Free Republic

"Papa loved Mama, so they got married and had babies." Thus does my earnest four-year-old summarize the mysteries of marital love. For scientific purposes that statement is terribly incomplete. For philosophical purposes, it hits the bull's eye. With those words Phil Lawler began a Wall Street Journal op-ed in March of 1996. His child's perspective stands in instructive contrast to an article in today's New York Times titled, "Talking With Children About Sex and AIDS: At What Age to Start?" The answer suggested in the lede is "How about, oh, 4?" The reporter tells us this is the subject...

My mother never owned a copy of “The I Hate to Cook Book,” but that was probably because she was a Communist. Communists, at least the 1960s suburban... --snip-- “Another good gambit, when a Potluck is under discussion, is to move in fast with the dessert. You say, ‘Girls, I’ll bring my wonderful Hootenholler Whisky Cake!’ (These things must always be done with a good show of enthusiasm.) Suggesting this Whisky Cake is a shrewd move, too, because you can make it six months ago, it’s easy and very good, it’s cheap, as good cakes go, and as good cakes...

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON Q: I see that your magazine, a feminist quarterly based in Oakland, Calif., and devoted to critiquing the sexist slant of pop culture, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with the publication this week of a thick anthology called “BitchFest.” Why would you choose to glamorize the unappealing female stereotype of the bitch?When we chose the name, we were thinking, well, it would be great to reclaim the word “bitch” for strong, outspoken women, much the same way that “queer” has been reclaimed by the gay community. That was very much on our minds, the positive power...

No one vets the culture with a keener eye than Dowd. Her identification of trends - especially the perverse evolution of liberated women from Birkenstock-wearing intellectuals into pole-dancing sluts - is dead on. But while she sees women clearly as they search for identity in a gender-shifting culture, she doesn't seem to know much about men. Men haven't turned away from smart, successful women because they're smart and successful. More likely they've turned away because the feminist movement that encouraged women to be smart and successful also encouraged them to be hostile and demeaning to men. Whatever was wrong, men...

<p>First there was no way that 1.15 million people were there, as claimed by the organizers. They are lying and they know it, 200,000 tops. I was down on the mall for the "Promise Keepers" event, and there was well over 4 times the number of people for that event.</p>

The March, in three words: "viciously, mercilessly abusive." The amount of verbal aggression and abuse hurled at me personally, by women and men, of all ages, for carrying the I REGRET MY ABORTION sign, well, I thought that from all the nastiness and name-calling I've withstood recently on ampersand and calpundit's blogs, that I was ready for it. I wasn't. Not even close. I consider myself fairly far along on the "healing" and "public-appearances" scales. We stood, all 500 of us in the Silent No More Awareness groups, in total silence as planned, for over five hours, not replying or...

Who's Lying to You About Early Feminism? Susan B. Anthony: Lucifer's Babe? December 1, 2003 by Art Lemasters Many people of scriptural faith have been duped into believing that Susan B. Anthony was a devout follower of the Word by feminist mentions that she was a Quaker, that Quakers were strict, and so forth. Those stories omit the truth. Anthony's family was with the liberal Hicksite Quakers, that is, until she stopped attending Quaker meetings. In liberal Quaker doctrine, scriptures are secondary to each person's "Inner Light." Some Quakers disagree with liberal thought against scripture, but Anthony could not have...

Feminism's Third Wave by Angela Fiori Last Friday's article on date rape by Murray Rothbard in these pages brought back a lot of college memories (not many of them good). By the end of his essay Rothbard cut to the real motive of the feminists: the campus date-rape campaigns of the early 1990s weren't motivated by a genuine concern for the well-being of women. They were part of an ongoing attempt to delegitimize heterosexuality to young, impressionable women by demonizing men as rapists. The only point I'd add is that the regulations the feminists were proposing applied only to men,...