Gender equality? Not so fast, say today’s conservatives. Despite the months of telling women prior to the election that there are no roadblocks for being female, that a woman can have access to any opportunity a man can have, and that there are no opportunity differences between the sexes, now that no one needs a vote for anything it appears that men and women aren’t that equal at all.
In fact, it turns out there are a number of places where conservatives believe women probably just don’t belong at all. The following are just four places they think women should avoid to keep men comfortable, stop the scourge of spreading “feminism” or just keep themselves all around safe.
1) College. No really, there are way, WAY too many women in college. And you know what that leads to? Sexual assault. Oh, sorry, just “sex scandals” as conservative icon Phylis Schlafly says. In a recent column she bemoaned women taking over the majority of college slots, saying that, “The imbalance of far more women than men at colleges has been a factor in the various sex scandals that have made news in the last couple of years,” because women are “competing” for men, resulting in “more casual hookups that are dead-end encounters with no future and no real romantic relationships.” Schlafly says the issue could be fixed by prioritizing men in applications, removing student aid and encouraging more male sports that the feminists apparently yanked.
One thing that could help even more? Talk to boys and men about consent. According to a North Dakota survey, one in three college males would rape a woman if they thought they could get away with it. Explain to them that non-consensual sex is actually rape? That number drops drastically.
2) The church. Speaking of encroaching feminism, did you hear the one about how women are destroying the church? Yes, that’s what Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke told a religious magazine in an interview, where he bemoaned the “feminization” of the church and claimed it was responsible for everything from lack of altar boys to priest pedophilia. “Apart from the priest, the sanctuary has become full of women,” Burke said in his interview. ”The activities in the parish and even the liturgy have been influenced by women and become so feminine in many places that men do not want to get involved. Men are often reluctant to become active in the Church. The feminized environment and the lack of the Church’s effort to engage men has led many men to simply opt out.”
3) The “Opportunity for All” summit. Looks like conference organizers should have called it the “Opportunity for Men” summit. According to Laura Bassett at the Huffington Post, the Heritage Foundation’s next conservative conference forgot to book any female speakers. “The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that helps to shape the policies and ideas of the Republican Party, invited a large group of Republican lawmakers to be speakers and panelists at its ‘Opportunity for All’ policy summit on Monday and Tuesday. That list includes Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Mike Lee (Utah), as well as 20 male congressmen,” writes Bassett. “The panel discussion topics range from controlling government spending and free market energy solutions to abortion policy and gay marriage. Even the ‘Pro-Life Agenda’ panel has only male speakers: Reps. Chris Smith (N.J.) and Mark Meadows (N.C.). None of the four women senators and 19 congresswomen from the Republican Party is participating in the summit.” Perhaps the GOP is finally admitting their agenda doesn’t leave a lot of opportunities open for women?
4) The Senate pool. Speaking of women in Congress not being welcome in places, it has long been known that there hasn’t been much in the way of gender parity in the Capitol. Now, however, we have a glimpse into where female politicians feared to tread. According to Politico, women always had lesser resources than their male counterparts, and in some cases they were banned from areas outright, just so male Congress members were “comfortable.”
“Kay Hagan just wanted to swim. It was late 2008, and the Democrat was newly arrived on Capitol Hill as North Carolina’s junior senator-elect. But Hagan was told that the Senate pool was males-only. Why? Because some of the male senators liked to swim naked,” reports Politico. “It took an intervention by Senator Chuck Schumer, head of the Rules Committee, to put a stop to the practice, but even then ‘it was a fight,’ remembers pollster Celinda Lake, who heard about the incident when the pool revolt was the talk among Washington women. The pool wasn’t the only Senate facility apparently stuck in the Dark Ages. The restroom closest to the Senate floor that was set aside for women senators had only two stalls. By 2013, with 20 women in the Senate, restroom traffic jams were commonplace, forcing some of the female senators to traipse to a first-floor restroom far from the chamber. Two additional stalls, an extra sink and more storage space were added in the fall of 2013, after several female senators raised the issue publicly.”
If female lawmakers are still struggling this badly for equality, no wonder the rest of the women in the country are having such a hard time, too.
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