Woman drives drunk. Naturally, Feminism blamed.

As a response to the tragic story of the drunk driver who was responsible for the deaths of 8 people on a New York freeway,  the AP published an article about how women are drinking, DUI’ing, and child endangering more these days.  Unsurprisingly, feminism was highlighted in paragraph 4 as the real culprit.

“Younger women feel more empowered, more equal to men, and have been beginning to exhibit the same uninhibited behaviors as men,” said Chris Cochran of the California Office of Traffic Safety.

Because, you see, when women start thinking that they have the same basic human rights as men, all hell breaks loose.  People die.  Equality Kills.

Interesting also that criminal, reckless endangerment is akin to the “uninhibited behaviors” that men regularly exhibit and that we expect from them.   This troubles me.

So buried at the way bottom of the story we get a couple of paragraphs citing some relatively legitimate reasons why women might be drinking more now:

“Our society has taught us that women have an extra burden to be the perfect mothers and perfect wives and perfect daughters and perfect everything,” Levounis said. “They tend to go to great lengths to keep everything intact from an external viewpoint while internally, they are in ruins.”

In the current recession, women’s incomes have become more important because so many men have lost their jobs, experts say. Men are helping out more at home, but working mothers still have the bulk of the child rearing responsibilities.

“Because of that, they have a bigger burden then most men do,” said clinical psychologist Carol Goldman. “We have to look at the pressures on women these days. They have to be the supermom.”

All valid points (disregarding the notion that woman = wife and mother) and much more likely than the empowered women crap that keeps getting top-billed blame for any gender-specific “pattern” that hits the news wire.