Reverse Sexism from Congress
Remember the concept of equality? That belief stemming from our Founding Fathers that all men and women deserve the same rights and opportunities endowed from our Creator? Apparently, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter missed that lesson in her high school civics class:
Rep. Shea-Porter is playing into an argument that gender Feminists love to make: women are better at getting things done because we’re natural nurturers. Note what Shea-Porter says at the end: that women are better suited for leadership because they’ve taken care of mothers, mothers-in-law and other family members. None of the men in Congress have ever driven their mothers to a doctor’s appointment or changed a dirty diaper? None of them are concerned fathers or devoted husbands? That’s a rather broad stroke and a huge insult to the men serving in Congress.
This is playing into the “if women ruled the world” fantasy that Feminists articulate in their psychobabble academic papers and books. Their goal has devolved from empowering girls to give them the same opportunity as boys to now tearing down men so that women can assert their superiority.
It’s interesting how feminists talk out of both sides of their mouths. Women and men are equal, and gender is socially constructed unless the situation demands that women are more nurturing and willing to collaborate. When it is convenient to point out the softer side of women, feminists are quick to play the nurture or victim card. When feminists are attacking traditional roles or femininity, suddenly we’re back to “gender is artificially created by an oppressive patriarchal society.”
You can’t have it both ways.
It’s shameful that Shea-Porter is insulting her colleagues based on their sex. As Weasel Zippers points out, had a man said this, most women’s groups would go ballistic. Sexism works both ways. Women can’t be victims nor can they be superior.
Equality is giving men and women the same opportunities. Equality is not achieving random quotas in society, such as the Shriver Report, which gleefully announces men and women have reached parity in the workplace. Equality has been achieved because women and men now have equal access to the same programs, jobs, opportunities, education, and so forth. Equality doesn’t mean that women must become equal in every single job or segment of society. That will never happen. The fact that women have the opportunity to decide for themselves is equality. Of course by carefully selecting the fields where there is a gender gap (such as STEM fields) gives women’s groups an excuse to stick around.
The Independent Women’s Forum also exposes another popular fallacy that Feminists take:
What bothers me about this isn’t just the double standard, but her implication that all these women-Republicans and Democrats-think alike because they are women and have therefore, of course, been family caretakers. She implies that the GOP women get it, and roll their eyes at all these silly men, who are derailing reform; GOP women are cajoled into voting no on health care reform, but really they know better.
This is going back to the meme from the nineteenth century that women will bond together because we share the same chromosomes. This has been proven wrong time and time again. After the 19th Amendment was passed the National Women’s Party believed that women would solidify as one voting block and take over government. There would be no wars, and all children would be fed and educated. Actually, even the movement for suffrage was marked by countless splits and debates. In the 1970s, feminists believed that women would bond together and demand that the ERA pass. In 2008, Hillary Clinton ran for president under the assumption that all women would vote for her in order to finally get a female in the White House. Even liberal women can’t decide what Feminism is and frequently call it “femininisms” because of the splinters in the movement. Every time this tactic is played, it fails miserably.
Stating that women will agree on something simply because we all have ovaries is demeaning. Men would never utter a something like this about fellow men. This view says women are simple creatures and should come together because we share the same anatomical parts. The promotion of fellow women is more important than our minds, ideas, beliefs and philosophies. This is sexism directed towards other women, and it is wrong.
IWF also agrees:
Republican women lawmakers should be offended. There are many, many principled reasons to stand against what the Democrats are proposing (for example, see here). And it’s not just Republican lawmakers who reject Democrat proposals: women around the country don’t want a government take-over the health care system as this poll shows.
Somehow it remains okay politically to categorically insult male lawmakers, but in doing so Rep. Shea-Porter dismisses female lawmakers and all the men and women that these Members represent.
So despite that Republican women disagree with the health care bill because of massive government spending, an attack on individual liberty and the funding of abortion, women should vote on it for the sole purpose of showing solidarity? The call of being a woman is more important than religious beliefs or political views?
I’m also insulted that Shea-Porter pulls the stereotype of women going to the bathroom together. When male comedians use this as a punchline, women complain, yet a female Congressional member used it when addressing the House?
As Moe Lane at Red State put it:
162 years since Seneca Falls, and we’ve come this far.
Perhaps the Feminists should just get out of the way and let the conservative women lead. After all, we actually get stuff done rather than spending time whining about it and then spending millions of dollars analyzing the whining.
Tags: Carol Shea-Porter, gender feminism, health care, Independent Women's Forum, reverse sexism
January 25th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I’d agree that Shea-Porter’s remarks are essentially sexist, though I’d be pretty hesitant to chalk the tenor of those remarks up to feminism itself. There’s a lot of tolerance for man-bashing in our culture – often, if you think about it, encouraged by men – that’s either an indirect response to feminism or largely unconnected to it, and, on the flipside, feminist views on men are much more complicated and conflicted than you bother to admit.
But it is worth noting that Shea-Porter’s comments also seem to be substantively accurate, in one respect. A large majority of the women in Congress are Democrats, and, to take the health care reform bills as one example, they appear to be largely unified. Looking at the roll call vote on the House bill, I count only three female defectors from the Democratic party, and, of course, every Democrat in the Senate voted for the House health care bill. So, if you just got the women in Congress together, they would, in point of fact, have passed the legislation that’s otherwise struggling through, easy.
Of course, you might reply that this ignores all the women represented by male Congressmen and doesn’t pay any attention to majority rule and the power of the people and so on. Which is true! Obviously, actually throwing all the men out of Congress and just letting the women vote would be a crazy idea. But one ought to keep in mind that, at the moment, the only reason those aforementioned bills haven’t been passed is an arcane, abused Senate rule that’s also obstructing majority rule and true representation.
It just so happens that chucking guys out of Congress, in this particular situation, would result in an outcome much closer to what the people of this country voted for than the actual political process has. I don’t think that says anything about the relative merits of the sexes, but it certainly says something about how anti-majoritarian and convoluted our current, legislative system is and how blithely conservatives are willing to ignore that, when it suits their purposes.
January 25th, 2010 at 12:41 pm
N.S.,
Man bashing is wrong when anyone does it in society. The fact that feminists allow it to happen shows how hypocritical they are. Sexism is wrong at all times, and society needs to start respecting men more.
Feminism has many clear-cut examples of man-bashing. The basic philosophy of feminism is man-bashing. Believing that patriarchy is a conspiracy theory to hold women down is essentially sexist.
How are Shea-Porter’s comments correct? She includes GOP women in her remarks about women in the bathroom. Those women in no way would work together to pass health care. There are issues in this bill that go beyond gender.
Were the majorities reversed, would those arcane procedural laws be some troubling to you? A clear majority of Americans are opposed to this law. Poll after poll has confirmed that. If Congressional members were actually doing their job, they would listen to their constituents. Those constituents are clearly sending the message that they do not want this bill and want Congress to focus on the economy. How are those rules anti-majoritarian when they reflect the will of the American people?
Our convoluted legislative system just shows that despite a super-majority in the Senate (until last week), majority in the House and the Presidency, Democrats have been incapable of passing any kind of true “change.”
The larger issue is that Democrats are inept and blindly refusing to listen to the opinions of the Americans they represent. The post references that Carol Shea-Porter insulted all of her male colleagues and is sexist and therefore a hypocrite.
February 9th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
While women have every right to fight for our equality, we have no right to demean men. It is gratifying to find that I am not the only woman who sees and is disgusted by reverse sexism.