So stated the Central Mississippi Tea Party President Janis Lane in an interview last June. I saw this being discussed on the net last night but wasn't going to write about it because of the time lapse and because I'm always either ahead or behind the news cycle. But this is just too much fun not to write about.
Here's the exact quote by our Janis, as it comes up in the interview where other people also responded to the questions:
#But do you think there are too many male politicians telling women what to do with their bodies?
#Wade: This is about right and wrong. How is it that they find a cell on Mars, then there's evidence of life on Mars, but if there's a cell in a womb, it's not a baby? ... You don't have the right to kill.
#If that was the case, then they had a right to kill us as blacks. If it's just a matter of having enough votes in the Legislature to kill someone, then there's nothing wrong with it.
#Lane: I'm really going to set you back here. Probably the biggest turn we ever made was when the women got the right to vote.
#What do you mean?
#Lane: Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting. There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how than can skewer a person. I do not see that in men. The whole time I worked, I'd much rather have a male boss than a female boss. Double-minded, you never can trust them.
#Because women have the right to vote, I am active, because I want to make sure there is some sanity for women in the political world. It is up to the Christian rednecks and patriots to stand up for our country. Everyone has the right to vote now that's 18 or over (who is) a legal citizen, and every person that's 18 and over and a legal citizen should be active in local politics so they can make a change locally, make a change on the state level and make a change in Washington, D.C.
I bolded the relevant bit! Delicious stuff! Women are meaner than --- let's think a bit --- Hitler or Pol Pot or Stalin! After all, Lane hasn't observed any nasty behavior in men. Women are also diabolical (checks for hooves and horns in the mirror, spots nothing different from the usual scales)!
The one exception might be Janis Lane. She is not diabolical or double-minded. But she IS a misogynist, and she uses the usual strategy which is to compare the worst in women to either the best of men or to some undefined alternative.
Then she gets into a bit of knot given that she belongs to that group of diabolical people who shouldn't have a vote. She engages in politics herself. People should avoid voting for her as she doesn't believe she should be politically active. She might come up in diabolical spots one morning, finding fangs in her mouth and such.
Hilarious stuff. How on earth do people filter out all the news about crime and wars and such, to arrive at such conclusions? Of course there are lots of nasty women out there. But to imply that women somehow have the upper hand in overall nastiness, well, that's just too funny for words. Even though I've written many words about it.
In a serendipitous way I also happened to have a recent discussion about William Congreve's phrase :
"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned," spoken by Zara in Act III, Scene VIII.[1] (This is usually paraphrased as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned")
This is usually applied in the sense that a scorned women is more furious than any other kind of human being. But my own observations, having to do with breakups and divorces, is that the fury (and the pain) of the scorned is pretty much gender-neutral. Isn't it interesting that this often-heard quote comes from a play?