Posted by
Playful Walrus on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 8:16:41 PM
There’s nothing like reading through the Los Angeles Times, sometimes because of the wacky stuff that goes on in California, sometimes because of how the paper covers something, and sometimes because of opinions carried inside.
City of Los Angeles Councilmen Ed Reyes and Jack Weiss have proposed stricter sentencing for those caught with illegal firearms in a school zone. Really? So it isn’t as bad to have illegal firearms elsewhere? Will this change any behavior? The guns are already illegal - the person doesn't care about the law.
Speaking of guns, there’s this from Joel Rubin:
A panel of law enforcement experts convened by Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton to examine the department's elite SWAT unit concluded in an undisclosed report that the rigorous testing to get into the unit should be changed to make it more open to women, called for tighter supervision and criticized officers for relying too heavily on force over negotiations.
Uh, no. The SWAT unit exists for a reason. It doesn’t need to be easier to get into. It has been functioning very well for many years. In fact, they only recently had their first fatality. How about this… how about creating several units of women prone to bad PMS. Each unit will bond enough to synchronize menstral cycles, but each unit will stay away from the other units so there will always be a unit at menstruation. When there is a problem such as a standoff, send the unit in with the women who are PMS-ing at that time, with bullhorns. Let them nag, berate, demean, and belittle the suspect, describing their symptoms, until he gives up.
Speaking of sexism, Elizabeth Wurtzel chimes in with some cheese and whine in this opinion piece.
Am I the only one who feels that last week's news events prove that the women's movement has failed?
Some women make bad choices. But they do have choices. That’s the difference.
Even worse, because Silda Wall Spitzer is accomplished and beautiful, the whole scene serves as a grim reminder that even amazing women become sexually disposable after a certain age.
You can’t make a jerk appreciate even the best woman. If what he cares about is youth and variety, he will stray. Lesson: Don’t hitch yourself to a jerk. Not all men are jerks.
Is this the world that feminism hath wrought?
Yup.
Walk onto the trading floor of any of the hedge funds that crowd the Lever House building in Manhattan and hardly a female face will be seen who is not a secretary or an assistant. Enter the software shops of Silicon Valley, go to the rows of terminals where geeky computer programmers design cleverly crafted new media. They are mostly smart boys, playing with their toys. Everything that keeps our economy running is run by men.
This is not true, but even if it was, everything that keeps our lives running is run by women. Women have the primarily role in making new citizens. Which is more important?
For all the dynamic, visible women who are chief executives -- like the CEOs of Xerox and Kraft -- only 16% of corporate officers and 17% of large law firm partners are female.
Much if this is due to the choices women have made. Shouldn’t women be able to make choices?
Meanwhile, women still make 80 cents on the man's dollar. And, for whatever reason, women who do the exact same work but are also mothers make 10 cents less, according to Anne Alstott of Yale Law School.
Ugh. It is a lie that a woman makes less than a man for doing the same kind, level, quality, and quantity of work. If you take time off, if you call in sick, if you come in late or leave early, you’re not going to climb as high or make as much as someone who is present and applying himself.
It seems that the only industries in which women earn more than their male counterparts are pornography and prostitution.
Don’t forget modeling.
My Sunday night summer viewing, which once consisted of the slumber-party gab of "Sex and the City," is now the lad-happy cool of "Entourage." I really do love that show, but most of the women -- girls -- in it cannot even kindly be called sex objects: They are simply sockets.
Some women choose to allow males to treat them that way.
I appeared topless on the cover of one of my books, a decision I stand by still. I am proud that Naomi Wolf published a book called "Promiscuities" and that Katie Roiphe wrote a book called "The Morning After." I am really proud that Susan Faludi came out with the brilliant "Backlash." But I don't think the idea that you could own your own orgasm was ever intended to teach college coeds that it is a good idea to spend spring break in a shower with your roommate in a motel room in Daytona Beach having a lesbian encounter for the cameras of "Girls Gone Wild." That's not feminism!
So women shouldn’t be allowed to choose? What’s really ticking her off is that now males can get their jollies without any obligation to women. Remember when your type mocked the conservative women who warned how radical feminism was going to end up changing things for the worse?
But there's a countervailing tendency: the much-discussed opt-out revolution, which many upper-echelon women have chosen as a way of ruining their lives all by themselves, no assistance from men at all. This phenomenon has been both well chronicled and thoroughly debunked. But whether or not you believe it exists, professional women are having babies and deciding not to go back to work because motherhood is a cult, or homemaking is meaningful, or the hearth has heat -- or, really and truly, because being in an office 40-plus hours a week kind of sucks. A lot of men don't like their jobs either. But it's only women who have decided the hell with it -- and, truly, the hell with feminism.
That’s because raising children is much more rewarding than earning a paycheck, but men are still expected to be the providers. Most women, even if they don’t want children, still expect to find a man who earns more than they do. And if they marry a high earner, they expect to have the choice to work or not.
Somewhere between childbirth and a no-fault divorce, a lot of smart women have chosen to engage in some risky behavior. Opting out is not a feminist choice. It's mostly just a bad idea.
Not if you CHOOSE WISELY and TREAT KINDLY. It is a smart investment to have time and energy to spend on your husband, your kids, and your home. There’s also- oh, pre-nups, saving and investing, insurance, alimony, and child support – all there in case something goes wrong (death, disability, divorce).