Feminism Gives Western Culture a Bad Rep

Progressives argue that Guantanamo Bay has been a huge recruiting tool for radical jihadists. If one small prisoner of war camp has that power, imagine what a massive recruiting tool the American feminist movement is for jihadists.

That thought came to mind when Egyptian-born Nonie Darwish said, at the Institute's Midwest Women's Summit in Minnesota, "the Middle East watches what happens in the West."  No doubt Middle Easterners draw inferences about Western culture generally and Western women specifically from the behavior of feminists today. That's a shame, because (to paraphrase President Obama), modern feminism is "not who we are."  Not by a long shot.

American feminists' utter disdain for men, children and family, and their penchant for excusing and/or defending even the most disgusting sexual misbehavior of women, paint an ugly portrait of Western culture — one that even a majority of American women find distasteful. An Vox poll this month found only 18 percent of Americans consider themselves feminists.

Any positive messages traditional feminism might once have had — equal workplace opportunity for women, and equal treatment of women under the law — have been lost today. That's sad for women in the world still dreaming of that degree of equality, and it's a disaster for Western culture.

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Below is a video of Ms. Darwish's full remarks at the Summit:

SRO at Georgetown U Lecture About Feminism

Congratulations to Georgetown University student Mallory Carr, who worked with her Georgetown CR chapter to coordinate a fantastic, standing-room only CBLPI-sponsored event tonight! Well over one hundred students attended the lecture entitled, "What's Right (and Badly Wrong) with Feminism?" given by Luce Institute campus speaker Dr. Christina Hoff Sommers.

Also in attendance at the event were about a dozen student feminists holding signs with slogans like "Trigger Warning: anti-feminism" and "Feminists Against RAPE Apology!"

These students also posted signs outside of the lecture room alerting students to "safe spaces" in another building on campus. According to the signs, "all are welcome to come if they feel triggered or upset by today's events. Hate speech will not be appreciated in this space," and "Trigger Warning: this event will contain discussions of sexual assault and may deny the experiences of survivors." The protesters also engaged in a heated Q&A session that will be posted soon on CBLPI's YouTube channel.

The protesters used trigger warnings as a way to stigmatize the presentation and anything that differs from their point of view. Liberals insist upon pushing their politically correct agenda on others and it’s insulting.

It was inspiring to see so many students attend this event. Despite the protesters, Dr. Sommers did an excellent job explaining her vision of 'Freedom Feminism'. While it is too bad that some of the Georgetown students felt the need to try to shame their fellow students who hosted the event, I am glad they did attend. Hopefully there are some thoughtful students who will reconsider the preconceived notions after hearing a new perspective tonight.

At no time did Dr. Sommers say anything that could be misconstrued as rape apology. The protesters were clearly trying to use a straw-man argument to silence and censor the event. Fortunately, the controversy only increased attendee turnout and campus buzz.

Mallory and CR chairman Amber Athey(pictured with Dr. Sommers) did a wonderful job coordinating this event, and I am happy for them that it was such a success!

—by Laurel Conrad, the Institute's Lecture Director
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Update -- Other articles on the event:

Students Fear for the Safety Because Conservatives Invited a Speaker to Campus, National Review Online
Militant Georgetown Feminists Demand 'SAFE SPACE' Because of Scary 5'5", 130-lb. Woman, Daily Caller
Christina Hoff Sommers Gets Trigger Warnings at Georgetown, Legal Insurrection
Feminist Students Feel 'Unsafe' Bringing Female, Conservative Speaker to Campus, Campus Reform
IRONY: College Students Demand "Trigger Warnings" For This Speaker, Chicks on the Right

And the video:

Jackie's Gang Rape Story: Early Lessons

Any woman with an ounce of estrogen in her body had to be seething as she read the Rolling Stone story of “Jackie’s” gang rape by nine University of Virginia frat boys. A reader’s desire to punish those men – in some creatively vile ways not fit to put on paper – would have been palpable.  In hindsight, that estrogen-infused, brain-deprived reaction appears to be exactly what the author and the magazine sought to achieve with the now-discredited story.

Jackie’s story began falling apart when others, exercising basic journalistic skills, discovered there was no party at the fraternity house on September 28, and the fraternity rushed in the spring, not the fall – two simple facts neither the author nor the magazine made any attempt to check. Rolling Stone issued a lame quasi-retraction, and Jackie’s own friends began backing away from her story. Now we learn that Jackie herself tried to withdraw from the story before it was published.

No doubt more will come out as the larger story unfolds, and it should. The innocents deserve exoneration, and the guilty deserve condemnation.  All of them.

In the meantime, we can draw a few early lessons from Jackie’s story.

One, liberal-progressives lie, distort, exaggerate, and emotionally manipulate with complete abandon to achieve their nefarious objectives.  The manufactured ‘war on women’ is one example.  Others include Jonathan Gruber’s candid (even proud) admissions of the public lies told by liberal-progressives to win passage of Obamacare, and IRS officials’ lies surrounding abuse of conservative organizations and individuals.  Lying worked in each case, but only for a time (a really short time in Jackie’s case).  Truth eventually raises her beautiful head and overcomes.  

Two, liberal lies cause real harm to the country and to innocent people.  Obamacare is the most extreme example.  A law now, the Affordable Care Act is a policy nightmare that has cost millions of people their health insurance and their health care providers, with more pain to come if implementation proceeds. With the truth of this disaster now obvious, a majority wants it repealed and replaced. 

Jackie’s story has caused harm to innocents, too.  The immediate damage is to the reputations of the men accused of such a reprehensible act and to their fraternity. The long-term damage will be felt by future rape victims who fear having their veracity doubted if they report the crime. 

Three, liberal college administrators are justifiably reaping the bitter fruit they have sown. They have been complicit in hyper-sexualizing campuses with co-ed dorms and bathrooms, bowls of free condoms, sex shows and Vagina Monologues plays, and titillating sex courses of no academic value. Add a generous supply of alcohol, and the situation becomes combustible.  A “sexual assault crisis” on campus?  Whatever did they expect?

Four, feminists have completely lost their minds, along with any moral grounds on which to speak for women. After Jackie’s story was called into question, feminist Zerlina Maxwell argued in the Washington Post that the facts [read truth] didn’t really matter because the story “helped dramatize what happens when the claims of victims are not taken seriously.” She’s wrong; facts and truth do matter above all else.

After decades of advocating that women play the non-committal hook-up sex game with men, feminists find women aren’t faring very well. So they’re petitioning the federal government for new Title IX regulations to tilt the campus sex-playing field in favor of women: to force colleges to adopt policies that presume the honesty of an accuser and the guilt of an accused. 

“It’s no coincidence that the Rolling Stone article spent a great deal of time advocating for the expansion of federal involvement in higher education via Title IX of the Civil Rights Act,” Jonah Goldberg points out; “regulations that would erode the presumption of innocence in rape cases on campus.”  God help the University of Virginia men if such regulations were already in place.

As we stand with and defend the innocents, whatever residual outrage we feel from reading Jackie’s story should be redirected to the guilty:  liberals who try to avoid the consequences of their incessant dishonesty.


Update:
U-Va Students Challenge Rolling Stone, T. Rees Shapiro, Washington Post
Rolling Stone and Random House Deserve Defamation Lawsuits, Leslie Loftis, thefederalist.com
Why the Media's Fact Problems are Way Bigger Than Rolling Stone, Mollie Hemingway

Millett: Marxist Feminism's Ruined Lives

Mallory Millett has a fascinating article on her early experiences with her sister, second-wave feminist and National Organization of Women loyalist Kate Millett, and the ruined lives caused by her sister's brand of radicalism.

It was 1969. Kate invited me to join her for a gathering at the home of her friend, Lila Karp. They called the assemblage a “consciousness-raising-group,” a typical communist exercise, something practiced in Maoist China.  We gathered at a large table as the chairperson opened the meeting with a back-and-forth recitation, like a Litany, a type of prayer done in Catholic Church. But now it was Marxism, the Church of the Left, mimicking religious practice:

“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”

Their answer left me dumbstruck, breathless, disbelieving my ears.  Was I on planet earth?  Who were these people?

“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.

Read the rest.

The Economics of Sex and Manhood

"Every day seems to feature a new complaint about the state of manhood in society," write Gannon LeBlanc and Bjarna O'Brien, who argue that birth control, the rise of feminism and "good old rational self-interest" have enabled men to extend adolescence well into their twenties.

Birth control and the rise of feminism has made the “price” of sex very cheap. By price, we are not talking strictly about a dollar value, but rather about opportunity cost. Back in our grandparents’ day before birth control was widely accessible, women collectively kept the price of sex very high because of the high risk of pregnancy. A hook-up culture was simply infeasible because women did not have access to birth control to effectively prevent pregnancy or the economic independence required to support a child on their own. A woman had to be able to trust that if she became pregnant, the man would stick around and be a good father and husband. As a result, women made men work, and work hard, to have sex with them and expected their suitors to have an honorable reputation, a good job, and an education.

Once birth control became more accessible and acceptable in society and once women gained more economic opportunities, women could virtually unshackle themselves from the biological risks associated with pregnancy and become more promiscuous. While this was great in the eyes of feminists, who believed that women should be equal to men and shouldn’t be shamed for their sexual desires or activities, this transition came with tradeoffs. Instilling a culture of promiscuity increased the supply of sex available to men, yet the demand for sex from men never changed. When supply skyrockets and demand doesn’t move, price plummets. This is called a supply shock.

Women have set the price of sex so low that men now have no incentive to compete for female favor. Unlike their forefathers, men today don’t need to have a solid job, good manners, be in top physical shape, or have a strong sense of honor to get sex. More often than not, taking a girl out to dinner and inviting her back to his place can be enough. Granted, having the above qualities can make men more successful in the dating game, but it doesn’t incentivize them to be more committed. In fact, supply is so high that this has the opposite effect. The more successful a man is with women, the less incentivized he is to enter a committed, monogamous relationship.

 Read The Economics of Sex: Where Have All the Good Men Gone?

Women Against Feminism Movement

"A social media movement called 'Women Against Feminism' has been making headlines recently both nationally and internationally, generating a wave of backlash and discussion on the definition of modern feminism," reports Anuhya Bobba @ College.USAToday.com. Bobba is a rising junior at George Washington University.

“Women Against Feminism” has garnered more than 17,000 ‘likes’ and followers on Facebook and Tumblr combined, and this number continues to grow along with the outrage of those who see supporters of the movement to be “grossly misinformed.”

Modern feminists are frustrated with the new movement:

“The perceptions that these women have about feminism is [sic] grossly misinformed. ‘Women Against Feminism’ paints feminists as man-haters who like to play the victim,” [Daniel Greinke, a recent grad who considers himself a feminist] says. “Feminism is not about oppressing men or playing the victim. There are real systemic issues with the way women are treated in our society — the effects of which are well documented in academic literature and which are felt by many women in my life.”

'Women Against Feminism' supporters have a very different perspective:

But Hannah Cowan, a rising freshman at the University of Wyoming, says the modern feminist movement is “full of faults” — adding that it is a fight for “entitlements and supremacy” rather than equality, that it shames men and does not take into account how men also have issues, and that feminists are “manipulative people” playing the role of a victim.

Cowan, who will be pursuing a pre-law track, says she finds “Women Against Feminism” to be a positive movement that sheds the truth about modern feminism, which holds up equality and creates an “unnecessary wall of tension” between the sexes.

“I am an anti-feminist, because feminists have attacked me for my political, personal, and religious views more than the ‘patriarchy’ ever did for my gender,” she says. “I absolutely loath the stigma feminism is placing on women as being ‘weak,’ ‘delicate,’ or ‘oppressed by the patriarchy.’ As a female living in the U.S., I am in no way ‘oppressed’ and I pity the women who are dull enough to believe the feminists lies.” [snip]

... She adds that because Western women already have the same rights as their male counterparts, feminists should shift their energies to issues like sex trafficking in Europe and not concern themselves with “ridiculous crap here like worrying about clothes that boys ‘hate'."

Oh, joy! Feminists Shellacked!

Camille Paglia aims a broadside at the feminist culture in a thoroughly enjoyable piece, It's a Man's World, and It Will Always Be!

A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology. [snip]

When an educated culture routinely denigrates masculinity and manhood, then women will be perpetually stuck with boys, who have no incentive to mature or to honor their commitments. And without strong men as models to either embrace or (for dissident lesbians) to resist, women will never attain a centered and profound sense of themselves as women.

Paglia argues that ...

• "[M]any ambitious professional women" in other nations "seem to have found a formula for asserting power and authority in the workplace while still projecting sexual allure and even glamour. This is the true feminine mystique, which cannot be taught but flows from an instinctive recognition of sexual differences."
• "[M]en are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments. It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall."
• The modern economy's "is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!"

Read and enjoy her full article at Time magazine.

Are You a Feminist?

Most American women don't want to be associated with the term or the movement, says Christina Hoff Sommers. She offered background, insight and data that will surprise many women during her May Conservative Women's Network luncheon presentation in Washington DC. Her full speech can be viewed on YouTube (http://youtu.be/VRzrT0H-T-4). 

Juggling Work and Family

Two recent articles, both by feminists, suggest contemporary feminism is struggling to find its way. In Female Ivy League Graduates Have a Duty to Stay in the Workforce, Keli Goff posits an extreme view, arguing women have a greater obligation to their gender, and those who wish to be wives and mothers should stay out of Ivy League schools entirely:

There's nothing wrong with someone saying that her dream is to become a full-time mother by 30. That is an admirable goal. What is not admirable is for her to take a slot at Yale Law School that could have gone to a young woman whose dream is to be in the Senate by age 40 and in the White House by age 50.

In Why Women Should Embrace the Good Enough Life, Elsa Walsh argues that the periodic "discussion about women and feminism, work and family" has become "a narrow conversation, centered largely on work, as though feminism is about nothing more than becoming a smart and productive employee and rising to the top."

Parenthood and family are much more central to our lives than this conversation lets on. The debate has become twisted and simplistic, as if we’re merely trying to figure out how women can become more like men. Instead, let’s ask: How can women have full lives, not just one squeezed around a career? It helps to take a longer view of a woman’s life...

Walsh offers a bit more conservative advice to her own daughter based on that longer view.

Fields: Feminist Fantasies (the Latest)

"Certain feminists, like children discovering that certain words shock their mommies, like to talk dirty," writes Suzanne Fields. "Or at least naughty. Naomi Wolf climbs on this bandwagon once more with her eighth book, Vagina: A New Biography. She joins aging shock jock ('jockette'?) Eve Ensler in shouting the word in a marketplace crowded with female monologues..."  Read the rest.

Why Are We Not Outraged by This?

That's the last question Barkha Herman asks at ricochet.com, but she has many more leading up to it:

I own my own business, travel and entertain a lot, have many hobbies that I don't always get enough time for, and am considering writing a memoir. I donate money and time to causes I believe in. Birth control has never occupied more than one percent of my time ever in my life. I suspect the actual lifetime number is much lower than that.

So what is up with the entire birth control debate?  Am I just a walking vagina? Is this insulting just to me or others?

Read her full post.

Feminism's American Caste Society

Feminists were dead wrong: The single-motherhood revolution "has been an economic catastrophe for women," writes Kay Hymowitz, who calls it the makings of a caste society.

Defenders of the single-mother revolution often describe it as empowering for women, who can now free themselves from unhappy unions and live independent lives. That’s one way to look at it. Another is that it has been an economic catastrophe for those women.

Poverty remains relatively rare among married couples with children; the U.S. Census puts only 8.8 percent of them in that category... But over 40% of single-mother families are poor [and] of the two-fifths of bottom-quintile households that are families, 83% are headed by single mothers.

The Brookings Institution's Isabel Sawhill calculates that virtually all the increase in child poverty in the United States since the 1970s would vanish if parents still married at 1970 rates..."

Hymowitz highlights several studies that show married mothers (including 'shotgun' unions) are economically better off than single or co-habitating mothers. So are married fathers, it turns out. 

Feminism's New Low

"Sandra Fluke has shown us the new lows to which the women's rights movement has fallen," writes Fay Voshell, a self-described traditional feminist who sees the need for a women's rights movement throughout the world.

Time was when real feminists fought for the right of little girls to be educated as well as little boys. Time was when they fought protracted and heartbreaking battles for women's right to vote. Time was when they fought for the right to own their own property, to be in charge of their own monies, to be equals before the law.

Time was there were heroines such as Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Whatever their personal vagaries, oddities, and conflicts may have been, they all fought for core values, values which included women having equal rights in education, in politics, in their homes, and before the law. They fought and they suffered on behalf of future generations of women, and the victories they did achieve were made possible by changing laws and/or amending the Constitution -- amendments which gave the vote to blacks and women.

[snip]

Once upon a time, even for secular feminists, the ideal was equality of men and women before the law — equality of opportunity to pursue careers of one's choosing. Once upon a time, feminists resented the reduction of women to the status of mere chattel or sex objects.

But now we are seeing secular feminism come full circle. Now the new radical feminist is glorying in being a mere sex object, and she boldly presents herself as such. Fluke, the latest representative of the new feminism, wants to boldly crusade for the "right" of women to be mere sex objects. Further, women are to be subsidized for maintenance of their reduced and tiny identity by being given free birth control.

Voshell suggests how Abigail Adams and other early feminists might respond to modern feminists:

My dears, there are far more heroic victories to be won than seeing your pet peeve "rectified" by HHS mandate. There are more serious battles to be joined in the struggle for female emancipation than making sure insurance companies allied with religious institutions provide you with the means to have safe sex, no matter what the cost to religious liberties. There are injustices and atrocities toward women which take precedent over your free birth control agenda, an agenda you wish to impose on all, regardless of their constitutional right to refuse coercion against conscience.

All over the world, women and children are being trafficked for sex; women and girls are being subjected to genital mutilation; unborn girls are the victims of sex-selective abortions and female infanticide; and women are subjected to the horrifying strictures and consequences of sharia law. This is to say nothing of the women who are enslaved by the demeaning and destructive practice of polygamy or the women of the world who are without clean water and food for themselves and their children.

Time was, apparently, when some of the issues listed above were important to you, Ms. Fluke.

Iron Lady: the Ultimate Women's Libber?

That's the argument leading historian Amanda Foreman makes about Lady Margaret Thatcher, saying her achievements should be celebrated rather than sniped at by feminists. Read the full article.

Sexual Harassment: Vague, Subjective, Slippery

Under the headline, "In Favor of Dirty Jokes and Risque Remarks," NYU journalism professor Katie Roiphe questions "the creative, capricious rubric of sexual harassment:"

The words used in workshops — ‘uncomfortable,’ ‘inappropriate,’ ‘hostile’ — are vague, subjective, slippery. Feminists and liberal pundits say, with some indignation, that they are not talking about dirty jokes or misguided compliments when they talk about sexual harassment, but, in fact, they are: sexual harassment, as they’ve defined it, encompasses a wide and colorful spectrum of behaviors.

[T]he majority of women in the workplace are not tender creatures and are largely adept at dealing with all varieties of uncomfortable or hostile situations. Show me a smart, competent young professional woman who is utterly derailed by a verbal unwanted sexual advance or an inappropriate comment about her appearance, and I will show you a rare spotted owl.

Did Feminism Really Free Women?

“Women are from Venus, men are from Hell” – these were the words used by Christina Hoff Sommers, moderating a Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute panel, to describe the sort of ‘textbooks’ she was required to teach from as a college philosophy professor. A self-confessed former liberal, Sommers began the conversion to more conservative ideas after being “excommunicated” from the feminist movement for attempting to balance the coursework in her classes. By offering her students some alternatives to radical feminism, Sommers put herself squarely in the cross hairs of the single-minded mentality of the Left. This is an all-too-familiar experience for conservative students speaking out on their college campuses but, according to Sommers, the tide is changing. The veil is being lifted on the liberal feminist lies and conservative women are leading the fight.

Sommers was joined by Hudson Institute senior fellow economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, healthcare expert and Galen Institute president Grace-Marie Turner, and National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez, whose recent article inspired this panel entitled “Freedom from Feminism.”

Weiner's Entertaining "Pathetic Man-Child" Fallout

Conservatives can't help but enjoy the various reactions to Rep Anthony Weiner's gross sexual misbehavior, from New York Times writer Sheryl Gay Stolberg's article on why "girls won't be boys" to Human Events writer John Hayward's take on Democrat leaders misplaced priorities.