Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Those Strong Conservative Women

In case you were wondering, all you women who aren't on the conservative side, your problem is that you're weak. That's what I heard.

It's important to understand your opponents so you can figure out how to argue with them and so you can see how they picture you. So maybe this will help us decipher "the conservative woman".
Strong women will identify with the Conservatives, wet noodles will vote for any lefty party that promises them eternal welfare. They don't care that their children will suffer, they have no self respect, and can't cope with life.

We're a little vague at this point as to what a "strong" woman is. This reeks of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. If a weak woman is found among conservatives, then she's not a real conservative. If a strong woman is found elsewhere, she's not really strong. If your mother raised the three of you after your alcoholic father beat her up and left town, she's still weak if she votes NDP.

"Strong" probably doesn't refer to physical strength, although that is hinted at. We'll get to that later. It's the rest of you women, the wet noodles, that I'm thinking about. Your devotion to social causes and the welfare of others is apparently a sign of weakness. The fact that infant mortality, life expectancy and other indicators are better in a society when we all take care of each other isn't a good thing, it's a sign of weakness. Your children will grow up with this social weakness and won't be able to cope [properly?] with life.

Of course, we wouldn't want you going away with the thought that conservative women are the Klingon matriarchs that the above paragraph implies, so we'll throw this in:
Conservative women help real people in real need, they don't write a paper about it.

More of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Conservative women only care about those who deserve their help. I wonder if Kimberly Rogers counts? The Mike Harris PCs didn't think so.

Maybe we'll go back to the beginning of the article. The blogger in question was apparently surprised to meet a woman who did things:
While her husband was working, she found a house and bought it. This lady was no shrinking violet. She did what was needed, and never looked back. She is a perfect example of how our country was born.

Ignoring for the moment the fact that women didn't have a vote when the country was born, we have the blogger's reaction to this woman who went and bought a house while her husband was working.

How much money does this anonymous couple have that one of the spouses could go off and buy a house while the other was working? I think we begin to understand, at this point, what "strong" means. It means "I have enough money to take care of myself". As well, we might point out that your mother is a weak, wet noodle if your family doesn't have enough money for her to go out and buy a house while her husband is at work. Additionally, just to belabor a point, is she allowed to go to work herself?

Now put this definition of strength (having enough money to buy houses without consultation) with the idea of charity (real people in real need) and you have a good idea what Hunter's definition of a Strong Conservative Women is: a woman with a rich husband and a discriminating sense of charity that probably doesn't include the unintentionally pregnant.

This is probably not the image that "Hunter" wished to project, but there it is. If you and your family don't have enough money to take care of all of your needs, you're weak. You're weak, your parents were weak (especially your mother) and you're raising weak children. You deserve your situation (inherent in your weakness) and are consequently not a "real person in real need."

Congratulations. We can now tell them apart.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bwahahaha! She admires a woman who purchased a house behind her husband's back while he was at work? And they call us feminists "castrating bitches".

Great post. You deglazed that pan beautifully.

Greg said...

It struck me as one of those back-patting, cheerleading sorts of things (by which I refer to Hunter's gleeful, undirected, empty rhetoric, not her, like, use of punctuation and unclear pronouns.)

Her post was apparently making the rounds, similar to that cheerleading, anti-immigrant, racist, pro-christian diatribe that people were falsely attributing to George Carlin. As it was making all the conservatives gleeful, it seemed deserving of a rebuttal.

Frankly, I prefer women with brains and independent thought whether they work or manage a household, but that's just me. I would prefer, however, not to be castrated. Call it a personal preference.