Conservative Amazons

Mr. Richards is the principal of Needham High School in Massachusetts. In response to concerns that students were too stressed, he created the “Stress Reduction Committee” and mandated that seniors take a yoga class.

It must be tough to be a wealthy surbanite whose parents insist on high-achievement. God forbid a student should get a side of stress with all that privilege.

Of all the educational problems in this country, can anyone really say with a straight face that excessive homework for the children of the upper-middle class ranks in the top ten? Or even the top 100? Let’s find some real problems to worry about, shall we?

A regular feature of my old blog, I’m trying to get back into the idiot of highlighting one idiot (or group of idiots) every day.  Some will be obvious (I’ve no doubt Hillary Clinton will earn a mention) and some will be less so - a constant reminder that fame, fortune and power are not necessarily prerequisites for foolishness.

In this case, though, the offender is whichever fool at Paramount believed that they could shame the memory of G.I. Joe by changing his identity for an upcoming movie.  Variety magazine reports that “G.I. Joe is now a Brussels-based outfit that stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, an international co-ed force of operatives who use hi-tech equipment to battle Cobra, an evil organization headed by a double-crossing Scottish arms dealer. “  Apparently, the studio was concerned that it would be difficult to market a movie about American soldiers to an international audience.  Seriously, this has the potential to be a great movie.  We might get some fast-paced diplomatic negotiations, culminating in some tough sanctions against countries that harbor Scottish arms dealer, and, if we’re really lucky, some classic Hollywood soul-searching (perhaps an oxymoron, certainly moronic) about whether fighting is ever worth it, with a key character realizing that no one is really evil, just misunderstood, as the special effects blaze around him (or, for ultimate PC points, her).

Vin Suprynowicz (try spelling that ten times fast) has a great op-ed at the Las Vegas Review Journal about the man whose face was on the original G.I. Joe action figure.  A quick preview:

Among the 90 American dead and seriously wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige’s platoon. Every one. As the night of endless attacks wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

No Hollywood screenwriter could hope to match the real stories of courage, defeat, bloodshed and heroism that spring forth in times of war.  But they’ll damn well try, and in their efforts to avoid offending their international audiences, they’ll water-down and special-effects-up a Real American Hero.

This past weekend I took a trip down to Oklahoma to visit my very good friend Carissa. She’s a college student - like me - and she’s planning to attend law school - like me - and she is passionate about politics - like me. The occasion for my journey was her wedding. Carissa is now married. Not like me.

Half of Carissa’s bridesmaids are married. One is 23 years old, and she just celebrated her fifth wedding anniversary. At Carissa’s wedding ceremony, a young girl in the pew behind me announced to the young girl sitting next to me her recent engagement . Later, at the reception, a young man, a college junior, told me about his girlfriend and how “she is the one” and they will be married in “the next few years.” On my way back to the airport, the groom’s younger brother announced to me that he plans to propose to his girlfriend this week. All of these individuals are under 22 years of age.

This all came as quite a shock to me (more so than the abundance of cows, peanut farms, oil rigs, and open, open spaces). After Carissa’s wedding, I called my grandma (and close friend) back on the east coast to inquire about such an unusual habit. I asked her why people in our area (I grew up on the Jersey shore) don’t get married in their early 20s. Her response was that east coast living is just too expensive. A young couple still in school just can’t afford to rent an apartment and take on the costs of medical insurance, car insurance, rent, and utilities. This satisfied me for the time being, since I hadn’t thought of that myself.

It’s true enough though. I’m working two jobs right now just to put myself through college. However, my college costs roughly $46,000 a year, whereas Carissa’s costs $125 a credit hour. Rigorous academic programs in the northeast don’t make it easy for students to work enough hours to pay rent and other essentials of married life in addition to tuition.

I think the real reason women don’t wed young in the northeast is due to societal pressures. In our culture of modern feminism, women who make smart, well thought-out decisions like Carissa would be looked down upon. And that is what I think is difficult to swallow. We are bred with a sense of independence from men, an independence I find completely unnecessary. While we obviously know that we, as women, can succeed on our own, there is no shame in preferring the company of a man along the way.

I must admit I’m a bit jealous of girls in southwestern Oklahoma. I think it would be nice to settle down and start a family, all while pursuing my education and career goals. Here, it’s almost unheard of for undergraduates to be thinking of anything other than graduate school, professional school, or interviewing with prestigious firms. My classmates were shocked when I told them I was going to my 21-year-old friend’s wedding. If I mentioned the thought of marriage to my friends, family members, boyfriend (!), panic would ensue. Feminists argue that the “patriarchy” oppresses women by forcing them into heterosexual marriage, directing their sexual urges as they see fit. I see the opposite: today society tells women not to get married until later on in life, to climb the career ladder of success first. At least in my region of the country. I suppose different girls see the pros and cons in different lights.

It is definitely beneficial for a young woman to enter the professional world before making such a large commitment as marriage. Still, it might be nice (and certainly isn’t wrong) to have a supporter committed to you while you venture out into the real world. Contrary to feminist theory, husbands needn’t be stifling. My friend Carissa is a testimony to that, experiencing the best of both worlds - she has a loving husband and just received high scores on her LSAT and is off to law school.

Young women need to make choices for themselves. We’ve been indoctrinated for so long into thinking marriage is for later; as strong women, we are plenty capable of deciding what we want to do now.

Cheers to your marriage, Carissa and Garrett!

Samantha, you’ve inspired me. I found an op-ed in the New York Times today which claims that Republican candidates are hostage to the unreasonable assumptions of supply-side economics. To quote the author, Jonathan Chait of The New Republic:

Last year, Senator John McCain earned widespread ridicule for publicly embracing Jerry Falwell, whom he had once described as “evil.” But an equally breathtaking turnabout occurred earlier in the year, when Mr. McCain embraced the Bush tax cuts he had once denounced as an unaffordable giveaway to the rich. In an interview with National Review, Mr. McCain justified his reversal by saying, “Tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues.” It was the political equivalent of Galileo conceding that the Sun does indeed revolve around the Earth.

Mr. McCain is not alone. Every major Republican contender — Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney — has said that the Bush tax cuts have caused government revenues to rise. No prominent Republican office-seeker dare challenge this dogma for fear of offending the economic far right.

Yet there is no more debate about this question among economists than there is debate about the existence of evolution among biologists. Most economists believe that it is theoretically possible for tax rates to be high enough that a reduction in rates could actually produce more revenues. But I do not know of any tenured economist in the United States who believes this is true of the Bush tax cuts.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea, in an article that “debunks” supply-side economics, to actually quote some numbers? Just a thought. But who needs numbers when you are busy discrediting Republican economic policies?

Reminds me of an oldie but a goodie from The Onion: How is the New York Times Padding its Opinion Page?

Economics 258 isn’t a course about markets and supply and demand. My course catalog calls it “the study of Marxist and institutionalist political economy;” it applies communist and socialist ideas to many different matters, including “race and gender issues.” To earn a degree in economics at my University, I am required to take this course. Welcome to the wonderful world of liberal arts.

In today’s class we began our study of feminist theory and women’s work, a unit that will comprise one quarter of the 15-week course. A roomful of eyeballs nearly rolled out of their sockets when, on the chalkboard, our professor scratched, “What is a woman?”

“A biological category” was not a satisfactory answer. That’s simply what society tells us. According to my Economics 258 professor, a woman is a social construct.

Now, throughout my two and a half years of University indoctrination, I’ve learned a few things about feminism. I know that “sex” means male or female, and “gender” refers to masculine or feminine characteristics. Feminists and even the LGBT crew talk frequently about how society determines gender. That is, they believe women and men behave differently not due to biological factors, but because these behaviors have become social norms over time.

That’s fine, and to an extent it might be true that girls like pink and boys like blue because that’s what society dictates. But today was the first time I heard someone say that your sex, your physical anatomy, is a social construct.

I’m no biologist, but I have taken my fair share of science courses. Whether an embryo develops with two x chromosomes or one x and one y is determined long before society presents itself in that child’s life. One’s genetic constitution is a physical entity. Arguing that society constructs one’s sex is like saying that society is responsible for my naturally curly hair.

Once this apparent absurdity was brought up in class, our conversation turned to the reality of multiple sexes, as my professor put it. As we learned in a lecture my classmates and I attended last week, there is a broad spectrum of sexes; male and female are just two types. The social construct lies in our categorization of people into these two and only two sexes.

My professor didn’t seem to accept the idea of genetic mutations. Yes, of the billions of people on earth, there are a few who are born with both male and female genitalia. This is unfortunate (though not in my professor’s opinion), but it doesn’t mean every Jamie Lee Curtis with three chromosomes is a newfound sex. I was too afraid of the PC-police to mention this in class, but people with three chromosomes aren’t normal. Their genetic makeup is - wait for it - abnormal. Similarly, people who have genetic mutations that result in six toes aren’t normal. They are not bad people; they just have a mutation in their genes. Six toes does not warrant the classification of a new species, just as three chromosomes doesn’t warrant the creation of a third sex.

If labeling someone with an extra sex chromosome is a social construct, as my professor claims, then labeling someone with an extra 21st chromosome must be as well. That’s saying that Down Syndrome is a social construct. Down Syndrome is not a social construct, but a physical abnormality. Those with the condition are different from a majority of the population. My professor just cannot admit that hermaphrodites are different too.

If I were to take seriously everything I learned today in Econ 258, I could conclude that a “woman” is just a fabrication of society. I would believe that gender roles are not only oppressive and misleading, but one’s physical anatomy is as well. This leaves me more confused than hermaphrodites must be about their sex. Social roles of women aside, why can’t we embrace our bodies as they are? It’s a blessing that one day I’ll be able to carry a baby inside me and nurse him after he’s born. It’s nature that mandates this, not society. Why is that bad? I suppose I’ll have to figure that out if I want to do well in my econ class.