This is quite a gem. It really puts forth the sexual double-standard in some of the clearest terms I’ve seen yet.
The run-down: Kathryn Jean Lopez hears about the Duke lacrosse rape case, vaguely think it’s unfair to the guys but doesn’t think much about it beyond, “Why are college guys having stripper drunken parties? That’s conduct unbecoming sensible young men.” It’s disappointing and depressing. Hiring strippes, fantasizing about skinning the for sexual pleasure, and gang-rape = disappointing and depressing.
But then Kathy hears about the women’s lacrosse team at Catholic University, who hired a male stripper for one of their parties and took pictures in “sexually suggestive” poses. Mind you, no rape, no violent fantasies, but still a scandal. Kathryn Jean’s reaction?
I had a more apocalyptic response: A women’s lacrosse team hires a stripper?! Crass conduct unbecoming ladies?! And they attend, for heaven’s sake, the Catholic University of America?!
All emphasis hers.
Young men shouldn’t be getting sloppy drunk and doing childish things and paying for a stripper. But young women really shouldn’t. There is something more disconcerting about the latter—and it is even more disturbing that we won’t all have that reaction. It’s not beyond the call of duty for women to encourage men to be gentlemen. It’s women’s work. .
And that is the burden of the vagina: You own one, and it’s your job not only to control yourself and your own life, but to control the actions of others as well (except when it comes to your own body, over which you should have no say). And when she’s encouraging control, she means control over the penis-owning members of our society who, without women to guide them and pick their knuckles up off the floor, would be raping and killing with abandon. (And apparently feminists are the ones who are trying to “feminize” and dominate men. Excuse me?)
That’s why the image we have of Lynndie England at Abu Ghraib is more jarring than if she had been a Lionel or Larry England abusing prisoners. Either is bad. Both are embarrassing for all of us. Seeing England pregnant during her court martial somehow made it worse still. I want our sons, husbands, fathers, brothers to have the utmost respect for women as fellow human beings, but as women, too. If women don’t have that respect for themselves—if daughters and mothers and sisters and wives don’t appreciate their own feminine calling—how can we expect the guys to?
True. Which is why she decides to give the Duke lacrosse players a pass, and instead target the women at Catholic University. Because she’s all about requiring that men respect women.
And as for following the “feminine calling,” that’s why she’s spending her days writing for the National Review, instead of, say, going home, having babies and baking cupcakes (two of the three of which I did today, because I’m a lady).
And look at that, it’s working! Now, creepy misogynist dads everywhere have somewhere to turn:
Thank you for the ammunition. I have a 15 year old daughter that thinks it’s OK for her to act like her brothers. I’ll have her read your essay and hear it from an independent source, and a woman, rather than from her conservative Dad.
Aww, thanks Kathy!
And she’s willing to use just about any bit of information to further her views about what women really shouldn’t be doing. I’ll just say, Twisty called it.
And apparently the same goes for serial killers, as it turns out that Jack the Ripper might actually be a Jill (god I hate my name sometimes). Kathryn Jean weighs in.
What an adorable theme. I can’t wait for tomorrow’s post: Men shouldn’t be writing for the National Review, but women really shouldn’t be!