feminine-genius

Where are the rational adults?

"I'm grown up now" from a twelve-year-old sounds remarkably similar to the four-year-old, rampaging and shouting, "I'm not tired!" It's something loving parents take with a grain of salt, as they take the child firmly by the shoulders and place him where he needs to be.

Unfortunately, this pre-teen's mother took her at her word and allowed her to star in a movie which I haven't had the heart to blog on til now, preferring to allow Touchstone's Mere Comments to do the heavy lifting:

[A]ctress Dakota Fanning plays a girl who is raped, who gyrates on her bed in full view of the milkboy, and who is lying in bed when her naked father slips in next to her.  Now, 12-year-olds are not supposed to be photographed engaging in sex acts, or even simulating sex acts, so there is a strong case to be made that the movie falls afoul of federal law.  But no attorney general will be prosecuting it; and that's the way it ought to be, according to Miss Fanning, her mother, the woman who works as her agent, and the woman who is directing the film.

One of his commenters already questions the techniques used to allow Miss Fanning to take part in the rougher scenes, but it's dark enough that she has the role, that she's been introduced to the whole concept for the sake of "art," and that she'll rocket to fame through the loss of innocence.

It's more of the same in the culture we (and our children) breathe. All we can do is look to the babushkas of old who banged the beads and simply persevered through decades of death spiral in the USSR. Keep the lamps burning, dear friends. The light will conquer the darkness in the end.

Equality vs. freedom

There is a dispute in the com-boxes about the relationship between equality and freedom, and I apologise if I wasn't clear. I thought it was obvious that the pull towards each inhibits the other; thus if quotas are established to mandate perfect statistical equality in hiring, then an employer is not free to hire the person of his choice. Likewise, if everyone is free to pursue his religion, those who subscribe to mysogynistic creeds (i.e. where a woman's testimony is only worth half of a man's) infringe on equality before the law.

That said, let me clarify: the harm in forcing cheerleaders to cheer for girls' teams was clearly stated in the story. No one supported the mandate -- not the cheerleaders, not the parents, not the administration, not the teams playing. So whose freedom was being respected? Equality trumped freedom.

Likewise, if one has an opinion other than the government-sanctioned view towards same-sex attraction disorder, then the freedom to speak is curtailed by the mandate to treat all relationships equally:

A French MP faces jail and a heavy fine after being accused of offending homosexuals by saying they represent a "threat to humanity". In France's first criminal prosecution under a year-old amendment of an 1881 law on press freedom, Christian Vanneste was taken to court by gay rights groups.

The modified law outlaws insults based on gender or sexual orientation and allows for up to six months' imprisonment and a £15,000 fine.

The MP, who denies breaking the law, protested in court that he did not say homosexuality was dangerous, but that it was inferior to heterosexuality and could, in extreme circumstances, become a danger to mankind.

Another example here.

When his [five year old] son came home with the books, [a father] became concerned and arranged a meeting with the school principal and district director of information, where he demanded that the school notify both him and his wife about any classroom discussions involving same-sex marriage and other “adult themes.”4 He asked that their son be removed from any such discussions, even if they arose spontaneously.5 The father explained that he wanted to control “the timing and manner” in which his son learned about “adult themes.” His wife explained, “we're not giving unfettered access to the psyche of our son when he enters the school.”

He was subsequently arrested for trespass, and the school made it clear that the parents were not the "gatekeepers" of such information. He didn't even say he was opposed to same-sex unions, only that he didn't want his [very] young son exposed in that setting. (I chose a SIECUS report which supports same-sex unions to be as fair as possible, and the added bonus is that it's full of statistics on sexual activity, which furthers my point about hpv vaccinations and the irresponsible push for teen sex.)

Next, the boy who is uncomfortable wrestling girls cannot wrestle. His freedom is sacrificed to the "right" of girls to participate.

Wrestler Abe Olson of Trinity High School at River Ridge in Bloomington, MN, testified that he had always been told to respect women, but that "the nature of the sport goes against what I've been taught." Olson explained that wrestling is different from other contact sports because opponents are separated by only "a thin layer of spandex."

To illustrate his point, two Burnsville High School wrestlers demonstrated how intimate touching, such as during a maneuver called the "high crotch takedown," is the inevitable reality of the sport. Opponents "pin" each other by pressing down hard on the chest.

A track and swimming coach who is also the mother of a high school wrestler testified to the "anguish" her son felt whenever he declined to wrestle a girl and was forced to forfeit his match. "The pendulum [of women's rights] has swung too far," she stated. What about the males' rights?"

Forty is the new thirty?

This is the most depressing article I've read in a long time, not because it deals with poverty, death, disease, or disaster -- but with the drama of the best and the brightest seeing what they perceive as their only chance of happiness slip through their hands like sand through a sieve.

More recently, women decided their early 20s are strictly for fun, and now the Relationship Window opens at 28 and closes at 35. So, you'll find single, childless women reaching their mid-30s increasingly hysterical that they might have missed their moment.

What if they have to face their 40s still frantically dating, while trying to quell their worst fears that they might end up alone — and childless?

In his latest book, The Good Life, social commentator Jay McInerney documents the Relationship Window for single girls in New York, describing it as 'the female equivalent of the two-minute warning in an American football match: time left — but not that much'.

What was all that fun about if smart women couldn't do the math? Perhaps they bought the lie that motherhood was a trap and real joy lay elsewhere. What were they doing instead?

Mairead Molloy, who runs the elite dating agency, Berkeley Sweetingham International, would agree that people are more painfully aware than ever about their Relationship Windows, and are frantic not to miss the boat.

Mairead believes there are two reasons for missing out on this first Relationship Window — women are consumed by their independence and are too busy for commitment while they are building their careers, or they are having affairs with married men.

It's not easy for Mairead find them the necessary matches, no matter how elite her rolodex, because of the emotional state of these women:

'While it is the easiest thing in the world to place a single girl of 35 with a single man of 40, if she's desperate for a baby, however much she tries to disguise it, she's in too much of a rush.

'She can't hide her screaming ovaries, and men are totally put off.' Mairead sees an increasing number of highly organised women in their early 30s determined not to miss their first Relationship Window.

To be clear, she says there are two windows: the first is late 20's to mid-thirties, and the second is at age 40, when the "starter marriages" have broken up and men are ready for Round Two. (What can be more depressing than that thought?)

However, just as the mounting despair is palpable in the thirtysomething career woman suddenly desperate for a baby, Mairead says her second most difficult placement is the 45-year-old woman who has missed her second Relationship Window.

'A 45-year-old woman wants a maximum 47-year-old man, or a good-looking 50-year-old, but a 47-year-old man wants to find a 40-year-old woman.

'The problem is that the 45-year-old woman doesn't want to date the 60-something man who wants to go out with her, and yet she's terrified of facing 50 alone — and projects that.'

This is the upstairs version of the same old meat market that puts a woman in the commodities trade show based on her breast size, whiteness of her smile, designer tag on her clothes, and sexual availability. As the years pass, we'll see how she holds up, the effects of gravity, her earning potential, how much she'll put up with, and recertify her sexual availability. She may finally realise she's missed out on companionship, emotional maturity, domestic tranquility, and the joys of motherhood, but she got high marks in ... sexual availability. What went wrong?

I know a successful interior designer, aged 49, who left her husband, an artist, on her 40th birthday. She walked out on him, taking their two children, because she couldn't face another decade supporting him, while living with his seething resentment of her financial independence.

Now, facing 50 and single, she is achingly aware she made a mistake. She's full of regret, not that she left her husband, but that she didn't wise up sooner to the opportunities of her second Relationship Window.

'When I first left my husband, I was so busy with the children that I didn't want serious commitment,' she says. 'I had affairs with married men, which suited me because they were less time-consuming.

'However, I should have spent my early 40s dating properly, because now I'm competing with much younger, fresher women. I worry desperately that I have missed my chance for a second relationship.'

Ah, regrets. With hindsight like this, there will be no wisdom to pass along to the children. Oh, I forgot -- what children?

UPDATE: Dawn Eden has a sharp closing thought on the same piece:

According to the article, a "Relationship Window" opens only twice in one's life. Thankfully, the heart is capable of opening much more often. But one has to listen in order to hear it over the din of those "screaming ovaries."

She also emphasises the joy in working to fulfill others, rather than being so absorbed in self-fulfillement. Excellent.

Be careful what you wish for

Radical feminists have been pushing for a gender-blind society for decades and piece-by-piece, they're getting what they asked for. Amazingly, women's "progress" is not embraced by all women -- go figure.

High school cheerleaders must now cheer for girls' teams as often as for boys' teams thanks to federal education officials' interpretations of Title IX, the civil rights law that mandates equal playing fields for both sexes. According to The New York Times, almost no one directly involved wants this -- not the cheerleaders, not the fans, not the boys' teams, and not even the girls' teams. But it doesn't matter: The law coerces cheerleaders to cheer at girls' games.

As common sense often neglects to remind us, you cannot have freedom and equality simultaneously:

Unlike the nearly contemporaneous French Revolution, which affirmed "egalite" along with "liberte," the American Revolution never held equality equal to liberty. The Founders knew that you cannot have both, and so, the further left one moves, i.e., the more like France and Western Europe we become, the more coerced equality and the less personal liberty we will have.

Pharmacists have known this, as they've been coerced into dispensing materials contrary to their conscience. The Church is learning this, as England now dictates that Catholic adoption agencies must place children with same-sex couples. And around the globe speech has been increasingly curtailed, jailing and fining those who suggest marriage ought to be reserved for male-female couples. But, as Dennis Prager points out:

Now even high school cheerleaders know that [ouch].

The price of babies

No, not the stretch marks, varicose veins, or lost sleep. It's the child care that's killing the mothers in England.

The most expensive childminders – self-employed carers who look after children in their own homes – cost almost as much nurseries with fees of £400 a week not uncommon in outer London, according to the latest survey by the charity, the Daycare Trust. However both are still cheaper than nannies, who cost an average of £28,786 in London.

The charity, which campaigns for accessible, affordable and quality child care, said parents must be given more financial help to meet growing costs.

According to the charity [Daycare Trust], which advises parents and carers, employers, unions and policymakers, a typical full-time nursery place for a child under two is £152 a week. This compares to average earnings of £447 a week last year. [Exchange rate:

The government subsidises part of the cost but it's not enough -- since the price of infant care rivals the tuition at elite schools.

The lowest fees for out of school clubs were found in inner London, reversing the trend of high costs usually found in the capital. Daycare Trust's sixth annual child care costs survey shows that fees continue to rise above the rate of inflation, and that the typical costs in England are higher than those in Wales (£131 a week).

The survey is based on statistics provided by the Children's Information Services, 67 per cent of which said that parents had reported a lack of affordable child care in their area in the last 12 months even though help with costs is available through the tax credit system, and many parents can now also get tax relief through their employer via child care vouchers.

Three and four-year-olds are also entitled to 12 and a half hours of free nursery education a week.

That "free" education is presently costing the taxpayers $£million/day or $£billion/year and it's not nearly enough, parents insist.

The National Day Nurseries Association said that although costs had risen by six per cent, the average hourly rate in nurseries was still only £3.04 for the under twos – money which must cover high staff to children ratios, utilities, rates, premises and equipment.

The image G.K. Chesterton liked to use was that of a man standing out in a downpour, holding an umbrella over his garden plants as he sprinkled them from a watering can. Think about it.

I'm impressed

Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has standards, and those standards are fueling a rift between her country (New Zealand) and rowdy rival Australia. She was billed to sing a series of concerts with wildly popular Aussie John Farnham (think Tom Jones at apex of his career) and after doing a little homework on the man, she cancelled.

After watching a recording of John Farnham on stage, in which he addressed a largely female audience in intimate terms and they responded by bombarding him with intimate items of clothing, the New Zealand soprano decided it was not quite to her liking.

The court heard that Dame Kiri was aghast when she learnt that audiences at Farnham's concerts, predominantly middle-aged women, were renowned for their knicker-throwing antics.

She decided not to perform with him after realising that there was every possibility that "someone's pants [would] end up on the stage", Richard Evans, for the promoters Leading Edge Events, told the court.

Dame Kiri thought Farnham's shows were "absolutely horrendous".

The tabloids in Australia are having a field day, calling her move "outrageous" (unlike the completely ordinary act of heaving underwear at a strange man) but with an loyal following already comprised of millions, she doesn't need the insult. Score one for dignity.

Where's the fanfare?

A new study makes the connection between the birth control pill and breast cancer and there's a deafening silence. According to ProLifeBlogs:

Through the University of Illinois, researchers announced that not only does estrogen speed up the process of breast cancer once it has started and help to transport the disease to other cells, but it actually can block our immune cells from being able to kill these cancerous cells. It does this by inducing the expression of an inhibitor enzyme, much like similar inhibitors that can cause depression by blocking the release of serotonin. (That’s a fancy way of saying that an excess of estrogen won’t let our white blood cells do their job.)

While this has been suspected for quite some time, this study is especially helpful in understanding how estrogen works. It also puts added pressure on the medical authorities to explain the risk to women.

For years, Planned Parenthood and others have responded to our argument that birth control is causing an increase in breast cancer by saying that it helps to prevent other kinds of cancers, such as ovarian and endometrial cancers. I hope now that Planned Parenthood will stop advertising that taking birth control will reduce your risk of cancer, when the evidence is so obviously contrary. With Breast Cancer as the second leading cause of death of women, even the possibility that it might increase a woman’s chances of contracting the deadly disease is just too much.

Seeing how the news is buried (though I don't watch television, so I cannot speak to its presence there) it doesn't look like this story will have nearly the legs of "coconut oil killing popcorn lovers," or "every surgical detail of the thoroughbred Barbaro." Shame. Once again, women's health subverted to money and the sexual agenda.

Documenting injustice

The United Nations' Development Program issued a report on the status of women in Arab countries and the overall view is dim. While a royal member of the commission, Saudi Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz, tried to extricate the findings from the practice of Islam in his forward to the document, even the UN was having none of it, noting that regardless of the source of the inequality (culture or religion) the practice of Islam did nothing to mitigate it:

While most of the Arab countries have promulgated constitutions that grant women equal rights with men, laws governing domestic relations are adjudicated by clerics or religious legal scholars who often give preference to men over women by assigning twice the weight to evidence rendered by men than that rendered by women.

The report notes that female illiteracy is higher than males; women's health is relatively worse than men's; women's access to the public arena is limited (due to illiteracy, mainly); and that women-headed households (caused by being widowed or abandoned) are poorer than male-headed households.

There is also the proclivity among Arab families to encourage the girls’ reproductive role over their continued education and professional advancement. Moreover, there is the built-in discrimination against women in admission to certain professional schools. In Kuwait, for example, a male candidate to the engineering and petroleum studies is admitted on the basis of a grade point average of 67.9, whereas female students must achieve an average of 83.5. The underlying irony of these numbers is the evidence that girls in the Arab countries are more successful students than boys at all levels of education and are less likely to drop out of school or repeat the school year. In other words, the lower rate of girls attending schools at all levels should be attributed to discrimination against them rather than to inherent scholastic ineptitude.

Of course, the reproductive role of women is a troublesome angle to the UN report, since they firmly disseminate the false notion that high birthrates are a danger to societies:

At the current rate of growth, the population in the Arab countries will double almost every 20 years. Such a rate of growth will place unmitigated burdens on social services, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, and the environment and will augment unemployment which is already high at about 20 percent of labor forces, and which could generate political instability and social dislocation.

Now, granted, a woman who is having children and caring for them is unable to enter the workforce, or to stand for public office, but there is otherwise no reason that childbearing is burdensome as long as education is made equally available to the women. The harm in these numbers is not that more babies = more unemployment, but that the girl babies will go uneducated and the boy babies will be entering a corrupt marketplace that does not embrace growth.

More "social services, schools, [and] hospitals" should mean more jobs, especially for women to be teachers, nurses, doctors, and social workers, and for men in the building trades -- it is not a zero-sum game. Growth is growth, and without children a society collapses.

Otherwise, it's an interesting report, giving credence to all the anecdotal evidence found here at feminine-genius and in all the pockets of story-telling worldwide.

Women’s struggles to rise above and beyond their current inferior status are inexorably linked to the broader political reforms that must take place in their respective countries. Unfortunately, the signs of such a change appear only on the distant horizon. For it is not clear why women would be any more successful in enjoying various measures of freedom at a time when the rest of society lives under an authoritarian political environment.

Not much hope, not much sign of imminent change, and not much about Islam that bodes well for women.