Stunned In Plymouth
September 24, 2004
Well behaved women rarely make history. -Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
On Thursday morning I sat down to read, as I do most mornings, the Boston Globe. Regardless of the leftist leanings of the editors the Globe has some of the best reporter. On page A15 of the September 23rd edition I was repeatedly stunned while reading one of the columnists.
She wrote, “Indeed, in studies of domestic violence women initiate violence nearly as often – though not as lethally – as men.” Knowing the columnist is one of the leading feminist authors in this nation and this column appears in one of the leading fundamental feminist liberal newspapers in the country, to say the very least I was stunned.
She also quotes from a co-author of the book “Same Difference” that “It’s a fantasy that women are so much more caring and empathetic than men. In all the systematic research, men and women come out about equal.” WOW! Double stunned.
Crawling back up onto my chair I continue reading, “When the social constraints are off – surely when women are rewarded for violence – they can mimic the worst behavior of men.” DOUBLE WOW! Triple stunned and to the floor once again.
Centered in the middle of the column, in bold print so large that I could see it from the floor, is: “Get over the stereotype of women as peaceful.” TRIPLE WOW! Quadruple stunned.
In the column in paragraph after paragraph Ellen Goodman lets it be known that women can not only be, they are, as violent as men. Of course none of this is news to anyone who is reading this article on this site.
If only Goodman had written this column many years ago before I wrote my book. Perhaps if I could have cited her when I wrote, “Women have not been proven more moral than men, they simply remain less uncorrupted by institutional control and political power” I might have sold more than a few hundred copies.
However, as Goodman acknowledges it does appear that the more institutional and political power women receive the less moral and more corrupt they seem to become. Never-the-less, I still can’t believe it. Ellen Goodman got it right. And now I ask that you please take part in a quick but unofficial survey.
All of you that think if that naked Iraqi prisoner on a leash had been a woman and the person smiling, smirking, and pointing a finger at the prisoners genitals had been a man, that we might have heard some voices of complaint from the National Organization of Women, please raise your hand. You know what we got from NOW was a deafening silence. Keep holding those hands up, I still can’t see a single hand. Wait - - Wait – There’s one! WOWWOWWOW, Ellen Goodman’s at the end of that hand! After all these years, who would have thunk it?
