As The Earnest Feminist Awaits Her White Knight...

Following the Aurora shooting we get the inevitable silliness from a feminist troubled by the disproportion between men shielding their girlfriends from bullets and women shielding their boyfriends from bullets.

I admire the self-refuting nature of her presentation. She advances both of these propositions:

(1) Heroism has never had a gender: just tell that to Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, or any of the female soldiers who risk their lives daily in our military;

and, following a mention of the United 93 action on 9/11,

(2) We just know it feels good to have heroes and it feels good to sit down on an airplane and think, “Maybe there is someone like Todd Beamer on this flight.”

Do men really sit and hope that someone else will be Todd Beamer? My impression is that we aspire to be Todd Beamer, if situationally appropriate. As to women's aspirations, well, the author just described hers. Which is fine - if she is 120 pounds of coiled literary angst, she may not be the best choice to grapple with a trained terrorist anyway.

As to her point - if "heroism" includes moral courage, as it should, then women are well represented by examples from history. If heroism is limited to brief displays of physical courage, there are surely many more examples involving men. That seems to follow from both cultural norms and basic biology, since the average guy is bigger and stronger than the average women.

That said, absolutely no one is surprised when a mother is physically fierce in protecting her children, as exemplified by Patricia Legarreta, who rallied her two young ones out of the Aurora theater (with help from a young man!) after her boyfriend cut and ran.

And Todd Beamer had help from the stewardesses on United 93. But let's read about some of the guys who took the lead in the scuffling:

This much we know, they were big guys: Bingham was a 6-foot-4 rugby player; Glick, also a rugby player and judo champion; Beamer was 6 foot 1 and 200 pounds, and Nacke was a 5-foot-9, 200-pound weightlifter with a "Superman" tattoo on his shoulder.

Logic, biology and cultural norms all pointed to letting the men lead the way on United 93, and in many other moments of sudden physical peril.

Comments

[GMAX]

Ok Jimmy, I ran out of letters before I ran out of name. I bet that was the only homerun Salty has hit in Arlington ( despite playing here ) he used to struggle to get it by the pitcher...

[Sue]

How did I miss that!

Apparently shaving a ham makes it presentable for state dinners. No whiskers please!

[Sue]

Saltlamacchia. Which is why I call him Salty. It has nothing to do with sweat. I'm leaving this conversation now. I'm surely going to die and go to hell.

[Sue]

GMax,

Who cares? He's pretty.

[Sue]

Carp. I left an "a" out of his name. Saltalamacchia.

[matt]

pork is central to both German and Chinese cuisine, so the lack thereof reflects the tastes of the host or their political correctness, as many people of many faiths attend these dinners.

Normally when we entertain we try to gauge our guests limits and stay just within them.

[Sue]

GMax,

On August 22, 2007, Saltalamacchia had two home runs and seven RBIs in the historic 30–3 rout of the Baltimore Orioles.[5]

In 46 games with the Rangers in 2007, Saltamacchia batted .251, collecting 7 home runs and 21 RBIs.

[Captain Hate]

How are your 'maters this year? We are having a great crop. I think next year will only plant the grapes, prolific constantly ripening and wonderful flavor. The big boys, better boys etc, take so darn long to mature and then they are poof!--gone

Very good so far but they're taking their time on ripening because I've only gotten 2 so far but there are lots of green ones starting to color up. Yes the small ones would have already been great guns by now.

Yes, not so young Maggie would've been after those deer and still running.

[Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!]

Imagine eating dog but not bacon.

The president is an odd man.

[Sara]

.

[Janet]

Yes, yes he is -

[Sara]

Maybe Romney is holding off on using those but every time I hear the JEF's voice hectoring that the rich should pay "a little more" I go ballistic.

Romney is restricted on what his campaign can spend at this point. They must rely on the PACs and RNC for ads for the most part, until after the Convention, when all the General Election money is released. Technically we are still in the Primary Election cycle and I doubt he has much left in that piggy bank.

I see that the Olympic Committee has forced the Obama PAC to take down their ad mocking Romney using footage for the SLC games.

[Sara]

Frau: You can follow me @Pal2Pal on Twitter. Jane is right, the best way to get started is to follow a couple people you know and then look at who they follow and start picking and choosing.

[daddy]

"I don't understand Instapundit's attraction to the Frisky. "

Well the very next story at the Friskey site was this one, so how could he resist?

Deviated Septums Run Rampant In Hollywood!

[cathyf]

...irreversibly gay at birth is ultimately an article of faith...

To be precise, gay at birth is not the same thing as gay at conception, and even gay at conception is not exactly the same thing as "genetic."

Studies of DES sons and daughters show that DES daughters are more likely to be lesbians, and DES sons are more likely to be transgender, transsexual and intersex. The children of DES daughters are slightly more likely to be homosexual. (The egg that became the DES grandchild was formed in the second trimester of the pregnancy of the DES daughter.)

What happens in utero is environmental, not genetic.

[Schwa]

Ya all got it so wrong. As I am sure my feminist friends would confirm, the real hero guy was Jamie Rohrs, he of the fleeing boyfriend. He allowed his girlfriend to take charge and save her two kids without him thereby affirming her feminist credentials. I mean what a guy, right ladies? I mean fellow feminists. The rest of you are just sexist pigs.

[SPQRS]

This is a horrible tradgedy. When I think of the decisions these people made as they faced the gunfire, I would never be critical of their choices.

For me as I have often travlled in the 3rd world with my family I always to whatever I can to insure the safety of my wife and child. I would not hesitate to cover them. I would not allow her to do that, if I did and survived I would suffer death every day thereafter...

[bluesdoc70]

Pet peeve. You don't try to diffuse a situation. Soft lighting is diffused through an area. You try to defuse the situation.

[Socratease]

As someone who has stupidly put himself in harms way to stop an act of violence, I didn't do it to save somebody precious or because of some manly ideal I was trying to live up to but because I knew I'd feel like slime (or some other S- word) if I walked away when I had the chance to do something. Do women ever feel like that? Would they even understand the question if I asked them? Who knows.

[Mahon]

There is a difference between long-term heroic behavior of the Tubman/Barton type and in-the-moment reaction to immediate danger. And professionally trained female warriors are a separate category.

"Possess and protect" has been implanted very deeply in the male psyche by 500,000 years on the savannah and 5000 years of civilization. This will not change in one lifetime because it makes some people feel bad.

[lethargic]

If it had been a family movie filled with families, you would have seen women dying to protect their children. Boyfriends, not so much. Women are heroes when it's about the cubs ... Mama Grizzlies, ya know ...