Results matching “kathleen parker”

From left to right: Carol Jenkins, President of The Women's Media Center and Founding Member of its Board of Directors and Glennda Testone, Vice President.

Carol Jenkins and Glennda Testone took time out of their busy schedules to reflect on their work at The Women's Media Center, politics and progressive activism and their upcoming Progressive Women's Voices (PWV) classes. Applications are due in December 15.

Here's Carol and Glennda...

While there have been talks of former Harvard president Larry Summers (you know, the guy that said that women are naturally not good at math) being on Obama's shortlist for Treasury Secretary, folks are now saying it will be unlikely he'll be picked.

Of course Kathleen Parker (an author who contends that women who have sex are experiencing a "mental health crisis" and women raped in the military are responsible for the crime) had an op-ed in the Washington Post today about Summers and how we should give him a break for saying one dumb thing, that this shouldn't decide his fate.

Funny you say that Parker, when he's said plenty more than just one dumb thing. In fact, he defended his position as a "purely academic exploration of hypotheses" and then said in what he calls an apology: "I suppose I've done my part over these last several months to increase interest in these topics." And those are just the tip of the iceberg. Check out Jill's post for more enlightenment on Summers' record.

I thought Ian Welsh's comment today sums it up pretty well, "Brains aren't the same thing as good judgment, and while Summers may be smart, I am aware of no evidence that he is wise or even has any common sense."

Open Left has a petition. Sign it.

Jessica's new book, He's a Stud, She's a Slut, is reviewed in tomorrow's New York Times -- alongside Kathleen Parker's ode to gender difference, Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care. (Not familiar with Parker? She's said that women having sex without going through courtship rituals first is a "mental health crisis." And she looooves to talk about how women in the military should expect to get raped.) It makes for quite the contrast:

Both of them cite a study that shows that women are "biologically" programmed to like housework more than men do. Ms. Valenti denounces it as rank anti-feminism. "In our happy little sexist world, things run much better when women are relegated to the home," she writes.

Ms. Parker applauds it: "Allow me again to translate. There's no way to make men into women."

Read the rest here. You can buy Jessica's book here.

Carol Platt Liebau, author of yet another book--Prude: How the Sex-Obsessed Culture Damages Girls (and America, Too!)--about how sex is ruining young women, takes issue with my analysis of Kathleen Parker's theory that women boning is a sign of a "mental health crisis."

In Prude, I talk about the existence of "do-me feminists" -- women who think it's a sign of "liberation" and "empowerment" for young girls to have sex consistent with the worst stereotypes of the way men do it, i.e. without affection, emotion or commitment.

For anyone who thinks such women don't exist, check this out. From their perspective, it isn't that young girls can suffer physical, emotional, psychological and (for people of faith) spiritual damage from giving too much, too soon to the wrong person (or people). Apparently, the problem is that someone, somewhere might be encouraging young girls to behave modestly. Heaven forbid!

Yes, heaven forbid we continue to shame girls and women about their bodies and sexuality. Heaven forbid we keep telling women that their moral compass lays somewhere in between their legs. Heaven forbid we teach abstinence-only education that not only is creating a generation of sexually misinformed and lied-to youth, but that is also responsible for unplanned pregnancies and STDs in that same generation. Heaven forbid.

You know, I am just so sick of these liars--and that's what they are, liars--pretending to have young women's best interest at heart while creating policy and social norms that destroy our sense of self and put our health at risk. I'm sick of these same liars spouting ridiculous myths about feminists wanting children to have sex because it's "empowering." I challenge Liebau, or any of her cohorts, to come up with just one example of a feminist (on this site or others) saying that teens having sex is "liberating." It's a sham, a distraction to take attention away from the fact that they are destroying young women.

What feminists really believe (and what Liebau and friends refuse to address): That young women should be informed and not lied to. That young women's moral character shouldn't be based on whether or not she has a hymen. That young women deserve access to health care that will enable them to live the lives they want--and that will potentially save their lives. That young women are smart. That young women are to be trusted. That young women can make decisions for themselves without moral panic assholes telling them they're whores.

(Not-as-angry-aside: I laughed when I found out about Liebau's Prude, because it's basically the anti-book to what will be my third venture with Seal Press--a book about how the myth of sexual purity is fucking up young women.)

So long as there are people who want to think about what dirty, dirty whores today's girls are, we're going to continue to see misleading, stupid articles like this one, penned by Townhall columnist Kathleen Parker. The headline is about as predictable as a Lifetime movie title: Dying to date.

If you're younger than 30 or maybe even 35, you may not recognize the word "date" as a verb. But once upon a time, dating was something men and women did as a prelude to marriage, which - hold on to your britches - was a prelude to sex.

By now everyone's heard of the hook-up culture prevalent on college campuses and, increasingly, in high schools and even middle schools. Kids don't date; they just do it (or something close to "it," an activity that a recent president asserted was not actual sex), and then figure out what comes next. If anything.

Kids are fucking! Women are fucking! And they're not even demanding flowers for it anymore!! Here we go again.

Parker says there is a "mental health crisis on American campuses." Disease, thy name is fucking. To prove that young women are all going crazy with the cock, Parker quotes Miriam Grossman, yet another hack, I mean "expert," on the supposed hook-up culture on campuses.

Damn, The Washington Post sure does love their anti-feminists recently! First they feature Carrie Making-Less-Money-Than-Men-Sure-Is-Fun Lukas, and now they've given space to Kathleen Parker--who likes to blame female soldiers for their own rapes. Lovely.

Parker penned an article for WaPo this past weekend, "Mother Of All Blunders." And what is the blunder, you ask? Well letting "our" women near combat of course. Honestly, the sexist bullshit that comes out of her mouth is so obvious, I don't know what to write other than just feature some of her best quotes:

We can debate whether they're right until all our boys wear aprons...

Cause then they'll be like women (ew!), get it?

Women may be able to push buttons as well as men can...

But not when they're on the rag, then they're too cranky.

Rape...is a consistent argument against putting women in or near combat. While advocates for women in combat argue that men are also raped, there is an important difference. Women are raped by men, which, given the inherent power differential between the sexes, raises women's rape to another level of terror.

Let me see if I get this. Sexism creates a hierarchy of rape? Uh huh. And men are tough and are equal to their rapists, so they can handle a little sexual assault every once in a while? Charming.

This is truly my favorite bit, though:

What kind of man, one shudders to wonder, is willing to allow his country's women to be raped and tortured by men of enemy nations? None that I know, but our military is gradually weaning men of their intuitive inclination to protect women -- which, by extrapolation, means ignoring the screams of women being assaulted.

I think my head just exploded and Cynthia Enloe popped out.

Shorter Kathleen Parker: Women in the military are raped because they're stupid enough to be around men.

Oh, and the ladies are probably exaggerating anyway. No, seriously. Check out these gems:

No serious person doubts that sexual harassment and even rape occur in a war zone. But the degree to which sex is consensual or forced -- often a question of he-said-she-said -- is further complicated by military hierarchy and the extenuating circumstances (and passions) of war.

...Clearly, some of what is considered sexual harassment falls into the category of harmless sport -- the usual towel-snapping that is, in fact, a way to neutralize sex.

This one is my all-time fave though:

But more overt sexual aggression may be the product of something few will acknowledge, at least on the record: resentment.

Off the record, in dozens of interviews over a period of years, male soldiers and officers have confided that many men resent women because they've been forced to pretend that women are equals, and men know they're not.

And clearly, the best way to put us bitches back in our place is with a good raping, huh?