Anna Quindlen Quotes
The issue is privacy. Why is the decision by a woman to sleep with a man she has just met in a bar a private one, and the decision to sleep with the same man for $100 subject to criminal penalties?
Quindlen, Anna. Thinking Out Loud. Random House, 1993, p. 121.
1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley. Baldwin, a moralistic prig, and others including the rest of the Royal Family, pressured the King to give up Simpson, but the King instead abdicated and married Simpson who had been divorced and remarried when she began her affair with King Edward VIII.
He was referring to Sandra Fluke, a student at Georgetown University, a Catholic school whose health plans did not cover birth control pills. The Heath advisory committees had concluded that birth control pills were a critical element of women’s health. Congress was debating a rule that would exempt religions from having to provide birth control as a part of their health insurance if it was against their beliefs. However, universities, hospitals, museums and civil activities run by churches were not exempt, Ms Fluke testified before Congress that her birth control pills cost her much money out of pocket. Many conservatives throughout the country opposed the requirement, some on religious conscience grounds and others like Limbaugh who opposed because they opposed birth control itself. So Limbaugh concluded that since with insurance paying for birth control for women, the women were getting paid to have sex. Therefore Ms. Fluke was a prostitute and a slut. There was a national outrage over Limbaugh’s statements and many conservatives, especially those running for office were put in an awkward position. They realized the inappropriate logic and use of language and the meanness that Limbaugh exhibited, but with few exceptions they were afraid that if they opposed him publicly, Limbaugh would retaliate on the airways and he was the major Republican spokesman at the time. Although not a politician, he was in many ways the leader of the party. However, this time his mean, twisted, venomous, attack had gone too far. It was not a politician he had attacked this time; just an innocent young student. A number of his sponsors dropped him.
Statement made by Root to President Roosevelt regarding a prepared speech about the rights to build the Panama Canal.
… everyone is convinced that all sexual wrongs represent a symptom of decadence peculiar to our age.
His observation at that time has been typical of almost all eras which tend to be seen as unique in this respect by those who live during them.
Even though a strong feminist, note the Victorian concept of sex—namely that it is the man who does the seduction and the woman who is the passive victim. Also that the act of sex has somehow damaged a woman so that she needs “maintenance”. Modern feminists and non feminists, and our laws and culture, no longer look at sex as damage to a woman so the seduction, regardless of whether the male or the female is the seducer, is not a problem that needs compensation. It is only if children result, that there is male responsibility—not for the seduction but for taking his share of the responsibility for creating another human being that needs support. Also, most modern cultures do not see all sex as a seduction of one party be another—sex can be and often is the joint decision of consenting adults. In some cases females seduce males.
Anna Marie Quindlen is an American author, journalist, and opinion columnist.
