I guess the inferior position of women came first, and the story was concocted to justify it. They'd hardly write a creation myth in which man was created out of woman's rib and then say "Hey, we ought to be treating women better! "When I said "the INTENTION is to denigrate women" I meant the intention is to keep them in their place.

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name.20 And the man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place.22 And the LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.23 And the man said, "This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man."24 For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

Imagine if someone uttered the following statement “Women are irrational creatures. Due to their propensity to be emotional, they are not responsible for their actions.” I suspect people would think I was quoting from a popular elizabethan or medieval discussion of women and most would write this statement off as sexist, misogynist and old fashioned.

Well, I suggest you check out the news because such views are apparently alive and well in New Zealand. To see my point let me put down two not-so-hypothetical cases.

A man abandoned his three year old daughter in an Australian train station, he clearly was distressed yet immediately there was outrage at the fact that a father would abandon his child in this manner.

(Of course, later we discover that Nai Yun Xue murdered his wife and was on the run in the US but the outrage that was poured out and expressed in the media regarding the fact of abandonment preceded this knowledge.)

Now turn to a second case, a woman abandoned her baby in an airport in New Zealand. Again, we do not yet know all the details, all we know is that the woman appeared distressed.

Unlike the man who abandoned the child in a public place, where others would likely notice her, this woman dumped her baby in a rubbish bin, where people are unlikely to see her, where in fact she very possible could have died.

What’s the response in the second case? Sympathy, empathy, understanding, discussion over women's hormones, speculation into culture and her family situation. We are already being prepped to swallow that the woman is not really culpable for the action, we are told heart tugging stories about how they were reunited all peppered with terms like "its all very sad" - very different from the angry, absolute, terminology aimed at Nai Yun Xue.

What’s the difference? I cannot see any.

As far as I can tell in the first case the abandoner was a man and the second it was a woman and women have emotions that effect their judgement and culpability.

As a person who has researched the abortion issue extensively I have noted that what passes for sexism and misogyny is frequently embraced and even promoted by certain quarters to promote the ideals of those who claim to be favour of women. They will condemn statements like the above quote in popular theological writings of the past as patronising and insulting yet when there are benefits to women from being treated as full rational agents they seem quite willing to buy into this line of thought as long as it enables women to avoid criticism.

The problem is you cannot have it both ways. Accepting that women, like men, are rational moral agents means that not only do they have rights but that women can intelligibly be said to have duties. Possession of moral agency means that one’s actions can be subject to moral criticism, that one can be held culpable for ones misdeeds.

If women are moral agents then we can ask if they have duties to their offspring. We can ask if a woman, even if she is suffering emotional stress, is required to provide for the children she brought into existence. Asking these questions and holding women to the same standards as men, far from being degrading to women, actually respects them as moral agents.

But of course admitting this means that feminists are forced to face another question. It means that if a fetus is a human being then a woman may have a responsibility to not kill it. One cannot, as is common in moral literature, simply dismiss any criticisms of women as sexist nor can one appeal simply to the emotional plight of women who have abortions; one needs to actually ask serious moral questions.

This is a question that is too hard for some feminists to fathom; hence, they would rather buy into the very misogynist trends they condemn in traditional theology and treat women as emotional, irrational, beings who are incapable of moral choices rather than allow people to question the political stances they have advocated in the name of women.

What do these two pictures have in common?

The Hand Mirror oppose both as forms of oppression against women. In the first one the woman is being "belittled", "denigrated", made the subject of "idiot chauvinism", in the second, the woman's clothing choice is "silly" and her "sexuality is being controlled by her father".

Now look at this image featured in the sidebar of the Hand Mirror:

My body, my choice. Really? I have frequently found left-wing feminists of the ilk at the Hand Mirror to be inconsistent in their application of their feminist mantras, condescending and paternalistic towards women of my ilk. They talk about women's empowerment, equality, the right of women to make their own choices about their sexuality, their bodies, their lives but that's all it is; talk.

In the first image, a woman made a decision to accept a modelling job which involved almost baring her breasts and they wrote her off as a victim of male oppression, ignorant about the realities of the world.

In the second image they blast another woman's choice to cover her breasts with a t-shirt that states the woman agrees with her family's morals. In the comments section, the same author from the first case identifies this image as "Fathers controlling their daughters' sexuality;" implicit from the title is the claim that this woman is "silly". I am confused. Can women not choose their own t-shirts and their own reasons as to why they do not want their breasts ogled?

In the same blog piece the author writes:

Perhaps you can help me choose which is worse - the t-shirt above or the one I can't get a shot of which said "No trespassing. I'm waiting for my husband."

Again the search for an oppressor is sent into full swing in response to a woman making a choice about when and who she wants to have sex with.

Ironically, when Otago University's student rag, Critic, published unwanted comments about my breasts [link is to just one example], denigrated my appearance, etc because I was right-wing, some of the very same Hand Mirror feminists who were witness to this at the time said....

When I first read reports on the blogosphere about the NZ Herald commenting on Bronagh Key's wearing the same jacket twice, I thought that the article everyone was linking to must have been related to John Key's swearing in, where she wore the offending jacket the second time and the fashion comments had to be an ill-thought throwaway line.

I just clicked on the offending article; if the title doesn't give you a hint, Fashion tips to avoid First Lady blunders, I can tell you it has virtually nothing to do with anything John Key has done in his thus far short stint as Prime Minister, in fact he only gets a mention to frame the context the fashion tips fall in! The whole piece essentially reduces Bronagh to a barbie doll and is reminiscent of an era where the wife was just an accessory.

One also wonders at the term "First Lady" liberally sprinkled throughout the piece too. Is the Obama-McCain virus sweeping the media turning epidemic? New Zealand doesn't have a first lady, the only time I can recall that term being used in NZ politics was the last time the virus hit, when Clinton visited and PM Shipley's family was suddenly "our first family."

The article is way out of line. Especially in the financial crisis we are facing, wearing one's "purple Adrienne Winkelmann jacket" only once is the faux-pas, not the reverse. While the rest of the country faces the prospect of having to tighten our fashion budgets to Rachel Hunter's haute couture line from the Warehouse, the Herald's suggestion that Bronagh sports "diamond belts" and a specially commissioned "silver fern diamond brooch" because her husband "is loaded after all" is more than a little Marie Antoinette.

Of course the worst thing about this piece is the massive offense it must have caused Mrs Key. Its one thing to have one of your girlfriends quietly tell you they think your outfit is not your best look but when one of the biggest papers in the country takes it on themselves to have a raft of style-critics taking your look apart piece by piece and patronizingly telling you how you could look sexier complete with instructions of how to copy Katie Holmes, see last sentence below, it is outrageous,

"She's an attractive woman with a good figure, she could definitely be more adventurous with her clothes.

"We would accentuate her legs and waist, changing her tomboy look into a slightly more feminine and sexy version," she said.

Whitcher also plumped for slightly darker hair, cut in a bob, topped with a plum lipstick for a confident look.

In the two pages of fluff the Herald tried to pass off as journalism, I note there was no mention of PM John Key's repeat offending with the blue tie that has featured in almost every media appearance he has been in the past few weeks. Was this an oversight? Of course not. He’s male.

Matt and I have been involved in things political for a good 13 years, to a far lesser degree than the Keys of course. In that time while Matt has had to endure the odd comment about his "snappy dress sense" it was me that bore the headlines "Madeleine Richards on Murder, Feminism and Her Sexy Legs" on the front cover of the student mag at Waikato University, with weeks of letters to the editor commenting on the length of my skirts and how hot my legs are. It was me that has had editors writing comments on my figure - "ooh she gained weight" "has she lost weight?" - speculating what I eat, super-imposing my face on strippers jumping out of cakes and discussing my breasts. It was me that had to endure being woken at 6am by a call from a national radio program asking me live on air my thoughts on MP Pete Hodgson's comments on my weight. It is me that currently is the subject of a poll on my "hottness" where people have speculate as to 'how good a ride' I am.

Until we stop paying lip service to the lie that we don't judge people based on how they look and that men and women are treated equally in the political arena Bronagh Key can unfortunately look forward to more of the same.

I found this excellent article on Iranpressnews. It asks the insightful question why does the fate of Muslim women suffering under oppressive regimes not appear to matter to western feminists? And offers an insightful critique of the banalities and trivialities of western feminism.