The Motions of Home

 

LYDIA SHERMAN writes about the almost imperceptible motions of the experienced homemaker:

Some women make people run to the far corners of the house because of their aggressive attack on housekeeping; others can do it in such a way that it becomes poetic. I had a friend in my early days that fascinated me by her approach to homemaking. Though she never appeared to “do” much, she was always moving about, picking up things and straightening, and never sat down until she had briefly gone through the room and put it aright.  (more…)

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His and Her Domestic Violence

  "Women don't have jobs either, but women aren’t abusive, most of the time."                                                                                        --- Harry Reid, Feb. 22, 2010 The nice thing about being female is that you are presumed innocent. You can even shoot your brother, as Amy Bishop did, and not face charges. Men aren't born saints, but it's time we laid to rest the view that women are. I recommend Erin Pizzey's memories of growing up with an abusive mother to anyone who believes domestic violence is the exclusive preserve of men.

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Denied Tenure

 

HERE’S A SURPRISE. Amy Bishop, the woman who murdered three professors at the University of Alabama, did not have adequate credentials to be granted tenure, according to scientists interviewed by the New York Times. Bishop had filed a sex discrimination suit against the university and her failure to win a position as full professor of biology was seen as possible motivation for her crime. (more…)

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The “Psycho-Porn” of Self-Help

 

FITZGERALD WRITES:

Once again, I’m chagrined at the crass content of this Spearhead article, but the author, Dr. Paul, makes two really solid points that stand out and almost demand highlighting. He writes:

“Fake self esteem, like 98% of everything else that is marketed just to females, has become the psycho-porn of the Western woman, with profits that would put a twinkle in Bill Gates eyes. How much profit exactly is anyone’s guess.”

“Psycho-porn” is a brilliant turn of phrase as women all around are ingesting super-sized doses of narcissistic self adulation on a daily basis. I love how he shreds the self-esteem industry and skewers it. (more…)

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The Dearth of Female Genius

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Beethoven

WHY IS IT that women seem to be on average better musicians, better singers, better painters, better sculptors, better poets, better novelists, better artists, and yet the vast majority of artistic geniuses are men? How can this be? Is patriarchal conspiracy, some active repression of female talent, responsible for the low representation of women at the apex of artistic creation?

In fact, this strange contradiction makes sense. It is perfectly consistent with the dichotomy in male and female ability in many areas. Men tend to be the worst and the best. Women tend to fill the middle. This is the curse of female mediocrity. But it is only a curse in the eyes of the greedy and envious. Women may seldom be geniuses, but they also tend to be less represented among history’s abject failures. To be average is better than being awful. Women are amply compensated in the long sweep of history by having escaped the ruinous consequences of intense competition and masculine focus, and by the ability to excel in areas that will never garner Nobel Prizes. Besides, artistic endeavor is as much a feminine as a masculine thing.

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An Anti-Empirical Theory

 

Sage McLaughlin writes:

The notion that women have been deprived of the opportunity to express genius, and that this is the reason for the near total absence of female genius in the arts, is a long-standing meme among modern feminists. It runs up against the little problem that there’s no real evidence for it, and that it is based at an emotional level upon envy, as you say, and on an intellectual level of the facially absurd assumption that men and women are not very different. No self-respecting endocrinologist or neurologist would tell you that men and women are essentially alike in their mental and behavioral makeup. In short, despite their strong implications to the contrary, modern thinkers and scientists have provided precisely zero evidence for this idea of latent female genius, long-suppressed.  (more…)

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How to Marry Yourself

bride_02 

IF A WOMAN cannot find Mr. Wrong, she can always marry herself. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the fantastically popular Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage,  describes a friend who does just that:

On the morning of her fortieth birthday, my friend Christine went down to the northern Pacific Ocean at dawn. It was a cold and overcast day. Nothing romantic about it. She brought with her a small wooden boat that she had built with her own hands. She filled the little boat with rose petals and rice – artifacts of a symbolic wedding. She walked out into the cold water, right up to her chest, and set that boat on fire. Then she let it go – releasing along with it her most tenacious fantasies of marriage as an act of personal salvation. Christine told me later that as the sea took away the Tyranny of the Bride forever (still burning), she felt transcendent and mighty, as though she were physically carrying herself across some critical threshold. She had finally married her own life, and not a moment too soon.

Carrying herself across the threshold? And people say feminism has made women happy.

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The Lost Masterpieces of Women

   A READER argues here that the talent of female artists and composers was long suppressed and that's why we have no woman Mozarts. I disagree. The hackneyed idea that women could have created works of genius if only given the chance is rooted in envy.

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A World of Mister Wrongs

 marryhim

 

WOMEN HAVE reacted with outrage at the proliferation of books and Internet sites recommending Game and pickup strategies for men. At the same time, many women pursue their own reductionist romancing.

Lori Gottlieb, the author of the new book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, has made a big hit with her advice. Here is a venomous critique of the book at The Spearhead website. By the way, Gottlieb is the perfect modern authority on love: She dated for 25 years and finally conceived a child through artificial insemination. In the words of the writer Obsidian:

Gottlieb’s book no doubt will be viewed as “dating advice;” perhaps even as “self-help”-and in any event, such books are marketed in droves to Women, for years. All kinds of truly dehumanizing language and allusions are made to Men, such as the very title of the book we’re discussing; we’re rated and objectified, ranked and given the heave-ho for the slightest imperfection, infraction or just the misfortune of being human -a necessary evil all in the name of the Precious Ladies’ search for “Mr. Right”…

The sheer arrogance, hubris and out and out megalomania, that this Woman exudes is something the likes of which I’ve never set my eyes on before-and believe you me, I done seen a lot of stuff…

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The Brief, but Interesting Life of an Icicle

 

A CORRESPONDENT writes:

Even as the remnants of the record snows in the Mid-Atlantic corridor erode day by day, they continue to yield a spectacular harvest of icicles, in all likelihood one of the region’s most abundant ever. I saw one yesterday that appeared to be about 25 feet long, extending from just beneath a third-story window to the top of the snow pack. 

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Grammatical Engineering

 

Laura F. writes:

I wanted to send you this ridiculous little opening from a Wikipedia article: 

The curse of the ninth is the superstition that a composer will die after writing his or her ninth symphony. The most prominent examples are Ludwig van Beethoven, Louis Spohr, Franz Schubert, Antonín Dvořák, Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler.

Hey Wikipedia, thanks so much for finally recognizing all those great women composers. But wait, you didn’t name any in your examples…

Laura Wood writes:

Hah! The point is to create women composers. Some woman will read this and suddenly recognize her latent genius. She may even write a tenth.

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Our Anti-Discrimination Laws

 

Now that the Hardvard-educated biologist Amy Bishop allegedly has murdered three professors at the University of Albama, her charge of sex discrimination against the university would seem to be a shut case. But, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a spokesman for the university declined comment on Bishop because of the ongoing discrimination case.

Such is the atmosphere of proceduralism and bureaucratic hesitation created by our anti-discrimination statutes. Bishop had acted erratically and aroused suspicions of insanity in a number of colleagues, the Chronicle reports, and yet she was free to threaten the university with a sex discrimination suit filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Employees are much less likely to speak frankly with supervisors, and employers are much less likely to act on their instincts, in the kind of atmosphere created by anti-discrimination laws. They are not just inherently unfair, they are dangerous. Perhaps it is not too absurd in today’s work climate to imagine a convicted murderer winning a discrimination case.

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Puerilities

 

STARTING WITH THIS ENTRY, I will post statements by history’s famous feminists on a regular basis. These false or misleading appraisals of human nature, biological fact, spiritual truths, and common sense take the breath away. Feminism is rife with ridiculous assertions. I call these statements “puerilities” because they are so often child-like.

Here is the psychologically unstable Charlotte Perkins Gilman writing in The Man-Made World: Our Androcentric Culture, published in 1911:

The inextricable confusion of politics and warfare is part of the stumbling block in the minds of men. As they see it, a nation is primarily a fighting organization; and its principle business is offensive and defensive warfare; therefore the ultimatum with which they oppose the demand for political equality – “women cannot fight, therefore they cannot vote.”

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Is Sex Really Better Today?

 

IN RESPONSE to the previous post on the widely-held conceit that we live in an age of unprecedented sexual discovery and pleasure, a reader offers this view.

Anna H. writes:

As a Mennonite, I am aware that we are considered backwards by society for such “repressive” practices as encouraging modest clothing and a family-based lifestyle and discouraging divorce, premarital sex, and abortion. Clearly, these beliefs are terribly oppressive to modern folks, especially women. Or are they? And they certainly must stifle the enjoyment of sex. Or do they? (more…)

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Sex Discovered Eons After Procreation Began

ftsleep 

THE IDEA that women suffered sexual frustration for millennia is central to feminism, as I mentioned here. The human race lived in darkness for thousands of years. Then a few enlightened men and women came along and introduced pleasure to half of humanity. Before that sex was just glorified rape.

Lawrence Auster writes:

Here’s a typical example of the attitude you discuss. (more…)

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The Forgotten Fast

  FASTING purifies the soul. It lifts up the mind, and it brings the body into subjection to the spirit. It makes the heart contrite and humble, scatters the clouds of desire, puts out the flames of lust and enkindles the true light of chastity. -- Augustine                                                               

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Day Care Delusions

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Kathleen writes:

I recently engaged in a debate via the Washington Post. What caught my eye was the title, “Caring for a Newborn Doesn’t Have to Hurt Your Career.” (more…)

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Denied a Promotion

  [NOTE: I originally posted a picture of Amy Bishop here, but I found it too disturbing, I decided to remove it. It is a chilling portrait of an angry human being.]   It is always more shocking when a woman commits an act of extreme violence. The case of Amy Bishop, the neuroscientist who allegedly shot three professors at the University of Alabama last week, is especially troubling. Bishop has a Ph.D. from Harvard and is the mother of four children. Her case raises disturbing questions about a life of ambition and violence. Bishop shot her 18-year-old brother in 1986 in Massachusetts and the death was ruled accidental. She also was previously questioned in a 1993 case involving a pipe bomb sent to a former colleague. Bishop was denied tenure and there is speculation this fueled her rage. She was described by the New York Times as "fiercely intelligent." According to the Boston Herald, Bishop held a gun to a man's chest at a Boston area auto body shop and demanded a getaway vehicle minutes after her brother's shooting 24 years ago. According to the Herald, Bishop's mother was a member of the police personnel board in Braintree at the time of the shooting.

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