Friday, March 7, 2014

Revenge of the Male Amazons!

Annnnnnnd...we're back. The script I've been working on has been delivered, and in three or four years might eventually become an animated film that will probably only be seen on pirated DVDs in Asia. The sense of accomplishment is almost too pungent.

Anyway, getting back to our usual bailiwick...With same-sex marriage bans toppling all over the country, the folks who are weirdly obsessed by this subject even though it can't possibly affect them, since they are not themselves gay, need a new wrinkle. And veteran wingnut Kelly Bartlett is here to supply the rhetorical crowsfeet: Gay marriage is segregation, so ladies, you better not let the sun go down on you in West Hollywood (stick to lesbians, they have more experience).
Gender, Discrimination, and Marriage
My daughter was catching up on her college homework. Chapter Ten in her psychology textbook is titled “Sex and Gender.” It covers topics such as gender differences, similarities, and stereotypes. The chapter wends its way from transgender issues to sexual harassment to the glass ceiling, the invisible but real boundary in the workplace beyond which women are not welcome. The book defines sexism as “differential treatment of an individual on the basis of his or her sex.”
Wait a second...Just to be clear: you're helping your daughter with her college homework?  I think even Ward Cleaver would have drawn the line somewhere north of that point: "Yes, yes, Beaver, I appreciate your diligence, but I'd really prefer to settle in with the evening edition than hear about your 'Women's Studies' class. All I know about that bushwa is that your mother read The Feminine Mystique, and now she's off banging some hairy fakir in an ashram in Oregon. Get up, you're sitting on the Sports Page..."
As the text points out, more than half of all women in the United States now work outside the home. They are breaking through the glass ceiling and garnering high-profile positions in private industry, government, and politics. There is one domain, however, in which women are increasingly discriminated against and excluded: families.
It's true. Females comprise only 50% of this family, and that's counting the cats.
Ironically, same-sex marriage laws do this in the name of equality. We open our hearts and minds and definition of marriage to include two men, and in doing so we close the door to a wife in the living room, a mom in the nursery, and a feminine lover in the bedroom.
Well, we're not all Mormon fundamentalists. Plus, not everyone can afford a separate mom for living room, nursery, and bedroom, not to mention individual wives for the laundry, bonus room, and gazebo. I mean, if you're not careful, they start to breed, and then you have to call in an exterminator, or at least set up some of those Have-A-Heart Live Wife Traps, and then you've got to drive way out into the country to release them, otherwise they just come back and start nursing your children and folding your underpants again.
 We create a crass ceiling.
I agree that the principle danger of permitting women to freely pursue their dreams and ambitions in the work force is that some of them will just make shitty puns.  But is it really so different with men?  After all, some are Shakespeare, and some just sit in the Break Room making armpit farts.
It’s one thing for two guys to love each other; it’s altogether different for society to endorse this union by granting these two men the status of marriage.
Once they're married, the whole idea of two guys loving each other becomes a lot less hot.
A male marriage might not look overtly sexist, but what about the long-term effects? Redefining marriage grants men the legal right to deprive children of a relationship with their mother simply because she's female. Because she’s “born that way.” What if this gender discrimination continues?
Um, there's a few rather glaring logic flaws in that paragraph. I'm beginning to wonder why Kelly's daughter would even come to her for help with her college homework in the first place. Let's check the senior Bartlett's bio at MercatorNet, an ostensibly nonpartisan webzine on bioethics where she periodically spray-paints the walls with outrage over gays and abortion:
Say, this doesn't look like the face of a woman who would spend her days laboring to thwart gay marriage. This looks like the warm, friendly, welcoming face of a woman who'd really like you to try the rich taste of mountain grown Folger's coffee.
Kelly Bartlett has been practicing life, love, and marriage for decades, hoping to improve her game. She writes from a house nestled in a meadow off a dirt road in Vermont, surrounded by family and friends, music and mountains.
Her monograph, "On Squealing Like a Pig" has been successfully set to a lively banjo tune.
She has taught religious education using the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd and is certified by the safe environment program, VIRTUS: Protecting God’s Children.
VIRTUS is a program brought to you by "The National Catholic Risk Retention Group, Inc," which sounds like an insurance company for priests that got tired of forking out for sex abuse settlements.
After seventeen years of homeschooling her kids, she gives herself an A for effort and graduates summa cum laughter. 
Ha! Yes...it's like Erma Bombeck after a closed-head injury.
 She enjoys handing out A’s 
Well, I think we now know how her daughter got into college. And by "college" I mean "The University of Mom's Breakfast Nook".
and would be delighted to give you one also if you “Like” MercatorNet on Facebook.

Go on.  I dare ya.
Obviously, two men cannot reproduce with each other, but in tandem with marriage comes the right to adopt. If a male couple’s adopted son meets and marries a like-minded guy whose dads commissioned him from a surrogate mother, then we would see an extended family bereft of not only mothers but also grandmothers. On both sides. Under current law in many states, this chauvinism can continue for generations.
Which would mean an incalculable amount of men who never had the experience of being offered a hard candy by an elderly woman who keeps it rolled up in a Kleenex in her purse.
Decades from now, young Marvin can trace his family tree and compare it with that of his pal Leroy.
While studying genealogy, Leroy and Marvin might pause to wonder why they both sound like characters from Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.
The latter has one mom and one dad, two grandmothers and two grandfathers, four great-grandmothers and four great-grandfathers. Leroy’s family tree is gender-integrated and balanced.
Sounds like one of those liberal, affirmative action quota systems to me. Surely Clarence Thomas won't stand for this!
Meanwhile, Marvin lists two dads, four grandpas, and eight great-grandfathers.
Sounds like a call sheet for Duck Dynasty.
 His family has fourteen men and zero women; it’s gender-segregated and devoid of wives, mothers, grandmothers, and their feminine love.
As a result, the greeting card industry has become a husk of its once robust self.
Of course, we know that babies can’t actually be nurtured for nine months in a test tube using IVF, no matter how many thousands of dollars we thrust at researchers...Marvin had to have a mom or he wouldn’t be here.
I remember when I was a kid, "fags" were presumed to be mama's boys who never cut the apron strings and imprinted on a strong father figure. You'd think after three generations of nothing but male role models, Marvin would be the butchest dude on the planet!
And his parents had to have mothers as well. It’s not that Marvin doesn’t have a mom or grandmothers in his ancestry. These women are invisible to Marvin, but they are real. They were intentionally excluded from his family precisely because of their sex. This man-made barricade is more harmful than the glass ceiling at work since it prevents children from accessing their own mothers.
Is this really a problem, Kelly?  Is same sex marriage (which apparently doesn't include lesbians) really going to result in legions of gay men genetically engineering their own posterior-loving posterity?  And even if so, do we really want our young men "accessing their own mothers"?  That sounds less like sound social policy, and more like a Please Don't Eat the Daisies fan fic.
Man caves are fun. Man family trees . . . not so much.
So men, let your manly pals have fun in your cave, but don't be afraid to let the ladies climb your man tree.
If two guys fall in love, they can choose to keep their relationship private or make it public. They can even make it official by announcing it on Facebook. 
I guess Facebook posts are now legally binding.  So if you clicked "Like" on a friend's blurry smartphone pic of a schooner full of green-dyed St. Paddy's Day beer, you're now married to them, even if you're both boys.  So start laying in a supply of blue baby booties and foam rubber footballs for your multitude of strangely male-only descendants.
It’s their choice. But requesting a marriage license is different.
For one thing, you usually have to shout at the clerk through that bulletproof glass.
Marriage is the bond that seals a family together and plants the roots of our culture.
It bonds! It seals! It plants and tends roots! Marriage is the most amazing Ronco product you've ever seen, and it's not available in any store!
 Families are the living cells of the great organism of life. Typically, marriage creates new micro-societies: mom, dad, and their children. Marriage is social by nature; therefore, weddings require witnesses.
So do crimes.
It is important to note that de-gendered families exclude females not by accident, but by design.
Even lesbians refuse to admit women into their gay marriages, even though gay men are much more likely to make catty remarks about the bride's plaid flannel wedding gown.  One question, though, Kelly: How does this "de-gendering" process gay men go through when they wed actually work? Is it anything like getting your dog neutered, because if so, I'm gonna need a bigger pet taxi.
Same-sex marriage constitutes sex discrimination and segregation. 
It's the "Coloreds Only" drinking fountain of legal pair bonding.
But I have spent too many years interacting with mothers and children to support the idea of excluding moms from families because of their sex.
Can we exclude them from the family because of their habit of snooping in your sock drawer looking for porn? Because I'd totally be down with that.
 I love and respect my own mother and grandmothers far too much to fall for the notion that contracting them out of our marriage laws constitutes “equality.”
So if two men love each other and wish to wed, the state should require that the happy couple enter into a plural marriage with a grandmother, because it's only fair.
 And even if I didn’t have the firsthand experience of knowing so many women exhibiting their feminine genius, I would disagree with gender discrimination in principle.
Then wouldn't you agree that you yourself are discriminating against women by not bringing one into your marriage bed and licking the alphabet?  And where's this exhibit of feminine genius being held, because I could really use some at the moment.
After all, if gender is not important in marriage, when on earth is it important? 
Not many places that I've ever seen. Gender is kind of like algebra -- the teacher swears you're going to need it later in life, but I've successfully avoided it for decades. 
Will the same progressives clamoring for male marriage now seek gender quotas in the years to come? Will future feminists fight for the right of children to know their mothers?
That's a good question, but I believe Zager and Evans already answered it in the summer of 1969:

In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
Gender segregation belongs in public restrooms, not families.
Men just naturally have a wider stance than women, and should be free to express it in the toilet stall of their choice. Especially if they're a Republican senator and have a gender inclusive beard waiting at home.
Let’s keep our ancestry honest and inclusive; let’s keep our families intact and thriving.
And let's keep our wingnuts frothy and frenzied and whipped into stiff peaks.

14 comments:

Helmut Monotreme said...

There is a real issue hidden in there much like a corn kernel in a turd. The issue is: what rights do birth mothers (and biological fathers too, not that this author would touch on the matter) have with regard to children given up for adoption? But to cast this issue as a tragedy unique to men who are gay married, is willful distortion of any kind of rational approach to this issue. To imagine that simply being raised by two fathers is enough to begin a gay family tree devoid of women willfully ignores everything that is known about... pretty near everything, related to biology, sexual attraction, heritability, child raising, developmental psychology, you name it. A list of the flaws, fallacies and logical distortions in this article would be longer than the article itself.

Dr.BDH said...

Kelly must think that gay married men are stealing babies from women. That's the only way this article makes any sense at... oh, never mind. "Forget it, Scott, it's homeschooling."

grouchomarxist said...

Yes, marvel at the wonderful power of the Intertubes, turning what was previously your run-of-the-mill village idiot into a Global Village idiot.

Chris Vosburg said...

Kelly writes: However, at its core, marriage is about gender diversity and children.

So be sure to have equal amounts of male and female children.

It takes a long time for Kelly to get around to acknowledging that every complaint she has about same sex male marriage could also be said of same sex female marriage, but she tosses this aside with a disqualfier I still have yet to figure out:

To be fair, same-sex marriage laws grant women the same right to segregate family trees and the same power to deprive their children of fathers. But this doesn’t advance equality. That’s simply the debunked “separate but equal” argument in new, gender-segregated clothing.

Huh? Again, it's almost like an afterthought, and it's something that she'd really rather not talk about, despite its being more prevalent than same sex male marriage, and we zink maybe zis means zomething.

J Neo Marvin said...

Her site is called MercatorNet"? After the world-map projection that distorts the continents so badly that Greenland is as big as Africa? Fitting somehow.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

WAIT A MINITE...you mean Greenland isn't as big as Africa???

HA! Next you're gonna say South America is bigger than North America, aren't ya.
~

preznit said...

but don't be afraid to let the ladies climb your man tree.

but do you need to manscape first? and how does that old saying go? as you climb the man tree of success don't let the boys look up your dress? ;}

Chris Vosburg said...

J Neo Marvin writes: Her site is called MercatorNet"? After the world-map projection that distorts the continents so badly that Greenland is as big as Africa?

It gets better-- 16th century Flemish Cartographer Gerardus Mercator is indeed most famous because of the cylindrical world map model bearing his name. But check out the map featured on the main page of Mercatornet.

Although correctly attributed to Mercator, that's not a Mercator Projection, so what are they saying by using it? That they liked Mercator's cartography better before he modernized it into what has become the navigational standard?

Anonymous said...

ANNTI said...

1. "Then wouldn't you agree that you yourself are discriminating against women by not bringing one into your marriage bed and licking the alphabet?"

You'd be surprised at how many people think that Carlin did that joke before Kinison, but 't'ain't so.

2. Am I the only one getting the anti-gay-marriage in-article ad for the "No White Flag" guano-psychotics in this post? 'Cause the irony is far past palpable, it's a fucking TUMOR.

3. You know the ol' saying, "How are you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen the big city?"?? LET'S KEEP THIS DUMBASS DOWN ON THE FARM, PLEASE. Preferably as part of the compost heap out back.

Anonymous said...

ANNTI said...

I ***still*** can't believe that THAT "No White Flag" ad is up on this page, in THIS post!!! Somebody tell me that this is just THE most-fucktarded Google advertising-placement-algorithm IN HISTORY, and that it's not being put there ON PURPOSE...

Seriously. Somebody tell me.

Anonymous said...

Lastly, I have sent-out a copied/saved picture of the hate-mongering "NO WHITE FLAG" bullshit against gay marriage that ALWAYS pops-up in this post whenever ***I*** get here!!! I *told* y'all that Google was a SICK BUNCHA GLOBE-G0BBLING HATE-MONGERS!!!

Anonymous said...

ANNTI said...

SOOO ***NOW*** I learn that the "No White Flag" shit is FAKE/and/or some kind of SEVERELY-ODD "ART" INSTALLATION WITHIN THE BLOG POST?!?!?!?

Could somebody POSSIBLY explain this to me?

Unknown said...

I am just in stitches with this, obviously lesbians don't exist in her world, just like Queen Victoria, a myth but an entertaining story http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/mythbusters/353/victoria_and_the_lesbians.html
I reread her article and swapped genders and ZOMG discrimination against men!!!

Glennis said...

"What's that you say? There are lady homosexuals? Oh. Never mind!"

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