These days, I’m so benumbed to articles about what’s “wrong” with feminism that I don’t even bother to skim the headlines as they appear like fruit flies out of the ether of my Twitter feed. But this article (Blogpost? Feelpinion? Vague stab at polemic?) from IndyStar perked my ears up. Its subject? Why conservative feminists are the only real feminists – because “they don’t look for a handout.”
The essay reads like a mad libs of trendy libertarian ethos and liberal-bashing, and contains such gems as “manufactured war-on-women nonsense.” They claim that if their husbands ever decided to “trade us in for younger models, we’d be emotionally devastated, sure. But we’d survive,” as if that was a feminist argument.
All that aside, these so-called “real feminists” have some valid points to make. ”We know any government (or man) powerful enough to give us something is powerful enough to take it away,” say the article’s authors, Amy Jo Clark and Miriam Weavers, conservative bloggers and radio hosts from the Indianapolis area.
Clark and Weaver, ~true feminists~
These conservatives embrace the buck-up-and-deal-with-it approach to feminism, which is to say to smile politely in the face of gender discrimination, the theft of our constitutional rights, or rape apologists who would place the blame of an assault on the victim.
Continue the bloggers, “[Feminism’s] about staring unexpected challenges in the face and saying, “I’ve got this.”
Their platform, however, relies on shitting on “harpies” who “screech ‘WAR ON WOMEN!’ the second they’re faced with challenges – or with having to pay for their own birth control.” Notwithstanding the fact that conservatives and liberals alike are faced with challenges – 77 cents to the dollar kind of challenges, if you know what I mean – these women feel like their agenda will be accomplished by championing “our character, our passions, our loves, our strengths, our abilities and our successes” over “the entitlement machine that feeds women a false sense of security.”
I will not go into the ideological fallacies that COTR use to undermine ‘liberal’ arguments against the very real war on women – that was done very eloquently in another IndyStar article from a few days ago. Instead, I want to ask COTR: what’s your endgame, here?
These feminists, in blasting chicks on the left, forget the foundation on which feminism is based; that we’re all in this together. The divides between white and WOC, queer and cis, and now liberal and conservative feminists serve only to undermine the cause of feminism in the way that divisions in leadership and purpose weakened and ultimately quashed the Occupy Wall Street movement. “A house divided cannot stand,” said Abraham Lincoln, a member of the GOP back when it was just the GP. I assume he was talking about feminism.
The subtitle of their blog is “because conservatism needs a makeover.” Well, duh. But while it’s admirable that these women are attempting to make feminism palatable to the notoriously anti-women right-wing, the truth is that conservatism needs more than a makeover – it needs a total attitude adjustment. As Americans saw this past year in the Congress, two parties at polar extremes of the political spectrum either refuse to or are unable to make ANY progress together. The further apart our parties get, the less compromise will happen for women or for anyone.
So to answer the question of who is the “real” feminist, I would say it’s sure as hell not these chicks on the right: a real feminist won’t stereotype, or mock, or oppress, and she absolutely, 100% would not say that one type of woman is better than any other.
Thanks to IndyStar
Photos via Chicks on the Right
