A blog war on the subject of feminism broke out a couple of weeks ago between Little Miss Attila and Stacy McCain, of The Other McCain. My contribution in Attila’s comment section was minimalist — “Attila: right. Stacy: wrong.” I think that must be why I’m not linked in Attila’s post tonight thanking her sisters-in-arms–in case it surprises you that I’m not listed in a fight my dear gentle readers know I usually would be in, on the side where I always would be fighting. My diet is still affecting my writing, although I am starting to feel better.
Update: dear Attila has updated her post (linked below) to include me and I am grateful. My summary of the battle–and be sure to remind everyone what set it off, you two!–is that Attila took the side that feminism has the salient redeeming quality of having gotten something near equality for women in the United States and therefore it is fine for conservatives to identify themselves as feminists. Stacy personifies the arguments of social conservatives, who try to demonize feminism by claiming it’s really just a form of totalitarian Leftism.
Bah! Humbug! As I have pointed out here many times, there are three identity groups who are on the Left because they were driven out of conservativism by social conservatives: women, gays and Jews. Social conservativism is controlled by religion and religious leaders for their own benefit. They anathematize women who want equality and the liberty of choice and birth control, gays who aren’t producing babies for them and who want equality, and Jews for not converting. This means that the primary architects of the Left are on the Right. If this fraud that social conservativism will not ALWAYS demand precedence over fiscal conservativism is not exposed and the practice stopped, America is going to die of debt. And, frankly, if sexism were not so rampant and vicious, Hillary Clinton would have beaten Obama for the 2008 Democratic nomination — SHE was qualified for the job and we’d be in much better shape if she’d won (instead of Obama).
Anyhoo, I do plan to listen to DaTechGuy’s radio show with Joy McCann, aka “Little Miss Attila,” and Stacy McCain, The Other McCain, at 10 am, EDT, Saturday, April 2. To listen live online, go to WRCN’s website and click the “Listen Live” button. If you don’t have RealPlayer, WinAmp or Windows Media Player installed, you may need to download and install one of them, so allow 15 minutes or so to do that. If you miss the show live, but want to hear it, Peter posts the recordings of each show in an archive at DaTechGuy.
P.S.
Perhaps some observations from dear Violet Socks of The Reclusive Leftist will be helpful, considering that it was a post about a comment by Gov. Sarah Palin identifying herself as a feminist that was Ground Zero for this fight. She asks, “How in the hell is Sarah Palin more conservative than Mike Huckabee?“:
First of all, if there is any daylight between Huckabee and Palin on economic issues, I’m not seeing it.* But in terms of social issues—you know, basic human rights for women, that kind of thing—Huckabee is so far to the right he’s red-shifted.
I’ve covered this ground before, but let’s review a few key points:
- Mike Huckabee believes that God put women on earth to be subordinate and subservient to men. Unlike Sarah Palin, who explicitly embraces gender equality as a “conservative feminist,” Huckabee believes that women are the inferior sex.
- Mike Huckabee believes that contraception should be illegal. Illegal. Sarah Palin, of course, is strongly in favor of contraception.
- Mike Huckabee wants the Constitution to be rewritten to reflect “God’s word.” I’ve never heard anything like this from Palin. (And besides, we know she doesn’t think “God’s word” means women are inferior.)
- Mike Huckabee thinks homosexuals are dangerous deviants and that people with HIV should be sequestered in concentration camps. Palin is against gay marriage but is comfortable with homosexuality; like Obama, she has said she thinks civil unions are sufficient.
Sarah Palin is a conservative godbag for sure, but Mike Huckabee makes her look like Che Guevara.
*Note to Violet: WE can see it. Fiscal conservatives consider Huckabee a fiscal liberal. As a bad thing. Social conservatives who want their church to BE the government vote for high taxes and big government when they are in power — even though they generally get to positions of power by promising to vote for low taxes and small government. Somehow their perspective changes, I suppose, when THEY get their hands on the money and levers of power and can do so much good with them.
Glad to have you listening this morning
On the one hand, I’ve always wondered why women’s right are different from, say, the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement was hijacked by leftists and commies. It went too far in the opposite direction in the forms of things like disparate impact and affirmative action. But very few people claim that it was an unnecessary commie conspiracy to destroy the family and society.
On the other hand, I do sometimes wonder if it’s time to just let the *word* go. This is not “marriage” versus “civil unions” – the choice of word isn’t all that important. I’ve always found it easier to seperate the people who genuinely dislike equality from the people who just react to such an emotive, loaded word, once you start saying something like, “well women are equal human beings, apart ffrom some differences in physical strength, right?…”
Liz,
We’ve been fighting over who gets to define “feminist” for decades. I don’t remember when I stopped using the word to define myself because Leftist women went too far in adding a system of politics and beliefs to it on top of the equality issues — in substitution of the equality issues, even — in a mirror image of how social conservatives have hijacked the word “conservative” and substituted their religious agenda for the economic and political principles associated with conservativism. But, as a consequence of this little war, I’ve decided that if Sarah Palin says she’s a feminist, then dagnabbit, so am I. Frankly, with the number of women we have in elected leadership roles and as commentators, and with conservatives being the ones engaged in the fight for equality for women globally, it is we who now have the legitimate title to the word, “feminist,” not the Left.
Cynthia
BTW the podcast of the debate is up along with a poll for you to vote on the winner:
http://datechguy.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/who-won-the-debate-between-stacy-mccain-and-little-miss-attila/
Well I have been trying for a very long time to convince Linda Lou that, as the husband, I have the authority. Turns out I have the authority to do what I’m told. Durn.
I even threatened to report her to the Babitists. Turns out the only Babitists who make house calls anymore are the Phelps crowd and they’ll only come around to my funeral.