SelwynDuke.com

Women Vs. Men: Who Really are Better Drivers?

By Selwyn Duke

“Women drivers!” It’s a road refrain oft uttered by men. On the other hand, in this age of statistics it’s typically countered with the claim that men are actually involved in more accidents. And scientific data is very compelling. But what is the truth?

Speaking of science, a recently issued study found that “women are twice as likely to hit the gas by mistake.” I witnessed an example of this myself years ago. Emerging from a former workplace one day, I found an automobile wedged on a concrete parking stop; the front tires were dangling over it helplessly, which matched the way the driver, a gal of approximately 22, was looking on. Of course, I also know of a case in which a fellow did the same thing. He was a 12-year-old boy who, after being allowed by his parents to pull the family car into the garage, provided some extra ventilation. 

This is a good reason why you shouldn’t send a boy to do a man’s job, but should driving really be a woman’s job? If we’re to believe standard reportage, we might certainly think so.

Read the rest here.

Sex-selective Abortions and the Anti-choice People Who Oppose Them

By Selwyn Duke

It seems that all abortion is equal.

But some varieties are more equal than others.

In Britain, where even Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher was iron-hearted enough to vote for abortion, authorities have found a type of abortion they will not abide: that based on sex.

While such abortions have long been illegal in the U.K., an undercover investigation by the Daily Telegraph found abortionists willing to perform them at three of nine abortion mills investigated. Writes the paper, “Doctors at British clinics have been secretly filmed agreeing to terminate foetuses purely because they are either male or female. Clinicians admitted they were prepared to falsify paperwork to arrange the abortions even though it is illegal to conduct such ‘sex-selection’ procedures.”

The paper cites two examples — more information will be released tomorrow — one involving a woman who didn’t want her girl for “social reasons” and another who wanted to kill her unborn boy because she “already had a son.” 

Read the rest here.

When Conservatives Wax Liberal: Is Sex a Qualification?

By Selwyn Duke

Is it a conservative position that only women are qualified to comment on abortion?  A writer named Leann Horrocks certainly seems to think so.

In an American Thinker piece titled, "Contraception, the New Useful Passion," Horrocks does make some good points about how the left could turn the birth-control issue to its advantage and expand contraception to include even abortion.  Yet she also makes this claim:

"As a woman, I am qualified to state the following very clearly: there is no issue less suited to public discussion than abortion.  Like it or not, it is a personal decision."

“Gender-neutral” Childrearing: When a Sexual Hang-up Leads to Child Abuse

By Selwyn Duke

First there was “Pop” in Sweden, then “Storm” in Canada. Now out of Britain comes Sasha, a boy, we hear, who is being raised by his parents in a “sex-neutral” fashion. And this isn’t just your modernistic grandmother’s neutrality, where she didn’t want to push toy guns and trucks on her son. Sasha’s parents, Beck Laxton and “partner,” as he’s described, Kieran Cooper, are going the full feminist monty. 

On Sasha’s birth announcement, there was no indication of sex; and for years Laxton wouldn’t use the pronoun “he” when referring to him on her blog, but instead just indentified him as “the infant.” She explained why in an interview with the Cambridge News, stating, “I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping. Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?” Therefore, writes Piper Weiss at Shine:

Sasha dresses in clothes he likes — be it a hand-me-downs [sic] from his sister or his brother. The big no-no's are hyper-masculine outfits like skull-print shirts and cargo pants. In one photo, sent to friends and family, Sasha's dressed in a shiny pink girl's swimsuit. "Children like sparkly things," says Beck. "And if someone thought Sasha was a girl because he was wearing a pink swimming costume, then what effect would that have?"

Laxton clearly doesn’t know — and doesn’t seem to care. After all, writes Weiss, “[Laxton is] open to her son pursing any career or sexual preference he chooses….” Yes, well, as long as, I suppose, it’s not “hyper-masculine.” This brings me to my first point.

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The Security Sex

By Selwyn Duke

We have all heard about the sex gap in voting patterns.  This is the phenomenon whereby, in every election, women are far more likely to support liberal candidates than men are.  For instance, in 1996, Bill Clinton captured 54 percent of the women’s vote but only 43 percent of the men’s.  And in subsequent elections, the male-female gap has been as follows: in 2000, Al Gore, 42-54; in 2004, John Kerry, 41-51; and in 2008, Barack Obama, 49-56.  In fact, even in the watershed election of 2010, during which we heard about the rise of the conservative woman, the fairer sex favored Democrats by 1 point, 49 to 48.  The Republican victories were attributable to a sex gap (I don’t use the word “gender”) that was as wide as ever, ranging from 4 to 19 points.

Desexing Children: The Acceptable Abuse

By Selwyn Duke

“We've decided not to share Storm's sex for now — a tribute to freedom and choice in place of limitation, a stand up to what the world could become in Storm's lifetime (a more progressive place? ...).” So wrote parents David Stocker and Kathy Witterick after the birth of their third child, who they really did name “Storm.”

This isn’t the first story about parents who don’t want their children to be influenced by others’ sex-role expectations. In 2009, a Swedish couple, citing the feminist philosophy stating that “gender is a social construction,” refused to reveal the sex of their 2 ½-year-old child “Pop” (I have it on good authority, from Snap and Crackle, that it’s a boy).

Witterick says her inspiration came from “X: A Fabulous Child's Story,” a fictional account of a character who hides his biological sex from others. Well, we can only be thankful that she didn’t read a story about Carthaginian infant sacrifice.

Read the rest here.

Barack Obama’s Paycheck Unfairness Act

By Selwyn Duke

If you’re a stay-at-home mom, I don’t think you’ll like a policy that makes it harder for your husband to support your family. Yet Barack Obama is advocating just such a policy — it’s called the “Paycheck Fairness Act” (PFA).

While pushing the legislation in a radio address this past Saturday, Obama said, “Today, women still earn on average only about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns. That’s a huge discrepancy.” It certainly is, and the implication is that it’s a function of discrimination. But is this true?

Read the rest here.

Wrestling with Morality: Boys vs. Girls on the Mat

By Selwyn Duke

Imagine that you’re a young adolescent boy.  Like many your age, you’re shy around girls, perhaps to the point at which even talking to one might make your heart race.  You also like sports, so you go out for your school’s wrestling team.  Then, lo and behold, you’re at a meet, and something hits you like a load of bricks.

Your opponent is going to be a girl. 

You’re going to have to grapple with her.  In front of spectators.  Touching—and being touched in—intimate places.

The Feminocracy: Phony Rape Claims against Julian Assange

By Selwyn Duke

You can believe me when I say that I have no affection for Julian Assange. It’s clear that he’s a self-centered publicity seeker who, in grand leftist style, will subordinate the good of others to his own ambitions. But this doesn’t mean I’m incapable of judging him fairly, and, frankly, I’ve never heard anything more preposterous than the “rape” charges currently leveled against him.

Here’s a thumbnail version of the story that was presented in The Daily Mail: On August 11, Assange arrived in Stockholm, Sweden to give a speech at a seminar hosted by the left-wing Brotherhood Movement. His contact person — a woman the newspaper will identify only as “Sarah” (owing to ongoing legal proceedings) — had invited him to stay in her Stockholm apartment, and, you guessed it, they ended up sleeping together. Unbeknownst to Sarah at the time, however, Assange had already slept with another, much younger leftist admirer the Mail calls “Jessica.”

Jessica was worried, however. Because Assange refused to wear a condom, she was concerned she might be pregnant or have contracted a disease. Seeking an ear to bend, she placed a phone call to Sarah, who, as luck (or bad luck, from Assange’s perspective) would have it, she happened to have met during the Brotherhood Movement meeting. The women ended up comparing notes and realized they had been two-timed. That’s when the trouble began.

Read the rest here.

Obama’s Race to the Bottom: Punish Schoolchildren by Racial Quota

By Selwyn Duke

Last year I wrote about a Tucson Unified School District social engineering plan that had the effect of meting out punishment based on racial quota. The school board had insisted, reported Arizona Republic’s Doug MacEachern, “that its schools reduce its suspensions and/or expulsions of minority students to the point that the data reflect ‘no ethnic/racial disparities.’” (It wasn’t reported whether the students cooperated and started committing infractions based on racial quota.) It’s the kind of thing that, though outrageous, you might expect from a fairly large city with a leftist government.

But now, with a big Windy City leftist in the White House, this plan is going national. As University of Illinois-Urbana Professor of Political Science-Emeritus Robert Weissberg writes:

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