L. Neil Smith Quotes
Incidentally, the next time some war-mongering wise-ass tries to tell you that one reason we're in the Middle East is to enhance the civil rights and social equality of women, remind them that we very enthusiastically destroyed the most secular country over there, where women could dress as they liked, have good jobs, be literate, and vote.
Smith, L. Neil. Down with Power: Libertarian Policy in a Time of Crisis. L. Neil Smith's The Libertarian Enterprise, 2012.
Schafly is an inveterate anti-feminist who has made statements like these on the quotation throughout her career. There are no feminists who agree that their objectives include what Shafly claims they are. And feminists do not urge sexual promiscuity. They do urge that women have the same right to sexual promiscuity as men. In some cultures women’s adultery can be grounds for divorcing her and her losing her rights to her children, and in Muslim cultures death by stoning is the consequence. However, adultery on the part of the male has few if any legal consequences. When feminists object to that patent differentiation, they do NOT advocate that women commit adultery, but that the law treat men and women equally and fairly.
She was chiding the Egyptian military who in the Arab Spring, turned on demonstrators and soldiers in the middle of the central square stripped a female demonstrator half naked and beat her badly;
Abbot was apparently ignorant of the American women who did fight in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 or the Civil War where there were a few women who fought on both sides some of whom were decorated. Nor did he seem to acknowledge Joan of Arc and other female warriors in world history. But he would be truly shocked by the tens of thousands of “civilized” women who volunteered and served in the American military once they were allowed to do so and the “civilized” men who fought with them as compatriots.
Some men in the audience hissed as she took the podium.
She did not identify with “feminists” because most of the ones she read and came into contact with tended to want to change the role of women in society. Selbert wanted them simply to have equal rights under the law, and then individually each could make of that what they would. She was very effective because she did not threaten men as much as many of the feminists of the time did. All she said she demanded was equal and fair treatment in the culture that existed. She probably knew that the equality in fact would lead to major changes in society, but she saw no point in discussing that.
Lester Neil Smith III, better known as L. Neil Smith, is an American libertarian science fiction author and political activist. His works include the trilogy of Lando Calrissian novels, all published in 1983: Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu, Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon, and Lando Calrissian and the Starcave of ThonBoka. He also wrote the novels Pallas, The Forge of the Elders, and The Probability Broach, each of which won the Libertarian Futurist Society's annual Prometheus Award for best libertarian science fiction novel. In 2016, Smith received a Special Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Libertarian Futurist Society.
