‘Girls’ creator Lena Dunham loses it with voting/virginity ads

Though the study will be published in a leading academic journal, Psychological Science, the reaction to the CNN story was so overwhelmingly negative that CNN deleted the article from its website. Daily Kos indignantly called the study “pseudo-science.” A female commenter fumed on CNN.com: “What an insulting question. As if my ability to make decisions depends on my cycle!” Another snarked: “Yes. We all know women are irrational creatures, slaves to their hormones, with no agency of their own.”

Liberal pundits and readers were outraged by the study’s implication that women are ruled by their sexual selves. But this is precisely the premise that Miss Dunham’s ad, universally praised on the left, relies upon. It assumes that women are single-mindedly obsessed with having cheap sex (not to mention paranoid enough to think that the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket has a secret plan to outlaw it).

The ad’s patronizing message is directed at young, unmarried women who consider themselves cosmopolitan, career-oriented feminists. These are intelligent women, women who should know better than to be manipulated by the Obama campaign’s desperate attempt to buy their votes. The ad does not mention the economy, foreign relations, education, energy or other important policy issues. How blinkered and frivolous does the Obama campaign think women are?

John O’Sullivan, writing at National Review Online, describes the Obama campaign’s appeal to women as “The Vagina Dialogues.” It assumes women are “walking, talking, and voting vaginas with no other value or interests.”

I would not date a guy who thought that about women, and I would not vote for a president who thought that. It’s sexist, plain and simple.