In the previous entry on the low-cut, low-rise, low class clothes of modern women, clothes that leave a man feeling insulted or in a constant state of  distraction or alienated from his normal male responses, Clark Coleman argued that men should shame women for their appearance. I said I thought it was unlikely that they would.

Perhaps I was too pessimistic. Maybe it could happen. Certainly it would be a great development.

But would men have the courage to criticize women who are powerful and attractive or even those who are their friendly co-workers? Can they afford to criticize women who are powerful and attractive?  There are effective ways to go about it. No woman likes to be called a slut. It’s a word that retains its power, unplugging the secret, stoppered spring of modesty and shame in even the most uninhibited and sexually practiced of women. Men have used this word often in reference to women with little social status, those who are not beautiful and who are sexually loose. They risk nothing in doing this. Could they use it against someone successful, in a position of influence, surrounded by admirers and yet dressed in lingerie at work?

As another reader comments below, the situation is serious for men. They sometimes risk financial and social ruin in criticizing women.

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In 1898, Elizabth Bisland wrote a brilliant essay on the advance of what is now known as feminism. Woman is not by nature egalitarian, she argued. At heart, she is an aristocrat, prone to selfless loyalty to the hero who fires her romantic yearnings. Men were forcing egalitarianism on women. With the advance of radical democracy, they suddenly refused to play the role women’s loyalty demanded of them.

“He is relentlessly forcing a democracy of sex upon woman; industrially, mentally and sentimentally,” Bisland wrote. “He refuses to gratify her imagination; he insists upon her development of that logical selfishness which underlies all democracy, and which is foreign to her nature.”

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  The discussion on female immodesty continues here.

In a brief discussion about my post Fatherhood and Democracy, a commenter at Dennis Mangan's blog makes an apt observation: A bad king or a bad dictator can be deposed. But how can you depose a bad people?    

Was feminism the inevitable outcome of racial and cultural defeat? There is good reason to believe it was.

Feminism is the invention of Western white women. Their discontent, which emerged so forcefully in the 1960s, was arguably a reaction to the emasculation of men. Men were different first. They shed the trappings of male authority. They embraced feminine pacifism and revolted against all forms of paternal authority. 

This emasculation was a white phenomenon too. The white race had run afoul of history. It lost all pride and the will to survive. Why replicate itself? Fatherhood became aimless and decadent. Men stopped being chiefs and lords, kings and bosses. They became just guys. Guys do not rule anything.

A woman can never become a chief or a lord. But she can become a guy.

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Intellectual women have been openly antagonistic toward traditional women in the main organs of the press for more than 50 years. And when they are not openly so, they are often subtly and cleverly so. Thus the notion that women are not intelligent unless they are paid professionals remains alive and well.

This attitude is especially disturbing when expressed by supposedly conservative women. A good example is this recent article by Kay Hymowitz in City Journal. 

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  Lisa Miller, a former lesbian who has been ordered to turn over her daughter this Friday to her previous lesbian partner, has apparently fled and gone into hiding. The woman who has been awarded primary custody of the girl by courts in Virginia and Vermont has no biological tie to the child.  For all the mistakes of her past, Lisa Miller is a heroine. The case demonstrates why a federal constitutional marriage amendment is the only way to protect traditional marriage and children.  Custody disputes such as this are likely to become common, with parents fleeing to sympathetic states like fugitive slaves. If I were Lisa Miller, I would risk everything, even prison, for my daughter.

  In the previous entry, Karen I. describes an amazing incident in which her nine-year-old son was held down by pre-teen girls while one was forced to kiss him. His arm was injured. The story is typical of the aggressive sexual behavior popular culture encourages in young girls.

Like most women, I cherish the company of other women and welcome the opportunity to bask in female affection or talk about mutual interests. But I have turned down invitations to be part of any women’s book club. A disturbing cultural phenomenon has swept the nation. On the face of it, it seems a sign of progress, an awakening of  intellectual enlightenment and refinement. Women gather in living rooms to sip wine and discuss literature. What could be unhealthy or backward about that?

The truth is the women’s book club has too often become a self-justification society, a bastion of thought-control. Within the intimate enclosure of these gatherings, female supremacy is sometimes stroked and preened, like a spoiled Persian cat sitting on the lap of a spinster.

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  The Mystical Nativity, Botticelli   Heav'ns youngest teemed Star, Hath fixt her polisht Car,    Her sleeping Lord with Handmaid Lamp attending: And all about the Courtly Stable, Bright-harnest Angels sit in order serviceable.             - from "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," John Milton

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit and always green:
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.

His beauty doth all things excel:
By faith I know, but ne’er can tell,
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.

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Charles writes in response to the entry In Defense of Scrooge:

I thought I was the only one having difficulty with the way charities conduct themselves. Your posters have made some very accurate statements. Here are my favorites:  (more…)

Brittany writes:

I think you are too harsh on single mothers. Not all unwed mothers are bad people; they just made a mistake. Maybe their boyfriend pressured them into sex and he left when she got pregnant. You can have sex one time and get pregnant. I was born before my mom and dad were married but if my dad had left my mom would have been a single mother. Yes, my mom did have premarital sex but that did not mean she was a slut because she was only with my dad and they were engaged. Yes, some single mothers did not care but what about the ones that just made a mistake?

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Scrooge movie poster

M. writes in regard to the previous entry:

I have to disagree with Alex A. when he says that Scrooge’s transformation wasn’t as a result of seeing the light but of fear of the horrors to come if he doesn’t change. 

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  In the previous post on welfare and motherhood, Karen I. writes: I thought of a few more things the poor children of single moms get, including free lunch and often breakfast at school, free coats from the local newspaper charity, free filled backpacks from my church at the start of school, free rides to and from doctors appointments if they need them with the state insurance, fee waivers to attend summer camp free or cheap at the YMCA and free transportation to and from that camp. Add that to what I already listed and try to convince some single young tramp with a baby on the way she ought to marry her baby's Daddy and get a job. Morals are not going to convince her because she does not have any or she would not be in that situation to begin with. She has no education to use at a job, so that argument is out the window, too. So, she has to choose between working at a low paying, miserable job and sitting home "poor" with all the State is just dying to hand her the minute the baby arrives. No wonder 40% of births are to single mothers these days.  I used to be the first to give to the food pantry, the backpack drive, etc. After seeing who really benefits from these things, I don't do that anymore. Now, if I want to give something, I…

Should a family with an educated mother and a father attending graduate school be entitled to welfare payments so that the mother can remain home with the children? A reader says she knows such families and asks for my opinion. My answer: No. The mother should go to work temporarily or the family should live with relatives. Here is our exchange.

Intensely Curious writes:

I, like you, believe that families need their mothers to stay home and be the prime homemaker, making the family home a place of solitude, serenity and a warm environment in which everyone in the family can thrive. When voicing this opinion, which is not the smartest thing to do, I often hear things like, “Children need to know the value of the dollar,” and “Children need to see a good role model,” etc. Those responses are usually given in regards to situations similar to the one I’m about to share with you. (more…)

  The post "Terrible is This Place," on the architectural revolution in one Catholic parish, mentioned the importance of verticality in sacred buildings. The same can be said of domestic architecture and secular public buildings, often geometric boxes that resemble cages today. Verticality, which is not the same as mere height, is one essential aspect of a livable environment, whether in the form of steep-pitched roofs or windows and gables that draw the eye upward. It is no accident that verticality is noticeably missing from our built environment. We live in a world of deadly horizontality. It exists even in the highest skyscrapers. Modern architecture is an enemy of intimacy, beauty and enthusiasm. Commenting in that post, Fitzgerald writes: It is essential traditional architecture be revived both in our sacred structures as well as our homes. Note how the homes the wealthy and powerful today inhabit are barren and cold, empty of life and progeny. The bohemian radicals that transformed architecture have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They ripped architecture from its traditional moorings and erected soul-crushing living machines to foist their radically selfish and self-serving lifestyles, lived in opposition to the family and the traditions designed to nourish and support it, upon the unwitting and unfortunate inhabitants of the very structures they produced.  I recommend the remainder of Fitzgerald's comments.

Modern kitchen technology is wonderful, especially at this time of year. I was reminded of this yesterday when reading this very tragic story on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer of Dec. 26, 1909: Miss Bessie Ziv, aged 17 years, had already spent several hours with her mother in the kitchen of their home at 2553 East Clearfiled Street in preparing the Christmas dinner, when she opened the oven door to baste a turkey that was slowly turning a tempting nut brown. "Is not the turkey cooking nicely?" she remarked to her mother as she poured the drippings in the pan over the big bird with a spoon. She leaned too near the open coal fire in the range and her apron caught fire. From an open window a gust of wind fanned the first sparks into flames that quickly enveloped her. The story goes on to say that Miss Ziv's injuries were probably fatal; those of her mother, who used her hands to put out the flames, were serious. It reports a similar case of a woman badly burned the same day elsewhere in the city when cooking her turkey to "a requisite degree of brownness."