By Katie Phillippe
Staff Writer
“It is fundamentally the job of the men to bring home the venison for the women to split up.” Comments like this rang throughout the ears of the full audience in Raitt Recital Hall Monday.
Sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation, former Senate Judiciary Committee member and controversial author Ann Coulter spoke to a mostly receptive audience of anti-feminist students and adults in a lecture titled “Whither Feminism.”
Coulter chose to focus not specifically on feminism, but instead on women and gun control. She referred to liberal, feministic women as “soccer moms” and “stupid,” and later refused to clarify or expand on the use of the latter comment except to say it was justified.
Her view on gun control was obvious: “If you want to save more lives, you want a lot of people to be armed … guns are our friends.”
Coulter focused on the amount of liberal women, especially mothers, who adamantly support the gun control movement. She used statistics to point out the contradiction that toys and buckets of water kill more children than guns do, yet cited that according to the Million Mom March Web site (which Coulter says is down to only 100 moms) guns are the biggest threat to children.
As for the feminist movement, Coulter said that women cannot be responsible for having a career while raising a child because the child is a full-time job.
Yet with a decline in a man’s sense of responsibility to “bring home the bacon,” it is necessary for a woman to make a living, she added.
These working mothers feel this is just in making a world of equality between men and women, yet according to Coulter, do not see the obvious need to put the blame on men. Instead, they “want the government to play the role of husband by protecting them” through gun control and “taking away their babies” through pro-choice laws.
Coulter concluded her speech and opened up the floor to questions with a statement summing up her main point: “When it comes to elections, politics and the women’s vote, politicians must learn that all we really need to know is that the only women we need to watch out for are those with guns.”
Coulter has served as an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice and as a former Senate Judiciary Committee member. She has made appearances on the Today show, Larry King Live, and Politically Incorrect. George Magazine claimed her to be “One of the 20 Most Fascinating Women in Politics.” She is a New York Times best-selling author.
February 21, 2002