National Review's War On Women

Obviously behind in my reading, I just read "On A LARC" by Robert VerBruggen in the December 14, 2014 issue of National Review magazine (NR).  You can access all or part of the article here.  

My response in the form of a letter to the editor at NR follows, but there are basically two points so excessively irritating about the article.  One is the writer's, well, his male chauvinism though I hate that expression.  I'm not by any means a feminist, but VerBruggen shows himself to be brainwashed by 50 years of  feminist lies and so is one of those men who perhaps unwittingly, though conveniently, diminishes and takes advantage of the dignity of the woman as a human person.

The second excessively irritating thing about the article is its suggestion that conservatives need to nip a little here, tuck a little there, adjust their beliefs and views so they can get along with the Left.
This is the worst kind of cowardice.  If this is NR's stance, fine, but then it can't rightfully call itself "up to the minute conservative commentary."  

My comments:

All the points in  Robert Verbruggen's article "On a LARC" (December 31, 2014) follow logically one from the other if one accepts his premises, which he finally states halfway through his article.  He writes:  It's not as if we're going to ban birth control, eject women from the workplace, make abstinence until marriage. . . common, . . . .talk today's youth into marrying in their teens or early 20s, . . . . .

 

We're not?  How does he know?  Mr. Verbruggen writes that "many conservatives might prefer to bring back the marriage culture that America enjoyed decades ago,. . . . ."  That's a handy over-simplification Verbruggen makes to allow him to draw the mis-guided conclusions he goes on to promote in his article.  

 

Forget a return to the climate of the pre-60s revolution that Verbruggen implies some of us are looking for.   We seek an awareness of the human person that includes regarding sex, not as some animalistic urge to be indulged at will, but as an aspect of our humanity that yields the most benefits to society and to us as individuals when enjoyed within the bonds of marriage.  We seek a respect for and acknowledgment of the role that marriage plays in reducing poverty and providing the best environment for raising children.  We look to educate teenagers about the value of their sexuality, the benefits of chastity and abstinence, and to impress upon young adults, especially women, the perils of single motherhood both for themselves and their fatherless children.  We seek to re-educate men like Robert Verbruggen who've been bought and sold by the feminists as he writes "Giving women more control over their fertility is the most promising way to address this situation." 

 

No, Robert, women don't need more control over their fertility.  Men and women together will benefit when they control  and respect their sexuality which is the gift and responsibility of both sexes.  When it comes to sex, the commonly-held wisdom, and Mr. Verbruggen holds it in this article, is that rational adults and silly, hot-headed teenagers simply cannot control their sexual urges nor can they be held responsible for them.  Yet, despite this inability, Robert Verbruggen has come to the remarkable conclusion that women alone can shoulder the load for our society's uncontrollable sexual urges by having a health care professional  (I use the phrase advisedly)  shove a piece of plastic into their reproductive organs.  The women-folk won't mind. And don't complain about infections, cramps or other deleterious side effects either, gals.  How convenient that one group in society, women, can bear the burden of responsibility for everyone else, including men.  Mr. Verbruggen illustrates nicely the Real War on Women. 

 

More to Verbruggen's own point I suppose, is his notion that women and their IUDs will bring conservatives, pro-lifers and "religious people" to the bargaining table with the Left on controversies surrounding contraception and abortion. This is appeasement and carries with it the tacit implication that the Left is really right on these issues and that conservatives ought to change or at least massage their beliefs enough to be nice and just get along with everyone else, that they should be moderates.  

It's a large task, changing minds and hearts about foundational issues such as human sexuality, marriage, family and abortion when they've been obscured by the utilitarian, secular and politically expedient values Robert Verbruggen gives voice to in this article. It's a disappointment to read such an article in the pages of National Review.

Captain Petronio On Differences Between The Sexes

 

Keeping with the theme of the previous post, I revisited this very well-written article on women in combat.  There's no substitute for the article itself, but in a nutshell, Captain Petronio acknowledges that there are women who are physically qualified to meet Marine combat standards, herself included, but she questions the female's endurance ability over long periods of time while also pointing out higher attrition rates for females even during training.  Regarding combat:  

It was evident that stress and muscular deterioration was affecting everyone regardless of gender; however, the rate of my deterioration was noticeably faster than that of male Marines and further compounded by gender-specific medical conditions. At the end of the 7-month deployment, and the construction of 18 PBs later, I had lost 17 pounds and was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (which personally resulted in infertility, but is not a genetic trend in my family), which was brought on by the chemical and physical changes endured during deployment. Regardless of my deteriorating physical stature, I was extremely successful during both of my combat tours, serving beside my infantry brethren and gaining the respect of every unit I supported. Regardless, I can say with 100 percent assurance that despite my accomplishments, there is no way I could endure the physical demands of the infantrymen whom I worked beside as their combat load and constant deployment cycle would leave me facing medical separation long before the option of retirement.

Regarding training:

This said, we need only to review the statistics from our entry-level schools to realize that there is a significant difference in the physical longevity between male and female Marines. At OCS the attrition rate for female candidates in 2011 was historically low at 40 percent, while the male candidates attrite at a much lower rate of 16 percent. Of candidates who were dropped from training because they were injured or not physically qualified, females were breaking at a much higher rate than males, 14 percent versus 4 percent. The same trends were seen at TBS in 2011; the attrition rate for females was 13 percent versus 5 percent for males, and 5 percent of females were found not physically qualified compared with 1 percent of males.

If life were simple and human beings weren't complex creatures, it might actually be the case that  the only differences between men and women really were just superficial.   But scratch the surface, apply some thought and look a little more closely.  One can fit square pegs into round holes, but there's a cost.  Something gets destroyed in the process. 
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Differences Between Boys and Girls - Not What They Seem

I joined an Endow group.  Yes, a Catholic New Feminist type group, but more about that later.  As our group explores what femininity means in Catholic terms, we touch on any number of topics.  Since the basis for our group study is Pope John Paul II's Letter To Women and since he is discussing the uniqueness or "genius" of women, we often end up mulling over those characteristics that distinguish the sexes, one from the other. 

Most recently, we asked the mothers in the group with children of both sexes, myself included,  to reflect on the differences they may have observed when their children were young.  I brainstormed a bit and came up with a few ideas but realized that my list had nothing to do with my own children. My boys are talkers, my daughter is not.  My boys did show a preternatural pull towards footballs, tennis balls and rubber balls, but my daughter showed no interest in either dolls or girly chit-chat. Anyway, I never noticed many sex-related differences when they were young, say before the age of 3.  ( Actually, there's something to that. Read first paragraph here.)

Funny thing is, you don't have to be a parent to know that there's a reason for stereotyping male and female behavior.  Parent or no, anyone who's walked into a roomful of kids, gone on a field trip with a second-grade class or attended a family party where there's a gang of 4-10 year olds will be struck by differences in behavior.  At the family party, the girls will most likely have their heads together jabbering about the color of their dress.  The boys will be jumping from high places.  On the field trip, the girls will hold hands quietly with their partner and listen to the museum guide.  The boys will need reminders to get back in line and look at the exhibits-that's-why-we're-here.  We're speaking now in generalities of course.  This isn't to say that if a good game of hide-and-seek is underway at the family party, the girls won't be just as engaged as the boys.  And there will be those boys on the field trip who are captivated by the museum exhibits.  What gives.

My own list of typically boy traits was the pretty standard one.  Males are physical, doers not talkers, action-oriented not observers. They tend to excel at gross motor, but not fine motor skills.  They are risk takers, adventure seekers and have a greater sense of freedom to do as they wish.  Boys are less given to exploring their feelings and emotions, but if they do so at all, it won't be through hours of talking.  They are bottom line, likely to problem solve and reach a conclusion rather than obsess and discuss.  Girls?  Why, they're the opposite of course.

The only problem is that this list doesn't get you very far. If males are so inept at verbal expression, shouldn't all comedians, politicians,  teachers and therapists be female?  Shouldn't all neuro-surgeons and violinists --fine motor skills--be women?  Yet, real world experience aside, my list of typical boy traits is accurate, and, if today's PC gender-neutral propaganda is taken off the table, my list is widely-held, widely-acknowledged and probably exactly the same as yours.

The list isn't wrong but its interpretation may be.  I'm reminded to consider my women's group New Feminist readings.   The observable differences between the sexes belie our connectedness, our very sameness, our complementarity. Men are really not from Mars nor are women from Venus.  We're cut from the same cloth, fallen from the same tree and, if it weren't for our human pride, we'd probably be able to peacefully co-exist without the persistent need to articulate the differences between us.

More to follow.

NYC Schools Distribute Plan B

Here's another example of New York leading the country in progressivism as our governor proudly trumpets we do so well here in the Empire State. 

About 50 schools in The Big Apple are dispensing Plan B to students, no parental approval necessary unless a parent is fortunate enough to receive an opt-out notice from the school as given to the parent by their child.  The article is a mish-mash of sketchy background information and quotes by teen-age girls who have no idea what they're talking about.

This article,  a slightly more balanced coverage of the issue,  calls the distribution of Plan B Bloomberg's "stealth war" on teenage pregnancy.  It's actually more like Bloomberg's stealth war on young, uninformed females from lower socio-economic backgrounds.  What does it matter to the mayor if 16 year old girls from the Bronx are sexually active and then ingest high levels of hormones to prevent their 'unwanted pregnancy?'  At least he doesn't have to get either his heart or hands dirty by actually caring about the girls and what they're doing.  Give 'em a pill and call it a day.   I've already written about this as stealth population control here. 

Alice Von Hildebrand

A good article by this Catholic philosopher.  I've come across her name frequently but have never taken the time to read anything by her.

Surrogate Mothers

A report from Ireland's Iona Institue as covered by Zenit spells out very clearly why surrogate motherhood is wrong, as in immoral.  A few quotes from the article:

 “Surrogacy compromises the dignity of the child by making the child the object of a contract—a commodity,” the report argued. “It further compromises the dignity of the mother, even if her participation is voluntary, by merely treating her as a ’womb for hire’,” it added.  

 The commodification of children in surrogacy was highlighted by the report when it mentioned that due to the high costs involved couples tend to have the mentality that they deserve children who are more likely to be good-looking and successful in life.

Adoption is substantially different from surrogacy, the report argued. In adoption the birth mother makes a decision based on what is best for the child. By contrast, in surrogacy the decision is made by the adopting parents based on what is best for them. “It is therefore inherently adult-centred in a way adoption is not,” the report added.

“Women’s bodies become commodities through which others can purchase what they wish to have, and most or all care, concern, and medical attention is directed at the child while the surrogate mother is left to fend for herself,” the report commented. 

And finally,  

The increasing trend to the legalization of same-sex marriages will inevitably lead to higher demand for surrogate babies, with all the negative consequences identified by the Iona Institute.

West Point "Wedding"'s Honor

Brenda Sue Fulton's nuptials at the United States Military Academy at West Point made the news in grand style.

At last reading in July of 2011, Brenda Fulton was appointed by President Obama to USMA's Board of Visitors and she describes herself as having many "informal allies" at West Point. She is also a self-described homosexual (and lesbian and trans-gender) activist and she has major roles in the organizations Knights Out and OutServe. The same-sex ceremony held a week or so earlier at West Point involved friends of Fulton. 

Consequently, these ceremonies look less like a case of West Point grads who just wanted to be married at their alma mater and more like a political ploy on the part of homosexual activists who used West Point's prestige and prominence as the backdrop for showing us how the military will behave in Obama's second term. 

Though the legal facts may be arguable if not downright abstruse, it appears that the United States Military Academy at West Point, which is on federal property, did not have to agree to host Brenda Fulton's lesbian ceremony had West Point chosen to honor DOMA which is still the law regarding marriage as approved by Congress.    Family Research Council (FRC) says,    According to Johnson, decisions about military facilities should be made on a "sexual-orientation neutral basis." And while the "wedding" may have been consistent with Johnson's memo, the DOD's general counsel is no substitute for the 427 elected members of Congress who voted to define marriage as the union of a man and woman for the government's purposes. That means it affects federal employees (which Fulton is) and federal property (where West Point resides). The President may vehemently disagree with the law--but until the Supreme Court overturns it or Congress rejects it, DOMA is still the law of the land.

Earlier in the article FRC characterizes West Point as moving away from the rule of law which seems accurate even though technically the so-called wedding may not have been illegal.  However, as pointed out here,  LGBT Think Progress reports that DOMA merely says that  as pertaining to any federal regulation,  the word 'marriage' refers to the union of one man and one woman.  The article says that it is an " incredible stretch to interpret this language such that a same-sex wedding is somehow illegal merely because the resulting union is not recognized by the federal government."

 

Not so it seems to me.  In fact, seems to me that's the crux of the matter for Fulton and those she represents--to have same sex "marriages" recognized to be on the exact same plane as traditional marriages defined as being between one man and one woman.  If the federal government doesn't recognize Fulton's union as a marriage, what did she actually accomplish at West Point's Cadet Chapel?

 

Duty, Honor, Country.  West Point graduates do not behave honorably when they opportunistically exploit their alma mater  as a way to force others to cave to their demands.

 

Stealth Population Control?

From this article,   "the  American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists updated its guidelines for teenagers to say that IUDs and hormonal implants should be “first-line contraceptive options” that are discussed at each doctor’s visit."   I'm reminded of what a doctor told me 20 years ago.  He commented that 'government programs' and 'clinics'  favor the IUD as a method of birth control because its success doesn't require much skill or vigilance on the part of the user.  The user whom a government program is targeting is probably not the educated, white, middle or upper middle class female who will get whatever birth control she may or may not wish to have.  The user is probably a less educated, younger female from a lower socio-economic class, possibly with a good chance of being black or hispanic.  

 Why does a government program want a quick and easy solution to pregnancy?  To control the number of births resulting, perhaps?  Population control.   Throwing easy solutions at what are perceived to be problem pregnancies presumes that  the population in question is both sexually active and too irresponsible--too, uh, dumb?-- to control its sexual activity.  That in and of itself is the  soft bigotry of low expectations.  Secondly, there must be a presumption that the children resulting from these sexual unions are not wanted, either by their parents or by the society.  More bigotry and not so soft.  By advocating for 'easy' forms of contraception, society promotes a libertine attitude toward sex at the expense of the health and well-being of women in particular and our society in general.  The article points out the health problems associated with IUDs and the increased availability they will have under Obama's health care.  More wonderful things for liberated girls and women, brought to us by liberated women, with the support of  liberated men. 

Not to be outdone, New York City public schools are also into the population control business with the insidious CATCH program.   Cardinal Dolan notes the tragic irony and comments here that parental consent is needed in New York state for piercings, tattos and tanning salons, but the CATCH program makes hormonal injections and contraceptive drugs available to teen-agers without parental consent.

Women Speak For Themselves

More on Marriage as Cure For. . . .

. . . . . any number of ills, but this study from the Heritage Foundation focuses on marriage as the best cure for child poverty. 

Approximately 41% of children are born out of wedlock.  That's a precipitous increase from the 70s when only 10% of children were born to unmarried women.  

A few quotes from the article:

Since the early 1960s, single-parent families have roughly tripled as a share of all families with children. As noted, in the U.S. in 2009, single parents were nearly six times more likely to be poor than were married couples.

Overall, single-parent families comprise one-third of all families with children, but as Chart 6 shows, 71 percent of poor families with children are headed by single parents. By contrast, 73 percent of all non-poor families with children are headed by married couples.

These [out of wedlock birth] rates remained relatively low until the onset of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty in the early 1960s. Then the black out-of-wedlock birth rate skyrocketed, doubling in little more than a decade from 24.5 percent in 1964 to 50.3 percent in 1976. It continued to rise rapidly, reaching 70.7 percent in 1994. Over the next decade, it declined slightly but then began to rise again, reaching 72.3 percent in 2008.

The report elucidates on the matter of out-of-wedlock births.  The majority do not occur among teens, but rather among young adults over the age of 18, people who generally have a favorable attitude toward marriage and children and who desire children.  The study refers to the interesting book on this subject,   Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Mothers Put Motherhood Before Marriage by Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas.  As the study explains it,

A major obstacle is that most low-income women plan to marry after having children, not before. Their life plan is the exact opposite of the normal sequence in the upper middle class. In the upper middle class, men and women still follow the traditional pattern: A man and woman become attracted to each other; a relationship develops; the couple assess each other and at some point deliberately choose to become lifetime partners; emotional bonds deepen; they marry and after a few years have children.

In the lowest-income third of the U.S. population, this traditional sequence of family formation and childbearing is now explicitly reversed. Women first have children and then seek to find or build a stable relationship that will eventually lead to marriage. Typically, low-income single mothers do not see marriage either as an important part of childrearing or as an important element of financial security or upward social mobility. Instead, marriage is seen as a symbolic event that should occur later in adult life. Marriage is regarded as an important ceremony that will celebrate one’s eventual arrival in the middle class rather than as a vital pathway that leads upward to the attainment of middle-class status

.

My opinion is based on anecdotal evidence only, but I don't think this mentality is limited to the lower-class.  It's becoming increasingly adopted by young middle-class women up to about age 30.   Lower-income women describe having children as fulfilling, giving purpose to their lives and they may do so in lieu of not having many other opportunities.  But middle-class gals who do have opportunities seem to be latching onto having children as simply something else to do, some other experience to have.  I believe these Generation Y-ers are so steeped in the culture of the feminized society (post 60s sexual revolution) that they have no awareness of the value of a father in their child's life or a husband in their own life.

Religious Persecution or Just All in a Day's Work for a Health Director?

Wednesday, August 1st was the first day of the HHS Mandate as it applies to some institutions.  The Cardinal Newman Society sees it as the first day of  'religious persecution'  while Inside Higher Ed more sanguinely views the implementation of the Mandate as requiring college 'health centers' to adjust.

After wading through this article, and admittedly not completely grasping all the ins and out of a college health center adapting to the requirements of the Mandate, the general conclusion I reached is that college health centers exist to hand out contraceptives and to provide pap smears along with other euphemistically-termed 'preventive' services.  As one health director says,  “Our mission is to keep students on campus. It’s to ensure that the student is going to be successful in their higher education, and one of the ways that we achieve that mission is by maintaining their health."    I don't get the impression he's talking about preventing the common cold.   As I commented in the comments section of the article, these health centers seem like little more than mills that foster unrestrained sexual activity on college campuses, with the girls (most enter college still in their teens) expected to assume the responsibility for 'prevention.'  Another perk of the liberating feminist movement.

Sex-Selection Abortions

Senator Blackburn of Tennessee makes some points about gender-based abortions.  A bill to ban such abortions was voted on today in the House and failed to pass.  (Our/my own Rep. Carolyn Maloney voted against the bill. No surprise.).  Those who support abortion on demand as part of  'reproductive choice' and a woman's 'right to choose' are in the sticky position of having to support this very anti-woman, anti-female act.   That includes our president, Barack Obama, though his position seems to be still 'evolving.'  The prevalence of this practice was discussed here, though such abortions only went on in far-away places like India and China.  Now modern feminism has brought the practice to us.

Will The Left Fight the Real War on Women

You can read this article here.  After listing some truly horrible offenses against women such as rape, forced marriages and sex-selective abortion, the author points out that,

Instead of tackling any one of these important issues that set back the clock on women’s rights centuries, the feminist left has decided that the possible denial of free contraception is what constitutes a war on the fairer sex.

Amen.  As she goes on to note,

You can be a misogynist and disparage women (preferably conservative), as long as you vote a straight Democratic ticket each and every election.

Nonmarital Births Among Young Women

In this article, the New York Times is basically reporting on one of the themes of Charles Murray's new book, Coming Apart, although there's no mention of Murray until almost halfway through the article!  Oh well.  The Times leads off with the fact that among women under 30, more than half of births are outside of marriage,  'nonmarital births' as Murray calls them. 

The Times puts an objective, neutral, non-judgmental, well, their own spin on it with  phrases like "the transforming family" and "rewards of marriage increasingly reserved for people with the most education."   Ideological mumbo jumbo on the part of the Times journalist!  Here's more mumbo jumbo:  "Money helps explain why well-educated Americans still marry at high rates: they can offer each other more financial support, and hire others to do chores that prompt conflict."

It's exactly the other way around of course.  Marriage is one of the major factors in leading people out of poverty!  Read this article by Robert Rector  and this one on married fathers also by Mr. Rector.  For a lighter treatment of the same issue, see this article.   

What particularly chafes is that this development is another example of the unabashed hypocrisy and deception of feminist ideology.  Unfortunately, young women still seem to be taking the bait--hook, line and sinker---that they'll be able to do it all.  In this case that includes raising children without the benefit of a father and husband while simultaneously bringing home the income necessary to support themselves and their children.  All this while somehow managing to maintain a reasonable standard of living and quality of life for themselves and their children.  If a young woman is thrust into this situation through the vagaries of life, that's one thing.  But for young women to make a choice to be husbandless and for their children to be fatherless is a sad thing for these women, their children and our society.  Unnecessary also.

Book Review--Unnatural Selection

This review of the book Unnatural Selection covers some unpleasant territory and shows the cruel irony of what the ill-fated feminist movement has delivered to women and girls, namely, more ways to be an oppressed group.   To quote:

In the mid-1970s, amniocentesis, which reveals the sex of a baby in utero, became available in developing countries. Originally meant to test for fetal abnormalities, by the 1980s it was known as the "sex test" in India and other places where parents put a premium on sons. When amnio was replaced by the cheaper and less invasive ultrasound, it meant that most couples who wanted a baby boy could know ahead of time if they were going to have one and, if they were not, do something about it. 

The book explores how sex selection, by means of abortion, has skewed the male-female ratio in some countries, especially India and China. The resulting shortage of women not only fuels the practice of abortion but also turns women into a commodity to be bought and sold.   Again, from the review:

The economist Gary Becker has noted that when women become scarce, their value increases, and he sees this as a positive development. But as Ms. Hvistendahl demonstrates, "this assessment is true only in the crudest sense." A 17-year-old girl in a developing country is in no position to capture her own value. Instead, a young woman may well become chattel, providing income either for their families or for pimps. As Columbia economics professor Lena Edlund observes: "The greatest danger associated with prenatal sex determination is the propagation of a female underclass," that a small but still significant group of the world's women will end up being stolen or sold from their homes and forced into prostitution or marriage. 

In a screwy twist of logic, the author of the book (a woman, no surprise) worries that this shortage of women might endanger the sacred cow of  abortion that feminists champion. 

This is a very interesting review and makes a number of good points, most all of which were accounted for and predicted in Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae.

HollaBack!

HollaBack! Another mailing from my alma mater Barnard College and its Barnard Center for Research on Women. I flipped the post card over to see phrases like "combat street harrassment" and "ending sexual harrassment." I flipped back to the front of the card to see an angry (or was she hurt) looking young gal holding up her hand as if to say stop . . . or hollaback?

When I actually read the text, the fog lifted at once. No, it's not an obscure word from some Spanish dialect. HollaBack! is about "feminist responses to street harassment." It's about creating safe transit and safe communities by ending sexual assault. It's about getting tough and street-wise. It's about women fighting! We're fighting back. We're HOLLERING back. I finally got it. Forty plus years into the feminist movement and according to the Barnard Center for Research on Women, we lady-folk are still victims. Society still doesn't treat us properly. The feminist movement may be gulping for air, but it hasn't breathed its last. And to prove it, we're going to finally make streets safe for women by using "technology, mapping and community organizing." Heaven help us.

Back in 1971, when the Center was founded, who would have thought that years down the road Barnard would be sending its alums mailings about hollering back, polyphonic feminism, erotohistoriography, economic and sexual justice and other such topics covered by 'sexuality scholars' and those whose area of expertise is 'gender/sexuality/queer studies.'

I'm often told that the current crop of Barnard undergrads is interested mostly in being good students and getting a sound education. Perhaps at this point the Women's Center is an afterthought, a 70s hold-over, a campus anomaly. I certainly hope so, and, in fairness, it should be added that not every mailing from Barnard is about reproductive justice (their term) and feminist art. The campus is also host to Bach concerts and back in February there was a lecture about raising happy and moral children.

The End of Men?

A few months ago, OrignalMetalChik asked where are the men, the real men, that is. Only slightly more dramatic, Brian Caulfield, in the Winter 2010 issue of The Human Life Review, asks if it's the end of men. Thank goodness, he does predict their return.

Caulfield gives some of the factors contributing to the demise of fatherhood and manhood in our society (the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade which left men with "no enforceable rights in the continued life of the child in the womb that they helped to create " and in vitro fertilization and donor conceived babies, methods that allow women to "start their pregnancy in a Petri dish" without ever having to deal with a living, breathing man and creating children whose biological father is a mere cipher.)

Caulfield cites the damage the de-masculinization of society has already done. Children in homes without fathers are five times more likely to be poor and 54% more likely to be poorer than their fathers. Child abuse is more prevalent in single parent homes than those where a child is raised by both biological parents.
Infant-mortality rates are almost twice as high for infants of unmarried mothers, and being raised without a father increases the likelihood of teen pregnancy and dropping out of school.

The mainstream media has, naturally, willingly reinforced the image of men as weak and silly creatures further fueling the damage done by a culture that has been swept along by the damnable women's movement of the 70s and the sexual revolution of the 60s.

However, Caulfied gives some indicators of how manliness is hopefully on the upswing again, citing in particular Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body, the Pope's teaching and reflection on human sexuality. As Caulfied puts it, the Pope "draws energy from the very sexual revolution that it seeks to correct. Like a transformer station that takes raw energy and converts it into streams of electricity that are useful to a household, the pope takes the sexual energy unleashed in the 1960s, draws out the positive trends, and adds the tempering perspective . . . of the Christian tradition."

If you can't find this article on line, which I couldn't, you can certainly read more along these lines at Caulfield's website Fathers for Good of which he is the editor. Current wisdom has tried, lamentably with considerable success, to hammer into us that there is no difference between male and female despite appearances, experience and overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Thus, it's uplifting to be reminded that current wisdom is wrong, that "gender" is not a state of mind or an accident of environment, that the complementarity of the sexes is directed by God. As Caulfield writes,

"Men and women togther, equal in dignity and value, yet different in nature and capacities: This is the great model that John Paul sketched in his theology that placed the ensouled human body at the nexus of all history. "

OrignalMetalChik Asks "Where Are The Men?"

Sarah Palin says that Obama has no cojones, but OrignalMetalChik offers an explanation as to why even our nation's leader is an unmanly men. The reason is feminism. You are not watching the wrong video as you hear OriginalMetalChik talking about the problem of illegals in Arizona. She begins there and warms to her thesis. Who is OrignalMetalChik? I don't know, but here she is.