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AS GOVERNMENT budgets grow tighter in Europe, and as numerous countries adopt austerity plans, expect to see more angry demonstrations like this recent one in Italy. Women make up as much as two-thirds of the public sector workforce in many countries. 

The figures for female government employment are 54 percent in Italy, 64 percent in Ireland, 60 percent in Australia and 64 percent in Germany.

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IN RESPONSE to a recent Wall Street Journal article, which looks at the psychological difficulties of children of anonymous sperm donors, a woman wrote this letter to the editor: 

Regarding W. Bradford Wilcox’s “Daddy Was Only a Donor” (Taste, June 18): Although I agree that “old-fashioned” parenthood is still the best choice if possible, for many of us that isn’t an option. As a woman who has never found the “perfect mate,” I had the choice of no kids or donor kids, and I chose the donor route. It was the best decision of my life, and I think my boys would agree that they’re happy to be here.  (more…)

  THE PORTLAND woman who says Al Gore violently groped her in a hotel room in 2006 also states that she found it unpleasant to tell her friends about the incident. When she told them what had happened, these friends, who had voted for Gore, "didn't necessarily support her." In all likelihood, this story will never be confirmed. But it seems the woman involved had little to gain from coming forward with her account. [Note: This is not true. The New York Daily news reports that she asked the National Enquirer for $1 million to tell her story.]

JOHN E. writes:

In the previous entry, your commenter John wrote: 

The “new feminism” of JPII is destructive of marriages, families, and souls, not so much because of what he said, but of what he didn’t say.

I agree with John, and add that what seems to be lacking in the two documents you referred to by JPII is an even-handed perspective on human relationships. I don’t think there is anything asserted in Mulieris Dignitatem that is blatantly false (it is even difficult to make that assertion of the Letter to Women), but, as John said, the things that are not said hinder one’s perspective in understanding the truth of the good and evil of which all humans, men and women, are capable. (more…)

KATIE COURIC interviews Gloria Steinem on CBS on The Atlantic Monthly’s recent piece “The End of Men.” The women agree that the title of this piece is misleading. Men are still men and women have a long way to go to overcome the evils of patriarchy.

“We’ve been much too nice,” said Steinem.

This is a mind-numbingly boring interview that recounts 50 years of feminist doctrine and grievances. Steinem, who travels around the country still spreading her message and apparently lives in a buried time capsule, found the title of the article offensive and “stupid” because the point of feminism is equality and not female domination. Therefore women should not talk about or celebrate the demise of masculinity. That’s tasteless. Nevertheless, women should work to bring about an end to masculinity. “Men raising children is crucial in every area because it shapes our idea that men can be nurturing and women can be knowledgeable and in authority,” she said. Men “are doing more than their fathers but they’re not doing anywhere near enough.” (more…)

VANESSA writes, as part of the ongoing discussion about Catholicism and feminism:

In response to Kimberly’s statement:

Another traditional priest I used to confess to told me that at times, it’s even okay to lie to your husband! The example he gave was that if my husband hates my mother and says she is not to be allowed in my home, and yet she comes to visit me and I allow her in, that it would be fine to tell him that she was never there if he were to ask. Makes sense to me. But then, I know my own husband,

I can only say that the priest was in grave error.

It is one thing to be disobedient if your husband asks you to commit a grave sin. It is another to be willfully and spitefully disobedient in such a manner. If your husband doesn’t want your mother in his house, that is completely within his rights and should be respected. (more…)

  A REAL MAN shares some beers and a few jokes with his friends on the eve of his wedding. The faux guy, who marries on the cusp of middle age, searches out the best and most expensive roasted fennel, as well as potatoes cooked in duck fat.

EXPANDING ON the theme of courtesy, N.W. writes:

I seem to recollect Faulkner once saying that a true gentleman treats every woman like a lady whether she is or not. Given the scarcity of ladies nowadays this is a tall order. On the contrary, many women I’ve dated have been offended when I’ve paid for dinner or held the door or walked on the traffic side of the walk. Hillary Clinton used to bawl out the Marine guards for holding the door for her. 

On the matter of colorful language, it really is a convoluted state of affairs these days. I went to a small, conservative (in the Burkean sense) Catholic liberal arts college, graduated ’06. Most of my class went to Mass regularly and was relatively conservative and most everybody in my class was rather free with their language, men and women alike. I never minded, the girls all carried themselves with a classy and vaguely scandalous sort of style, like a 1930s Hollywood actress, or Brett Ashley in “The Sun Also Rises.” Now, my sister’s class, ’08, had a higher density of sheltered homeschoolers in it and the girls were a bit more restrained in their language. My sister, however, was rather free in her use of certain words, most likely owing to my influence. (more…)

JOHN writes:

I wanted to thank you for your excellent analysis of “John Paul II and the Phony Feminine Genius.” I have spent a bit of time studying these topics, and I believe you are 100 percent correct. 

Those who try to defend JPII by pointing out some remarks that may have resonance to conservatives are missing the bigger picture which you are able to see, perhaps because of your work with this website. What is more important than individual statements of one sort or another is the complete absence of what is most crucially required: the traditional Catholic teaching on marriage. Not one word of traditional Catholic marital teaching has been allowed to escape the complete blackout in place for the past 50 years.  (more…)

KILROY writes:

This is a poster advertising the Australian military which appears on the side of a kiosk at Martin Place in Sydney. It struck me as odd that motherhood and military service were somehow equated as difficult on the same level, as if there is no distinction between the ultimate service to humanity that a women can embrace by giving life, and the ultimate sacrifice of men on the field of battle in defending it. Both are sacrifices, and both are selfless. But there is a difference on a fundamental level that makes posters like this just look ridiculous. (more…)

LYDIA SHERMAN urges Southerners to take their children out of public shools. She writes:

The question is often asked, “How can we help the South to rise again? Where are our Southern folk, ready to take a stand; ready to guide the South back to the old paths, where the good way is?” The answer is: they are in their cribs, talking baby talk, waiting for Southern mothers to teach them the right ways. That will never be accomplished until we get our children out of the public schools. Even if public schools were to suddenly become “good,” they are not safe places for our children. We need to shelter them and teach them ourselves, so that they will grow in the right direction. Farming them out to someone else will not make a great nation.

Read the following quote from “A Nation at Risk,” published in 1983:

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. (more…)

N.W. writes:

After three long months of almost no reading it was nice to come home from boot camp and peruse your blog. The only trouble is that between you and Mr. Auster I’m so far behind I don’t know where to start. (All suggestions welcome.) 

The Marine Corps is strong as ever. One aspect of the Marines which I especially admire is their dedication to defending not only our country and Constitution but also the common courtesies which are the foundation of a great society. (more…)

  THE TRUTH about the experiences of individuals conceived with donated sperm is finally being told, as if common sense were not enough. Karen Clark and Elizabeth Marquardt write: Listening to the stories of donor-conceived adults, you begin to realize there's really no such thing as a "donor." Every child has a biological father. To claim otherwise is simply to compound the pain, first as these young people struggle with the original, deliberate loss of their biological father, and second as they do so within a culture that insists some guy who went into a room with a dirty magazine isn't a father. At most the children are told he's a "seed provider" or "the nice guy who gave me what I needed to have you" or the "Y Guy" or any number of other cute euphemisms that signal powerfully to children that this man should be of little, if any, importance to them. Elizabeth Marquardt, by the way, is the author of one of the best books about divorce, The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce.

  THOUGH NEW YORK state already has a devastatingly high divorce rate, with one divorce for every two marriages, the legislature is contemplating making marital dissolution easier by allowing spouses to unilaterally terminate a union after swearing to six months of unhappiness. Michale Virtanen, of the Associated Press, examines the proposed bill here purely from the perspective of women, ignoring the negative effects on men and children. He raises the specter of domestic violence by men repeatedly and profiles a woman who testified about the hassles of divorcing her husband. There is no effort mentioned to seek comment from the husband and no reference to the well-documented psychological harm to children.

In a column in The Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday, Rachel K. Sobel writes:

I joke with my other mommy-career friends about the best places to pump. The Chicago airport has amazing bathrooms with lots of space. The toilets have seats covered in plastic that rotate. You know it’s clean when you sit down to pump.

The phenomenon of mothers hooking themselves up to funnels and mechanical pumps in offices or toilet stalls to extract milk for their babies is chillingly inhuman. The breast pump is hideous. Yet, in the unwritten laws of feminism, this contraption is a hallmark of progress and enlightenment, a necessary inconvenience for the normal woman, not simply for the mother facing illness or weaning. A practice that seems to come from the pages of science fiction is now widely accepted as normal.

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I WAS rooting around this weekend for a poem to post on Father’s Day and, as I was meditating on this, I remembered a verse I once read by the modern poet Anthony Hecht about divorced fathers hanging out in Central Park with their children on Saturdays. I looked it up. Reading it again was unbearably sad, as sad as it was the first time. Obama did not speak of these fathers in his proclamation this weekend.

The experiences of the men I have known who have been unwilling participants in divorce have changed my life. I cannot quite explain why this phenomenon has affected me more than it has others. These are terrible injustices, some of the greatest instances of injustice I have personally encountered, but I know many people who are entirely unmoved. 

These men are not perfect people.  But most of them are not more imperfect than, say, I am. Not a single one of them committed adultery; they were all tried and convicted on the grounds of insensitivity. “The punishment is incommensurate to the crime.” I have said that many times. I have said that to friends and family members. Whatever flaws they had as husbands, these men did not deserve the exile they received. (The same, of course, can be said of many women who have been left under no-fault divorce. I just don’t know many women who fall into this category.)

These men are not whiny people, although some have been occasionally enraged. They are loving fathers, and they have all, with one exception, worked hard to stay involved in their childrens’ lives despite rejection by their childrens’ mothers. Those who are rich have found it easy to remarry if they wanted. Those who are poor, less so. (more…)