Card Carrying Feminists vs. Reality

I just read this posting, which lead me to this one. The latter one is from a very unhappy woman who deeply believes she is a true feminist. She's extremely unhappy because the Canadian 'Best Feminist Blog' award didn't go her way. Here's a sampling (language warning) :

Within hours, sda received a slew of nominations from her tongue-lolling, crotch-scratching fans. Other rightwing female bloggers were nominated, albeit without the attendant frenzy of the admirers that sda commands who rushed the CBA site like so many grotty little boys comparing the length of their posts and the ejaculatory reach of their verbosity. All deleted now by a CBA moderator who had to dip her laptop in bleach after that little display of frothing fannitude for sda.

To this woman I just had to share my thoughts:

A Little Background . . . I'm one of those metrosexual guys who has always believed in and advocated for full equality for women and minorities throughout my life. Within my technology company I've hired people from around the world, including many women. Gender, race, skin colour, sexual preference - none of these things mattered one whit in terms of hiring or promotion. There was zero discrimination. In fact, women often have the more senior management roles and often the highest salaries! In my professional life there has never been a feminist agenda per say, but rather just a glorious meritocracy.

So for me the word "feminist" has always meant "equality for women", which is the original & proper meaning, is it not?

How naive I was to think that everyone still shared this definition. The recent U.S. election revealed a dirty little secret about card carrying feminists, didn't it? The infamous posting of the CBC's Heather Mallick showed a deep-seated HATRED (there's no other suitable word) toward Sarah Palin and women like her. And why? Because she's a strong proponent of the Pro-Life Movement and a Republican. Wow, what a horrible person!!

I actually don't share Palin's beliefs on abortion but do recognize them as being morally consistent. So while I don't agree with the 'no exceptions' views of Pro-Lifers, I do respect them.

It seems crystal clear that you and your like-minded readers have a long road to walk before you will ever understand that "feminism" simply doesn't equate to "pro-Abortion". The fact that you deeply believe that a feminist MUST be vociferously pro-Choice is a mystery I'll leave for Sherlock Holmes to unravel.

Another mystery is why you believe that feminists can ONLY have Radical Left political views? "Socialism is the only path to set us free, sisters" ? ! ?

The 3rd Requirement in the Trilogy for Card Carrying Feminists seems to be a certain degree of antipathy toward men, especially if they're Caucasian. If you think I'm exaggerating then you really need to hire a different polling firm.

So in summary, there are you you and your ilk who believe that Feminism means:

• Pro-Choice (anytime, anywhere)
• Radical Left political views
• A little or a lot of dislike towards men
  

Then there's the rest of us. Thank goodness there's the rest of us!

Until you realize how far off the rails your movement has veered, you will never be able to grasp why women like Sarah Palin, Kate McMillan, Michelle Malkin, Amy Alkon, Laura Ingraham, and Patricia Heaton are the TRUE feminists of the New Millennium.

Phyllis Schlafly: Feminists against Palin - Shame on You!

The nomination of Sarah Palin for vice president is a big step forward for women, but a long backward step for the movement we have been taught to call feminism.

That is obvious from the anguish, indeed the fury, of feminist commentators. They are so intemperate in their criticism that they are incoherent. Men who are clueless about feminism naively think all women should be cheering. Sarah Palin is a woman who has done it all; she has a successful and even more promising career, five children and a supportive husband.

She crashed through the ultimate layer of the feminist fiction -the "glass ceiling" - and she joined those very few women destined to be known only by their first names. What more could any woman want?

The denunciations of Sarah can't be only because she appears to be a conservative Republican, and the feminists want only liberal Democrats to win. In this era of independent voters and respect for a maverick, surely the milk of bipartisanship should soften feminist angst about Sarah.

But, no. Feminist anger against Sarah has exposed the fact that feminism is not about women's success and achievement. If it were, feminists would have been bragging for years about self-made women who are truly remarkable achievers, such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, or former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, or Sen. Elizabeth Dole, or even Margaret Thatcher. Feminists never boast about these women because feminism's basic doctrine is victimology. Feminism preaches that women can never succeed because they are the sorry victims of an oppressive patriarchy. No matter how smart or accomplished a woman may be, she's told that success and happiness are beyond her grasp because institutional sexism and discrimination hold her down.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to get the Democratic nomination for president or vice president, she and her allies rained a torrent of tears all over the media about the injustice of it all, ranting that rampant sexism denied her the nomination she was due. The aging Gloria Steinem opined on CNN that it is "clear that there is profound sexism." She whined that Hillary couldn't crack the "glass ceiling" because there are "still barriers and biases out there."

Oh, the unfairness of it all! Steinem bemoaned that women find it so "difficult to be competent and successful and be liked." Au contraire, Hillary and women like her are not disliked because they are competent and successful, but because they are chip-on-the-shoulder feminists, living in an unhappy world of their own making and spreading their discontent like a virus. Feminists convey a notion of entitlement, as though they deserve special privileges today because of wrongs in past years that no one any longer can remember, such as women not having the right to vote. The bad attitude of victimhood is indoctrinated in students by the bitter feminist faculty in university women's studies courses and even in some law schools. Victimhood is nurtured and exaggerated by feminist organizations using their tactic called "consciousness raising," i.e., retelling horror stories about how badly some women have been treated until small personal annoyances grow into societal grievances. The feminists resent Sarah because she's the exact opposite of Hillary Clinton. When the liberal media sharpened their knives against Sarah, some chivalrous McCainiacs cried foul about media unfairness, but we didn't hear any whining from Sarah. Sarah has been successful because of hard work and perseverance, not because she's a woman, and she's not going to pull any crybaby act now. Sarah didn't need any Equal Rights Amendment, which Hillary is still promoting even though it was declared dead by the Supreme Court 26 years ago.

The feminist tirades against Sarah are mostly so tiresome, but one line of their complaints is really funny. After 40 years of telling wives and mothers to get out of the home (which Betty Friedan called "a comfortable concentration camp"), put their children in day care (tax-funded, of course) and join the workforce, these same feminists now tell Sarah to stay home with her children.

Sarah doesn't need feminist approval for her lifestyle; the only person whose OK she needs for her double career as mother and politician is her husband's, and he seems very happy with Sarah.

Sarah Palin is an exemplar of a successful, can-do woman, and the feminists simply don't know how to deal with her. I hope she will usher in a new era where conventional wisdom recognizes that feminist negativism is ancient history and American women are so fortunate to live in the greatest country on Earth.

Phyllis Schlafly is president of Eagle Forum, an attorney, and the author of 20 books, including "Feminist Fantasies." Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/21/IN5U13026F.DTL

This article appeared on page G - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Is Sarah Palin an Anti-Feminist?

Earlier today I was referred to this editorial from Ann Althouse's popular blog. To it I added this comment:

If I happen to not hate Sarah Palin does that make me a “troll” by your way of thinking? Put another way, all of you are of course free to think any way you wish (as am I), but thinking the way you do, are you open to actually listening to others who happen to have another point of view?

Here are two interesting articles that I found most enlightening:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/index.html
http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.28410/pub_detail.asp

Compare those with these:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eve-ensler/drill-drill-drill_b_124829.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/09/05/f-vp-mallick.html

If you still choose to label me as a troll, simply because I very politely and respectfully chose to post this then that’s your prerogative. It would be sad though.

Someone with the moniker of "JPlum" responded with this:

Robert, we have listened to other points of view, and disagreed with them. Reality, in fact, disagrees with Paglia’s opinion that Palin is a feminist. You see, feminists advocate for the rights of women. Palin advocates taking away the rights of women. Therefore, she is not a feminist. How many times do we have to say this? Opposing policies and funding that would help women is the antithesis of feminism. Palin opposes policies and funding that would help women. Therefor she is the antithesis of feminism.

I could say that you, Robert, are a turnip. Does that make you a turnip? Do you possess many-or any-of the qualities that make up a turnip? No? Then, I could call you a turnip ‘til the polar bears come home* and it wouldn’t actually turn you into a turnip.

*Ssince Sarah Palin wants to take polar bears off the endangered species list, we could be waiting a while for them to come home

To that I responded with this, which I felt I should repost here:

Thank you for your thoughtful response, JPlum. Consider this though: Your political views assert that more government funded programs are the answer to solving problems. Fair enough. But others just as sincerely believe that such programs are unnecessary and, in fact, often have the opposite effect. You have every right to disagree with such people and believe that your way is the better way. But then to go the extra step and conclude that therefore such people don't care about 'X' or want to take away the rights of 'X' is a logical leap of faith that is not warranted.

I'll give you a good case in point. Checking out my blog you would have learned that I'm a Canadian living in Vancouver, BC. We're currently engaged in our own federal election these days.

One of the parties asserts that the best way to provide low-cost childcare is to create government funded childcare programs to which any family (no means test) can take their children to for less than $10 per day. There's only so much money available for this, so once the funds are spent, no more families will be eligible.

Another party doesn't think such a program is equitable because it provides no funding for families who choose for either the mother or the father to stay at home with the children until they enter school. So they've decided to give money directly to all parents, totaling a budget amount that's comparable to what the first party wanted to spent on their program.

A 3rd party may come along and feel that current funding for current health care and education is also strapped and choose to increase the budgets of these existing programs instead of creating a new childcare program. Or perhaps they feel that with a rapidly growing elderly population, more money needs to go to low income seniors instead of to families where both parents are still of working age.

Like you, I would have my own opinion on which party's platform makes the most sense but perhaps unlike you, I would never say that any are "taking away the rights of children or parents". It makes for a great soundbite but only goes to stifle debate.

Here's another example. I frequently visit Chicago. I have a good friend there named Melissa who has been a registered Democrat all of her adult life. We've often discussed the massive ghettos that exist on the Southside of Chicago. She carefully explained to me the history of how they got to the abysmal state they're now in. Back in the 1960's well meaning politicians felt that the poor needed to be provided for. So they built huge apartment complexes which later became known as "The Projects". Apartments were provided at low or even no cost. Over time they deteriorated so badly that now many are being demolished.

Why did this happen? I think it can be summed up in one word: Incentive. More accurately, the lack thereof. If you give someone something for nothing and continue to do it over time, most people take it for granted. This is because you've taken away any incentive for them to try harder, work harder, and strive for more. I'm not a particularly religious person but there's an old parable that is quite apropos: "Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day (and be back again tomorrow looking for another fish). But teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime."

I realize that some consider this parable to be a fallacy. I, on the other hand, adamantly believe it is the cornerstone of human psychology.

In case you're interested, I passed on our conversation to a female friend of mine here in Vancouver. She's 46, a single mom, upper-middle class but not wealthy. In times past I've heard her describe herself as a strong feminist, but not a radical one. Her words, not mine. She's no fan of Sarah Palin (or Barack Obama) but is adamant that Palin is just as much a feminist as you or she is.

I can only conclude therefore that what you're really against is Sarah Palin's more libertarian views on the size and breadth of government. In the democracies we both live in you have absolutely every right to oppose her political views. In fact, I sincerely compliment you for exercising your democratic rights. But when you then jump the shark and assert that she is not a feminist, you choose to stray far away from what this woman has actually accomplished in her life and how much inspiration she is giving little girls to aspire to be anything they want to be.

The Roots of Palin Derangement Syndrome

On August 1, 2008, long before Sarah Palin became a national figure, an academic & author named Christina Hoff Sommers authored this lengthy but fascinating essay that documents the history of feminism and how it has evolved (devolved?) into its current state.

She was vilified in despicable ways by the same feminists for the same reasons they attack Palin: both women do not subscribe to the extremely radical left-wing views of the "official" feminist movement.

Her essay is indeed a long one but well worth reading if you want to understand what is fueling PDS. Here are some key parts:

Pick up a women's studies textbook, visit a college women's center, or look at the websites of leading feminist organizations, and you will likely find the same fixation on intimate anatomy combined with left-wing politics and a poisonous antipathy to men. (Campus feminists were among the most vocal and zealous accusers of the young men on the Duke University lacrosse team who were falsely indicted for rape in 2006.)

But modern "women's liberation" has little to do with liberty. It aims not to free women to pursue their own interests and inclinations, but rather to reeducate them to attitudes often profoundly contrary to their natures. In "Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies (2003)", two once-committed women's studies professors, Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge, describe how the feminist classroom transforms idealistic female students into "relentless grievance collectors."

In 1991, the culture critic and dissident feminist Camille Paglia put the matter even more bluntly. She described women's studies as

a jumble of vulgarians, bunglers, whiners, French faddicts, apparatchiks, dough-faced party-liners, pie-in-the-sky utopians and bullying sanctimonious sermonizers. Reasonable, moderate feminists hang back and keep silent in the face of fascism.

Truth be told, there are also great numbers of contemporary American women who would today readily label themselves as feminists were they aware of a conservative alternative in which liberty, rather than "liberation," is the dominant idea. Today, more than 70 percent of American women reject the label "feminist," largely because the label has been appropriated by those who reject the very idea of a feminine sphere.

In a 1975 exchange in the Saturday Review, the feminist pioneer Betty Friedan and the French philosopher and women's rights advocate Simone de Beauvoir discussed the "problem" of stay-at-home mothers. Friedan told Beauvoir that she believed women should have the choice to stay home to raise their children if that is what they wished to do. Beauvoir candidly disagreed:

No, we don't believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.

In Beauvoir, we see how starkly the ideology of liberation has come to oppose actual, practical liberty--even "choice." Her intolerance and condescension toward family-centered women is shared by many in today's feminist establishment and has affected the education of American students. Historian Christine Rosen, in a recent survey of women's studies texts, found that every one disparaged traditional marriage, stay-at-home mothers, and the culture of romance. Perhaps there is a sensible women's studies text out there somewhere, but, for the most part, the sphere of life that has the greatest appeal to most women and is inseparable from traditional ideas of feminine fulfillment is rejected in the name of liberation.

Today's feminist establishment in the United States is dominated by the radical wing of the egalitarian tradition. Not only do its members not cooperate with their conservative sisters, but they also often denigrate and vilify them; indeed they have all but eliminated them from the history of American feminism. Revisionist history is never a pretty sight. But feminist revisionists are destructive in special ways. They seek to obliterate not only feminist history but the femininity that made it a success.

[Young women of the U.S. can] make the movement attractive once again to the silent majority of American women who really do not want to be liberated from their womanhood. And then take on the cause of the women who have yet to find the liberty that Western women have won for themselves and that all women everywhere deserve.