Catching Up: Two Examples of Why the Left Fails at Feminism

Once again, I’m behind on posting the links to my articles at other sites. (What else is new?)  Here are two of the pieces I published at NewsReal this month:

I Now Pronounce You Wusband and Hife
The editor-in-chief of a women’s lifestyle site is so fearful of gender stereotypes in marriage that she’s decided to abolish the terms husband and wife. I’m not joking, and neither is she.

Obama is Not What a Feminist Looks Like
On International Women’s Day, the president had plenty of time for shout-outs to celebrities and Communist activists.  But when it came to voicing his support for the struggles of women outside the United States, President Obama had nothing to say.

More to follow.

March 27, 2010 · Filed Under Barack Obama, Feminism, Women

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In Defense of Sexual Freedom

Dirrrty girl Christina Aguilera has given up half-naked floor humping and even the fictional Carrie Bradshaw recently traded in her Sex and the City escapades for marital bliss. Apparently, there’s something terribly wrong with these developments.  There’s a “new backlash against casual sex,” says Jessica Grose in her latest piece for Slate, a “new wave of anti-orgasmic sexual conservatism that makes you hate yourself for what you did last night.”

Grose blames cultural conservatism and neo-Victorian morality for the latest iteration of what she calls “the shame cycle,” an era of sexual regret among women who participate in casual flings. Internalized conservative values, it seems, are forcing women to end their delightfully liberating one-night stands with the dreaded walk of shame, causing many to consider more chaste lifestyles.

The five or six celebrities and authors Grose says have jumped on the chastity bandwagon are hardly evidence of a cyclical phenomenon. But even if we are entering a period in which women are rejecting their inner Girls Gone Wild, why the blame game?

Shouldn’t genuine feminists celebrate women seizing their sexual destinies? Or is embracing your inner hoochie the only path to sexual freedom?

Grose answers that question by linking approvingly to a quote from Feministing.com: it is a “feminist duty to 1) seek pleasure and feel entitled to it and 2) to make the world a more orgasmic place for other women.”

Got that, ladies? If you’re not out there hooking up with every passing fancy, you’re shirking your feminist responsibilities.  You owe it to your comrades!  Is it any wonder that Feministing founder Jessica Valenti made an abstinent college student cry during a lecture on the myth of purity?

The problem with viewing sex as a “feminist duty” is that it muddies the waters between the personal and political in a way that is ultimately damaging to men and women alike. When casual sex is a feminist act, it’s a political act, not a personal, sensual one. And having sex out of a sense of political duty is disturbingly antithetical to the notion of sexual freedom.

Please visit NewsReal Blog to read the rest.

March 13, 2010 · Filed Under Feminism, Liberal Absurdity, Women

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Feminist Indoctrination for 4th Graders

Bloggers and commenters in the “progressive” feminist blogosphere were almost giddy with excitement last week over a young woman’s proposal to bring feminism into the elementary school curriculum.  I’m all for making sure women’s historical contributions are well represented in school curricula, but controversial ideologies that promote far left ideas like “social justice” have no place in public schools.

Here’s what I wrote at NewsReal:

In 2009, Ileana Jiménez asked her class of high school juniors and seniors to write letters to President Obama about “the ways in which feminism might be addressed in the curriculum.”  Earlier this week she shared one letter on her blog, Feminist Teacher.

It is understandable that teachers cannot be expected to cram decades of struggles into 12 years of study. I just feel that there should be more time in the curriculum starting in the lower grades (if they can learn about the slave trade, they can learn about feminism) dedicated to learning about feminism and the goals behind it.

To do that, I propose that by fourth grade, students be exposed to basic feminist ideas.

Note that the student’s interest isn’t in ensuring that women’s experiences are adequately represented in history texts.  She’s proposing the indoctrination of nine-year-old children into a political movement.

She doesn’t define “basic feminist ideas,” but here’s a list of the top priorities of a representative feminist group, the National Organization for Women:

  1. abortion rights/reproductive issues
  2. violence against women
  3. constitutional equality
  4. promoting diversity/ending racism
  5. lesbian rights
  6. economic justice

How many of those “basic feminist ideas” would you teach to a fourth grader?

Visit NewsReal to read the rest of my thoughts on this kid’s letter.

February 14, 2010 · Filed Under Education, Feminism, Liberal Absurdity, Women

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When Can You Call a Woman Masculine?

My latest article at NewsReal looks at when it’s okay to question a woman’s femininity. Check out the double standard:

Last week, noted feminist Keith Olbermann implied that the women of Fox News are only hired because they’re attractive.  In response, The Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher posted a photo gallery of women who work for MSNBC. When he got to Rachel Maddow, Treacher wrote, “Whoops, how did that one get in there? Sorry, man. I mean dude. I mean Rachel! Sorry, Rachel.”

Similar jokes have appeared in a column by Treacher’s colleague Matt Labash, prompting a writer at Jezebel to lecture “Tucker Carlson’s minions” that they must never, ever suggest that a woman looks masculine in appearance.

Making fun of women for looking or acting mannish is a time-honored way of belittling them, of trying to keep women out of both men’s clothes and men’s roles, and just because the woman in question is an out lesbian doesn’t mean jokes about her aren’t part of this misogynist tradition.

But if a Jezebel writer wants to insult Ann Coulter’s femininity? Oh, that’s totally cool:

Ann Coulter Finally Explains What’s Behind That Adam’s Apple

Please visit NewsReal to read the rest.

February 8, 2010 · Filed Under Feminism, Liberal Absurdity, Women

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In Which A “Progressive” Feminist Bows To My Will

Vanity Fair Hollywood issue - March 2010

In my latest piece for NewsReal, I wrote about a feminist diversity cop who complained about the dearth of “colored women” in Vanity Fair.  Yes, she actually used the phrase “colored women,” as in, “There is not a single colored women [sic] gracing your pages this year!”  Welcome to 2010.

After my piece appeared, her editor issued a correction. I hope the change would have been made with or without my prodding, but let’s just pretend that my mission was successful. That way I can gloat.

If you get a chance, please check out my other NewsReal pieces from this week:

Introducing the Naomi Wolf Award
I take feminist writer Jill Filipovic to task for her defense of the burqa as a mere article of clothing rather than a tool of subjugation.

Lord of the Rings Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky
A quick link to a very funny satire at McSweeney’s.

Slate Magazine Reintegrates Womenfolk
Nine months after Slate’s women writers went off to the virtual menstrual lodge, the magazine has found that separate but equal doesn’t pay the bills.

Comments are always appreciated.

February 6, 2010 · Filed Under Feminism

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Martha Coakley: Victim of the Patriarchy?

My piece at NewsReal today examines the inclination of some feminist writers to immediately blame sexism for Martha Coakley’s loss to Scott Brown.

There are facts, and then there are feminist facts.  Here’s an example:

Fact: Scott Brown is a white male who drives a pickup truck and won the Massachusetts special election.

Feminist fact: Scott Brown won the Massachusetts special election because he’s a white male who drives a pickup truck.

Can’t you picture the GMC warning labels? Caution: you’re driving a tool of the phallocracy.

You can read the rest at NewsReal.

Boiling the entire Coakley/Brown race down to gender bias is not only shallow, disingenuous political analysis, but it deprives women candidates of the ability to sink or swim on their own merits.  Of course, that hasn’t stopped others from piling on with variations on the sexism theme.

In addition to the examples cited in my NewsReal piece, a POLITICO article about the “impenetrable” glass ceiling in Massachusetts decried “how mind-bending the gender dynamics in this campaign were.”  And in The Daily Beast, James Carroll wrote that “Martha Coakley was croaked by an electorate that could not get past her gender” in “Misogynist Massachusetts.”

When gender disparity is your bread and butter, that’s what an election post-mortem looks like.  So I was pleasantly surprised to see a smarter, saner analysis of Coakley’s loss at Salon’s Broadsheet:

But, as a lefty feminist, I’m calling B.S.  It isn’t so simple, and suggesting otherwise is dangerous.

It takes willful blindness to argue that Coakley’s loss was chiefly the result of anything other than a crappy campaign.

Clearly Coakley didn’t lose because she was the female candidate.  But her crappy campaign wasn’t the biggest factor either.  She lost because she represented everything the majority of Massachusetts residents detest about the Democrats’ agenda. And she lost because immoral, politically motivated decisions she made as a prosecutor came back to haunt her.

So does Massachusetts have a problem electing women to office?

The Commonwealth ranks 18th in electing women to positions in the state legislature. That leaves room for improvement, but it hardly merits the “Misogynist Massachusetts” slur.  And crying sexism because the better man wasn’t a woman is simply counterproductive.

January 21, 2010 · Filed Under Conservatism, Feminism, Liberal Absurdity, Women

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