Table of Contents
Title Page
Introduction
Chapter One - THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BOYS AND GIRLS
The controversy about gender
Nature or nurture?
Root causes of the differences between men and women
Why sex differences matter
Chapter Two - RETURN TO ROMANCE
Feminists’ hostility to chivalry
The important role of courtship
The brave new world of romance
Women’s loss of power
Rebuilding courtship
Chapter Three - SEX: LOVE’S GOT SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT
Popular culture’s love affair with sex
Women’s studies textbooks or Cosmopolitan?
Sexual freedom is not exactly liberating
A biological aversion to casual sex
The benefits of serious sex
Chapter Four - NOT EVERYONE IS DOING IT
Popular culture’s message to kids: just do it!
Teens and young adults: not as sexually active as you—or they—might think
Most teens think being a virgin is positive
Parents have an important role to play
Conclusion
Chapter Five - THE RISKS OF SAFE SEX
Sex education—more than the birds and the bees
Condoms’ great P.R.
Women’s biological vulnerability
Is safe sex making kids less safe?
The limitations of condoms
Chapter Six - MEN AREN’T THE ENEMY
Danger: men among us
We’re all victims of violence
Redefining violence against women
Forget men?
Violence against women and men
Domestic violence or wife beating?
Is marriage to blame?
The dubious origins of the one-in-four statistic
Defining rape
Conclusion
Chapter Seven - MARRIAGE: HAPPIER EVER AFTER
Feminists’ rocky relationship with marriage
Popular culture: celebrating weddings, not marriage
Marriage: happier ever after
Marriage: a good financial plan
Marriage leads to better health
The sexier side of marriage
Shacking up isn’t the same as tying the knot
More than just husband and wife
Conclusion
Chapter Eight - DIVORCE
Society’s changing attitudes toward divorce
Facilitating divorce; changing marriage
Does divorce improve a woman’s chance for happiness?
The kids are all right
Divorce’s kid-lateral damage
Conclusion
Chapter Nine - FERTILITY FACTS
Fertility and aging: off-limits in our politically correct culture
No taboo about smoking’s drawbacks
Infertility: a “non-issue” for feminists and women’s studies
Facing the facts
The consequences of not knowing the facts
What does this mean for women?
Chapter Ten - ABORTION
Pro-life is not anti-woman
Roe v. Wade’s real role
Abortions overseas—Europe is not as liberal as you might think
Abortion as a health issue
The health of the mother exception
An informed choice
Chapter Eleven - WORK IN THE REAL WORLD
The feminist working girl fairytale
What most women do
Women’s greatest source of fulfillment: not their jobs
Chapter Twelve - THE MYTH OF HAVING IT ALL
Feminist frustrations about what women really want
Wage gap wars
Why do we want women to work like men?
More women working isn’t reason to celebrate
Chapter Thirteen - DAYCARE DELUSIONS
The politically correct position: more government funding of institutional daycare
Government’s role in the mommy wars
What childcare arrangement do women actually want?
Is it guilt or good mothering?
The muzzle on daycare critics
The research on daycare: some negative effects on kids
Making the decision to work
Chapter Fourteen - POLITICS: ALL WOMEN DON’T THINK ALIKE
Women’s political power
What’s the gender gap?
Women’s priorities
Women support candidates they believe in, not other women
Conclusion
Chapter Fifteen - DIVORCING UNCLE SAM
The slanted perspective given to women
Selling more than fashion and make-up tips
The feminist philosophy of government
Taxation
Social Security
“Free” healthcare
Women and work
Affirmative action
School choice
An agenda for women
NOTES
Acknowledgements
INDEX
Copyright Page
Introduction
WOMEN’S UNINFORMED CHOICES
According to a poll conducted by Marie Claire, one-third of women consider themselves to be feminists. But what does being a feminist mean today, some forty years after the birth of the modern feminist movement? After all, since 1963, we’ve had Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, and the National Organization for Women, the Feminist Majority, and Ms Magazine, capture the popular imagination, influence successive generations of women, and define what it means to be a feminist. The politically correct answer from the leaders of the feminist movement would be that they believe in women’s equality. It’s a good answer; just about everyone believes that women should be treated fairly and equitably. The problem is that since 1963, real feminism, organized feminism, has evolved into something altogether different.
The modern feminist movement isn’t about women’s equality. It’s about an agenda designed to benefit a special interest group: women who will follow the professional feminist’s idea of what a woman should want. To further this agenda, the modern feminist movement takes to the airways, Internet, and the print media, and walks the halls of Congress, the federal government, and state capitols to expand government, subsidize politically correct choices for women, and change our culture so that men and women become interchangeable. They also work hand-in-hand with liberal colleges to advance these goals.
The feminist influence on our government, media, and educational system means that many young women are getting a lot of bad information. And bad information leads to bad decisions that are especially harmful when they are made by young women, just starting off on their own.
Consider the many important decisions that a young woman—let’s call her Amanda—will make during the following ten years of her life. Amanda worked hard in high school to get into a good college. She has a nice group of friends and enjoys average college-girl activities—she reads magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour, indulges in Desperate Housewives and re-runs of Sex in the City, but always manages to complete her studies. Soon, she’ll have a degree from a respected university and be poised to begin the next stage of life.
She’ll get a job and start down a career path. She’ll meet potential mates and may consider getting married. She’ll make important health decisions: She may consider engaging in casual sex and may face the decision of whether to have an abortion. She’ll think
about having children. If she decides to begin building a family, she’ll face choices about her role as a parent and how to balance family with career aspirations. She may also consider divorce.
Does Amanda have the information she needs to make decisions that will improve her chances for long-term health and happiness?
Unfortunately, the answer is no. Most likely, she’s been given a lot of bad information, much of it in the name of political correctness.
Amanda grew up in a culture that makes it difficult for her to describe right from wrong—she fears being judgmental. Even as she hopes for marriage, she sees divorce as the natural end for marriages that aren’t entirely happy. She’s been saturated by popular culture that glorifies promiscuity, and reads feminist literature telling her that it’s old fashioned to associate sex with marriage and love. She’s sometimes confused about the role sex should play in her own life, whether she should view it as a casual activity meant simply for pleasure, or as something more meaningful. She wants a fulfilling career and has listened to feminist political organizations that say a women’s primary goal should be to work full-time and make money. Amanda struggles to reconcile these perspectives with her own hopes and desires.
Can you identify with Amanda? I sure can—she was more or less me ten years ago. A lot of my peers today are learning in their thirties that they wish they’d made different decisions in their twenties. And when I speak to members of the generation just coming out of college today, I encounter women with the exact same hopes and fears that I had and who, much like me, lacked a road map for how to navigate the tumultuous terrain of adulthood.
This book is written to address the misinformation being fed to women. I’m thirty-two years old, married, and just had my first child. I know the difficulties that women face during their twenties and thirties as they make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives. I feel lucky my life has turned out as it has, but I sure wish I’d received better information when I was younger about the trade-offs women inevitably must make during their lives.
This book exposes some of the most frequent myths sold to young women and takes on taboo areas of research not discussed in the politically correct world of academia or in popular culture targeted at young women.
For too long, the feminist movement has dictated what’s appropriate to talk about—and what’s off-limits—when it comes to issues affecting women’s lives. An ethic of silence has surrounded issues like the negative sides of casual sex, the relationship between age and infertility, and the effects of daycare and divorce on kids. This silence has real consequences for women, their families, and our society.
This book fills the knowledge gap by highlighting research in areas of critical importance to women’s lives—from sex, love, and marriage to work, daycare, and divorce. It exposes how the feminist vision of what women should want their lives to be often runs counter to the hopes and desires of actual women.
Since this book doesn’t pretend to be a comprehensive overview of research on all the topics addressed, readers interested in learning more will be pointed to other texts—works often ignored by academia and popular culture, which provide more thorough analysis. This isn’t meant to endorse everything contained in those books, but I’ve included them because they are useful resources and offer interesting perspectives.
Women need the unvarnished truth in order to appreciate the consequences of life’s choices—the decisions that shape our futures. I believe the only way to foster a generation of truly independent women is to present them with the best information available and then allow them to follow their hearts and minds.
A brief history of the women’s movement
The first women’s rights convention in the United States was held in Seneca Falls, New York, on July 19 and 20, 1848. The women who gathered there—including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott—issued a Declaration of Sentiments, which echoed the Declaration of Independence, listing grievances that women suffered in the United States and calling for equal treatment under the law:We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ....
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise ....
He has endeavored, in every way that he could, to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.
Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States.
These pioneers for women’s equality are often referred to as “first-wave” feminists. The women’s rights movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth century focused primarily on gaining the right to vote for women. This goal was achieved in 1919 with the passage of the 19th Amendment.
The “second-wave” of feminism occurred during the 1960s and 1970s when women began pushing for legal and social changes that would allow them to participate more fully in society and the economy. Many herald the start of feminism’s second-wave with the release of the book The Feminist Mystique by Betty Friedan. This book described the dissatisfaction that many housewives felt with their situation and encouraged women to consider work outside the home. This message resonated with many women, and many of them joined to press for political and social changes.
The “second-wave” feminists demanded guarantees of women’s equal treatment under the law and an end to gender-based discrimination. They sought also to change societal expectations for women. Some of these changes included simply encouraging women to take jobs and roles that had traditionally been reserved for men. However, some feminists took the desire for more options a step further and became overtly hostile to the traditional roles that women had played. They questioned—and at times fought to undermine—the concept of the nuclear family. They saw men not as equal partners, but as enemies who oppress women. They encouraged women to forgo traditional relationships and embrace sexual “liberation.” During this period—and in part due to the feminist movement’s influence—Americans’ attitudes towards sex shifted dramatically, including more openness to premarital sex, and family structures began to shift, with the divorce and out-of-wedlock births soaring.
The modern feminist movement
Today, the feminist movement—which encompasses what is sometimes referred to as feminism’s “third-wave”—has grown into a large, organized, politically powerful entity that wields tremendous influence over public policy, on college campuses, and in popular culture. While the second-wave of feminism primarily addressed the concerns of white, straight, relatively well-off women, the modern feminist movement focuses a great deal on the concerns of lesbians, minority women, and those living in poverty.
In many ways, the feminist movement of today is a victim of its own successes. Webster’s Dictionary defines feminism as “the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men” and “an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.”1 But this battle has been won: Overwhelmingly, Americans expect and support the idea that women and men are equal and deserve equal opportunity and treatment under the law.
Modern feminism has strayed far from this original mission. It is now associated with radical liberal politics, including support for an ever larger federal government, a European-style welfare state, and a gener
al hostility to traditional families. For this reason, a minority of American women today associate themselves with the label “feminist.”
Chapter One
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BOYS AND GIRLS
Are there innate differences between the sexes? The politically correct answer is “no.” Although feminist educators acknowledge that it’s impossible to ignore differences in the male and female anatomies, many insist—often stridently—that the behavioral characteristics we commonly associate with female and male are social constructs.
Their general opposition, for some blind hostility, to any discussion of innate gender differences is an important backdrop to understanding some of the challenges that women face today—and how feminists advance a vision and agenda that’s contrary to many women’s desires and interests.
The controversy about gender
In January 2005, then Harvard University president Lawrence Summers spoke at an academic conference dedicated to exploring the question of why women are under-represented in the fields of science and math at top universities. Larry Summers, who served as secretary of the treasury under President Clinton, is hardly a conservative ideologue. But at this conference, Summers made the mistake of delving into the controversial subject of gender differences.
Guess what?
Former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers was censured by the Harvard faculty for speculating about the innate differences between men and women.
Research suggests that men’s and women’s brains are built differently.
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism Page 1
