Posted on 02/07/2011 9:59:58 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The liberals have unjustly blamed Sarah Palin for many things, but there's one thing for which she is probably responsible: making feminism the hot topic that it has become today. Every couple of years, Time and Newsweek ask, "Is Feminism Dead?" but all of a sudden feminism is being discussed and debated in the mainstream media.
Feminists have been weighing in to dictate their definition of feminism. Modern feminist Jessica Valenti defined it authoritatively in The Washington Post: "Feminism is a structural analysis of a world that oppresses women, an ideology based on the notion that patriarchy exists and that it needs to end."
Picturing women as the victims of mean men is the engine of feminism. The feminists' legislative agenda -- from unilateral divorce in the 1960s, to the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s, to taxpayer-financed daycare in the 1980s, to the Violence Against Women Act in the 1990s, to the Paycheck Fairness Act in the 2000s -- is always wrapped in whines about alleged discrimination.
Feminist dogma decrees that women can never be successful under our oppressive patriarchy. Feminists complain that Hillary Clinton was denied the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 because of (in Gloria Steinem's words) "profound sexism," and feminists never honor genuinely successful women such as Margaret Thatcher or Condoleezza Rice.
The most scholarly book written about the feminist movement by a non-feminist is "Domestic Tranquility" by Carolyn Graglia. She read all those tiresome books and articles by the feminist leaders -- Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, Kate Millett, Gloria Steinem and Simone de Beauvoir -- and concluded that the principal goal of feminism from the get-go has been "the status degradation of the housewife's role."
Graglia documented the fact that all branches of feminism are united in the conviction that a woman can find identity and fulfillment only by a career in the workforce. Steinem said "you become a semi-nonperson when you get married," while de Beauvoir and Friedan labeled the housewife a "parasite."
Acquiescence in devaluing the role of fulltime homemaker has become part of our culture, taught in women's studies courses and endlessly reiterated in the media. Conventional wisdom says that modern women should all be in the workforce because just being a homemaker is a wasted life.
Another contemporary feminist, professor and author Linda Hirshman, set forth a popular definition in the Daily Beast. She wrote that "support for abortion rights and Obamacare were litmus tests for true feminism."
That shows how out of touch the feminists are. The Republican victories in the 2010 elections, which demonstrated American opposition to Obamacare, included many new non-feminist female House members, a senator and four governors. Nearly all newly elected Republicans are anti-abortion.
The feminists don't know what to say about Sarah Palin, but they can't resist talking about her. They can't deal with the facts that she has a successful career, a cool husband and lots of kids; and it's salt in the feminists' wounds that she's pretty, even while wearing glasses.
It's clear that feminists never wanted gender equality; they want power for the female left, which is why they use the word empowerment so repetitively. The worldview of the women you see on television and in college classrooms is fueled by feminist dogma about men, sex, work, marriage, motherhood and politics.
The female left got Barack Obama to make his first acts as president to overturn the anti-abortion executive order known as the Mexico City policy, to sign the Lilly Ledbetter law to facilitate lawsuits against decades-old alleged employment discrimination and to give women the majority of jobs created by the stimulus.
By November 2009, the feminists were ready to gloat and to reproach Americans for relying on "an outdated model of the American family." They gave fulsome publicity to "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything," published by the left-wing think tank Center for American Progress.
The 400-page Shriver Report boasted that we are now living in a "woman's world," and, "Emergent economic power gives women a new seat at the table, at the head of the table." The female left argues for women to be independent of men, self-supporting, sexually uninhibited, and liberated from the obligations of marriage and motherhood.
The result is that women are chronically dissatisfied, however. The National Bureau of Economic Research reports, "As women have gained more freedom, more education and more power, they have become less happy."
It's time that young women have a handbook that sets forth the real goals and agenda of the feminists plus a non-feminist roadmap to a happy life. My co-author, Suzanne Venker, and I have provided this in our new book, "The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know and Men Can't Say."
To 14 - Uh-huh, and many Palin supporters crucified, some in a very ugly fashion, Mrs Schlafly over that. As if one must forego a right to one’s opinion when the subject is ‘Sarah Palin’.
Where I live in NJ my sons have many friends form Latin America and Asia (Bangladesh, Syria). Such “wussification” isn’t taking hold there; they have friends that will never be “wussified”.
There was also a book written a few years back by a former (I would guess token) male member of the National Organization for Women (NOW) called The Myth of Male Power written as a once true-believer become disaffected by having to face up to fact after fact, and how the movement was unconcerned with the truth, hostile if presented with it.
Warren Farrell. IMHO his opinions are sometimes off the wall - but often they are very acute, indeed.
Touche. If Palin get Schlafly’s endorsement in the race, she’ll have one heckuva feather in her cap.
. . . but Phyliss has publicly come out against the notion that Palin is presidential timber. Pity.
Being from Florida, and watching the SCL trains fly by loud and proud, that was the COOLEST train vid I’ve ever seen.
They want the woman at work and the government to be the husband while destroying any children she might find time to produce, turning them into delinquents with public schools.
Feminists have been feeding clap trap to young women for decades telling them, it’s about “choice”. Then when a woman chooses to marry and assume the roles of mother and homemaker she is marginalized and told she is a parasite, outmoded, and useless to society.
Feminism is dead because of Republican women and Islam. Democrats want to be able to portray Republican women as stupid which is a form of misogynist bullying that feminists have always condemned. Not only that, they are unwilling to criticize Islam for the worst abuses of women.
It’s rather hard to call for “equality” when you are a fan of people who are forcing women under a shroud and into the basement of the church.
To paraphrase Michael Savage, who I think is spot on with this topic, feminism is an invention by women too butt ugly to attract a husband to extract revenge on the rest of us.
Feminism is a rump cult of liberalism, where a few hacks make the money the bulk reap get what they ask for from life. At Kos the fems routinely get rolled by the other cults, one example is some fem of FemKos had her thread on “Corrective rape in South Africa” rolled by BlackKos for the fem’s “racism.” Literally hundreds of posts of womyn whining and crying and asking for forgiveness while the sadists of BlackKos poured it on their silly lib heads.
Their primary goal is the destruction of the family.
Communism is EASILY implemented after this happens.
FEMINISM IS ANTI-FAMILY, ANTI-FATHER, AND ENCOURAGES THE FEMINIZATION OF THE AMERICAN MALE
Before she published The Feminine Mystique, Friedan had spent years in Marxist-inspired agitation on behalf of mistreated lower-class workers-and the abstractness of her analysis is fundamentally Marxist.The feminists whine endlessly using their favorite word "choice" in matters of abortion, but they reject choice in gender roles. The Big Mama of feminist studies, Simone de Beauvoir, said, "We don't believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children . . . precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one."
See also:Agenda: Grinding America Down
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.