Feminists & Men

Amanda over at Pandagon has an excellent post on Feminists and man-hating.

http://www.pandagon.net/archives/2005/05/man-hating.html#more

It's a standard strawman slander of those "traditional women" Wingers: you hear it from Rush and Dr. Laura and on the Far-Right Christian blogs all the time. (Have a look at this one for a typical strawman picture of how good Christian women paint feminists:

http://www.beverlylahayeinstitute.org/articledisplay.asp?id=3350&department=BLI&categoryid=femfacts)

I certainly heard it from my Winger students: Feminists hate men. Liberal women hate men. Lesbians hate men. Once I came out as a feminist to my Mormon students, back in Idaho, it was the talk of the campus -- not because of anything I had said, but just because of my admitting to feminism. "Dr. Jennings? Yeah, she hates men." All my women students used to defend me: "She does not! She's married!"

Because if I was married, then obviously...hell, I don't know.

But Dr. Laura claims feminists hate men? When she publishes that book on the Care and Feeding of Husbands that tells women men are "simple" and need only two things: sex and sandwiches, and that women should use sex and food to manipulate men into giving them everything they need?

Compare that to how the women over at Pandagon see the men in their lives, and tell me who actually disdains and belittles men.

Or, better yet, go borrow a copy of Amanda Bright@Home -- don't buy it, don't given Danielle Crittenden the money -- and have a look at the men in her book.

She hates her husband because he can't earn enough money for her to have a big house like her rich friends.

(He's also a loser because he can't start a fire as well as the rich Texas guy. Who she hates because he's committing adultery. So he's a sinner. But he does have good manners. Unlike her loser husband.)

She hates the stay-at-home dad because only a wimp and a loser would stay at home with his kids, unless he's a woman, because all women should stay home with their kids, because it's the right thing to do. And all males should be out earning $400,000 a year so their wives can have huge houses on 40 acres and face-lifts whenever they wants them, and still plot behind hubby's back to squirrel away money for the inevitable day when he will have an affair with a 25 year old, because that's what men are, they're only interested in fucking and sandwiches, so better plan ahead.

(May I mention here that I know, personally, two fathers who have stayed home with their kids, and one of them is, in fact, mr. delagar and both of them think it's hilarious that anyone would think a wimp could handle staying home with a kid, also mr. delagar would like me to add he has medical proof that he has the highest sperm count in the tristate area*, so Ms. Crittenden can wank the hell off.)

Of course, she hates all the woman too. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe conservatives are just hateful. I was reading a conservative blog the other night that was arguing that South Park was actually a conservative TV show, and its main argument was that SP must be conservative because it hated liberals.

So apparently conservatives define themselves wholly and entirely through the things they hate.

Which explains a lot about them, I guess.

*discovered when we were undergoing fertility counseling to find out why I wasn't getting pregnant, after the miscarriage and previous to the kid. (Endometriosis, as it turned out.) mr delagar was very impressed with his numbers, and still finds ways to work them into conversations. "Oh, by the way..." He's much more impressed with these numbers than with his (equally impressive) SAT scores.

I read an article in the Chronicle today, BTW, that claims we always remember our SAT scores, no matter how long ago we took the SAT. I asked mr. delagar what his were and he rattled the number right off. I, of course, didn't take the SAT (Jefferson Parish public school system again -- no one bothered to tell us we ought to, no one mentioned such things as the SATs existed, it was a charming school system) so I don't have my own reference point, but is this so?

I did take the ACT, and the GRE, later, both the regular and the Lit GRE, and I couldn't tell you what I made any of those tests with a gun to my head.