But What About the MEN??!?!?!?

WaPo columnist Kathleen Parker--yes, that Kathleen Parker--has gone and written another column extolling male privilege, this time in the form of a piece blasting Obama for creating the White House Council on Women and Girls. Or, as Parker would have it, getting pussywhipped by the nagging laydees:

With a flick of his pen, President Obama finally laid to rest Freud's most famous question and iterated one of man's hardest-learned lessons: Women want what women want.

And the wise man sayeth: "Yes, dear."

Zing! Those crazy women, with their menses and their mood swings and their Cathy cartoons and their chocolate cravings, always hen-pecking men over silly stuff like equality of pay and opportunities! Why, next thing you know, they'll be demanding higher allowances, the right to own property, and autonomy over their own reproductive organs! Stop them before they nag their way to equal rights!

But Parker isn't unreasonable:

There's little profit in criticizing a move to make life better for the fairer sex.

Reality check: As much as I'd like a White House office dedicated to making my life more pleasant-- the White House Council for Massages, Martinis, and Mind-Blowing Orgasms has a nice ring to it--that's not what the White House Council on Women and Girls is about. According to the White House--which we can maybe agree is in a position to know?--the new agency is actually aimed at "addressing the challenges confronted by women of all ages."

But of course, Parker doesn't think women have any challenges. Nope, they're just using their feminine wiles to trick Obama into giving them extra candy and privileges:

Still, one does have to suppress a chortle as we pretend that the First Father's rescue of damsels in distress is not an act of paternalistic magnanimity. Chivalrous, even.

But enough about the ladies. What about the MENZ?!?!?!

And surely the president can't be ignorant of the fact that boys in this country are in far graver danger than girls in nearly every measurable way.

Where's the White House Council on Men and Boys? Okay, let men fend for themselves. But boys really do need our attention, not only for themselves but also for the girls who will be their wives (we hope) someday. We do still hope that boys and girls grow up to marry, don't we? Preferably before procreating?

OK. "Boy crisis"? debunked, debunked, debunked, debunked.

Leaving aside Parker's weird "hope that boys and girls grow up to marry" (I don't have kids, but if I ever do, I just hope they end up happy--married, domestic partnered, happily alone, whatevs), this obsessive be-all-end-all focus on boys and men is just... weird.

And, sorry to point out the blindingly obvious, but here goes: The need for a special agency focusing on women's and girl's needs is a product of hundreds of years of second-class citizenship in which women and girls have been denied opportunities, subjected to wildly different expectations than boys and men, and told we have to choose between a fulfilling home life and a fulfilling career (with the clear implication that only selfish bitches choose the latter). At the same time, we're told that we make less not because of a structural wage gap, but because of our "choices"--if we choose diapers and a "fulfilling" part-time job over the career track, well, that was our decision.

It takes a deeply delusional person to believe, as Parker clearly does, that the mere creation of a token (if symbolically important) new agency dedicated to addressing centuries of sexism is "advancing the false notion that girls are a special class of people deserving special treatment." You might assume that Parker believes that making any distinction among "classes of people" is advancing a "false notion" that everybody doesn't have the exact same opportunities. Except, of course, for men, who are apparently so threatened by women's advancement that they deserve special emphasis--"The White House Council Obama Forgot," as Parker's subhead puts it --a strangely pitiful portrait of American manhood from a woman so obviously obsessed with masculinity.