arguably the most talented American athlete competing in this summer's Olympics. But at USA Today, gender counted for more than talent, so his story was buried on page 4F.

And the miraculous Iraqi soccer win? That piece was neatly tucked away on page 2C, below the fold.

Overall, women's sports ruled. And men's athletics were practically an afterthought.

How did USA Today's coverage of the Olympics become so biased? That question can be answered in two words: Christine Brennan.

Christine Brennan, the person who organized the articles, is the well-known sports reporter at USA Today. Brennan is an ardent proponent of female athletics ­ and she's a doctrinaire feminist.

Brennan does not hesitate to ridicule men's athletics. She has referred to college wrestling as “malarkey” and football programs as “bloated.” Once Brennan wrote a smark-alecky column why men should swoon over women's figure skating (www.usatoday.com/sports/comment/brennan/2002-02-08-brennan.htm).

Of course, Brennan believes that female athletes should be paid the same as men, despite the fact that professional women's sports is a proven money loser. Look at what happened to the now-defunct Women's United Soccer Association. And the Women's National Basketball Association is barely staying afloat.

But when women choose to not fill the stadiums and arenas, Brennan blames the sports editors who don¹t create new beats to cover female athletics. “The sports world is changing, and we¹re barely reflecting this. There is no excuse for this,” the hyperventilating Brennan exclaimed (www.makeithappen.com/wis/readings/covlack.html).

But above all, Brennan is an unabashed supporter of Title IX. In a 2002 interview, Brennan described Title IX as mandating “proportionality and equality for men and women in terms of having opportunities to play sports." (www.jomc.unc.edu/carolinacommunicator/archives/july2002/brennan.html)

If you're looking for an example of loopy feminist logic, it doesn't get any better than that.

Because the 1972 law that prohibits sex discrimination in schools doesn't say anything about “proportionality.” Proportionality is fem-speak for “quotas.” Proportionality is the highly controversial term that the Clinton administration used to justify the elimination of hundreds of men's swimming, golf, and wrestling teams.

According to the Independent Women's Forum, males are twice as likely as females to participate in colleagiate intramural and club sports (www.iwf.org/pdf/fairness.pdf ). And at ESPN, male viewers outnumber females three to one. So how can anyone expect that women will want to participate in sports in numbers that are “proportional” to their college enrollments?

I'm an unabashed fan of women's tennis and figure skating. I love the artistry and grace.

But many of the Olympic sports have little to do with artistry or grace. Cycling, rowing, running, and swimming all come down to one thing: speed. And events like shot-putting and weight-lifting are tests of brute strength. Despite Ms. Brennan's good intentions, she would have to admit that in those departments, men outclass the women.

Radical feminists believe that women should achieve complete statistical uniformity with men. Experience proves that feminists are willing to resort to heavy-handed tactics such as propaganda-like media coverage and heavy-handed quotas to reach that goal.

But the truth is, if women don't get involved in athletics in similar numbers as men, that has nothing to do with discrimination or patriarchal oppression. That's about women exercising their right to free choice.

Lady....Or the Tramp?

In 1970 Greer published The Female Eunuch. The book claims that the sexual repression of women robs them of the dynamic energy they need to attain gender independence and selfhood. Hence, sexual license is the sure path to female liberation.

Many years and several abortions later, Greer finally renounced her advocacy of sexual debauchery. But in typical feminist fashion, she recanted her own promiscuity not by way of offering an apology, but rather by blaming it all on men.

As an international best-seller, The Female Eunuch influenced the sexual mores of an entire generation of women. Thanks to the likes of Madonna, Britney, and Janet Jackson, Greer’s free love philosophy is beginning to permeate our culture.

Just look at the way women are parading around these days. The examples I’m about to describe are not what I read about, saw on TV, or heard third-hand from the neighborhood gossip. These are incidents I have personally observed during the past several months.

At the office, well-educated women don the sheerest brassieres and tight-fitting sweaters. Do they really need to prove to their co-workers that they don’t suffer from inverted nipples?

A singles event is held at a community fair. Each participant is given a number to post on his or her lapel, so interested persons can make contact. One young lady decides to cut to the chase – she pastes the number directly over her crotch.

The epidemic of immodesty has even spread to teenage girls.

At a girls’ high school soccer game, a close-fought game ends. Rather than walking to the nearby dressing room, the girls strip down to their sports bras in front of hundreds of shocked onlookers.

For its Fall fashion line-up, J.C. Penny’s is now selling T-shirts for girls sporting these slogans: “I’m hot,” “What’s with those twins?,” and “Pick me up, coffee shop.” Right across the aisle, pubescent girls can buy thong, hipster, or bikini underwear – all three for just $12.60.

And then there are untold numbers of women who can’t seem to find a single top in their wardrobe that covers their brassiere. Or they don’t realize that if they wish to don a fluorescent pink bra, a thin white T-shirt really won’t do.

I could give other examples, but I think you get the point.

What makes this discussion surreal is way these women use a combination of narcissism, victimology, and pop psychology to justify their newly-found lewdness.

The other day I came across an internet discussion in which a woman with a DD cup admitted to coaching her soccer team wearing a tank-top shirt. Referring to her half-exposed breasts as “a symbol of my embraced femininity,” she feigned amazement that so many women were asking her to cover up. (www.ifeminists.net/interaction/forum/viewtopic.php?t=648)

Going on the offensive, she went on to say that she had discovered a new variety of sexual harassment, in which “women are sexualized and degraded by other women who fear their confidence.” To make her case bullet-proof, she wrapped herself in the mantle of victimhood: “I just don’t feel that I should be subject to disrespect because of jealousy.”

So why are we allowing a growing number of sexually-precocious women to degrade our public morality? It seems we are being seduced by the mantra of moral equivalence and non-judgementalism. As a result, decency is being evicted from the public arena.

Professional men don’t parade around the office wearing underwear so tight that co-workers can figure out their religious upbringing. And men don’t walk down the street with their flies open, proclaiming this as a symbol of their “embraced masculinity.”

Now, the Axis of Eve, a women’s rights group, is planning a mass panty flash at the upcoming Republic National Convention. Event planner Natasha Eve is organizing this stunt to demand “accountability in government.”

Please, Ms. Eve, keep your drawers on. People have better things to do than looking at women’s underwear.

Will the NASCAR Dads Tilt the Election?

In 2000, 60% of the white male electorate voted for Bush -- now there’s a real gender gap (www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/epolls/US/P000.html). So as President Bush puts the final touches on his Thursday night acceptance speech, no doubt he will be thinking how to strengthen his appeal with the NASCAR Dads.

So let’s ask, What has Bush done over the past four years to help struggling men?

Men are usually the primary breadwinners, so we should first examine Bush’s track record in reviving the economy. Shortly after taking office, Bush had to deal with some formidable challenges: the downturn of the stock market, the corporate accounting scandals, 9/11, and the War on Terror.

So last year Bush passed the Jobs and Growth Act which reduced personal income taxes and created new jobs. And in the past year, the economy grew an impressive 4.8%.

Giving a boost to male breadwinners – that’s a biggie. So score three points in the plus column.

In recent years, men have faced an unprecedented effort by radical feminists to marginalize their social and legal standing in society. A prime example: thanks to the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, fathers lost the legal right to participate in decision-making on keeping their own child.

Last year, Bush signed a law banning the gruesome procedure known as partial birth abortion. Although the law did nothing to address the reproductive disenfranchisement of dads, it was a step in the right direction.

One point.

But in other areas, Bush has kowtowed to the radical feminist agenda.

Take the Violence Against Women Act. VAWA spends $1 billion of taxpayer money each year based on the faulty assumption that only women are victimized by domestic violence. Sadly, Bush has done nothing to rectify the obvious unfairness of VAWA.

Subtract one.

The second area of concern is the child support program, administered by the Office for Child Support Enforcement.

If you want to see how an expensive do-gooder program can actually make things worse, you will find no better example than the OCSE. According to a recent Census Bureau report (www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p60-225.pdf), the percentage of mothers who received child support has dropped in recent years. In 1994, the figure was 76.1%. Eight years later, it was down to 74.7%.

The reason for this decline is simple. When you start putting thousands of low-income fathers behind bars for child support arrearages, it becomes pretty hard for these guys to earn money and make payments. The Bush Administration has done nothing to blunt the squeeze-blood-from-a-turnip mindset of the OCSE bureaucrats.

Take away another point.

Shortly after George W. Bush won the 2000 election, his Administration issued a Statement on Responsible Fatherhood. The document acknowledged the fact that “research shows that a large portion of fathers who do not pay child support are themselves poor.” (www.whitehouse.gov/news/usbudget/blueprint/bud12.html).

Fatherhood advocates were hopeful they would see an end to the midnight raids on so-called “deadbeat” dads.

True, Bush did continue the Fatherhood Initiative (http://fatherhood.hhs.gov/fi-overview.shtml) which the Clinton Administration had started. But under the rubric of “responsible fatherhood,” the Bush Administration has linked fatherhood promotion with child support collection.

Think about it: first you’re going to talk about being a caring, involved dad. And then you’re going to throw him in jail if he loses his job? PLEEEEAASE.

Sorry, the mixed-message Fatherhood Initiative doesn’t win my vote.

So let’s tally up the numbers. Four points in the plus column, two in the minus. Final score: two points.

If we did a similar tally on John Kerry’s radical feminist platform, the number would fall in the negative range (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts072804.htm). Overall, Bush comes out ahead. But not very much to get excited about.

So white males likely will continue to vote overwhelmingly in Bush’s favor. Or on second thought, maybe they’ll decide to sit this election out.

In Honor of the Heroes of Flight 93

Shortly after gruesome screams of “Get out of here!” were heard, the hijackers assumed the controls of the Boeing 757, cruising in the airspace near Cleveland, Ohio.

At 9:38 the aircraft executed a U-turn and headed towards its new destination: the White House, located less than 60 minutes to the southeast.

Over the next 25 minutes, there would be many tales of faith and courage. But as Jere Longman has documented in his book, Among the Heroes, none of these stories could surpass the valor of four men: Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett, Richard Guadagno, and Todd Beamer.

Jeremy Glick was an all-around natural athlete. In 1993 he had won the national judo championship. Positioned in the back of the plane, Jeremy telephoned his wife Lyz at 9:37. He said that he and three other guys were thinking about attacking the hijackers. His last words to her were, “Okay, stay on the phone, I’ll be right back.”

Who were the three other guys?

One of them was Tom Burnett, a former star high school quarterback. At 9:27 he called his wife Deena on his cell phone. As she began to recount the unfolding events at the World Trade Center that September 11, the sinister intentions of the terrorists became clear. Tom told his wife they were hatching a plan, and added, “If they’re going to crash this plane into the ground, we’re going to have to do something…It’s up to us. I think we can do it.”

Richard Guadagno was certainly involved in the counter-attack. A federal law enforcement officer, he had received training how to respond to a hijacking. The night before, he had packed a small pickax into the bag that he would carry on board Flight 93.

Todd Beamer, who had once aspired to play Major league ball, was now a father of two boys. At home he had a pet saying. When it was time for his boys to go outside, Todd would exhort them with the call of “Let’s roll.”

At 9:45, Beamer reached for the Airfone, dialed “0,” and was connected to the GTE operator. When he explained their plan to jump the hijackers, the operator asked him whether he was certain. Beamer answered, “At this point, I don’t have much choice. I’m going to have to go out on faith.”

Seven minutes later the insurrection began. Beamer stopped his conversation with the GTE operator and uttered the war cry, “You ready? Okay, let’s roll!”

Hearing a ruckus in the first class area, one of the hijackers in the cockpit asked what was going on. “Fighting,” came the response.

By 9:58, the men had reached the cockpit door and began shouting, “In the cockpit, in the cockpit.” One man yelled “Hold.” Another screamed in English, “Stop him.”

At ten o’clock the pilot began to sharply rock the aircraft’s wings, hoping to confuse and dislodge the counter-attackers.

A final rushing sound could be heard on the cockpit recorder. And then dead silence. It was three minutes after ten.

We will never know exactly how many passengers arose from their seats to overpower the hijackers. In addition to Glick, Burnett, Guadagno, and Beamer, other likely men were Mark Bingham, a former rugby player, and Louis Nacke, a guy with a weight-lifter’s physique who reportedly would never back down from anyone.

The fiery demise of Flight 93 outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania gives reassurance that in these politically-correct times, the warrior heart still beats steady and strong. Male daring-do may have gone underground, but is still very much alive and well. But three years later, the bravery of these men remains unheralded.

I dedicate this essay to Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett, Richard Guadagno, Todd Beamer, and to the other men who won that first fight in the modern war against terrorism. Thanks to you, our nation’s White House, a worldwide symbol of freedom and democracy, still stands today.

Kobe Bryant: Alice-in-Wonderland Justice

Radical feminists were in a frenzy that the judge had decided to allow DNA evidence which painted Bryant’s accuser as a floozy. Sasha Walters of the Chicago-based Rape Victim Advocates exclaimed, “This decision will be seized on by defense attorneys around the country. It will take us back to when the emphasis in a trial was on the actions of the victim.”

University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos shot back, “If you are not Kobe Bryant, you could find yourself in a case where you may well have to negotiate a plea in order to avoid spending the rest of your life in prison.”

But Walters and Campos both missed the larger issue. Because over the past 20 years, radical feminists have been working behind the scenes to do an extreme make-over of the laws of rape.

Rape, of course, is a horrific crime. And the act of rape is just as terrible as making a false accusation of rape.

False allegations of rape occur more often than most people think. One study found that 41% of women who had reported rape to the police later admitted the allegation was false (www.anandaanswers.com/pages/naaFalse.html). And a 1996 Department of Justice report concluded, “in about 25% of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI,…the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing” (www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/dnaevid.txt).

So the purpose of our legal system is to determine the truth of the allegation, and to mete out punishment where punishment is due.

For years, the law defined rape as “forced sex without consent.”

All that changed in 1979, when New Jersey passed the so-called N.O.W. act. Under that law, “sexual assault” was defined as "an act of sexual penetration with another person [when] [t]he actor uses physical force or coercion."

Imagine that being parsed in front of a sympathetic jury. With such an expansive and ambiguous definition, many, if not most instances of non-marital intercourse could be construed to constitute rape.

It wasn’t long until that line of thinking made inroads into the laws of other states.

In 1996 the Cato Institute surveyed the damage caused by the 1979 New Jersey law. The report concluded that greatly expanded definitions of rape represent “dangerous moves to eviscerate the presumption of innocence in sexual assault cases” (http://mensightmagazine.com/Library/femjuris.htm).

Bruce Fein, an expert on constitutional law, is even more pointed in his critique. He has compared the due process violations of men accused of rape to the “unilateral and summary pronouncements of guilt like the Queen of Hearts in ‘Alice in Wonderland’.”

How did the evisceration of rape law play out in the Kobe Bryant case?

First, many have criticized District Attorney Mark Hurlbert for filing a case that was deeply flawed from the very beginning. Hurlbert reasoned that dropping the case would have sent the wrong message to future rape victims. But did he stop to consider that pursing a weak case against an innocent man might also be sending a bad message?

For months, the DA repeatedly referred to the accuser as the “victim,” a word that carries a strong presumption of Kobe’s guilt. Finally, Bryant’s attorney had to petition the judge to order the DA to stop using the V-word.

And why not refer to the accuser by name, as is the usual practice in legal contests? The reason is, Colorado has a law that prohibits releasing the name of the accuser, presumably to protect the woman from further embarrassment. But isn’t a man who is accused of rape entitled to the same consideration? Doesn’t that double standard violate the principle of “equal treatment under the law”?

Worst of all are the rape shield laws, which presume a woman’s sexual history cannot be counted as evidence in a rape trial. But the accuser’s concurrent sexual activities had an important bearing on this case. Rape shield laws war with the presumption of innocence, and ultimately encourage the filing of false accusations.

As part of the withdrawal agreement, Bryant was required to offer an apology to the accuser. But given the scurrilous campaign of radical feminists to undermine the constitutionally-protected right of due process, perhaps it is they who owe a letter of apology to Mr. Bryant.

New Media Claims Bragging Rights in Rathergate Flap

When people believe that their news is no longer balanced or objective, they begin to look elsewhere. That “elsewhere” has come to be known as the New Media, the thousands of internet sites that have sprung into existence in the past 10 years.

And it was the internet bloggers who hammered away at the obvious forgeries in the fake memos. They tracked down the source of the documents. And it was they who insisted that Rather come clean with an apology.

But Mr. Rather was not the person who did the legwork on the ill-fated 60 Minutes II show. That task fell to producer Mary Mapes. She’s the one who researched the story and obtained the four fake memos.

One would expect a 60 Minutes producer to be highly objective in her work. But recently Mary’s father, Don, appeared on KVI radio in Seattle. When asked about the 60 Minutes brouhaha, Mr. Mapes described his daughter as “a typical liberal. She went into journalism with an ax to grind, and that was to promote radical feminism.” www.talonnews.com/news/2004/september/0917_cbs_producer_pressure.shtml )

So much for journalistic objectivity.

It’s no secret that the fem-liberal worldview permeates the Old Media. The Sisterhood doesn’t even bother to deny it any more. Here’s Susan Winston, former executive producer of Good Morning America: “We were feminists. We were liberals, and most of us still are.”

The feminist-driven media rigidly cleaves to three rules in its coverage of gender issues:

1. Portray women as deserving virtually limitless rights, with no corresponding responsibiliti

2. Whenever possible, present men as bumbling fools. If they also can be shown to be abusive clods, so much the better.

3. Never depict men as victims or being treated unfairly.

Take articles about missing persons. People don’t normally consider this to be a gender issue.

But a recent Fox News article carried this provocative headline: “Missing Women Grab Headlines, But What About the Men?” (www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,122398,00.html) The article rattled off the list of women whose disappearances have gripped the nation in recent years, and then posed the question, “But where are all the missing young men?”

Another story at MSNBC raised the same unsettling question (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5325808 ). Missing men, especially those who are Black, seemingly don’t rate as much media attention as young, white females.

How can any journalist in good conscience write a story on missing persons, and then spin the article to pander to the only-women-count mindset?

The New York Times is one of the most dependable sources of Ms.-Information. Previous columns have documented how The New York Times has portrayed men in a negative light (http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/03/roberts062103.htm , biased its coverage of gender health issues

(http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/03/roberts052103.htm ), and worked covertly with pro-feminist legislators in the Senate to influence national legislation

(http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/03/roberts052703.htm ).

Author Warren Farrell has come up with a novel theory to explain the media’s neglect of men. He calls it the Lace Curtain, which he describes as the tendency of the media to view gender issues only from a female or feminist perspective. His book, Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say, documents the head-numbing experiences of male authors who have hit the estrogen ceiling.

And in his recent book Arrogance, reporter Bernard Goldberg recounts how CBS talk shows routinely invited radical feminists to appear as gender “experts.”

Some people like to dismiss the New Media as a flaky source of news and commentary. Jonathan Klein, former vice president of CBS News, recently derided the internet bloggers as “a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”

No doubt the fem-liberal establishment got a chuckle out of that remark. But they need to face up to this sad but obvious conclusion: When it comes to men’s and gender issues, the Old Media’s coverage can no longer be said to be accurate, balanced, and fair.

Wonderful, Wacky World of Fem-Speak

To get around in Femlandia, you must master a little Fem-Vocabulary, Fem-Statistics, and Fem-Logic. Are you ready?

There are three key words in Fem-Vocabulary. Pay close attention now, because these words have different meanings from their English counterparts:

1. Feminist: In the English language, “feminine” refers to a woman who is polite, modest, and comely. But in Fem-Speak, “feminist” has the exact opposite connotation: demanding, angry, and unkempt.

2. Equality: In English, equality refers to open and equal opportunity. But in Fem-Speak, equality refers to statistical uniformity that is enforceable with rigid quotas. Feminists will apply this term to women’s issues and concerns, but then will refuse to discuss it in relation to men.

3. Gender: This word actually has three meanings:

1. Male or female biological sex
2. Social differences between men and women that are learned, as in “gender roles”
3. Pertaining to the radical feminist ideology

Gender is one of the most popular words in Fem-Speak because no one knows for sure which interpretation you are using (www.sydneyline.com/Language%20Wars.htm ). Just ponder the phrase, “gender equality.” Consider the many permutations of meaning this innocent-looking expression contains!

In Fem-Speak, it is perfectly acceptable to use words and expressions with female derivations, such as Mother Earth, mother-tongue, mother lode, ladybug, sister city, “necessity is the mother of invention,” and so on.

But Fem-Speak prohibits any word or phrase with a male connotation, such as mankind, manpower, middleman, or “man the ramparts.” Breaking this linguistic convention is a violation of what feminists call “speech codes,” and can invite the imposition of legal sanctions.

And did you catch my use of the word “master” in the first paragraph of this travel guide? My friend, that is a word you should never use in Femlandia. Not only does it have masculine implications, but it also contains allusions to the dreaded hierarchy.

Once you grasp the basic vocabulary, you are now ready for a lesson in Fem-Statistics. Fem-Statistics is easy once you understand this one basic rule: Always give percentages in multiples of 10 -- like 30%.

So what if the actual number is, say, 53%? No problem, you can round up or round down -- whatever makes your statement sound better.

And what if that number doesn’t feel right? Again, no problem. Use whatever number you want! Remember that in Femlandia, truth is deemed to be a linear, socially-constructed concept. So feel free to be creative.

Now on to Fem-Logic.

Fem-Logic can be described as any discussion that presents information out of context, introduces irrelevant concepts, and eventually reaches a conclusion that bears no relationship to common sense. And if you want to elevate the statement to the level of Revealed Truth, just preface your comment with the two magic words, “I feel.”

This can be illustrated by way of example.

A couple weeks ago I heard some people talking about athletics. One man was arguing that men are biologically stronger and faster, which gives them an inherent advantage in sports such as sprinting. But the persons from Femlandia said he could not possibly be right, because his reasoning did not comport with the Fem-Speak definition of equality.

So after a few moments of thought, one person responded: “I feel that women surpass men in endurance sports. We may not run as fast, but we run more efficiently and have more pelvic strength.”

Did you get that?

In Fem-Speak, it’s perfectly fine to simultaneously espouse opposite views. For example, you can talk about women being strong and independent. And then you can turn around and argue that women are victims who require constant governmental help and legal protection. Femlandists see no contradiction in those two statements.

Finally, a word of counsel. In Femlandia, you should never question or doubt the truth of a denizen’s statement. For these persons are said to possess A Woman’s Way of Knowing.

Fem-Speak is a rich, emotive language, filled with subtlety and nuance. And with luck, fellow traveler, all of us will soon be thinking in Fem-Speak.

Women Victimized by Feminist Fables

But then radical feminism came along. The High Priestesses decreed that truth was a cynical ploy designed to dupe women to submit to male hegemony.

Feminist philosopher Joyce Trebilcot once ridiculed the “apparatuses of ‘truth,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘science.’” And feminist theorist Elizabeth Fee stated bluntly: “Knowledge was created as an act of aggression.”

Not even Cartesian logic was safe from the onslaught. “We might begin to question the import of Descartes’ stress on logic and mathematics as the ideal types of rationality,” explained Linda Gardiner, editor of the Women’s Review of Books.

Told to ignore reason and common sense, women found themselves vulnerable to the machinations of the mischievous matriarchs. Under the guise of female liberation, these feminist Pooh Bahs set out to indoctrinate women into a three-tiered mythology.

It all begins with the Mother of all Myths: the belief that a cabal of men, termed the Patriarchy, has been scheming all these years to keep women down. We won’t dwell on the fact that history fails to support such a sweeping indictment (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts080404.htm ). Suffice it to say, in the feminist worldview all the ills of the world can be traced back to the dreaded Patriarchy.

The Great Myth of Patriarchy in turn spawned the Four Lesser Myths.

First is the claim that men “have all the power.” Must be nice to have the whole world waiting at your beck and call.

Next is Gloria Steinem’s doozy: “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Steinem was telling a generation of American women that barren spinsterhood would be good enough. Of course, Steinem later found her bicycle and married airline pilot David Bale – but let’s not worry about minor details.

Third, there’s the feminist belief in the moral superiority of women (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts052704.htm). That concept is captured in the chauvinistic expression, “A woman can do anything a man can do, only better.” To the Sisterhood, that statement is not a joke, it is a central tenet of the gender catechism.

But here’s the biggest whopper of all: the claim that feminism seeks to bring about gender equality. Let’s look at the record. What have feminists done to rectify the fact that men have shorter lifespans? Or are victims in 93% of all workplace deaths? To the radical feminist, gender equality is only a one-way street.

The Four Lesser Myths of male omnipotence, female autonomy, feminine superiority, and gender equality create the foundation. Upon that base, feminists have constructed an ever-expanding superstructure of equivocations, half-truths, and outright falsehoods.

The list is much too long to recount, but encompasses the full range gamut of issues including health care, education, the law, family relationships, and domestic violence. Like the Super Bowl hoax – the myth that domestic violence rises 40% on Super Bowl Sunday. Even though that hoary chestnut was refuted long ago by the Washington Post, the alarming statistic continues to be recycled.

So exactly how do the feminist fables victimize women?

Precisely because so many intelligent, caring women have come to accept the lies. They now believe they are victims. You might say they’ve been brainwashed. These women walk around with an attitude of entitlement, wondering why men aren’t interested in them any more. They are lonely people.

And as long as women remain in the victim mode, they will always be vulnerable to the argument that they need more legal protections and services. Thanks to the Sisterhood, female dependence on men has shifted to female reliance on government largesse. Is that progress?

But for a number of women’s groups, the feminist misrepresentations have reached the point of outright embarrassment. So they have launched campaigns to tell the world, “Look! The Empress has no clothes!”

The Concerned Women for America sponsors extensive grass-roots activities that counter the feminist doctrine. And the Independent Women’s Forum has launched a national campaign to alert students to widespread liberal bias on college campuses (www.iwf.org/campuscorner/default.asp). The program is appropriately dubbed, “She Thinks.”

A feminist who thinks – what a thought!

Achieving Feminist Class Consciousness

Sometime visit the Women and Marxism website (www.marxists.org/subject/women/ ). There you can read exactly what V.I. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung had to say about women’s liberation.

Vladimir Lenin was the mastermind behind the early Soviet propaganda campaign. In his book The Birth of the Propaganda State, Peter Kenez concludes the Soviet state achieved its early successes because of the “ability of the political system to isolate the Russian people from information and ideas that would have undermined the message.”

And that message was the gospel of class consciousness. The Marxist mantra was repeated endlessly: the worker was exploited by the evil capitalist, and the peasant was oppressed by the greedy landowner.

This indoctrination strategy worked for several reasons. It motivated the workers and peasants. It channeled their anger towards the capitalists. And it vilified and demoralized the opponents of Communism.

Lenin also pushed the class consciousness theme in his speeches to women, but with a new twist. On the occasion of the 1921 International Working Women’s Day, Lenin proclaimed that women were doubly oppressed -- both because they were victims of capitalism, and because they were slaves “overburdened with the drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking and stultifying toil in the kitchen and the family household.” (www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/mar/04.htm )

“Drudgery of the most squalid, backbreaking, and stultifying toil”? An apt description of life in the Gulag, perhaps, but not of housework in the relative comfort of the home.

But lack of historical accuracy did not deter the early feminists. Pick up a copy of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex or Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics. You will read exactly the same arguments: Men are the unending oppressors of women and marriage is a legalized form of slavery.

To achieve their vision of women’s liberation, the Matrons of Mischief pursued the age-old strategy of divide and conquer.

First, the Sisterhood canonized the strong, self-assured, independent woman. This ideal became government policy when the Clinton administration launched its “Girl Power” program and UNICEF later started its “Go Girl!” initiative. To this day, programs to prevent osteoporosis carry the slogan, “Strong Women, Strong Bones.”

But these campaigns carry an underlying message: “If you’re a strong woman, why would you ever need or want a man?”

And when the Marlboro Woman message didn’t completely sink in, feminists went to Plan B: male-bashing. Male chauvinist pig. Misogynist. Insensitive. Over-bearing. Abusive. Batterer. And many others.

At first, men thought the caricatures were funny. Then they tried to ignore them. But the end result has been to make men feel guilty and shameful.

The steady drum-beat of those inflammatory messages served to turn the battle of the sexes into a gender war.

The next step would be to conquer. And what was the target? Nothing less than the institution of marriage.

Robin Morgan, who would later become the editor of Ms. Magazine, referred to marriage as “A slavery-like practice.” Germaine Greer argued, “If women are to effect a significant amelioration in their condition, it seems obvious that they must refuse to marry.” Kate Millett extolled the destruction of the traditional family as “revolutionary or utopian.”

Persons who are interested in comprehending the scope of this relentless assault should peruse the Heritage Foundation report, Why Congress Should Ignore Radical Feminist Opposition to Marriage (www.heritage.org/Research/Features/Marriage/bg1662.cfm ).

So what is the ultimate objective of this campaign of feminist class consciousness? Surprisingly, feminists have made little effort to disguise their goal. In her book Red Feminism, Kate Weigand makes this stunning admission: “this book provides evidence to support the belief that at least some Communists regarded the subversion of the gender system as an integral part of the larger fight to overturn capitalism.” (print.google.com/print/doc?isbn=0801864895 )

Subvert the gender system to overturn capitalism. Karl Marx would be pleased.

Rise of the Feminist Propaganda State

1. On April 20 last, sports pages around the country featured a picture of the Catherine Ndereba of Kenya with upraised arms, the “winner” of the Boston Marathon. She won not by virtue of being the fastest runner, but because the female runners had started the race 29 minutes before the men.

That day the Boston Globe ran an article carrying the headline, “New Rule Engenders Equal Footing.” (www.boston.com/sports/specials/marathon/articles/2004/04/20/new_rule_engenders_equal_footing/ ) If giving women a half hour head-start is an “equal footing,” then would someone please explain inequality to me?

2. Fox News ran an article in late August about American military women in Iraq (www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,130106,00.html ). This was the lead sentence: “Today, equality of the sexes includes dying in combat.”

The article highlighted the statistic that 24 female soldiers had died in Iraq. As of that time, one thousand American troops had perished -- 24 female and 976 male. If we do a little math, it turns out that only 2.4% of combat deaths are female. That’s equality of the sexes?

In both stories, the reporter massacred the obvious meaning of “equality.” But where was the outrage? The fact that no one murmured a word of protest says something about the mental anesthesia that grips our collective awareness.

In his recent book The War Against Men, Professor Richard Rise of Texas A&M University notes, “the female propaganda machine is relentless.” My last four columns have traced the outlines of this machine:

First, erect an elaborate mythology that begins with the Great Myth of Patriarchy. Then embellish it with a series of urban legends that “men have all the power,” “marriage is a legalized form of slavery,” and so on. Remember that emotional impact, not historical accuracy is what counts (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts100604.htm ).

Then introduce a gender perspective to the mass media. Portray men as unworthy and women as entitled. Never allow men to be depicted as victims. There’s nothing subtle here -- the key is the sheer mind-numbing repetition of the Ms.-Information (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts092204.htm ).

Take the claim that women suffer from wage discrimination, for instance. On the average, women are paid 76 cents for every dollar that men earn. Groups such as the National Center for Policy Analysis have found that when differences in work hours and other factors are taken into account, the gender wage gap disappears (www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba392/ ).

But during last week's presidential debate, one of the candidates couldn’t resist the urge to dust off the old canard that women receive unequal pay for equal work. Score one for the rad-fem PR campaign.

Third is the tactic of inciting gender conflict. V.I. Lenin employed the concept of class consciousness to instigate class warfare. As an offshoot of Marxist-Leninist thought, it is no surprise that radical feminism now seeks to promote gender consciousness in order to drive a wedge between men and women. Women have been put upon all these years, so isn’t turn-about fair play? (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts101304.htm )

In the final phase of the propaganda campaign, everyday speech becomes sprinkled with ideologically-loaded words like “gender.” Male-derivative words like “chairman” are banned, but female expressions like “Mother Earth” continue in use. Once persons internalize the terminology and logic of Fem-Speak, you could almost say they have become brainwashed (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts092804.htm ).

So when mainstream media outlets such as the Boston Globe and Fox News use the word “equality” to denote its exact opposite -- and nobody seems to mind -- you know that we’re in trouble.

Almost sixty years ago George Orwell wrote a prescient essay titled "Politics and the English Language." Deploring the way language was being used to manipulate and deceive, Orwell wrote: “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Who can doubt that the feminist propaganda campaign has now reached Orwellian proportions? Welcome to the world of Fem-Prop.

Girlie-Man, Next Leader of the Free World?

It started back in July when the Democrat-controlled state legislature stalled the vote on a critical budget bill. The partisan foot-dragging prompted Gov. Schwarzenegger to chide the legislators for being “girlie-men.”

Despite howls of protest, Schwarzenegger refused to apologize. Then he repeated the charge in early August, this time tagging candidate John Kerry with the emasculating moniker.

By the time the Republican Convention rolled around, the California delegates – male and female -- had donned pins reading “Girlie Men” with a red slash through them. In his televised speech before millions, Schwarzenegger couldn’t resist repeating the now-famous phrase.

Worse, Kerry’s own supporters began to admit the truth of the charge. In his New York Times column, “How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man,” Frank Rich confessed, “It’s Mr. Kerry’s behavior now, not what he did 35 years ago, that has prevented his manliness from trumping the president.” (http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1207620/posts ) And Michael Moore began accusing his fellow Democrats for being “a bunch of crybabies” for complaining “how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can’t win.”

It wasn’t for lack of trying that Senator Kerry couldn’t shake the caricature. Riding high after winning primaries in Iowa and New Hampshire, he challenged President Bush to “Bring it on.” And when he rode that thundering Harley-Davidson onto Jay Leno’s set, the black-leather crowd was duly impressed.

Of course, Kerry didn’t help things when he admitted he intended to fight a “sensitive” war on terror. Or that he wanted to bring the terrorist threat down to the level of a mere “nuisance.”

But it’s the Teresa factor that really tests Senator Kerry’s cojones. As we all know, Teresa Heinz Kerry is worth more than $700 million, which prompted columnist Ann Coulter to deride Kerry as a “poodle to rich women.”

Let’s consider Teresa’s last name. Some political wives, such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, choose to retain their maiden names. That’s fine.

But Heinz is not Teresa’s maiden name – it’s her ex-husband’s name. By calling herself Teresa Heinz Kerry, Teresa is revealing her loyalty to former Republican Senator John Heinz.

Naomi Wolf had this to say in a recent New York magazine article: “Teresa is publicly, subliminally cuckolding Kerry with the power of a dead man.” Strong words, indeed.

Most revealing, though, were Senator Kerry’s comments during the third presidential debate. Referring to the wives of the two candidates, moderator Bob Schieffer posed this question: “What is the most important thing that you’ve learned from these strong women?”

After paying tribute to his now-deceased mother, Senator Kerry had this to say:

“And my daughters and my wife are people who just are filled with that sense of what’s right, what’s wrong.”

Feminists believe that women are morally superior to men, so that comment played well with one of Kerry’s key constituencies. But what does that say about Mr. Kerry’s own moral compass?

And then things fell apart. Kerry admitted:

“They also kick me around. They keep me honest. They don’t let me get away with anything. I can sometimes take myself too seriously. They surely don’t let me do that.”

“Kick me around”? Last I heard, kicking is a form of domestic violence. If a female candidate ever said that, the cops would have shown up at her doorstep with an arrest warrant in hand.

Maybe Mr. Kerry didn’t mean that kicking comment literally. But still, is this the voice of a self-confident male who is in marital relationship with equal say and mutual respect? Or is this the whine of a hen-pecked husband?

If elected President, is this a man who will command respect from our allies and adversaries? Will they regard him as a man of his word?

This man John Kerry curtsies and bows to anyone wearing a skirt. And now he aspires to be the next leader of the most powerful nation on earth?

All Hail to the Panderer-in-Chief

It was a reprise of the timeless story of the two hopeful suitors competing for the affections of the fair maiden.

When the reluctant maiden declined to offer her hand to the first suitor, along came the second gallant knight, proffering more gifts than the first. Determined to not be outdone, the first man upped the ante. Eventually, both men had promised all their worldly possessions.

Pandering, of course, is the stock-in-trade of any political campaign. Still, it was impressive to watch the two presidential candidates pulling out all the stops to woo the female vote.

Of the two campaigns, the Bush people devised the more creative strategy. They took Bush’s middle initial and, like Michael Jordan peddling his footwear, turned it into a brand name: “W Stands for Women.”

This is the first time in memory that a presidential candidate has linked his persona – his own name -- with a particular voting block. But why women? Why not “W Stands for White Men”?

In contrast to Bush’s name brand approach, the Kerry campaign used the more traditional tactic: convince people how awful things are, and then promise them a brighter future.

But attracting the white female vote women is a daunting task. After all, how do you reach out to persons who already have the most rights, protections, and discretionary income of any group in history? What more can you promise to the manicure-and-hairdo set?

So the Kerry campaign set out to test the limits of reinventing the truth.

John Kerry’s condescending message was this: “Things are actually much worse for women than you realize. If you vote for my opponent, you will soon be sent back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant.”

But it was the wage equity issue where candidate Kerry was downright insulting to women. Everyone knows that persons who work 41 hours a week (which is the average for men) are going to get higher wages than their female co-workers who clock only 32 hours (www.iwf.org/issues/issues_detail.asp?ArticleID=56 ). And it’s obvious that men who work in the more dangerous jobs – like construction and asbestos removal – should be paid more than women who work in safe, climate-controlled environments, such as school teachers and telephone operators.

But by harping on the so-called “wage disparity” issue – while offering no specifics on how to solve a problem that doesn’t even exist – Senator Kerry revealed a disdainful regard for women’s intelligence.

Soon the pandering became so obvious that women began to complain. After all, we live in the Age of the Empowered Woman. And empowered women don’t need anything that a man might have to offer.

So in late September columnist Cathy Young, returning to the courtship theme, decried that the two political parties are treating women “with a condescension that, in a better world, would cause a suitor to be sent packing.” (www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/27/a_new_condescension_greets_women_voters/)

Both political parties took note. Neither of them was willing to blink first, but a solution had to be devised. And so it happened.

It occurred during the third presidential debate. Here’s the question that moderator Bob Schieffer asked the two candidates: “What is the most important thing you’ve learned from these strong women?” In case anyone missed the point, Schieffer repeated the “strong women” phrase two more times.

Within days, the “strong women” mantra was appearing in the stump speeches of the candidates’ wives. This way, if women felt guilty about all the political bouquets being thrown their way, they could comfort themselves with the knowledge that indeed, they were “strong women.” How Orwellian.

With both candidates going to such an effort to target their messages to the female voter, you’d think that women would have had no trouble making a decision. But through the very end of the campaign, 62% of all undecided voters were female.

Privileged or victim? Underpaid or compensated fairly? Strong or in need of constant blandishments by powerful men?

With so many fibs and half-truths floating around, it was no wonder that women had trouble making up their minds.

NASCAR Dads and Soccer Moms Join Forces, But at What Cost?

Indeed, white men represent a sizeable chunk of the U.S. electorate -- 45 million voters to be exact. Back in 2000, 60% of them voted for George W., while only 36% gave the nod to Al Gore (www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2000/epolls/US/P000.html ). Those additional 11 million male voters spelled the critical difference for Mr. Bush in that tight contest.

But Mr. Bush attracted only 49% of the white female vote in that electoral nail-biter. So soon after he was sworn in as President, wooing the women became a key element of the Bush re-election strategy.

That meant that, with the exception of the abortion issue, the Bush campaign was reluctant to ruffle the feathers of the radical feminists. As a result, the Gender Warriors left over from the Clinton Administration continued to have free rein throughout the federal government.

And that’s exactly what they did:

• Despite the recommendations of a Blue Ribbon panel, the Department of Education refused to soften the rigid Title IX quotas that the Clinton Administration had used to shut down hundreds of male collegiate sports teams.
• At the Department of State, feminists succeeded in imposing a 20% quota for women in the newly-established legislatures of both Afghanistan and Iraq.
• The Department of Health and Human Services named Christina Beato to the powerful Assistant Secretary of Health position. An avowed advocate for women’s issues, she blocked the creation of an Office of Men’s Health.

Most disappointing was the area of child support reform. Early in his term, President Bush brought in fatherhood advocate Wade Horn to head the Administration on Children and Families. But Horn’s program was co-opted by the advocates of responsible fatherhood– “responsible” being a code word for more draconian child support.

Those developments set the stage for the 2004 presidential race.

Despite Celinda Lake’s dire warning, the Democratic Party was not willing to risk offending the Sisterhood. So the 2004 Democratic platform flatly ignored the issues of men, while kow-towing to such feminist demands as protecting abortion rights and remedying the so-called gender “wage gap.”

And what about the Republicans? Not surprisingly, their gender message also targeted the female vote. Millions of placards, lapel pins, and bumper stickers told us, as if we didn’t get it the first time, “W Stands for Women.”

In the end, 62% of white males and 55% of white females voted for George W. Bush. Two core constituencies -- NASCAR Dads and Soccer Moms – came together on November 2 to re-elect President Bush. (www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html ).

This new-found coalition made all the difference in that closely-fought presidential race. But Republican glee should be tempered by a sobering fact: their victory came at the price of neglecting the issues of white males. This is what I mean:

• Men are the workhorses that drive the nation’s economy. When each year tens of thousands of middle-age men die prematurely from heart disease and cancer, what are the effects on our economic productivity and global competitiveness?
• Among our nation’s most eligible bachelors, 22% have gone on a marriage strike because of laws that tilt towards women (www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts071504.htm).

What does that portend for the future of families, which create the foundation of society?

• Fathers are a pillar of stability for beleaguered families. When divorcing wives cast fathers out of their homes and claim sole custody of the children, are we prepared for the higher rates of juvenile delinquency and social dysfunction seen among fatherless children?

Meanwhile back in Massachusetts, a small band of NASCAR Dads put together a statewide ballot initiative. The initiative asked voters whether they believed fathers should get shared custody of their children in the event of divorce.

That common-sense idea was overwhelmingly approved by 85% of voters (http://fathersandfamilies.org/site/legislation.php ). In contrast, candidate John Kerry managed to garner only 63% of the popular vote for the presidential race in his home state.

One of these days, some smart politician is going to come along and will realize that championing the issues of men, as well as women, is not only a winning campaign strategy, it’s also good for America.

The Untold Story of Betty Friedan

In the book, Friedan claimed she had lived in a “comfortable concentration camp” of New York City suburbia. And for years afterwards, Friedan claimed that her awareness of woman’s rights did not coalesce until the late 1950s when she sat down to write the book in her stately mansion in Grand View-on-Hudson.

But based on his analysis of Friedan’s personal papers at the Smith College library, historian Daniel Horowitz has dramatically refuted that claim.

In his book, Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique, Horowitz acknowledges that Friedan had a brilliant mind, was a prolific writer, and pursued her cause with a single-minded devotion.

But Horowitz also reveals a dark side to Friedan’s social activism: Betty Friedan was a long-time participant in the American Communist movement.

Here is Betty Friedan’s true story (page numbers from the Horowitz book are in parentheses):

• Friedan was first exposed to socialist thinking while an undergraduate at Smith College in the late 1930s (pp. 39-49).
• Beginning in 1940, while still a junior at Smith, Friedan became an outspoken advocate of the Popular Front, a pro-Communist umbrella that embraced a broad range of radical groups (p. 10).
• While studying psychology at UC-Berkeley 1942-43, Friedan was a member of the Young Communist League (p. 93).
• From 1943 to 1946, Friedan worked as journalist at the Federated Press, a left-wing news service established by Socialist Party members (p. 102).
• In 1944, Friedan requested to join the American Communist Party. According to her FBI file, Friedan was turned down because “there already were too many intellectuals in the labor movement” (p. 93).
• From 1946 to 1952, Friedan worked as a journalist (some would say “propagandist” is the more accurate term) at the radical United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America. According to historian Ronald Schatz, this labor union was “the largest Communist-lead institution of any kind in the United States.” (p. 133).

Horowitz also documents Friedan’s numerous relationships with Communist Party operatives, including her romantic involvement with physicist David Bohm while a student at Berkeley (p. 92). Bohm would later invoke the Fifth Amendment while testifying in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, and leave the United States shortly thereafter.

It is important to note that Horowitz did not intend to write his book as an exposé. Indeed, throughout the book, Horowitz is clearly sympathetic to Friedan’s feminist objectives.

But this much is clear: beginning in 1940, Betty Friedan became a committed and articulate advocate for the American socialist movement.

It is true that after 1952, her views become less strident. but Friedan’s basic outlook still reflected the socialist worldview of capitalist oppression and female victimization.

Take this quote from Frederick Engel’s famous 1884 essay, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State:

“The emancipation of women becomes possible only when women are enabled to take part in production on a large, social scale, and when domestic duties require their attention only to a minor degree.”

Engel was saying that equality of the sexes would only happen when women abandoned their homes and become worker-drones.

Friedan copied that sentence into her notes sometime around 1959, while she was doing her research for The Feminine Mystique (p. 201).

That revolutionary passage would become the inspiration and guiding principle for Friedan’s book, and eventually for the entire feminist movement.

It's Boo-Hoo Time at Abortion Central

The 2004 presidential election was not just a setback for the Democratic Party. Candidate Kerry repeatedly promised to appoint pro-abortion judges to the Supreme Court and to eliminate the so-called gender “wage gap.” So Kerry’s defeat also represented a repudiation of the rad-fem agenda.

Of course, the feminist Mafia tried to put a good face on the debacle. Ann Lewis, editor of the Democratic party’s Women’s Vote Center, consoled the party faithful: “Congratulations for all you did: the telephone calls, letter writing and contributions, the woman-to-woman conversations and door-to-door canvasses.”

Over at the Planned Parenthood Federation, the ladies were in an absolute tizzy. Already counting the days until they lose their precious right to abortion-on-demand, they vowed to step up the work of its Post-Roe Service Delivery Task Force. Co-chair Chris Charbonneau advised, “Women should lobby state legislators to eradicate laws that date from the 1800s and early 1900s and that call abortion murder.”

N.O.W. president Kim Gandy issued a press release liberally sprinkled with bold-face demands: “We must fight back against Bush’s regressive policies on every issue…We must demand our senators block every Supreme Court nominee.” [www.now.org/issues/election/elections2004/041103letter.html ]

“Fight back” on “every issue”? What is this, Mrs. Gandy, guerilla warfare?

To gauge the mood of the female electorate, a group of women’s organizations called Votes for Women 2004 polled 1,000 voters. The results were released this past week [www.votesforwomen2004.org/Election%20Poll%20Analysis%2011-04.pdf ] -- and the news was grim.

Compared to 2000, support for democrat Kerry declined among a broad range of women: white women, married women, and older women. Even working women were less likely to vote for Kerry in 2004 than Gore in 2000. So much for all those women being kept down by the Glass Ceiling.

Only 2% of persons said that lesbian and gay rights were on their list of top concerns. I guess the N.O.W. is going to have to retool its euphemistically-named campaign for “equal marriage.”

But what most rankled the Sisterhood was the finding that only 2% of all respondents cited abortion as the issue that made them decide whom to vote for President. And 14% of women actually said the candidates were too focused on the abortion controversy. In other words, abortion has become a losing issue.

The poll found that many did not believe that women’s issues were adequately addressed during the campaigns. But now that you mention it, the poll didn’t bother to ask whether the campaigns adequately addressed the issues of men – I wonder why not.

But it was the analysis of the “gender gap” issue which reveals how the feminist movement relies on Soviet-style propaganda to advance its neo-Marxist agenda. The notion of the gender gap has been used for years to browbeat politicians into passing pro-feminist legislation.

But on November 2, the gender gap reversed itself. That day, 55% of males voted for the Republicans, while females were almost evenly split -- 51% favored Kerry and 48% gave the nod to Bush.

Radical feminism survives by churning out an unendless series of myths and falsehoods. So predictably, Feminist Majority president Eleanor Smeal issued a press release this past week with the misleading headline, “Gender Gap and Women’s Votes Pivotal in Close 2004 Election.” [www.feminist.org/pdfs/gender_gap_release.pdf ]

But an honest summary would have said the exact opposite: “Men’s Votes Pivotal in Close 2004 Election.”

So now the Sisterhood finds itself on the losing side of its own issues, is witnessing the widescale erosion of its voting base, and must now resort to dis-information tactics to staunch the exodus.

Anyone have a hankie?

Patriarchal Power or Marxist Mischief?

For wife Maria Shriver is known to be of the liberal Democratic persuasion. Sure enough, Maria put Arnold in the doghouse -- and that meant no sex for a fortnight [cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2004/10/19/676764-ap.html].

According to socialist-feminist theory, a vast anti-female conspiracy known as the “patriarchy” controls the social order. When you ask a feminist to explain that mind-boggling statement, she invariably points to the fact that the great majority of elected officials are male. And according to the Marxist analysis, those callous male patriarchs look out only for their own kind, leaving women neglected and downtrodden.

But when we examine the record, a different picture emerges. Take our federal entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. All three of these programs were conceived of and enacted by men. They are paid for mostly by male taxpayers.

And who are the principal beneficiaries of this governmental largesse? In all three cases, it’s women. Under Social Security and Medicare, women come out ahead because they outlive men. In the case of Medicaid, women edge out the men because of eligibility criteria that favor custodial parents, who in most cases are mothers.

Medical research reveals a similar pattern. Beginning in the 1970s, Senator Edward Kennedy became a tireless advocate for breast cancer research. As a result, the National Institutes of Health now budgets three times more money for breast cancer research than for prostate cancer [www.nci.nih.gov/public/factbk97/varican.htm].

Then add the Violence Against Women Act, aggressive child support enforcement policies, and sexual harassment laws. The conclusion is clear: chivalry is alive and well within the halls of Congress. Our elected patriarchs unabashedly cater to the needs of women.

But the public arena is not the only venue where the matriarchy reigns. Women often rule the roost at home, as well.

And it’s not just Gov. Schwarzenegger who cowers in the face of matriarchal might. During the recent election campaign, Laura Bush recounted how husband George was ordered by mother Barbara to take his feet off the furniture – a story told much to the delight of her female audiences. And we know who wears the pants in the Heinz-Kerry household [www.mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/2004/roberts102704.htm].

It’s true that in traditional families, the husband was considered the head of the family. But appearances can be deceiving. Consider the old saying, “The man is the head of the house, but the woman is the neck. And it’s the neck that turns the head.”

In truth, the husband’s role can be compared to the Queen of England. Even though the Queen is the titular head of the government, her role is more ceremonial than substantive.

There are those who argue that the sexes have always been equal, they only exercised their power in different ways. David Shackleton, writing in the July-September issue of Everyman magazine, explains that men’s power in the political, economic, and physical arenas has always been balanced by women’s power in the moral, emotional, and sexual realms.

Teresa Riordan makes a similar point in her recent book, Inventing Beauty. Surveying women’s use of false bosoms, push-up bras, and lipstick, Riordan argues that women “have shrewdly, cannily, and knowingly deployed artifice in their ceaseless battle to captivate the inherently roving eye of the male.” [oddnews.orb6.com/stories/nm/20041014/oukoe_life_feminisim.php]

So much for the stereotype of the powerless female.

It can be said that “patriarchy” is one of the most potent words in the English language. Its mere mention induces spasms of guilt and shame in men. Among women, the word incites anger and vindictiveness.

That powerful mix of emotions is the fuel that has allowed radical feminists to advance their cause. To this day, the Sisterhood talks about the patriarchy as if it is still going strong, inflicting misery on all those hapless women.

For the last 30 years or so, the neo-Marxists have relentlessly pummelled the frail strawman of patriarchy. After a while you begin to wonder, is their agenda to promote gender equality and reconciliation? Or do they have something more nefarious in mind?

The Grinches Who Would Steal Marriage

As early as 1971, the Declaration of Feminism declared war on this bedrock institution: "Marriage has existed for the benefit of men; and has been a legally sanctioned method of control over women....We must work to destroy it.”

So radical feminists sounded their hysterical alarm, and began their relentless assault on this sacred union (www.heritage.org/Research/Features/Marriage/bg1662.cfm).

Some feminists went so far as to compare marriage with illicit sex work. Andrea Dworkin warned the sisterhood that “Like prostitution, marriage is an institution that is extremely oppressive and dangerous for women.” Attorney Catherine MacKinnon issued this analysis: “Feminism stresses the indistinguishability of prostitution, marriage, and sexual harassment.”

In recent years, however, a broad coalition has emerged to rescue and resuscitate this beleaguered institution. Who are the lead characters on the stage of this Christmas pageant?

In Act I, we see the government coming to the rescue. Beginning this past January, DHHS Secretary Tommy Thompson began to announce a series of initiatives to promote healthy marriages.

But Steven Baskerville reveals that only one-quarter of the funds are actually targeted at improving marriages(http://users.rcn.com/baskerville/gov_as_family_therapist.htm ). The remaining amount goes to child support enforcement programs, designed to wring more money out of the pockets of low-income, unemployed fathers.

Act II, enter the marriage counselors, the marital Mr. and Mrs. Fix-Its. But are they hurting more than they are helping?

William Dougherty, a family therapist at the University of Minnesota, would answer that question with an emphatic “yes.” Dougherty accuses some marriage counselors of actually pushing for a break-up withcomments such as, “You deserve better.” And critizing the pro-female bias of many therapists, he notes that “men also get seriously disadvantaged in some couples therapy.” (www.smartmarriages.com/hazardous.html )

But don’t lose hope, because the curtain is about to rise on Act III.

On cue, here come the marriage enrichment programs, those groups that would charge $500 to help you find your marital bliss.

The lead actor in the marriage enrichment business is an outfit called Smart Marriages. This past summer, a Smart Marriages conference featured a speech that answered the question, “What are Men For, Anyway?” (www.smartmarriages.com/pittman.keynote.html ) The conference brochure included this insulting description: “One more time, with feeling and through the movies, we'll explore men's roles and their usefulness. Or lack of.”

And if that’s not disturbing enough, pay a visit to the website of John Van Epp, PhD at www.nojerks.com/. You will see that Dr. Epp conducts seminars on “How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk.” Last I heard, Dr. Epp had no plans to offer a program on “How to Avoid Marrying a Bitch.”

Fortunately, there is at least one marriage enhancement program that is not afraid to present a male-friendly perspective. Secrets of Married Men (www.secretsofmarriedmen.com/ ) offers practical advice on how men can cope with the many stressors and demands of marriage.

But the sad fact is, most marriage enrichment programs are designed for -- and pander to -- women. They convey the message that at best, men are irrelevant, and at worst, men are “the problem” in bad marriages.

So as the curtain falls on our Yuletide pageant, we will ask ourselves, which is worse: The Grinches who demonize and disparage marriage? Or the Grinches who, in the name of reviving marriage, demonize and disparage men?

The Unfolding AIDS Scandal at the UN

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As we know, there is no vaccine or drug that can stop AIDS. But there is one proven strategy. That approach, which is backed by the Bush Administration, is known as "ABC." A stands for Abstinence, B means Be faithful, and C refers to Condoms [www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2003/wt030406.html ].

The ABC concept has been implemented in Uganda over the past 15 years. There, a massive public education campaign was mounted. Billboard signs admonished would-be adulterers, "No Grazing." And religious organizations were tapped to play key roles (sorry about that, ACLU).

The results were impressive: the HIV infection rate in Uganda dropped from 15% to 5%. In 1991, 21% of pregnant women had the deadly HIV virus. Ten years later, that figure had dropped to 6% [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0415roberts.html .

But the experts at UNAIDS don't believe in the ABCs. Why? Because they had a strategy with a name that appealed to erotomaniacs everywhere: Safe Sex. The Safe Sex advocates argue that since sexual activity is a fact of life, the best we can do is offer condoms.

But two years ago the truth began to emerge.

Speakers at the 2002 Barcelona AIDS conference began to openly admit the failure of the Safe Sex approach. The UN Population Division offered this dispiriting assessment: "Much effort has been spent on promoting the prophylactic use of condoms as part of AIDS prevention. However, over the years, the condom has not become more popular among couples." [nationalreview.com/comment/comment-sylva073002.asp ]

Why did Safe Sex fail? Well, knowing that the condom failure rate is 15%, ask yourself this question: If an intimate partner of yours had AIDS, would you trust your life to a condom?

And why didn't the UN embrace the proven ABC strategy? The answer: it's a little too....puritanical. Abstinence is something a Bible-thumping preacher might push -- but not the respectable public-health types at the UNAIDS.

If the gospel of Safe Sex didn't sell, why not try the orthodoxy of The Sisterhood?

So just last week the UNAIDS published its report, "Women and AIDS" [www.unaids.org/wad2004/EPI_1204_pdf_en/Chapter2_women+aids_en.pdf ]. If you are interested in getting a glimpse into the radical feminist mindset, you will find it there. You will learn how women are subject to discrimination, domestic violence, and all manner of mistreatment - at the hands of their male chauvinist oppressors, of course.

For example, the report tells us the amazing fact that "women and girls provide the bulk of home-based care" -- but what does that have to do with stopping AIDS? Feminists who believe that all heterosexual intercourse is a form of rape will be heartened by the document's sweeping claim that "Women and girls often lack the power to abstain from sex."

And what if you are a woman who is looking for concrete suggestions on how to avoid becoming infected with the deadly HIV virus? Don't go to UNAIDS, because you will find nothing there in the way of practical advice.

If fact you may become convinced that since women are so utterly powerless in the face of global patriarchy, taking any action to protect yourself would be futile.

Every day, 8,500 men and women die from the modern Black Death that we call AIDS. Most of those deaths could be avoided if the UN took a practical approach that is based on science, not ideology. And pitting women against men is hardly the answer.

The UN is engulfed in a growing array of scandals: the Rwanda slaughter that left 800,000 dead; sexual abuse by peacekeeping forces in the Congo; the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Then there's the ever-deepening Iraqi oil-for-food scandal - just this week we learned that Kofi Annan's son Kojo was on the take to the tune of $2,500 a month.

Now add to that list, the devastating toll of the AIDS epidemic.

Kofi's Resignation Won't Cure the AIDS Epidemic

Take the report, Women and AIDS, which was released by the UNAIDS two weeks ago [www.unaids.org/wad2004/EPI_1204_pdf_en/Chapter2_women+aids_en.pdf ]. UNAIDS is the United Nations program charged with stopping the HIV threat.

The past 20 years I have held a front row seat in the unfolding AIDS drama. I have seen persons being handed the death sentence that they had contracted the HIV virus. I have witnessed the terrified look of AIDS patients coming in to check their plummeting CD counts.

This is a disease that plays for keeps. If we are going to beat AIDS, we need to use an approach that is based on hard science, not trendy ideology. And that’s where the UNAIDS report goes wrong.

The first step in stopping AIDS is compiling accurate statistics on the spread of the disease. But if you look at the 2004 UNAIDS annual report, you will find the HIV infection rates for women and children -- but not for men [www.unaids.org/bangkok2004/GAR2004_pdf/GAR2004_table_countryestimates_en.pdf ]. Is that because the lives of men count for less?

Last week Cliff Kincaid revealed how the UNAIDS has been cooking its statistics. For example, they once reported that 15% of the population in Kenya had HIV. But later the UNAIDS cut that number to just 6.7% [www.aim.org/aim_column/2261_0_3_0_C/ ]

Bottom line: All those impressive-looking AIDS statistics coming out of the UNAIDS are suspect, especially the ones that apply to men.

The Women and AIDS report contains a number of demonstrable falsehoods. Here are two of them:

1. “Men tend to have better access to AIDS care and treatment…through drug trials.” Now go to the website clinicaltrials.gov , which lists all the AIDS studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, and you will see that the reverse is true.

2. “Violence against women is a worldwide scourge, and a massive human rights and public challenge.” But Linda Kelly recently wrote in the Florida State University Law Review, “Over the last 25 years, leading sociologists have repeatedly found that men and women commit violence at similar rates.” [www.papa-help.ch/downloads/kelly.pdf ]

But the problem with the UNAIDS publication is not limited to its factual errors. Of greater concern is that the report sets up the boogeyman of patriarchy, and then casually lays the blame for the epidemic at the feet of men.

The report lectures ad nauseum, “men tend to hold the upper hand” and “the balance of power in many relationships is tilted in favor of men.” But a recent Washington Post editorial, “A Female Pandemic?,” took exception to this one-sided approach, because “high-risk groups are stigmatized, and hence often ignored.”

The bias of the UN report is confirmed by its refusal to admit that women also contribute to the spread of AIDS. For example, the report never admits the fact that one-third of all heterosexual transmission of HIV is female to male.

Nor does the report reveal the slightest concern with HIV-infected prostitutes, those Typhoid Marys who infect hundreds of male partners in a single month. Maybe that’s because radical feminists have no problem with women selling their bodies, just as long as they are paid equitably.

The UN report is not only palpably unfair to men; it’s also dangerous to women. The report claims, “Women and girls often lack the power to abstain from sex.” [www.washtimes.com/commentary/20041205-123305-3151r.htm

Once you start preaching the mantra of female powerlessness, you are telling individual women there is nothing they can do to stop the spread of AIDS. That message is not only perniciously false, it is the hallmark of the totalitarian mindset.

Over the past three decades, feminists have developed a well-honed strategy: Make women feel angry and fearful, induce guilt and shame in men, and create an environment of hysteria.

On November 30 Peter Piot, director of the UNAIDS, came to Washington, DC to unveil the Women and AIDS report and to sound the drum-beat of female victimization. But US Ambassador Randall Tobias, who spoke at the same meeting, would have none of that.

It was good that Ambassador Tobias ignored the UNAIDS report. But side-stepping this radical feminist screed is not enough. The House Republicans and the Bush administration need to come out and repudiate the Women and AIDS document, a bonanza of gender bigotry.

© 2005 Carey Roberts

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