When Can You Call a Woman Masculine?

My latest article at NewsReal looks at when it’s okay to question a woman’s femininity. Check out the double standard:

Last week, noted feminist Keith Olbermann implied that the women of Fox News are only hired because they’re attractive.  In response, The Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher posted a photo gallery of women who work for MSNBC. When he got to Rachel Maddow, Treacher wrote, “Whoops, how did that one get in there? Sorry, man. I mean dude. I mean Rachel! Sorry, Rachel.”

Similar jokes have appeared in a column by Treacher’s colleague Matt Labash, prompting a writer at Jezebel to lecture “Tucker Carlson’s minions” that they must never, ever suggest that a woman looks masculine in appearance.

Making fun of women for looking or acting mannish is a time-honored way of belittling them, of trying to keep women out of both men’s clothes and men’s roles, and just because the woman in question is an out lesbian doesn’t mean jokes about her aren’t part of this misogynist tradition.

But if a Jezebel writer wants to insult Ann Coulter’s femininity? Oh, that’s totally cool:

Ann Coulter Finally Explains What’s Behind That Adam’s Apple

Please visit NewsReal to read the rest.

February 8, 2010 · Filed Under Feminism, Liberal Absurdity, Women

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Martha Coakley: Victim of the Patriarchy?

My piece at NewsReal today examines the inclination of some feminist writers to immediately blame sexism for Martha Coakley’s loss to Scott Brown.

There are facts, and then there are feminist facts.  Here’s an example:

Fact: Scott Brown is a white male who drives a pickup truck and won the Massachusetts special election.

Feminist fact: Scott Brown won the Massachusetts special election because he’s a white male who drives a pickup truck.

Can’t you picture the GMC warning labels? Caution: you’re driving a tool of the phallocracy.

You can read the rest at NewsReal.

Boiling the entire Coakley/Brown race down to gender bias is not only shallow, disingenuous political analysis, but it deprives women candidates of the ability to sink or swim on their own merits.  Of course, that hasn’t stopped others from piling on with variations on the sexism theme.

In addition to the examples cited in my NewsReal piece, a POLITICO article about the “impenetrable” glass ceiling in Massachusetts decried “how mind-bending the gender dynamics in this campaign were.”  And in The Daily Beast, James Carroll wrote that “Martha Coakley was croaked by an electorate that could not get past her gender” in “Misogynist Massachusetts.”

When gender disparity is your bread and butter, that’s what an election post-mortem looks like.  So I was pleasantly surprised to see a smarter, saner analysis of Coakley’s loss at Salon’s Broadsheet:

But, as a lefty feminist, I’m calling B.S.  It isn’t so simple, and suggesting otherwise is dangerous.

It takes willful blindness to argue that Coakley’s loss was chiefly the result of anything other than a crappy campaign.

Clearly Coakley didn’t lose because she was the female candidate.  But her crappy campaign wasn’t the biggest factor either.  She lost because she represented everything the majority of Massachusetts residents detest about the Democrats’ agenda. And she lost because immoral, politically motivated decisions she made as a prosecutor came back to haunt her.

So does Massachusetts have a problem electing women to office?

The Commonwealth ranks 18th in electing women to positions in the state legislature. That leaves room for improvement, but it hardly merits the “Misogynist Massachusetts” slur.  And crying sexism because the better man wasn’t a woman is simply counterproductive.

January 21, 2010 · Filed Under Conservatism, Feminism, Liberal Absurdity, Women

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Keep Government Out of Health Care, Say … Liberals?

Want a clear indication that the federal government has no business getting into the health insurance industry? Look no further than the Stupak amendment, the measure that attached tight abortion funding restrictions to the House health care bill.

Democratic consultant Karen Finney called the Stupak amendment “an attack on our personal freedom and liberty as guaranteed by the constitution.” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) said the amendment “attempts to dictate to women how to spend their own money.” And liberal columnist Michelle Goldberg lamented, “Health-insurance reform was supposed to end the sort of hideous cruelties our system inflicts on patients, not create them.”

To call Finney, Lee, and Goldberg tone deaf would be a grand understatement.

The only reason the abortion restrictions in the Stupak amendment are so intrusive is because health care reform is so intrusive. When we increase the role of government in health care, our freedoms and choices become more vulnerable to politics. Period.

Funding for every aspect of the doctor-patient relationship, every medical test and procedure, and every health care guideline becomes susceptible to pressure from special interest groups and moral scrutiny by taxpayers.  If guys who can’t get it up have enough money to throw around, erectile dysfunction drugs make the cut.  If taxpayers think acupuncturists are predatory quacks, no reimbursement for them. And after the reconciled bill is signed by the president, an unelected body will make these decisions for all of us.

Liberals cheered when President Obama appointed an executive pay czar, reasoning that companies like AIG have no right to determine pay packages if taxpayers are footing the bill.  But somehow they missed the obvious lesson.  There are always strings attached to government handouts.

Welcome, liberals, to the hazards of government subsidy.  Either private insurance is restricted by health care reform, as with the Stupak provisions, or abortion receives some form of federal funding, thus changing the status quo.  There’s no in between.

Objectionable restrictions abound when we seek increased state participation in our lives through regulation or subsidy.  Just ask members of a United Methodist Church group that refused to make a beachfront pavilion available to a lesbian couple for a civil union ceremony.  The group lost its state property tax exemption for failing to make the venue available to everyone on an equal basis.  But that’s how it works: if you want state subsidies, you have to play by the state’s rules.

We’ve seen the impact on coverage in states that are experimenting with models of universal health care.  In Massachusetts, legal immigrants no longer have state-subsidized coverage for dental, hospice, and skilled nursing care. And if you’re a Medicaid patient, prisoner, or public employee in Washington state, don’t expect your government to cough up the cash for knee arthroscopy for osteoarthritis – it’s one of several treatments no longer covered.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that “the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited.”  Do liberals really believe that those regulations will exist to make their wildest dreams come true, now and forever?

When you invite the government to become more deeply involved in health care, you’re also inviting greater government interference in personal choice. Medical decisions become political decisions. That’s how it works, and it’s why philosophical opposition to the growth of government isn’t the crazy-eyed wingnuttery progressives make it out to be.

Proponents of liberal health care reform deliberately lured a bloodthirsty vampire over their thresholds, and now they’re shocked – SHOCKED – to find they have fangs buried deep in their necks.  I’m not one to blame the victim, but it sounds like they might be getting exactly what they were asking for.

December 4, 2009 · Filed Under Abortion, Barack Obama, Health care, Liberal Absurdity, Nanny State, Women

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Hope & Change in America, Mammogram Edition

Who could have predicted a new federal recommendation calling for less frequent mammograms?

Oh wait, I did. In May I wrote at length about how American mammography recommendations differ from those in places like Canada and the United Kingdom where cost containment goals determine testing guidelines:

Of women who receive annual screening mammography beginning at age 40, six out of 10,000 over a decade will have their lives saved.  Breast cancer will be detected and cured in many more, but regular mammograms will only make a life or death difference for six of every 10,000 women in that group.  Mammograms are of extremely high value to those women and their families, but don’t offer much bang for the buck when it comes to the other 9,994 women.

And wringing more bang from every health care buck is reason enough for Canadian and British recommendations that women wait until age 50 to begin receiving screening mammographies.  In these countries where cost-effectiveness studies influence health policy and medical practice, six saved lives aren’t worth the substantial costs associated with all those extra mammograms and the false positives they sometimes produce.

…

It is hardly shocking that the breast cancer mortality is 9 percent higher in Canada and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom.  Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).  And British and Canadian patients wait for care about twice as long as Americans.

There are indeed valid criticisms American health care, but one area in which we excel is that we don’t base guidelines for care on cost-utility analysis. That’s why the U.S. ranks first in providing the “right care” for a given condition and has the best survival rate for breast cancer.

Obamacare may force Americans to give up those bragging rights.

Starting right about … now:

“We’re not saying women shouldn’t get screened. Screening does saves lives,” said Diana B. Petitti, vice chairman of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which released the recommendations Monday in a paper being published in Tuesday’s Annals of Internal Medicine. “But we are recommending against routine screening. There are important and serious negatives or harms that need to be considered carefully.”

Those “important and serious negatives” are anxiety and the risk of false positives. Shockingly, not everyone agrees that the risks outweigh the benefits of early detection.

But the American Cancer Society, the American College of Radiology and other experts condemned the change, saying the benefits of routine mammography have been clearly demonstrated and play a key role in reducing the number of mastectomies and the death toll from one of the most common cancers.

“Tens of thousands of lives are being saved by mammography screening, and these idiots want to do away with it,” said Daniel B. Kopans, a radiology professor at Harvard Medical School. “It’s crazy — unethical, really.“

As I wrote in May, “I’ll be saving up for a date with a mammography machine in one of those thriving medical tourism meccas.”

Memeorandum has much more from the blogosphere on the new federal guidelines. Ed Morrissey reminds us that the very same federal panel developed the mammography guidelines we’ve been using, and Sister Toldjah asks, “What’s changed? Hmmmm….”

Yes, what could it be?

November 17, 2009 · Filed Under Health care, Women

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Republicans for Rape (Now With Push Polls!)

Why did Republicans vote to deny rape victims their day in court?  Why do they want women to be raped?

Oh, you haven’t heard?  Republicans are pro-rape.  At least, that’s the latest sensational charge levied by liberals, and they’re hoping it will stick when voters go to the polls in 2010.

That’s why they’ve started push polling the smear.  Here’s a question asked of likely North Carolina voters during a poll commissioned by Change Congress, an organization working against the reelection of Sen. Burr (R-NC).

Jamie Leigh Jones is an American woman who was gang raped by her co-workers while working for a defense contractor in Iraq. Her employer tried to cover up the rape and prevented her from filing charges in court – instead forcing her to use a private arbitrator chosen by the employer. I’m going to ask you a few questions about this.

Congress is considering legislation that would allow victims of rape to bring their case to court instead of being forced by their employers to use private arbitrators. Some businesses oppose this legislation because arbitration costs less money than going to court. Do you favor or oppose this type of legislation?

Subsequent questions focused on how voters would feel about Sen. Burr opposing the legislation. (He and 29 other Republicans voted against the measure.)  The poll also implied that the defense industry was buying congressional opposition to the bill at the expense of protections for rape victims.

Understandably, 73 percent of those polled said they would disapprove if Burr voted against the legislation and 74 percent said they favored the legislation. Considering the wording, one wonders what the other 26 percent were thinking.

Why, it’s almost as if they knew they were being hoodwinked by a deceitful push poll.

This current smear campaign began when Sen. Al Franken (D-SNL) proposed S. Amdt. 2588, a measure ostensibly inspired by the horrific gang rape reported by Jamie Leigh Jones while she worked in Baghdad for defense contractor KBR, then a subsidiary of Halliburton.  Franken contended that “her KBR contract banned her from taking her case to court, instead forcing her into an ‘arbitration’ process.”

It was a lie.

No employment contract can be used to force criminal complaints into arbitration. Not in America. But that didn’t stop the disingenuous left from immediately seizing upon the talking point that Republican opponents of the amendment want to deny rape survivors their day in court.  Commentators pretended to be mystified as to how any rational human being could vote against rape victims.

“We’re still waiting for the screaming-Fox-News-headline: Republican Senators Support Gang-Rape by Three to One Margin,” wrote an ill-informed Huffington Post contributor. “Arbitration for gang-rape?  Surely the Republican Party has earned the right to die.”

Daily Show host Jon Stewart called it “the old ‘it’s ok if you get raped’ clause in government contracts” and wondered how anyone could possibly reject the amendment.

And of course, no smear campaign would be complete without its very own Web site: Republicans for Rape.

Hundreds of scathing attacks on Republicans have appeared in major newspapers and blogs.  Dependable foot soldiers that they are, the netroots are gleefully promoting the laughable idea that Republicans voted to prevent rape victims from having their criminal cases heard in court.  And just this week, video surfaced of a rape survivor accusing Sen. Vitter (R-LA) of trying to silence victims.

In actuality, Jones’ contract required employment disputes, not criminal cases, to be resolved through arbitration, an effective form of alternative dispute resolution that is cheaper, faster, and offers individuals greater access to justice than litigation.  The contract she signed limits her litigation options in matters of civil law related to the workplace, but it does not impact her ability to seek redress against her assailants through the criminal courts.

It is the foot dragging of the United States Department of Justice that is keeping Jamie Leigh Jones from facing her attackers in court, not her KBR employment contract and not Republican legislators. Republicans must do a better job articulating the true motivation behind Franken’s amendment.

Franken’s primary objective was not to ensure justice for rape victims, but to strike a blow at the company that sits at the top of every rank and file liberal’s hit list: Halliburton. The legislation is an overly broad political sledgehammer designed to ban the disbursement of federal funds to Halliburton when narrow wording addressing arbitration in assault cases would have received bipartisan support. Franken makes his intentions clear by calling Halliburton out by name in the amendment’s stated purpose:

To prohibit the use of funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton Company, KBR, Inc., any of their subsidiaries or affiliates, or any other contracting party if such contractor or a subcontractor at any tier under such contract requires that employees or independent contractors sign mandatory arbitration clauses regarding certain claims.

Even the Obama administration objected to the amendment as worded, characterizing it as unenforceable.

Franken’s second objective was to assist the trial lawyer lobbyists in their relentless campaign to do away with arbitration, thus lining their pockets with the spoils of litigation.  Remember, trial lawyers and their lobbying groups are among the biggest contributors to Democratic Party, and even former DNC chairman and presidential candidate Howard Dean has explicitly said that Democrats are not willing to rub trial lawyers the wrong way.

If Franken’s primary concern was rape victims, why did he risk opposition to his legislation by weighing it down with a hefty gift to trial lawyers?  Why does the amendment cover disputes totally unrelated to rape?

Finally, this legislation is Franken’s attempt to curry favor with his fellow Democrats by handing them a giftwrapped smear of Republicans just in time for the 2010 election season.  Hence, the propaganda masquerading as an unbiased poll in North Carolina and the absurd allegations nationwide that voting for the falsely labeled anti-rape amendment is a vote in favor of rape.

It is the Democrats who are using an unspeakably atrocious gang rape as a political bludgeon, and Republican senatorial candidates are already feeling the impact.  Of course, no one spreading these liberal distortions has addressed why Republicans would invite the nasty political fallout following a vote against an “anti-rape” amendment.  Just gluttons for punishment, I guess?

Expect the following senators to be targeted during their 2010 reelection campaigns:

Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Mike Crapo (R-ID)
Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Richard Shelby (R-AL)
John McCain (R-AZ)
John Thune (R-SD)
David Vitter (R-LA)
Richard Burr (R-NC)

Must we play politics with rape?  Instead of using sexual assault as partisan political ammunition, let’s do something that will really help rape survivors.  We need a cooperative effort to find out what’s preventing the DOJ from aggressively pursuing cases of sexual violence among military contractors.  Only then will Jamie Leigh Jones’ rapists be brought to justice.

November 4, 2009 · Filed Under Crime, Liberal Absurdity, Media Bias, The Blogosphere, Women

15 Comments 

Judging Meghan McCain

Freedom of speech is guaranteed to all Americans.  Freedom from judgment is not.

Consider the great décolletage debacle of ’09.

Meghan McCain threatened to delete her popular Twitter feed Wednesday night after receiving a torrent of comments about the revealing photo she posted.  Although many reactions were complimentary, some were negative and offensive, calling the Daily Beast columnist a “slut” and admonishing her for displaying considerable cleavage.  She wrote:

so I took a fun picture not thinking anything about what I was wearing but apparently anything other than a pantsuit I am a slut, this is … why I have been considering deleting my twitter account, what once was fun now just seems like a vessel for harassment … I am going to take some more time to think about it but seriously I was just trying to be funny with the book and that I’m a dork staying in … when I am alone in my apartment, I wear tank tops and sweat pants, I had no idea this makes me a “slut”, I can’t even tell you how hurt I am

Calling Meghan McCain a slut is infantile and idiotic no matter how skimpy her tank top.  It’s a nasty, overused pejorative that only reflects poorly on people who fling it around. Much like calling a woman a mashed-up bag of meat, it has no place in polite discourse.

But Twitter isn’t prime time television and there’s no promise or expectation that every interaction will be polite. For the famous and infamous, it’s a vicious celebrity gauntlet, not a genteel afternoon tea party.  Every tweet, every Twitpic, is an open invitation asking other Twitter users what they think of you. And sometimes they think you’re a slut.

Meghan McCain knows this.  In fact, that’s why celebrities like McCain use Twitter.  It’s a gargantuan, interactive global advertising platform offering unlimited promotion for the low, low price of $0.00.

I’ve followed Meghan McCain on Twitter for the better part of a year.  She’s done a brilliant job of building a large following she can leverage to promote her upcoming book.  In part, she does well with Twitter because of her penchant for oversharing, and for spitting invective at conservative bloggers and commentators.  She’s not afraid to dish it out, but can she take it?

Apparently not.  And that’s fine.  No one is forcing Meghan McCain to endure the trials and tribulations of fame.  Living in the media spotlight requires a thick skin.  Hell, even writing a blog with open comments places you in the line of fire.  Whether it’s your ideas or your body, when you put yourself out there for the world to see and hear, you’re going to get criticized.  A lot.  Plenty of it will seem unfair, and some of it will make you want to bring up your lunch or crawl back into bed.  Right or wrong, good or bad, it’s the price we pay for participating in the marketplace of ideas.  There’s no invisible rider on the First Amendment that promises to protect the thin-skinned from vile and demeaning criticism.

I’d love it if no woman had to suffer the stinging indignity of having her virtue called into question based on the size of her breasts or the way she dresses.  Been there, done that, and it sucks. If a public figure like Keith Olbermann had something foul to say about Meghan McCain, I’d be dialing up MSNBC to complain.  But there’s not much to be done about lonely strangers tweeting insults as they masturbate to the thought of Meghan McCain crying into her cleavage. She can ignore them or ridicule them, but they’ll always be there.

Meghan McCain has two choices: toughen up or drop out.  Expecting the world to stop judging her is not an option.

Update: Sister Toldjah and The Other McCain link. Thanks!

October 16, 2009 · Filed Under Celebrities, Women

12 Comments 

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