Bioethics, healthcare policy, and related issues.
The self-consciously quaint, and apparently unironically asinine, “Ladies Against Feminism” consists of the usual religious-right commentary on social issues couched in the prose style of Miss Manners. Every other post is about babies and homemaking (”Many women do not see the importance of their role as Mother and Wife . . . “). Mostly it’s just weird and dreary, but sometimes they surpass themselves. From their July 10 posting:
Birth rates in the European Union are falling fast. . . . What is supremely sad about those who insist that “it’s up to the individual to decide what constitutes a family,” is that they do not realize it will one day be up to the state to determine what constitutes a “worthy” life. Euthanasia can only flourish in a culture that embraces sterility and sees children as burdensome leeches. Who will be around to care for the elderly when the vast majority of the population is old or infirm? The state will not love you back. It will not ask to share your memories or miss you when you are gone. . . . Deliberate sterility is choosing death.
Wha . . .?
This is mind-boggling in a way that goes beyond the right’s usual confusion. Not having children leads to euthanasia? I can’t even imagine what kind of slippery slope would link those two. Presumably this is some kind of “culture of death” raving, but usually that’s accompanied by at least an attempt to make the delusions sound plausible.In this case, they just let it all hang out.
Birthrate . . . euthanasia . . . leeches . . . eldercare . . . . “The state will not love you back” - huh? Who imagines the state loves them? “Deliberate sterility is choosing death”? Does that mean the involuntarily sterile are murder victims? Strangely, sterile individuals generally look pretty lively to me - at least as much so as fully-stocked breeders do. Whence this “choosing death”? No matter - it’s all part of the “culture of death”. It doesn’t have to make sense.
I have nothing to add. Some forms of nonsense speak for themselves. But there’s a familiar sense of idiocy permeating these writings - an unapolagetically unhinged repudiation of any obligation to make sense, or even to use conceptually related terms in the same paragraph. This is the gibbering of people for whom gibbering is, well, good enough. And that calls for recognition.
Therfore, Ladies Against Feminism, for proudly selling the entire rest of womanhood down the river, for mistaking preciousness for insight, for nearly-insane doomsaying in response to perfectly ordinary human behavior, for making no fucking sense, and for including on your own blog the disclaimer that “Ladies Against Feminism was founded by Mrs. Lydia Sherman and Mrs. Jennie Chancey . . . . LAF is under the oversight of Stanley Sherman”, you are officially and collectively the Stegosaurus of the Week. Next time try thinking with the cerebral ganglion, not the sacral one.
Our lovely “Stegosaurus of the Week” Award GIF: Official Winners may feel free to add it to their Web sites (if Stanley approves, of course).
UPDATE: Added link and post ID reference.
6 Responses to “Ladies Against Sanity”
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July 14th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Um, is there a link to the site somewhere in there?
July 14th, 2006 at 11:31 am
I thought there was. Now there is.
July 15th, 2006 at 4:14 am
wow. that was…bizarre. i’d like to post a comment to their site, but somehow i doubt anything i have to say would do any good, since they seem quite enveloped by self-righteousness. how unfortunate. can’t someone invent a time machine so we can just *zip* them back to the victorian era? and maybe check on them after a few years to see how they like being *totally subjugated* (not through their own free will, as they are doing now (thanks to–drumroll please–the feminist movement!) hmmm…a thought…perhaps they are really, deeply into some strain of bdsm that most of us are not familiar with? perhaps i should ask them?
July 15th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
That’s an interesting thought. Maybe the whole right-wing anti-feminist-woman schtick is really some kind of elaborate S&M scene that liberals are just too square to grasp. Maybe Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter get together on Friday nights with James Dobson for games of “The Naughty Chambermaids and the Country Gentleman”, dressed up in black frocks with white lacy caps, curtseying demurely while whispering “Yes, sir. Oh, I deserve it, sir.” as he plies them with his hunting crop, little flecks of spittle flying from the corners of his mouth as he grunts with each manly blow, before ripping the costumes bodily from their quivering flesh. Maybe Feminists for Life is actually some kind of Sadeian orgy cult, gathering in a disused tomb on full moons and offering themselves, splayed across a stone casket, to priapic abortion-clinic protesters dressed in black robes and Supreme-Court-member Halloween masks. Secretly they all go out by day, walking in freedom, pursuing their careers, making their own choices about life and lifestyle, enjoying the fruits of the feminist movement, while at night and on weekends they’re having violent, draining sex-play that the rest of us are missing out on and could hardly imagine.
Wow.
Maybe I should join one of those groups.
July 18th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
I think their logic is that large numbers of people having no children eventually translates to large numbers of elderly with no family around to support them which translates into a huge burden on the state which translates into pressure for euthenasia. “The state will not love you back” I’m guessing would mean that any care provided by the state to elderly with no family will be impersonal and make them lonely and depressed. One may or may not agree with their reasoning, but there does seem to be some reasoning behind it.
July 20th, 2006 at 10:06 pm
That’s interesting, because if the state were actually liberal, it would care about the wellbeing of the elderly.