The New York Times woke up this morning having decided that maybe there is something special about women, something that deserves protecting-- a kind of virtue, or grace, if you will.
Or at least that's what is suggested by the NYT editorial, "The Women of Gitmo".
In this editorial the Times argues that it is particularly reprehensible that women were used as sexual foils in the interrogation of detainees. Personally, I find it reprehensible that women are being used as political foils for the Times to take another cheap shot at Gitmo detention. You know and I know that the Times probably doesn't really give a hoot about women, or their degradation as long as it doesn't take place in a context the Times doesn't approve of. An "artistic" display of women being beaten probably wouldn't make the NYT bat an eyelash. The kind of degradation that the Times is talking about, the use of women in sexualized roles, usually goes by without a peep.
Women are sexy! Oh goodness no! Where was the Times to object when sexy women are hired as cocktail waitresses? When sexy women are splayed over its pages as advertising vehicles for perfume, jewelry and expensive clothes?
While it is very worrisome to me that women serving in the US Military might have been commanded to give a detainees lapdances, I will find it more worrisome if nobody realizes that the New York Times cares far more about needling the President and the legitimate detention of Guantanamo bay detainees than it does about women and their role in the modern military, and the place of female sexuality in our modern economy.
Although some feminists might tell you otherwise, women are special, women are different than men, and women have certain social roles, for example the bearing of children, that cannot for biological reasons be carried out by men. Respect for womanhood and the role it plays in today's society is important, but pretending to rediscover your chivalrous instincts just in time to say that we shouldn't ask terror suspects rude questions if the interrogator is a woman is just plain ridiculous.
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