Sep 12
11
Identity politics and Quebec’s new female Premier
From ChristianGovernance eletter, Sept. 8, 2012:
Only days after Barbara Kay’s excellent article on the absurdity of Identity Politics ideology in Canadian universities (you’ll find the link to that article in our last eletter), the reliably feminist Ottawa Citizen editor Elizabeth Payne embarrasses herself with a column the paper titles, “Everyone benefits from women’s representation in politics.” (It’s about Pauline Marois becoming Quebec’s first female premier.) These days, a statement like that is considered self-evident. Nobody would dare say anything critical about a statement like that. OK, almost nobody. But that’s mostly because they have been brainwashed in Identity Politics so they don’t recognize it when they see it. When I see a statement like that, the first question that comes to mind is, “Why? Do all women think alike?”. Hey, did you know all Blacks think alike! So do all blondes. There might be a bit more diversity of thought among pygmies. But definitely, all white Protestant guys living on waterfront property think alike. Good thing we have women in politics, otherwise how on earth would people with long hair feel represented??? I would be all for more men in politics who thought like Margaret Thatcher and Michele Bachman. Michelle Obama, not so much! Of course some Humanists think we should have all children in common, and all wives in common – once you’ve seen one wife, you’ve seen them all, I guess – so we might as well dissolve all differences of thought between women as well. All we care about is that she’s a she, then we’re at peace because somehow the planets have aligned, yin’s become yan, karma’s settled and we’ve made interplanetary contact with the Beatles… The Ottawa Citizen’s good for something after all…
OK, enough of my rhetorical flourish. Ms. Payne actually makes this very point, that not all women think alike: “And that is the point about women in politics – they don’t all bring the same ideas or better ideas to the table.” But she immediately follows this with: “but they do bring representative voices of half the population. Without adequate representation of women, as well as men, the pool from which we draw politicians, ideas and inspirations is shallow.” Thankfully for Ms. Payne, it’s likely that less than 1% of her readers have taken lessons in logic, so they won’t pick up on the incoherence of these comments. Her leftist readers will just walk away with the emotional, political “sense” of them warming the cockles of their hearts. But we’re not finished because Ms. Payne does make mention of the ONE GRAND EXCEPTION: “there is one thing that many of them have in common – a clear understanding of the importance of reproductive rights.” Women don’t all think the same way on all issues, but they do on abortion. No wait… She immediately follows that statement with: “While women are on both sides of the abortion debate, …”. So women don’t actually all think the same way on abortion! So why the article in the first place? She concludes: “Polarization is the enemy of reasonable debate and intelligent policy. There are enough polarizing issues in politics – as we have seen in the Quebec election. The full participation of women in public life should not be one of them.” Fine, but who is doing the polarizing? She just finished noting that five provincial leaders (including Nunavut Territory) are women, all with seemingly different political philosophies and beliefs. So Canadians don’t seem to be polarized on this issue. And she starts off her article by noting that the fact that Ms. Marois was a woman hasn’t been an item of discussion in the media. So even the media isn’t promoting polarization on this issue for now. So why did Ms. Payne write this illogical piece of shallow, irrational, feminist boilerplate? Perhaps because she’s a feminist boiler and she’s boiling because she can’t get anybody interested these days in feminist ideology. What a sorry sight…