Monday, November 12, 2012

Women - Protected Species?

After each election, the editorial board at the Lexington Herald-Leader, Lexington, Ky., can be expected to deliver a commentary bashing white men, the implication being that they have ruined the country and kept women and minorities from assuming their rightful places in government, in the bargain. Ditto for this year. The thrust of the editorial of 09 November was that there isn’t enough DIVERSITY in Kentucky government, with the usual statistics to show that evil white men are threatening again, up to their old tricks.

Ironically, the second paragraph of the editorial included the news that the presidential election was not primarily decided by white men but by women (the largest segment of the population, more than half) and people of color. A little farther on came the claim that “we will be left behind” if the white-male MINORITY continues to run things. The editorialist probably did not see a strange conflict there, but the paper’s bias is what it is. One thinks logically that the victims (women, a majority, plus minorities) could vote the white-male bums out of office and replace them with saints from the regions of gender and color but, alas, such seems hard to do.

It makes sense to the H-L that women and minorities should take their places according to their percentage of the population – seems perfectly reasonable. How would it be if half of all the infantrymen (make that infantrypersons) in the army were women when wartime came around? Or policemen? Or firemen? Or power-forwards in the NBA or linebackers in the NFL? Silly? Of course!

The actual statistics relating to the above were carved out by the people with the credentials to do those jobs. Women make up 13.5% of the army but they are officially precluded from combat for reasons that are perfectly obvious, as found out quickly when integrated boot camps were tried. A similar circumstance obtains for the other professions mentioned. Parity is good for some things but not others, presumably. Even the editorialist might agree…nah…probably not.

Okay…those are physical things. Officeholders don’t need strong backs…they need strong minds and ambition. In Kentucky, there may be far more of the latter than the former but there’s nothing stopping women and minorities from attempting the heavy non-physical lifting that leads to the electorate and the bureaucracy. Indeed, women outnumber men handily now on college campuses and make up more than 45% of law school students so surely they have the strong minds. Constantly caterwauling about their mistreatment got old long ago but the editorialist seems not to have noticed.

As usual, the editorial cited the fact that women make about $10,000 per year less than men in Kentucky, with the supposed implication being that the legislature should do something about that, never mind that market-economics dictate who gets what and how much, not the government, something learned in economics 101. Wage and price controls have been tried and failed, of course, although the current administration in Washington seems hell-bent upon bringing everyone down to the lowest common denominator level.

This brings one to the admittedly chauvinistic question, to wit, is there some inherent superiority in women that qualifies them to be treated deferentially? Are their intelligence and drive so off-the-charts that in their over-qualification they must be a protected species, thus exempting them from contending in the hard games of politics and everything else? Physical strength is not noted. One has only to guess what might happen to a woman playing right tackle for the Giants even if she measured 275-lb., stood 6-4, and was hopped-up on steroids and did breast-feeding on the bench.

Predictably, the usual red herring is dwelt upon in the editorial, namely, that over half the single-parent families headed by women with young children in Kentucky live in poverty. No mention was made of the single-parent families headed by men. Maybe there aren’t any of those. The editorialist stated that many if not all the economic issues debated on the state and national levels are “women’s issues.” That doesn’t leave very many if any as men’s issues, but men are the devils (especially those evil minority-WHITE men) who got everything out-of-whack in the first place…right?

As for the single-mom poverty…72.1% and 35.9%, respectively, of black and white babies are born with no fathers of record, according to the Centers for Disease Control. In other words, women lack the power and supposedly the wit NOT to get in the poverty position? Men can be fornicators and adulterers but only women can be recognized as prostitutes or dumb or unlucky enough to get hooked up with the wrong guy, whether legally or otherwise. Constantly whining about what is mostly just being sex-happy won’t change a thing, and a lot of those poor gals probably are not all that unhappy with Uncle Sugar feeding their kids, doling out food stamps and checks, and paying 80% of their rent while they pig-out on cheeseburgers and fries, anyway.

Or…they can always go to San Francisco, where it was noted in the same issue of the paper that the government will finance all sex-change processes for those who can’t afford them. Then they can become single-dads and step up a notch.

And so it goes.
Jim Clark

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