Over at the new-to-me weblog Objectivist v. Constructivist is a debate regarding the status of women in the U.S. WARNING: Know, feminists, that by even reading such a debate, it proves you don't care a fig about Muslim women! Because the debate concerns women in the U.S., see, and you can only care about one or the other. That's either a law, or an all-too-predictable result of your unfortunate insistence on dabbling in the hypocritical feminist arts, I forget which.
All right, enough sarcasm. If you're like me you may be tempted to read the debate backwards, as the first sentence from the Objectivist party, Stephen Kershnar, is:
Sadly, radical feminism is alive and well.
I have two knee-jerk reactions to that:
(1) "Sadly?" What is this "sadly?" I'm throwin' a fuckin' party!
And
(2) "Alive? Well? They told me it was dead!"
But you know knee-jerk reactions are a bad way to go, so eventually I will read the rest of it in a more calm and rational state of mind. This will be accomplished through the power of vodka.
Full disclosure: I was alerted to this debate by a gracious email from the Constructivist participant, Bruce Simon. So it could fairly be said that I am biased against the Objectivist, but only if we ignore that I was bound to be biased against anything that begins with "Sadly, radical feminism is alive and well" in the first place. I don't think that should count against me too much, if you want to know the truth.
Mr. Simon requests participation! So don't be shy about commenting. Weigh in!
P.S. I don't know whether it's actually correct to capitalize Objectivist or Constructivist; I do so here to prevent any angry Objectivists from exhuming Ayn Rand and beating me with her corpse while screaming at me that A is A. (She is buried, right? She didn't get cremated? Crikey, don't make me look that up.)
P.P.S. Corrected the blog title above--Objectivist v. Constructivist, not Objectivist v. Constructionist. I have got to stop thinking I can knock out posts in 5 minutes. I cannot, and it shows.
P.P.P.S. Also I closed comments 'cause I'm mean like that because I didn't mean to include them on this post to begin with. If this keeps up my apologies and clarifications are gonna be longer than the post itself.
Is it my imagination, or is there not a single cite in those posts?
Sorry. I don't do facts that aren't cited. 78.9% of all statistics are made up.
Posted by: Meryl Yourish at March 30, 2006 03:05 PMBy the way, read "Atlas Shrugged" in college at the urging of a fellow editor on the school paper. I'm sorry, but anyone who can write a 90-page speech and expect people to, well, stay awake while reading it, has a very strange view of human attention span.
Objectivism? I called it "The Theory of Selfishness" twenty years ago, and, well, it still is.
Posted by: Meryl Yourish at March 30, 2006 03:07 PMFor example, what employer wouldn’t view woman applicants more skeptically given that working women are eight times as likely to spend four or more years out of the labor force than are men, nearly nine times more likely than a man to leave the workplace for six months or longer for family reasons, and lose about twice as much time from the workplace as men?
Maybe any employer that doesn't want to break the freakin' law?
Jesus, and people wonder why laws like this are needed. This guy would have kicked Dagny Taggart out of the Colorado Valley. After all, look at the statistics for chicks.
Posted by: Hubris at March 30, 2006 03:41 PMYikes, you KNOW I love you both, and I guess this is what I get for leaving comments open on this post in the first place, but por favor GO OVER THERE and sound off, okay?
Especially the Dagny Taggart comment, Hubris. If you don't I'm going to steal it and post it there myself.
Without cites. :)
Posted by: ilyka at March 30, 2006 03:53 PM