Free Republic

The Women’s March promises to include a diverse set of women. But there’s one woman it didn’t invite this year: Amy Coney Barrett. The second 2020 Women’s March, held on October 17, centers on sending an “unmistakable message about the fierce opposition to Trump and his agenda, including his attempt to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court. This comes after the president nominated Judge Barrett, a brilliant jurist admired even by legal experts who disagree with her, as the late justice’s replacement. This latest march takes a stand against Barrett, even as so many American women identify...

There was a time, or so I’m told, when “feminism” was about equality for women. Women had been treated as second-class citizens in many well-documented ways, and it was not right. No need to rehash all the ways in which they weren’t treated fairly, they’re well documented. But somewhere along the way they won, if not every battle, at least the war. In my lifetime, women have been able to do whatever they want and go as far as their ambition and talent will take them. But, like the union and civil rights movements, winning was the biggest threat to...

Should more women work outside the home? If additional women desire to do so, sure — of course. But what if those same females wish not to labor outside their humble abodes? The answer follows just as easily: no, they most certainly should not. I don’t even need to hear the reason. You see, a woman is first a free individual with certain inalienable rights. Women are not merely cogs in the machine of their nation’s state. Does that matter to the debate? It really should. Let’s consider this issue not in America, but in Japan. A front-page feature story...

"'Life' in this 'society' being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of 'society' being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex." - Valerie Solanas.Professor Breanne Fahs is a revolutionary. She teaches Women's and Gender Studies at Arizona State University. Recently, she decided to give extra credit to her female students for "defying social norms" by refusing to shave their armpits. In the name of equality, she also gave her male students an opportunity to earn...

Rosen vs. Romney is not exactly high noon at the Powder Puff Arena. But it provides an insight or two in the gender games at the center of the culture: Trendy lesbian working mom, a public relations strategist raising adopted children, attacks traditional super mom for staying home to raise five sons. This is not exactly a rumble in the jungle or the thrilla in Manila, but the way it's hyped, you might think it's a fight that would frighten Muhammad Ali, a thriller if not for the ages at least for this news cycle. Rosen vs. Romney is supposed...

Miss America officials have decided to kill off their beauty pageant. That's not what they're saying, but you tell me what it means when a beauty pageant that professes to champion America's young women issues a news release with "Rush" and "thrilled" in the same sentence: "We are thrilled to have Rush join us for our pageant this year," said the Miss America Organization's president and CEO, Art McMaster. "We know that the 2010 Miss America Pageant will be filled with new twists and exciting opportunities with him as one of our national judges." No, he's not talking about the...

"Papa loved Mama, so they got married and had babies." Thus does my earnest four-year-old summarize the mysteries of marital love. For scientific purposes that statement is terribly incomplete. For philosophical purposes, it hits the bull's eye. With those words Phil Lawler began a Wall Street Journal op-ed in March of 1996. His child's perspective stands in instructive contrast to an article in today's New York Times titled, "Talking With Children About Sex and AIDS: At What Age to Start?" The answer suggested in the lede is "How about, oh, 4?" The reporter tells us this is the subject...

My mother never owned a copy of “The I Hate to Cook Book,” but that was probably because she was a Communist. Communists, at least the 1960s suburban... --snip-- “Another good gambit, when a Potluck is under discussion, is to move in fast with the dessert. You say, ‘Girls, I’ll bring my wonderful Hootenholler Whisky Cake!’ (These things must always be done with a good show of enthusiasm.) Suggesting this Whisky Cake is a shrewd move, too, because you can make it six months ago, it’s easy and very good, it’s cheap, as good cakes go, and as good cakes...

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON Q: I see that your magazine, a feminist quarterly based in Oakland, Calif., and devoted to critiquing the sexist slant of pop culture, is celebrating its 10th anniversary with the publication this week of a thick anthology called “BitchFest.” Why would you choose to glamorize the unappealing female stereotype of the bitch?When we chose the name, we were thinking, well, it would be great to reclaim the word “bitch” for strong, outspoken women, much the same way that “queer” has been reclaimed by the gay community. That was very much on our minds, the positive power...

No one vets the culture with a keener eye than Dowd. Her identification of trends - especially the perverse evolution of liberated women from Birkenstock-wearing intellectuals into pole-dancing sluts - is dead on. But while she sees women clearly as they search for identity in a gender-shifting culture, she doesn't seem to know much about men. Men haven't turned away from smart, successful women because they're smart and successful. More likely they've turned away because the feminist movement that encouraged women to be smart and successful also encouraged them to be hostile and demeaning to men. Whatever was wrong, men...

The March, in three words: "viciously, mercilessly abusive." The amount of verbal aggression and abuse hurled at me personally, by women and men, of all ages, for carrying the I REGRET MY ABORTION sign, well, I thought that from all the nastiness and name-calling I've withstood recently on ampersand and calpundit's blogs, that I was ready for it. I wasn't. Not even close. I consider myself fairly far along on the "healing" and "public-appearances" scales. We stood, all 500 of us in the Silent No More Awareness groups, in total silence as planned, for over five hours, not replying or...

Who's Lying to You About Early Feminism? Susan B. Anthony: Lucifer's Babe? December 1, 2003 by Art Lemasters Many people of scriptural faith have been duped into believing that Susan B. Anthony was a devout follower of the Word by feminist mentions that she was a Quaker, that Quakers were strict, and so forth. Those stories omit the truth. Anthony's family was with the liberal Hicksite Quakers, that is, until she stopped attending Quaker meetings. In liberal Quaker doctrine, scriptures are secondary to each person's "Inner Light." Some Quakers disagree with liberal thought against scripture, but Anthony could not have...

Feminism's Third Wave by Angela Fiori Last Friday's article on date rape by Murray Rothbard in these pages brought back a lot of college memories (not many of them good). By the end of his essay Rothbard cut to the real motive of the feminists: the campus date-rape campaigns of the early 1990s weren't motivated by a genuine concern for the well-being of women. They were part of an ongoing attempt to delegitimize heterosexuality to young, impressionable women by demonizing men as rapists. The only point I'd add is that the regulations the feminists were proposing applied only to men,...