MEPs want TV regulators in the EU to set guidelines which would see the end of anything deemed to portray women as sex objects or reinforce gender stereotypes.

[...] The new rules come in a report by the EU’s women’s rights committee.

Swedish MEP Eva-Britt Svensson urged Britain and other members to use existing equality, sexism and discrimination laws to control advertising.

She wants regulatory bodies set up to monitor ads and introduce a “zero-tolerance” policy against “sexist insults or degrading images”.

[...] Swedish MEP Eva-Britt Svensson urged Britain and other members to use existing equality, sexism and discrimination laws to control advertising.

She wants regulatory bodies set up to monitor ads and introduce a “zero-tolerance” policy against “sexist insults or degrading images”.

Ms Svensson said: “Gender stereotyping in advertising straitjackets women, men, girls and boys by restricting individuals to predetermined and artificial roles that are often degrading, humiliating and dumbed down for both sexes.”

To be fair, it’s probably just the yapping of an annoying woman bureaucrat in the world’s most annoying bureaucracy. The European Union is a frightening thing to behold, George Orwell’s 1984 practically come to life, and a sample of the nanny state that America must never allow (yes, I’m looking at you, Obama and Democrats).

I’ll have to do a little research, but I’m dying to know what the EU’s women’s rights committee has to say about the Islamic misogynists in Europe’s midst, and the practices of forced marriages and the like.

This is pure Rush Limbaugh material. My gut tells me that this suggestion will go nowhere. Unless the EU determines that Israeli companies are behind the sexist advertising. Then, look out. It’ll be adopted in a heartbeat.

For the post-1960s, post-socialist left, the single most important breakthrough has been the alliance between modern feminism and the sexual revolution. This was far from inevitable. Up until around 1960, attempts at sexual liberation were resisted by most educated women. In the wake of the success of Playboy and other mass-circulation pornographic magazines in the 1950s, men were depicted as the initiators and main beneficiaries of sexual liberation, women as intolerant of promiscuity as well as potential victims of predatory “liberated” men.

With the introduction of the Pill around 1960, things abruptly began to change. Fears of overpopulation legitimated a contraceptive ethic throughout middle-class society in North America, Europe, Japan, and the Soviet bloc.

[...] The fact that the Pill was taken only by women gave them a greater feeling of control over their sexual activity and eroded their social and psychological resistance to premarital sex. “No fault” divorce, a term borrowed from the field of auto insurance, in reality amounted to unilateral divorce and began to undermine the idea of marriage as a binding mutual contract oriented toward the procreation and nurturing of children. Contrary to nearly every prediction, the ubiquity of far more reliable methods of contraception and the growing ideological separation of sex from reproduction, coincided with a huge increase in unwed pregnancies.

So let’s see. Jeffrey Bell says that prior to the 1960s, women were prim, proper, and properly in fear of repercussions of sex outside “proper” channels, a.k.a., the marriage bed. Prior to the 1960s, the fear of overpopulation stopped educated women (note the elitism of the thought that uneducated women are too stupid to care about the earth having too many people on it) from having premarital sex. Prior to the 1960s, women didn’t do things like, say, have affairs with married men, have sex with their fiancé before marriage (or six-month-after-the-honeymoon babies, no, that never occurred before the 1960s), sex in high school (shyeah, right), sex with unmarried men, or, well, I guess “educated” women simply didn’t have sex until the clock struck twelve on the wedding night. At least, in Jeffrey Bell’s world, that’s what happened.

Then along came The Pill, that awful, awful object that suddenly turned educated women from virtuous, moral, guardians of chastity (or frigid bitches, depending on the point of view of the disappointed suitor) into wanton whores, just like those uneducated masses who never gave a thought to the consequences of having sex. It destroyed the idea of marriage, because let’s face it, prior to 1960, no one ever had sex outside of marriage. And it gave people an excuse to have children out of wedlock. It’s almost as if the devil himself took hold of those virtuous, educated women, forced The Pill down their throats, and then waited for the aphrodisiac effect of being to have sex without pregnancy.

The fact that the Pill was taken only by women gave them a greater feeling of control over their sexual activity and eroded their social and psychological resistance to premarital sex.

Spare me from the sexist, condescending ignorance of men like Bell. It isn’t the fact that the Pill is taken only by women that gives women a “feeling” of control over their sexual activity. Taking the Pill does give women control—over their reproductive ability. It does give women control over their sexual activity. It allows women to decide how many children they want, and when they’d like to have them. It eroded our “social and psychological resistance to premarital sex”? Really? It didn’t become popular because men and women are at the height of their sexual activity in their teens and twenties, and women didn’t necessarily wanted to start families that young anymore if they didn’t have to? Are you sure about that?

The thing that bothers me the most about conservative analysis of feminism is how they put all the blame for sexuality on the women’s shoulders, and utterly ignore that part of the formula which requires a male partner in order to achieve potential childbirth. If society’s mores are so important, why aren’t men refusing to have sex with the wicked women who ingest the Pill and want to go for it?

Funny how that never seems to come up in these discussions. Men refusing to have premarital sex because they don’t want to have children, or because it’s socially unacceptable. But it’s not socially unacceptable for men, really. Only for women. Is anyone blaming the boy that got Bristol Palin pregnant, or are they all, as always, thinking it was her fault for having unprotected sex with him?

Put the blame for the changing of social mores square on the shoulders where it belongs: On both genders, right and left. The right is no more moral than the left. How many times have you heard conservative men utter a variant of this: “I loved going to protests in the sixties/seventies/eighties. You could always get laid if you told chicks you were against the war/Reagan/nukes.”

These same men are now blaming the “moral breakdown of society” on the women they had sex with, while not taking any responsibility for their part in that partnership. The hypocrisy factor is so high here, I can’t even quantify it. This is why I will always be a feminist. And I will never consider that word an insult.

Sarah Palin is a feminist, too, and a conservative. How much you want to bet that she and Todd didn’t wait until the wedding night? But let’s blame that on Sarah’s eroded social and psychological resistance to premarital sex due to women taking the Pill starting in the 1960s. Because Jeffrey Bell says so, that’s why.

Any idiot can get a blog on DKos. And this ridiculous accusation is proof that many idiots do.

Oh, wait. That was Andrew Sullivan’s link.

Here’s the Daily Kos moron’s blog.

These unerring detectives have Photographic! Evidence! that will shock you!!

And they’ve been slammed to the mat by—facts.

Unless Bristol was pregnant for fourteen months, the baby is Sarah Palin’s. And it’s been confirmed by Kos Kiddie “Red Pen”:

Unless someone has counter evidence, we can drop this crap now. Yes, there are still some interesting questions, such as why she flew to Dallas and back when she was this pregnant, and why the Alaska Airlines crewmembers insisted that she was not visibly pregnant on the flight. Nevertheless, until this photo is debunked, we look stupid pushing this rumor.

That is all.

Morons. Sexist, misogynist sons of bitches. STUPID sexist, misogynist sons of bitches.

Way to prove how progessive you are, lefties. Way to keep women wanting to vote for your candidate. Just keep on slamming Sarah at every opportunity, sinking lower and lower as you go, and you will drive me firmly into the arms of the right. You’ve already lost me for two Presidential elections. That’s right, you lost a feminist who was a lifelong Democratic voter. At this rate, you will never get me back.

Update: Sarah Palin’s daughter is pregnant. Doesn’t change a word I wrote in this post.

“If 18 million votes is not enough, what does it take in the Democratic Party to get a woman on the ticket?”

Time was, when the two top candidates were in a statistical tie, no one was “anointed.” They fought it out on the floor of the convention, and then the loser became the VP candidate.

Then again, this is also the fault of the arcane rules the Dems chose so that they could take the choice away from the voters and put it back into career politicians’ hands (read: Superdelegates). One person, one vote? Not for them.

What people don’t understand when they fling around the easy label of “identity politics” is that like it or not, identity politics exist. When we see the sexist and misogynist comments on blogs and online news sites, we tend to get angry. It’s something that comes up every single time. I have never seen a discussion on any kind of women’s issue that doesn’t devolve into sexism and/or misogyny. Or, worst of all, the pretense that white males are being discriminated against as much as, if not more than, women and minorities. Shyeah. How many white male Senators are there again? How many female and minority candidates for VP and president have there been again?

But I’m getting off the point. The point is, the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain’s VP underlines the perception that women were slighted, yet again, by the Democrats. And that isn’t really what the Democrats want.

As I said, I was going to vote for McCain anyway. The addition of Palin has made me want to pay attention for the rest of the campaign. And the reaction from the Democrats and progressives?

Despicable.

I am a died-in-the-wool Democrat, but when Obama turned his ass to Hillary and called her “sweetie,” I didn’t know what to do. I thought that I would write Hillary’s name in.

But McCain has given me a choice. While I disagree with most all of their policies (except for the honesty and integrity part), I’m voting for Sarah.

Can you start a women for Sarah group? That I’d like to join and work for!

Really. You cannot overestimate the negative effect that the naked sexism and disrespect shown towards Hillary during this campaign has had on women. I expect to be getting more emails like this as the sexism lands on Sarah Palin as well (and of course, it already has). Witness the comments over at John Cole’s Balloon Juice, a site where the reading comprehension is so great that the commenter who linked me there called me a Hillary voter. (Shyeah.)

Ninerdave Says:

She looks like a stripper in teachers garb. I keep expecting her to rip off her glasses and grab a pole.

And then there’s this charmer:

r€nato Says:

this pick just REEKS of desperation. I can’t wait to see Biden wipe the floor with her in the Veep debates.

And yes it is creepy to see old man McCain standing next to a cute chick 30 years his junior.

Even creepier when you remember that McCain’s second wife, Cindy Hensley McCain, is 18 years his junior.

I think the Obama campaign should definitely consider pushing an undercover ‘McCain digs chicks young enough to be his daughter’ meme.

I mean, great for the old guy that he can get young chicks… everyone else pretty much thinks it’s creepy.

Or this.

AkaDad Says:

When I think of Palin, I’m thinking “Drill Here Drill Now.”

You stay classy, progressive Democrats. And try to wonder why women are unhappy with your party these days.

You know, I always hated Cole’s site. This garbage reminds me why.