Girls just want to have fun
I wasn't terribly shocked to learn that there were quite a few women who were less than entirely enthusiastic about my description of women's rights as a disease that society would do well to eradicate. I was surprised, however, to learn how many women agreed with my position and were delighted to see a man take on the Sisterhood and its dogma.
But the criticisms were particularly interesting for what they revealed of the fruit of 35 years of education and liberation. Below are selections from five of the more coherent critics of last week's column:
"Yes. It's defintely the influx of WOMEN into the workforce that caused this low 'real wage.' It's not:
a) the exponential increase in child births.
b) the exponential influx of immigrants (both legal and illegal)
c) the increase in the retirement age, thus putting exponential increases of people working later in life in the work force
d) the exponential growth of corporations in this country
e) drops in economy because of exponential offshoring of jobs
Jesus ... for a woman ... I just made this guy look like an idiot. I better get back in the kitchen."
This was an interesting - and all too typical - response, notable primarily for its tangential relationship to the world we currently inhabit. In response: a) American childbirths have dropped from 18.4 to 13.9 per thousand, b) 34 million women entered the labor force between 1970 and 2000, 2 million more than all legal and illegal immigration into the U.S.A. during the same period, c) fewer people are working past the age of 55 than ever before, d) more corporations would increase the demand for labor, not reduce it, e) The economy has not dropped but grown from 5.03 trillion in 1970 to 11.75 trillion in 2004 as measured in 2005 dollars.
"Oh yes, because my only, most important goal in life is to get married to some guy like you who'd keep me pregnant and in the kitchen and stupid until I either died in childbirth or just got too old. Because honestly, I can't even IMAGINE a better, more fulfilling life than that. Please ...
FYI, my dream is to be an archaeologist. Now tell me, would it really have been easier for me to become one 50 years ago than it is today? I don't think so ... As for kids, I really don't want any. If every woman did, we'd be way more overpopulated than we already are. I don't want to be tied down for 18-plus years and it sounds too painful to be worth it."
For every five women who don't have children, another five must have 21 in order for the population to remain stable. Perhaps in studying the dead societies of the past, this critic will begin to realize why her own is reaching a terminal stage.
"And as for population decline ... the answer, as I see it, is adoption ... Why should I sacrifice my goals and dreams because someone who doesn't even have to worry about giving birth thinks it's my responsibility to do so?"
The reason that this sacrifice is worth considering is because those adopted children are already being counted in the birth rates. From the demographic point of view, it doesn't matter by whom they are being raised, there still aren't enough of them in any Western country even with current levels of immigration.
"I must point out one profound flaw in your reasoning below, one which seriously calls [into question] your intellectual credibility. To call "liberated secular society" only 30 years old is to ignore thousands of years of Western intellectual and cultural tradition, going all the way back to the Greeks, through the Enlightenment, right up to the founding of our own nation and into the present ... What changed so profoundly in 1975 that our very existence as a nation is now under threat? I'll answer you: nothing."
Nothing besides adding 34 million more women into the labor force, the birth rate falling by nearly 25 percent to sub-replacement levels, a 5-year increase in women's median marriage age and 36 million abortions. That's all.
"Man, that was an awesome fake article you wrote for the Onion. What a brilliant parody of the conservative patriarchal mindset ... Oh, wait - you were actually serious with that article, weren't you? Well, all I can say is thank god your breed is dying out. Keep it up, dude, you give us something to laugh about."
Ironically, right-leaning Christians are one of the few groups in American society that are still successfully replacing themselves. It is the secular left which has become as sterile reproductively as it always was intellectually and threatens to destroy not only America, but the entire West. For not all societies are so foolishly short-sighted, and it seems at least possible that the patriarchal society that is projected to have 160 million expendable men in the next 10 years will be able to find a way to keep them occupied by transforming them into someone else's problem.