PJM Lifestyle
Who Wants To Lose Their Virginity at the Ballot Box?
Both the Lady Parts and Periods items were pulled within hours of posting, and Julia had launched quite a backlash meme, so one might think that the Obama campaign would be cautious about patronizing women again.
Alas, no. The Obama campaign has plenty more patronizing to do, this time in a plucky commercial. Thursday afternoon the Obama campaign released this spot, “Your First Time.”
In case you are not familiar with the young woman telling voting virgins to have their first time be with Barack Obama, that is Lena Dunham, creator and star of HBO’s Girls. It is Sex in the City for millennials — all the sex and the single girl drama but without the cushy jobs to support the Manolo Blahnik fetishes.
The Only Reason Why a Man (Or A Woman) Should Get Married
Dr. Helen asks the question at her blog: Name 5 Reasons a Man Should Get Married,
As I think about it, I wonder in today’s anti-male climate, whether there are financial and legal reasons that a man would want to marry. Maybe I’m being too cynical here. Can readers help me out?
No financial or legal reasons exist for a man to want to marry. I’ll go further: no secular reasons exist for a man to marry. Choosing marriage is an entirely irrational act, contrary to male nature and self-interest. It’s an act of self-sacrifice in which the man decides to give up his own life so he can take care of his wife and their children, giving them a better life than he knew himself.
There’s only one reason why anyone should marry: Because they believe in a religion that says you’re supposed to get married and have as many children as possible and that happiness will then follow. If a transcendent God doesn’t exist and death is the absolute end then what difference does it make if a man spends his money on a wife and kids or on toys and escorts?
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
23 Books for Counterculture Conservatives, Tea Party Occultists, and Capitalist Wizards
7 Lies Women Need to Stop Telling Themselves
How Today’s Young Women Learned To Sing The Truth About Hook Up Culture
Binders Full of Women: A Meme to Defend Women’s Psyches
Throughout this election cycle, ever since that Halftime in America commercial during the Super Bowl, I have worried about how much people, especially women, want to vote for Obama despite their disappointment. They want to believe him. They want to have hope. And they certainly don’t want to be lumped in with those cruel-hearted women of the Right. Giving up on Obama is a potential political Dark Night of the Soul.
In their resistance, I’ve seen and heard much twisted reasoning in the past months. They look for any ray of light in Obama’s abstract musings. They recoil from any concrete good done by Romney. So it is with the “binders full of women” meme. They are punning to avoid a positive fact about Romney: he has a standout record of seeking and appointing women to his Massachusetts administration.
To illustrate: if Romney had said “stacks of applications from women,” there would be no meme. The press and defensive women, afraid of the polling data that women are breaking for Romney, have seized upon the omission of the word “application” and the connotations of “binder”—not just the plastic-ringed notebook but also the notion of restraining—to pretend that a Romney administration bodes ill for women in government.
In truth, the binder meme says the opposite. Romney’s choice of words illustrates a concrete memory. He remembers someone bringing him a binder full of applications from women. Romney went through that binder and appointed many of those women to office. It all happened. It is all part of his record. Not only does he remember the physical binder, but he also remembers the women, not merely the applications on paper. But for silly wordplay, we would be talking about Romney’s impressive record for women in government.
Of course, if we did that, then we might need to talk about Obama’s history of women in government, and that’s complicated. Obama answered Romney’s memory of appointing women to his administration with an abstract and off-point thought about his future hopes for his daughters: may they have the same opportunities as men. Obama often answers in abstracts because the facts are not in his favor. Obama’s record with women in his administration is dark and murky. Just this week, he threw Hillary Clinton under the bus as damage control for the debacle in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack. Last summer, in Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President, Obama faced criticism that his administration was a hostile work environment for women. When the book came out, the women who were quoted accusing the administration claimed that they were misquoted, and women’s groups, usually quick to pounce upon any allegations of hostile work environment, refused to comment.
Another Democratic president with a murky history with women. There was certainly ample evidence that President Clinton might have meant "binders full of women" in a women-as-mere-objects sort of way, but there is nothing in Romney's past to suggest that he sees women as mere objects.
Women of the left are so well-trained by the conventional wisdom that they reflexively reject promising evidence on the right and prop up weak evidence on the left. They will believe what they want to believe, regardless of the evidence. Hopefully independent women are more astute.
Also read: Binder Politics: GOP Fires Back at Dem Push Against Romney Quote
Welcome Back to the Woman Wars, Camille Paglia…
The quality of discourse for women today is poor. The many and varied reasons for this will make a post for another day, but for the moment, note that the Mommy Wars and hookup culture discussions might be heartfelt but rarely resolve anything.
Notable recent examples of unproductive chattering: Naomi Wolf has created a new range of vagina puns with her anecdotal account of her technicolor orgasms in her latest book Vagina. The Life of Julia is a left-looking faceless cartoon claiming that women need government to take care of them. (I linked to Iowahawk’s parody because the original is too depressing.) Hanna Rosin seeks to convince us that replacing domineering men with domineering women amounts to positive progress. And a fan fiction author addicted to “shouty capitals,” E.L. James, captured the imagination of women across the English-speaking world with a poor specimen of a bondage novel that has since spun off a line of sex toys with little Fifty Shades of Grey logo tags. (British comment threads are always informative. Why pay for trademarked logo pleasure balls when limes work just as well?)
Missing has been someone to show how absurd this all is. We, the most privileged and independent women in history, find those discussions compelling? Sure, the Right has been pointing out the absurdities in such discussions for a while, but we are written off as the bigoted and biased Other. Feminist thought needs some honest criticism from the inside.
Re-enter Camille Paglia, the “pro-sex, pro-porn, pro-art, pro-beauty, pro-pop” sixties feminist and heavily published art and culture critic, quiet for the past few years while writing her latest book due out on October 16th, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars. Our debates suffered from her absence.
VIDEO: Jesse Jackson in Defense of Polygamy During Gay Marriage Discussion
via Jesse Jackson Says He‘s Not Convinced ’Gay Marriage’ Is Wrong | Video | TheBlaze.com.
Of particular note, though, was a separate response that Jackson gave about homosexuality as a societal norm. Holmes pointed out that the central tenets of the Christian faith point out that “homosexuality is wrong.” The host then asked if Jackson agrees with this sentiment.
“I’m not all-together convinced of that,” the civil rights leader responded, going on to claim that marriage has “blurred” definitions. “King Solomon had many wives in that culture. Then David had many wives of that culture. The Muslims today have three or four wives of that culture.”
Rather than focusing upon a defense of traditional marriage as a central component of the faith, Jackson said he sticks to the “moral imperatives” that Jesus described in the Bible.
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
8 Ways Blacks Perpetuate Racism and the Only Way to Thwart It
Jay-Z: 99 Problems and Gay Marriage Ain’t 1
The Sex Bots Have Arrived
Wayne Brady: Bill Maher Likes His Black Men Violent and His Black Women Prostitutes
How Today’s Young Women Learned to Sing the Truth About Hookup Culture
After Hanna Rosin’s glowing praise for promiscuity in her new book The End of Men, articles about the hookup culture are popping up all over the web. Is it really good for women? Do they actually like it? Is replacing forward men with on-the-prowl women really progress?
Intentional or not, many of this summer’s pop rock music releases offer songs about the truth and consequences of the hookup culture. Three of these artists in particular boldly sing about love; as products of their generations, their songs can teach us about the hookup culture. The early songs of Alanis Morissette, P!nk, and Katy Perry provide a window into how these ideas progressed from Gen X women to Millennial women. The rockers’ latest works (Alanis’ havoc and bright lights, P!nk’s The Truth About Love, and Perry’s “Wide Awake”) are about how they are coping, or not, with marriage and, in the case of Alanis and P!nk, motherhood. What truths about love and happiness do their songs tell us?
The results are counterintuitive for the Rosin types who think that the hookup culture empowers women. Surely the eyes-wide-open, independent Millennial Perry is the one who has it all together? According to her songs, she is not. The truth-teller P!nk, perhaps? She is holding together if only because she hates goodbyes. No, it is angry Alanis who seems to have found peace in spite of all the havoc and bright lights. And her relative lack of experience with the hookup culture can explain why.
When The Abortion Ship Sets Sail For the Muslim World
via Dutch abortion ship heads for Morocco – FRANCE 24.
AFP – A Dutch “abortion boat” has set sail for Morocco, its first trip to a Muslim country, to provide abortions to women who are exposed to grave health risks if treated domestically, its organiser said on Monday.
“The ship is on its way. We can’t yet disclose the place and time of arrival… We expect it to stay for up to a week.” Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of the Dutch non-profit organisation Women on Waves, told AFP by phone.
The group says that, according to figures published by the Moroccan government, between 600 and 800 abortions take place every day in the north African kingdom, where the procedure is illegal and taboo.
“The problem is that only about 200 cases are done properly, by women who have money,” the Dutch abortion doctor said, with the rest resorting to dangerous methods because they are unable to afford the expensive treatment.
This leads to the deaths of 78 Moroccan women each year on average, Gomperts claimed, citing statistics provided by the World Health Organisation.
Hat Tip: Drudge
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Related at PJ Media:
In Praise of Gendercide
Is It Time We Stopped Saying ‘Feminist’ and Started Saying ‘Eugenicist’?
Human Nature is not Always Politically Correct
I like reading college newspapers to get a feel for the culture on campus. Today, I was reading The Stanford Daily and an article on the front page caught my eye. The article, “Groups react to sexual batteries” under “crime and safety” reminded me of how advice from politically correct women’s groups can actually be harmful to women. Unfortunately, I could not find the article online but I will summarize it for you.
A male suspect has been groping and attempting to sexually assault women — two of whom were in public places and another who was on a foot path. The police believe the same man may have perpetrated these three incidents and recommended that pedestrians be more aware of their surroundings and “women jog in pairs or small groups whenever possible.”
Good advice, right? “No” according to the Stanford Sexual Assault and Relationship Abuse (SARA) office: “To suggest that someone can employ certain tactics to ward off an offender–particularly when caught off guard during blitz attacks such as these–can be victim-blaming.”
This office goes on to encourage students to do whatever makes them feel “safe and empowered in public spaces and behind closed doors, but prefer not to give advice on self-defense.” The director of the Women’s Community Center at Stanford stated “We don’t advocate using self-defense as a prevention measure for a sexual assault or rape or relationship abuse because it’s not prevention.”
Huh? The woman attacked on a secluded foot path struggled out of a bear-hug by a perpetrator. Is that too much self-defense for these damsels of political correctness? They would rather a woman not use or learn self-defense to protect herself because to do so would somehow be victim-blaming? Do they really think the perp doing this is going to stop himself and say “no, this is wrong?” Perhaps if these sanctimonious women would come out of their cocoon long enough to join us in the real world, they would realize that the police officers’ advice is sound. There will always be people in the world, both men and women, out to harm others. You cannot wish that away, no matter how much you may wish to do so.
What Father Would Permit His Young Daughter to Wear a Bikini?
From Vesta Vayne at her must-read blog The Cowardly Feminist, “Itsy bitsy bikini”:
Did you guys read about Elizabeth Hurley’s line of sexy kiddie bikinis?
Much like the author of the article, for me, the problem is a combination of two things – the bikini itself and the child model’s pose or, I should say, the pose she was instructed to do by someone. If she had floaties on her arms and was building a sandcastle, I might not have focused as much on the pint-sized string bikini. What really bothered me, however, was the wording that apparently went along with the pictures on Hurley’s site, such as a caption next to a bikini for the 8-13 age range, which said “great for girls who want to look grown up”. I checked out her site, elizabethhurley.com, to see for myself, and received an error message. I can only assume her reps are doing some damage control with regards to either the pictures or the descriptions.
It’s even worse when you go to Hurley’s website — which is still very much up. Here’s a screenshot from the UNDER 8 page which I’m not all that happy about posting here, but which seems necessary to preserve as evidence:
Vesta poses the usual questions to stir up debate about whether it’s better for young girls to wear very adult swimwear.
Here are a few questions that were on my mind: how do the fathers of the girls wearing these swimsuits look at themselves in the mirror in the morning? Do these men actually feel comfortable taking their girls in public with strangers seeing them dressed like this? Are they in denial about the damage done to an 8-year-old girl training to be “sexy” or do they not care? Or would most fathers today be proud of daughters growing up to be underwear models and porn stars?
The Designer Family: Putting a Dollar Value on a Little Girl
Over at Acculturated this week editor Emily Esfahani Smith highlights a disturbing development, the rise of services that help couples choose the gender of their baby. Couples are paying tens of thousands of dollars to make sure they have girls (the reverse of what we commonly see in China and India), and are heartbroken when they end up with a boy:
Simpson was inseminated with the slower sperm that same day. Fifteen weeks later, she asked a colleague at the hospital to sneak in an after-hours ultrasound. The results felt like a brick landing on her stomach: another boy.
“I lay in bed and cried for weeks,” said Simpson, now 36, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy. She took a job in the operating room so she would no longer have to work with women who were giving birth to girls.
Even more disturbing is her reaction when she finally did get her baby girl:
“My husband and I stared at our daughter for that first year. She was worth every cent. Better than a new car, or a kitchen reno.”
Aside from the obvious hints at eugenics that can be seen here, what does this say about how we view children? From the high rates of abortions of babies with Down syndrome or other disabilities to choosing the sex of our babies, are we beginning to view our kids as accessories? As “things” meant to bring us happiness? When parents are paying to make sure the baby they have is the one they want, it really is like buying a new car or renovating a kitchen. It’s a purchase. It puts the child on the same level as the little chihuahua Paris Hilton carried around in her purse: a designer object meant to be used as a status symbol or to make the parent feel good.
And where do we go from here? What if we could choose our children’s eye color, hair color, height? Would we? The reason this is disturbing is because it allows parents to play God… to engineer perfect children, and toss out the not-so-perfect ones. Along the way, would we lose our humanity as well?
Science may allow us to create designer babies, but that doesn’t mean we should.
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Tax-Funded Sterilizations for Teenagers (No Parental Consent Required?)
Is It Time We Stopped Saying ‘Feminist’ and Started Saying ‘Eugenicist’?
The Sex Bots Have Arrived
Why the Negative Titles for Books on Men?
I saw that Hanna Rosin has a new book out entitled The End of Men: And the Rise of Women. I have to say that I really dislike and find distasteful the derogatory titles that these new books on men seem to find acceptable. Do authors lately ever have a title that makes men sound good, or decent or even likable? Are there any that don’t include women in the title or refer to how men relate to women? Just asking.
Seriously, titles like Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys or Save the Males: Why Men Matter Why Women Should Care or even Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind give the reader negative images of men that lead them to believe that men have no agency — that is, they are not autonomous, independent beings who deserve better, but rather immature characters who can’t hack it in the current system.
I am sick of these titles and wonder why anyone would buy a book that is geared toward men as failures. Certainly, few men are reading these books as most publishers only want books about men for women and therefore, take those books that make women feel good and make men look like losers for their female customers only.
If male, would you buy a book entitled The End of Men?
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Related at PJ Lifestyle on Rosin:
‘Feminist Progress Right Now Largely Depends on the Existence of the Hookup Culture.’
Sandra Fluke Speech Full Text and Video: ‘Many Women Are Shut Out and Silenced’
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Some of you may remember that earlier this year, Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception. In fact, on that panel, they didn’t hear from a single woman, even though they were debating an issue that affects nearly every woman. Because it happened in Congress, people noticed. But it happens all the time. Many women are shut out and silenced. So while I’m honored to be standing at this podium, it easily could have been any one of you. I’m here because I spoke out, and this November, each of us must do the same.
During this campaign, we’ve heard about the two profoundly different futures that could await women—and how one of those futures looks like an offensive, obsolete relic of our past. Warnings of that future are not distractions. They’re not imagined. That future could be real.
Is It Time We Stopped Saying ‘Feminist’ and Started Saying ‘Eugenicist’?
Image via Dana Loesch at Breitbart.com
From my friend Bethany Mandel at Commentary, “Dems See Women as Objects, Not Voters”:
At the Democratic Convention this week in Charlotte, we’ve learned what mainstream feminism has become. What was once a movement to fight for equality for women in every sector of society has somehow turned into a parody of itself. Since the feminist movement began in the mid-1800s, feminists strove to move past the era where women were seen merely as sexual and reproductive objects. These feminists fought for women to have roles outside of their marriages and their homes, to have equal opportunities in education, the workplace and the political arena.
Cut to Charlotte in early September 2012 and these “feminists” are representing themselves solely as human beings with female reproductive organs. At the DNC this week, women are promoting the Democratic agenda by walking around the convention wearing pins that read “I’m a slut and I vote” in addition to dressing up in costume as birth control dispensers and vaginas. These female reproductive organs, devoid of any other identifying characteristics, are duty-bound to vote for Democrats in order to protect themselves from government (while simultaneously demanding governmental involvement in their reproductive choices).
Read the whole thing. And be sure and follow Bethany and her husband Seth on Twitter here and here.
I thought to just instant message Bethany to tell her about this book that I started reading the other day, but then it seemed to make sense to just throw it out as a blog post instead because I’m sure there are commenters much more versed in this subject than I am who can provide their own recommendations:
I used to think it strange that my leftist friends who were the most outspoken about abortion “rights” and their own promiscuous sex lives were also loud about worrying about overpopulation and the proliferation of unwanted poor babies cursed to miserable lives. But when we understand Margaret Sanger’s ideology as institutionalized within the platform of the Democratic Party then suddenly it comes into focus how the two subjects of hedonism and eugenics would be related in today’s progressives. “Feminism” and “women’s rights” and “coat-hangers” were just the cups of the shell game distracting guilty, do-gooder “liberals” from Sanger’s eugenic utopianism. Here’s an excerpt from page 14 that seems relevant today:
Hmm… “Thus the working classes are pressured to copy the particular reproductive choices of society’s elite.”…
VIDEO: Should Women Have ‘Equal Rights’ to Go Topless in Public?
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Fighting the Battle for Sluts Everywhere
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Wayne Brady: Bill Maher Likes His Black Men Violent and His Black Women Prostitutes
Ann Romney, The Corporate Wife
Ann Romney is a valuable asset for the Romney campaign. Not only is she an inspirational wife and mother and apparently a talented speaker, but she’s also a woman who effortlessly draws errors from the Democrats. Last night, Juan Williams felt lukewarm about Ann’s performance and called her a “corporate wife” because her husband has always taken care of her.
To the extent he meant that someone wealthy enough to not have to worry about the price of gas isn’t the most believable person on the plight of the middle class, Williams isn’t way out of line. But after decades of being groomed by feminists not to dismiss women’s opinions, his comment smacks of dismissing the experiences of an entire group of women based on career choice. She hasn’t had to take care of herself financially so her opinion isn’t valuable.
One might think that feminists would come to Ann Romney’s defense, but they beat Williams to the attack months ago. Remember the Ann Romney “hasn’t worked a day in her life” comment from Hilary Rosen back in April? Both comments suggest that unless a woman works for money and accolades outside the home, then she has nothing of value to say.
Not only is the notion insulting, it’s also wrong.
‘Feminist Progress Right Now Largely Depends on the Existence of the Hookup Culture.’
From my friend Emily Esfahani Smith over at Acculturated, a new group blog that’s providing engaging cultural commentary week after week with one interesting piece after another, “Is the Hook-Up Culture “Empowering”?:
In 2010, Hanna Rosin wrote a pretty devastating feature article in The Atlantic titled The End of Men, which argued that women are outpacing and outperforming men in the postindustrial economy. That article has since been transformed into a book by Rosin that will be coming out next month.
Her most recent article in The Atlantic, Boys on the Side, is adapted from this forthcoming book. In the piece, she takes up what are, to her, the merits of the hook-up culture. That the hook-up culture is thriving on college campuses–thanks, in large part, to the women who drive it–is another sign that women are replacing men as the alphas of society. So Rosin’s argument goes.
She writes:
But this analysis [Caitlin Flanagan's in Girl Land] downplays the unbelievable gains women have lately made, and, more important, it forgets how much those gains depend on sexual liberation. Single young women in their sexual prime—that is, their 20s and early 30s, the same age as the women at the business-school party—are for the first time in history more successful, on average, than the single young men around them. They are more likely to have a college degree and, in aggregate, they make more money. What makes this remarkable development possible is not just the pill or legal abortion but the whole new landscape of sexual freedom—the ability to delay marriage and have temporary relationships that don’t derail education or career. To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture. And to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.
Gossip Girl Blake Lively Refuses ‘Distracting’ Nude Roles
via Blake Lively vows never to go nude on screen – The Times of India.
Blake Lively has insisted that she will never strip for an acting role because she finds it “distracting” to the plot.
The actress also revealed that she finds on-screen nudity unnecessary.
“When I see nudity in movies, I am always distracted by it. I know that if I am watching a scene and someone has their boobs out, then that’s all I’m looking at – I can’t help it. I just don’t think that will ever be right for me,” Contactmusic quoted her as telling Style magazine.
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Related on PJ Lifestyle:
3 (Conservative) Reasons to Admire Helen Gurley Brown
Yes, I know:
She advocated for legal abortion and contraception.
She made the world safe for Sex and the City.
Worst of all, she insisted on wearing mini-skirts well after menopause.
Yet I can’t help but admire Helen Gurley Brown, the author of the early 1960s self-help phenomenon Sex & the Single Girl and longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine who died last week at age 90.
I’ve always had a soft spot for “outsider” female writers of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. It’s hard to imagine two women more different than Grace Metalious and Jacqueline Susann, yet I inhaled both their biographies.
Helen Gurley Brown was part of the same cohort of fiercely ambitious, sometimes uncouth “literary” females of the era.
But while those novelists created vivid fictional worlds in which to play out their fantasies of beauty, romance, fame, and revenge, Helen Gurley Brown’s accomplishment was far more audacious:
She too imagined, in pointillistic detail, her ideal realm — then set about remaking an entire society to match her personal vision.
The old joke goes, “It’s Sinatra’s world — we just live in it,” but it would be more accurate to say we’re living in Helen Gurley Brown’s.
Not everyone is happy about that.
However, there ARE three things to love about the brash publishing icon.
