Women want to believe that they’re impervious to things like age and ovaries. So, during peak creative years, women push their energy into relatively time unlimited endeavor–career–instead of a very time limited endeavor–having babies.

Young mothers are scorned for being stupid, giving up their potential, subjugating themselves to a man’s world.

Ironically, by subscribing to a dirty man’s definition of success — rutting like animals and climbing the corporate ladder by any means necessary — women deprive themselves of doing the one thing that is essentially female–giving birth.

Newsflash: Only women can do it. There are requirements. A woman must have a functional uterus, fresh eggs, good health and it’s really helpful to have economic and emotional support. In old-fashioned terms, that was called a husband.

Imagine the shock, then, when women find out that they’ve been lied to about their reproductive ability:

A decade ago, a fertility ad campaign on public buses in several big cities sparked a vicious backlash. It featured a baby bottle shaped like an hourglass, to warn women their time was running out. But women’s rights groups called it a scare tactic that left women feeling pressured and guilty.

Another ad campaign? Sure, says Mingo.

“And it needs to come on when men are paying attention,” she says. “Heck, put it on in the middle of a football game or something!”

Women are afraid of losing career opportunities. It’s not like there is one choice or the other. I’ve always worked while having kids.

Still, it helped that because of medical training waiting to have kids was no option because it limited options.

When you know you want kids, and maybe a big family, two things should be a priority:

1. Getting married.

2. Getting pregnant.

So, women in their 20s need to strike while their hot body and biology work to their advantage. This, of course, is very politically incorrect advice.

Telling a woman to carve out time to date, join social institutions (like, horrors!, churches) that encourage marriage, etc. just seems so old-fashioned.

Well getting married and having kids young has many biological and sociological and cultural advantages.

Women need to be told the truth about their limitations so they can change their life choices accordingly. Many who want and should have children won’t be able to because of the lies they believe and they’ll find out the truth too late.

I lived in the U.S. for many years and I was and am still pro-choice. Yet, when I returned to India as an adult even my pro-choice mind could not comprehend the absolute horror of the fact that in less than a century India has eliminated more than 50 million women from its population. It is targetted elimination and by definition a genocide. That’s when I started the 50 Million Missing Campaign. Our website is www.50millionmissing.in

And you are absolutely right Melissa. There is a big block in the west regarding female genocide in India. It is not an anti-abortion issue. The Soroptimist International just last week took on this cause. And I hope other feminist and human rights groups will.

More so it is not just about female feticide. There is infanticide, dowry murders, under 5 mortality rate and abortion related MMRs (1 woman every 5 minutes in India). I just published an article for the Australian journal Intersections. Here is the link:
http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue22/banerji.htm

At the link [Go read the whole thing]:

The public reservation, however, is with the actual likelihood of such a mass-scale elimination occurring. Occasionally one reads in Indian papers about baby body parts being found in a well in the compound of some clinic, or a young woman dying of burns under suspicious circumstances due to a supposed kitchen accident, but there is nothing in the news that suggests a blood-bath on the scale of a genocide. To drive home the point to my Rotary audience, I put up on the overhead a two columned table relating to the annual rates of female homicide in India. This slide included the means of elimination, and the estimate for the annual rate for each category.

Table 1. Annual Rates of Female Homicide in India

Female foeticide approximately 1 million[5]
Female infanticide approximately 25000 in the State of Kerala alone[6]
Dowry-related murders approximately 25000[7]
Preadolescent mortality 1 in 6 dies before 15 yrs (CRY)[8]
Mortality rate 40% higher for girls under 5 than boys the same age (UNICEF)[9]
Maternal mortality rate (MMR) 136,000
(1 woman dies every 5 minutes due to pregnancy-related causes) (WHO)[10]

# The number one means of elimination I pointed out, is female foetal abortions. An estimated 1 million female foetuses are selectively eliminated in India each year, and that number is expected to rise to 2.5 million within the next few years.[11] Method number two is female infanticide, a practice that has a long history in India. So far there has been no national average estimated for female infanticide, largely because it is difficult to track down with there being no administrative compulsion for citizens to register births. Nevertheless, existent data gives an indication of the scale of the practice. In the state of Kerala, one of India’s most progressive states, with a literacy rate of over 90 per cent, it is estimated that about 25,000 new born girls are killed every year.[12] In other states like Bihar, where the issue of gender bias is plainly discernable, one survey reveals that mid-wives interviewed admitted to being paid to kill almost 50 per cent of the baby girls they delivered.[13] As the number three method of elimination I listed dowry murders, also known as ‘dowry deaths.’ Despite the fact that a majority of dowry-related homicides of young married women in India are never even filed with the police, in the late 1990s it was estimated that at least 25,000 young married women were cold-bloodedly murdered by their husbands and in-laws in dowry extortion cases.[14] That number has continued to rise, as the practice of dowry itself spreads to communities, like tribal groups, that traditionally never had the custom of dowry.

What happens when an evil element of a culture meets up with technology? Genocide.

There is a disconnect for Western women. Because of cultural relativism and their own desire to have the power of life and death over another human, they avert their eyes when the same motivation is used on a grand scale to engage in the most misogynistic of ventures: killing women because men are better (and, in India, cheaper).

But the choice to eliminate a life for gender seems like just one reason among many to have an abortion. 90% of mongoloid children are aborted in America. In America, that child is viewed is dysfunctional, less than, and wrong. In India, women babies are viewed that way. It’s just a different culture. All over the world, people want the “useful”. In India, women aren’t very useful. In America, retarded children aren’t very useful.

At some level, mostly unconscious, Western women know they are little different than their Indian counterparts which is why they stay silent in the face of the biggest female genocide in history.

Wayne Elise makes his living helping men find women. I suggested to him that we should have a lonely hearts male blogger meet-up, video tape it and see how good he really is. I personally wonder if the male bloggers protest too much and actually have healthy personal lives or if they’re in dire need of his services. Wouldn’t it be fun to find out?

Anyway, we also talked about the culture and how it’s affecting dating. He noted that women are getting much more aggressive, that sex is talked about more but there seems to be less of it, and that mystery is gone, too.

At the end I discuss Obama v. Palin. Hope you’ll listen!

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It’s not choices that are causing problems for women, it’s expectations.

Women are no longer merely expect to act like women. Now, feminism, liberalism, and Hollywood says they’ve got to be able to do everything women used to do AND everything that men still do, and then some.

The old feminine ideal was the woman who got married to a good man, stayed home, took care of their house, took care of the kids, and took pride in making the whole family function.

Now, look at the messages women get from popular culture: Dress like a fashion model, cat around like the women from Sex in the City, get married, have a beatiful house, have 2.5 kids, have a career that’s every bit as successful and fulfilling as your husband’s, and still look like a professional actress, even when you’re 60 years old.

There are only so many hours in a day, days in a week, and weeks in a year and there just isn’t time for most women to do all that. Granted, there are a few who manage to pull it off — or at least seem to do it to the outside world.

But, the reality is that most people have skills, abilities, desires, and wants that they never fulfill — women, in part because of their emotional natures, are just made to feel worse about not living up to the hype of what modern feminism says a woman should be.

Oh boy.

Where I agree: Yes, women have more expectations now and that can make life difficult. That is, women both internally and societally are expected to do the whole female progenitor life-cycle thing within the male-defined work-cycle. A woman who doesn’t “work” is often viewed with suspicion both by modern men and women who work outside the home.

As a working, professional woman, I can tell you that the expectations grate. I’ve had women judge me for working (a female patient said to me once, as I was taking the practice for my husband who had sprained his ankle), “You’re not leaving your children at home, are you?” I’ve had women judge me when I took time to take care of my babies and then, home school my children one year. Men, too.

So the nearly impossible standards applied culturally–Oprah, Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray–can make a woman feel “less than” no matter what she decides to do.

Where I disagree: This statement rather breezily dismisses the untapped potential of women: ” the reality is that most people have skills, abilities, desires, and wants that they never fulfill”.

Really? Without the biological imperative, men have a freer time of fulfilling their skills, abilities, and desires. What are they denied? Gestating, birthing and nursing a baby is what they’re denied. That’s a huge trade-off, one, as a woman, I would never give away. Still, the reality is this: since I value myself and my children, and how I’m wired and made, I decided to focus on my children for a few years. That, by necessity, slowed my career roll during what would be considered peak professionally creative years. Ten years later, I’m jumping in with both feet while still balancing my child raising concerns–working around a school schedule and cutting hours to be with my pre-school age child. Childhood is fleeting, and I want to be there for it.

Still, I do not have the dichotomy that only a stay-at-home mother can be a good mother. That’s just patently false. Both fathers and mothers can parent a child, even a baby. There are wonderful care-givers who raise children even better than parents. For generations, children have had nannies, grand-parents and other care-givers and most survive just fine. I am not, however, a fan of huge day care centers, but there are even good versions of those.

This all being said, a woman with talents and gifts does NOT have to subsume them to motherhood in order to be a good woman, or a good Christian woman. That is just nonsense. It should be an affront to all men and women that a woman’s talents, gifts and desires can be dismissed as an acceptable trade for a housewife life.

Many women find a way to incorporate their gifts into their family life. Having stayed at home, I can testify to the challenge of managing a house and kids. It is no lie when people say it’s the most difficult job and so many elements of it are beyond a person’s control. That is, a child may cry inconsolably, the house is perpetually being “undone”, dirty laundry self-generates, and all of these things are out of a person’s control. And in today’s society, a woman is alone at home. She can be socially disconnected. The internet has been a huge gift to stay-at-home parents. It’s a connection.

Social isolation and lack of control contribute to unhappiness. Read up on psychologist Seligman’s work in this regard. That’s a stay-at-home parent’s whole lot in life. There is a good reason women at home might be unhappy and the unhappiness increases the more kids a woman has. More kids equals less control. Also, she may be frustrated at her unused talents.

Before the post-war generation, women often worked with men–in the fields, in the tavern, in the store, etc. A woman was not June Cleaver. The industrial age changed a woman’s role. Tasks became divided. A man changed the oil and mowed the lawn. A woman cooked and cleaned. Exclusively.

In this new generation, women are working and rearing kids and doing many things. They may be unhappier than men, but that in no indicates that a woman should be only in the kitchen. Now, if that role fulfills her (and I know that for many women, this is the case) she will contribute mightily to the household.

More women these days are like me. Moving in and out of the workforce around children and going back to work when the kids reach school age. Is it more challenging? Maybe. Not maybe. Absolutely, it is. But would women trade this? I can only speak for myself, but the answer is a resounding “no”.

I have the pleasure of writing, doctoring and being an online activist while also being a mother. I love it all. And many women embrace the freedom to choose these roles.

It should also be noted that with loosening societal strictures, men, too, are becoming more involved in the household tasks and child rearing. That’s all to the good. This too, is not a new phenomenon. In the pre-industrial world, kids knew what dad did because at a certain age, kids helped dad do the work. Kids bond with fathers just as surely as they bond with mothers. It has a different quality, of course, but it’s just as real and necessary.

This is a lot of words to say that I think it’s wrong to dismiss the loss to the individual woman and to society when a woman doesn’t use her gifts and talents just as I think it is a loss to the individual man and to society when a man doesn’t involve himself with his child’s life.

That men would discourage women from using their gifts is patently wrong. That women would discourage men from child-involvement is patently wrong.

If there is one gift the feminist movement gave to society, it’s this: women have the freedom to pursue developing their talents. This societal shift forced men to become more involved (or, it put more burdens on women who don’t hold a man’s feet to the fire). Both men and women have benefited.

I know that writers don’t often choose the titles of their articles but your article led your editor to title the piece: “Behind the Veil Lives a Thriving Muslim Sexuality.” I do not want to repeat what I’ve already written but your article asks whether “we in the West (are not) radically misinterpreting Muslim sexual mores?” And, you write that the “Western interpretation of veiling as repression of women and of their sexuality….is not so, (but is rather) rooted in a strong sense of public versus private…what is due to God and what is due to one’s husband.”

This does not sound like a feminist indictment of female genital mutilation, forced veiling, forced illiteracy, forced arranged child marriage, polygamy, normalized daughter- and wife-beating, honor killings, or the torture and murder of so many people, both women and men, in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, Somalia and Algeria, by Islamists paramilitary forces and by the Islamic government.

You ask that I publish your piece. Indeed, I have already “published” your piece by linking to it in my blog. It is embedded in the piece. Check it out for yourself.

Naomi: Both your generation and my much earlier generation of feminists have failed a universal vision of women’s human rights; most have become multi-cultural relativists and politically correct leftists. Such feminists have been more concerned with the rights of formerly colonized Muslim men than with the rights of formerly colonized and still colonized Muslim women. And, they view America and often Israel as the Evil Empires par excellence and give a free pass to Muslim tyranny.

I have stood almost alone and have been condemned by many for telling the truth about Islamic gender and religious apartheid, and about Israel, anti-Semitism, jihad, and America.

Post-modern feminists are loath to condemn real injustices towards Muslim women. They prefer whitewashing with pap like this from Wolf:

“Many Muslim women I spoke with did not feel at all subjugated by the chador or the headscarf. On the contrary, they felt liberated from what they experienced as the intrusive, commodifying, basely sexualizing Western gaze. … Many women said something like this: …’how tiring it can be to be on display all the time. When I wear my headscarf or chador, people relate to me as an individual, not an object; I feel respected.’ This may not be expressed in a traditional Western feminist set of images, but it is a recognizably Western feminist set of feelings.”

Here’s what I wrote August 19:

It would make sense that Feminists would oppose burqas because they are a tool of oppression for women: that is, burqas are specifically made to make a woman persona non grata. A burqa’s very purpose is to hide the woman and make her invisible as an individual. She is just not there.

But feminists, and liberals in general support the burqa. The woman has a “right to choose”.

But Phyllis points out that is nonsense:

Most Muslim girls and women are not given a choice about wearing the chador, burqa, abaya, niqab, jilbab, or hijab (headscarf), and those who resist are beaten, threatened with death, arrested, caned or lashed, jailed, or honor murdered by their own families. Is Wolfe thoroughly unfamiliar with the news coming out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan on these very subjects? Has she forgotten the tragic, fiery deaths of those schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia who, in trying to flee their burning schoolhouse, were improperly veiled and who were beaten back by the all-powerful Saudi Morality Police?

And this reality is what feminists don’t want to see. They wish to excuse sexist, abusive, raping, and murderous behavior inherent in much of Islamic practice because to be against it would be a tacit approval of Western standards and that simply would not do. It would require a moral choice that would undermine their own criticism of their own patriarchal culture that has long since ceased to be abusive to women. Again, Phyllis says:

Wolf presents the West as anti-woman because it treats women as sex objects. Am I happy about pornography and prostitution in the West? Hell no and, unlike Wolf, I’ve fought against them–but to portray these vices as a “Western” evil, and one that the Islamic world opposes, is sheer madness.

It is well known that the Arabs and Muslims kept and still keep sex slaves–they are very involved in the global trafficking in girls and women and frequent prostitutes on every continent. You will find pornography magazines in every princely tent–those for boys as well as for girls. I am told that the Saudis fly in fresh planeloads of Parisian prostitutes every week. Perhaps they veil them before they conduct their all-night and all-day orgies. Or, perhaps they view them as natural, “infidel” prey.

Naomi Wolf and her American feminist ilk are spoiled rotten grown women who seem to have lost the ability to spot true oppression when it’s right in front of their faces. The burqa has been effective on them, too, evidently. They don’t see the individual under the cover, either. They see their own desires to be judged purely by their brains and accomplishments and long for a way to have their physical imperfections hidden. They see a burqa as a useful feminist tool to achieve that end. What they don’t see is that by being visually invisible, burqa clad women become literally invisible in society, as a cohesive force, as women.

The Feminist’s own callous disregard for the covered and abused women as individuals demonstrates why burqas are an abomination. Perhaps if they saw the bruised, beaten, bleeding, burnt bodies of these women, the torment of women suffering under radical Islam, under the burqa, would be real to them.

I’d like to add a few more examples of the Feminists willful ignorance and determination of silence in the face of injustice. India has experienced a gendercide–that is millions of female babies have been aborted because they’re female. The same thing has been happening in China where single men looking for women become scam victims. All in all, the very tool the Leftist women worship (Bonnie Erbe, “Abortion is a rite of passage”) is used against women to annihilate the “lesser” sex. Leftists will stand around and wonder, however, what happened to 100,000,000 women–that’s the gender disparity now. Don’t say it ladies. Do not say it. Don’t condemn the tool used to create this disparity. And don’t condemn the religious and cultural foundation of hate for women. Don’t do it.

You know those women being stoned in Saudi Arabia for showing ankles? Crickets. You know the women beaten, have acid thrown on them, and are beheaded for shaming a man? Not a word.

No wonder the Feminists are okay with President Obama’s hideous Cairo speech. No wonder they stay silent regarding the hypocrisy of a President Obama’s moral equivalence while he kept his wife out of Egypt and out of a burqua.

And finally, why would Feminist women condemn the cyber-rape of women they believe have it coming when they won’t even defend themselves. Cassy Fiano writes of a Dutch journalist kidnapped and repeatedly raped by Islamists in Afghanistan who then goes on to defend her attackers who “respect her”:

This is a perfect example of the problems with so many liberals today. They are so terrified to call Muslim jihadists what they are — terrorists, murderers, monsters — not because they might be physically harmed in some way, but because they might be branded intolerant. People like Joanie de Rijke don’t look at themselves as sufferers of Stockholm Syndrome, they look at themselves as righteous and intellectual and open-minded and modern. What Mrs. de Rijke, along with so many others on the left, do not understand is that we do not call Muslim thugs and murderers (like the coward who abducted and raped her) monsters or terrorists simply because they are Muslim. We call them monsters or terrorists because they are murderers, rapists, and terrorists. Unfortunately, situations like this are black and white, even though liberals love the idea of moral relativism. There are no shades of grey. Murder is murder, just like rape is rape. A rapist cannot “respect” you, and rape is not something beyond a man’s control simply because of his “high testosterone”.

Also interesting is de Rijke’s description of Gul as a religious man, yet also a hypocritical one. She, of course, is holding Gul to Judeo-Christian religious standards, not Islamic ones. The truth of the matter is, that his actions would indeed be considered hypocritical (and monstrous) by Judeo-Christian standards. By Islamic standards, they are not only not hypocritical, they are expected and acceptable. Muslims are commanded in the Koran to rape and kill infidels, and de Rijke would be considered an infidel. Of course, that little nugget of truth does not fit very neatly into her enlightened liberal worldview, so she ignores it.

So backward and insane are feminists that they will abuse themselves, abuse other women, and annihilate their own gender to serve the ideology that there is no right or wrong and that there is no one better or worse. The only sin is the sin of judgment and intolerance. And these women are willing to tolerate nearly anything except anyone who points out the limitation of their belief system.

Please read the column here.

Addendum: Yesterday night, Media Lizzy and I talked about feminism, beautiful women, sex and much more on my radio show for RFC radio called Right Doctor. You can listen Monday and Wednesday nights and chat with me from 10 – 11 EST, 9 CST, or catch the podcast from iTunes. Subscribe to The Right Doctor on iTunes.

UPDATED:

Megan Carpentier editor of Jezebel contacted me and noted that she had written about the Playboy article. I had read her post but didn’t link the article since the website itself seemed more of a fashion and style website. Upon further investigation, the site covers news of the day, too. Megan deserves credit for giving voice to what many self-professed pro-women refused to do: condemn sexism. Read her piece here.

But think about it, this woman is a lawyer and a mother. How lame must it be to be reduced to her muscle definition? How sexist. How racist.

My latest Pajama’s Media column is about the Strange Lives of Political Wives:

Political wives. Can you think of a worse job? Married to type A personalities with more than a little bit of a narcissistic streak, these women — often educated and accomplished in their own right — must present a subservient demeanor and a sunny picture of their spouses or risk their spouses’ success. In addition, they often play a big part in their husbands’ careers by campaigning or crafting strategy. It is a rare politician whose wife operates outside the inner political circle.

For the article, I interviewed a political wife at the very beginning of her journey. After talking to such a nice woman and mother, it made me wonder why anyone would seek politics. What a nasty business it all is.

You know that thing called feminism? Why must I be the only feminist around here and expect a woman to be able to handle the tough questions? Robert Gibb’s threat just pisses me off. Why had we better go carefully? Because Democrats did with Miguel Estrada or Justice Thomas or Robert Bork? Hmmmm….?? We can’t ask because she has ovaries? We can’t ask questions about her belief system because Hispanics might not understand that this woman is being put into the highest court in the land?

Who is racist again? Who is sexist again?

People should be treated the same no matter their gender, color, ideology. But not so with Democrats and now the willy-nilly D.C. Republicans who’ve drunk the MSM’s Koolaid.

NOTE TO REPUBLICAN SENATORS:

You do realize that every question you ask, no matter how trivial and soft-ball will be portrayed as a tough, penetrating and unfair question? You do get that right? Might as well take that tail between your legs and ….dare I say it, woman up and ask a useful question. Hells bells, if the Republicans had the balls of Nancy Pelosi, they wouldn’t be reviled so. Good grief.

And as to all you hypocritical dumbass Democrats, I don’t want to hear one more word out of your mouth about the mistreatment of women and minorities. Not. One. Woman after woman has cried foul on your side before a punch has been thrown. If you can’t freaking take the fight, Get. Out. Of. The. Ring. If you need a moobed guy like Robert Gibbs to run interference for you, you should be back in the kitchen baking cookies with Hillary Clinton. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Nancy Pelosi fumbles around like a deer in the headlights at a press conference about torture and she’s the toughest politician DC has got. That says something.

And since I’m ranting…you know who I miss? I’m going to miss the bloviating Joe Biden and his pompasity asking stupid questions that guys 10x smarter than him are going to have to answer with seriousness. I’m going to miss old ornery Arlen Specter for the same reason. Wow. The Judicial committee just won’t be the same without these towering intellectual giants explaining things for the judges and the rest of us dummies.

Someone will stand in the self-important, aggrandizing gap. Who will this genius be? I can hardly wait.

In the meantime, watch another American tell his sad American, come-from-nothing compelling story. I’m freaking sick of compelling stories. We’ve all got a compelling story. We’ve all experienced life. Shut. Up. About. The. Compelling. Story. We’re Americans. We all come from somewhere and we all walked uphill both ways. In snowdrifts. Barefoot. Big freaking deal.

We’ve become a nation of self-pitying, identity-politicking jerks where character and accomplishment matter less than genetics, gender and cultural identity. Blech.

UPDATED:

And now, top Republican strategist kvetch to the Huffington Post. Is anyone worried about what this woman actually believes? Her comments about her gender and race make the law about her and not the law about the law.

Does she believe the Constitution should bend to her experiences? Is the Constitution still relevant? Is it a timeless document embodying timeless values? Or, does Ms. Sotomayor believe that the Constitution should be a living, breathing document that expresses her own views? How does she feel about states rights? How would she have decided Kelo? How would she have decided in the LA child rape case? THAT’s what I care about.

And what I am afraid of is that tough questions won’t be asked because she’s a woman and Latina. And any tough questions would be perceived as racist and sexist. And I view the withholding of tough vetting as racist and sexist. The job is too important to get lost in compelling life stories.

That the Democrats are playing this game is utterly predictable. That Republicans play along is tiring and frustrating.

Its okay to be a stupid, beautiful woman. It’s okay to be a smart, handsome (but not beautiful) woman. It is not okay to be a beautiful, smart woman. And if you’re a liberal and an average looking woman, expect the press to objectify you and spend lots of ink explaining why you’re a beautiful woman.

Please note: If you’re an obviously smart, beautiful, successful, and worst of all, conservative, woman here’s a succinct message, in case you haven’t gotten it via the media yet: Shut The Fuck Up.

Up until today, I haven’t written about Michelle Obama’s sculpted biceps or Carrie Prejean’s breast implants and view on gay marriage. I find the left and the press’ need to objectify any (on the right or left) woman abhorrent and disgusting. Jon Stewart, of all people, sums up the convoluted mess that Feminism, yes Feminism, has wrought against women:

Media Lizzy writes a must-read piece about beauty and women, and ultimately, truth:

For years, I have watched as the feminist movement pretended to care about women. From Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland and Margaret Sanger to Kate Michelman and their pro-abortion advocacy to Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth. They are contempuous of beautiful, feminine, intelligent and successful women. For a time, I read Naomi Wolf with some interest… she is charismatic, has an Ivy League education, was aesthetically beautiful and talked about the oversexualization of girls at too young an age… things I have been interested in all my life. Somewhere along the way, she fell victim to the Leftist ideals of feminism, never realizing how the vaguely masculine Patricia Irelands of the world are all too happy to kill the spirit of a beautiful woman. Modern feminism, with the glaring exception of Camille Paglia, is about hating men and stamping out their seed. It is about hate. They can wrap it up in “anti-Patriarch” ribbons and bows, but that does not make it so.

I too, have read Ms. Wolf, and in fact have her book Misconceptions on my shelf. I had hope for the next wave of feminists, that for once, they’d embrace the feminine, the female. Alas, it was not to be. They too, are consumed with envy. Gay men like Andrew Sullivan and Perez Hilton share with feminists the same trait: desire for what they cannot have. To be taken seriously, a liberal woman must be ugly or make herself ugly. To be accepted by God and/or the culture, a gay man should have been born a woman. These untenable positions make the trapped person very angry. So feminist women hate their ovaries and breasts and so do gay men.

The solution, then, is to shame and silence those who have what the jealous person cannot have. Feminists will participate in the destruction of Sarah Palin right along side Andrew Sullivan. Feminists will discuss a beauty pageant winner’s artificial breasts right along side Perez Hilton. They are consumed with jealous, impotent rage. It makes them hideously ugly.

Media Lizzy gets to another truth. Beauty serves as motivation to higher callings:

MY primary criticism of Ms. Gregory’s work, and many others, is the assertion that Anne was raped by King Henry VIII. Why imply such a thing? For literary enrichment? No. To accomplish two things: paint Anne as deserving of rape. And to paint Henry as a rapist – depicting a powerful, passionate man as an animal. Why again? Because, if Anne loved King Henry – and he loved her… then his break with the Vatican (and the spark that ignited the Reformation) was due in no small part to beauty, love, passion, and intangibles most simply can not grasp. King Henry VIII was not sitting around looking for a way to stick it to Rome.

Beauty can provoke love which can provoke noble action. I would submit that it is impossible to be otherwise. A beautiful person is not necessarily more loving, but a loving person is always more beautiful. Always. And a lifetime of hate and loathing makes one anything but beautiful. It shrivels the soul…and often, the face. Noble action is never sparked by hate. Noble action is ignited by love.

Truth is beauty and beauty is truth? Very often, beauty is love and love is beauty.