In his Monday column, Stossel discusses job discrimination against pregnant women and quotes Carrie Lukas of the right wing Independent Women’s Forum (one of the countless right-wing women’s group that believes women’s place is in the home, except for themselves) explaining why laws against discrimination are a bad thing: “All of a sudden, a potential employer is looking at me and thinking ‘She just might turn around and sue us.’ That makes it less likely that I’m going to get hired.’”

In the first place, why use Lukas as a source? She’s not a labor law expert nor does her bio at IWF show any particular expertise in this. My guess is, because she’s a conservative guaranteed to argue in favor of employers’ right to fire women while creating the illusion—since she’s a woman—that sexism can’t be an issue.

In the second place, if employers aren’t planning to fire or demote pregnant women, why would they have to worry?

And how does Lukas know anti-discrimination laws make things worse? True, employers wouldn’t be worried about lawsuits, but they’d be worrying about insurance costs, or simply deciding that pregnant woman have no business in the workplace. Does she have any actual evidence?

I remember reading an interview with Stossel where he whined about how even though he’s a libertarian, neither conservative nor liberal, those unreasonable liberals always get offended at him. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that judging by what he writes, he’s pretty much a conservative.

A discussion on dissenting justice of how Scalia’s criticizing or getting tough with attorneys is written up very differently from Sotomayor.

From libertarian Peter Thiel: “The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

Well, America’s still a democracy, and we’re still capitalist (not pure unregulated capitalism, but certainly capitalist) so that’s pretty much nonsense.

But what’s really striking is that in Thiel’s eyes, women voters make it impossible to have optimism about politics (they and the welfare beneficiaries are presumably why he also says “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”). While he didn’t spell it out further, this sounds like a variant of an idea that’s been floating around for several years: Nanny State Government exists because women want someone to take care of them, so they vote for welfare programs, big government and against libertarians.

In the first place “A, then B,” does not mean “A causes B.” Saying that women got the vote, then government got big is like saying that after Nixon became president, the divorce rate skyrocketed (which it did). There’s no connection.

In the second place, since women began voting, we’ve had a government that’s actually become less intrusive and less nannyish. Jim Crow is dead. Laws against interracial marriage are dead. Government can no longer tell married couples not to use birth control. Homosexuality is no longer illegal and in some states gays can even marry.

Unlike Thiel, I don’t assume that’s the direct result of women voting. But I do think it means democracy and freedom can coexist.

The Afghanistan government has shelved that law that would have authorized spousal rape and banned women leaving the home without their husband’s approval (among other repressive measures). Faced with a widespread international outcry (including the British and US governments), the government says the law has been put on hold and will be reviewed.

I’d assumed nobody in power would make a fuss about this. I’m glad I was wrong.

National Review’s Kathryn Lopez has a simple explanation for why a number of teenage girls blame Rihanna for her boyfriend allegedly beating her up: Feminism made them think that way.

“What has happened — and what Rihanna and Chris have to do with Gloria and us — is that by inventing oppression where there is none and remaking woman in man’s image, as the sexual and feminist revolutions have done, we’ve confused everyone. The reaction those kids had was unnatural. It’s natural for us to expect men to protect women, and for women to expect some level of physical protection. But in post-modern America, those natural gender roles have been beaten by academics and political rhetoric and the occasional modern woman being offended by having a door opened for her. The result is confusion. …
But while feminists whine about false pay gaps and oppression that doesn’t exist, we ignore the mess that we’ve created in rejecting the fact that there is good in nature and tradition. We’ve so confused ourselves that now many teenagers in Boston are excusing Chris Brown. Why wouldn’t they? He and Rihanna are equal, and we expect no more from men — in fact, we’ve conditioned a generation or two now to expect less.”

Of course, the flaws in this logic are that feminists have done a lot more to criticize domestic abuse than NRO’s staff, and also to publicize and point out, over and over, that it’s not the woman’s fault. And that blaming the victim is an attitude that predates the current wave of feminism. And that wife-beating most definitely took place back when “natural gender roles” went unquestioned—though Lopez may be able to fool herself otherwise, since it didn’t get half the publicity or attention it does now.

Spousal abuse has never been about confusion of gender roles. It’s been about violence, caused by a great many things, but not feminism. And anyone who interprets “women can stand on their own without a man to protect her” as saying “If a woman gets abused, it’s her own fault” badly needs to make better use of their brains.