DADI.org

"Kathie Lee is out of touch. She should have known that it is no longer fashionable for a woman to say, "I adore my husband and love my children." She should have known that decency and faithfulness are out of vogue for the liberated American woman. She should have known that lesbianism, killing babies, sleeping around and emasculating men are now de riguer. There was a time when the sweet, girl-next-door Doris Day and the gentle, motherly Donna Reed were American icons. Now, the modern American woman considers it an insult to be likened to them. Sometimes, we get rid of our heroes because they aren't good enough for us. Sometimes, however, we get rid of them because they are too good for us."

Mona Charen:

"The great push in the schools these days is to "empower" girls, to let their "voices be heard" and to enhance their self-esteem. Often, that means stifling the confidence, the verve and the boyishness of boys. Take Our Daughters to Work Day has become enshrined as a yearly event. There is no comparable "holiday" for boys. And "health" curricula are loaded with false statistics about the violent proclivities of husbands and fathers."

"But boys outnumber girls at the very top of the IQ scale. There are more boy than girl geniuses. And unruly, unkempt, unmanageable boys have also grown up to become the greatest poets, scientists and musicians in history. Disappointed liberal parents watching their sons play with guns should remember that."

"Academic feminism has become so outlandish as to be unsatirizable. There are respected academics in women's studies departments and elsewhere who argue that Jane Austen was a lesbian, that Beethoven's ninth symphony is an anthem to rape, that mathematics and science are "phallocentric" disciplines ill-suited to "feminine ways of knowing," and on and on."

"It's all laughably stupid, right? Or do these nutty rantings by angry, sex-obsessed fanatics have an indirect effect upon society? Arguably, the Dianarama we have been witnessing for the past several weeks is the apotheosis of a trend that has been building for some time: the feminization of the culture."

"The feminine inclination toward emotion is a little like nitroglycerin. In small doses, it can be life-saving. In large doses, it is explosive. Appeals to emotion, and not to reason, are the stuff of demagoguery."

Maggie Gallagher:

"In most cases it was a temporary solution to the, shall we say, tragicomedy of intersexual love. Most of these once-proud lesbians are now happily married, which suggests that Ellen's premise is flawed in another way. In our modern ideology, coming out is a one-way, irreversible process, in which a new label clarifies and rationalizes the subject's previously tormented and confusing sexual experience and longings."

"My own admittedly anecdotal experience suggests we need another word to describe the process by which an avowed lesbian makes the even more embarrassing announcement that she has made a mistake, and was really just a bumbling heterosexual all along."

"This is, of course, exactly the opposite of what feminists have demanded for real G.I. Janes, whom critics like Linda Bird Francke (author of "Ground Zero: The Gender Wars in the Military") say can never succeed until the last remnants of "masculine mystique" are eradicated."

"In real life, feminists know (but seldom say) "one standard" of physical ability would knock almost every woman currently admitted to West Point or the Naval Academy back to civilian life. Under the "one-standard, no special treatment" banner, women can't qualify to be cops, much less Navy Seals. That is, unless -- as countless police departments and fire brigades have had to do under court orders -- that one standard is lowered so far that not only strong women, but weak, flabby men get to wear the badge."

Linda Chavez:

"In barely one generation, we've experienced a revolution in child rearing, with fewer youngsters than ever being cared for in their early years primarily by their mothers. If some of us are feeling anxious and more than a little guilty about our decisions to let others raise our children, maybe we should start heeding our own instincts."

"But lately, American feminists have begun to rethink their goals and, in recent years, have looked to the European model for guidance. Feminists like author Barbara Bergmann ("Saving Our Children From Poverty: What the United States Can Learn From France") have urged the United States follow France's role in setting up government child-care centers for infants and pre-school children and providing parents with direct government payments to improve living standards for poor and working families."

"Of course, these feminists rarely mention that France, Sweden, Denmark and other welfare states have had to pay for these programs with a crushing tax burden on all their citizens and that their productivity lags behind America's in large part because of these higher social welfare costs, regulations and taxes. But most importantly, the point missed by feminists, including Mrs. Clinton, is that most American women are not eager to trundle their children off to institutional day-care centers in the first place."

Suzanne Fields:

"The feminine mystique, no doubt well meaning in the beginning, morphed into a masculine one. Sexual freedom replaced the double standard with a single standard -- based on traditional boyhood. Safe sex was soon about the mechanics of coupling, not the ineffable connections of affection and devotion. Good bodies are the result of working out, staying fit and postponing pregnancy for careers that lead women into the minefield years of fecundity."

"``Today, all that is naturally womanly -- especially anything related to childbearing -- is treated by elites as something to be managed, minimized and somehow overcome,'' writes Ms. Whitehead. ``Nearly all women still want motherhood, but they have grown up with the idea that it is a trauma that must be ``worked into'' a career."

"Welfare as an entitlement based only on material concerns has created generational cycles of illegitimate children. The sexual revolution, begun in the 60s, freed many men and women to ignore sexuality as a moral act. What college-educated elites set in motion -- in the name of sexual equality -- has devastated the poor who inevitably imitated those elites"

"As in other centuries, illegitimacy deprives the individual of dignity, of the pride that comes from knowing that a father cares. Illegitimacy begets psychological and sociological damage as well as economic deprivation. This is the insight that propelled a conservative Congress to persuade the liberal Bill Clinton that now is truly the time ``to end welfare as we know it.'' "

"NOW was trying to pour old whine (cq) into new battles (cq), trying to persuade us to believe that wives of Promise Keepers bear ankle scars from shackles, cuffed to the stove, barefoot and pregnant."

"The appeal of NOW, whose major issues are gay, lesbian and feminist studies targeting man as oppressor, is largely limited now to college campuses, and often to the faculty lounge. But its influence there may be changing, too."

"In ``The Guide: A Little Beige Book Written for Today's Miss G,'' Bryanna T. Hocking, a sophomore, and Dawn Scheirer, a junior, attack NOW and other feminist groups for poorly conducted research and the dissemination of phony statistics -- ``cooking the books'' -- that not only compromise what we know, ``but how we know it.'' "

Phyllis Schlafly:

"Twenty years after women began attending law schools in greater numbers, feminists are turning up as law school professors, law review writers, state legislators, congressional staffers, prosecutors, law clerks and even judges. It's splendid to have women in all those positions, but large numbers of feminists are causing ominous dislocations in basic concepts of American law and justice. An excellent policy analysis on "feminist jurisprudence" by the CATO Institute explains why."

"The feminist goal is not fair treatment for women, but the redistribution of power from the "dominant" class (the male patriarchal system) to the "subordinate" class (nominally women, but actually only the feminists who know how to play by rules they have invented)."

"Feminists have peddled the fiction that men are engaged in a vast conspiracy against women, that something like 85 percent of employed women are sexually harassed in the workplace, and that something on the order of 50 to 70 percent of wives are beaten by their husbands."

"In the 1990s, the feminists no longer even pay lip service to a gender equality goal (except, of course, when it suits their purposes). Their goals are the feminization and subordination of men, and their tactics are to cry "victimization" and "conspiracy." They have launched a broadside attack on such basic precepts as equality under the law, judicial neutrality, a defendant is innocent until proven guilty, conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and guilt or liability should be judged according to the traditional "reasonable man" theory."

"The "unreasonable woman" rule is what the feminists are demanding now. The feminists want the victim rather than the law to define the offense. Remember, the feminists repealed the old laws making it a misdemeanor to speak "any obscene, profane, indecent, vulgar, suggestive or immoral message" to a woman or girl. Now, they argue that it's just as actionable for a man to call a woman "honey" or "baby" as to call her a "bitch." The feminists are trying to enforce rules that any man's words can be punished if a woman subjectively doesn't like them, and the basis is how the woman felt rather than what the man said."

Cathy Young:

"For years, battered women's advocates have passionately - and rightly - argued that, no matter what the provocation, "there is no excuse for domestic violence." But maybe that's only for men - while for women, any excuse will do."

"Many feminists who pay lip service to equal parenting reinforce notions of maternal supremacy - by glorifying single motherhood (law Professor Nancy Polikoff, former counsel to the Women's Legal Defense Fund, writes that "it is no tragedy, either on a national scale or in an individual family, for children to be raised without fathers") and gloating, like Susan Faludi in Backlash, over women's ability to exclude men from decisions about their offspring."

"On Crossfire in early 1996, National Organization for Women (NOW) President Patricia Ireland denied charges that feminists aren't concerned about fatherlessness and said "men need to take equal responsibility for the family." Later that year, NOW issued an "Action Alert on 'Fathers' Rights' " comparing fathers' advocates to batterers and urging efforts to defeat such sinister proposals as joint custody, penalties for false charges of abuse and mediation instead of litigation."

"Both conservatives and feminists love to bash feckless dads who desert their wives and children. Several of the Journal panelists talk about the need to stigmatize these men, as if we didn't already. But two-thirds of the time, it's the mom who ends the marriage. Many fathers fight tooth and nail to remain a part of the children's lives. Some lose hope and vanish."

"Instead of arguing about the merits of "traditional" vs. "new" fathers - and few men fit neatly into one category - we should be working to tear down barriers to paternal involvement. Ultimately, a father-friendly culture benefits not only men and children but women, too. A father's presence can allow a mother either to choose a traditional home-centered life or to balance work and family far more effectively."

Ayn Rand:

"Nothing can corrupt and disintegrate a culture or a man's character as thoroughly as does the precept of moral agnosticism, the idea that one must never pass moral judgment on others, that one must be morally tolerant of anything, that the good consists of never distinguishing good from evil."

"In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. ... When loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it's picked up by scoundrels -- and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteous uncompromising evil."

"For the last twenty years or more, the professional community has been involved in a cover-up concerning" the issue of day-care. "Not wishing to offend anyone, much less appear out of step with the times, developmental psychologists, early-childhood educators, and the like have acted as if home-care and day-care were fundamentally equivalent; that if parents know what to look for in a day-care center, a young child will be as well off in the care of strangers for forty-plus hours a week, fifty weeks a year, as in the care of a parent. That's a myth."

"Here's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: Being cared for during one's tender years in one's own home by a responsible committed parent is distinctly different, both qualitatively and quantitatively, from being cared for in even the best of day-care centers. If these are two distinctly different situations, then the outcomes must be distinctly different. Having proposed what I believe is not debatable, I am simply convinced that a child's needs are better served in the former situation. And anyone who's upset by what I just said, I submit, needs to be upset."
John Rosemond, "Because I said so!"