Via anthropologist, paleontologist, and Neanderthal expert John Hawks' regular "Neanderthal anti-defamation files" feature, media diva Sarah Palin said of aspiring teabagger Presidential candidate Rick (man-on-dog) Santorum

Why do they have to bring poor Neandertals into it?

...

"I will not call him the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal," Palin continued. "I'll let his wife call him that instead."

Oh, well, this is so easy a caveman could do it.

Source: john hawks weblog

First of all, it's always funny to be reminded that over-the-top doth-protest-too-much homophobic conservative Republicans are sometimes married to members of the opposite sex.  Complete and total bias on my part, I know.  But that really was my gut response: "Rick Santorum is married?" Not that there's anything wrong with that.  Nor even anything implausible about it.  I'm just more used to the Ted Haggard / Jim Baker / Larry Craig / Fred Phelps / Jim West / George Alan Rekers / Richard Curtis / Mark Foley / Brent Parker / Matthew Glavin / Bruce Barclay / Glenn Murphy / Eddie Long / Troy King / David Dreier / Roy Ashburn / Ed Schrock / Jeff Gannon / Terry Dolan model of Republican homophobia.

Second of all, though, Palin was (for once) lashing out at Santorum in a perfectly appropriate fashion.  Columnist Ruth Marcus puts the seemingly Neanderthalist non-sequeteur in context

Just in case his wife doesn't take Sarah Palin up on her offer, I'll say it: Rick Santorum is a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal.

The former Pennsylvania senator and wannabe president was bad-mouthing Palin the other day for being a no-show at CPAC, the annual conservative gathering and showcase for presidential hopefuls.

"I wouldn't have turned it down," Santorum said of Palin's decision not to attend, "but I don't live in Alaska, right, and I'm not the mother to all these kids, and I don't have other responsibilities like she has."

All these kids? Santorum has seven, which by my count makes him two kids busier than Palin.

Oh, wait, I guess not. He's father to all these kids, not mother.

And we know who stays home with the kids.

Source: The Washington Post

That guy really is a little shit stain. I'd just add that the incident really does illustrate what a genuine outlier Sarah Palin is to the Republican mainstream.  I genuinely don't understand what the fuck she's up to these days, but once upon a time she really was a force for change -- positive change no less! -- in the Alaska Republican establishment.

I'd just add that that impulse of hers, even more than her sex or gender or even complete decent into id and not just ideology, explains the animosity against Palin by deep establishment Republicans like Rick Santorum.  She's no stupider than they are.  She's no less hypocritical than they are.  She's no less avaricious.  Nor fiscally responsible. Nor prepared to create and execute national-level government legislation or policy than they either.  But unlike the Santorums, the McConnells, and the Bohners of the party establishment she has little tolerance for those qualities in others further up her party's food chain.  And as an almost literally self-made woman, whatever her own too-real faults in the domain of reproductive rights, she really doesn't have much tolerance for their knuckle-dragging attitudes towards women.

Shame she no longer seems interested in using her abilities to do good rather than to do well.

So the other day I spoke with blind optimism (tempered with a great deal of anticipatory pragmatic despair) about a “male studies” program founded by the usual anti-feminist suspects. At least so far nobody I’ve read has had more to say about the program than Amanda Hess. And evidently as a result, as far as I know nobody I’ve read has gotten more anti-feminist whining in comments on her blog at Washington City Paper.

In the link above Hess directly answers most of the dozen or so tropes that make up the entire core of male discontent with feminism. (That would be another reason a legitimate “male studies” curriculum would spend no more than eight minutes of class time on feminist oppression of men since virtually all damage done to men is collateral and/or self-inflicted damage upon ourselves and each other.)

I wanted to call out one particular instance because it speaks to an instance of male oppression that has nothing at all to do with “feminist oppression” but instead illustrates perfectly why men’s and/or male studies should focus instead on the impact of anti-feminism on men.

In the exchange below, the commenter calls on the anti-feminist expectation that men sacrifice their lives for women and children.

If you think you have it so hard why not trade places? Have the guys sit at home and play housewife while you get marched off to your death for god and country? Have the guys get in the lifeboats with the kids with you go down with the ship?

Amanda Hess carves that little conceit into giblets (emphasis mine)

... I’m afraid that if we actually traded places, I would be forced to sit at a computer and file nonsensical blog comments expressing outrage at outmoded gender analogies that I am unwilling to work to deconstruct, for I am an anti-feminist blog troll, in this scenario. So yes, in this case, women do have it better.

Read the quotes in context here.

At the end of the day, in even the most disaster or war-torn countries (say, England during the World Wars) or subcultures (say, inner-city America) or regions (say, post-Katrina Louisiana or post-tsunami Sumatra) the vast majority of men live natural lifespans.

And, as Hess points out, instead of “theirs is not to question why / theirs is but to do or die”-ing it in the Charge of the Light Brigade, most men, and certainly most anti-feminist trolls sacrifice nothing. Except, evidently, their dignity, less-evidently but no-less certainly, their self-esteem.

That contrast between men’s acquired social expectation on the one hand, and men’s lived experience on the other, would be something else a real “male studies” program could really dig into. Unless, of course, it tried to somehow tie that scrutiny to some kind of criticism of feminism — because as Hess points out feminists are almost dead set against men sacrificing themselves in general, and against men self-selecting themselves for violent sacrifice for “womankind” in particular. And consequently trying to find any negative links with feminism would be a colossal waste of time.

I ought to point out that another, less overt resentment embodied in the commenter’s remark is the anxious middle-class male certainty that “when the big one hits” men like them will be completely dispensed with, as “alpha males,” (often “big black” African Americans in these fantasies) take all the food, property, and (white) women for themselves, leaving NiceGuys™ like themselves to die isolated and alone.

When, in fact, even in the most war-torn and catastrophe-ridden places that still doesn’t happen: strong, healthy men tend to be sent to the front lines, and when they return the heterosexual ones still tend to enter into relationships with at most one woman and, of course, the homosexual men “take” no women at all.

So again, if I were embarking on an inquiry into “male studies,” and the “enormous relation between … a person’s biology and their behavior” Professor Tiger claims he’d like to examine, I’d definitely want to take a look at the disconnect between the roles men imagine they’re supposed to fill vs. the roles they actually fill. I’d further examine the source of that intense, and intensely irrational, indoctrination that leads perfectly average men to believe they serve no purpose and that they’re neither desired nor desirable to the very partners that… they are married to by the tens and hundreds of millions.

Again (and again, and again) these are the guys who imagine feminists hate men. And imagine that anti-feminists are on their side.

fMhLisa of Feminist Mormon Housewives stands up for feminism and men (I’ve mildly reformatted her post)

So there’s this one debate, you may be familiar with it . . .

One side of this debate says stuff like:

• Feminists hate men.
• Feminists attack men.

• Feminists want to weaken men.

And I hear many of these same people saying:

• Men only think (or care) about one thing.
• Men  don’t have a strong moral compass and need women to (gently) guide them to do the right thing.
• A man’s pride controls him, so don’t bruise it by being bossy.  It’s okay to get your way, just so long as he thinks it’s his idea and feels strong and manly about it.
• Men are visual, they can’t help it, so cover up because he can’t control himself.
• Men are simple creatures who need food, sex, sports, money, and fast cars.  Don’t expect him to have (or express!) a complicated inner life with emotions and crap.
• Men are naturally less righteous than women, so they need this here God-powered crutch gift to raise them up (nearly) to our level.
• Men have to think they’re in charge, or they quit trying. So we’ll just tell’em they preside (even if we really are equal partners), and let’em assign someone to say the prayer.
• You also gotta let men have all the leadership positions, cause otherwise they’ll stay home and watch football.

• If we don’t let men have the priesthood (and make the money, and protect us from spiders ‘n rapists), then women wouldn’t really need men. (Since other than that all they’re good for is sperm donors?)

So wait . . .

Who is it that attacks, weakens, and hates men?

I nicked her whole post from here.

An even better question? Who created the stereotype of men that feminists are supposed to hate so much? Anti-feminists hate, fear, and are strongly disgusted by men. Feminists? Exasperated sometimes, when we men mistake anti-feminist stereotypes for compliments maybe. But hate? Not so much. Certainly not the way anti-feminists hate us.

Hugo Schwyzer, a proud father and a committed feminist calls out a particularly vicious principle of antifeminism: that men are actually weak, sniveling, useless, worthless bags of dirt for whom, as Hugo nicely summarizes it, “male responsibility is contingent on female vulnerability.”

In the strange math of social conservatives, it’s all a zero-sum game: the greater the freedom of women to divorce, exercise reproductive sovereignty, and earn money outside the home, the less self-worth their male partners will invariably feel.

... Only when women defer to men, submit to men, allow men to take the proverbial reins — only then will men “feel” valued, feel needed. According to this tired bit of wisdom, men get confused and alienated when they are denied the opportunity to shoehorn themselves into a traditional masculine role. The notion that gender identity is a continuum rather than a dichotomy, the notion that men and women can possess different plumbing but the same skill set — all this is too much for the be-penised to grasp. Fathers have abandoned their families, the lie goes, because they no longer feel needed or valued as men.

Read the quote in context here.

Sweet mother of pearl! And these are the folks who say feminists hate men!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a two way street. The whole “Second Shift” phenomena suggests that many women, no matter how productive their work or how high their financial contribution, feel valued or needed as women only to the extent they also cook or clean or nurture when they “finally” get home. We all need to deal with that, but at the moment I want to deal with this.

Listen gang, if men are abandoning their families because they’re feeling “unneeded” they’re men who… sorry… have already abandoned their families the “traditional conservative” way by… working outside the home, by staying out late with friend or overtime, by abdicating domestic responsibility, by – in other words – already providing no more than they would with post-divorce “visiting rights.” Because there’s a heck of a difference between “bringing home the bacon” and “dropping the bacon off before heading back out again.” And there’s a heck of a lot more to fathering than ballgame, park excursions, and being the “wait till your father gets home” backup in an otherwise completely autonomous household.

You want to feel needed? You be there at o-dark o’clock when the baby needs changing. You be there, same time, a few years later when she or he or they are feverish, or restless, or fearful. You be there, and I mean right there with no video or camera between your face and them, when they take their first steps. You be there feeding them and talking baby talk to them. You be the one with spoonful after spoonful (after spoonful!) of strained carrots or rehydrated rice pablum saying “say ‘aah’ for Daddy” and smiling and giggling and engaging with them. And you know what? You do that and you wanna know what? Their first word is going to be “da-da.” And when they’re said they’ll call for Daddy. And when it’s bedtime they’ll want Daddy to read to them, or snuggle them. And later when you and your partner take them to daycare they’ll ask their teachers very hopefully, and equally happily, whether it’ll be mommy or daddy who’s going to pick them up today. And they’ll do that not because they’re scared of you. Not because you’re “the man of the house” Not because Mommy approves or told them they should “respect” you. But because you were there. And they won’t just want you, they’ll need you, like nobody’s ever needed you before and like nobody else ever will.

And how do you then balance that with the friends and work and outside interests you think you’re going to have to give up to have it all? The same way everybody should be able to, Samson: you share work and home life, you share parenting and partying, you share the cribs and the cabinets and the clubs with your partner, not your property!

Antifeminists are assholes. Stay as far away from those assholes as you can humanly get. You want to be a real man? A needed, and necessary, and wanted man at home, at work, and in bed? Pull your weight. Share the weight. Don’t just love your partner and home and family, don’t just be there for them — be there with them. You want that for yourself, and your family, and if you’re not a man then for the men in your life.