Quick follow up on that post about Jonah Goldberg, who wishes (coughthirdworldcough) women could have a little more power so they could “civilize” their men.

Goldberg actually has it exactly backwards. It’s not that women civilize men, it’s that oppressing women uncivilizes us.

When men have the idea that we automatically have dominion over half of humanity an obvious question becomes “why not have dominion over the rest?” And when men believe we can automatically ignore the agency of half of humanity, rob them of their power, and use them as objects of our own convenience or gratification it’s a quick leap to “why not make similar use of all of humanity?”

Where Goldberg goes wrong is he thinks that just giving women enough power to better withhold sex creates civilization. Instead it’s that taking away any power from women as a class makes us all uncivilized.

And once you get that it’s easy to see how, in this case, his plea to give women a little bit of power so that they can trade sex instead of just having it taken from them, is completely anti-feminist. And uncivilized.