Feminists: women's own worst enemies?

I’m going to make a cou­ple of assump­tions here: mar­ried women don’t like being cheated on, women don’t like being sex slaves, and there’s more to life than screw­ing around.

Win­tery Knight opines that women allow men to cheat: we sim­ply do not hold men to high stan­dards. (Lit­tle Miss Attila and her com­men­tariat have more.) He’s largely cor­rect: women who stay with their hus­bands for power (e.g. Mrs. Clin­ton, Mrs. Shriver) con­done their hus­bands’ infi­delity. Like­wise, it’s impos­si­ble to com­mit adul­tery with­out another will­ing part­ner (absent rape), and the women who sleep with mar­ried men are mak­ing his infi­delity pos­si­ble. My dis­agree­ments with him are lim­ited: I don’t hold much against women like Jenny San­ford and Elin Norde­gen, who were devoted, car­ing wives who kicked their cheat­ing hus­bands to the curb. If a man can­not be com­pelled to stay faith­ful for the sake of his own wed­ding vows, he may stay faith­ful because of fear that his wife will find out and leave him.

It is not just women who have per­sonal rela­tions with men who encour­age cheat­ing and infi­delity. In Kuwait, a woman activist sug­gested that adul­tery could be elim­i­nated by the legal­i­sa­tion of sex slav­ery:

We want our youth to be pro­tected from adul­tery,” said Al-​Mutairi, sug­gest­ing that these maids could be brought as pris­on­ers of war in war-​stricken nations like Chech­nya to be sold on later to devout merchants.

This is not reli­giously for­bid­den,” she added, indi­cat­ing that Caliph Haroun Al-​Rashid (766−809 AD) was mar­ried to one woman but pos­sessed 200 concubines.

(Hat tip: Michael Gra­ham.) Rather than putting female pris­on­ers of war in, say, a female prison until the end of the war, or given asy­lum in a dif­fer­ent coun­try, we should take these poverty-​stricken, suf­fer­ing women and sell them into rape. That way, a pow­er­ful man doesn’t have to worry about hav­ing a stain on his immor­tal soul; the only cost to this is the san­ity, health, dig­nity, and integrity of a poor woman from a war-​torn nation. Note to Al-​Mutairi: per­haps the pro­hi­bi­tions on adul­tery are there because oth­er­wise, men would feel free to abuse their posi­tions to take advan­tage of women who do not have their advan­tages in society.

Obvi­ously, Amer­ica is no bet­ter: lib­eral “fem­i­nists” sup­port Anthony Weiner, just as they sup­ported Bill Clin­ton, John Edwards, and Ted Kennedy, with nary a thought for their wives (even when preg­nant or cancer-​stricken) nor the young women these pow­er­ful men preyed on (and, on one occa­sion, killed). Amanda Mar­cotte thinks that the promi­nent Con­gress­man who sent sex­u­ally explicit pho­tos to women more than two decades his junior is the real vic­tim in all this. (Hat tip: Lit­tle Miss Attila.) As Pat­terico details, Weiner’s dis­cus­sions with young women were numer­ous, dirty, and debasing.

Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor David Epstein pleaded guilty to attempted incest — to silence from the lefty blo­gos­phere, prob­a­bly because he’s a HuffPo blog­ger. Yes, a HuffPo blog­ger: the same group that has the time to sift through Sarah Palin’s emails can’t give the boot to Epstein. The lib­er­als, the fem­i­nists, and the pro­gres­sives, who claim to be on the side of the rights of women, are silent; as Ace says,

As McCain gets at, isn’t the claim to be a “feminist” — all con­cerned about women’s wel­fare and their treat­ment as equals rather than objects — serve as a pow­er­ful pred­i­cate for lay­ing the “hypocrisy” charge at the feet of lib­eral fallen angels?How many coeds do you have to dick-​dial behind the back of your preg­nant wife before some­one notices that maybe that’s not exactly con­gru­ent with the teach­ings of Glo­ria Steinem?

But Weiner wanted The Tri­umph of Civic Virtue taken down, so under the bus you go, Mrs. Weiner!

These peo­ple are schiz­o­phrenic in the extreme. They can call Laura Ingra­ham a slut but organ­ise an inter­na­tional “Slut­Walk” move­ment around being offended over being told to dress sen­si­bly. Fem­i­nists like Mar­cotte will sup­port Clin­ton, Weiner, Edwards, and every woman-​abusing, sexually-​harassing, adul­ter­ous male politi­cian out there, because Democ­rats put forth poli­cies which are good for women (i.e. pro-​abortion).

Beyond that, “fem­i­nists” do not under­stand that in their rush to decou­ple sex from its role as a tool of patri­ar­chal dom­i­na­tion (read at your own risk), they leave soci­ety with­out any val­ues upon which to con­demn a man who cheats on his preg­nant wife, cheats on his cancer-​ridden wife, uses cam­paign funds to cover up the birth of his love child, sex­u­ally harasses and sex­u­ally abuses his sub­or­di­nates, buys sex slaves so as to not stain his soul with adul­tery, or leaves a woman to drown in Chap­paquid­dick. When Jes­sica Valenti writes in “The Purity Myth” that

“…the bur­geon­ing fem­i­nist who knew that some­thing was wrong with a world that could label me as a bad per­son for sleep­ing with a high-​school boyfriend [she was 14, he was 16] while ignor­ing my good heart, sense of humor, and intelligence,”

(pp. 11 – 12) she gives license to abusers, rapists, and harassers to say that one’s sex­ual appetites and how one ful­fills them bear no rela­tion to one’s judge­ment, good heart, or wis­dom. For if sex is not a moral act, and if judge­ment and sex­ual decision-​making are unre­lated, then there are no grounds upon which to com­plain about a 46-​year-​old man who tweets his junk to young women, a Pres­i­dent who sleeps with his interns, or a man who cheats on his preg­nant wife.