With
a rash of sexual harassment allegations against them, powerful men like Harvey
Weinstein, Al Franken, and Roy Moore are facing a day of reckoning. Ironically,
so is feminism – a movement that claims to fight for women's rights, but clearly
has done a miserable job living up to its own billing.
As
social critic Caitlin Flanagan recently argued in a
scathing
piece in the Atlantic, feminism betrayed women in the 1990s when it chose to
defend Bill Clinton rather than the victims of his alleged sexual harassment,
assault and rape. Now, women are finally realizing that feminism is not the
great champion of women. It is, as Flanagan noted, "a weaponized auxiliary of
the Democratic Party," willing to sacrifice its dubious principles on the altar
of political expediency.
When
news of Bill Clinton's alleged sexual misconduct with young intern Monica
Lewinsky first surfaced,
Betty
Friedan, the woman credited with launching second-wave feminism, said:
"Whether it's a fantasy, a set-up, or true, I simply don't care . . . Clinton
has started the national childcare policy, and appointed some very strong women.
He has also stood firm on abortion."
Similarly,
feminist writer
Nina
Burleigh crudely declared that she not only was willing to overlook
Clinton's predatory ways, she'd actually perform a sex act on Clinton "just to
thank him for keeping abortion legal."
But
perhaps the greatest betrayal of women came in the form of a
1998
New York Times
editorial written by feminist icon Gloria Steinem. In it, she grossly
minimized Clinton's misdeeds, claiming that his
alleged
groping of Kathleen Willey (whom Steinem curiously noted was "old enough to
be Lewinsky's mother") was not sexual harassment, but merely "a gross, dumb, and
reckless pass."
She
also characterized as a "pass" Clinton's alleged groping and indecent exposure
of himself to
Paula
Jones in a hotel room. "Even if the allegations are true," Steinem wrote,
"the President is not guilty of sexual harassment," but merely a "candidate for
sex addiction therapy."
Gloria
Steinem's defense of Clinton was "one of the most regretted public actions of
her life," Flanagan wrote. Steinem's piece in the New York Times "slut-shamed,
victim-blamed, and aged shamed," and urged "compassion for and gratitude to the
man the women accused."
Yet
even now, Steinem is not apologizing for what she did. Neither is celebrated
feminist Hillary Clinton, who reportedly tried to
silence
Bill's victims, including
Juanita
Broaddrick, the woman he allegedly raped in 1978.
In
the 1990s and subsequent decades, feminism revealed itself to be shockingly
Machiavellian. At a critical time, when the nation's attention was trained on
the plight of women exploited by a powerful man, feminism essentially told
female victims to suck it up and move on. Is it any wonder that women like
actress Natalie Portman have been rendered numb to the sexual harassment they've
routinely endured?
Portman
recently
disclosed that when the allegations against Weinstein first surfaced, she
thought, "Wow, I'm so lucky that I haven't had this." Then on further reflection
she realized she's been the victim of sexual harassment a hundred times, but had
learned to dismiss it as "part of the process." "I've had discrimination or
harassment on almost everything I've ever worked on in some way," she said.
Feminism
also told powerful predators like Bill Clinton that if they support liberal
causes, they can have their way with women and feminists will have their back.
Is it any wonder that the Harvey Weinsteins of this world took this message and
ran with it?
Let's
face it. We're in this current cultural moment because of feminists, not in
spite of them!
But
it's not just feminists' protection of predators that has contributed to the
epidemic of sexual harassment and abuse in this country. The entire ideology of
feminism renders women as tools for men.
Take
their keystone political platform – abortion. What is abortion other than a
get-out-of-sex-free card for men, absolving them of any responsibility for their
actions? Feminists continue to champion abortion like it's an essential means of
liberation for women, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Women
don't want abortions; men do. In fact, a study reported in the
Medical Science
Monitor found that 64-percent of women who abort feel pressured to do so.
Similarly, Frederica Matthewes-Green, who talked to hundreds of women about
their decision to abort for her book,
Real
Choices, found that women aren't having abortions because they are
poor, or because a child would interfere with school or career plans. They're
having abortions because the men in their lives tell them to do so.
Matthewes-Green
reported that 88-percent of the women she interviewed said their trip to the
abortion clinic was not a choice, but a capitulation. They didn't feel
empowered; they felt isolated, overwhelmed and sad.
"No
woman wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche,"
Matthewes-Green concluded. "She wants an abortion as an animal caught in a trap
wants to gnaw off its own leg."
Yet
abortion remains enshrined as the holy grail of feminism. The National
Organization of Women (NOW) names so-called "reproductive justice" as one of its
five main campaigns. Reproductive Rights is also cited as one of
the
Women's March main "unity
principles."
Feminism's
commitment to abortion is downright fanatical. As one of Hillary Clinton's
biographers,
Dr. Paul Kengor, once
wrote, "(Abortion) is Hillary's hill to die on. I believe Hillary Clinton
would give her life for Roe v. Wade."
Abortion
is necessary to achieve feminism's goal of making women the functional
equivalents of men. But women aren't the functional equivalents of men. Perhaps
someone should inform feminists that women have a womb; we nurse babies; and
we'd prefer to have our unique maternal functions protected, rather than
obliterated.
We'd
also prefer feminists to call predatory men to account – not just the Bill
Clintons and Harvey Weinsteins, but the "Alexes" and "Martys." These are the
guys who bragged to a
Vanity
Fair reporter about their "Tinderellas," the dozens of girls they've slept
with and discarded after finding them on dating apps like Tinder and Hinge.
Feminists
should be up in arms over the wanton abuse of women inherent in the current
hookup culture; instead so-called "third-wave" feminists are actually promoting
it.
These
"sex-positive" or "porn-positive" feminists are so deceived that they actually
think freely prostituting one's body is somehow in women's best interests.
Heavily influenced by the message of the sexual revolution, these daughters of
second-wave feminists believe sexual freedom is essential to women's freedom
and, as a result, oppose controlling or limiting sex in any way.
Sadly,
their errant ideology is killing them. As a female student at Boston College
told Vanity Fair, "Sex should stem from emotional intimacy, and it's the
opposite with us right now, and I think it really is kind of destroying females'
self-images." Her classmate agreed and added, "But if you say any of this out
loud, it's like you're weak, you're not independent, you somehow missed the
whole memo about third-wave feminism."
Unfortunately,
men haven't missed the memo on third-wave feminism. They've hopped on it just as
gleefully as Weinstein would on a hot actress. But it's sick and perverse and
horribly misogynistic. And it's about time women, and those who love them, begin
saying so.
And
to those conservatives, who like Friedan and Steinem are saying they don't care
if Roy Moore is guilty of molesting young women:
as
long as he's pro-life, they'll vote for him. May history deal with you every
bit as harshly as it is dealing with Friedan and Steinem today.
Conservatives
care about conserving timeless principles. But if you are willing to sacrifice
the principle of protecting women and children for political gain, you are not a
conservative; you are a grotesque pragmatist. Your day of reckoning should not
be any less severe than those in whose footsteps you are walking.
But
for the rest of us, let's make today a day of reckoning for feminism and reject
it once and for all. And instead, let's embrace God's vision for womanhood – one
that honors and values women as women, and refuses to use them as tools, but
instead protects and cherishes them.
Julie Roys is a speaker, freelance journalist and blogger
at www.julieroys.com. She
also is the host of a national radio program on the Moody Radio Network
called Up For
Debate. Her
book,
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