Feminism

The Power Line Show, Ep 216: The Recovery of Family Life, with Scott Yenor

Featured image We’re delighted to bring Scott Yenor to the show this week to discuss his important new book, The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies, which is being officially released tomorrow from Baylor University Press. Unlike many other fine books on the family today that rely chiefly on social science, Scott brings his immense learning in political philosophy to bear on family questions, from Plato and Aristotle through »

What the media can and can’t say about Biden’s running mate

Featured image A group called “We Have Her Back” has sent a remarkable memo to “News Division Heads, Editors in Chiefs, Bureau Chiefs, Political Directors, Editors, Producers, Reporters, and Anchors.” In the memo, the authors tell the media leaders how to cover the female whom Joe Biden will select as his running mate. They even graciously offer to provide the mainstream media with guidance as the campaign progresses. And they warn that »

Man Bites Dog: NY Times Has Something Positive to Say About the Trump Administration

Featured image The editors must have blundered or gone on vacation at the New York Times today, because there’s actually a news story up today that offers a positive perspective of the Trump Administration, and even more astounding, the praise is coming chiefly from feminists, a few of whom have apparently gone rogue from the identity politics party line of the moment: Trump Overhaul of Campus Sex Assault Rules Wins Surprising Support »

And Now For . . . Data Feminism?

Featured image Feminists were rightly annoyed a couple decades back when Mattel released a talking Barbie doll who had among its canned sound bites the phrase “Math is hard!” But does it help the cause of gender parity in math and science to propose that there is a distinct feminist perspective on data? This is the question of a recent book from MIT Press (which seems to specialize in bizarre leftist books), »

Hollywood Ignoramuses Strike Again

Featured image Save up for this! The Hulu streaming channel is debuting a nine-part series called “Mrs. America” on the 1970s-era clash between Gloria Steinem and Phyllis Schlafly chiefly over the Equal Rights Amendment, and given that it’s Hollywood’s take you can be sure it is fully “nuanced.” You know you are in trouble when the very first sentence of the review of the show in the Hollywood Reporter today runs as follows: »

When great skin is not enough

Featured image The Washington Post has a section called “Style.” I call it the paper’s id. Left-wing memes and rants too out there to appear in the news section or the op-eds find voice in the Style section. This article by Monica Hesse about Elizabeth Warren is a good example. Here’s how it opens: One of the more intimate side conversations you were likely to overhear between women at an Elizabeth Warren »

You Can’t Cancel Fried Chicken!

Featured image A predictable dustup over sexism has arisen in Australia over a KFC ad that has caused KFC to apologize and pull the ad. This has had the predictable effect—millions more people around the world have seen this ad (funny that the oh-so-woke Guardian would embed the ad—I’m sure it was just an oversight by a junior editor), which we are proud to share with Power Line readers—only 15 seconds long: »

The Patriarchy Smashed?

Featured image Yesterday’s jobs report—145,000 new jobs—is only so-so, but there are two more interesting features of the labor market right now. The first is that wages are rising fastest at the bottom end of the income scale, suggesting that sustained economic growth is better than redistribution or minimum wage mandates for lifting the prospects of low-skilled workers. Of course, the left is not interested in growth any more, as I’ve often »

Death Recorded Live—and at the Bookstore

Featured image Back in June, Scott reported on the embarrassment on live TV of feminist celebrity author Naomi Wolf (“Death Recorded Live“), in which it was revealed that her forthcoming book Outrages, which alleged that 19th century Britain executed homosexuals on a prodigious scale, was based on a misunderstanding of a legal term so simple that an undergraduate should have spotted it. I wrote separately at the same time that “I suspect »

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured image Ammo Grrrll declares THE END OF FEMINISM. She writes: I don’t rightly remember the first time I even heard the word “feminism.” As a girl growing up in the ’50s, the oldest child, I do not remember a single time that I was told I could not do something or less was expected of me because I was female. And this was with a very traditional “cis-normative” father, born in »

Today Is #Empathy Day

Featured image This one is just for fun. Someone called Zuby–a musician, apparently–tweeted this earlier today: As a feminist might say: “That’s not funny!” »

The Infantile, Superficial Left (2)

Featured image Another one of the left’s favorite totems these days is “patriarchy,” along with “toxic masculinity,” in which women are “objectified” and “commodified,” kept in subjugation by “violence.” For example, Corey Robin’s attack on conservatives, The Reactionary Mind, dwells in its opening pages on the assertion that the subjugation of women is part and parcel of the central conservative principle (so Robin thinks) of maintaining power over women and minorities at »

Joe Biden opens the door

Featured image It’s suddenly commonplace for feminists to say of Joe Biden that “he doesn’t get it.” The statement, though, is question-begging because the word “it” covers a lot of ground, much of which is controversial. What’s fair to say about Biden is that he hasn’t been paying attention. It’s not just that Biden is making light of his touchings of women and girls. Consider this excerpt from a Washington Post story »

Toxic Masculinity Strikes Again

Featured image I can’t wait to see how the intersectional left handles this story from Science magazine: Girls who share a womb with boys tend to make less money than those with twin sisters Female twins who shared a womb with a brother tend to get less education, earn less money, and have fewer children than girls who shared a womb with another girl, according to an analysis of hundreds of thousands »

White men dominate in Dem presidential fundraising and polling

Featured image White male presidential candidates Beto O’Rourke and Bernie Sanders are well out in front in the Democratic presidential fundraising sweepstakes, while Joe Biden and Sanders dwarf the field in the polls. Their female, African-American, and Latino rivals have been left in the dust so far. The Daily Caller reports: O’Rourke announced Monday morning that his campaign brought in a record $6.1 million in online fundraising dollars within the first 24 »

Beto-skepticism, feminist style

Featured image Gail Collins is a left-wing feminist columnist for the New York Times. If this snarky piece about Beto O’Rourke is any indication, Collins wants the Democrats to nominate a female presidential candidate in 2020. Don’t get me wrong. O’Rourke is a deserving target of snark. Indeed, the snark virtually writes itself. But why is O’Rourke a less serious candidate for president than, say, Kamala Harris? He served in Congress longer »

U.S. Women’s soccer team sues for equal pay

Featured image The 1996 Olympic Games were held in Atlanta, but some of the soccer matches took place at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. I took our family to see a doubleheader — a women’s match between Brazil and Norway and a men’s match between Ghana and South Korea. The two women’s teams were among the five best in the world at that time. The two men’s teams probably would have been »