Charlotte Hays at IWF has predictably taken the occasion of Betty Friedan’s death to piss on Friedan’s legacy and wax poetic about the housewife’s life. Reading or hearing handsomely paid female conservative pundits romanticize housewifery reminds me of nothing so much as reading old pastorals written by people who didn’t actually do any of the pig shit shoveling and as such could imagine a farmer’s life was non-stop bliss. Hays is comparing Friedan unfavorably to Phyllis Schlafly in this post, and it’s a model of how not to construct an argument. Maybe Hays really should reconsider and live the life she praises of cooking, cleaning and shutting up.

Though still very much with us, Schlafly certainly realizes that she’s not going to be accorded the sendoff Friedan is receiving from the mainstream press when her time comes.

This much is true. Friedan is getting kind, grateful words from all over the place from women, who do owe her much for her relentless activism that improved women’s lives by making employment, housing, medical care and marriage less discriminatory against women. I don’t really see there being cause for people to write laudatory pieces on Schlafly–what are women supposed to thank her for, again? Promoting the idea that the rest of us are as stupid as her and want the boot on our necks?

Some might argue that the problem had no name because it didn’t really exist—many American women led fulfilling lives before Betty Friedan came along. You’d never know this from reading Friedan’s obituaries.

Other things that “some might argue” that probably won’t be appearing in Friedan’s obituaries: that women don’t really exist but are a figment of the male imagination, that babies come from cabbage patches and therefore abortion rights are unimportant, and that the moon is made of green cheese.

In her autobiography, Ms. Friedan accused her ex-husband Carl of beating her up. The accusation garnered headlines from a press lacking in skepticism. As David Horowitz wrote at the time: “The media ran with the story. Now Mr. Friedan has responded with a website, in which he charges that his ex-wife was mentally disturbed and given to fits of violent rage. It was she who abused him, says Mr. Friedan, not the other way around.

For those following at home, the argument then is this–in a dispute between a man and a woman, we should automatically side with the man. This disproves that feminism is necessary.

“The ex-Mrs. Friedan, meanwhile, has softened her charges, telling Good Morning America, ‘I almost wish I hadn’t even written about it, because it’s been sensationalized out of context. My husband was no wife-beater, and I was no passive victim of a wife-beater. We fought a lot, and he was bigger than me.’�

So, in other words, if women are anything but passive punching bags, the beating isn’t a real beating. You can’t say you’re abused until you capitulate completely, and of course if you capitulate completely, you will be silent about your abuse. The benefit of this is that most of us can say then that abuse never happens and that means we have no use for feminism.

Far from being the desperate housewife she claimed to be, Friedan was a journalist with a history of activism in far-left causes: her book was propaganda. Phyllis Schlafly was a housewife. She had no desire to “shatterâ€? the “cozyâ€? ideal of suburban life. It was her life–she was also a lawyer, activist, bestselling author and mother.

Argument: Friedan was no housewife because she wrote books. Schlafly was a housewife because she she wrote books. And the Washington Post is only denying that we should make war on the terrorists hoarding the green cheese on the moon because they are the Librul Media and afraid of the scary, all-powerful feminists.

The intrinsic difference between Schlafly and Friedan is that Schlafly saw the locus of evil as over there, the Soviet Union, while Friedan saw it as here—our society and the heart of society, the family. Phyllis beat Friedan at her own game, organizing women to fight the utterly and absolutely superfluous Equal Rights Amendment, and winning.

I try to keep the most irritating conservative arguments list down to three so that my head doesn’t blow up from overloading on the irritation, but it’s just so damn hard. The one invoked here is the classic “criticizing your own society means you think all others are perfect” argument, which is really kind of a Platonic ideal of conservative belief, since it flies in the face of all evidence and is believed solely on faith, much like creationism. We’re all aware, I’m sure, of the latest version of this load of horseshit.

Unlike Friedan, she had a great marriage and a great sense of humor—she used to begin speeches by thanking her husband, the late Fred Schlafly, for letting her attend the event—she would then chortle and say she always thanked Fred because it drove the feminists crazy.

Oh, don’t lie, Phyllis. The real reason the joke is funny is you pulled the wool over stupid old Fred’s eyes by denying him the right to his own housebound domestic servant by going out into the world preaching that men really are entitled to housebound domestic servants. Feminists maybe don’t like that, it’s true. Many of us think that kind of sneaky manipulation is wrong.

By contrast, Friedan’s “I’d like to burn you at the stake,� uttered to Schlafly in a debate (wonder who was winning?) was not said with a twinkle in the eye.

Eye twinkles are all the proof we need for an argument. Fuck facts and figures. Oppression’s only a problem if the oppressors forget to smile.

A campaigner for better employment opportunities for women and traditional values, Schlafly has probably done more for the average woman than Friedan.

Presuming that what the average woman needs more than to be free from sexual discrimination, harassment and state-forced pregnancy is condescending lectures on how appealing submission is to the kind of men that no woman in her right mind would want to fuck, much less marry. Women could also use a pat on the head before you give them a kick in the ass, but of course that’s the sort of pandering to hysterical feminists one really shouldn’t engage in.

For further reading, I highly recommend Dave’s post at the Galloping Beaver on the emptiness of the arguments made for male supremacy. He refrains from claiming his wife gave him “permission” to write this.


60 Responses to “But I thought making speeches and writing books was housework”  

  1. *sigh*

    You know, one of the reasons why these jobs associated with “women’s work” are paid such shit is because we continually freakin’ compare those jobs to the worst thing anyone can possibly do.

    I really irritates the fuck out of me.

    There are people who legitimately enjoy housework — and I’d prefer it to a a lot of other jobs I’ve had. The problem with housework is not that it is inherently icky, but the conditions in which it is too often done. And one contribution to those conditions is dissing such work.


  2. I really irritate the fuck out of me when I can’t see my typhos til it’s too late! :)


  3. skywalker77

    “she would then chortle and say she thanked Fred”

    Chortled! What a creepy old bag.


  4. Oh Bitch, my friends mock me for enjoying housework. But I can enjoy it, because I have more in my life than just housework.

    And no one likes scrubbing, scooping, wiping or otherwise dealing with shit. And housework involves shit. Literal shit–toilet scrubbing, diaper-changing, dog shit scooping, litterbox cleaning. Hardly fulfilling stuff.


  5. Also, the retort to a lot of horse shit is Fridan’s own words. In a debate with de Beuavoir, for instance, she pointed out that she not only wanted to make family life better for everyone (plainly evident to anyone who ever read anything she wrote), but she also felt that women who chose to be housewives should do so: there was no dictate to not be a housewife, something she eventually conceded.

    The reason it was a problem was, not be/c family was inherently bad, but the particular way we had conceived of family: separaation of spheres, dependency on the Breadwinner Wage, and a narrowing of the definition of womanhood to finding orgasmic delight in a waxed floor. Fridan was a flaming liberal humanist — but also deeply indebted to a marxist analysis — in so far as she wanted to eliminate the alienating conditions within which housework was done.

    Friedan had some faults — she was a diva, she treated women who worked with her like servants, and she treated lesbians in NOW like crap — but of course that wouldn’t be this author’s concern. It is ours, though.


  6. Or, put another way, I don’t see where I put down housework. I put down the notion that women should be satisfied to be constrained to it. Housework’s great! Men should do more of it! Not only is it fulfilling but rumor has it that it gets you laid.


  7. My favourite bit of Backlash is where Susan Faludi points out not just the hypocrisy the right-wing women, like Schafley.

    I have all Bitch|Lab’s problems with Betty Freidan, but that doesn’t undermine the importance of The Feminine Mystique.


  8. Actually, I do all of the housework about 55% of the time. Of course I come from a decades-ago backgound where cleaning was a requirement of rank and all the cleaners were young men. (Don’t join the navy if you don’t like scrubbing, wiping and doing toilets).

    The rewards, as Amanda has alluded to, are considerably better at home.


  9. A Luxurious Junket For Bloggers…

    Bloggers of all stripes love to bloviate these days about public officials who accepted money or luxurious treatment from corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff in his attempt to curry government favor for his clients. But that doesn’t mean bloggers are above…


  10. latts

    What’s funny is that one of my first comments upon hearing of Friedan’s death was “and miserable old bats like Phyllis Schlafly hang around forever!”


  11. wilhelm

    I’ve never been quite sure how Phyllis Schlafly makes it through the day without her head exploding. If she’s so big into women staying home and scrubbing pantries all day, then what is she doing writing books, let alone political activism? Kind of a paradox, really.

    Sigh. The good ones die too young, and old hags like Phyll continue to raise the collective cognitive dissonance of the world a little bit every day.


  12. ginmar

    Of course they do. The good may die too young for the rest of us, but the mediocre are eternal. Schlafly, Paglia, Roiphe, all those—-they will be with us till they accomplish something that differentiates them from all the other anti-feminists, and because they all say the same thing, that will never be.


  13. I’ve never been quite sure how Phyllis Schlafly makes it through the day without her head exploding. If she’s so big into women staying home and scrubbing pantries all day, then what is she doing writing books, let alone political activism?

    Here’s a theory: She thinks she’s special. Scrubbing and cleaning is for the peasant women, not her sort of people. Her job, as far as she’s concerned–the purpose of all those books and radio shows–is to make sure those other women know their place.


  14. stickler

    Amanda’s answer reminded me of the premodern household:

    Women dealt with human shit (house, diapers, peas porridge hot peas porridge cold peas porridge in the pot nine days old …), while men dealt with animal shit (muck out the stall, harness the ox, etc).

    Industrialization, when it severed the link between hearth and economic earning, severed the link between men and shit. Unless the man was working in a slaughterhouse or as a teamster.

    I’m not sure what to make of this. But it’s an interesting insight. Who has to deal with the shit? Who gets, as they say, the “short end of the stick”?


  15. Here’s a theory: She thinks she’s special. Scrubbing and cleaning is for the peasant women, not her sort of people. Her job, as far as she’s concerned–the purpose of all those books and radio shows–is to make sure those other women know their place.

    Bingo. But doesn’t it work that way in all such things. Note that female anti-abortion activists don’t include themselves in the ranks of those who should be punished or humiliated for having sex. If they need to end a pregnancy, they will… because they’re special.

    Sorry to have transgressed… it’s the rum.


  16. Rob

    Schafly is just like Bill Bennett. He has the moral wherewithall to gamble and visit the local dominatrix. Thats because he is of the correct class. Now the rest of the people, well they are too simple to have such choices and must be herded to the right place.


  17. alsis39.5

    I just want to live long enough for Phyllis to be exposed in the press as a compulsive gambler and veteran dom client. That would make every bad day I’ve put up with in the past 39 1/2 years all worthwhile…


  18. Schlafly certainly realizes that she’s not going to be accorded the sendoff Friedan is receiving from the mainstream press when her time comes.

    I know that I’m planning on uncorking a bottle of wine to celebrate when Schlafly meets her maker (I have bottles awaiting Pat Robertson’s & Jerry Falwell’s deceasements, too). Of course, I doubt that Phyllis wants that kind of sendoff….


  19. Sally

    I think Phyllis Schlafly is the equivilent of the college Republicans who don’t have to go to Iraq, because they’re fighting the good fight by applauding the fact that other people are in Iraq. She doesn’t have to actually scrub any toilets, because defending toilet-scrubbing is a kind of virtual housework that’s really just as valuable and important as the actual housework.


  20. Molly, NYC

    Schlafly certainly realizes that she’s not going to be accorded the sendoff Friedan is receiving from the mainstream press when her time comes.

    Forgive the stating-the-obvious, but Friedan was an extremely nice, gracious woman who was known for her generous view of what everyone’s life might be like. Schlafly is a self-aggrandizing bitch who made hay by ripping off feminism. And Hays and Schlafly are right–Schlafly won’t be especially missed. And neither will Hays.


  21. Friedan’s passing brings all the talking heads with an ax to grind. Witness Camille Paglia doing her usual schtick over at Salon.


  22. firefalluk

    The problem with housework is not that it is inherently icky, but the conditions in which it is too often done

    Actually my real problem with it is the usual rate of pay for it.

    And, is there anyone so meanspirited as to want to attend Schafly’s (hopefully soon) funeral with placards and celebrations? Oh, yes, I think I could manage that


  23. postdated

    The New York Times
    Dec. 20, 1977
    by Terry Martin Hekker

    I don’t yet perceive myself as a failure, but it’s not for want of being told I am.

    The other day, years of condescension prompted me to fib in order to test a theory. At a party where most of the guests were business associates of my husband, a Ms. Putdown asked me who I was. I told her I was Jack Hekker’s wife. That had a galvanizing effect on her. She took my hand and asked if that was all I thought of myselfâ€â€?just someone’s wife? I wasn’t going to let her in on the five children but when she persisted I mentioned them but told her they weren’t mine, that they belonged to my dead sister. And then I basked in the glow of her warm approval.

    It’s an absolute truth that whereas you are considered ignorant to stay home to rear your children, it is quite heroic to do so for someone else’s children. Being a housekeeper is acceptable (even to the Social Security office) as long as it’s not your house you’re keeping. And treating a husband with attentive devotion is altogether correct as long as he’s not your husband.
    Sometimes I feel like Alice in Wonderland. But lately, mostly, I feel like an endangered species.

    The New York Times
    January 1, 2006
    By TERRY MARTIN HEKKER

    A WHILE back, at a baby shower for a niece, I overheard the expectant mother being asked if she intended to return to work after the baby was born. The answer, which rocked me, was, “Yes, because I don’t want to end up like Aunt Terry.”

    That would be me.

    In the continuing case of Full-Time Homemaker vs. Working Mother, I offer myself as Exhibit A. Because more than a quarter-century ago I wrote an Op-Ed article for The New York Times on the satisfaction of being a full-time housewife in the new age of the liberated woman. I wrote it from my heart, thoroughly convinced that homemaking and raising my children was the most challenging and rewarding job I could ever want.

    I come from a long line of women,” I wrote, “most of them more Edith Bunker than Betty Freidan, who never knew they were unfulfilled. I can’t testify that they were happy, but they were cheerful. …They took pride in a clean, comfortable home and satisfaction in serving a good meal because no one had explained that the only work worth doing is that for which you get paid.”

    I wasn’t advocating that mothers forgo careers to stay home with their children; I was simply defending my choice as a valid one. The mantra of the age may have been “Do your own thing,” but as a full-time homemaker, that didn’t seem to mean me.

    The column morphed into a book titled “Ever Since Adam and Eve,” followed by a national tour on which I, however briefly, became the authority on homemaking as a viable choice for women. I ultimately told my story on “Today” and to Dinah Shore, Charlie Rose and even to Oprah, when she was the host of a local TV show in Baltimore.

    In subsequent years I lectured on the rewards of homemaking and housewifery. While others tried to make the case that women like me were parasites and little more than legalized prostitutes, I spoke to rapt audiences about the importance of being there for your children as they grew up, of the satisfactions of “making a home,” preparing family meals and supporting your hard-working husband.

    So I was predictably stunned and devastated when, on our 40th wedding anniversary, my husband presented me with a divorce. I knew our first anniversary would be paper, but never expected the 40th would be papers, 16 of them meticulously detailing my faults and flaws, the reason our marriage, according to him, was over

    I faced frightening losses and was overwhelmed by the injustice of it all. He got to take his girlfriend to Cancun, while I got to sell my engagement ring to pay the roofer. When I filed my first nonjoint tax return, it triggered the shocking notification that I had become eligible for food stamps.

    The judge had awarded me alimony that was less than I was used to getting for household expenses, and now I had to use that money to pay bills I’d never seen before: mortgage, taxes, insurance and car payments. And that princely sum was awarded for only four years, the judge suggesting that I go for job training when I turned 67. Not only was I unprepared for divorce itself, I was utterly lacking in skills to deal with the brutal aftermath.

    I read about the young mothers of today - educated, employed, self-sufficient - who drop out of the work force when they have children, and I worry and wonder. Perhaps it is the right choice for them. Maybe they’ll be fine. But the fragility of modern marriage suggests that at least half of them may not be.


  24. Note that female anti-abortion activists don’t include themselves in the ranks of those who should be punished or humiliated for having sex. If they need to end a pregnancy, they will… because they’re special.

    Yes, sadly.


  25. Having recently engaged in an abortion dialog with someone across the fence (I pat myself on the back–while I can’t, for certain, say I “changed his mind,” he is definitely looking at matters differently now), I think that the key really is to personalize the issue. The anti-choice’s tactic is to make people not consider the woman, take away her face, and her name, and her circumstances, in order to paint all women with the broad brush stroke of stupid sluts, who make irresponsible choices, which lead to selfish abortions. When you ask someone to actually envision themselves in an unwanted pregnancy situation, they are much more perceptive to the idea that other people might have damn good reasons for them too. The sad thing about “When the anti-choice choose” is that these women sneak off for their abortions, then engage in absolutely zero introspection after-the-fact, and go right back to demanding that it be outlawed.

    But back to topic–

    Something occurred to me today while cleaning out my ears. While looking at the little crusty brown bits clinging to my cotton swab, my thoughts naturally turned to trolls–in particular, the Scooby-Doo-moniker’ed troll that flits from thread to thread on Pandagon, quacking about how feminists are responsible for all the misery in the world and how we should all be back at home scrubbing floors (unlike her, who needs to allocate her precious floor-scrubbing time to telling the rest of us off).

    Then it hit me (fortunately, the cotton swab was in the trash at that point, so I avoided injuring my brain in the impact), all of those MRA’s who run around crying about how women trap men into marriage, women aren’t trustworthy, women are incapable of love and all they want is power and money and will stop at nothing to get it–up until now I’ve always responded with “yeah, whatever. I’m sure that these women are next-door neighbors of The Easter Bunny. Next time you see one, drop off a casserole to the Boogey Man for me, whydontcha.” But now, I think that I understand–these women *do* exist, and they’re the like’s of Schlafly and dear Daphs and other warped anti-feminists. These are women who, out of their own self-hatred and general misanthropy, would look at an unplanned pregnancy with glee at being able to rope some man into a committment he doesn’t want, and live out some childish fantasy of not having to work and spending all day watching TV and surfing the internet to talk up what a great life they have (of course, scrubbing toilets never enters into this fantasy). I think the next time an MRA starts snivveling about how some evil seductress has him pinned for a few hundred a month in child support, I’ll pat him on the shoulder, and suggest next time he date a real feminist.

    “Accept no imitations,” I’ll tell him. :)


  26. Halfmad

    I was going to comment on this at IWF but…gosh, no comments. What a surprise!


  27. Halfmad

    PS — Is it wrong that when I clicked “submit” this time, it made me laugh?


  28. R. Mildred

    These are women who, out of their own self-hatred and general misanthropy, would look at an unplanned pregnancy with glee at being able to rope some man into a committment he doesn’t want, and live out some childish fantasy of not having to work and spending all day watching TV and surfing the internet to talk up what a great life they have

    No no, these sorts of women are the sorts of “women” who daphne and other girls-who-are-boys and MRAs wish they were, their whole schtick is not to actually moan about being oppressed, it’s to moan about how they can’t pull the same trick - all due to the “sexism of nature” of course.

    it’s like they’ve figured that with a womb they could even better oppress women and are thus deeply afraid about being unable to control any wombs, because without total control over all wombs they are vulnerable to such a ploy.


  29. Schlafly is a man? (boggles)


  30. R. Mildred

    Ai karumba! (also boggles)

    I think she goes under the heading more of a transqueer man in a woman’s body, listening to queen songs while she tells her housemaids to clean, and pining for the days when she didn’t have to worry about some floozy getting knocked up by her hubby while she’s away on a business meeting.


  31. The fucking problem ISN’T that being a housewife is bad or the wrong choice for women. The fucking problem is a) that there is an imperative to be a housewife (if it was just another validated choice, then it’d be fine), and b) that despite it being an imperative for women, it’s treated like SHIT in our culture.

    Women ‘chosing’ to ‘return’ to being Moms and housewives from high-paid professions aren’t some fucking ‘rebel’ group … they are privileged tiny uber-white minority who in pubicising their decisions so much are in effect merely contributing to maintaining the imperative. For the far majority of women, particularly non-white women, they don’t have this fucking ‘choice’ and pull mulitple jobs on TOP of being mothers and homemakers.

    I really HATE those articles, but it’s a good thing Hecker (see the article posted by ‘postdated’ above - I might suggest some contextualising comments though, hon) is, perhaps, seeing what the REALITY actually is.


  32. mmmm ... sultry

    I just want to live long enough for Phyllis to be exposed in the press as a compulsive gambler and veteran dom client. That would make every bad day I’ve put up with in the past 39 1/2 years all worthwhile…

    … I just took schadenfreude-esque pleasure when her son came out of the closet in the 90s … “feminists spend too much time outside the home and neglect their kids and that’s why they wind up gay” … indeedy …


  33. Women ‘chosing’ to ‘return’ to being Moms and housewives from high-paid professions aren’t some fucking ‘rebel’ group … they are privileged tiny uber-white minority who in pubicising their decisions so much are in effect merely contributing to maintaining the imperative. For the far majority of women, particularly non-white women, they don’t have this fucking ‘choice’ and pull mulitple jobs on TOP of being mothers and homemakers.

    The above group does double-damage, in fact. According to The F Word, most SAHMs are actually living at the poverty level, because the women in question have determined that the amount of money they would have made working the minimum-wage jobs that were available to them wouldn’t have covered the cost of childcare that they would require in order to work said minimum-wage jobs. Meanwhile, the media focuses all of its attention on the white, upper-class careerwomen who got scared on Sept. 11th and decided to nest. They’re a fun group to talk about; motherhood is little more than an extension of consumerism, they have these delightful neurosises that are just a ball to pick apart, they stubbornly refuse to subsume their identity entirely into their sprogs, making them selfish narcissists. They give extra ammunition to all those who love to blast SAHMs (and by extension, all women everywhere) as being shallow and silly. Unfortunately, when people unload their frustrations with these archetypal SAHMs reported on in the papers, the only available targets tend to be the SAHMs that make up the majority of the population.

    It’s a grand ol’ time.


  34. evil_fizz

    I think this might be my favorite sentence in the article:

    The young Schlafly’s passions were a distrust of centralized government and political elites.

    Oh, the irony.


  35. OMG, evil_flizz …

    The young Schlafly’s passions were a distrust of centralized government and political elites.

    And the award for ‘Best 1984 Doublespeak’ goes too …

    I mean, THAT MUCH complete bullshit just HAS to implode in on itself thanks to its own mass … it just HAS to, physical reality demands it!

    Come to think of it, it may have already, it would explain all the huge amounts of sucking coming from their direction …


  36. …Speaking of Schlafly, here’stoday’s screed about the horrors of allowing women to prosecute husbands that have raped them.

    And although she doesn’t mention Friedan’s name even once, I’m positive that Schlafly was thinking of Friedan when she penned this.


  37. evil_fizz

    Hehehe, Sarah.

    BTW, Schafly clearly has never actually looked at the text of the rape shield law or any case law interpreting it. Before rape shields went into effect, the defendant was entitled to trot out “she’s a slut!” defense with complete impunity. (I recall reading one case where the defendant wanted the victim’s landlord to testify about her promiscuous character.) The old system was infinitely worse, and thank god feminists worked on that issue. (Oddly enough, I had sympathy for this guy she described until she blamed it all on feminists…)


  38. Schlafly raised 6 kids, she has her JD and a Master’s in Poli Sci from Harvard and has been a relatively big political player for 30 years. But she thinks she did it all without feminism and that, quioxotically, feminism is somehow against people like her.

    I’ve heard her speak several times, she never mentions anything about growing up in poverty, so in absence of that something tells me she grew up in a well-to-do family. I think Schlafly figures she did it, she can’t figure out why anyone else would need anything changed. As far as I can tell she doesn’t recognize that sexism exists. She thinks it’s all feminist propaganda or something.

    If it weren’t for her super anti-abortion stance and her reactionary politics she’d be a textbook example of a modern feminist.


  39. alsis39.5

    Sultry: :D

    Sarah wrote: And the award for ‘Best 1984 Doublespeak’ goes too …

    Are you sure you don’t want to read Paglia before handing out that award ?

    Someone else will have to wade knee-deep in Paglia Poo and bring the highlights[sic] back here. I can’t tell what bugs me more about her: The William F Buckley-transitions-and-joins-a-biker-gang-on-Meth style of prose, the generally wretched taste in pop culture, or the truly mind-numbing depths of self-loathing that show up any time she has to mention women’s –shudder !– bodies.

    Of course, it is Salon. :p


  40. kathy

    I think that the key really is to personalize the issue. The anti-choice’s tactic is to make people not consider the woman, take away her face, and her name, and her circumstances, in order to paint all women with the broad brush stroke of stupid sluts, who make irresponsible choices, which lead to selfish abortions. When you ask someone to actually envision themselves in an unwanted pregnancy situation, they are much more perceptive to the idea that other people might have damn good reasons for them too.

    I had this argument with a cousin of mine a few years ago when they were passing the federal ‘partial birth’ abortion ban (that term really annoys me). Most of my family is pretty devout catholic and of course most of them are also anti choice. Anyway, this particular cousin was going on about how awful it is that women have late term abortions, etc. However, once I pointed out to her that her severely diabetic sister (who was pregnant at the time) might need a late term abortion because of complications due to her diabetes and really, would she rather have a baby or her sister, she changed her tune really quick. That point really is true, as soon as it become personal, when they have to think about what would happen to them or thier loved ones, usually the tune changes really quickly.


  41. Antigone

    If what Schafly is saying is true in that story (and, considering the source, I’d say probably not) then yes, I’d feel for the husband. That would be a misuse of the judicial system.

    But, my bullshit meter is sparking off, first and foremost (a rape conviction with no physical evidence? Not bloody fucking likely). Secondly, wtf does this have to do with rape shield laws? And if this is one of the guys that did get screwed over, what’s the point of writing about it then to aggrevate the “Women call rape to get revenge” crowd?


  42. sultry:
    I just took schadenfreude-esque pleasure when her son came out of the closet in the 90s

    If homophobia is the result of repressed homosexual tendancies, and homosexuality is genetic, it’s not surprising that a lot of conservative assholes have gay relatives

    … but I think it’s really selection bias.

    evil fizz:
    Schafly clearly has never actually looked at the text of the rape shield law or any case law interpreting it.

    In her (bare) defense, what she says is:

    The judge used Michigan’s new Rape Shield Law to prohibit cross-examination of Linda.

    That doesn’t say anything about whether this is a proper use of the law. Since the guy never filed an appeal, we don’t know if the judge was officially considered out of line.

    Getting back to the proper attitude towards Schlafly, it doesn’t say anything about whether this is a typical use of the law either. I support rape shield laws, but only because I don’t think they’d actually violate the 6th Amendment. At least, not for long.


  43. evil_fizz

    My thought when reading that line was “cross examine her about what?” I don’t know what the particulars are of Michigan’s rape shield law, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the husband’s lawyer wanted to ask about something improper.


  44. Hadn’t thought of that; I suppose if Schlafly had learned that the lawyer was barred from asking the victim if she’d consented to the sex in question, she’d have come out and said it.


  45. Molly, NYC

    Zoe Kentucky–Schlafly, how you say, “married well.” The late Fred was loaded.

    And Postdated? Fucking learn to post a link.


  46. Are you sure you don’t want to read Paglia before handing out that award?

    Oh, normally I would have no prob giving it to her (I swear, the woman is the Ann Coulter of lesbians), but since she hasn’t put out any of her usual turd-droppings recently, I feel I should be fair and give someone else the chance to have their amazing ability to pass fecal matter orally recognised … hence, the above.

    Though, that said, I gave up reading her shite a while back, so perhaps she might have put out something new that I ‘missed’.


  47. Woodrowfan

    The words “evil” and “fascist” get tossed around casually, but I think Phyllis Schlafly has earned them both many times over. She has done more to damage the country she claimed to love than any other single woman in recent memory……


  48. Dr. Locrian

    When I was but a wee lad, I used to confuse Phyllis Schlafly with Phyllis Diller. Non-sequitor, I know, but it’s like a Pavlovian reflex–I see Schlafly, and picture her on Laugh In or 20,000 Pyramid.


  49. Dr. L: I think that the Cruella DeVille lookalike/actalike issue is a big piece of your cognitive association between the two Phyllis’s.


  50. Oh, no, Woodrowfan, she’s most certainly married.


  51. NancyP

    I’d guess that Phyllis hasn’t picked up a mop, sponge, or vacuum cleaner for a good many years (40?) - that’s what servants are for.


  52. NancyP

    It’s highly likely that Schlafly was born into the upper middle class or upper class, since she went to undergraduate and law school at Washington Univ, and got a political science MA at Harvard - 9 to 10 years of private school tuition at institutions that didn’t give out many full scholarship. And she married well into a prominent Catholic family. The Schlafly family has been locally prominent at since WWII, and another branch of her husband’s family was involved in Catholic school desegregation.


  53. If you seek Betty Friedan’s monument, look to your right, your left and in a mirror. In at least one of those places, you will see a woman doing something that even a woman with Phyllis Schlafly’s privileged background could not have done forty years ago.

    Ponygirl, don’t clean your ear canals with cotton swabs. Use a large syringe or a turkey baster filled with warm water. Lean over the sink and let four or five loads of nice warm tapwater melt the wax and flush out the crud. It works great.


  54. I don’t know what kind of crack Hays is smoking when she says Friedan received a “sendoff.” Compared to what she’s done for women, she’s been virtually ignored. People like Hays consider any recognition of a feminist a “sendoff.”


  55. Blue Jean

    You’re right. Grandpa Munster got a bigger sendoff than Friedan did.


  56. Magis

    Antigone:

    I read PS’s case too and it doesn’t sound very credible. Not there have never been gross miscarriages of justice….

    How come one of these fancy pro bono lawyers didn’t file a §1983? Something is missing in that story.

    First of all, maybe it makes me dishonorable, but if admission is the only thing that would get me out of the slammer, so be it. Then I’d try to clear my name. If the case is that good why don’t some of the MRA’s come up with some bucks and make it into a “posterchild” case?

    Bullshit meter going off here.


  57. Since I’m responsible for posting Schlafly’s op-ed, I’ll give my opinion on what she’s trying to accomplish.

    Admittedly, the man in question may possibly be innocent (like someone else said above, though, I too automatically disbelieve anything that comes from Townhall. Carrying on…) However, Schlafly’s using this case to imply that all spousal rape cases are frivolous & spurious, and that poor poor dear men would still have their “conjugal rights” i.e. be able to force women to have sex, if it wasn’t for those “hairy-legged, man-hating malicious feminists” agitating for laws against husbands raping wives.

    Spousal rape laws are one of those topics that make wingnuts’ heads spin and laser beams shoot out of their eyes when it’s mentioned. Question wingnuts on their beliefs re: trad marriage & the nuclear family, and they’ll eventually bring up the laws against husbands raping wives.


  58. Spousal rape laws, like spousal consent for abortion, is an area in which it seems to me the wingnuts are treating marriage as adversarial. “If a man can’t rape his wife, how can they have sex, with all the bonding and procreation that come from that?” “If she can just up and get an abortion without telling her husband, they’ll never have children!” Aside from the assumption that no woman ever wants sex or children, this assumes that people feel no obligation towards even those people they ostensibly love than what is imposed by the State.


  59. alsis39.5

    So Fr**p*rs are essentially admitting that they’re lousy in bed, and the only way they can hope to have sex with their wives is to blackmail, bully or beat it out of them…

    I guess fearing a “false” rape charge from the wife is the natural price of being too much of a selfish pig to find out what kind of sex their wives might enjoy. NOTA forbid you should talk to your wife and treat her as an equal rather than a sperm receptacle.

    It’s hilarious that these guys whine about feminists being “dykes,” “man-haters,” what-have-you, when they themselves are the best free advertising for staying single around. I could never come up with a hatchet job that could compete with what it says about these guys that they worship some clown like Paglia, Shlaffley, Coulter, or the IWF Maidens…


  60. The Scent of a Woman’s Ink…

    (original painting by Caoily Andrews)
    It feels as if there is nothing else to say about the supposed dearth of women bloggers. Just take our word for it: they’re out there. Each week, I’ll bring you an extremely limited sampling of writing that got …


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