Self-hating woman Kathleen Parker linked to our friend Ann Bartow at Feminist Law Profs this week in a strange apologia in The Washington Post on behalf of Jon Favreau:
The blogosphere the past few days has begun to resemble Durham, N.C., circa 2006 following the alleged Duke lacrosse team/stripper-rape nonincident: Pitchforks ready, torches lighted.
Feminists groups such as NOW and The New Agenda are outraged that Clinton — or at least her image — is being treated disrespectfully by the boys. Conservatives are outraged that there’s not enough outrage, as would be the case were the party boys Republicans.
An attorney wrote on the Feminist Law Professors blog that Favreau should not be excused for “youthful indiscretion” and questioned Obama’s judgment “in continuing to rely professionally on someone so young and irresponsible and offensively sexist.”
FitzWalter, quickly, my smelling salts! Oh, and dust off the guillotine while you’re at it.
That’s the problem with feminists in this country: they’ve executed so many men without due process. With guillotines, and the assistance of their servants, all of whom are named for some reason “FitzWalter.” Parker finishes her column with another lazy antifeminist jab:
In the meantime, feminists might channel their free-ranging anger toward, say, Iran, where yet another woman recently was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.
Silly feminists–we should send them someplace where they’d really have something to b!tch about! Yes, that’s right: we can’t ever point out injustice or discrimination in the United States, because there are even more oppressive countries for women. Until women in this country are stoned to death for adultery, or set on fire by their in-laws, or forbidden to appear in public without a male relative as an escort, feminists should STFU. See Ann Bartow’s specific reply to this lazy and stupid accusation of feminist inaction.
Memo to Kathleen Parker: since there are more progressive countries in the world when it comes to gender equity, you’re not allowed to complain about American feminists ever again. You should peddle your antifeminism in countries and regions of the world that need it much more urgently than the U.S. Quickly, woman, there’s no time to lose: the men of Canada and Scandinavia need your irrational and “free-ranging anger” at feminism more than ever!
Historiann 
Ha! Thanks.
On top of everything else, she didn’t read the excerpt of your post that I put in my post very closely either. Parker makes it sound like someone with a camera victimized Favreau, when apparently he posted the picture himself on his own Facebook page, to make himself look “cool.”
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Bummer. So those glazey eyed kids in that picture are now going to have to transfer to Virginia, Cornell, Hopkins, Maryland, Syracuse, and, where else, Navy? What was a non incident about the events in Durham, anyway? I thought it was the D.A. who got railroaded, actually.
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Don’t forget Spain! Where the Prime Minister appointed a woman Secretary of Defense knowing she was a few months pregnant! Not mention that he has a majority female cabinet…
I’m sure she ccn find plenty to rail against there.
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It is interesting to me that conservatives cling to the “Duke Case” with such fervor. I wonder what that is all about. . .
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I think they love to scream “DUUUUUKE” because in one word they think they have automatic sexism and racisim complaints repellent. Because a few privileged white men were once falsely accused of the sexual assault of an African American woman, this allegedly proves that the real danger of rape is that men can be falsely accused, and that white people just can’t catch a break in this world.
Mikail, I don’t know if the lives of most Spanish women are free of sexism yet, but the case of the defense secretary and the PM’s cabinet is a good one–thanks for the reminder!
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Heh heh. I think American anti-feminist thinkers should all immediately emigrate to those poor progressive countries and get to work where they are _really_ needed.
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And, of course, there’s the fairly explicit assumption that U.S. feminists aren’t involved in working against sexist violence against women in other countries.
Oh, right: but when we do that, we’re arrogantly demanding that other countries adopt our own standards.
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And the ruination of the possibility of an undefeated season added measurably to the outrage, too. Even the trope of “falsely accused” is somewhat of a complex construction. The Grand Jury’s declination to find criminal evidence for specific charges conveniently truncated the discussion of the larger issues of immunity and entitlement, to the great relief of the institutional advancement community. Peter Wood, an eminent historian who also played collegiate lacrosse, wrote the most insightful commentary on the issue before its denoument. _Rolling Stone_’s subsequent effort to portray Duke as a peculiarly sex-crazed and hookup-driven collegiate culture went over the top, and doubtless did more reputational damage to broad categories of people than anything the prosecutor did in his misguided zealotry.
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I’m still angry at all the women who insisted that Palin couldn’t be a feminist. I wonder if I might have been one of them a few years back – but this election changed a lot for me. I realized (rather belatedly) that democrats aren’t “the good guys”, having witnessed how they cheated Hillary. And my ideas about feminism have considerably widened.
http://myfugue.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/the-history-of-feminism-and-exclusion/
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Canada as a better place for women and feminists than the USA? Hmm, a tough one. Maybe, and I emphasize maybe, we have equal rights before the law whereas Americans were unsuccessful with the Equal Rights Amendment. So Maybe we are in a better situation theoretically. If it’s possible to make such a generalisation, maybe Canada is a little more enlightened or progressive or whatever word works, than is the US, in general. But I don’t think we come close to the situation of women in many of the Scandinavian countries. Is that a good enough argument for sending Kathleen Parker over there, instead of up here? I hope so!
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hysperia–I was also thinking of your guaranteed paid maternity leave policy, as well as universal health care, which I think is very much a feminist issue. There are more women heads of household who struggle with keeping themselves and their children fed and out of poverty, and UHC would eliminate two major sources of stress on them: who will see my child, and how will I pay for it?
But, you’re right: equality before the law is an important advantage that can serve as a legal instrument to enact other feminist reforms. (I thought you might have some opinions on this–thanks for commenting!)
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think if the “youthful, indiscreet” speechwriter and his ‘Obama staff’ tee-shirt wearing wingman were groping a paper….Michelle Obama? Would the prevailing male response be “oh good grief” to feminist anger? Um, no.
And BTW, why are young and indiscreet now qualifiers for chief White House speechwriter? I bet we could come up with 100 names of young women, discreet or not, who could apply. Did they get the shot this young pig got? Or were doors held open wide for him, as they were for Obama?
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The Favreau photo devalues and disrespects the incoming Secretary of State, a female Senator and a former First Lady.
We know that violence against women begins with the disrespect and devaluing of women. By not firing Favreau and remaining silent on the issue, the Obama administration gives the message that Favreau’s devaluing and disrespect of women is inconsequential.
Take a look at the latest data from Human Rights Watch, and their article “US: Soaring Rates of Rape and Violence Against Women: More Accurate Methodology Shows Urgent Need for Preventive Action” on the Human Rights Watch website at: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/12/18/us-soaring-rates-rape-and-violence-against-women
“The Human Rights Watch’s national recommendations include:
1. The Obama administration should appoint a special adviser on violence against women in the US
2. Congress should restore full funding to the Office on Violence Against Women
3. The Department of Justice, through the National Institute of Justice, should authorize comprehensive studies that more accurately track sexual and domestic violence in the US, especially among individuals who are least likely to be surveyed by the National Crime Victimization Survey
4. Congress should increase funding for sexual and domestic violence prevention, intervention, and treatment programs
5. Congress should amend the federal Debbie Smith Act, a grant program designed to eliminate the rape kit backlog, but that states can and have used for other kinds of DNA backlogs
6. The US should ratify the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), which obligates states to prevent, protect against, and punish violence against women.”
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