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I’ve learned a lot about how not to communicate thanks to Dawn Eden.

Dawn’s perfect earnestness blows me away. How can she take herself so seriously all the time? I bet she’s made maybe (and I mean maybe) 2 jokes in the entirety of her time as Chief of the Patrol.

Obviously, you don’t have to be a comedian to blog responsibly, but you should at least have a sense of humor. Constant alternations between dour finger-wagging and check-out-my-halo ego masturbation hardly provide what a reader might call “variety.” We are all of us disturbed by the status quo — Dawn wants no fucking, we want her to stop gettting in our way, etc. — but sometimes it helps to register your complaints with a little laughter, or at least soften them with a funny turn-of-phrase or two. As far as entertainment value goes, Dawn’s blog feels like a Catholic mass.

Dawn oversimplifies everything. She sees all issues in black-and-white. She’s nostalgic for a society that only existed in 50s-era propaganda and fiction. She lacks self-awareness and promotes self-denial. She misunderstands science and misrepresents basic facts. She blames everyone else for her emotional issues and, like most social conservatives, demands that we remake society in whatever way hurts her feelings the least.

She also makes huge, embarrassing, ginormous mistakes all the time. Like quoting GK Chesterton to defend women’s rights. Or, as she does today, making someone else’s case for them:

At the core of the left-wing bloggers’ animosity towards chastity is, I believe, an uneasy awareness of what a culture that values marriage — by which I mean so-called traditional marriage — does to their lifestyle.

[deep breath]

DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

My god, Dawn, you’re exactly right. You want to destroy our ability to choose our own lifestyle and – SHOCK! – we happen to think that stinks. We’d like to be left alone to do what we please with our bodies and our time, and we’ll happily let you do the same. But it’s nice to know you openly admit that you want to destroy the individual’s choice to do choose the life that best suits him or her.

(more…)

Dawn Eden at her finest:

In an op-ed in Britain’s Guardian, Jessica Valenti of NARAL and its BushvChoice blog quotes a line she read in The Dawn Patrol from my upcoming book where I say, “when you become chaste, you’ll notice for the first time that women who have sex outside of marriage don’t really appreciate men.”

To that, Valenti says, “Don’t get me wrong, reviving romance sounds great, and if you want to hold out on sex, more power to you. But can you really base a movement, a revolution even, on the idea that women’s life goal should be marriage?”

Yes.

As usual, G.K. Chesterton has the perfect reply — writing in 1920:

“In plain words, there is clearly something wrong in the calculation by which it was proved that a housewife must be as much a servant as a housemaid; or which exhibited the domesticated man as being as gentle as the primrose or as conservative as the Primrose League. It is precisely those who have been conservative about the family who have been revolutionary about the state. Those who are blamed for the bigotry or bourgeois smugness of their marriage conventions are actually those blamed for the restlessness and violence of their political reforms. Nor is there seriously any difficulty in discovering the cause of this. It is simply that in such a society the government, in dealing with the family, deals with something almost as permanent and self-renewing as itself.”

What, no mention of Jessica’s work at Feministing, Dawn? Too scared to link to a place where women might actually have their eyes opened to the world? No, best to stick to scary words like NARAL, which I’m sure you’ve told your readers stands for the Naughty And Racy Association of Ladies.

Anyway, in the op-ed, Jessica absolutely annihilates the modesty movement, something Dawn repeatedly blahs about on her blog. For example:

Another retrogressive aspect of the modesty movement is its disconcerting message that women are responsible for men’s behaviour. The notion of dressing modestly comes at least partly from the idea that men can’t control themselves; by telling women that they have to dress a certain way to quell men’s desires, modesty advocates are sending a clear message that the onus is on us to control men’s sexual – and possibly violent – actions.

Any discussion of that, Dawn? Nope. Just the out-of-context mention of Jessica questioning a statement in Dawn’s book.

Naturally, Dawn feels unequipped to respond to even the most chopped up version of Jessica’s argument, so Dawn falls back on a quote from G.K. Chesterton, also known as this guy:

Hi ladies! I’m here to tell you all about how to live your lives because I know best, uh-hee-hee-hee! Why, I’m sure you’re all zoomin’ around in fancyfangled flyin’ moto-carriages and discussing the merits of the suffrage movement with Martians by 2006, but I bet not much else has changed since 1920. If’n you want to be a revolutionary, make sure you settle down with a nice man, because only the married can affect real change in this ol’ society we got cookin’.

Oh, and did I mention that, while I dislike the ol’ Hitler, I agree that there’s a “Jewish problem?” Uh-hee-hee-hee! Good idea to quote me, Dawn. I’m barely outdated, prejudiced, and sexist at all!