Jewish World Review April 2, 2003 / 29 Adar II 5763

Wendy McElroy

Wendy McElroy
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
James Glassman
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Leftist feminists using war as podium


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Differences over the war in Iraq are arising in families throughout our society. I know because they are arising within mine. With one relative in Qatar and a nephew at draft age, disagreements — even debate about nailing down the financial cost of war — can become emotionally charged.

And they should. The questions surrounding the war impact our futures and those of our children. There would be something wrong with us if we didn't care passionately about a pivotal event in our lives.

Yet the people with whom we argue are family members, friends, and neighbors beside whom we will live long after Saddam Hussein is buried in the sand. He is an enemy; they are not. And the very fact of the war's importance, increases — not eliminates — our need to talk together with good will and honesty.

Some voices are making that dialogue more difficult. These are political opportunists who use the blood of soldiers and civilians to score cheap points. They trivialize the war by attaching petty little agendas to it in an attempt "to make hay while the war shines."

On this score, the recent antics of left-leaning feminists have been reprehensible. Like petulant children who throw temper tantrums because the attention no longer centers on them, these feminists are using the war as a podium and a publicity stunt.

Consider Martha Burk. The shrill feminist has spearheaded a demand that the privately-owned Augusta National Golf Club, sponsor of the Masters Golf Tournament, admit women as members. Burk states, "The war ... has enhanced our message. We have women fighting for American values in Iraq. Women fighting for their country. But ... women can't get into Augusta."

As a matter of fact, almost every male soldier in Iraq can't get into the expensive and ultra-elite club either. But facts don't stop Burk. Nor does common decency.

She uses women soldiers — including POWs like Shoshana Johnson, whose terrified visage on TV haunts us all — to argue for the "right" of affluent women to play golf in a private club where they are not wanted. Speaking for Augusta National, Glenn Greenspan said it all: "If she is invoking the troops to draw more attention to herself, only three words apply 'shame on you'!"

Consider Suzanne Fields, a columnist for the Washington Times. She wrote an article entitled "A new front in the war (of the sexes)" in which she uses the Iraq war to slam the sexism in rap music.

Fields begins with a description of the women who make up 15 percent of active-duty soldiers. Then she writes, "but back on the home front men are reverting to big-time piggery as women invade traditional male turf. You can hear the snorts, grunts and oinks throughout the pop culture." Quoting another columnist for support, she continues, "'ho' and 'bitch' are just about the nicest words used [by rappers] to describe young women." She concludes that women at the "lower end of the social order" will pay "of resurgent male chauvinism as reflected in rap music" — a resurgence that she clearly connects to the war in Iraq.

Consider renowned feminist Dr. Helen Caldecott. Her recent speech for the anti-war organization Code Pink became an article entitled "Men: Natural Born Killers." She declared, "when the scent of blood metaphorically enters the male nostril, it triggers the psychological imperative to kill — a primitive autonomic reflex located in the male midbrain." I have news for Ms. Caldecott. One fear expressed about my nephew, who is deeply religious, is that he won't be able to kill another human being, even in self-defense.

Caldecott's solution for men's savagery? Remove men. She declares, "53 percent of us are women. We've had the majority and we've been absolute wimps. And it's time we smacked their [men's] bottoms, removed them, and we took over. I'm not just joking —this isn't funny. I am deadly serious." She is deadly contemptuous of the majority of adult, self-respecting women who are expressing their preferences but with whom she disagrees.

The next candidate for shame is Eve Ensler, famous for her play The Vagina Monologues, which centers around women speaking as though they were their vaginas. Ensler recently staged the play in Pakistan where Hibaaq Osman, the play's representative, declared, "having these Pakistani women talking about vibrators — that's what it's all about."

A scene from the original Monologues was not performed; it celebrated child molestation. Specifically, it featured a 13-year-old girl/vagina named 'coochi snorcher' who is plied with alcohol by a 24-year-old woman and sexually seduced. The child declares, "Now people say it was a kind of rape.... Well, I say if it was rape, it was a good rape." In Pakistan, the good rape was replaced by a bad rape: a Serbian woman raped by a group of soldiers.

The list of opportunists could scroll on.

It is ridiculous but necessary to state that the war in Iraq has nothing to do with "the right to golf," rap music, replacing men in society, or vibrators.

By attaching their wagons to the war, these feminists make it more difficult for others to discuss the real and complex issues surrounding Iraq. They manufacture conflict in a situation already overflowing with it. I can't say it better than "Shame on you!"

Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.



JWR contributor Wendy McElroy is the editor of Ifeminists.com. She also edited Freedom, Feminism, and the State (Independent Institute, 1999) and Sexual Correctness: The Gender Feminist Attack on Women (McFarland, 1996). She lives with her husband in Canada. Comment by clicking here.

Up

03/26/03: Laying down 'the white woman's burden'
03/19/03: Iraq War may kill feminism as we know it
03/13/03: A woman to replace Saddam
02/19/03: Elder abuse demands family solutions
02/13/03: Iraqi women brutalized by Saddam
01/29/03: There ought not to be a law
01/22/03: Gambling with race and gender cards
01/02/03: The future of fatherhood
12/26/02: U.N. complicit in forced sterilizations
12/20/02: Compassion, kindness killed by fear, paranoia
12/11/02: Affirmative action insults immigrant contributions
12/04/02: Stand up for yourself
11/27/02: Feminist fighting: Aren't we all women?
11/20/02: Rights & responsibilities
11/14/02: Feminist "urban legends"
11/06/02: Equal access does not guarantee equal outcome
10/24/02: Battered Women's Syndrome: Science or sham?
10/17/02: I demand a civil society that respects the individual and acknowledges the existence of honest disagreement between human beings of good will
10/09/02: Abortion debate is about to be ratcheted up yet again
10/02/02: 'Restorative justice' offers battered women more options
09/25/02: Why is prez promising to embrace UN radical social engineering programs?
09/18/02: Dirty dealings kill men's panel
09/11/02: Taking back your power
09/05/02: Calm down, Hootie!
08/21/02: Will Congress empower a group of radical feminists to oversee money slated for Afghan women?
08/14/02: Empower the U.N. with power to sculpt American laws and institutions into the image of gender feminism!?
08/01/02: Practicing 'intellectual virtue'
07/24/02: All male, bad. All female, good: Your tax dollars at work
07/11/02: Put Up or Shut Up
07/03/02: NOW they've done it, again!
06/19/02: A dark cloud shades U.N. Women's Treaty
06/10/02: This Father's Day, send justice
05/31/02: When good women do nothing
05/28/02: Feminists claiming motherhood as liberal cause
05/20/02: Wounds in health care system are self-inflicted: Or, why "my son the lawyer" makes more sense
05/10/02: Are parents boycotting public schools?
05/03/02: Women can't be gun-shy about defense
04/25/02: The Bill of Intellectual Rights
04/19/02: World Bank or World Government?: The World Bank is blackmailing impoverished nations
04/12/02: Victims From Birth: Engineering Defects in Helpless Children Crosses the Line
04/05/02: The professor made me cry, now I will make him pay!
03/31/02: Doctors and teens --- parents be on guard
03/22/02: I was born, now I'm suing you!
03/15/02: The 21st Century is knocking at the barricaded door of feminism
03/08/02: Fun and games at the Ms mag Bulletin Board
03/01/02: Andrea Yates, NOW, and Feminist Jurisprudence
02/22/02: Lady, Your Slip is Showing
02/14/02: 'Abusing' Valentine's Day
02/11/02: Is NOW Pro-Choice or Pro-Abortion?
02/01/02: Are 'fathers' rights' a factor in male suicide?
01/25/02: Is the U.N. Running Brothels in Bosnia?
01/18/02: 'Freedom' at another's (moral) expense
01/11/02: Feminists hit Ground Zero with WTC funds grab
01/04/02: Males winning "diversity discrimination" cases is good?
12/21/01: Good will toward men
12/14/01: "Boss Tweed" feminism
12/07/01: Call me 'anti-woman'

© 2001, Wendy McElroy