I’m about to write words that I never thought would remotely cross my mind: someone at Daily Kos wrote a post that makes sense.

Angry Mouse writes in Feminism Fail:

No, not that kind of feminism. Not the theory of women’s equality or the history of suffrage or the First Wave or the Third Wave or 18 million tiny cracks in the glass ceiling.

I’m talking about Feminism^TM, as in the largest feminist advocacy organizations in the country raising millions of dollars to fight on behalf of women.

And I’m wondering if Feminism^TM is really such a good investment.

You got that right. After initial successes in getting media attention and making inroads at the workplace in the 70s, feminists realized that they had a good thing going. What’s better than being an activist for a movement? Being a paid activist for a movement. How do you sustain the movement? You create cushy academic programs to ensure that your belief system is passed onto younger generations. Despite all of their gains in certain sectors, like the media and academia, these women are always in a crisis! of some type. Why? Crises are extremely profitable:

And it’s always a crisis. Even under a Democratic president, with a Democratic supermajority in Congress, the nation’s biggest feminist organizations are in crisis mode, raising money but unable to deliver results. They’re just as effective as they were under Bush. Which is to say, Not. At. All.

Could it be that women are catching on that this philosophy is superficial and doesn’t work outside of a hippie commune? This week, the National Journal examined how the Susan B. Anthony List has tripled the amount of PAC money spent compared to NOW, that old stalwart of the feminist movement. However, when all pro-life PAC money is compared to anti-life PAC money, the anti-lifers outspent us. Just what did they do with all that money? Since a majority of Americans are now opposed to abortion, it doesn’t appear that the angry ladies have been very successful. Angry Mouse isn’t too happy about it:

In the last decade, we’ve seen more restrictions on women’s reproductive health, more government-funded sex (mis)education, and budget cuts everywhere — for after school and early education programs, for employment and training programs, for programs to fight domestic violence — all of which directly and disproportionately impact women.

And at every step backwards, the major feminist organizations have been powerless to stop it. Or just plain absent.

Both the Daily Kos piece and the National Journal article discuss how feminist groups were silent on the health care debate until the Stupak Amendment passed in the House. National Journal writes:

The Susan B. Anthony List has been educating its audience on health care reform since early spring, while NOW was getting ready to change its leadership. Yet NOW is well-situated to fire up public pressure because it has 450 regional chapters — some of which have their own paid staff.

And Angry Mouse:

In other words, Emily’s List didn’t bother to raise awareness of the threat to reproductive rights when it might have mattered. You know, before Congress voted on the Stupak Amendment.

Over the summer, while members of Congress were speaking with their constituents about what should and shouldn’t be included in the health care bill, where were the feminist organizations? They weren’t mobilizing the millions of women across the country who would have been only too glad to raise their voices in opposition. Guess it just wasn’t a good time.

No, they were busy sitting on their hands, apparently waiting for the eleventh hour, waiting for it to be a crisis.

Meanwhile, the nation watched wall-to-wall coverage of teabaggers screaming nonsense about socialist death panels. And that tiny fringe of teabaggers, with their signs and their slogans and their stunts, was so effective that they actually succeeded in killing the part of the bill they found objectionable. Score? Teabaggers: 1, Feminists: Big, fat zero.

We’re seeing an overwhelming malaise on the left, particularly among women. Feminists were successful when they had major donors and the media in their pockets. When the news was controlled by only a few, they could make it look like all women supported these efforts. However, now that alternative media and the Web have grown, and conservative female leaders have emerged, feminists can no longer keep up the charade.

Perhaps the biggest change this year is the freedom to be female and conservative. For most of my life, I felt like the lone voice in the wilderness. It’s as though the feminist shackles are removed, and women can be articulate, educated, professional and conservative. While I’m gleeful to see organizations that I’m ethically opposed to struggle, this ultimately gives women more choices. Women no longer have to doggedly follow one set ideology. They have the freedom to decide which side they publicly support. Ironically, the decline of Big Feminism means that the equality goals of feminism could actually be achieved.