That's not funny!

A painful double standard

I'm dating someone new, and I'm pretty excited about it. Her name is Lorena. She's impetuous, but just a tad moody. Quite an edge on her. I have this little problem when we're together. Call it a fear of intimacy. Oh, maybe it's just me.

I ADMIT TO BEING PERPLEXED BY THE Bobbittry wracking America. I'm concerned, of course, about the lengths to which some women will go in the spirit of penis envy. Yet more amazing still is how uproariously funny all this is to women in general, feminists in particular. These are the grim ideological reapers who ordinarily tolerate not a smirk, grin, or giggle--not to mention a wayward glance. You trying to make a joke, buster? Well, that's contributing to an environment hostile to women!

It appears that Mrs. Bobbitt's veg-o-matic is the sole route to a feminist's sense of humor. If we had sent Leonard Nimoy in search of the Women's Movement funnybone, he would have come back with videotape of Lorena tossing it out the car window. Cokie Roberts, hardly among the militant wing, could barely contain herself when Messrs. Will, Donaldson, and Brinkley squeaked their punditry ever so anxiously on ABC's This Week after the verdict. They squirmed while she doubled over.

If you've never seen a feminist activist howl in delight, just cut off a male organ or two. Slice of life is apparently the one irresistible satirical art form, the feminists' comic Kryptonite.

The standard, off-the-shelf explanation for such mutilation jubilation is that women have been getting their collective hearts ripped out for 500,000 years, give or take an Ice Age. It's about time those bastards got theirs! John Wayne Bobbitt has apparently been hoisted high and laid low to pay for our macho sins, and by his martyrdom sexual justice will be done on earth as it is in...hell.

Mr. Bobbitt is not our lone sacrifice, as an inventive Mrs. Macias made sure. The Los Angeles woman employed a pair of household scissors to surgically remove those parts of her hubby without which he is said to have been castrated. While he slept. (I've heard of sound sleepers, but this guy takes his Z's in a coma.)

Yet the couple have now reconciled and are once again ensconced in blissful wedlock, indicating that even those who have made the supreme sacrifice are willing to concede that angry women with sharp implements have a claim to moral legitimacy. For her part, Mrs. Macias may find her husband much gentler now than he used to be, more sensitive to her needs. Soon she'll be hawking special Home Husband Repair Kits for $29.95 on cable infomercials, offering testemonials about how she "fixed" her marital problems. Thousands of annoyed wives will be eyeing the TV screen with new-found hope.

How many feminists does it take to cut off a penis? That's not funny!

The double standard on laughter has been stretched so wide it now covers the entire hemisphere like a continental prophylactic. Tune into virtually any daytime television show, and one is treated to an unending parade of gleeful male bashing. "Men are scum" is the least controversial thing one can utter in this carefully monitored era of thought control, and columnists writing "Stupid Man Tricks" ridicule the brutish gender with aplomb.

This celebration of reverse sexism stems from the genderization of offensiveness. The crimes and misdemeanors that are today called "sexual harassment" are largely what polite society used to straightforwardly call indecency. The feminists, in yet another example of their camouflaged sense of humor, have claimed traditional gentlemanly behavior as their protectorate and turned boorishness into a Continental P.C. Divide. Historically, no honorable man would leer at, paw, or abuse a co-worker. If hundreds of generations of the male species have been tutored in the traditions of sexual oppression, I must have missed lecture that day. The key to what was widely understood as manhood was a sense of virtue that featured a respect for others and particularly for women, the physically weaker gender.

NOW THE VIOLATION OF CERTAIN BASIC courtesies--rude, hurtful, and wrong in the context of the most conservative social scruples--is a crime of high sexual treason. Those who deviate from civilized norms (established long before gender equity) inflict damage on Every-woman. He who used to be called a "jerk," a "cad," or an "oaf" has been elevated to the status of Great Male Warrior.

The politicization of rudeness is the most impressive achievement of the so-called Women's Movement. That Fat Louie in Accounts Receivable displays a creepy, unwanted affection for Sarah Jane in Customer Service is a comment on Louie, not on Sarah Jane or on the state of the nation. The facile means by which socio-political opportunists have carved out a powerful niche for themselves based on the reliably appalling behavior of cretins should quash any foolish doubts one might have had about the strategic sophistication of the feminine mind.

But now I must get ready for a hot date with my lovely Lorena. I think we just might be hitting it off. She says I make her laugh.

Contributing Editor Thomas W. Hazlett teaches economics and public policy at the University of California, Davis.