State Owes Women a Formal Apology on Behalf of Its Men

Katie Engelhart writes in the progressive Huffington Post that governments owe women an apology on behalf of their men. She actually seems to want reparations for women but figures that won't happen, so she'll settle for an apology.

"Do governments owe women an apology? Over the last few years, women's groups have been pushing reticent governments to acknowledge their role in specific acts of cruelty against women.. . . . But what I'm talking about is an apology that has nothing to do with rape, sterilization, imprisonment, or torture. I'm talking about an apology for the decades and centuries that women were simply treated like crap.  

"It's interesting that while states have offered formal apologies to almost every conceivable group -- for every conceivable wrong -- no state has apologized wholeheartedly to its women, on behalf of its men."

It's the usual feminist victimhood blather bordering on the pathological that blinks at the fact that, historically, men have been treated like "crap" by forces more powerful than them, including a hell of a lot of wealthy women, to at least the same degree as women, and probably to a much greater degree.

Ms. Engelhart cherry picks her examples of oppression, of course, and she's particularly obsessed with the gender wage gap. That's interesting, because the wage gap is attributable to choices women make, and no apology is owed for it.

And, naturally, like the best cherry pickers, Engelhart leaves out some biggies that just happen to be monopolized by male victims (you know, involuntary conscription, war casualties, workplace injuries and deaths, homelessness, suicides, all but one of the 15 leading causes of death etc.).

Forget the fact that society's underbelly -- which includes the insane and the forgotten living under bridges -- has a penis. None of that matters because it doesn't fit Katie Engelhart's victim narrative.

Engelhart's piece raises a bigger question: what is it about women demanding apologies to their entire gender from men?

Tiger Woods should apologize to all women, one female writer wrote, for what he did in his personal life.

Attorney Gloria Allred said that Mel Gibson should apologize to "all women" for telling his partner, "if you get raped by a pack of n*****s, it will be your fault." (Oh -- Allred said that Gibson should also apologize to African American men -- but note she puts women first). 

Sarah Palin said David Letterman owed an apology to young women across the country for his joke that Palin's daughter got "knocked up" by New York Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez during a trip to New York.

Notice Tiger Woods need not apologize to all men for fortifying the awful "cheating husband" stereotype. Letterman need not apologize to all men for suggesting that men will fuck anything that moves. And no state owes men an apology for anything.

If Tiger, Mel, and Letterman owe "all" women an apology for the things they did, why, they must be stand-in's for all men.  Each of the incidents complained about represents an assault by all men against all women.

Come on, ladies, time to grow up. The '60s are over.

Whatever trouble Tiger Woods and Mel Gibson were having in their private relationships was just that -- private. Both seem to be first-class jerks, but all womanhood isn't victimized by them.

A stupid joke that referenced both a male and a female wasn't an assault on all things female anymore than it was an assault on all things male.  It was just a stupid joke.

And no state owes all women an apology, much less reparations. For anything.

Seriously. Time to stop using your gender as a club to take the moral high ground. Time to stop pretending that women, as a class, have a monopoly on virtue, and that men, as a class, have a monopoly on vice.  That's just childish.