November 07, 2014
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On Wednesday, Republicans seized control of the Senate. What’s more important, women regained control of reality.
It’s been a rough few decades for feminism. They began by freeing women from the shackles of domestic oppression, and wound up handcuffing them to careers until they had no hope of ever achieving domestic bliss. The movement’s heart was in the right place. A woman shouldn”t have to sit at home with the kids if she wasn”t meant to. Unfortunately, the vast majority are meant to, and preventing that from happening has left them miserable.
There is a new feminism on the rise, however”one that’s marked by the belief that women don”t have to be men to be happy. The American Enterprise Institute’s C.H. Sommers calls it “factual feminism.” These commonsense feminists deny they are being oppressed. Instead of complaining, they embrace their beauty, their innate ability to nurture, and the wonderful gift that is childbirth. Many have careers now but they don”t scoff at the housewife. They recognize her family as the backbone of Western civilization. This week America confirmed their beliefs.
This election marked the end of the assumption that murdering an unborn baby is empowering. Young women today can see their big sisters crying into their pinot grigio because they”ve become too old to find a man. After years of Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter stating obvious facts about single mothers and the importance of a family unit, the truth has sunk in. Malkin and Coulter haven”t changed their views, but the perception of them has gone from radical “trolls” to mainstream pundits.
Young women today are realizing their grandmothers didn”t have it so bad. The greatest generation sure seems happier than all these divorced baby boomers bitching about their ex-husband as they take half his salary every month.
This awakening was inevitable. The old feminism is a hot mess of contradictions. Women complain about being invisible after 40 but also whine about being catcalled when they”re pretty. They go on “slut walks” and then gasp in horror when Rush Limbaugh implies Sandra Fluke is one. Porn is slavery one week and empowering the next. They”ve made gender so “fluid,” being a woman has been stripped of its meaning. The old feminists take money from Bloomberg to pretend they”re grassroots moms mad at guns, while the new school points out you can”t rape a .38.
The new feminists include best-selling authors such as Katie Pavlich, whose Assault and Flattery: The Truth About the Left and Their War on Women simultaneously debunks old feminist myths while giving young women a foundation they can dig their high heels into. Dana Loesch’s Hands Off my Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America does the same to the feminist left’s strong-arm on gun control.
National Review‘s Katherine Timpf is another girl I”d label a new feminist. She goes into the eye of the storm on college campuses and mocks their fanatical obsession with censorship, the “transgendered,” and calling virtually every sexual act rape. The National Review also publishes A.J. Delgado, an MMA fan in stilettos who would love to have a family and thinks false domestic abuse charges are a scourge.
Up in Canada, Sun News has Faith Goldy, a gun-loving bombshell who says legalizing abortion is tantamount to legalizing rape. Finally, we have Kennedy, host of The Independents, who manages to spend half the week across the country mothering her children while defining inequality as “a false notion propagated by those who are made to feel guilty for what they have by those who are jealous for what they don”t.”
It’s easy for me to sit here and say feminism has been redefined, but the election locked it down as a national trend with real numbers behind it. Sandra Fluke danced into the wildly liberal West L.A. district and claimed her refugee status. She was still riding high on the coattails of Rush mentioning her name. If the election had taken place even 10 years ago, she would have been a sensible shoe-in. Fortunately, things are different now and she lost. She lost hard.
Time and time again during this election, the liberal narrative got bitch-slapped and told to sit down and shut up. Mary Landrieu ran on the platform that the South is just as racist and sexist as Northern liberals think it is. That attitude left her flat on her face.
When politicians dared buck the old feminist tropes, they were rewarded. Mitch McConnell said workplace sexism is over, and added that women no longer deserve special treatment. Both Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren flew to Kentucky to shut him down by supporting his opponent Alison Grimes. America replied with a firm “No, thanks”: virtually everyone the Clintons backed lost, which doesn”t say much for Hillary in 2016. Mitch’s male chauvinism was rewarded with a landslide, while Grimes reacted by pretending she won.
