Where do the alleged, silent, dhimmi 'feminists' stand on:
[sound of crickets]
Posted on 05/24/2008 4:55:23 AM PDT by markomalley
Blessedly brief, Pollitt's diatribe brought to mind Erma Bombeck's reaction to a Betty Friedan speech: "We were too intimidated to laugh and too old to cry. We sat there stunned." And Pollitt is stunning in her vehemence. Stretching a comparison of the abuse of teen girls within the recently raided Texas compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and the moral teachings of the Catholic Church on sexuality, Pollitt asserts:
If it was up to Benedict, we might be more stylish than the plural wives of the FLDS, but we'd be trapped in marriage and have 15 children just like them. FLDS men have many wives and the pope has none, which goes to show there's more than one way to keep women pregnant and in their place.
Pollitt simply cannot intend this as a factual assertion. She is too educated, too well-published not to know at least minimally the nature of the Church's objections to the contraceptive, aborting mentality of today's Western culture. While Pollitt may never have read Humanae Vitae or Mulieris Dignitatem -- or any of the other rich, philosophical Church documents regarding love, marriage, women, and reproduction -- she's not stupid.
How, then, is Pollitt unable to distinguish a small, allegedly abusive cult in remote Texas from a 2,000-year-old, 1.2-billion-strong, worldwide religious movement that has produced women like Catherine of Siena, Caryll Houselander, Sigrid Undset, Mother Teresa, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Mary Ann Glendon, to name a few? How does she leap from rebuking the "FLDS' extreme male dominance" to berating the media "lovefest" with "Benedict's intellect, charm and elegant red shoes" during his recent United States visit?
And why the vitriol with which she willingly, perhaps purposefully, obscures fact, hatefully lashing out at a cultural enclave deeply cherished and defended by millions of the same women on whose behalf she claims to argue? For a person who believes that women, not the government, are best suited to make a decision regarding abortion, Pollitt certainly vents a breathtaking lack of faith in Catholic women's ability to make spiritual and moral decisions for themselves.
An ardent atheist who "can't stand to be in a religious service," Pollitt may simply share the same passion that drives "kill God" advocates like Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins. Indeed, the depth of her scorn toward the pope strangely mirrors Hitchens's own dark crusade against Mother Teresa.
But even accounting for this effect, I suspect a deeper determination drives her rancor. It is the deathly determination, undergirding the entire radical feminist sexual agenda, that a woman's womb and her reproductive capacity are an evolutionary accident at best and, at worst, the cause by which she is "fated to be subjected, owned and exploited like the Nature whose magical fertility she embodies" (The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir).
The female rejection of her womb remains a critical component of radical feminism, which insists that women merely "happen to be the people who give birth" (The Feminist Mystique, Betty Friedan) and that the capacity to bear children must be managed and subjugated to the higher, worthier (formerly male) callings of profession and paycheck. A woman's reproductive capacity, the radical feminists have always insisted, is an often burdensome biological function that has oppressed women, impeding their material and professional success.
Tools like contraception and abortion, then, can and should be readily employed to neutralize the misfortunes of the womb -- and women should be forced by education and policy to pursue "truly challenging work" and "economic independence." Earning a paycheck, according to the "enlightened" radical feminists, is woman's only path to "equality and human dignity" (The Feminine Mystique). Pollitt's diatribe echoes and continues this shrill insistence that women's identities derive no import or meaning from their capacity to bring forth life.
Thus does Pollitt riddle her short column with references to pregnancy and motherhood as "trapping," "controlling," and "keeping" women "in their place." Women with multiple children particularly offend Pollitt's sensibilities, recalling Simone de Beauvoir's description of such women as "not so much mothers as fertile organisms, like fowls with high egg-production." That women might indeed find fulfillment through their gender-unique reproductive and nurturing capacity -- the very theme and proposition of Pope John Paul II's Mulieris Dignitatem -- can provoke blind rage in women who have so deeply and permanently invested in rejecting these feminine traits to pursue more "manly" pursuits.
Here, then, is the source of Pollitt's unlikely correlation: Any behavior or reflection suggestive of the "myth" that relates female identity and meaning to the birth of a child is suspect. Pollitt can thus lump together the statutory rape and underage sexual activity suspected at the FLDS ranch and the Catholic Church's pro-life teachings as in-kind schemes to make "women . . . baby machines controlled by powerful older men in the name of God."
But as young women today embrace their femaleness, fecundity and all (as witnessed in the writings of Dawn Eden, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Miriam Grossman, and Wendy Shalit, to name a few), Pollitt has surely noticed dwindling support for her campaign for "contraception, condoms, divorce and abortion" -- goals she insists are "human rights," but which women increasingly see as means for the abdication of male responsibility.
The heady days of commanding open the doors of Oz have passed, and Pollitt and her peers grow ever less relevant to the real world in which young women live. |
This article is false. The heady days have not waned, they have merely been supplanted by the same mentality dressed up with new shoes and a bag, and served up at brunch a la sex in the city. It’s the new feminism, but it’s just as coarse as they old. On the other hand, the relationship of the church towards those who would have large families is a distanced one: the support for those is relegated to virtual wildernesses as mothers won’t find help in Catholic Schools or any kind of organized support within the physical church in terms of babysitting, etc. Homeschooling and a very strong male figure is necessary. Unfortunately, that type of male is not always available, and therefore the willingness to have a larger family absent a support system is, for obvious reasons, not there. V’s wife.
[sound of crickets]
The evolutionary mandates of the ovaries and testicals could never be long denied.Some try,through social engineering,to put panties on the caveman and jockstraps on the cavewomen yet the skull still remains beneath the skin.
Sorry, I had promised to dial back the crudity. Pollitt has that effect on me.
I apologize for the relapse.
Just as race relations are plagued with race-hustlers like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Jeremiah Wright who never want anything solved, feminism appears to have its analog. (Has anyone coined the term "fem-hustler"?)
God knows the Catholic Church deserves legitimate criticism; it doesn't deseve Pollitt.
How about “Estrogen Hustling,Penisphobic Pimps?”
Crudity has a place if prudence fails.
Crudity is not profanity,yet should be just as little used unless called for.
It is interesting that when Hillary raised the bloody flag this year, not too many rallied. I think feminism IS dying, but, like communism in Russia, enormous damage has been done.
It is dying indeed. And has wreaked mighty havoc. These feminists are SO unattractive, tho. Who would want to model themselves after them? I would like to listen in, tho, when this bitter hag-writer stands before the Great White Throne.
Non-white and/or non-Christian perps are just demonstrating their multi-culturalism.
I suspect that they well know that even stepping into that bath water is going to make all of their complaints about things such as "glass ceilings" look stupid.
The reality of slavery and real oppression would only serve to confirm their pettiness.
Second-wave feminism totally disrespected the willful choices men made in caring for their loved ones.
Many women, having made mincemeat of their own lives, as a result of second wave feminism, do exhibit a tendency to wish to return to ground zero, to start over.
And here's second wave feminism, to tell them how stupid they are, once again.
The females in Texas are making willful choices as to how they wish to live. Any woman and man alive can tell you that what women want, they usually get. This infurates second wave feminists because females are not wanting what the second wavers want.
And so, second wavers belittle, denigrate, smear in the hopes that what they want they will get.
Assuredly, some females will follow in the steps of second wave feminism, per writ. These are the college professors teaching women's studies. These are the pundits who write articles like Katha Pollitt's.
What second wavers never admit is what they have spawned and created. They whine that women who follow the Catholic Church or Mormonism, etc., are not making personal choices.
It takes a personal choice to become a second wave feminist. That's to be respected, according to second wave feminists. But any other choice than that is to be belittled, smeared and denigrated.
Second wave feminism is its own cult.
women’s studies = social carcinoma
I think it's an evil spirit, myself. What else could hate life and the ability to produce it so much ?
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: That's not funny!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.