11.12.2007

This is How Far Off the Rails She Is

Ok, the great Laura Sessions Stepp blow out tomorrow is at capacity. I did not get in. Well, I didn't try since I had dinner plans. But, hopefully, someone who visits this site got a pass. I mean, there were only, like, 30 people at her last appearance at the Arlington Library and 60 people at her book singing at Politics and Prose. Both times I ran into a reader. So, one of you got in, right? Please?

At the very least I plan on DVRing the shit out of this.

I'm really posting to bring more attention to a comment I received from EJ Takes Life:

Did you happen to catch who was co-sponsoring this "discussion?" The Cardinal Newman Society (Catholic college society sponsoring "a program to re-establish chastity as the cornerstone of Catholic campus culture") and the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, a charming organization whose homepage is currently extolling the virtues of Phyllis Schlafly, "the first to defeat the radical feminists."

How exactly does LSS, who is supposed to be a journalist with at least some modicum of impartiality, justify headlining an event that blatantly trumpets a religiously and socially conservative agenda? Especially because she is identified in promotional materials first as "Washington Post reporter" and not as the author of retro modesty lit.


The Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute's website is appropriately fantastic. Is that Ann Coulter on the homepage? Good Lord, it is. This is the kind of organization that comes out with columns titled "Want Protection from Breast Cancer? Have Some Babies." If I had seen that without any context I would have assumed it was an Onion headline.

Terri, my lady friend who accompanied me on my last LSS party crash, also wanted me to highlight this from the description of the discussion tomorrow night:

Many college campuses across the country report rising numbers of sexual assaults, date rapes, and sexually-transmitted infections. And there is reason to believe the "hook up" culture - the prevalence of sexual activity with "no strings attached" - is affecting students' mental health. Are students today well-educated about healthy relationships?


That's right, college ladies. Since you keep getting rapes and assaulted, maybe you should try to educate yourself about healthy relationships.

I know sound like a skipping record every time I start talking about Laura Sessions Stepp, but I just can't help myself. This woman, with her dangerously old timey ideals and her complete lack of journalistic integrity, always claims to be a feminist. Again, please click on the Clare Booth Lucy website. What kind of feminist would support them?

11 comments:

  1. I couldn't imagine spending this much time, effort and wasted energy on such an undeserving person. If you didn't care enough to cancel your precious din-din, let it go dude. Let. It. Go. Sure she's a dumb bitch, but so are a lot of people. Incessantly hearing about her is tediously redundant.

    *yawn*

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  2. Lastly, LSS doesn't deserve the extra publicity...even on this blog.

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  3. this would just be another typical day if it were at CUA

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  4. From the "Have Some Babies" article by Miriam Grossman, M.D.:


    You won’t find it highlighted in women’s magazines or health websites, but it’s the mommy track that provides the greatest protection against breast cancer: giving birth before thirty, having a bunch of kids, and breastfeeding them—for a long time. Numerous large studies have shown that each birth will reduce your risk by ten percent and each year of nursing by at least four percent. So if you start your family early, have three kids and nurse them each for two years, you’ve decreased your risk by about 54 percent.

    That last sentence is factually incorrect. She is double counting two different approximations of how nursing could affect breast cancer risk.

    I'm left with two equally uncomfortable explanations: that Dr. Grossman is willfully obstructing the facts to advance her argument, or that she, a medical professional, is too stupid to recognize a very basic error.

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  5. I refuse to believe you, Rusty, YOU would miss this LSS event. Me thinks with CSPAN around you're feeling a little camera shy.
    Don't back down, son. Think of all the high school boys whose future proms will be ruined because LSS was able to save the all the sluts from slutting it up. You have virgin blood on your hands!

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  6. Rusty's going to be there. He's just lulling LSS into a false sense of security, but actually already hiding under the stage in preparation of a sneak attack...or assassination. As my role model Drago would say, "If she dies, she dies..."

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  7. surprisingly, or not, i almost commented on your last post about figuring out an association to write telling you to put "cua" down because the president still believes that catholic students aren't having sex on his campus.

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  8. Didn't Luce and her husband experiment with LSD? Not that I have any problem with recreational drug use -- but does this really go hand in hand with telling women to make babies and preserve their chastity?

    And I'll say it again. You've got some angry ass commenters here at WIHD. All the hating. Are they being forced to read this? What the f*ck is wrong with them?

    Oh that's right -- DC.

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  9. Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute is a total nightmare. I feel like there are 2 different orgs and I'm not sure if they are affiliated. One gives out scholarships to girls in the sciences under her name and then there is this one which is a right wing place.

    This on their site is annoying: http://www.dawneden.com/2007/11/call-of-mild-and-latest-from-planned.html

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  10. Either Rusty's fans didn't do their job or Wendy is whitewashing the events of the evening.

    tinyurl.com/3ba7fb

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  11. man, sorry i'm commenting late on this, but i'm so glad i found this site. i was gonna try to go to that lss event, too. (it didn't work out.)

    anyway, the REALLY fucked up thing about those damn "beatific motherhood prevents breastcancer" things is that a lot of the "protection" that pregnancy and breastfeeding give you is that they STOP YOUR PERIOD. whereas in a normal menstrual state your estrogen levels cycle high and low, which as we know makes your boobs swell then shrink, meaning your breast tissue is periodically growing. every time your cells multiply they are at greater risk for getting it wrong and "forgetting" how to stop multiplying -- i.e., tumor.

    so instead of having kids we could also reduce our risk of breast cancer by taking a low-estrogen or progesterone-only birth control continuously, to stop our periods; or by surgically removing our ovaries, which would stop our periods AND most of our estrogen production in the first place. fuck you, babypushers.

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