Fact and feminism keep tripping over each other.
For decades, radical feminists have prostrated themselves upon the altar
of androgeny, flatly declaring that all differences between the sexes
are socially constructed. So when men earn more money than women, they
say that's proof of sex discrimination.
But men have the Y chromosome, while women don't. And it turns out that
one chromosome contains 78 very important genes. Those genes contain
programming instructions that control a man's brain structure, sex
hormones, and a host of other functions.
These critical genetic differences play out in thousands of ways that
influence risk-taking, sex relationships, and social roles. Steven
Rhoads' book, Taking Sex Differences Seriously, is an
information-packed, must-read on this topic.
Women conceive babies, men can't. Women are better at decoding facial
expressions, hearing a baby's whimper in the night, and simultaneously
talking and listening. Fine.
But what happens when we insist that men and women are social
equivalents, twisting like neutered cogs in a giant gender nirvana?
Last year I was talking with a woman who insisted female athletes are
just as skilled as the men. A few months later, the US female Olympic
hockey team played a boys' high school team from Warroad, Minnesota. The
small town boys prevailed 2-1 over the elite Olympians - and that was a
non-checking game.
Then there are the women-in-combat zealots. They parade girls like PFC
Jessica Lynch as living proof that women can handle the fierce demands
of front line combat. You may recall that war heroine Lynch later
admitted about her Iraqi mishap, "I did not shoot, not a round, nothing.
I went down praying to my knees. And that's the last I remember."
What about women in the media? Remember, they were going to bring us a
more balanced and empathic perspective on the world.
Well, that was before Oprah Winfrey predicted one in five heterosexual
Americans would die from AIDS by 1990 and Meryl Streep duped the EPA to
ban alar.
Let's not forget Connie Chung's scientific discovery that breast
implants make women sick. Even though researchers could never prove the
link between implants and connective tissue disease, the ensuing
hysteria-driven lawsuits eventually forced Dow Corning into bankruptcy.
Of course there's the ever-apoplectic Maureen Dowd, left to wonder why
the New York Times circulation numbers tumble ever-downward. And rumor
has it that once Katie Couric debuts at CBS News, she's planning to sign
up Cindy Sheehan as a political analyst for the upcoming November
elections.
And women, it is said, will make the political arena more ethical and
fair: "Research shows the presence of women raises the standards of
ethical behavior and lowers corruption." That quote comes to us by way
of senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, which practically makes the claim
self-refuting.
We were promised that women in academia would bring important new
insights. But soon the ladies came to the sobering realization that
Beethoven composed Ode to Joy to induce men into a sexual frenzy, and
Newton's Principia Mathematica is actually a rape manual.
We should all feel especially sorry for MIT professor Nancy Hopkins.
As a biologist, she no doubt learned how primates engage in sex-specific
courtship rituals and hunting patterns. But then ex-Harvard president
Larry Summers suggested that innate differences in the human species
also might exist, causing the ever-delicate Dr. Hopkins to lapse into a
swoon.
Smelling salts, anyone?
Those examples are mostly amusing. But there's one variation on the
woman-can-do-anything-a-man-can-do theme that's downright dangerous.
It's the "mothers and fathers are interchangeable" mantra.
The reason is simple: little boys don't identify with their moms the
same way they bond with their dads. And girls learn different lessons
from dads than from moms.
Want proof?
Look at inner city ghettos ravaged by Great Society programs that
required dad to vacate the home before mom was entitled to collect her
welfare check. Bereft of their loving fathers, boys looked to the media
and gangs for their male role models.
Is anyone surprised when all manner of social pathologies take root and
flourish?
It's one of the conundrums of our time that while demanding fealty to
the dogma of androgeny, feminists condemn the expression of masculine
qualities by men and then turn around and demand that "liberated" women
exemplify exactly those same attributes.
As my mother used to say, Who said women had to be logical?
Carey Roberts has
been published frequently in the Washington Times, Townhall.com,
LewRockwell.com, ifeminists.net, Intellectual Conservative, and
elsewhere. He is a staff reporter for the New Media Alliance.
