Andrew Sullivan Wants To Know Why Women Americans Don't Want To Overturn The Civil Rights Act, Endorse Fetal Personhood

Andrew Sullivan apparently has a lot of time on his hands, so he is currently chewing on one of life's great mysteries, namely, why libertarians are mostly male. You would think that the answer to this question would be kind of obvious even to stupid dummies, given that everyone's favorite libertarian, Ron Paul, is in favor of overturning the Civil Rights Act and passing a personhood amendment for fetuses. What is not to like about that, ladies? Anyway, this is a huge mystery to Andrew Sullivan, who has posted an on-line discussion and this obnoxious video to debate the finer points of whether or not women are too stupid to be libertarians.

WHY AREN'T THERE MORE FEMALE LIBERTARIANS??? This is how the video begins, so turn the volume down.

Anyway, WHY AREN'T THERE MORE FEMAL LIBERTARIANS, this white lady screams at you. Don't worry, it is a rhetorical question, and luckily, she has the answer! It is because women are more interested in "bein' social" and don't want to be associated with something "outside the mainstream," like libertarianism.

Then she holds up what seems to be  a Cosmo magazine and claims that it is FULL of liberal propaganda because it says the word sex on it, and also supports stuff like access to birth control and fixing the wage gap. Why are women so STUPID that they would want this kind of stuff? Also too, the handbags they advertise in Cosmo are very expensive, she observes, and this is wrong for some reason that she doesn't quite identify.

ANYWAY, the lesson here is that "we" need to make libertarianism more "mainstream," and then women will be FALLING ALL OVER THEMSELVES to let other people tell them when they can have non-procreative sex and under what circumstances, doesn't that sound wonderful? As we always say here at Wonkette, regulate women not markets, amiright bro?

Here is the thing about libertarianism, aside from this stupid video: in the libertarian political-philosphical framework, the government's role is reduced to the point that it is almost solely about the protection of property rights, which includes physical property as well as one's "self" and the fruit of one's labor. This (and yes, we are being reductive, but bear with us), is why libertarians consider taxation to be a huge encroachment on their liberty: if they own themselves, they own what they do and what they make, and taxation is therefore an infringement upon their self-ownership and autonomy.

Anyway, as government authority over other spheres recedes, the family and kinship network takes its place. The family and kinship network, of course, is patrilineal and patriarchal, what a coincidence. Most libertarian political thinkers--Von Mises, Macintosh, Cohen, Novak, Rand (if you can call her a "thinker") in fact either explicitly use libertarianism to justify increased patriarchal control, or alternatively, totally ignore how pregnancy, child-bearing, and child-rearing fit into their respective theoretical paradigms.

THIS is why libertarian skews male, and it doesn't help that Ron Paul is totally OK with fetal personhood and that a disproportionate number of self-identified libertarians are really obnoxious, like this lady.

 [The Daily Beast]