Some honest questions

Christine Hoff Summers offers the feminist gains in a nutshell -- with women closing ranks and surpassing men in education and job proficiency (without mentioning, of course, the bazillion babies sacrificed in the process). She then asks some honest questions:

In Friedan's day, women were clearly the second sex. Not so today. Yes, many women are struggling with the challenge of combining family and work. But men do not have it easy either. They are increasingly less educated than women. They are bearing the brunt of the recession. The New York Times recently reported that "a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men." Reuters referred to the surging male unemployment rate as a "blood bath." Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "FastStats" show that men are less likely than women to be insured—and more likely to drink, smoke, and be overweight. They also die six years earlier than women on average.

Why are there no conferences, petitions, workshops, congressional hearings, or presidential councils to help men close the education gap, the health care gap, the insurance gap, the job-loss gap, and the death gap? Because, unlike women, men do not have hundreds of men's studies departments, research institutes, policy centers, and lobby groups working tirelessly to promote their challenges as political causes.

I don't think those conferences will be booked any time soon, because feminists don't give a fig about the demise of men. For them, life has been a zero sum game and they've finally gotten to the top of the hill. Tough luck to those whose flag has been supplanted.

Interestingly, she makes clear that the feminists are still gnashing their teeth over their inability to "re-engineer" women completely -- that maternal instinct keeps messing with the statistics.