Modern Feminism: Appalling Stupidity Backed by Hysterical Rage

Last updated on: December 17, 2014 at 3:41 pm by David French

Modern Feminism: Appalling Stupidity Backed by Hysterical Rage 2014-12-17T15:41:47-05:00 David French

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Sex.Assault.Rape

Modern feminism is getting embarrassing. There’s a reason why so few women identify as feminists: It’s less a true “women’s movement” than the public face of hysterical leftist intolerance — combined, of course, with utterly bizarre (and bizarrely stupid) ideas.

While I had numerous brushes with extremist feminists in law school — women who declared that all (heterosexual) sex was rape and often responded with literal screams to classroom speech they didn’t like — it all felt fashionably fake. Surely no one took that level of extremism into the real world, did they? Then my wife encountered a lesbian couple in Ithaca, N.Y., who was raising their child to be “genderless.” They refused to call him a boy or girl, allowing him to “choose his gender” identity during his teenage years. And, apparently, they are not alone.

Most people — including most liberals — believe that kind of behavior is insane. NPR, by contrast, writes a glowing profile of women raising their “boychicks.” It’s hard to craft a more nauseating self-parodic paragraph than this self-identified “queer-identified male-partnered monogamist’s” description of her son:

She describes her boychick, born in March 2007, as a “male-assigned at birth — and so far apparently comfortable with that assignment, white, currently able-bodied, congenitally hypothyroid, cosleeper, former breastfed toddler, elimination communication graduate, sling baby and early walker, trial and terror, cliched light of our life, and impetus for the blog. Odds are good he will be the most privileged of persons: a middle class, able bodied, cisgender, straight, white male.”

The true insanity is not that there are crazy people in this world — there always are (I can tell some stories after 45 years in church) — but that modern feminism actually strives to elevate the crazy, the stupid, and the just plain hysterical into the realm of actually relevant cultural and political commentary. Consider these examples:

1. A woman (who likely identifies as a feminist herself) quite sensibly writes that college girls should drink responsibly as a form of defense against sexual assault, and other feminists call her a ”rape denialist.”

2. A feminist hero writes about an extended period of grotesque sexualized conduct involving her sister — conduct that would lead the Left to write any conservative woman out of respectable society — and prominent feminists rush to her defense (though, to be fair, it seems that to some in the feminist world, defending Lena Dunham is a “white feminist” thing to do).

3. A man helped remotely guide a spacecraft onto a comet — let me say that again, a man helped remotely guide a spacecraft onto a comet – but to some feminists that’s less important than his geektastic shirt.

The stupid is so very strong here. The list could go on and on. In fact, we should never forget that perhaps the single-most stupid political argument in modern politics — that you’re waging a “war on women” unless you completely support requiring all employers of any faith or no faith at all to provide employees with free contraceptives and abortifacients — was adopted enthusiastically and wholeheartedly for at least two full years by one of our major political parties.

This is a movement that seems to be all about short-term gains, mostly through name-calling and other forms of online bullying, at the expense of any long-term intellectual coherence or even basic integrity. But in the long run how many women want to be identified with a movement whose champions can’t even listen to a mildly controversial speech without having to walk out to keep from either blacking out or throwing up? How many women want to be identified with a movement that is currently arguing over whether the founder of Facebook’s preference for plain T-shirts is sexist?

All of these reactions display a level of hyper-sensitivity and emotional fragility that every woman I know finds repugnant. Treating women as equals in our culture and politics is simple fairness. Modern feminism, by contrast, has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with the special pleading of its entitled commentariat.

Treating women as equals does not mean that we ignore differences — men and women tend to have different strengths and weaknesses, different likes and dislikes, and will often choose different career paths, family roles, television shows, books, and movies. In fact, men and women tend to like that they’re different and celebrate those differences. Feminism has reacted to this obvious reality by either arguing that our myriad differences are mere social constructs or by arguing that — to borrow my wife’s excellent summary of feminist philosophy – men and women are the same, except when women are better. After all, it wasn’t long ago that one prominent feminist argued that our entire “postindustrial society” was just “better suited to women.”

Feminism doesn’t really have a philosophy. It’s barely even an ideology. It’s mostly just a series of temper tantrums thrown by a small, privileged minority. And, unless it changes, it will soon be irrelevant.

This article first appeared on National Review Online

Read more on the Patheos Faith and Family Channel and follow David on Twitter.

Previous Post

November 13, 2014

How Bad Is Obamacare? Remember the Context For Gruber's Deceptions

Next Post

November 17, 2014 Dear Democrats, Don't Even Think about Running from Jonathan Gruber

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Christmas faith family ministry music Television Uncategorized

Select a Month June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 March 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz