The Maladjusted Misogynist Movement: Rick Santorum and the Birth of a New Political Party

I had a very interesting discussion last week via e-mail with a former business acquaintance.  For the purposes of protecting this man’s privacy, I shall from here on out refer to him as “Tim.”  Tim had read my last piece wherein I mentioned Rick Santorum and his book It Takes a Family.  For reasons I still can not fully comprehend, Tim actually defended Santorum’s stance that “radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness.”

Obviously, Tim is not the first person I have ever spoken to that doesn’t like feminists.  I’ve known Tim for a few years and I had picked him to be a fairly liberal-minded guy.  I was wrong.  Like Rick Santorum, Tim’s problem is that despite physically living in the twenty-first century, the male figures in his family seem to have stopped evolving beyond the twelfth century.  Below is a brief excerpt from our e-mails to each other, with Tim’s words in bold, italicized type.

“Santorum’s a complete bozo, however, I actually do agree with his sentiment about the ‘radical feminists.’   I’ve actually read about the four women who were the most influential in this regard.   All were Jewish and represented a starkly different culture than had been celebrated in America up to that point.”

Tim, who were those four women?  Can you name them?  Lemme help you out, buddy.  There were in fact more than four women who were influential, and the feminist movement certainly had no ethnic/racial/national divisions.  Some of the most radical feminists I know are gentile women, Catholic nuns and female Episcopal priests.  Historically speaking, there were also many male feminists, men who fought for the rights of women.  Some people would argue that “feminism” is a misnomer.  In fact, feminists seek basic human rights, the ability for all people, regardless of gender, to pursue life, liberty and happiness.  As for the Jews having a “radically different culture,” this is the same terminology used by the Nazis in World War II.  They decided the German race needed to be “purified,” to rid itself of the Jewish pollutant.

At this point, I was beginning to become uncomfortable with the direction this conversation with “Tim” was heading, but he continued.

“As I’m sure you well know, the Tribe values the female in a very different way than Gentiles do.”

No, Tim…I don’t know that.  You’re using a typical rhetorical trick to get me to say I believe the way you do.  First of all, stop it….I’m much better at rhetorical tricks than you but, more importantly, I do not share your beliefs of anything you’ve said so far.  The truth is that people of Jewish descent value women far more than many gentile groups.

“These four women did a remarkable job of inspiring Gentile women to embrace their cultural ideas.  Pat them all on the back.  Bravo.”

Where’s your proof that Jewish women work more than gentile women?  It’s another trick to try to get me to agree with you.  By the way, Tim, please stop capitalizing the first letter in “gentiles.”  Contrary to what you may have learned from watching conspiracy-theory videos on YouTube, gentiles are not a distinct group with a specific religious/ethnic identity.  Like Rick Santorum, you’re setting up two opposing camps: Jewish women and gentile women.  Like Rick Santorum, you are trying to set up an “us” versus “them” comparison that is basically invalid.  Neither of you takes into account the economic realities of working women and the fact that, throughout history, all poor women had to work, regardless of their ethnicity.  The same holds true today.  You and your hero Rick Santorum assume that all these women are working because they “choose” to do so and that they have the option of staying at home and not working.  How ironic to have implied that ”choice” is available because ”choice” is the foundation of the feminist movement.

“Having said that, let’s consider the by-product of the gentile woman not being at home raising her children any longer.   Nearly every woman I know in my town not only has their kids go to public school but also enrolls them in ‘after school’ programs that will engage children until 6 p.m. when the moms of the world race from work to pick them up in time.  None of them cook for their kids because they get home at 6:15.  Instead, they race over to McDonald’s or some other fast-food chain, or just feed them SpaghettiOs and left over Halloween treats.  Then their kids have to study, eat quickly and get to bed to repeat this vicious cycle.”

Whoa!  Here again, Tim, you’re assuming that all these working women could choose otherwise.  I know of no town where “nearly every woman works.”  You are using a tired argument typically used against public education, “I’m paying for public school that ‘other people’ take advantage of.’”  If your kids need an after-school program, then you have to pay for it, but you and Rick Santorum would apparently prefer to have children walking the streets until their working mothers came home.  By the way, the only people who still feed their children SpaghettiOs are those who are extremely poor and have absolutely no other option.

“So really what I’m saying is that our kids are no longer raised by their mothers…rather, they are raised by the schools out of necessity.  And as you well know, our public education system is an absolute disaster and we’re creating generations of underachievers.  All the statistics in the world support me on this.  Remarkable achievement by those four feminists?  Yes, remarkable in how they sent generations of Gentile kids to the gutter.  I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true.  I’m no fan of their by-product.”

You are spouting a lot of what you think is “fact” here, Tim, but you’re lacking in any solid proof that what you say is true.  Are you advocating being home schooled?  Were you home schooled?  Public schools were started so that children could in fact secure a better education than was available from their immigrant, hard-working parents.  What you have done Tim, is ignore the fact that many women have to work.  What feminism did was give women the opportunity to do so by providing support in the public as well as the private sector.  It helped open up jobs to those who needed them and, at the same time, provided work for those who made the “choice” to work.  You are also ignoring the fact that feminism helped many women who were single either by choice or by accident.  You and your hero Santorum lump all women into a group that is seen only in the clearly affluent town in which you live.  You assume that all women are married and have the “choice” to work or not.  This is simply not the case.

So, where do you go from here, Tim?  Rick Santorum is never gonn’a get nominated by the GOP in August, so he needs to start a third party to represent the “family values” you both espouse.  Come to think of it, Santorum needs to choose a running mate.  May I suggest that you offer to be his vice president in this newly formed political party?  I’ve even thought up a name for your party: the Maladjusted Misogynist Movement.  I won’t vote for you, but I’m sure somebody will.