And being live-blogged by yours truly from our IWF headquarters on M Street in Washington as she reads from her wonderful book, “Women Who Make the World Worse.” Yes, those women–Hillary, Justice Ruth, Jane F., et al. The book’s just out in paper this week, and was a best-seller in hardback, and we’re treating Kate and all our guests (that meant you!) to wine, cheese, and assorted sweets. So far, we?ve got Claudia Winkler and Noemie Emory of the Weekly Standard and assorted Heritage Foundationers enjoying our reception fare. Stay tuned….
It’s an overflow crowd (as usual), and as The Other Charlotte explains, Kate is “the only non-mythological character to suffer an Amazon attack.” (Kate’s book was bombed–800 reviews, most by people who hadn’t read the book–by radical feminists at the book’s site, which, of course, sent sales soaring. And now–Kate!
“You know, feminism is the gift that keeps on giving,” says Kate, who notes that the illegitimate-birth rate is now at an all-time high: 37 percent. And evidently the rads are going to try to get the Equal Rights Amendment (what’s that? you say–it died some 30 years ago). So yes, you might think feminism is dead–but uh-uh. It’s baaaack! Kate’s got a catalogue: the Larry Summers debacle, for example, where Summers was forced to treat women with Ph.D.’s as delicate flowers, and even his profuse apologies didn’t suffice.
Kate reminds us that she’s completely opposed to discrimination against women–a condition that was guaranteed by federal law 40 years ago. “I learned more about women’s self-esteem from Catholic nuns in school than I ever learned from Gloria Steinem,” says Kate, who thinks that radical feminists are chronically dissatisifed and unqualified for any job other than aggrieved feminist. And we, the taxpayers (along with corporations that want to look good) pay their salaries and give them huge grants to “prove” the theories they’ve cooked up.
“The modern women’s movement has never enjoyed the allegiance of American women,” says Kate, who notes that many women may call themselves feminists but don’t buy into the feminist agenda. She discusses the views of Linda “Get Back to Work!” Hirschman, the gal who can’t understand why mothers of small children would rather stay home with said children than slave 50 hours a week at high-paying jobs. Hirschman wants to outlaw families as “unjust” to women–and “the enemy is us” because women would rather live in families.
Then, there’s the supposed “political gender gap”–the idea that a monolithic “women’s vote” can defeat a candidate who doesn’t toe the radical feminist line. That, too, is propaganda, since conservatics have won five out of the past seven presidential elections, and Bush, for example, got both the white women’s vote and the married women’s vote in 2004. And then there’s the sexual revolution, trumpeted by feminism and a bonanza to men who want to live in perpetual adolescence.
How about the “feminist denial syndrome”? That’s the tactic of Kate’s book’s hostile reviewers, who pretend to be not so radical as they actually are.
In short, Kate can’t wait for Hillary, Nancy Pelosi to try to bring back the ERA.
Question time:
Claudia Winkler with the money question: Can Hillary get elected? Sure, maybe so, says Kate: “They elected her husband.”
Another question: “Helicopter parents” (the ones who come to their kids’ job interviews with them). Is “over-nurturing” as Betty Friedan put it, back? Kate thinks that’s an Upper West Side neurosis and has little to do with how middle-class mothers raise their children.
The Other Charlotte: How did women’s vote play out in the midterm? “They voted anti-Republican, along with men; in other words, there is no monolithic women’s vote.” And a number of conservative pols (including George Allen in Virginia this year) made stupid moves to try to win that imaginary women’s vote.
Another question: Why have radical feminists been so successful in getting money? Kate: they take issues, such as violence against women, and then redefine “violence” and get huge grants. Or they get mileage out of the supposed “wage gap” (77 cents for men’s dollar), which of course everyone is opposed to but in fact doesn?t exist.
My question as a recovering shoe-addict: Why Sarah Jessica Parker on the cover of your book? Along with such true-life harridans as Hillary and Ruth Ginsburg? Yes, she’s fictional, but she represents the unhappiness of women who “sleep with half the men in New York and then think they’re going to get married.” Kate says: “A lot of women really listen to these women.” You know, says Kate, if you look at all these women–Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, Germaine Greer–they had really bad experiences, typically with their fathers, and unhappy relationships with men. And they project their experiences onto the rest of us, who love our fathers and have good relationships with men.”
Says TOC: Kate’s “having us laugh through the apocalypse….And don’t forget to buy her book!”