Web Analytics
Uncategorized « The Thinking Housewife
The Thinking Housewife
 

Uncategorized

A Tux, A Gown, Lots of Pictures – and Pizza

May 16, 2011

 

READERS of this blog know that history is divided into various phases: the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and now, the Age of Pizza.

A teenager I know is a student at one of the fanciest prep schools in the country. He recently attended his senior prom. No expense was spared for the event, which was held in a major football stadium. (A father of a student owns the team that uses the stadium.) Limos were rented. Girls agonized over their gowns. Corsages were purchased. Pre-prom and pre-pre-pre-prom parties were held.

What, you might wonder, was served to eat at this first formal occasion for these excited students? Pizza. The students stood around in their formal attire eating pizza.

The pizza-fication of America proceeds apace. It is only a matter of time before pizza is served at all state dinners and banquets. Pizza is to modern cuisine what socialism is to political life. It represents the leveling of aspiration. It is the only significant consequence of radical democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville failed to predict. Pizza is the denim of dining. It even tastes like blue jeans. Pizza is the anti-soul food.

 

An Accepting Family

May 16, 2011

 

ERIC writes, in response to the entry “When a Daughter is a Lesbian:”

I had a grade school chum once who grew up into a homosexual man after I had moved away and dropped out of touch. I returned to my boyhood town and inquired about him. Read More »

 

A Scandal Waiting to Happen

May 16, 2011

 

AT Galliawatch, a blog which reports the latest in French news, Tiberge writes about the sexual assault charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund who has been accused of attacking a hotel maid in New York City. She writes:

In a culture weakened by so much rot, Strauss-Kahn is just another symptom. But the problem is that he is an international celebrity and he has temporarily dragged France down with him. And he may have committed a crime, not merely an immoral act.

I should add to the above that the United States strongly approved Strauss-Kahn’s nomination to head the IMF. This was in September 2008.

Second, I really do not think any French person should feel ashamed. This was a scandal waiting to happen. The best thing for the country now is just to get rid of the worst politicians and put in people who have some integrity. Read More »

 

Is Blogging Immoral?

May 16, 2011

 

IN A brief essay titled “The Internet and the Dangers to the Soul,” the Rev. James Jackson discusses the spiritual dangers of blogging. The essay appeared in 2007 in the parish bulletin of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Littleton, Colorado. Father Jackson’s bulletin inserts often include interesting meditations on moral and cultural questions. His essay on tattoos was previously featured here. He wrote of blogging, “Firing off ignorant opinions about everything is a self-destructive exercise in the vice of pride.”

Father Jackson wrote, 

Blogs—short for “weblogs”—have become a standard form of communication among Catholics in the English-speaking world, especially in America. Mr. R. J. Stove wrote a feisty article attacking this phenomenon of blogs, and Internet discussion groups, which appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Oriens, a fine Australian traditionalist journal. He asked the question whether Catholics should be blogging at all, and argues that for the most part, they should not. Read More »

 

Black Unemployment Is at Its Highest Level in Almost 40 Years…

May 14, 2011

 

AND, yet Obama continues to support and work for amnesty for illegal aliens. Brenda Walker writes about the latest numbers at Vdare.com and about the likeliood that Obama won’t lose support by black voters despite his positions on immigration.

 

How Can One Be Beautiful, Successful and Rich, and Wear a Dress As Ugly as This?

May 14, 2011

 

The actress Rachel McAdams with Michael Sheen

The actress Rachel McAdams with Michael Sheen

 

Chicago Fire Department Must Pay Millions and Dumb Down Its Force

May 14, 2011

 

THE CITY OF CHICAGO, as a result of a federal appeals court ruling issued yesterday, will pay about $30 million to blacks who were not hired as firefighters because they scored significantly lower on entrance tests than white candidates. Not only must the Chicago fire department compromise standards and hire less qualified candidates purely because they are black, thus discriminating against more qualified whites, but it must pay millions in compensation to men who have never worked and will never work as firemen. These never-hired beneficiaries of the suit will receive compensation for one reason: they are black. Read More »

 

The Rise of Intolerant, Repressive Homosexualism

May 14, 2011

 

AT VFR, a commenter Jeanette V. writes:

Fifty years ago, it was easy to associate with homosexuals in the workplace, because a person’s sexual proclivities were either unknown or known but never mentioned. These days the bedroom door is wide open and we are forced to acknowledge a person’s perversions.

This is a direct result of the decriminalization of homosexuality. I have done a complete 180 on what I feel about homosexuality. My best friend in high school (this was the 1970’s) was a homosexual and I remember the horrible abuse he got from his peers. So I have lived in a time when homosexuality was illegal and now when it is celebrated.

I have seen homosexuals stalk and harass people at home, online and where they work simply because they believe marriage should be redefined. I have friends with school-aged kids who tell me about the pro-homosexual propaganda being fed to their children.

It is actually fashionable these days for women to consider themselves lesbian. They get lots of positive feedback for “coming out.” I read that 40 percent of high school seniors now identify themselves as lesbian or bisexual. It seems the queering of our schools and entertainment has been successful.

The decriminalization of homosexuality has had some very detrimental side effects indeed.

 

A World Map of Gender Distinctions in Pronouns

May 14, 2011

 

SARAH LAPLANTE writes:

I was reading your May 12th post on gendered pronouns, which I mainly have nothing to say about. But as a linguistics student I have to disagree with one sub-sub-sub-claim, namely:

Human beings have a hard time speaking in terms of non-sexed individuals.

This is pretty easy to be confused about, English does have mandatory sex differences in third person singular pronouns, as do most of the languages taught in American schools. But it’s easy to see on a map that this distinction is hardly a human universal, in fact it’s the exception.

The map is a bit unclear, so here’s a rundown: Read More »

 

Male or Female?

May 13, 2011

HOLLY writes:

A friend and I regularly trade e-mails about what we’re reading. Your blog is often one of the topics I bring up for discussion. (I agree with you most of the time; she does not.) Read More »

 

Self-Esteem Myths

May 13, 2011

 

ALEX A. writes from England:

Your observations on masculine and feminine pronouns caused the following reflection to jump into my brain.

One of the crazy and patronizing feminist notions that’s taken hold is that women in general are “vulnerable” to an extensive array of psychic injuries. They are not. This idea is a ideological lever
intended to force radical sexual adjustments that would reduce the incidence of so-called injuries to the female psyche, and at the same time, to use a coarse expression, put women in the driving seat.

I’ll risk a generalisation and say that most women are, as a rule, mentally tough. What’s more, as your blog and its female readers illustrate all the time, the life of the mind that a thoughtful woman
enjoys is just as varied and intellectually stimulating as a man could hope for.

Read More »

 

Greer the Ridiculous

May 13, 2011

 

HOWARD SUTHERLAND writes:

The Telegraph publishes Germaine Greer lauding the “slut walk” women “fighting for their right to be dirty.” I’m not sure how familiar you are with the British press, but The Telegraph is generally considered the leading conservative broadsheet; small- and large-C alike. Yet another indication, alas, of just what ‘conservative’ now means in the ever-less-United Kingdom of less-than-Great Britain! Truly, this sort of thing challenges one’s ability to hope for recovery. Greer and her ilk are a social cancer on the West, and in British terms Greer is an imported one (Aussie).

Laura writes:

Greer’s argument is so absurd it amounts to lunacy, which is to be expected from a woman who has trumpeted every form of feminist nonsense and contradiction. She says it’s important that women embrace sluttiness so they can lose their hang ups about sexual pleasure and also their hang ups about cleaning their homes.  That’s right. Women are forced by some unseen conspiracy to clean. Women are denied the right – by men apparently – to be filthy. They do not pursue cleanliness with skill and devotion because they preferclean dwellings themselves but because they are – in the fevered imaginaton of this addled feminist – idiots and conformists and slaves who succumb to the slightest social pressure. With slut walks, we might finally have the chance to be promiscuously dirty. Hip, hip hooray! I knew feminism was going to get us somewhere! Social collapse, household collapse – it’s all just a neat form of dirtiness!

I repeat, she is around the bend – and please, Germaine, don’t ever invite me to your house. Greer writes: Read More »

 

The Modern Woman: Cheap, Easy and Exploitive

May 13, 2011

 

JACLYN FRIEDMAN, the writer and activist who spoke at the recent Boston SlutWalk, is author of this inspiring 2010 piece, “My Sluthood, Myself,”in which she defends promiscuity as heroic and cathartic. Caution: this piece is raunchy. She describes sleeping with a man she contacted on the Internet the same night that she met him and a long history of casual sex. She also speaks of “dating” a woman and praises women who support each other in their exploits. She writes:

A slut needs a posse who finds her exploits almost as delicious as she finds them herself, who cares about her safety and her stories and her happiness but not one whit about her virtue. A slut alone is a slut in difficulty, possibly in danger..

This explains her support for sluts marching en masse. Here is an interview with Friedman, apparently in her mid-thirties and unmarried, about the Boston event.

Miss Friedman has successfully defined the modern slut: part prostitute who doesn’t take cash and part self-aggrandizing exploiter of others. In the feminist mind, it’s okay for a woman to treat other people as instruments of her passing desires.

 

On the Beauty of the Feminine Pronoun

May 13, 2011

 

N.W. writes:

I may have sent you this poem by Richard Wilbur once before, but I thought it dovetailed nicely with what you had to say concerning pronouns.

 She

What was her beauty in our first estate
When Adam’s will was whole, and the least thing
Appeared the gift and creature of his king,
How should we guess? Resemblance had to wait

Read More »

 

When a Daughter is a Lesbian

May 12, 2011

 

A MALE READER writes:

My grown daughter told me she is involved with a woman. This was a total surprise to me and it really hurt. I gave her my complete blessing, which was a bit of a lie. I met the woman and I liked her quite a bit. I’m glad that I like her, because it makes it easier for me. The woman is fairly wholesome in her habits — at least there is that. Read More »

 

Catholic Leftists Call For Forced Charity

May 12, 2011

 

MORE THAN 75 Catholic professors have written to Speaker John Boehner on the occasion of his pending commencement address at Catholic University of America. The academics, in an outrageous distortion of theological principles, have charged the speaker with violating Catholic moral teachings for cutting government programs to the poor. They wrote to Boehner, who will be speaking at the university Saturday:

The 2012 budget you shepherded to passage in the House of Representatives guts long-established protections for the most vulnerable members of society. It is particularly cruel to pregnant women and children, gutting Maternal and Child Health grants and slashing $500 million from the highly successful Women Infants and Children nutrition program. Read More »

 

The Psychic Damage Inflicted by Male Pronouns

May 12, 2011

 

CONNOISSEURS of feminist scholarship may be interested in this 1994 interview by staff of the National Council of English Teachers with Kate Swift, the editor and writer who was author of The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing and who was a major force in inducing mass guilt and confusion as to the use of male pronouns.

Ms. Swift, who helped popularize the address of “Ms.,” died last week at the age of 87. Her major works, including Words and Women, were co-authored by her partner of many years, Casey Miller. Presumably, they were lesbians. They argued that the English language had “relegate[d] the female half of the species to secondary status.”

Ms. Swift and Ms. Miller recommended that “genkind” be used instead of “mankind” and that “tey,” “ter” and “tem” be adopted as sex-neutral substitutes for “he/she,” “his/her” and “him/her.” The New York Times glowing obituary of Swift provides an overview of their works. 

The use of male generic pronouns inflicts psychic damage on girls and women, Ms. Swift and Ms. Miller argued. They wrote:

The penetration of this habit of language into the minds of little girls as they grow up to be women is more profound than most people, including most women, have recognized; for it implies that personality is really a male attribute, and that women are a subspecies. (Women and Words, p. 19) Read More »

 

More on Sluts

May 12, 2011

 

JESSE POWELL writes:

If you want to know what the real purpose behind SlutWalks is listen to what those who actually promote and organize the events have to say. A transcript of the first part of the speech given at the Boston SlutWalk by Jaclyn Friedman reads as follows:  

Look at all these beautiful sluts! Look at you, you’re gorgeous, you’re gorgeous. Are you having an amazing day? How many of you are having an amazing day? Read More »