When wingnut writer Dennis Prager writes about sex and relationships, you know you’re in for a full-on, misogynistic weakling display of ignorance. For instance, he wrote quite a bit a few years ago about how marital rape really doesn’t exist, and how it’s a wife’s duty to let her husband have sex with her any time he wants, as a thank you for the fact that he’s not having sex with other women. Dennis is quite a charmer.
Today he’s back with a column at the National Review, about how feminism and ladies having rights has destroyed everything. Let’s take a look:
Yes, women have more opportunities to achieve career success; they are now members of most Jewish and Christian clergy; women’s college sports teams are given huge amounts of money; and there are far more women in political positions of power. But the prices paid for these changes — four in particular — have been great, and outweigh the gains for women, let alone for men and for society.
Dennis Prager cares about the ladies, first and foremost! Let him man-splain to all of the ladies how making things better for them has really made it so much worse.
The first was the feminist message to young women to have sex just as men do. There is no reason for them to lead a different sexual life than men, they were told. Just as men can have sex with any woman solely for the sake of physical pleasure, so, too, women ought to enjoy sex with any man just for the fun of it.
Why should women be free to act as men so often have? Because Dennis says it’s not good for the silly ladies:
As a result, vast numbers of young American women had, and continue to have, what are called “hookups”; and for some of them it is quite possible that no psychological or emotional price has been paid. But the majority of women who are promiscuous do pay prices. One is depression. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat recently summarized an academic study on the subject: “A young woman’s likelihood of depression rose steadily as her number of partners climbed and the present stability of her sex life diminished.”
Let us pause to consider Ross Douthat’s expertise in the area of sex and relationships. From his book:
One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend’s parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this point–”Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?” she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn’t surewhat to say, but then I wasn’t sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business… and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered–”You know, I’m on the pill…”
As Ken Layne remarked at the time, “Let’s see, misogynist passive-aggressive drunken jerk blaming his impotence on a woman having access to birth control? WE HAVE A WINNER.” Back to Dennis:
The second awful legacy of feminism has been the belief among women that they could and should postpone marriage until they developed their careers. Only then should they seriously consider looking for a husband. Thus, the decade or more during which women have the best chance to attract men is spent being preoccupied with developing a career. Again, I cite woman callers to my radio show over the past 20 years who have sadly looked back at what they now, at age 40, regard as 20 wasted years. Sure, these frequently bright and talented women have a fine career. But most women are not programmed to prefer a great career to a great man and a family.
Most women are not programmed to want careers, and it’s only the fact that they’re so easily led by feminists that causes them to pursue careers in the first place! Dennis instead presumably believes that women are programmed to stay pregnant and submissive, and again, to have sex with their husbands at all times, whenever the guy wants it.
The third sad feminist legacy is that so many women — and men — have bought the notion that women should work outside the home that for the first time in American history, and perhaps world history, vast numbers of children are not primarily raised by their mothers or even by an extended family member.
Ladies, you should not want financial independence or peace of mind! Why would you want to accomplish things on your own when a big strong man could do them for you?
Finally, though, is Dennis’s greatest concern for the women: how it affects men and makes him feel, personally. As it turns out, all you ladies with jobs and lives are making him feel like less of a tuff guy:
And the fourth awful legacy of feminism has been the demasculinization of men. For all of higher civilization’s recorded history, becoming a man was defined overwhelmingly as taking responsibility for a family. That notion — indeed the notion of masculinity itself — is regarded by feminism as the worst of sins: patriarchy.
Men need a role, or they become, as the title of George Gilder’s classic book on single men describes them: Naked Nomads. In little more than a generation, feminism has obliterated roles. If you wonder why so many men choose not to get married, the answer lies in large part in the contemporary devaluation of the husband and of the father — of men as men, in other words. Most men want to be honored in some way — as a husband, a father, a provider, as an accomplished something; they don’t want merely to be “equal partners” with a wife.
You see, men like Dennis Prager need to be honored and worshipped, not on their merits, but merely because they have penises. It makes them uncomfortable to consider the notion that they are not better than other people, simply on account of being dudes. It makes them feel unsexy and stupid to consider the idea of an “equal partnership” with a woman. After all, in an equal partnership, nobody is bowing down and groveling at their feet simply for existing, and men might actually have to ask ladies if it’s okay if they have sex with them. In short, you ladies, whether you are Ross Douthat’s Chunky Reese Witherspoon, or someone else entirely, are ruining everything for poor fools like Dennis, who obviously aren’t smart enough to make a mark on this world with their actual ideas.
Occasionally it’s good to check in and see what our favorite anti-gay hate groups are up to when they’re not hating gay people. Lest we fail to understand that the fights for LGBT equality and reproductive rights are inextricably linked — they are both about the ability of fundamentalist Christian men to control the bodies and sex lives and autonomy of anyone who doesn’t look like them — let’s take a look at the “personhood amendment” being debated in Mississippi right now.
If you’re not familiar with a “personhood amendment,” it goes like this:
Garden variety “pro-life” people tend to be concerned with stopping abortion, and favor using the law to enforce that, rather than actually fighting for things like economic freedom for poor women and sex education, things which have been proven to reduce the need for abortion. [Those are the things the pro-choice movement works toward.] However, there is a subset within the activist anti-choice movement which seeks dominion over all female bodies, and will go to any length to achieve it. A “personhood amendment” would codify in a state’s Constitution that human life begins at the point of fertilization and grant that embryo all the rights of an actual human being. This is patently insane to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the human reproductive process. By this definition of “personhood,” millions of people “die” every day when embryos which haven’t yet implanted simply don’t turn into actual pregnancies. They aren’t even miscarriages.
The result of such an amendment would, of course, go around Roe v. Wade and ban all abortion in a state, but it would also put in danger lots of other things 99% of women take for granted in the United States. Irin Carmon has a great piece in Salon today which exposes what Mississippi is trying to do right now:
[T]he Personhood movement hopes to do nothing less than reclassify everyday, routine birth control as abortion. The medical definition of pregnancy is when a fertilized egg successfully implants in the uterine wall. If this initiative passes, and fertilized eggs on their own have full legal rights, anything that could potentially block that implantation – something a woman’s body does naturally all the time – could be considered murder. Scientists say hormonal birth-control pills and the morning-after pill work primarily by preventing fertilization in the first place, but the outside possibility, never documented, that an egg could be fertilized anyway and blocked is enough for some pro-lifers.
On the chopping block: the morning-after pill, IUD’s, most forms of in vitro fertilization and, according to some, the regular old birth control pill. Moreover, the door would be open to investigating women who have recently miscarried. It happens in lots of countries.
You may be reading this and thinking, “that is insane. Nobody is that insane.” Have you met Fundamentalist Christian men before?
But a Colorado-based Personhood activist, Ed Hanks, is more than willing to publicly take things to their logical conclusion. He wrote on the Personhood Mississippi Facebook page that after abortion is banned, “the penalties have to be the same [for a women as well as doctors], as they would have to intentionally commit a known felony in order to kill their child. Society isn’t comfortable with this yet because abortion has been ‘normalized’ — as the Personhood message penetrates, then society will understand why women need to be punished just as surely as they understand why there can be no exceptions for rape/incest.”
[...]
At several public forums organized by the secretary of state to discuss ballot initiatives, resident Scott Murray’s statement was typical: “I know there is an issue with pregnancies, unmarried pregnancies, but I tell you the greatest prevention is God, and we’ve got to return to God.” So was Stephen Hannabass’ assertion that “we’ve got to repent. We’ve got to come before God and beg for mercy for our state and for our country.”
You see, if Mississippi just “repents” and “turns back to God,” there won’t be any problems anymore! Left unmentioned by these men, of course, is the fact that Mississippi has one of the worst infant morality rates in the nation, as well as one of the worst rates of child poverty. For these people, life truly begins at conception and concern for it ends at birth, especially if you happen to be a woman.
Irin explains that this measure [which was once supported by most Mississippians, until they actually heard the details of it] didn’t really have legs until one of our favorite hate groups got involved. Yes, the American Family Association is an anti-gay hate group, but it’s also an anti-woman and anti-family hate group:
It was the American Family Association endorsement that put media muscle behind the movement in Mississippi, with email blasts, radio PSAs and interviews, promotions on its own website, and combined with the grass-roots energy, the state’s anti-choice groups took notice. Suddenly, people who had previously focused on incremental change – parental consent laws, waiting periods, ultrasound laws – were ecstatically heralding an end of the “murders.” Mike Huckabee keynoted a fundraiser and even presumed GOP front-runner Mitt Romney to endorse the concept on his show.
Ta-da! When they’re not letting Bryan Fischer lie shamelessly about gay people and screaming and crying about hardware stores being mean to them, the AFA is quietly working to take away most of women’s fundamental rights over what they can and cannot do with their bodies. I cannot imagine what the next step would be, should something like this ever pass. Once they have women’s reproductive systems firmly in their hands, will they move on to controlling what they eat or when they speak? I wouldn’t be surprised.
Please, do yourself a favor and read Irin’s whole piece. The part about how this could affect the treatment of ectopic pregnancies will make you sick. There is a good chance that, as the details of the Personhood Movement, and their true goals, come to light, that this will go down in history as one of the patriarchy’s grand overreaches. I hope so. Again, 99% of women think birth control is just great.
And remember — groups like the American Family Association don’t just hate you as an LGBT person. They hate you in any way you might be different from their poorly conceived, bastardized fundamentalist “Christian” view of how people should live.
UPDATE: Two more things. First, here is the video from Freda Bush, a proponent of the amendment, who is also an OB-GYN. Watch as she lies through her teeth about what this bill is about.
Her lies are solidly refuted in Irin Carmon’s piece.
This will probably make you retch if you are a thinking person, so if you happen to be eating lunch right now, I am sorry. But PZ and severalothers found this letter from a devout Reformed Baptist man, describing his marriage to his wife, and let’s just say that if this is what anti-gay bigots are talking about when they extol “traditional marriage,” well, then, there’s a reason divorce rates are so high in more fundamentalist states and communities.
Disclaimer: yes, we know, this is not what all Christians are like. Indeed, these are Reformed Baptists, which, as a recovered Reformed Presbyterian (they’re not that far apart), I happen to know something about. It’s a strange theology, and a cruel one, wherein humans have no say in whether or not they were created in order to be sent to paradise or a fiery hell by their benevolent god. Thanks, John Calvin! As many of the most vehemently anti-gay bigots out there are Calvinists of some stripe or another, I find this relevant.
So anyway, this seems to be a note from a Reformed Baptist man to the guests of his wedding feast to the wife he has procured [you will need to click to embiggen it, probably]:
Okay! So let’s break this down a bit, so we can learn about the qualities of, apparently, some Reformed marriages, which are viewed by these people as The Real Thing, whereas same sex marriage is “an abomination.”
As Bible-believing Baptists who hold to reformed theology, X and I believe that God is sovereign in choosing who will or will not believe in him, having chosen his people before the foundation of the world (see Ephesians 1), and that his selection is unbreakable and irresistible. If marriage is to mirror this principle, we believe that a woman has no right to select a husband for herself, but that she is to be chosen by a man and marriage is to be an unbreakable arrangement between the man and her father. Based on this reasoning, we have shunned a standard proposal and wedding ceremony, because if I had asked her to marry me (which I did not) then I would have given her the decision to marry me rather than selecting her and taking her myself. Furthermore, if we had exchanged conventional marriage vows, our union would have been based on X’s will and consent, which are not Biblical factors for marriage or salvation. Instead, I asked X’s father for his blessing in taking her hand in marriage. When he gave his blessing, X and I considered ourselves to be unbreakably betrothed in the sight of God. While we had initially intended to consummate our marriage after today’s symbolic ceremony, we instead did so secretly after private scripture reading, prayer, and mutual foot-washing.
Yes, in Reformed theology, humans have no say in the matter. Therefore, as a logical extension, since “marriage” is a picture of the relationship between Christ and his church, it would follow that that sort of marriage would be essentially a transaction between a man and his new chattel’s daddy. And really, she’s just a woman. It’s not like she’s a person or anything! This is, of course, a rather childish understanding of Reformed Theology, not that I expect any more from its typical adherents. In point of fact, if this devout Reformed Baptist man had a wedding and marriage that really went according to the Calvinist “plan of salvation,” there are few details missing. Yes, they believe that their god chooses who will and will not be saved and that humans have no say in the matter. However, they also believe that, by the very act of being called upon by their god, humans come to “salvation” irresistibly. In other words, only those who are chosen are called, and by their god “changing their hearts,” they are impelled, but happily, to freely come to a “saving faith.” Those who are not chosen are simply not called and thus remain hardened or deaf or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days.
So for Reformed Baptist Dude to really make his wedding a mirror of his understanding of the relationship between Christ and the Church, he needs to have coerced her in some way into believing that she has no other choice but to do what he commands, which in this case is marrying him. She must first be bamboozled into believing on her own that she has literally no choice in the matter. I assume that the wife’s father probably helped with that.
Moving, on, his words about how his god hates gays. This, in a letter about his own marriage, again, presumably to his wedding feast guests:
X and I have obtained a marriage license in Hall County, GA to gain recognition from the state, but their recognition does not make us married. The recognition of a civil government cannot marry any two people in the sight of God, and this should be obvious from the state’s recent confusion in “marrying” same-sex couples engaged in the sin of sodomy.
Uh. Yeah, millions upon millions of people know differently. But of course, his statement is essentially arguing with itself, as wingnuts so often do. OF COURSE they want the civil benefits of being “married in the eyes of god!” They want the goodies, because they were chosen, you see! This dude and his chattel’s father were chosen together to trade a particular member of the wimminfolk race from one generation to another, and they’ll be damned (well no, they won’t, as they are chosen) if you’re going to keep gubmint benefits from them. But they want the secular civil government to conform its idea of marriage to their weird notion of matrimony. By this definition, of course, most other Christian couples aren’t really married, and neither are Jews or Muslims or atheists, even if they all have penis-vagina marriages! But you’ll never see this breed of wingnut argue to take marriage rights away from straight couples who don’t believe in the medieval crap they espouse. Something in them knows that’s just a bridge too far. But, you know, gays are bad.
The rest of his letter, as you can see, is about how she’s wearing white and he’s wearing a red shirt, representing blood, or something. Sounds like the wedding party looked like hell.
Anyway. So there is a portrait of one kind of biblical marriage. To most sentient beings, it’s pretty disgusting. But that is what at least some of the bigots are defending from the marauding hordes of evil gays.
If you are like normal Americans, you were under the impression that yesterday, Labor Day, is a holiday where we celebrate the accomplishments of the organized labor movement in this country. More information about that here! Of course, wingnuts really hate organized labor in this country, so they have to find weird, contrived things to write about it whenever it comes around. So it is that we have this dude, writing at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Choler, about what Labor Day means to him, personally:
Robert Morrison served in the Department of Education under President Ronald Reagan. He is now a Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at Family Research Council in Washington.
Great, a dingus I’ve never heard of from a hate group that annoys me. This should be entertaining:
As we mark Labor Day, I’d like to salute those women who keep our economy productive by their labors in the home.
Scripture refers to the first time that God said that something was not good. “And the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him’” (Gen. 2:18). By “an help meet,” the Elizabethan writers of the King James Bible meant someone who is able to help a man work. Even in paradise, there is much work to be done. Naming and exercising authority over the plants and animals, making the garden fruitful — these are labors of the first order. Thus, we see marriage between man and woman as part of the natural order. In thus creating and honoring marriage, God also dignified labor.
God said something wasn’t good that wasn’t about gayness? Imagine. So we’re paying tribute to the ladies who stay at home, that’s fine. How is he going to make this about gays?
Labor unions claim credit for being “the folks who brought you the American weekend.”
That’s largely true. But today, organized labor also brings us America the weakened. That’s because liberal labor union leaders have too often ignored their members’ values as they’ve pressed for abortion-on-demand and the ending of marriage.
Bravo, weird wingnut, bravo. America is weaker because “labor unions today” (evil) spend all their time loving abortion and gayness. He of course offers no corroborating evidence for these assertions, but “proof” is anathema among the fundamentalist wingnut crowd. You’re simply supposed to take what the hate group hack says on faith!
Anyway, he goes on for several more paragraphs doing his “women should stay at home and push out babies” thing because that is the true meaning of “labor,’ and then he is finished, therefore so are we. Ugh.
Fundamentalist Christian Misogyny 101. Ladies need to get their heads out of “emo-porn,” you see. What is “emo-porn?” Welllllll:
Loneliness strikes at the heart of both husbands and wives, but tends to plunge deeper into the emotional expanse of women. This is one reason why wives are seduced by “emo-porn,” virtual infidelity that is more emotionally satisfying before it physically pleases. But like salt water, it creates a worsening thirst. With emo-porn, fantasy men perform stunningly between the sheets of conversation, emotional understanding, and emotional dexterity. Most mortal men cannot deliver such behavior, the way men do in soap operas and romance novels. Just as wives rightly complain when compared to the artificially created women of Internet porn, men should complain when compared to the artificial men of daytime television. Interesting, isn’t it, how they have such exciting jobs—no Joe The Plumbers. In the real world where real men burn through a lot of emotional battery life to make a real living, being expected to behave like men who don’t exist is more than wrong. It’s cruel.
Emo-porn creates caricatures in the minds and hearts of wives. Most men just aren’t and cannot be that attentive, especially in marriage where responsibilities to provide weigh heavy upon them. Husbands are quietly deemed unresponsive and uncaring when compared to emotionally dexterous hunks of daytime lore, chat rooms, celebrity rags, and romance novels. Thus a secretive and snowballing form of marital discontent is born and nurtured.
First of all, this was written by a dude. Stupid ladies, listen to the man trying to teach you the stuff about things!
Um, so yes, what Paul Coughlin seems to be saying here is that silly womenfolk get all caught up by the “nice, romantic men” they read about in the Harlequin romances and watch on the Days of our Lives, when what they really should be doing is staying home and being grateful for the chauvinist shitass Godly Christian Man the Lord Hath Blessed Them With.
Boys aren’t supposed to feel emotions or be thoughtful! Crazy ladies, what are you thinking, wanting men who treat you like human beings? That is not the fundamentalist Christian way, and you know it.
An openly gay high school student confronted Tim Pawlenty about his lack of support for marriage equality at the Iowa State Fair. Predictably, Pawlenty punted, called it a “respectful disagreement,” and tried to run away from the question. This is pretty stunning, actually, and shows just how little wingnut Republicans think of their fellow human beings. The transcript, and then the video, viaThink Progress:
Q: I thought our country was about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone, no exceptions. So Tim Pawlenty, I want to know know — when will you stand up for me…because you are discriminating against me and it hurts, it really does.
PAWLENTY: I understand we have a difference of opinion on this issue…the relationship between a man and a woman in a traditional marriage is important to our country, our society, our culture…
Q: I support that you have your moral values, but that is something that is hurting my future and how I get to live my life…why does government get involved in our marriages? … Do you think I’m a second class citizen?
PAWLENTY: We’re just going to have a respectful disagreement, sir.
The wingnut definition of “respectful disagreement,” by the way, is “yes, I view you as lesser, because you’re not a white, straight Christian man. I am a supremacist, and that’s just how it is.”
Don’t you like it how the other lemmings start barking in the audience, trying to drown the kid out? Lovely people.
Jeremy just had a novel idea for Maggie Gallagher, who is on the whine-trail this week about marriage supposedly being destroyed, redefined, being taken over by the government, blah blah blah, etc. For instance, she said this:
“Gay marriage is not an increase in liberty; it is a government takeover of an institution that government did not create and should not redefine.
When the government endorses a lie about human nature, there will be consequences.”
Yeah, whatever, Maggie. We still haven’t seen YOUR traditionally wed husband and you still don’t wear a wedding ring. Which leads to Jeremy’s idea:
If Maggie thinks marriage had been subjected to government takeover, then she and every single married person who agrees with her needs to return the marriage license that he or she obtained from the state.
DAMN RIGHT SHE SHOULD! Maggie, Brian Brown, whatever other Religious Right goons live in marriage equality states: if your marriage has been devalued, redefined, destroyed, taken over by the government, or whatever else, due to the inclusion of gay people in the institution, then return your now worthless marriage license and fend for yourself without the benefits granted to you by the state.
We are waiting with bated breath. Unless you really don’t believe your own BS and this is just about heterosexual supremacy, patriarchy and extreme butthurtness over the fact that the American people lose more respect for you every single day…
My only question is this: How many of these changes is the Religious Right actually happy with?
I mean, we know Phyllis Schlafly probably doesn’t support the 1993 change, because she doesn’t believe marital rape exists. The 1769 change probably is a bit of a thorn in many anti-gay bigots’ sides. 1967? Hell, Mississippi’s still having trouble with that.
Perhaps the greater lesson to be learned here is that it’s important to see the same-sex marriage fight not as simply anti-gay, but as just one more thing that chips away at the frail patriarchy wingnuts need to preserve in order to sustain some semblance of self worth.
We all know the Bible verse from our Sunday School days, you know, the one about how only girls are supposed to wear pink nail polish. It’s right there, red-letter-edition, I believe. [That means Jesus said it, in case you didn't know.] So it’s appropriate that a wingnut going by the name of “Erin R. Brown” has published a fever screed bemoaning the “transgendered child propaganda” in a J. Crew ad:
J.CREW, a popular preppy woman’s clothing brand
Whoa, whoa, whoa, Erin, J. Crew is a women’s clothing brand?! They must be more subversive than I thought with their transgender propaganda, because I am a BOY BLOGGER and I am totally wearing a J. Crew shirt right now. Gay/transgender agenda bein’ crammed down everybody’s throats, ain’t it!
is targeting a new demographic – mothers of gender-confused young boys.
Well, they got cash. Okay, so here is the ad in question. It features Jenna Lyons, the president of J. Crew, with her son, who apparently likes the color pink, and also likes a little nail polish now and then.
This is a phase that MANY boys go through, and they grow up to be straight, gay, bisexual, transgender and whatever else. It literally has no bearing on anything if a little boy likes pink or nail polish. But we’re dealing with the Religious Right here, so please, let us all get our pink panties in a wad. Back to the complaining Erin person:
In the feature, Jenna is pictured with her adorable curly-haired son Beckett, and the two are seen giggling with Jenna holding Beckett’s feet, containing hot pink painted toe-nails. ‘Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink,’ read Jenna’s quote. ‘Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.’
Not only is Beckett likely to change his favorite color as early as tomorrow, Jenna’s indulgence (or encouragement) could make life hard for the boy in the future. J.CREW, known for its tasteful and modest clothing, apparently does not mind exploiting Beckett behind the façade of liberal, transgendered identity politics. One has to wonder what young boys in pink nail polish has to do with selling women’s clothing.
Okay, first of all, let’s be clear, that J. Crew makes clothes for men too. Also, let’s be clear about the fact that millions of moms have had little boys who liked to do girly things sometimes. Let us continue to be clear about the fact that, AS ERIN STATED, Beckett might change his favorite color tomorrow! That is the point about this being a phase that lots of kids go through! It is perfectly normal, and the reason this ad probably resonates is that it is such a common experience for moms of boys. To conclude that this ad has anything to do with “transgendered identity politics” is approximately as insane as continuing to believe that there is a question about the birthplace of Barack Obama. Oh, Erin. You’re probably one of those too, aren’t you?
Anyway, that’s all that Erin has to say. Unfortunately the story isn’t over, because now Fox News is jumping on the idiot bandwagon in declaring this a liberal, transgendered propaganda something or other. Enter hack psychologist Dr. Keith Ablow:
Yeah, well, it may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid—and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your “innocent” pleasure.
Yeah, because we all know the great damage done to kids who aren’t made to feel ashamed of themselves. Oh wait, this is a wingnut psychologist…they don’t care about protecting kids! They simply are concerned with protecting patriarchy and tradition.
This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity—homogenizing males and females when the outcome of such “psychological sterilization” [my word choice] is not known.
This is a dramatic example of nothing. And it is very obvious that “psychological sterilization” was your word choice, as a more qualified mental health professional would never utter moron words like that.
In our technology-driven world—fueled by Facebook, split-second Prozac prescriptions and lots of other assaults on genuine emotion and genuine relationships and actual consequences for behavior—almost nothing is now honored as real and true.
Increasingly, this includes the truth that it is unwise to dress little girls like miniature adults (in halter tops and shorts emblazoned with PINK across the bottoms) and that it is unwise to encourage little boys to playact like little girls.
One can make the argument that little girls shouldn’t be objectified in such ways, but to conflate that with the idea of little boys simply enjoying “girly” things is beyond stupid. What kind of degree mill let Keith Ablow through?
Now would be a good time to point out what this wingnut bitching session is really about, because Ablow goes on to ask, approximately, well, if you don’t see anything wrong with the ad, what if it was a boy in a sundress?! Note that they wouldn’t be quite as freaked out about a tomboy-ish girl. Why? Because, for a girl to aspire to be “like a boy,” although galling for these weak-minded men as it applies to a woman eschewing motherhood and choosing a high-paying career instead, seems quite natural for them, because they believe men are superior. They are freaking out over this because they believe that for a little boy to do something stereotypically “girly” is not just against tradition, but indeed shameful. It’s also the same reason wingnut freak-outs over homosexuality tend to skew hardest against gay men, because gay men are perceived [by wingnuts] to be betraying our masculinity, our superiority, our place on the pedestal. This goes all the way back to the verse in Leviticus about lying with a man “as with a woman.“ That verse isn’t about homosexuality, at least not the way modern minds understand it. It’s about misogyny. It’s about the inherent shame, the inherent lower status [they believe], in womanhood.
Watch the trash science spew as Ablow continues:
Well, how about the fact that encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil—not to mention crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts? Why not make race the next frontier? What would be so wrong with people deciding to tattoo themselves dark brown and claim African-American heritage? Why not bleach the skin of others so they can playact as Caucasians?
Oh my dear god! First of all, actual transgender people don’t get gender identities that match their biological sex at birth. Science actually understands this a bit, and all the major medical and mental health associations present a fairly unified front on how this should be handled. Moreover, no one is “crowding” operating rooms for the “amputation of body parts.” Anyone, who is not currently a mentally deficient wingnut, can understand that transgender is not a disease that is somehow going to spread through the general population if little boys are allowed to wear nail polish! The suggestion that this would in any way be related to “playacting” as members of another race is so stupidly insipid that I won’t even address it. Indeed, I’m not sure why I’m still responding at this point, because you really can’t fix stupid.
Ablow then details other symptoms of the fall-out from Nail-Polish-Gate:
The fallout is already being seen. Increasingly, girls show none of the reticence they once did to engage in early sexual relationships with boys. That may be a good thing from the standpoint of gender equality, but it could be a bad thing since there is no longer the same typically “feminine” brake on such behavior. Girls beat up other girls on YouTube. Young men primp and preen until their abdomens are washboards and their hair is perfect. And while that may seem like no big deal, it will be a very big deal if it turns out that neither gender is very comfortable anymore nurturing children above all else, and neither gender is motivated to rank creating a family above having great sex forever and neither gender is motivated to protect the nation by marching into combat against other men and risking their lives.
Okay, first of all, the seething hatred and jealousy Ablow exhibits toward men who have nice bodies and good hair is bizarre, but I understand it, considering his hair situation. But the rest of this can be summed up in one statement: “This is agin’ terdishun, it is!” Ablow here is lamenting the fall of a world where bitches know their place and men are elevated to superior status, simply on account of their penises. It’s supremely pathetic.
I wonder what Jenna would think if her son wanted to celebrate his masculinity with a little playacting as a cowboy, with a gun? Would that bring the same smile of joy and pure love that we see on her face in the J. Crew advertisement? Or would that be where she might draw the line?
Uh, she’d probably be fine with it, because normal, good parents [i.e. not wingnuts] love and support their kids no matter what, instead of putting the terdishun of the penis-having patriarchy above all else, and worrying about the fall-out later.
I’m always amazed at the utter lack of self-awareness wingnut men exhibit when they pen pieces like this, when they clutch their pearls in this way. Do they ever realize how weak, how fearful they look and sound? Do they realize that, in their desire to paint women into one, inferior corner, in their obsession with penis-substitutes, that they end up appearing, in their stereotypical images, like little girls? We on the sane side of things know that these binary constructs aren’t true, for we all have the capacity for strength and weakness, for “masculinity” and “femininity,” and every other emotion and characteristic on the spectrum, regardless of the respective arrangements of each of our genitals. But that is the world wingnuts live in, and so it’s always stunning to me, and not just a little bit hilarious, that in their whiny need to protect their male superiority, they just end up looking sad and scared.
The true threat to men like Dr. Keith Ablow isn’t that little boys who like to wear nail polish will suddenly become gay or transgender or anything else. It’s rather that there are little boys who wear nail polish today who will grow up to be greater, stronger men than anything those wingnuts could ever aspire to, men who don’t need the grading curve of the patriarchy to succeed in life.
He’s in character as 007, and in case you’re curious, he looks damn good in a dress.
But it’s not “pro-equality” like you’re thinking — no, this is a public service announcement addressing the kind of inequalities that still exist between men and women. Oh yes, we’re still cleaning up the mess the Christian patriarchy left us, on both sides of the pond.
When wingnut writer Dennis Prager writes about sex and relationships, you know you’re in for a full-on, misogynistic weakling display of ignorance. For instance, he wrote quite a bit a few years ago about how marital rape really doesn’t exist, and how it’s a wife’s duty to let her husband have sex with her any time he wants, as a thank you for the fact that he’s not having sex with other women. Dennis is quite a charmer.
