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Carey Roberts probes and lampoons political correctness. His work has been published frequently in the Washington Times, Townhall.com, LewRockwell.com, ifeminists.net, Intellectual Conservative, and elsewhere. He is a staff reporter for the New Media Network. You can contact him at E-Mail.

Feminist Infiltration into the Conservative Ranks?


It was one of those claims that only a feminist could dream up: “A 2005 U.N. Population Fund report found that 70% of married women in India were victims of beatings or rape.” Despite the lack of credibility of anything that comes from the United Nations, this straight-faced claim actually made its way into a front-page article last week in the Washington Times.

That, despite the fact that the research shows Indian women are the gender more likely to abuse. Plus, no one could track down the UN report that supposedly made the claim. [www.mediaradar.org/alert20061113.php ]

The Washington Times is certainly no feminist rag. So what’s going on here?

In the wake of the November 7 electoral debacle, conservatives are doing a lot of soul-searching. Maybe it’s time to assess whether the feminist ideology has been allowed to invidiously dilute the conservative message.

There was a time, of course, when the women’s movement held the moral high ground. Susan B. Anthony not only championed women’s right to vote, but also took a principled stand against abortion.

But after Anthony died in 1906, her movement fell under the sway of a group of neo-Marxist women who dubbed themselves “feminists.” The Misses of Misery asserted that everything that is wrong in the world can be blamed on the vast anti-woman conspiracy they call the patriarchy. Here’s Gloria Steinem: “Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole... patriarchy.”

For years, conservatives have underestimated the dogged determination of the women’s libbers to undermine everything that is good and right in our society: the inviolability of life, sanctity of the family, free speech, opportunities not quotas, law based on due process, and limited role of government.

Let’s be perfectly plain about it: Feminism is the antithesis of everything conservatism stands for.

Thankfully, some in the conservative ranks have bravely spoken out against the rad-fem jihad, including Phyllis Schlafly, Ann Coulter, Laura Schlessinger, Catherine Seipp, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and Myrna Blyth.

But why are there only six, not 600 conservative women on the list? And what about conservative men? Are the conservative no-shows intimidated or merely complacent? Why haven’t the mainstream conservative organizations come out four-square against radical feminism?

To be sure, one reason is that the conservative movement has become beholden to the electoral imperatives of the Republican party, fearing that any criticism of feminism might stir a backlash on election day. This fear is misplaced, however, as only a quarter of American women call themselves feminist, and 22% of women say that being called a feminist would be an “insult.” [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0811roberts.html ]

Another reason is that many conservative men – especially politicians and newspaper editors -- confuse ladies-first chivalry with becoming water-carriers for the latest feminist myth-de-jour.

It’s time that these guys wise-up to the feminist bait-and-switch. These gals claim to be the complete equals to men. But voice any doubts about their ideology, and they lapse into a pathetic cocoon of hurt feelings.

And then there are those ladies who claim to be straight-laced conservatives, but bristle with an anti-male hostility or spread poisonous gender myths.

Take conservative columnist Suzanne Fields who had the habit of making nasty asides about men. Finally her readers objected en masse, their letters appearing under an editorial headline that took exception to Fields’ “Anti-Male Diatribe.”

And then there’s marriage maven Maggie Gallagher who never passes on the opportunity to diss men. Once Gallagher claimed that, “battering is largely a male prerogative, the way a tiny fraction of evil men seek to control the women they sleep with.”

Really, Mrs. Gallagher?

Try telling that to the family of Dennis McGlothin of Peoria County, Ill., who last week was run over and killed by his ex-wife Krystle. Just to make her point, the woman also rammed his pickup truck and smashed his windows.

This case is not an aberration. Psychologist Renee McDonald has found that American wives are twice as likely as their husbands to engage in severe domestic violence. [www.smu.edu/experts/study-documents/family-violence-study-may2006.pdf ]

A few months ago Washington Times editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden reflected on the feminist opportunists who seize on military sex scandals to push for women in front-line combat positions. Prudent ridiculed the flat-footed military brass as “Powerful men who know better are unable to stand up to the stamp of little feminist feet.”

It’s time that conservatives found the moral courage and personal gumption to say ‘no’ to the latest feminist demands, lest we bequeath to our children and grandchildren an unruly and emasculated culture.

The Silence of the Wedding Bells


Am I the only one who is worried about the collapse of the traditional American family right before our very eyes?

Census Bureau bureaucrats are not in the habit of making apocalyptic pronouncements, but last year Mark Mather reported that the “dramatic decline” in the married population is “one of the biggest demographic stories of the past several decades.” Now, married couples now account for a minority – 49.7% to be exact – of all U.S. households.

The cause of this extraordinary demographic shift is two-fold. First, Americans are getting married only half as often as we used to. Second since 1960, the share of divorced Americans rose from 2% to 10%.

African-American communities have been especially hard-hit. In 1960 four-fifths of all Black families had fathers and mothers at home. Three decades later, that number had plummeted to 38%.

As a result of the decline of marriage, illegitimacy is on the upswing. Just last week the National Center for Health Statistics announced that almost four in 10 babies were born out-of-wedlock in 2005.

All this is very bad news for kids, since children raised only by mothers are more likely to be poor, suffer from a host of behavioral and academic problems, and get in trouble with the law.

For sure, the great majority of young women say they plan to get married and have kids some day. So why has Cosmo replaced Bride magazine in the supermarket check-out lines?

Some experts cite the “greater economic independence of women,” as if a single mom scraping by on a welfare check is what female liberation is all about. Others argue that Americans are simply delaying the age of marriage, suggesting that women who are nervously watching their biological clocks just need to be a little more patient.

But there’s one fact that’s hard to dispute: our country faces an acute shortage of marriage-minded men.

Two years ago Barbara Whitehead and David Popenoe of Rutgers University did a national survey of single heterosexual men, ages 25-34. To everyone’s shock, they found 22% of the men declared no interest in finding their One and Only. [marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/SOOU/TEXTSOOU2004.htm ] That means two million American women will likely never see the inside of a wedding chapel.

Now, hooking-up is replacing that quaint courtship ritual that used to be known as “dating.” When Norval Glenn and Elizabeth Marquardt surveyed college senior women, they found that one-third of the women had been asked on fewer than two dates.

And this past August the New York Times ran a piece on “Facing Middle Age with No Degree, and No Wife,” which revealed the reluctance to wed runs especially deep in less educated men.

There is overwhelming research that shows marriage benefits both men and women in terms of their financial and emotional well-being. Plus, married folks live longer. So what do we need to do to entice men back into the courtship ritual?

The Nasty Nellies have been giving marriage a bum rap for years, so sadly there are no quick fixes. But this is what we need to do.

First, we need to dispose of the boogeyman of the patriarchal ogre lording over his beleaguered wife. If that image was ever true, it certainly doesn’t apply to any couple that I know of. In fact, the reverse now seems to be more commonplace: the harried, henpecked husband who’s hectored to keep his feet off the furniture during the ball game.

Second, we need to consider the effects of the 1992 Supreme Court’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision that banned fathers from participating in decisions to keep the unborn baby, thus leaving them biologically disenfranchised.

Third, we’ve got to do more to help boys excel academically. Trash the Title IX quotas, provide special help for boys who are lagging, and tell teachers to stop expecting boys to act like girls.

Fourth, we need to do a major overhaul of our nation’s domestic violence laws, which allow any woman to plunder her husband’s assets and steal his children by merely claiming “abuse.”

And fifth, reform of our divorce laws is long overdue, so fathers are encouraged to remain involved in their children’s lives as parents, not every-other-weekend visitors.

Sadly in low-income Black communities, marriage is essentially a dead institution. And there are groups in our country that now want to extend their agenda of family destruction to society at large.

The family is the very building block of a civilized and prosperous society. What will it take to bring back the exuberant peal of June wedding bells?

Feminist Infiltration into the Conservative Ranks?


It was one of those claims that only a feminist could dream up: “A 2005 U.N. Population Fund report found that 70% of married women in India were victims of beatings or rape.” Despite the lack of credibility of anything that comes from the United Nations, this straight-faced claim actually made its way into a front-page article last week in the Washington Times.

That, despite the fact that the research shows Indian women are the gender more likely to abuse. Plus, no one could track down the UN report that supposedly made the claim. [www.mediaradar.org/alert20061113.php ]

The Washington Times is certainly no feminist rag. So what’s going on here?

In the wake of the November 7 electoral debacle, conservatives are doing a lot of soul-searching. Maybe it’s time to assess whether the feminist ideology has been allowed to invidiously dilute the conservative message.

There was a time, of course, when the women’s movement held the moral high ground. Susan B. Anthony not only championed women’s right to vote, but also took a principled stand against abortion.

But after Anthony died in 1906, her movement fell under the sway of a group of neo-Marxist women who dubbed themselves “feminists.” The Misses of Misery asserted that everything that is wrong in the world can be blamed on the vast anti-woman conspiracy they call the patriarchy. Here’s Gloria Steinem: “Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole... patriarchy.”

For years, conservatives have underestimated the dogged determination of the women’s libbers to undermine everything that is good and right in our society: the inviolability of life, sanctity of the family, free speech, opportunities not quotas, law based on due process, and limited role of government.

Let’s be perfectly plain about it: Feminism is the antithesis of everything conservatism stands for.

Thankfully, some in the conservative ranks have bravely spoken out against the rad-fem jihad, including Phyllis Schlafly, Ann Coulter, Laura Schlessinger, Catherine Seipp, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and Myrna Blyth.

But why are there only six, not 600 conservative women on the list? And what about conservative men? Are the conservative no-shows intimidated or merely complacent? Why haven’t the mainstream conservative organizations come out four-square against radical feminism?

To be sure, one reason is that the conservative movement has become beholden to the electoral imperatives of the Republican party, fearing that any criticism of feminism might stir a backlash on election day. This fear is misplaced, however, as only a quarter of American women call themselves feminist, and 22% of women say that being called a feminist would be an “insult.” [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2004/0811roberts.html ]

Another reason is that many conservative men – especially politicians and newspaper editors -- confuse ladies-first chivalry with becoming water-carriers for the latest feminist myth-de-jour.

It’s time that these guys wise-up to the feminist bait-and-switch. These gals claim to be the complete equals to men. But voice any doubts about their ideology, and they lapse into a pathetic cocoon of hurt feelings.

And then there are those ladies who claim to be straight-laced conservatives, but bristle with an anti-male hostility or spread poisonous gender myths.

Take conservative columnist Suzanne Fields who had the habit of making nasty asides about men. Finally her readers objected en masse, their letters appearing under an editorial headline that took exception to Fields’ “Anti-Male Diatribe.”

And then there’s marriage maven Maggie Gallagher who never passes on the opportunity to diss men. Once Gallagher claimed that, “battering is largely a male prerogative, the way a tiny fraction of evil men seek to control the women they sleep with.”

Really, Mrs. Gallagher?

Try telling that to the family of Dennis McGlothin of Peoria County, Ill., who last week was run over and killed by his ex-wife Krystle. Just to make her point, the woman also rammed his pickup truck and smashed his windows.

This case is not an aberration. Psychologist Renee McDonald has found that American wives are twice as likely as their husbands to engage in severe domestic violence. [www.smu.edu/experts/study-documents/family-violence-study-may2006.pdf ]

A few months ago Washington Times editor-in-chief Wesley Pruden reflected on the feminist opportunists who seize on military sex scandals to push for women in front-line combat positions. Prudent ridiculed the flat-footed military brass as “Powerful men who know better are unable to stand up to the stamp of little feminist feet.”

It’s time that conservatives found the moral courage and personal gumption to say ‘no’ to the latest feminist demands, lest we bequeath to our children and grandchildren an unruly and emasculated culture.

Fathers No Longer Cost-Effective?


I’m not one who is prone to get misty-eyed, but Tim Russert’s latest book did it.

Two years ago Russert penned a moving tribute to his own father, Big Russ and Me, which quickly became a New York Times best-seller. Russert was inundated with so many poignant letters that he decided to compile them into a sequel, Wisdom of Our Fathers. Now that book has become a run-away top-seller, as well.

There’s a message here: persons have an enormous sense of gratitude for the many things – big and small – that dad did for them. I know, that’s exactly how I feel about my father.

But there is a small yet influential group in our society that views fatherhood as an anachronism and a stubborn obstacle to their utopian vision of the social welfare state. And they see divorce and award of child custody to mothers as a highly-effective ploy to achieve their goal.

When one million children experience divorce each year, and when custody is awarded to mothers in 85% of cases, you can see the scope of the problem. If you want to scale down male influence in a society, what better way than to bar fathers from seeing their own sons and daughters?

So this past spring, Mitch Sanderson of Grand Forks, North Dakota set out to make things better for kids. He canvassed voters throughout the state, collecting signatures for a measure on the November ballot to promote shared parenting. The petition stated that in the event of divorce, “each parent would be entitled to joint legal and physical custody unless first declared unfit.”

One of Sanderson’s most vocal supporters was grandmother Myrna Meidinger, who explained, “If you don’t have shared parenting like I went through, it’s hard to see your grandkids.” Before long over 17,000 signatures were gathered, proving that the shared parenting idea enjoyed support throughout the state.

But what happened next is comprehensible only if you remember the old saying, “Follow the money.” Under federal regulations, states stand to gain millions in federal incentives and reimbursements by increasing their child support rolls. If kids spend equal time with dad and mom, child support payments are reduced accordingly.

So in July, Thomas Sullivan of the federal Administration for Children and Families (the gargantuan federal agency that runs our child support apparatus) sent a letter to state senator Tom Fisher. Since the measure would reduce federal largesse by $70 million, citizens should vote against the pro-child ballot initiative, Sullivan argued.

Since when are green-visor bureaucrats allowed to lobby state legislators?

As columnist Stephen Baskerville lamented, “federal bureaucrats are now using taxpayers’ money to strong-arm citizens from democratic decisions that, by relieving a serious social problem, threaten to render the bureaucrats redundant.” [www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=16538 ]

Then North Dakota Human Services director Carol Olson weighed in with the same Chicken-Little message, raising the specter of federal cutbacks. How could anyone so brazenly ignore the well-being of children?

This catapulted Mitch Sanderson’s sleeper initiative into the most-debated topic throughout the state. Soon former governor Ed Schaeffer announced his support for the shared parenting measure.

Schaeffer also chastised the lawyer-dominated state legislature for dragging its feet on the issue. Remember, when divorcing couples litigate high-priced child custody disputes, it’s the lawyers who make out like bandits.

Proving Mr. Schaeffer’s point to be true, the North Dakota bar association soon jumped into the fray. The attorneys hastily assembled a front organization known as the North Dakota Concerned Citizens for Children’s Rights. Soon the group was resorting to scare tactics such as the claim that shared parenting would “dismantle the current child support system.”

Huh?

Two years ago a similar ballot measure was presented to the voters of Massachusetts, where 85% of the electorate approved the idea.

But this time, the lawyers, social workers, and others who profit from family break-up succeeded in sowing enough confusion to tip the balance. This past Tuesday, the shared parenting measure was defeated by a 56% to 44% margin, thus dashing the hopes of Mitch Sanderson, Myrna Meidinger, and the many kids who, like the persons who wrote loving tributes in Tim Russert’s book, long to see their daddies.

Brock Chisolm, former head of the World Health Organization, once admitted, “To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men, their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism, and religious dogmas.” Men are often the staunchest defenders of those democratic ideals, so it only makes sense to marginalize males by any means possible.

Usually the Lefties work their mischief behind closed doors. But this time around, the rats came scurrying out of the woodwork.

Bush Needs to Rein in Feminist Operatives


If you should happen to telephone Ambassador John Bolton’s office at the United Nations, chances are good the person who answers your call will be one Peggy Kerry. Does that name ring a bell? Perhaps it should.

According to a July 27, 2004 article in the Washington Times, Miss Kerry was the featured speaker at an event sponsored by the NOW in conjunction with the Democratic National Convention. “And he has a secret weapon,” Kerry boasted. “It seems to me that it’s up to the women, because when women vote, Democrats win.”

And which “he” was Miss Peggy’s talking about? Why, brother John, of course. Senator John Kerry, Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

I’m certain that Miss Kerry is well-qualified to work as a press aide. But really, how can the State Department be so clueless as to allow an avowed political and ideological foe of President Bush to hold such a sensitive position? Why not assign her to an understaffed consulate in, say, Mozambique?

Tuesday night, President Bush’s Republican party hemorrhaged blood all over the TV screen. The Dems took control of the House of Representative and registered solid gains in the Senate. But the electoral losses certainly weren’t for Bush failing to appease the rad-fems.

Under the Clinton two-for-the-price-of-one presidency, a bevy of feminist-inspired programs sprang up throughout the federal bureaucracy. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2006/0531roberts.html ] A decade later, most of those programs are going stronger than ever, sucking up taxpayer money, violating men’s civil rights, and destroying families.

Remember Title IX, the well-meaning program that Clinton appointee Norma Cantu turned into a rigid quota system that shut down hundreds of men’s sports teams? Just because Cantu was shown the door doesn’t mean the buzz-saw was turned off.

Recently James Madison University in Virginia, which has a student body that is 61% female, announced its decision to cut 10 sports teams, including wrestling, swimming, cross-country, indoor and outdoor track, archery, and gymnastics. Why? Even though 51% of all JMU student-athletes are female, that wasn’t enough to satisfy the bean-counters at the Department of Education. [www.iwf.org/title_IX.asp ]

Taxpayer-funded abortions is another feminist priority. Last year Bush Administration employees had a field day awarding $265 million in grants and contracts to Planned Parenthood. That tidy sum allowed the group to perform nearly 250,000 abortions. And with its spare change, Planned Parenthood filed lawsuits against bans on partial birth abortions.

And then there were the bureaucrats at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) who didn’t like the idea of divorced fathers seeing their kids. So in direct violation of federal ethics rules, they took it upon themselves to tell the North Dakota legislators to defeat a shared parenting initiative.

Their reasoning? It’s better to let fatherless kids become drop-outs and juvenile delinquents – that way the state can rake in millions of federal welfare money.

Shame on ACF head Margo Bean for tolerating these bureaucratic shenanigans.

To his credit, President Bush did manage to shoehorn $150 million into last year’s welfare reform law to promote marriage and fatherhood. But that money will do little to stem the destructive effects of Clinton time-bomb programs like the Violence Against Women Act.

In most states, domestic violence is defined so broadly that sending mental telepathic messages is now considered be a form of harassment and worthy of state intervention – remember the David Letterman case? [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2005/1228.html ]

These laws allow any half-witted welfare queen to game the system. All she has to do is utter this phrase: “Judge, I’m feeling afraid for my safety.” No proof of injury or physical violence is needed.

Presto! Those 7 words will get her man kicked out of the house and excuse her from return-to-work welfare requirements. Don’t worry that the kids have now been deprived of their daddies, the state will be there to provide.

All this puts the Department of Justice feminists in high spirits, because with the stroke of a judge’s pen, another family has been dissolved, a patriarch has been de-throned, and the statistics of “abused” women continue to mount.

Of course, there’s an obvious solution to this travesty – remove the perverse incentives to lie. But then the N.O.W. lobby might accuse you of being “anti-woman.”

One of these days, the G.O.P. will come to its senses and realize that you can never appease the Gender Guerillas. Kow-towing to the rad-fem agenda is a losing political strategy. Mr. President, it’s time to do some housecleaning.

Cleavage Candidates and the Politics of Gender


This headline crossed my desk last week: “Gubernatorial Hopeful Flashes for Cash!” Below that exclamatory remark appeared a sketch of well-endowed blond, her hands clutching the front of a low-cut jacket.

This cheap thrill did not grace the pages of a recent issue of Playboy magazine, nor was it the come-on for a back-alley peep show.

No, this was the official campaign literature of one Loretta Nall, libertarian candidate for the governorship of Alabama. [www.nallforgovernor.com]

And three months ago Hillary Clinton appeared on C-SPAN, this time with her formidable cleavage peering through her tailored blue dress. [theanchoressonline.com/2006/07/18/nothin-wrong-with-a-little-cleavage/ ] What is it about the Clintons and blue dresses, anyway?

Whether these ladies’ natural assets put them over the top in Tuesday’s elections, we will soon find out. And clearly, women are leaving their imprint on the modern political scene. That impact can be explained in two words: psychology and demography.

It’s no doubt true that men and women look for different things in a candidate. Columnist Allison Brown laid out the psychology this way:

“Women prefer to attach themselves to the problems they want to solve. Men operate best while maintaining a certain level of detachment, and analyze problems based on rules, on thoughts as opposed to feelings . . . In truth, women are natural socialists. . . . Men, to put it simply, are more independent in thought and action.” [www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/brown6.html ]

So on July 7, 2004, presidential candidate John Kerry bragged that his team had “better vision, better ideas” and just as importantly, “we’ve got better hair.” Somehow I doubt that hairdo pitch was aimed at the nation’s male electorate.

Then there’s the old saying about women who can’t make up their minds. At one point in the 2004 election, women favored Kerry with a 17% point lead. Two just months later that reversed itself, with Bush enjoying a double-digit advantage among the female electorate.

And other women remained undecided until the very last minute, making them highly-courted “swing” voters.

Women may have trouble making up their minds because they don’t understand the issues. Columnist Debbie Schlussel reports that the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center has found men are consistently more knowledgeable than women about candidates’ positions on a broad range of topics such as taxes and gun control. Even on so-called “women’s issues” such as education and healthcare, men hold the edge.

In the past, politicos who wanted to salvage a faltering campaign would carry their demagoguery to low-income minorities. Now, it seems women who haven’t studied up on the issues are being targeted for the pandering.

This Tuesday, for example, Michigan voters will decide on a ballot measure to ban arbitrary preferences in state admissions and hiring. But a Trotskyite fringe group called “By Any Means Necessary” is now arguing the referendum would send Birkenstock-clad women back to the kitchen and deprive them of their constitutional right to watch Oprah.

Oh, my.

The demographic profile of the American electorate is even more revealing than Hillary’s latest low-cut pantsuit.

Men die, on average, at the age of 75, while women live to the ripe old age of 80. That means there are 5.3 million more women than men in the United States. In every state except one – Alaska – the female electorate outnumbers the men. So it comes as no surprise that Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska has long been a strong advocate for prostate cancer research.

In the 2004 presidential race, it was men who handed George W. Bush his margin of victory. That year 55% of males voted for the Republicans, while 48% of females gave the nod to Bush.

But pollsters pay far more attention to another statistic -- men represented only 46% of the total electorate that year.

As a result, vote-hungry candidates increasingly pitch their message to females. And the political discourse becomes increasingly trivialized – remember when 17-year-old Laetitia Thompson asked President Bill Clinton whether he wore boxers or briefs?

And fewer men vote. So pols are even less likely to listen to men’s concerns. It’s an ever-worsening cycle that marginalizes men and is bound to ultimately undermine America’s economic, moral, and social fiber.

But there is a solution, and it doesn’t require a million-dollar federal program, either. LISTEN UP, GENTS. It’s your duty to get out on November 7. Vote for the candidate of your choice, but be sure to vote.

As far as Miss Nall, I would urge you to go back to debating the issues. And keep your clothes on – lest we begin to give hard-working strippers a bad name.

The Feminization of Poverty? There You Go Again, Hillary!


Some 20 years ago the feminist crusade ran out of legitimate issues to address, so it did what any smart advocacy group would do: fabricate new injustices and outrages.

The gender wage gap? Well, that turned out to be a fraud.

The glass ceiling? A fatuous exercise in smoke-and-mirrors logic.

Then there’s the “feminization of poverty” canard. Hillary Rodham Clinton has been milking this one for years.

Back in 1995, HRC led the U.S. delegation to China to attend the United Nations World Conference on Women. There Hillary held forth on the economic status of women, making the claim that “Women are 70% of the world’s poor.”

And sure enough, Madame Hillary is at it again. Two weeks ago, she spouted the “feminization of poverty” cliché at her husband’s conference on global challenges. No doubt shedding crocodile tears, Clinton deplored the fact that “Far too many women are stuck in the cycle of poverty from which there is no escape.”

During my life I’ve traveled far and wide, visiting some of the most poverty-stricken regions of the world. And I’ve never seen anything that resembles a sex-based imbalance of poverty.

Indeed, a 2000 document from the UN Economic and Social Council had to admit, “Despite observations on the ‘feminization of poverty,’ for example, the methodologies for measuring poverty among women respective to men are still inadequate.”

A recent report from the UN Development Program was even more pointed: “There is no evidence of systematic over-representation of women among the poor around the world.” [www.undp-povertycentre.org/newsletters/WorkingPaper20.pdf ]

And Alain Marcoux of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization once ridiculed Hillary’s 70% claim by noting the total implausibility of the statistic “will teach us a lesson about using illustrative figures for advocacy.”

So exactly where did the notion of the “feminization of poverty” come from?

Not too long ago, men were the primary breadwinners. Poor, middle-class, or rich, men were the designated hitters to bring home a living wage.

But then the Great Society came along. Eligibility criteria for welfare programs either required the man to leave the home, such AFDC, or openly favored female recipients, such as the Women, Infants, and Children program.

“Now listen carefully, class, to today’s arithmetic quiz. Here it is: Take one daddy, one mommy, and two children. Now subtract the male breadwinner. What’s left over?

a) Financial ruin
b) Welfare dependency
c) Social decay
d) All the above

“Class, if you answered d) All the above, you’re absolutely right!”

But the architects of the Great Society were playing hooky that day.

So told they were unwelcome or unnecessary, men gradually melted into the woodwork. And the Black family, which had weathered the storms of the Great Depression and two World Wars, began to disintegrate. In 1960, the percentage of intact African-American families with fathers and mothers at home was 80%. By 1990, that number skidded to 38%. [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2006/0315roberts.html ]

When economist Victor Fuchs of the National Bureau of Economic Research combed through the figures from the 1970s, he concluded: “Statistical decomposition of the changes shows that an increase in the proportion of women in households without men was the principal source of feminization of poverty.”

Translation: Divorce places a woman at risk of becoming impoverished.

Fuchs went on to note, “between 1979 and 1984 poverty rates rose for both men and women, but they rose relatively more rapidly for men.” So according to Dr. Fuchs, the real crisis was the masculinization, not feminization, of poverty.

“Miss Rodham, stop drawing pictures of women in villages and start paying attention!”

A few years ago sociologist Martha Gimenez sagely observed that the feminization of poverty myth only serves to fuel “conflict between men and women, young and old, and white and nonwhite.”

Therein lies the secret of cultural Marxism.

Cultural Marxists know they cannot topple Western democratic societies with a direct assault. Rather, they seek to undermine basic values, incite gender conflict, and weaken institutions such as the family. Gloria Steinem may have revealed more than she intended when she remarked: “Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole... patriarchy.”

When widespread divorce and social discord ensue, the Gender Guerillas then blame the whole mess on patriarchal society, leaving behind no marks or fingerprints.

Think about it -- it’s the perfect crime. That’s the genius of radical feminism.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics at UNICEF


At first I assumed UNICEF director Ann Veneman had been terribly misquoted.

This was the statement the media attributed to her: “We know that women do about 66% of the work in the world, they produce 50% of the food, but earn 5% of the income and own 1% of the property.” But then I checked, and that’s what she had said. It was right on the UNICEF website.

Veneman’s message was clear: Around the world, men are lazy dolts who lord over their down-trodden wives.

But I was a skeptical. So I called the UNICEF press office and asked for the source of those damning statistics. Press aide Kate Donovan cheerfully reassured me that Veneman is “very picky about her facts” and promised she’d get back to me. She never did.

Google to the rescue. Many mouse-clicks later I arrived at another UN web page devoted to the Millenium Development Goals. [www.millenniumcampaign.org/site/pp.asp?c=grKVL2NLE&b=186382 ]

Ah ha! -- right there on the page 2 was the elusive quote, along with its source: Womankind Worldwide.

So then I contacted Womankind Worldwide [www.womankind.org.uk], asking for the exact name of the source document. And here’s the long-awaited response from a Julia Czastka: “I can tell you that the facts given in this quote are from the UN.”

Let’s see … Group A relies on Group B, Group B bounces us over to Group C, and Group C sends us back to Group A. In my neck of the woods, that’s called recycling the trash. Ms. Veneman, may we consider your statement a candidate for the Phony Statistics Hall of Fame?

While I was perusing the UNICEF website, I couldn’t help but notice some other questionable claims.

A March 8 press release quoted Veneman as saying, “Violence against women is the extreme form of inequality.” So how does she reconcile that statement with the UN’s World Report Violence and Health, which showed 14% of men die from violence-related causes, compared to only 7% of women? Or the recent survey showing women are twice as likely as men to initiate partner abuse? [www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2006/may/em_060519male.cfm?type=n ]

And a 2005 News Note claims, “Violence in the family affects mainly girls ...” Wrong again, UNICEF.

According to a compilation of 172 studies by Lytton and Romney, it’s boys who are consistently subjected to more physical punishment than girls. (This News Note also maligns the traditional family, recklessly claiming that “values promoted by the family … use violence as their main tool.”)

Remember the Yiddish proverb, “A half-truth is a whole lie”? If that is true, then UNICEF, which now views the world through the lens of patriarchal oppression, is immersed in a complete and utter lie.

The UNICEF home page informs us, “Women’s political power is growing,” as if that’s somehow going help kids get their tetanus shots and clean drinking water. Its website recounts the woes of girls: educational attainment, female circumcision, abuse, and discrimination. It even has a newsletter called Girls Too!

But nowhere does UNICEF admit to the inequities facing boys: higher rates of suicide, undernourishment, and low healthcare utilization. Not a word about the 12-year-old lads forced into armed combat, or kids sent off to become camel jockeys in the Persian Gulf.

Remember, we’re talking about BOYS – those impish lads who are made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. It’s those tykes who trek through the woods in search of a handful of wilted daisies to proudly present to their moms.

Over the last three years I have chronicled the steady descent of UNICEF into the slough of gender advocacy. These reports have documented how UNICEF has systematically: boys [www.ifeminists.net/introduction/editorials/2003/0422roberts.html,

UNICEF has become the target of blistering critiques. In 2004 the Catholic Family and Human Rights Group charged, “Radical feminism has come to define the current UNICEF.” Two years ago the prestigious Lancet journal accused UNICEF of “shamefully” failing to develop an effective child survival strategy.

But the gals at UNICEF have turned a deaf ear on their critics.

Last week the Heritage Foundation released an analysis titled “The Status of United Nations Reform.” Its sobering conclusion reads: “There has been quite a bit of smoke on reform, but very little fire … Without tying reform to financial incentives, the sound and fury of the current U.N. reform effort, as with past efforts, will prove grossly insufficient.”

Ambassador Bolton, we need to make UNICEF the first example of our towering resolve and moral disgust.

© 2006 Carey Roberts

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