Barbara Kay Speaks; Do Canadian Pols Listen?
They should. For a long time now, Barbara Kay has been calling Canadian liberal feminists on their multiple hypocrisies and overall lack of intellectual honesty. This article is more of the same (National Post, 10/23/09). If more people read Kay's work, it would go a long way toward restoring a measure of sanity to Canadian law and public policy.
The Liberal Women's Caucus has coughed up its annual "Pink Book" which supposedly analyzes the condition of women in the country and recommends changes for Parliament to consider. This year it looks like the Pink Book is pretty tame stuff. As Kay points out, it goes right out on a limb and fearlessly calls for Canadians to be secure and prosperous. Ho hum.
Even its obligatory anti-male sexism is less exciting than usual. For example, it calls for government-subsidized micro-loans to women who want to start small businesses. Consider that for just a moment. If there's a need for micro-loans in Canada, which I very much doubt, are they only needed by women? Don't men want to start small businesses? My wild guess is that they do. So why is it that the Liberal Women's Caucus couldn't find it in their egalitarian hearts to include men in their call for micro-loans?
The answer is obvious, but I wonder if it occurs to most people that this feminist group actively opposes gender equality. For them, it's all about "more for us." Feminism got started with the entirely justifiable call for women and men to have equal opportunities, equal treatment by the law and equal respect in public discourse and affairs. That's not only been accomplished in Canada and many other countries, but the gender imbalance now favors women in every category I can think of. So true feminists, i.e. those who actually believe in the concept of gender equality, should be shouting as loudly on behalf of men's and fathers' rights as they ever did for women's rights.
A few do, but most don't. "Gender equality" has come to mean "more for us." Or, as Kay puts it, "...when the Women's Caucus says 'gender,' they mean 'women's interests.'"
I can't think of a single statistical category here in the United States in which women do worse than men. They live longer, get custody of children 84% of the time, get more undergraduate degrees, an equal number of advanced degrees, don't have to register with the Selective Service System or fight in combat if they join the armed services, but receive equal benefits for having served. Women make up only about one-third of the victims of violent crime, are only 10% of workplace fatalities and a minority of workplace injuries. They receive strikingly more lenient sentences for criminal conduct and are paroled earlier than men. Although women and men use pot about equally, 90% of those incarcerated for its simple possession are men. Seventy-five percent of the homeless are men. Fifty-five percent of adults without health insurance are men. I could go on and on.
Meanwhile, women earn and save less than do men, but that is strictly a function of their own choices - of careers and of time worked in those careers. Some 50 separate studies show that and even former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich admits the fact. So it's not like women can't change their earnings any time they want to and it's not like any individual woman can't do so herself irrespective of what others do.
I suspect that much the same is going on in Canada, which, like the U.S. has laws prohibiting discrimination against anyone based on sex.
And coincidentally, that's just what Barbara Kay's response is to the Liberal Women's Caucus call for a "gender equity commissioner," the very concept of which assumes some unstated inferiority on the part of women.
As for a gender commissioner, if the Women's Caucus really wants to go there, they might start by recommending the abolition of equity programs in university. Enrolment in most programs is so female-skewed, an outsider might think men have fallen victim to some mysterious plague. And given the dropout rates of boys, one might call it a plague, because gender-wise the education system is sick. Boys are disadvantaged K-12, with teaching methods geared for girls and a very poor understanding of how boys learn best. Just this week Toronto proposed sweeping changes to education to make up for years of apathy toward the eroding performance gap.
Maybe this putative gender commissioner could ask why Ontario health units only screen for abuse in incoming female patients 12 and older, not male patients, even though male adolescents suffer nearly as much sexual abuse as girls.
And how about a thorough investigation of the family court system, where almost 90% of contested custody cases end up with sole custody going to mothers? How about support for equal parenting, a long-overdue gender-fair initiative that can't get traction because groups like the Liberal Women's Caucus aren't interested in gender fairness?
Preach it sister. But are there any members of parliament in the congregation?
Thanks to Jeremy for the heads-up.
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