In my latest National Post column, I object to people imposing facile negative gender stereotypes on the men's rights movement.

In my latest National Post column I deplore “prejuvenation,” in which you pre-emptively inject gunk into your face to stop it showing emotions or developing character.

So there's this story out of France where the "top court", the Council of State, has suspended various bans on the burkini, an arguably excessively modest form of swimwear popular among some Muslims. In a characteristic leading paragraph, NBC said "France's top court on Friday suspended a controversial ban on full-body burkini swimsuits that has sparked heated debate both inside the country and abroad." And I wonder: Why so much attention to this one? Now I could write at some length about the way "controversial" is used in the press to mean "thing you should disapprove of". Or the logic of the ban itself. Or the extraordinary French way of doing things, including that freedom of association is a largely foreign concept as opposed, in the English-speaking world, to a core right that is fast disappearing. (To give another remarkable example, this "top court" of which stories speak, the Conseil d'État, is at once the supreme court for administrative law, that is, for settling disputes about the behaviour of executive agencies, and the legal advisor to the executive branch. In the Anglosphere such an arrangement would be an unthinkable conflict of interest; in France it is seen as commendably efficient in empowering the state to run people's lives for them.) But for now I want to ask a different question.

Why all this hoo-hah about the French ban, and not a peep about the legal and social restrictions on "immodest" swimwear and indeed clothing generally in much of the Muslim world, including extralegal violence to enforce it? Why are so many people calling the French intolerant on this issue and saying nothing about what goes on elsewhere? Where's the "heated debate" on bans on infidel attire?

To ask this question is not to suggest that the French ban should not be debated, or that there are not reasonable arguments on both sides. Quite the reverse. And for what it's worth, as I've written elsewhere, I favour considerable freedom of dress provided it isn't obscene or likely to cause justified public alarm. But I also favour, and indeed regard as inseparable from the former, freedom of association; if I do not like how you are dressed I should be free to shun you personally and, yes, professionally. Especially if you cover your face on the grounds that if I see you, one or both of us will be soiled, which I find deeply offensive. But again, that's not really the point here.

The point is that we seem to be holding France and the French to a much higher standard than, say, Jordan and Jordanians, let alone Iran and Iranians. For instance, a recent Daily Telegraph Travel/Advice piece said that in Jordan generally, "Women should wear loose fitting clothes, covering the arms, legs and chest area, while T-shirts are best avoided for both sexes. Women’s hair should be dry, as wet hair is said to suggest sexual availability..." What? Are you kidding me?

Obviously I would not want to be judged by that standard. I think we can do better. And the French, for all their foibles and fondness for state direction, generally do better. But for the sake of perspective about such things I also think we should be clear, in going after the French for responding to the menace of radical Islam in their own characteristic way and sometimes getting it wrong, that we are holding them to a higher standard. We might even want to fumble toward an explanation of why.

See, they're a Western country. And while it's politically correct to despise Western arrogance, cultural imperialism and so forth, just about everybody knows deep down that... that... that public policy in Western countries is broadly rational and tolerant whereas elsewhere it too often isn't.

If that's a "controversial" thing to say, well, I said it anyway.

My latest for the Rebel: The first oral contraceptive pill, approved by the US FDA on June 23, 1960, had a far larger impact on the way we live than all the legislation and political agitation of that or many other years. As Andrew Breitbart was fond of saying, politics is indeed downstream from culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRzZZwA4GQ0

The audio-only version is available here: [podcast title="Rebel audio, June 23"]http://www.thejohnrobson.com/podcast/John2016/June/160623Rebel.mp3[/podcast]

In today’s National Post Rex Murphy quotes Malcolm Muggeridge, like Chesterton a prophetic voice about the modern age, that “We live in an age in which it is no longer possible to be funny. There is nothing you can imagine, no matter how ludicrous, that will not promptly be enacted before your very eyes, probably by someone well known.”

Murphy goes on to describe artist Tracey Emin marrying a rock in France last summer, and a group of philosophy students in California marrying the ocean a few days ago. Not as satire but as what passes for sober reality. Murphy concludes the piece “As Wordsworth said of Milton, of Muggeridge we can also pray: Malcolm thou shoulds’t be living at this hour. Or, may be not.” What, indeed, would Muggeridge make of Emin, a Royal Academician of the Royal Academy of Arts who Wikipedia calls “a paragon for women artists in today's art world” who “does not overtly appear as a feminist artist” because she says “she is a feminist, but not a feminist artist” and “discusses sexism from the viewpoint of the being a female victim” and was a Turner Prize nominee for the predictably filthy, in both senses, “My Bed”? Or the notion, discussed by Murphy, of obtaining consent from the ocean for sex?

Well, I’m no Muggeridge. But I’m not letting satire go down without a fight. Because I’ve heard of getting your rocks off, but this is ridiculous. And if you get the ocean pregnant, does it need a sea section?

See. We can still laugh. Through our tears. Salty tears. Like the ocean. Say, I think I’ll marry my face. If it says yes.

Amid all the sound and fury in the American presidential election, with the latter being on the whole more justified than the former, a remarkable voice of sanity emerges in the form of an open letter (yes, a much overused format, but justified this time). It’s from two women, both mothers, about the central issue in the apparent unraveling of America: the unraveling of the family. They ask Donald Trump what he might do about it, especially given his own example. And it’s an entirely appropriate question for the man who would be Republican nominee and apparently will be. But it could also be asked of almost anyone aspiring to office, as a reproach in some cases including Hillary Clinton’s and merely an urgent policy question in others.

Nothing matters more than intact families in making America “great” again. Nothing matters more in making it whole, in making it free, in preserving limited government, decentralization and vigorous citizens able to tackle problems both public and private instead of passively waiting for incompetent overbearing government to barge in and make things worse. And nothing matters more in people’s private lives.

So what has anyone to say about it? The problem is by no means unique to the United States. Whether you are American, Canadian, Australian or any other nationality, I strongly urge you to read the letter, to ponder it, to see what answer you might give as well as what answer any candidates do American or otherwise.

In today's Mercatornet Newsletter, Editor Michael Cook cites a noteworthy observation by his colleague Carolyn Moynihan:

A great deal of ink has been spilt over the rather dreary topic of the state of public bathrooms in the United States. Transgenders, it is argued, clearly have a civil right to access the bathroom of their choice. This is an issue which affects, at most 0.3% of the population. For my money, Carolyn Moynihan, our deputy editor, has penned the most sensible contribution to this debate. She asks why Americans are working themselves into a frenzy over bathrooms when nearly 1 in 6 young men between 18 and 34 is either out of work or in jail.

In principle it's possible, even logical, to be compassionate to everyone. But her observation underlines how selective, and ostentatious, some people's concern seems to be.

Today I got this envelope from Statistics Canada saying "2016 Census: Complete the census - it's the law." (Equally rude in French: "Recensement de 2016: Répondez au recensement - c'est la loi".) I am told the government is the servant of the people. But this peremptory tone, giving orders without even a pretence at "please," is not how a servant speaks to a master. Quite the reverse. Remember how all the right people were shocked and appalled when the Harper Tories got rid of the long form census? Without accurate data, they complained, social scientists would find it hard to engineer satisfaction of the human units to a sufficient number of decimal places. Which I always found rather an odd conception of the proper role of government and of its abilities. And look how they talk to us now that it's back.

The smart set make a lot of fuss about "evidence-based decision-making". But a decision to trust the intelligence or benevolence of government doesn't seem to me to be based on much sound evidence. Not even the personal stuff I have to provide or else, according to this envelope that just marched into my house, waved a pair of handcuffs at me and started shouting questions.