The Problem With ‘Take Women Seriously’

Individuals should be regarded as individuals, not according to their membership in some abstract category.

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Dear Reader (Including my compatriots who are also struggling to find open cigar shops),

Because I had to, I watched Joe Biden’s appearance on today’s Morning Joe—and because I am still trying to figure out what I want to write about, I’ll start there. But I won’t tarry.

I thought Mika Brzezinski did a good job. I also wish she would change the spelling of her last name because I spent three minutes trying to spell it from memory. The spell checker at one point cried and just shouted, “Are you trying to spell the name of Billy Crystal’s character from Monsters, Inc.?”

I thought Biden did an okay job forcefully denying the charge, but if this Business Insider story is true then his campaign is a clown show. You don’t direct the entire press corps and every opposition researcher in the country to go check out the National Archives for the relevant evidence unless you’ve actually confirmed that’s where it would be. 

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  1. Avatar photo
    Man-Eating Cow

    Another thought struck me as I read this: Sex is really not some abstract category. It's pretty concrete, much more so than race or ethnicity.

    Unless you're a really radical feminist.

    So let me play the devil's advocate here for a moment.

    There is enough difference in psychology between men and women that it is possible it matters for some legal purposes. For example, I'm actually okay with the presumption in family court that, all other things being equal, the mother is the better custodial parent. (I acknowledge that the presumption may be too strong in some family courts and systematic injustices may take place as a result.) I think the evidence that women are fundamentally more honest than men is nonexistent, but let's go with the idea that it's theoretically possible, just for a moment.

    Doesn't that undercut the whole legal basis for treating women and men as equals?

    If we assert that women and men are significantly different in some respects, we open the door to the possibility that they are significantly different in other respects. It seems unlikely that the differences favor women in every case. (The assertion that women are superior to men in every way really ought to horrify us.) Maybe, I dunno, women don't belong in combat? As certain kinds of first responders? As leaders who must make hard decisions they know will hurt some individuals?

    I don't really believe that last one. (I've seen how brutal some women can be about a decision. Plus I was a witness to my own mother raising me.) I do think an awfully good case can be made that women don't belong in an infantry company.

    But where does it stop? In particularly, where does it stop with respect to evidentiary rules in court?

    Feminists really ought to think about this harder.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Man-Eating Cow

    The helmet on that Toto guy was weirdly reminiscent of a coronavirus.

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    Keith Francis

    This is why I appreciate The Dispatch. Good insight, and much for me to ponder. This, in tandem with your most recent Remnant podcast, were well worth my time. Thanks!

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    Jlenhikes

    I "literally" don't think I could survive the rest of the lockdown if Pippa gets chomped 😬😳😭

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  5. Scroop Moth

    “Believe women” conspicuously lacked an adjective of quantity, such as “many,” “most,” “or every.” The slogan commanded indeterminate credence. “Believe all women” is version 2.0, engineered by conservative wordsmiths to troll “the activist left” whenever a Democratic politician is accused of sexist behavior or worse.

    “Believe women” was useful as a corrective and open-ended precept. The mutation, “believe all women,” is a useless universal, a mere snare of logic. No, right wingers, I don’t admit that Blasey Ford was such a spider you can’t believe, weaving her web to deceive.

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    1. Scroop Moth

      “Believe women” does not predicate the believability of each assertion of every woman on the planet. It’s a precept, not a disjunctive judgement of relation in a book of logic that would require the accused to admit guilt. Taking a healthy maxim to an absurd conclusion is a bad-faith evasion of good medicine on the rationale that overdose is toxic. Not long ago, people (think Phyllis Schlafly) proclaimed that any woman who would leave her house to speak about the business of heaven or earth was not to be believed.

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      1. Avatar photo
        Mike from Jersey

        That word salad was delicious.

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        1. Scroop Moth

          You’re welcome, I hope it balances your diet!

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  6. linda

    The "take women seriously" mantra has always been silly. Reminds me of the McMartin daycare fiasco. At that time the feminists were burbling about how children were incapable of lying because the were pure. That's nuts because anyone who has had a child especially one with a imagination in overdrive knows that they lie freely and often. A four year old often swears to God they saw a dinosaur or a Man in Black in the front yard. A two year old will look you in the eyes and swear they didn't kick the dog when you saw it happen. Females do lie for all kinds of reasons as do men. I know this because I'm a woman and no fool. I have zero poor yous for people who bring sexual assault charges against a man after 27 yrs and only when he's a candidate for the presidency or a woman who brings up high school charges against a man who doesn't recall where it happened or when or has zero witnesses. Makes you think they might have ulterior motives. I'm not a Biden supporter by any means but I am also not a dirty pool supporter. Yes, he asked for it for siding with the feminists on Me Too. That makes him a hypocrite (shocking that politicians are hypocrites, I know) doesn't make him a sexual assaulter.

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  7. Adam Kaiser

    Not a NR subscriber but quick note on your Hollywood article link- I worked in Hollywood, in development a few years and while I’m not opposed to the idea in principle, it would be practically almost entirely unenforceable. Most CCP Hollywood influence is preemptive self-censorship. There’s little contact with the actual Chinese govt. The execs know what will and won’t fly overseas and just avoid what won’t. There’s no record of this, no documentation, at most it’s a quick conversation in the middle of an smoky unofficial writer/director meeting. We once scratched a ghost scene ourselves out because the CCP doesn’t like them, it’s not really something people think twice about. Obviously there needs to be more awareness but a law would be likely be greeted with a confused shrug and change nothing.

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  8. MeAgain

    Women, they’re just like cars, can’t live with em can’t live without em. Flounder from Animal House.

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    rlritt

    Totally agree with this piece. I have a big problem with women (a group I belong to) who come back 30 years later to accuse a man about to land an important political job of sexual assault. I was not a fan of Kavanaugh, but you can't come back 30 years later to complain about what a teenager did at a drunken party. The same with Reade. Biden ran 4 times for the senate and twice for VP and now you come forward? I ask what were you waiting for? This is clearly politically motivated just as Kavanaugh accusations were. Women as weapons is becoming a default tactic in politics.

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      Pat Riot

      Reade's case is full of holes and that is just one of them. The last news dump about the Reade case was timed perfectly with Trump's bleach remarks, which is pretty suspicious.

      The sad upshot about all of this is that it will be a *boon* for rapists everywhere since if everybody is a rapist then nobody is.

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  10. Avatar photo
    DougCLE

    I see motte-and-bailey arguing a lot when political views are being argued. In fact, it's a favorite tactic of left-leaning thinkers. (And before you get your knickers in a twist, the right has its own favorite underhanded tactics; this just isn't one of them.) But JG leaves out the most important part - once the confrontation is past and you walk away, the M&B fighter comes running back out into the courtyard, picking up exactly where he left off.

    Saying that #MeToo was only ever about taking women "seriously" - rather than that you should literally #BelieveAllWomen, as they still have on their bumper stickers - is a perfect example, as JG points out. But there are plenty of others: talk to the people promoting the GND, or to pro-abortion activists, or heck, spend 5 minutes talking to *any* Bernie Bro, and you will be absolutely *amazed* at just how little change they actually want.

    Their demands are just the tiniest, most rational, most logical tweaks to the status quo, such that one could not possibly imagine any rational person denying them. Until you start to walk away, upon which they go right back to screaming "Free College For Illegal Immigrants!" It's like the last 5 minutes didn't even happen.

    At that point, you have two choices. Since I already know that Choice 1 will literally be a replay of the previous 5 minutes, only this time ending with me being picked up for assault, I usually choose to just shake my head in disgust and keep walking.

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