women

The Disappearing Russian Family

  Is there any nation as contrary in its demographics as Russia? While the world’s population police obsess about the ongoing “explosion” of the human species, Russia is on a depopulation slide and in danger of imploding. Again, while the world’s conscience is stirred by Asia’s 163 million missing females, Russia has a gender deficit … Read more

A Talk in Tehran

How should academics comport themselves when visiting a dictatorship? More specifically, what should they do and not do when presenting a paper at an academic conference hosted by a government that denies academic and other freedoms to its own population? These were the questions that accompanied me to Tehran in July 2010 as I prepared … Read more

The Pro-Life Attitude toward Unplanned Pregnancy

“My parents will kill me if I get pregnant.” This offhand comment is uttered by young women of every socioeconomic class, race, and religion. A girl is usually taught by the time she reaches puberty that an unplanned baby is one of the worst things she can bring upon herself. That kind of pressure from … Read more

No, Chemical Abortions Are Not Safe

  Apparently Orson Welles once quipped: “I drag my myth around with me”. Based on the most recent news about the RU486 abortion drug (also known as Mifepristone, Mifegyne or Mifeprex) one can’t help but sense that the proponents of RU486 abortions are going to have to start dragging their myths around with them if … Read more

Gender Confusion in One Easy Step

  With same-sex marriage, we saw the advent of arguments for “genderless parenting” – the idea that all a child needs is love and it’s irrelevant whether the loving persons are male or female. Now we have “genderless kids.” Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, the parents of Jazz (5), Kio (2) and three-month-old Baby Storm … Read more

Absurd and Corrupt at Once

Not satisfied with a general failure to teach students basic arithmetic, the structure of the English language, the history of our nation, the rudiments of the physical sciences, and enough geographical knowledge to distinguish Sweden from Switzerland, the legislators of the state of California have determined to require that the public schools teach “Gay Studies.” … Read more

Scandal and Lavender Gowns, 2011 Edition

Ever hear of a “lavender commencement”? For some Catholic college students, gone are the days of traditional pomp and circumstance. On May 2, homosexual students at the nation’s oldest Catholic university cheered anti-homophobia remarks from the director of the campus LBGTQ (lesbian-bisexual-gay-transgender-queer) Resource Center and paraded around campus with a rainbow flag. The “commencement” speaker … Read more

How Not to Solve Poverty

  And was Jerusalem builded here Among those dark satanic mills? … I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England’s green and pleasant land. (“Jerusalem”, by William Blake) Last month marked the 100th anniversary of the most deadly industrial accident in American … Read more

Getting it Wrong on the ‘SlutWalk’

  Back in January, at York University in Toronto (coincidently, my alma mater), a police officer advised women to avoid “dressing like sluts” in order to prevent rape. It sparked an uproar, and the officer later apologized. But it didn’t end there: Marches called “SlutWalks” have sprung up around the globe in protest. According to … Read more

Themis

Most of us, unless we have been steeping ourselves in Greek drama lately, will draw a blank when we come upon that word. Themis. Not really a household word nowadays. But it ought to be. It bespeaks, really, the whole shape of life for the Greeks. For them, it constituted the touchstone by which a … Read more

The Joy of Recovery

Recently I had a short contretemps with someone who said that her teenage son had come to a wonderful and intelligent conclusion about Homer’s Odyssey. He said that, when you stripped the beautiful language away, what you had left would make a good R-rated quest video game. She agreed with that assessment and grew angry when … Read more

Studies show virginity and hook-ups both on the rise

USA Today reports some new trends on college campuses: While more young men and women are staying virgins, casual sexual encounters are also on the rise. The relationship game among college-age adults today is a muddle of seemingly contradictory trends. Recent studies indicate that traditional dating on campuses has taken a back seat to no-strings … Read more

Feeling your age

The UK’s Daily Mail reports on a recent study that shows that women consider themselves old at 29, whereas men don’t consider themselves old until about 58. Apparently, women’s perceptions of their own age relate to their appearance, but for men it’s about sexual performance.  It is thought that this gulf between the sexes is … Read more

Biased against breastfeeding

Tom Jacobs at Miller-McCune writes about a study out of Oxford University that shows that, while breast-fed babies fare better at school, the number of American women who choose to breastfeed is “stagnant and low.” The reason? Apparently, breastfeeding women are judged more harshly: Research just published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin … Read more

Second-guessing the sexual revolution

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Moses writes on the worrisome trend for younger and younger girls to dress and act provocatively. Of course, that’s been the constant lament of parents for generations — but in Moses’ case, she recognizes that her own generation was the first to come of age in the sexual … Read more

Benign Neglect or Calculated Malignity?

Why, I wonder, do boys these days get no love? What have they done to deserve their treatment at our hands? Recently, a boy competing for his high school in the Iowa state wrestling tournament chose to forfeit his initial match rather than wrestle against a girl. He spoke about his decision with an admirable … Read more

Friday Free-for-All: March 4

Time for some Friday morning links: France’s ban on the niqab, or face veil, goes into effect next month: Face veils will be outlawed virtually anywhere outside women’s own homes, except when they are worshipping in a religious place or travelling as a passenger in a private car, although traffic police may stop them if … Read more

The Chutzpa of the German Theologians

  In The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten defined chutzpa as “presumption-plus-arrogance such as no other word, and no other language, can do justice to” and then offered classic examples of chutzpa in action: “Chutzpa is that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of … Read more

Former ‘woman priest’ returns to the fold

While I occasionally hear stories of women being “ordained” to the priesthood by the group Roman Catholic Women Priests, I’ve never heard of any women leaving the heretical organization…until now. Norma Jean Coon, who participated in one of these ordinations in 2007, recently posted the following on her personal website: [T]he ordinations were illegitimate and … Read more

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