Welcome to the weekly standard podcast. I'm your host, Michael Graham. And despite the fact that it is a day without a woman, there is in fact, Alice Lloyd sitting across a mirror in the studio reminding me that Lady Gadaia was a freedom writer, she was a sister who really could. And then there's Maude.
So you had a fun piece up about a day without a woman. Yes, I enjoy things like this. I think it's important to have fun with it because of how incredibly heavy-handed and humorless we get about these events. I think it's important to remember for one thing that International Women's Day, which is technically what March 8 is, started in the utilitarian feminist tradition, which we get from the Marxists, which we get from the Bolsheviks, which is what kicked off the February Revolution, because March and February, and the Julian versus Gregorian calendars, it gets confusing.
The Tsar was unseeded because of a women's march in Petrograd. So I think, as any anti-communist was, it's important to laugh at these types of events first and foremost. So that's our job. And then also, as a former teacher and someone who writes obsessively about education every night, I think it's important to note that teachers choosing not to show up for work in sort of vague protest of the patriarchy really can do some serious damage.
Urban public schools hate snow days because they know that there are a lot of poor kids in nowhere to go. And Alexandria, which closed its schools, and the Chapel Hill District didn't have any snow days this year, but they did have the day without a woman. And they had to go to school. A day without a woman and snow.
I have a much more pragmatic objection I would like to raise to you. If I may, as I confess right up front of my failing, I was born male. I begged after me, and I tried to work my way out of it several times. So women live longer, smarter, higher IQs, higher tolerance for pain, more likely to graduate from college.
And the vast majority of them can get the vast majority of us dumb guys to do pretty much what they want. What's the complaint? Well, that was also the point, per the organizers, the same organizers as the January 21st, Women's March, part of the point is to lean on men to pick up the slack. It's written in there, sort of into the frequently asked questions, why are we doing this web page?
And I mean, that's sort of particularly I'm using, just because we wonder, looking at these types of vaguely organized protests, what's really the end goal. And that line kind of just proves to me nothing in particular, because men and women were always picking up the slack for each other anyway. And it just seems that that line just stands out as just sort of like the ultimate proof, nothing new under the sun. You're not suggesting that a woman is in fact a day without a point.
You're not suggesting that? That was the headline, I think. This is maybe why people of a certain age just don't get it. If you're under a certain age, my entire life has been spent with women authority figures.
My parents were, this is kind of an odd story, they were divorced but then they married each other again. Oh, that's nice. Well, my parents were divorced and that didn't happen. I can't.
I would say, you'll have to ask my dad. My point is, so for a while I had a single mom, for a while I lived with my grandmother, who was absolutely the matriarchal authority of our family. I went to school virtually every teacher was a woman. I've mostly been self-employed, but the few times I wasn't many times, my boss was a woman, my doctors were women, my dentist was a woman as a kid.
There's never been a point in my life where I would ever look up at somebody and see a woman in charge or a woman in a professional position, and a woman in any position really and go, hey, what do you mean a girl? I mean, I know that that was the way it was at some point. I've seen movies about that being at some point, but this seems so really... It's fascinating, and that's where I'd refer you to Andy Ferguson's cover story about microaggressions, because it's really a type of social science that trains us to pick up on subtle signs of the patriarchy, and you're absolutely right, a world where the patriarchy is pretty much a thing of the past.
I mean, this isn't sort of Phyllis Schlafly saying there's great honor in staying in the kitchen because she had her right to believe that, obviously, and it rang through with plenty of ladies, but it's certainly no longer... I want to get a record that was not my voice who said that. It was Alice Lloyd. It's certainly no longer.
I mean, nobody promotes that message anymore. The women who, I hadn't, frankly, been thinking about, you know, what were the consequences of a day without women today? You know, it wrote the piece yesterday. Didn't really think about what was, you know, what does the world come to without a woman today?
Speaking of it, it's very strange that it's called a day without a woman. Right. What woman? I mean, just like, why not use the plural?
Anyway. You know, I once again, just a glimpse into the male mind, for the male mind, I don't know. It's, you know, when you were single. Oh, no.
Another day without a woman. Yeah. That sounds like... That's so funny.
Several hundreds. I don't want to talk about it. So there is something on it. I want to wrap up with this.
I don't want to concede the ground to the angry activists that you have to think that, you know, no man has ever done anything wrong to a woman ever, that there has never been any patriarchal social construct ever, or you have to join them. That's what bugs me is. Yeah. I mean, I seek signs of show me where, you know, guys are using power and authority somehow in a, you know, in a broad social way.
Show me that person who says, you know, oh, I'm hiring a woman today because I only have to pay her 77 cents on the dollar. Yeah. Where is this? I will happily say, hey, that stinks.
But I honestly can't find it. Is it the case that I'm just deluded? I'm caught in my cisgender heteronormative trap? Or is this really as silly as it seems to be?
I think that's why we see that these protests lack focus, because there is nothing in particular to rail against the microaggression as, you know, a specter and is what the patriarchy has been reduced to. It's in the eye of the beholder. You have to believe in it or not. And let's not to say that there aren't isolated cases.
And honestly, internationally, you know, institutionalized situations in which women are oppressed. And that was one of the sort of, you know, prominent takes on today's event, you know, International Women's Day, the way the UN treats it, is a humanitarian idea and never got the kind of attention that today is getting, you know, would have a theme every year focus on, you know, Saudi women or something, like, actually, I don't know if that was ever the theme. It should have been. Yeah, I would say so.
I would say so. How do you march around complaining at your Alexandria public school about the evil patriarchy? Well, there are women who are suffering under forced, you know, genital mutilation and women who are forced to wear burkas and all the other things that happen in some corners of the world. I would, it would be, I have a lot more respect for people jumping into that fight, but then that would involve making judgments about it.
Right. Are the fact that there are women who are not allowed to work in parts of the world, who wouldn't, who would. So we're going to protest for them? Yes.
It's forced to work today because my patriarchal authorities here at the weekly standard forced me to force her into the studio is our own Alice Lloyd. Great piece at weeklystander.com. Thank you. You've been listening to the weekly standard podcast.
Please be sure to check weekly standard.com regularly for podcast updates or better still subscribe to the podcast at iTunes just search weekly standard and iTunes to find the podcast right there. You'll never miss another episode. Thanks so much for listening. I'm your host, Michael Graham.