Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
A guy in Israel studied male-female combat injuries in the Israeli Army and announces the Emperor has no clothes!
Plainly, he’s a hateful sexist. He’ll be purged, soon.
Equally plainly, the Rules of War need to be changed so women can play, too.
Joe Doakes
Victory for the agenda is the only victory some care about.
The Democrat “War on Women” rhetoric was entirely calibrated to try to win the votes of white women (Obama already controlled non-white womens’ votes).
But for all the palaver? It didn’t work.
Michael Medved in the NYTimes last week (with emphasis added):
A closer look at the numbers reveals that Mr. Obama’s success with the ladies actually stemmed from his well-known appeal to minority voters. In 2012, 72% of all women voters identified themselves as “white.” This subset preferred Mitt Romney by a crushing 14-point advantage, 56% to 42%. Though Democrats ratcheted up the women’s rhetoric in the run-up to Election Day, the party did poorly among the white women it sought to influence: The Republican advantage in this crucial segment of the electorate doubled to 14 points in 2012 from seven points in 2008. In the race against Mr. Romney, Obama carried the overall female vote—and with it the election—based solely on his success with the 28% of women voters who identified as nonwhite. He carried 76% of Latina women and a startling 96% of black women.
So for all of the left’s argling about racism being the only reason not to vote for Obama, it would seem that race is the only reason to vote for him, since Black and Latina women have fared among the worst of all during the Obameconomy.
As with every election since 2000, marriage matters:
The same discrepancy exists when considering marital status. In 2012, nearly 60% of female voters were married, and they preferred Mr. Romney by six points, 53% to 46%. Black and Latina women, on the other hand, are disproportionately represented among unmarried female voters, and they favored Mr. Obama by more than 2-to-1, 67% to 31%.
Read the whole thing.
And check a few of your assumptions about Democrat rhetoric.
Example 1: Take two electrical engineers; both 32 years old, both in the industry at the same firm since graduating from the same college with the same BA BS in EEE. One – not naming names here – has worked at the company the entire ten years. The other – again, not naming names – has taken about a year of parental leave, and also spent about a year working part-time while their kids were little. So between an engineer with ten years’ experience and one with in effect 8.5 years’ experience, who, all other things being equal should get paid more?
Example 2: Take two 25 year olds. One became an oilfield worker – a field involving a lot of brutally hard work, dominated by men, and with perennial shortage of workers with immense demand (especially in North Dakota), driving up wages. One went into social work – a field involving significant work, sometimes a state license, dominated by women, and a perennial glut of workers, driving down wages. With all other things equal, who should get paid more?
Example 3: Take two accountants – one male, one female. They have identical qualifications, identical experience, identical job reviews. Who do you think makes more? Statistically, the difference is within the realm of statistical noise, nationwide.
Example 4: Take a low-income couple. He works as a security guard, doing his best to pick up 50 hours a week to make ends meet. To avoid having to pay daycare, she stays at home with the kids and is counting the days til their youngest is at kindergarten so she can get a temp office job, or a part-time job at Target. This one’s a no-brainer, right?
Example 5: A female business analyst with ten years’ experience is working with a male business analyst working his first job. Who makes more?
Example 6: A brother and a sister – fraternal twins – graduate from high school. He goes into car mechanics. She goes into daycare.
Now – compare the “men” in the above examples with the “Women”. In aggregate, the guys make about 50% more than the women.
Is it because the men in the five examples are benefitting from sexism? Or because of the…:
This last cuts both ways, by the way; when my kids were little, I made a conscious choice to seek out jobs that offered flexibility in hours and schedules, so I could spend more time with them. This pretty inevitably led to contracting, which gave me flexibility and decent money – but cut down the chances for linear, corporate “career advancement”. Am I lagging behind other people in my “age cohort” in that career? Probably not – I switched careers – but if I were still a technical writer, those years that I spent focusing on other things would probably have had me lagging. (Technical writing, by the way, is a field where women make more than men, on average. Why? Because they’ve been doing it longer, and they dominate the field, and they tend to go into it for a career, as opposed to men (like me) who see it as a stepping-stone to elsewhere. Not because female tech writers are sexists. Although some are. Oh, the stories I could tell But won’t. Because most tech writer stories are really really boring.
Of course, the whole “gender wage gap” isn’t so much about facts as about waving a bloody shirt to try to shore up Democrat numbers in a year that’s looking very bad for them, and to draw attention away from the fact that this past five years have been little better for women, economically, than for African-Americans.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
As women moved out of the kitchen and into the workforce, the Law of Supply and Demand came into play:
Everybody’s wages dropped.
Is the War on Women a case of Friendly Fire?
If we brought in millions of new immigrants, would the numbers get better or worse?
Joe Doakes
And if most of the immigrants were female, how much worse would it get?
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
This woman is upset that a man didn’t help her lift her bag into the overhead compartment. Is chivalry dead?
Well, honey, it’s like this: a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, right? If he offered to help, that would mean he’s assuming you can’t do it alone, that you’re not as Good as a Man. That’s sexism and like all modern sensitive men, he abhors the thought of doing anything sexist. A committed feminist, he’s standing there letting you be the strong and independent woman you are, lifting your own bag. Sure, you helped another woman later, but that’s Grrrl Power and it’s okay because no men were involved so no female egos were bruised in the process.
Or possibly, he’s thinking this might be a teachable moment. Everybody on that 6:00 a.m. flight is a business-person Just Like You. They all packed their own bags. They all shlepped their own bags aboard. They all lifted their own bags. The difference is: they put some thought into what they were packing. They didn’t cram everything in their entire wardrobe into that bag. They can lift theirs without help. Perhaps he’s standing aside to give you the opportunity to make a life-changing discovery about yourself . . . that you need to organize your life better, plan ahead farther, pack less so you can lift your own bag without doing an Olympic event. Could be he’s using Tough Love to help you to help yourself. A bag-lifter is an enabler. A bystander creates the opportunity for life-style changing. Should you be sneering at a person who’s trying to help?
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s Not About You. Maybe he’s got problems of his own, just as you have problems of your own. He’s dealing with his. You deal with yours. As equals. Powerfully. Independently. Alone.
Joe Doakes
A woman needs a man like a fish needs carry-on baggage.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
My wife and I went to Har Mar last weekend, to walk the mall. Yes, I am a mall-walker. Hey, it’s the only exercise she can get me to do, so it’s better than nothing.
An older man was sitting on a bench, people-watching. We recognized him as a guy who retired from my wife’s workplace last year. Effeminate mannerisms, trim physique, perfect hair: everyone assumed he was gay but so what, he’s a nice guy and he works hard. He never married, lived at home so he could care for his Mom until she died, and now he sits in the mall, alone.
The best argument the gay rights crowd advanced for normalizing their lifestyle was that everyone deserves to grow old with someone they love. I felt sad for him as my wife and I walked away, holding hands.
Of course, I recognize that “grow old with the one you love” is a slippery slope. There’s no reason “the one you love” must be limited. As an intellectual argument, it’s just as valid when applied to child brides, first cousins, man-boy love and probably other arrangements I’m too squeamish to wonder about. I accept that the fundamental organizational unit for any long-term stable society must be the nuclear family, lest it collapse in an orgy of self-indulgence. I’m not certain whether the next big push to expand marriage come from Muslims in plural marriages or feminists living alone with their cats; I am certain the next big push is coming.
But I still feel sorry for that man, sitting in the mall, alone.
If I were an ultra-orthodox Mormon, my ears would be perking up these days.
Behold the next generation of “progressive” women.
And be afraid for our society. Be very afraid.
A move has begun in Oklahoma to get the state out of the marriage business. While the news story on the subject phrases it as “prohibiting marriage”, what the proposal would really do is end the practice of issuing government marriage licenses, and leave the institution of marriage – or whatever – to the individual.
If you wanted to marry in a church – provided the church recognizes your form of union – then mazel tov. And if they don’t – or you’re just not that religious, anyway – then you would just write up a contract, and live by it.
Of course, this proposal will likely rile up both extremes; the extreme left has come to regard redefining marriage (in the eyes of the state, anyway) as its big victory; this would be removing the issue from the table, which would be a slap in the left’s face akin to turning the Stonewall Bar into a condo development.
Social conservatives – or at least the short-sighted ones – will howl like stuck cats, too; many of them see government as a vehicle for building society in their image, no less than the far left does. But it is short-sighted; by getting marriage out of the public sphere, they can save the traditional version of it now that “let’s let government define our social mores” thing is backfiring badly.
By getting the state out of marriage, everybody wins; traditional marriage can sprout where it’s bloomed; “alternative” ideals of the institution can grow between whomever wants them.
Of course, the extreme left isn’t looking for a win-win. And we’ll have to see about the social right.
But for now? The idea is a brilliant one.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
President Obama celebrated the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade with one curious omission – he never mentioned the word “abortion.”
Instead, he dwelt on access to health care, reproductive freedom, right to privacy, safe and healthy communities, opportunities to fulfill their dreams . . . what a snooze. That same litany of mushy feel-good platitudes could roll across the Teleprompter any day of the week. We’re here to talk about killing babies, something like 50 million of them since the decision was issued. And according to Democrats, that’s a good thing. Fine, then say so.
It’s almost as if the President is afraid to speak the plain truth, for fear people will recoil from it. Perhaps we haven’t been de-sensitized enough. Might be time to recycle some Dead Baby jokes from my junior high school days. Remember those? Can’t remember the last time I heard a Dead Baby joke. Perhaps with 50 million of them piled up, it’s not funny anymore.
Joe Doakes
One can hope.
How many Planned Parenthood executives does it take to change a light bulb?
None. They just declare darkness a woman’s right.
Wendy Davis – “Abortion Barbie”, the lefty pinup girl who shut down the Texas legislature with a screaming mob of ignorant infanticide buffs – will be campaigning for Al Franken on the “War on Womyn” slate.
Wendy Davis. Trophy wife, baby-death advocate, Al Franken supporter.
Her bio – the inevitable “nineteen year old single mother who worked her way through Harvard” – is the sort of “Strong Womyn!” narrative that seems to have been snatched from the Lifetime Network.
Oh, yeah – it’s fudged just a bit:
Davis was 21, not 19, when she was divorced. She lived only a few months in the family mobile home while separated from her husband before moving into an apartment with her daughter.
A single mother working two jobs, she met Jeff Davis, a lawyer 13 years older than her, married him and had a second daughter. He paid for her last two years at Texas Christian University and her time at Harvard Law School, and kept their two daughters while she was in Boston.
Hey, wait! ”Trophy Wife” doesn’t fit the narrative! What the…?
When they divorced in 2005, he was granted parental custody, and the girls stayed with him. Wendy Davis was directed to pay child support.
In a state where women can normally win custody after killing someone, that says something. The first husband went on to run for office as a Republican.
Davis apparently gave her second husband the brown helmet the day after she graduated from Harvard.
Anyway – Abortion Barbie will be coming to Minnesota to campaign for Franken…
…unless she made that up, too.
Please, Al Franken campaign. I beg of you. Bring Abortion Barbie to Minnesota. Feature her up at the podium with you.
Wendy Davis is the face of feminism today.
Obama’s poll numbers are crashing – as in, post-Fallujah-George-W-Bush crashing.
He’s cratering fastest among women – who were, along with African-Americans, the lynchpin of both of his victories.
Tammy Bruce looks over Obama’s collapse among women:
The unfolding realities of Obamacare and its destruction of health insurance plans and personal, patient-doctor relationships confirm women’s fears that health insurance under Obamacare is not superior, but is quite inferior to health care they were free to choose before this regrettable law was in force. What women voted against in 2010 has come true, and we’re not happy about it. This may come as surprise to Mr. Obama and the people in his inner circle, but women’s health care involves more than sound bites and pithy one-liners.
With all the bad news descending on Mr. Obama as a direct result of his high-handedness and deceit on Obamacare, surely nothing could come as a greater shock to him than that women, the one constituency he has relied on the most, other than blacks, refuse to be swindled out of their health care freedoms and to be used to help perpetrate this massive fraud on the American people.
Well, I for one will believe it when I see it. In particular, single women who don’t have children are among the most querulously gullible liberals there are. They fell for that “vote to protect your lady parts” bilge in epic numbers, after all.
But maybe there’s hope.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
The big news at the Minnesota Continuing Legal Education Real Estate Institute was same-sex marriage passed this Summer and how does that affect spousal rights in Minnesota?
I thought the biggest laugh was this section of Minn. Stat. 517.201:
“Subd. 2.Rules of construction. When necessary to implement the rights and responsibilities of spouses or parents in a civil marriage between persons of the same sex under the laws of this state, including those that establish parentage presumptions based on a civil marriage, gender-specific terminology, such as “husband,” “wife,” “mother,” “father,” “widow,” “widower,” or similar terms, must be construed in a neutral manner to refer to a person of either gender.
Good news, Mitch, you are no longer a Husband or Father, you now are a person of either gender implementing the rights and responsibilities of a spouse and parent.
Frankly, I prefer “Interchangeable Marital Unit” or since we all know which role men are assigned in divorce court: “Cash Cow.”
Joe Doakes
Generally, when I get involved with someone, I try to do it for the long term.
But I’m almost tempted to try to get into a serious relationship – ideally something with a hip-hop theme, no matter how convoluted - if only so I can break up using the line “you got 99 problems, but a Mitch ain’t one”.
OK, just so you don’t have to ask your kids…
I’ve found that this is even more true…
…with womens’ cars.
Women can’t follow directions!
Criminy.
Imagine the media’s response if the genders were reversed in this commercial.
WOMAN: You’re “mansplaining”.
GUY: Huh?
WOMAN: “Mansplaining”. When a guys gives a condescending and inaccurate explanation that the assumption that I’m entirely ignorant on the subject matter or topic.
GUY: You are utterly ignorant of the subject matter and topic. Our discussion has shown you haven’t the foggiest clue about the subject. 90 degrees removed from literacy.
WOMAN: You’re doing it again. You’re mansplaining.
GUY: You’re being a whineanist. You need to unisexshushupandlearnsomething.
(And SCENE)
One of the least useful arguments against gay marriage was “so it’s about love? So if you love your goat, or a child, you could marry them?”
Neither goats nor children (age of consent laws notwithstanding) have standing to sign contracts, of course. It’s kind of a strawman.
But the other, inevitable part of the argument is “so what about polygamy?”
Remember – it’s all about love, and civil rights. And groups of people most definitely do sign contracts. So who are we to hold our antiquated “monogamous” standards over polygamists’ heads?
No, it’s not a strawman:
What’s magical about the number two?
In fact, you could argue that there is an even better argument for polygamy than for same sex marriage. For one thing, there’s a long tradition (just look at the heroes of the Old Testament.) It’s also intimately tied to religious practice, which means that by prohibiting polygamy, we might also be undermining the “free exercise thereof.”
Why should we impose our values on others?
Now, you might say that there is historical evidence to support the fact that polygamy is bad for women and children. This is sophistry. The truth is that right now about half of all marriages end in divorce, and lots of kids are already struggling, so it’s not like traditional marriage is a panacea. Besides, nobody is forcing you to be a polygamist. This is a choice.
And unlike gay marriage, which is entirely a modern Western social construct, Polygamy has occurrred througout human history, including our own.
There are practical reasons, too. It’s harder and harder these days to make ends meet. As a man, I can only imagine how much more efficient it would be to have one wife in the workforce and another wife at home with the kids. This would be much better for the children than shipping them off to some nursery school. And having three parents is a lot better than having just one … or none.
Yesterday’s SCOTUS decision, and last fall’s election in Minnesota, had clear-ish verdicts; “marriage” is “about love” and “civil rights”.
So what – legally - is the difference between a monogamous and polyamorous family unit, since those are the standards?
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
US Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, in part on the ground that states should have the right to decide the definition of marriage, the federal government has no Constitutional authority to do it.
Glad to hear States Rights making a comeback with the Left. Let’s remember this when Obama, Feinstein and Bloomberg call for national gun control legislation.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
Attention, liberals; now you’re all “Tenthers!”
Australia’s Prime Minster, Julia Gillard, flogs the “Gender War” card…
…with the kind of results the American electorate would do well to heed:
But the ploy has backfired with a poll in Fairfax Media showing male voters are abandoning Gillard and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and there is little sign of more women getting behind her.
The telephone poll of 1,400 voters found that since the last survey a month ago Labor’s standing has continued to slide, led entirely by a seven percent exodus of men.
Under a two-party vote, the conservative opposition would romp home in the September 14 elections with 57 percent (up three points) to 43 percent (down three points) for Labor.
Two possible conclusions: either 1) there are limits to “war on women” rhetoric, or b) Australian voters are just plain smarter than ours are.
I’ve written about this in the past. It’s worth another visit.
I’m very ambivalent about Father’s Day. I used to say I was of two minds – but it’s more like three minds these days.
On the one hand, I’m thankful for the father I have. My dad was just about the best father a guy could ask for (and still is), in just about every way. The part I didn’t appreciate about him until I had older kids of my own? Most guys learn about being a father, for better or worse, from their own fathers. My grandfather died when my Dad was five, though. My grandma raised Dad, and as good a job as she did, she wasn’t a father. Fathers bring different things to their children than mothers do – including the whole “How to be a dad” thing. So Dad was kinda winging it. And I’d like to think that, in the immortal words of Dr. Perry Cox, “he could have done a lot worse”. Part of the spirit of Father’s Day for me is acknowleding him. So thanks, Dad!
As to me? Having kids, and getting to raise them, was the most important thing in my life. Still is. And up through about age 11, it was almost purely wonderful and rewarding. Now, getting my kids through their teenage years and into their twenties has been - I’ll be diplomatic – a challenge. But if it were easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they? On that level, Father’s Day means saying “We survived another year!”. And that’s not so bad.
The third thing, though? Father’s Day makes me angry.
Our society systematically devalues fatherhood. It’s the most flagrant in our current urban culture, where a strong majority of babies are born into fatherless homes, where teachers are reporting an epidemic of risk-averse kids afraid to go outside because they’re being raised by risk-averse single women, where entire generations of young men are growing up with no masculine role models in their lives until they get into their teens – when all the role models are bad.
But it’s not just in the neighborhood. It’s all over our society. Hollywood and Madison Avenue’s model for the mainstream father is Homer Simpson – incompetent, borderline-depraved, saved only by his preternaturally competent, all-enduring and (at least on TV ads) improbably out-of-his-league wife (and sometimes daughter and, occasionally sons before they get the lobotomy that seems to go along with fatherhood in that special little world).
The current trend in feminist-dominated academia echoes Margaret Mead’s quip from fifty years ago – “men are a biological necessity and a social accident”. The education system is increasingly marginalizing boys and men of all ages; medicating their masculine traits and treating them as social disorders, shunting boys who refuse to comply and conform onto the “Special Ed” track, making “education” a punitive death march for boys who don’t get the message “go along, get along, conform, keep your butt in the seat and speak when spoken to”. And that policy is bearing rancid fruit; before long, women will outnumber men in higher education 3:2, with the margin even more grotesque in Education (ensuring the vicious cycle will continue) and the social “sciences” (ditto).
And while the situation has improved in recent years in many states, the fact is that for many men, “fatherhood” is a legal state of eternal debt and denial; ejected from any meaningful presence in their childrens’ lives by a court system that spent a few decades acting as an agent of Big Feminism and county social service bureaucracies that still largely do, men are relegated to the role of occasional visitors and ATM machines and, often, much worse; a shocking percentage of “domestic abuse” allegations are brought purely to manipulate the system during divorce actions.
So for a fair chunk of the fathers in our society, “Father’s Day” is a cruel mockery. And it’s a symptom of the current system that I find I need to hasten to add “I’m not talking about the abusive ones, or the fathers that are nothing more than sperm donors”, as if they’re the majority.
I focus on the first two views of the holiday, because I’m a lucky guy on both counts. But let’s be mindful, on this most tongue-in-cheek and pollyannish of all the Hallmark Holidays, that there’s another side to the story.
Congrats, same sex marriage supporters. After five months of noodling non-stop with social policy – gun grabs, forcing daycares into the union racket and so on – Governor Dayton took a few minutes from his grueling day of sitting in his office to come out and sign same-sex marriage into law.
Well, there you go!
Now, when all that wedding excitement wears off, take a moment to think about a few things if you would:
I know – same sex marriage was a big thing for you. But just as weddings and honeymoons give way to the push and pull of actual married life, the euphoria you feel over getting a legislative milestone passed (I had my moment on my issue ten years ago, so I know how you feel) eventually passes, and you get to dwell on other things.
Like what an unholy has the DFL is making of this state’s economy. The one we all live in, gay or straight.
Over the past 20 years, society’s largely made it illegal to just be a boy.
For a while, it was an openly-held belief in educational-psychology circles that the niggling traits of typical boyhood – a penchant for rough play and exploratory violence, a disdain, at least through one developmental stage, for verbally-based social interaction (that’s what girls do) in favor of getting outside and mixing it up – were pathologies that needed to be cured, or at least harnessed. As documented by Christine Hoff-Summers in her classic The War On Boys, “making boys more like girls” became a bit of a crusade in the educational academy during the 1990s and 2000s. Recess – with all its ritualized rough and tumble – was curtailed, supervised, sometimes abolished. Via means social, pedagogical and chemical, “educators” tried their darnedest to get boys to sit down, shut up, and get verbal.
It’s led us to a generation of kids who’ve been medicated to a fine sheen, who remain in a state of suspended adolescence well into their thirties in many cases, and in the worst case who don’t know the limits of roughness and violence, since the rituals by which they used to learn how to process that testosterone – rough play, stylized roughhousing, the occasional fight that usually ended in friends staying friends who knew who not to mess with – have been scolded, punished and drugged out of existence.
I don’t know who the woman is who wrote this piece; she sounds like she could be any of a few thousand middle-aged moms in Edina alone, at least in the first couple of grafs.
So, I think that instead of teaching our kids NOT to be violent we need to teach them HOW and WHEN to be violent. We have so many stories of people standing around watching others getting assaulted or verbally attacked and we don’t know why. We have thousands of self-defense classes all over the country. We have anti-bullying programs that tell us to stop bullying but offer no concise steps telling us how. Honestly ask yourself, if you don’t know that you can physically defend yourself, would you really step in to verbally confront someone who is being physically and verbally threatening? I know I wouldn’t.
If we are to raise boys who are willing to step in when a girl is being attacked or fight back when a boy is being vicious, we are going to have to admit that we DO expect violence in some scenarios and teach them the fine lines to walk within. Why wait to learn self-defense as an adult? Why not let them learn it, as they are growing up, with the guidance of their parents? Maybe not all is violence is so bad after all.
Force isn’t necessarily violence. And not all violence is bad.
And we have raised a generation kids that don’t know the difference. And it’s our fault.
And by “our fault”, I mean “all you feminists who banned boyhood’s fault”. Just so we’re clear on that.
They said that if I voted for Mitt Romney, our institutions would become overwhelmed with caustic sexism.
And they were right!
