“Certainly, no feminist can be expected to defend a conservative woman. To quote Palin-hating feminist Jessica Valenti, feminism is ‘a social justice movement,’ a radical ideology akin to Marxism.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, June 3, 2010
As the originator of “National Offend a Feminist Week” — our motto: Equality Is For Ugly Losers — I have often protested against the adoption of the term “feminism” by conservative women.
“Conservative feminist” is as oxymoronic as “moderate Obama supporter.” To be a feminist is to believe in — to advocate, litigate and legislate for — a sort of equality that does not exist, that has never existed and that will never exist. Men and women are not equal in the sense that feminists believe. They are not identical and interchangeable. Attempts to bring about such a false equality are misguided and harmful.
This is not an assertion of “male supremacy,” nor does anti-feminism entail the patriarchal dystopia of Margaret Atwood’s vicious imaginings. To oppose feminism is not to disparage women’s abilities, nor relegate them to kinder, kuche, kirche.
Misunderstandings about the meaning of “feminism” have been fostered by feminists themselves, who have tried to claim credit for all professional accomplishment by women. Ergo, if you are a college-educated woman with a successful career, the feminists say, this is only because of the courageous efforts of the radical Sisterhood.
Had it not been for Gloria Steinem et al., you would have no career opportunity at all, but would instead be weak and ignorant, doomed to toiling over a hot stove and washing socks with a screaming baby on your hip.
Or so they would have you believe, and therefore many otherwise intelligent conservative women feel obliged to call themselves “feminists.” Alas, Sarah Palin is among them:
“I’m a feminist who, uh, believes in equal rights and I believe that women certainly today have every opportunity that a man has to succeed, and to try to do it all, anyway. And I’m very, very thankful that I’ve been brought up in a family where gender hasn’t been an issue. You know, I’ve been expected to do everything growing up that the boys were doing. We were out chopping wood and you’re out hunting and fishing and filling our freezer with good wild Alaskan game to feed our family. So it kinda started with that.”
— Sarah Palin, interview with Katie Couric, CBS News, September 2008
David Shedlock at Caffeinated Thoughts:
[T]he thrust of feminism is not equal rights. It is the overthrow of God’s natural order. The reason the killing of unborn children and the promotion of contraception is so central to feminism is because it is a rejection of the differences between men and women.
Memo to young conservative women: Do not buy into “feminism” as an alternative to a nightmarishly oppressive past (or future) that exists only in feminist propaganda. Do not allow the collectivist philosophy of “feminism” to coopt credit for your achievements as an individual. There were high-achieving women in the workplace prior to 1964 or 1969 or 1973 or whatever other date the feminists would assign as the beginning or triumph of the “Women’s Movement.”
And Betty Friedan was a Commie.
If you wish to disabuse yourself of the feminist mythos, I strongly recommend three excellent books:
Get those books, study them carefully, and understand that a concern for the rightful dignity of women is incompatible with the feminist crusade for the fictitious “equality” of women.
UPDATE: Amanda Read offers thoughts on “righteous women.”
