Does Michelle Obama care more about girls than boys?

Submitted by Mastodon on Mon, 2014-05-12 23:05

Article here. Excerpt:

'Dear Potus and Flotus...

Now that the President’s prerogative of addressing the American people and the wider world in his weekly talk has been usurped by his wife, I was wondering if I, too, might have a crack? If one unelected individual who represents nobody but herself can air her views, why not anybody?

Like Michelle - like everybody in the developed world - I am horrified by Boko Haram’s kidnapping of almost 300 girls in north-east Nigeria and their grotesque, theatrical threat to sell the girls into slavery. I am of the same mind as Kofi Annan in hoping that this moment might mark the turning point in the world’s attitude and conduct towards Boko Haram (though let’s wish for better results with Boko Haram than we have seen so far with the Taliban). But, after that point, my views diverge from the First Lady’s sentiments.

In the first place, Michelle, you seem not entirely to understand the true meaning of the words “Boko Haram”. It may be presumptuous to be correcting a person on this question who can pick up the phone and ask anybody in the State Department, the counter-terrorism agencies or the US Embassy in Lagos but, so far as I know, Boko Haram does not mean “no education for girls”. It means “western education is sinful”.

That slogan does not apply only to one gender. And the religious primitives whom it inspires have previously enforced it with abominable violence upon boys.'

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Comments

... she is no different from virtually everyone else in the halls of power in the US gov't, or any other for that matter. She and POTUS are exhibiting nymphotropism, a very common phenomenon all over the world. And knowing they can make political hay over it does nothing to slow it down, either. To accuse her and the president of being selective in their sympathetic attentions is like accusing the emperor of Rome (Caesar Nerva Traianus), ca. 100 A.D., of being blind to the injustices of slavery and empire-building. Yes, slavery was terribly wrong to have been permitted at all, but as was everyone around at that time, the emperor was a product of his upbringing and his era. Particularly insightful and ethical people even back then were speaking out against slavery and also for the notion that women should have the same legal rights as men around inheritance, etc. Some even were speaking out for the interests of Roman soldiers who spent literally decades in the field, rarely seeing the families they only just started to have shortly after marriage. But as are MRAs today, these people were in the minority and generally not in positions of influence.

So while I am not giving FLOTUS a pass, I am simply saying "What else is new?" The good news at this moment in history is that there are people speaking out about this double-standard and saying, in essence, why the dead silence until now? That is a question that needs to be asked, and it is *finally* getting its day.

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Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2014-05-15 12:38