If you’re like most Americans and too busy to read whiny feminist blogs, note that March is Women’s History Month. Christina Hoff Sommers has an article in the current Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute’s Policy Express on taking back the feminist movement and highlighting women’s history. It’s an absolute must read. She writes:

But today the movement has been taken over by aggrieved eccentrics. Marching under the banner of feminism, the current activists are fighting a gender war that few women support or understand. The potential for harm is enormous. Mainstream women are going to have to rescue feminism from the feminists.

We badly need a responsible, reality- based women’s movement. Women in many parts of the developing world are still struggling for their basic rights.
Egalitarian progressives—some would say radicals. They held that men and women, although socialized to different roles, are identical in their essential natures. By appealing to principles of social justice and universal rights, egalitarians sought to liberate women from the private sphere of the home—into the public spheres of politics, business, and work.

I came into this fight over feminism late. As a young woman and conservative college student, I purposely avoided anything relating to womyn’s studies or gender politics. After working at a nonprofit geared towards girls, I came face-to-face with the “egalitarian feminism” that Sommers discusses. Behind every rallying cry for “equality” there’s a scary agenda from the Radical Left to remake our society into a European socialist copycat that has taken over colleges, the media and our court system.

Since the left has demonized conservative women for so long, most females on the right avoid anything remotely resembling feminism. That leaves us woefully ignorant when it comes to the history for women’s equality. Please take a few minutes and understand that there is a need to fight for equality between men and women, but this can be done–and has been done–in ways that value and protect American traditions and capitalism.

As Sommer’s notes in the article, Clare Booth Luce was writing about women’s issues long before Betty Friedan ever felt bored in her affluent suburban home. Rather than fight to change society into some socialistic utopia, she understood how women operate. Sommer’s quotes Luce:

It is time to leave the question of the role of women in society up to Mother Nature—a difficult lady to fool. You have only to give women the same opportunities as men, and you will soon find out what is or is not in their nature. What is in women’s nature to do they will do, and you won’t be able to stop them. But you will also find, and so will they, that what is not in their nature, even if they are given every opportunity, they will not do, and you won’t be able to make them do it.

Feminist arguments fall flat over “second shift” work, the so-called wage gap and complaints that we still have not achieved equality despite making up more than half of the workforce, as seen in the recent Shriver Report. Women don’t make choices to better the cause of women. Women make choices that better their individual lives and families. When you make women equal, as our society has largely done, women will reject what doesn’t work, even if this conflicts with the agenda of the left-leaning feminist movement.

H/T American Enterprise Institute

My friend and fellow Tennessee transplant, Matthew Hurtt, posted these videos on his blog. The first one is the Dodge commercial that did catch the wrath of feminists who weren’t busy complaining about the “inherent violence” in the Focus on the Family spot.

Both ads build on stereotypes. The feminist answer perpetuates the wage gap myth and makes the usual complaints about how awful it is to be a woman. I think these are silly since relationships are hard and there will always be communications issues between the sexes since we’re wired differently. Society also places different expectations on men and women. Deal with it. Men have issues too.  The only difference: men seem much more capable at laughing at these stereotypes, whereas women whine about them.

Warning: like most things feminist, the second video contains some language. The lefty gals enjoy being crass.

The Dodge ad is created to sell a product, but the feminist ad is a little long and doesn’t give a call to action. Whoever created it did a lot of work, but there’s no web site or activism appeal. Wasted opportunity for them.

Update: Not surprisingly, Broadsheet likes the ad calling it a “ego-blistering spoof!” Feministing claims “You must absolutely watch…” Amanda Hess at The Sexist has a full transcript of the video.

There you go. Feminists fighting the terrible front lines of silly Super Bowl ads. Glad to see that there aren’t more important battles out there.

A post at Hot Air covers the anti-life/Tebow debate currently going on from an interesting perspective. After reading it, I started wondering if the true debate over feminism and all the underlying issues is the definition of female empowerment? Doctor Zero writes:

It’s nostalgic to read a press release from NOW again. The organization was last seen sinking into the bubbling tar of the Clinton impeachment saga, babbling incomprehensibly about how sexual harassment really isn’t such a big deal when pro-abortion Democrat presidents do it. Like every appendage of the socialist state, NOW has no principle beyond fealty to the political party that grants it power, and the Democrats used to grant them a remarkable amount of power – enough to end the careers of Navy officers and combat pilots, after “investigations” that stopped just short of waterboarding. When NOW talks about “empowering” women, it speaks in the collective sense. Empowerment comes from obedience to feminist organizations, which use that power to drag an oversized chair up to the grim carving table where the Democrat Party wields its redistibutionist cleavers.

As I said earlier this week, feminists desperately need pro-lifers to continue the debate and keep their movement somewhat cohesive. Feminism is such a fractured ideal that abortion, err “women’s rights,” is the only real uniting thread. As long as the abortion debate continues, feminists have one common rallying point. Without it, they descend in to smaller, argumentative groups (lesbians vs. transgendered vs. black women vs. eco-feminists vs. porn stars vs. academics, etc. ).

We saw this in the early days of the radical women’s movement in the 6os. The movement was chaotic and cannibalistic. Every time a leader emerged, the masses destroyed her because they believed an individual female leader would trample the power of the collective. Roe vs. Wade was the only issue that anyone could unite around. After the 1973 decision, radical feminists tried to revive the movement with the Pornography Wars in the 80s but even that was contentious. As Doctor Zero wrote:

Some critics cite unquestioning support for unrestricted abortion rights as the primary demonstration of loyalty power feminists seek from their supporters, but the NOW offensive against the Tebow ad, and their response to Sarah Palin, suggest the true sacrament of radical feminism is not abortion… it’s opposition to the pro-life movement. Power in a collectivist system comes from tribal loyalty, and hatred is a powerful glue for holding collectives together. As with leftist racial groups, NOW has very little positive to offer its supporters these days, so it thrives by pointing fingers at its enemies. Religious people in general, and outspoken pro-life advocates in particular, look very good on the business end of a trembling finger.

Pro-lifers don’t need feminists. We have other issues and religious convictions to keep us motivated. Our movement is tightly defined and is based on absolute truths.We know that as long as abortions are conducted, we have a mission. Feminists derive their mission from fighting us. Resistance to another political force can not sustain a movement. Just look at all the failed third-parties throughout U.S. history.

But what makes feminism so fractured?  I frequently get comments from feminists saying, “If X or Y happens, perhaps all women can unite and vote together.” That simply won’t happen because of the very foundations that feminism is built on condemn it.

This is where things get confusing.  That fundamental opposition is based on the socialistic roots of feminism and the post-modern nature of the movement.

Groups based on post-modernism and moral relativism, the darlings of all left-of-center groups, will always struggle to achieve long-term survival. When truth and reality are different to each of your members, how do you form cohesion that can be multiplied into a strong political force? Dissensions and splintering will always occur. Identity politics ultimately fail. When groups form around superficial qualities rather than tightly defined philosophies, individuals with even more similarities will always join together and break off from the original group. They splinter off into smaller and smaller groups until the multiplier effect is destroyed.

This is why liberalism and progressives have always ebbed and flowed in this country. The movement consists of smaller groups that all believe different things. They were all united in 2008 against George W. Bush, but fell apart after Obama was elected. Just look at the progressive outrage at the health care bill.

Conversely, conservatism has always remained strong. Oh, we’ve achieved political power and lost it, but that is largely due to economic forces, abuse of power, a lack of leadership and the difference between Republicanism and conservatism.  Since the 18th century, the three pillars that unite conservatives have remained largely unchanged. Our labels are different (back then an American conservative would have been a liberal), but our philosophy is consistent.

This is a point that I’ve struggled to formulate for a while. I’ve discussed it terms of gender feminism vs. equity feminism, feminism vs. Feminism and Big Feminism vs. feminism. I continue to write these posts and always feel unsatisfied that I haven’t articulated what I see as the real problem. To go back to my original question, I continue to ask what is female empowerment?

On the surface, feminism is a positive thing. Hardly anyone would disagree that women have been maligned throughout history. Extending equality to cover gender and race was a much-needed step that our country took. I have no issue with this type of feminism known as equity feminism. As I’ve stated before, mainstream society absorbed this level of feminism. There will always be pockets of abuse and misogyny, but we have progressed radically in a few short decades.

To an equity feminist, female empowerment would be defined as providing equal opportunities to men and women. Once women are given the same opportunities as men, it is up to individual women to decide what is best for her life. This is why an educated woman can decide to stay home. Once society ensures the same opportunities for all genders, equality has been established. Equity feminism is built around the individual.

However, the downside is that the political movement that brought about this change has to either radically change, move onto another issue or acquiesce it’s power. It’s a problem of success.

Conversely, we have gender feminists.

Gender feminism is based on socialism. I hate invoking the socialism label, since many conservatives have cried wolf with it for so long. However, it is true. Feminism evolved out the the radical socialist movement that infiltrated the U.S. in the 1920s. Most of the early leaders in the feminist movement were members of the Communist Party or Socialist Party or were children of members.

The 1960s movement literally started when women involved with the civil rights battle were not promoted into leadership. The overwhelming majority were on the far, far left of the political spectrum and believed that capitalism, private property and right of the individual were hurting minorities and women. In order to win, those foundations had to be eliminated.

Look at the beliefs of gender feminism: men need to be suppressed to promote women, the entire patriarchy has to be destroyed to liberate women, in order to destroy the patriarchy, we have to move past capitalism, eliminate personal property and make sure that the rights of the individual do not trample the over-arching rights of the collective community. Is that not the gender version of socialism?

Remember that in socialism, the community is more important that the rights of the individual.Or as the the writers of Grassroots explained a woman can be pro-life and a feminist until she acts on her pro-life views. At that point, she’s placing her individual beliefs above other women and can’t be a feminist.

Go back to what Doctor Zero wrote:

Like every appendage of the socialist state, NOW has no principle beyond fealty to the political party that grants it power, and the Democrats used to grant them a remarkable amount of power – enough to end the careers of Navy officers and combat pilots, after “investigations” that stopped just short of waterboarding. When NOW talks about “empowering” women, it speaks in the collective sense. Empowerment comes from obedience to feminist organizations, which use that power to drag an oversized chair up to the grim carving table where the Democrat Party wields its redistibutionist cleavers.

If feminism is the gender arm of socialism, it answers to the greater political power. This is why when feminism disagrees with the leadership–the Democratic Party–feminism bends. You don’t see this in conservative circles. Many pro-life groups were blasted when they did not oppose the House’s health care bill. It was simply beyond the scope of their mission. After the Stupak Amendment was added, they were satisfied. They did not bend to the larger will of the Republican Party and rouse their members. They stuck to their individual mission.

Since the Democratic Party and the U.S. liberal community are more important than individual groups, feminists can afford to be hypocrites when it comes to defending Bill Clinton or discriminating against Sarah Palin. The collective is more important than the individual.

This is why empowering women to a gender feminist means forcing all women to agree with a checklist of issues and beliefs. Empowerment is not giving a woman the ability to make the best choices for herself, based on individual goals, beliefs and philosophies, but making sure that a woman makes decisions that uphold the collective’s views. Remember what Doctor Zero also said:

…the NOW offensive against the Tebow ad, and their response to Sarah Palin, suggest the true sacrament of radical feminism is not abortion… it’s opposition to the pro-life movement. Power in a collectivist system comes from tribal loyalty, and hatred is a powerful glue for holding collectives together. As with leftist racial groups, NOW has very little positive to offer its supporters these days, so it thrives by pointing fingers at its enemies. Religious people in general, and outspoken pro-life advocates in particular, look very good on the business end of a trembling finger.

Over and over again, I’ve said that feminism only respects liberal women. Even though a woman can reflect the values of equity feminism, that is not enough to entrenched groups like NOW. The minute they liberate their followers to support the promotion of other women, they lose the socialism war. Every Pam Tebow or Sarah Palin that deviates from the collective must be destroyed completely. Otherwise, the community is left open to asserting their own individual views and questioning the greater fight against capitalism.

I realize that this is an extraordinarily long post, but it more adequately covers my objections to feminism. Beyond the moral objections, I simply cannot support a collectivist group. The more I examine politics, the more I believe that the two philosophies of collectivism/community vs. individuals is the true battle. The issues will always change, but some people genuinely believe that their personal rights should be censored in order to make the community better. This is why liberals rarely object to higher taxes. Conservatives believe that when the individual is empowered, it encourages others to build better lives. I guess it could be described as “it takes a village vs. pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps.”

Nearly every news outlet and blog has a post or story about the pro-life Tim Tebow commercial to be aired during the Superbowl on CBS.

I fail to see why this is a big deal.

The Tebows, a strong Christian family with misguided football loyalties, made a commercial with Focus on the Family about their choices. Focus then came up with the cash to buy the spot from CBS. Why then does this create controversy? Free speech works both ways.

If this ad was purchased by NARAL or EMILY’S List about how Tebow supported his girlfriend in her choice to abort due to an unplanned pregnancy, wouldn’t these groups applaud?

When did our society arrive at a place that “celebrating life,” as Focus on the Family puts it, is controversial? This ad highlights one woman’s choice. She chose not to abort and look what happened. (Who knows what might have happened if all the aborted people were allowed to live?) Women need to know that choosing life is just as valid a decision. That option is rarely given any attention. Just look at all the anger aimed at Palin for knowingly giving birth to a baby with Down’s Syndrome.*

Educating women about all of their choices should be a priority of the women’s movement. However, this is only one more example of how the anti-life crowd only educates women on pre-approved “choices.” Women deserve to know all of their options. How often do they get those at an abortion clinic or Planned Parenthood facility? Lila Rose has exposed how often women hear about adoption or life at those facilities.

Anti-life forces are in an uproar, but they can only speculate about what’s in the ad. All Focus on the Family has said is:

The 30-second spot from the international family-help organization will feature college football star Tim Tebow and his mother, Pam. They will share a personal story centered on the theme of “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life.”

Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, said the chance to partner with the Tebows and lift up a meaningful message about family and life comes at the right moment in the culture, because “families need to be inspired.”

“Tim and Pam share our respect for life and our passion for helping families thrive,” Daly said. “They live what we see every day – that the desire for family closeness is written on the hearts of every generation. Focus on the Family is about nurturing that desire and strengthening families by empowering them with the tools they need to live lives rooted in morals and values.”

Broadsheet admits that no one knows what is in the ad, but since the Women’s Media Center has launched a petition, it must be alarming. Oh my gosh! A petition! Tracy Clark-Flory writes:

A Focus on the Family spokesperson told the Washington Post that the ad isn’t overtly political, but a petition by the Women’s Media Center argues otherwise: “By offering one of the most coveted advertising spots of the year to an anti-equality, anti-choice, homophobic organization, CBS is aligning itself with a political stance that will damage its reputation, alienate viewers, and discourage consumers from supporting its shows and advertisers.” There is no denying the organization’s founder, James Dobson, is about as polarizing a political figure as they come.

The problem isn’t that CBS sold the spot to Focus on the Family. The problem is that the anti-life crowd is losing the messaging war. It’s possible to talk about celebrating life without politicizing it. It’s easy to sell pictures of happy families and babies. How many mothers have ever publicly said they regret choosing life? Compare that to the numbers of women who regret having an abortion. Life is the positive. Abortion is the negative.

How do you sell abortion? It’s almost impossible to talk about abortion or “choice” without involving polarizing politics. The images are always of angry women protesting and holding signs. What’s their alternative? Pictures of aborted babies that highlight the truth of abortion?  The anti-lifers are losing this issue. Poll numbers prove it. It explains why anti-life feminists lose it when Focus on the Family celebrates life with Tim Tebow and his family, or Sarah and Bristol Palin are on the cover of a tabloid.

Abortion is still legal in this country. Even though Roe vs. Wade is a horrible judicial decision (an opinion asserted by all sides) it’s unlikely to be overturned any time in the near future. However, every positive pro-life message, every Bristol Palin magazine cover, every photo of amazing neo-natal surgeries, ultrasounds or medical advances put another nail in the coffin of abortion’s public image.

“Choice” is abstract. “Life” is concrete and visual. Every time that you show that a fetus is viable and valued, from medicine science news to Lacey Peterson laws, it hurts the public perception of abortion.  These images don’t affect laws or legal precedents, but they expose the fraud that the “choice” crowd continues to disseminate. That’s why they focus on “choice.” As soon as you focus on a baby, you lose the debate.

As the “choice” debate unravels, it shows that the only difference between a premature baby getting the best neo-natal care and an aborted fetus is desire. If the “planned” or “wanted” pregnancies are the best justifications for abortion, these groups are in trouble. That’s a flimsy excuse for murder, and an extremely brutal murder at that. If abortion was re-created outside of the womb to kill a person, it could only be described as gruesome and barbaric. Why do we continue to do this to the most helpless members of our society? Since it’s hidden and only happens on the inside of women’s bodies, not many people understand how brutal the abortion medical procedure truly is.

Medical science is on the side of life. Rather than spending millions to defend abortion, why don’t these groups work on educating impoverished women on birth control or help them earn an education? (I wish more pro-life groups did the same.) All sides should make abortion the absolute worst-case option. There’s enough money and nonprofit infrastructure to make abortion unnecessary in our society. The problem is that feminists need it to survive.

The simple matter is that abortion and all “attacks” on it are cash cows for groups like NOW, EMILY’S List, Feminist Majority and NARAL. Without us pesky pro-lifers, the money stream from supporters would dry up. These groups need to manufacture crises in order to survive since public opinion and the progress of science is against them.

The pro-life side will always have supporters due to our religious faith and the issues of euthanasia, stem cell research and cloning. Our side is evolving. The abortion side is dying. The writing is on the wall for abortion supporters, and that is why their reactions get more hysterical and ridiculous. They ought to be thankful to Focus on the Family for giving them a something to protest since “women’s issues” have become little more than arguments over botox taxes, middle-age columnists regretting not getting married and having babies and debates if Lady Gaga represents feminist ideals.

*Why is the special needs community not more outraged at abortion? Only 10% of special needs children are born, which reeks of eugenics and is a borderline holocaust for this community. What does our society reflect when we only allow the desirable and perfect to be born?

I spend a lot of time here discussing that if feminism is all about giving women choices how come only women who chose liberal positions merit the feminist label? Much of the time it seems that my opinions fall on deaf ears since most people on the right have completely given up on feminism or demonized it as evil. Since very few things in life are black and white, I set out last year to figure what feminism was about. Were all feminist evil harpies, characterized by Hillary Clinton, or had they actually done a few good things like revise rape laws and end workplace discrimination?

It’s very hard to find anyone willing to take middle ground on this issue. Feminists demonize anyone who diverges from the NOW-agenda for the 40+ and the Feministing crowd for the Xers and Millenials. Disagree with them, and it’s character assassination.

I was pleasantly surprised to see an article at MomLogic by two self-proclaimed pro-choice feminists that Sarah Palin is indeed a feminist.They echo many of the sentiments that I’ve shared over the past few months–namely that personal attacks simply because you dislike someone is not a rational political debate. Heather Robinson and Jennifer Ginsberg write:

Many of these columnists do not clearly explain why they believe Palin is not a feminist. But they suggest that her bid for vice president was a slap in the face to women. Their writing is filled with personal digs, referring to Palin, for example, as a “moose-killing former governor and mother of five,” and “Caribou Barbie.”

They believe these names cover a true reason for the attacks:

Women don’t come out and say they don’t consider Palin a feminist because she’s pro-life, because she made the brave choice to give birth to a baby with special challenges, or because she’s religious. But we believe those things (perhaps along with her beauty, and the fact that she hunts, and she’s managed to have both a successful career and a family) are what’s eating them.

I imagine if you’re Suzy Q Feminist and either fought your entire life for “equality,” or became of fan of feminism in order to overthrow the shackles of your middle class existence, Sarah Palin was a huge slap in the face.  A conservative, state-educated woman, a former beauty pagent winner (and we all know that beauty pagents are evil since Naomi Wolf told us so), hunter and PRO-LIFE woman is getting street cred for being a femininst. It would be like getting MVP status at a ball game without showing up to any practices. She didn’t have click moments at her Womyns Center at an Ivy League college, join any marches in DC or file any lawsuits against chauvenistic, capitalistic male co-workers.

Rather than pick a political issue and spend her life talking about it and complaining about it, Palin lived it. She didn’t spend time navel-gazing and writing op-eds about the difficulties of being a working mother or a woman in politics, she just overcame the obstacles and was successful. (There seems to be a lot of that on the right.) As the authors note:

All her life, this woman competed with men on an equal playing field, and in terms of concrete achievement, has done far more than many feminists who stick within their own homogenous enclaves and, frankly, spend a lot of time complaining.

Their last two paragraphs summarize why I write this blog, and why I furiously fight any attempt to be labeled by the f-word:

If feminism’s overall goals are advancing women’s freedom and empowerment, and promoting equality with men, we should have a great big inclusive tent that welcomes different religious and personal philosophies. We can recognize there is room for significant disagreement in our ranks, but that we share some core values.

In years to come, technology may radically alter the way we view issues like abortion. It’s tragic that the real definition of feminism, a doctrine that advocates equal rights for women, has become blurred over this single issue.

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.

Recently, The Economist ran an article on the emergence of feminism within management theory:

But some of today’s most influential feminists contend that women will never fulfill their potential if they play by men’s rules. According to Avivah Wittenberg-Cox and Alison Maitland, two of the most prominent exponents of this position, it is not enough to smash the glass ceiling. You need to audit the entire building for “gender asbestos”—in other words, root out the inherent sexism built into corporate structures and processes.

The new feminism contends that women are wired differently from men, and not just in trivial ways. They are less aggressive and more consensus-seeking, less competitive and more collaborative, less power-obsessed and more group-oriented. Judy Rosener, of the University of California, Irvine, argues that women excel at “transformational” and “interactive” management. Peninah Thomson and Jacey Graham, the authors of “A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom”, assert that women are “better lateral thinkers than men” and “more idealistic” into the bargain. Feminist texts are suddenly full of references to tribes of monkeys, with their aggressive males and nurturing females.

What is more, the argument runs, these supposedly womanly qualities are becoming ever more valuable in business. The recent financial crisis proved that the sort of qualities that men pride themselves on, such as risk-taking and bare-knuckle competition, can lead to disaster. Lehman Brothers would never have happened if it had been Lehman Sisters, according to this theory. Even before the financial disaster struck, the new feminists also claim, the best companies had been abandoning “patriarchal” hierarchies in favour of “collaboration” and “networking”, skills in which women have an inherent advantage.

Not surprisingly, the gals at Feministing had a few issues with this article, which puts them at odds with other feminist teachings from waves past.

Um, wait — what?? I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t think I have read one book in the last 10 years or have talked to one feminist who has contended that women are “wired” differently than men when it comes to work.

And as for the few examples of these “new feminists” that the author directs us to, here’s a tip: Just because someone has written about gender issues in the workplace doesn’t make them representative of today’s feminism. In fact, after some online research, I couldn’t find really any history where these folks even identified themselves as feminists.

Now if you’re like me and had read through The Economist article twice to understand the gibberish going on, this article hits on a few squishy issues that the feminist movement is now facing.

Vanessa at Feministing admonishes The Economist for, “contending that women are ‘wired’ different than men when it comes to work.” For starters, I didn’t realize that anyone was “wired” for work. Humans were not created to drive to the office every day and sit in front of little machines known as computers. There isn’t a part of our brain labeled “work.”

Since neither men nor women are wired for work, doesn’t it make sense that there would be difference in our styles and performance? Oh wait, what Vanessa is getting at is the larger, nature vs. nuture and “gender is socially constructed” fallacies that those on the left like to pretentiously trot out.

Recently, I finished reading The Female Brain by Dr. Louann Brizendine, which focuses on how modern medicine has found vast differences in the brains of men and women. Starting in utero, our brains are  triggered by different hormones, which produce a multitude of differences from our physical appearance to our emotions to how we respond to situations. Even male babies and toddlers respond differently than their female counterparts.

While Brizendine refrains for writing anything political, you can tell that she is hesitant to show that men and women are different. She writes, “In writing this book I have struggled with two voices in my head–one is the scientific truth, the other is political correctness. I have chosen to emphasize scientific truth over political correctness even though scientific truths may not always be welcome.”

Earlier she explains the political settings in which her training and research were conducted:

There are those who wish there were no differences between men and women. In the 1970s at the University of California, Berkeley, the buzzword among young women was “mandatory unisex,” which meant that it was still politically incorrect even to mention sex difference. There are still those who believe that for women to become equal, unisex must be the norm. The biological reality, is that there is no unisex brain. The fear of discrimination based on differences runs deep,  and for many years assumptions about sex differences went scientifically unexamined for fear that women wouldn’t be able to claim equality with men. But pretended that women and men are the same, while doing a disservice to both men and women, ultimately hurts women.

As I’ve written before, there are numerous types of feminism. That’s the problem when a philosophy emerges after the activist movement. In the 60s/70s when women were fighting real discrimination in the workplace, they branched out and began searching for an academic angle and philosophy. They essentially combined pop psychology (Betty Friedan) with actual philosophy (Simone de Beauvoir) with the suffragist movement (First Wave Feminists) and established a framework that was largely piecemeal. This is why feminism is broken into waves. Second wave feminists wanted to eliminate the concept of gender and were the hardened activists. As The Economist notes:

The first generations of successful women insisted on being judged by the same standards as men. They had nothing but contempt for the notion of special treatment for “the sisters”, and instead insisted on getting ahead by dint of working harder and thinking smarter. Margaret Thatcher made no secret of her contempt for the wimpish men around her. (There is a joke about her going out to dinner with her cabinet. “Steak or fish?” asks the waiter. “Steak, of course,” she replies. “And for the vegetables?” “They’ll have steak as well.”) During America’s most recent presidential election Hillary Clinton taunted Barack Obama with an advertisement that implied that he, unlike she, was not up to the challenge of answering the red phone at 3am.

The third wave realized that de-feminizing women wasn’t working, so another theory emerged: men and women are different, and women are superior. This is most evident in Women’s Ways of Knowing, an important text in academia, that has now infiltrated management. The book essentially teaches that all knowledge and education is misogynistic because the patriarchy (men) were the ones in control:

Along with other academic feminists, we believe that conceptions of knowledge and truth that are accepted and articulated today have been shaped by the male-dominated majority culture. Drawing on their own perspectives and visions, men have constructed the prevailing theories, written history, and set values that have become the guiding principles for men and women alike.

Thus, all knowledge, even the hard sciences, discriminates against women. Contrast what Christina Hoff Sommers writes in Who Stole Feminism? with The Economist article:

The authors of Women’s Ways of Knowing…define “separate knowing” as “the game of impersonal reason,” a game that has “belonged traditionally to boys.” “Separate knowers are tough-minded. They are like doormen at exclusive clubs. they do not want to let anything in unless they are pretty sure it is good….Presented with a proposition, separate knowers immediately look for something wrong–a loophole, a factual error, a logical contradiction, the omission of contrary evidence.”

Separate knowers–mainly men–play the “doubting game.” The authors of Women’s Ways of Knowing contrasts separate knowing with a higher state of “connected knowing” that they view as more feminine. In place of the “doubting game,” connected knowers play the “believing game.” This is more congenial for women because “many women find it easier to believe than to doubt.”

Again read the maligned paragraphs from The Economist article:

The new feminism contends that women are wired differently from men, and not just in trivial ways. They are less aggressive and more consensus-seeking, less competitive and more collaborative, less power-obsessed and more group-oriented. Judy Rosener, of the University of California, Irvine, argues that women excel at “transformational” and “interactive” management. Peninah Thomson and Jacey Graham, the authors of “A Woman’s Place is in the Boardroom”, assert that women are “better lateral thinkers than men” and “more idealistic” into the bargain. Feminist texts are suddenly full of references to tribes of monkeys, with their aggressive males and nurturing females.

What is more, the argument runs, these supposedly womanly qualities are becoming ever more valuable in business. The recent financial crisis proved that the sort of qualities that men pride themselves on, such as risk-taking and bare-knuckle competition, can lead to disaster. Lehman Brothers would never have happened if it had been Lehman Sisters, according to this theory. Even before the financial disaster struck, the new feminists also claim, the best companies had been abandoning “patriarchal” hierarchies in favour of “collaboration” and “networking”, skills in which women have an inherent advantage.

While proponents of this “feminized” management style may not be card-carrying feminists, this philosophy has its roots in Women’s Ways of Knowing and other transformationalist studies that attempt to break down the very foundations of education and learning and run them through a gender filter before being rebuilt the politically correct way.

This is hardly surprising. Peruse the business or management section at any bookstore. Has there every been a field more given to fads or philosophies-of-the-month? In grad school, I tried to write a satirical paper for my management class on how the cartoon strip Dilbert has influenced corporate management. I didn’t get very far with the satire because the research and academic papers were very real and very serious.

Anytime there is a problem in the workplace or a crisis, the business world will try some new technique or philsophy. Since we’re in a mancession, why not try feminism? Women are apparently successful and have reached parity with men in the workplace, so we need to re-teach men to be more “connected” and “transformational” in their professional approaches.

Cross-posted at Fourth Wave Woman

Earlier today, I wrote a post in response to AC Kleinheider’s column. It was getting lengthy, so I broke it into two parts. Below is Part II. Click here for Part I.

It’s not very often that I find myself agreeing with Tennessee bloggers, Betsy Phillips at Tiny Cat Pants or Newscoma. While always provocative, they represent more of the old-school feminism that I rail against most days. However, today they are nearly correct in responding to Kleinheider’s asinine post about conservative women in Tennessee.

To a large degree, Aunt B gets it:

Which brings us to the second thing happening–basic, humanitarian feminist ideals have permeated so far into our culture that even non-feminist women have basic, core feminist values they expect for themselves. They expect to speak and be listened to. They expect to be able to run for office and win. They expect recognition for their own work and to have that work attributed to them and not to their spouses. And they expect to have enough freedom of movement to be able to travel around and campaign.

Yes, Aunt B, to some extent feminism has been successful. But this success is hardly what the founders of the women’s liberation movement wanted in the 1960s. We’ve achieved equality in society. I find it a failure of the conservative movement that it took radical liberals to bring about this change. Equality should be inherent in the conservative platform of individual rights and free enterprise. It’s ironic that conservative women are the success story in this 50-year struggle. That’s what smarts for feminists. It’s a bittersweet victory if conservative women are the first ones to achieve their arbitrary goals and break the numerous ceilings that keep popping up.

Few can have problems with equity feminism.  I fully support those positions. What Aunt B fails to mention are the two different types of feminism, which Christina Hoff Sommers notes in her book, Who Stole Feminism? She and a few other authors explain the difference between  equity feminism and gender feminism. Aunt B is discussing equity feminism, which I support and most people on the planet support. She hints at the differences:

And third, feminists are still enough of a bogey-person (ha) among conservatives, that Republican woman can go a long way–thanks to feminists–while insisting that they are not like those FEMINISTS!!!! Even though, they clearly are. I mean, you folks who lived through the 60s and 70s, when men were hollering about how feminists just wanted to be men, isn’t it hilarious that the first militant female congressman is Marsha Blackburn? And she’s a “Congressman” as some kind of anti-feminist stance? Hilarious.

Gender feminism, the victimization of women, the attacks on men and the relentless pursuit of abortion, is the f-word “bogey-person” that Aunt B references. As someone recently told me, “There’s feminism, all the equality stuff, and then there are femi-nazis.” This is an important distinction that shows feminists have not 1) done a very good job of educating people about what their ideology means or 2) They desperately want to hide the fissure in their movement and admit that one side is so far left that most Americans disagree with them.

We’re now two generations out from the women’s liberation movement. In the 90s and early part of this decade, feminism was simplified to “being a woman who makes choices for herself.” Sarah Palin represented what the modern feminists had been preaching for so long. She’s active in her community, balances a career and a family and enjoys a “partnership marriage” with a husband who doesn’t mind changing the diapers.  Palin was the first test of modern feminism, and they realized that they didn’t like what she represented. So on August 2008, the feminist movement collectively changed the definition that they had been preaching for twenty years. It was no longer good enough to be “a strong woman who made her own choices” but a woman who represented what was eerily similar to the platform of the Democratic Party.

It’s frustrating to see these mixed results. Yes, society has changed. Yes, society did need to change, but the claws are still out because the examples are conservative.  As Aunt B notes:

I mean, yeah, as a feminist, it does make me roll my eyes to see all these TNGOP women building off of the successes feminists have won for them while at the same time pretending to be the same old women they’ve always been.

Sigh…society has changed, and many conservatives with it. Just because you’re stuck in the 80s, doesn’t mean we are. Younger generations have much more nuanced views towards thorny issues like staying at home vs. working. I guess you could call that a feminist victory, but it’s really a reflection of societal change, generatonal differences and sheer economics.

Its genuinely hard for a woman to stay at home now. Due to inflation and higher costs of living, it’s not really possible for most families to exist on one income. Our standards of living have increased since the 70s/80s, but real costs of education and housing making working absolutely necessary. I’ve written before about the debt load that young people are facing. Student loans are a major factor in why young people are postponing marriage and why young mothers are forced to work. Very few conservatives are still going to debate the working mom vs. stay-at-home mom debate. It’s a decision that should be left up to individual families.

Is it best for children to have one parent at home? I believe so. Does it matter if the parent is the mother or father? I don’t think so. I think the two post-feminism generations have extremely different views on gender roles and the second shift work. The concept of sex discrimination never really crosses our minds, and we don’t view our professional and political activities through a gender lens. Many older feminists are extremely angry at those changes, but it’s only inevitable as time pushes generations farther away.

What feminism has done is force women to walk a narrow ideological plank. While feminism claims that it advocates the right for women to make the best choices for themselves, it only advocates for choices that align with progressive politics. It may be possible for a woman to decide to work or a woman to stay at home. But her choices to work outside the home will be the only socially acceptable one out there.

As Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, two leading Gen X feminists, explain in Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism, a woman may be pro-life and a feminist, but the moment she advocates for pro-life issues, she’s no longer a feminist. The moment that a conservative woman advocates for issues that are not deemed acceptable by the larger feminist movement, she can no longer carry the f-label.

It’s a problem when the definition of a movement is so vague that it covers everyone, but then it’s members only selectively invite women to the club. Either feminism stands for everyone or it doesn’t. The movement really needs to make a choice.

Feminists just can’t get past the shock that women throughout the country view Sarah Palin as a role model. It’s fascinating to watch all of the soul searching, navel gazing, head spinning and venom-spewing. I’m frankly getting tired of writing about it. Can y’all collectively get over yourselves and stop repeatedly asking the same damn questions?

That lovely blog that started the maelstrom against Taylor Swift decided to go interview women waiting in line for the Palin book signing in Fairfax, Va. and incorporate the cover article on feminism in Newsmax this month. The author, Amanda Hess, forgot to mention that the Newsmax article was written by S.E. Cupp, a young female conservative. Since young, female conservatives don’t exist in feminist-land and are only the creation of old, white men in the GOP, she had to  snidely attack the women waiting in line:

In “newer feminism,” every woman’s choices are valued—no matter what those choices mean for other women. Schlessinger isn’t an enforcer of rigid gender roles; she’s a facilitator of women’s choices. Palin’s opposition to abortion rights and comprehensive sex education isn’t anti-feminist; it is her choice to deny reproductive choices to other women. Under this model, Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis isn’t an exploiter; he’s a liberator of women’s breasts.

Umm…no. Joe Francis is a pornographer and will be to the vast majority of conservative women. But ladies — and I sincerely hope that Amanda Hess and her colleagues find this post– let me spell it out for you. Sarah Palin is simply a marriage of conservative values with the watered-down version of feminism that you gals sold in the 90s in order to save a crippled and dying movement. Until Palin appeared, no one on the right had represented a liberated woman “making choices for herself,” successfully balancing the family and a career, and enjoying a modern marriage with her not-so-metrosexual husband. You were operating under the assumption that the Gloria Steinem vs. Phyllis Schafly dynamic still worked.

Despite my staunchly anti-feminist upbringing, I’ve gotten familiar with the f-word. I worked for a quasi-feminist organization. Well, it’s an organization determined to train little feminists, but it gave me a solid crash course in all things liberal women. After I left that job, I decided to get to the bottom of this feminist issue. I had been blogging anonymously for nearly a year but had danced around the subject. After I moved back to the DC area, I dove into reading feminist theory, history and anything from the women’s studies genre. I was determined to understand what feminism was. The only problem was that feminists were asking that too.  Sadly for them, Palin arrived on the scene before they could reach an answer.

To understand it, let’s go back to the beginning. Hopefully, this history is familiar to most of you.

(more…)

NY Times Highlights Aging Feminists’ Anxiety Over Abortion, Newsbusters

Feminists are in meltdown about the future of abortion. Ironic that they’re losing support because younger generations are more pro-life. When you kill your offspring, you can’t instill your values into the next generation. Conservatives may win simply because we like kids and the numbers are on our side.

From a Young Woman to (Some) of the Menopausal Militia, RHRealityCheck.com

It seems the protest for the Stupak amendment didn’t go so well yesterday, and feminists are bickering at each other in response to the article mentioned above.  Hehe! Keep it up ladies.

Ehrenrich: The Pink-Ribbon Breast Cancer Cult, Alternet

Ehrenrich complains that feminism has been replaced by breast cancer awareness and the focus has shifted away from abortion. I would say that the pink-washing of feminism is the only thing that’s kept it in the news for the past decade. If people knew the truth behind it, no one would follow it.

Taylor Swift: Pop princess, feminist villan? Salon

Seriously? First it was Palin, then it was Twilight. Now Taylor Swift is the catching the ire of feminists. Can’t a young woman just write about what she wants? How many 19-year-olds have the talent to write songs? At 19, did you sit around pondering deep issues of society?  Do all female artists have to be Melissa Ethridge or the Indigo Girls? Sheesh.

Patience Is a (Feminist) Virtue, The Sexist, Washington City Paper

It’s strange that by pursuing traditional roles and values, I’m now counter-cultural. I need a “Proud Supporter of the Patriarchy” t-shirt.

Ms. Pac-Man: Post Feminist Icon, Moving Pixels

A satirical view of the popular 80s arcade game within the realm of feminism. Entertaining, but it makes me wish that I had one. I loved Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. Classic gaming is very in right now.

Where’s My Post-Feminist Manifesto, The Cornell Daily Sun

Another funny editorial about the dismal state of feminism. I like these. Keep them coming.

Duke University Digital Collection, Vintage Ads

Absolutely nothing to do with feminism, but I’m looking for vintage ads to use as artwork in my apartment. The ads are organized by year and subject. Very cool. Also helps fulfill Mad Men withdrawal.