We are living in a feminist dystopia.
Nobody has more independent woman street cred than yours truly, the Academic Redneck. I traveled the world by myself in my twenties. I waited to marry until I was in my mid-thirties. Now in my fifties, I am child-free by choice. I never had an abortion, but I knew where babies came from and made damned certain I didn’t end up with one. While I admire women who nurture children, I never possessed the temperament for or interest in motherhood.
My working-class mother, wise beyond her sixth-grade educational level, stressed that my life choices would be severely limited if I married or had children too young. Mother’s own life served as a cautionary tale. Her poverty-stricken parents encouraged her to marry at sixteen. They had entirely too many mouths to feed and were (perhaps understandably) relieved when one of their eight children left the nest.
Mother’s first husband was a World War II vet who couldn’t shake the stresses of combat. He brought the fight home to her. What was supposed to be an economically advantageous marriage for her turned into a nightmare of regular physical, psychological, and sexual battery. When my sister arrived, he added deadbeat dad to his long list of dirtbag domestic distinctions.
Despite the horrors my mother experienced as a young wife and mother, she never lost hope. Refusing to wallow in self-pity, she got a job, not an easy task for any woman in the early 1960s, particularly one who could barely read and write. She filed for divorce, fought for and gained sole custody of my sister, though not before the dirtbag swore under oath that she was a whore and an unfit mother. She eventually got her life together and married my dad, her childhood sweetheart. Their marriage wasn’t always perfect, but they cultivated a successful partnership for nearly 50 years until my dad died in 2013. In contrast to my sister’s early years, my childhood was stable.
Perhaps conversations with my mother have rendered me incredulous when I see so many middle-and upper-middle-class women indulging in emotionalism and victimhood in the #MeToo era. Instead of making logical arguments about problems that affect women, they don Handmaid’s Tale costumes and shriek and scream at protest rallies and senate hearings. Their garb supposedly symbolizes the oppressive patriarchy and the second-class status of women in the Trump era. Yet for me, their histrionics represent a frightening, humorless, dystopian world where women’s status is diminished. I want no part of their oppressive and retro ideology.
Nowhere has this reality been more obvious than in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. Christine Blasey-Ford traumatized? Victimized? Maybe. Maybe not. She was the most powerful person in the United States last week, a Democratic political operative holding the entire country hostage as she received deference that no other alleged rape victim–or crime victim of any kind—would ever get. Yet she achieved this power over the United States Senate by projecting helplessness. She was treated as a delicate piece of porcelain china at the Senate hearings. No one dared ask her about the inconsistencies in her story because “we can’t re-victimize sexual assault survivors.” The entire spectacle was condescending and demeaning to strong, rational women.
I certainly don’t see Blasey-Ford as a brave standard bearer for women’s rights–quite the opposite. She has used her femininity (in this case, a three-decades-old groping allegation that she herself concedes was not rape) to throw the entire country into chaos. After thirty-six years, the debutante must NOW receive satisfaction, the country be damned.
In the past two weeks, my Facebook news feed has been filled with posts from women in my Alabama hometown. Like me, these female friends and relatives were disgusted by what unfolded in D.C. They tend to believe Kavanaugh since Blasey Ford hasn’t produced a shred of corroborating evidence. They do not consider themselves oppressed by the “patriarchy” and find the narcissism of elite women irritating. For them, Blasey-Ford is a manipulative basket case, miserable despite her own privileged upbringing and advanced education.
They also wondered why her story dominates the news cycle. Why is Blasey-Ford deserving of empathy, but Paula Jones was not? Does class have anything to do with it? After all, Democrat Party operative James Carville once said of Jones, “Drag a dollar bill through a trailer park, and you never know what you will find.” For all the talk of Kavanaugh’s “white privilege,” what about Ford’s? Has the press glommed on to her story because she’s from an upper-middle-class background and didn’t grow up a double wide?
A lot of pragmatic working class women believe if Blasey-Ford were really seeking justice, she would have filed her complaint matter-of-factly in the legal jurisdiction appropriate for the case. Instead, Salome has done her political song and dance for the most powerful. She will have John the Baptist’s head.
Feminism has been on the decline for decades, but the Trump era has exposed the women’s movement’s self-indulgent tendencies. A day after President Trump’s inauguration, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington, D.C., and other cities for the Women’s March. The sheer number of protestors provided the sisters with some salve for post-election wounds after their candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton, lost the election. Their protest signs expressed support for a garden variety of traditional feminist causes, like, “Keep Your Politics Out of My Uterus!” and a few newer, Trump-inspired ones, such as “This Pussy Grabs Back!”
Most of the speeches were embarrassing and hypocritical. Actress Ashley Judd certainly wasn’t invoking the inspirational rhetoric of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech when she crudely referenced a “dream” of another kind to insult Donald and Ivanka Trump. It’s hard to take any women’s movement seriously when one of the principal speakers reads a poem suggesting the president might have had incestuous designs on his daughter. Rape, incest, and sexual violence preoccupy the minds of these elite women.
Judd’s poetic snark is nothing new for contemporary star-studded feminism, but her remarks betrayed a callousness for the very causes she claims to care about. If she believed this allegation against Donald Trump had even a modicum of truth, shouldn’t she have treated Ivanka with the same privacy and dignity feminists demand for female victims of sexual abuse? Judd knew the smear was not true and didn’t care if her words embarrassed another woman, just as long as she revved up the partisan crowd.
The January 2017 Women’s March was just another example of how contemporary feminism remains detached and aloof from so many ordinary women outside the major cities on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The average female does not need the movement. However, the movement needs average women, a lesson its leadership still hasn’t learned after all these years.
Has establishment feminism actually experienced a significant victory since Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match? The #MeToo movement took a victory lap after Harvey Weinstein and Matt Lauer face planted, but the Brett Kavanaugh situation may signal the end of their gains. In a previous Academic Redneck article supporting Roy Moore for the Alabama Senate seat last year, I argued that the mere allegation of sexual misconduct should not be the standard for judging sexual assault cases. I also said that To Kill a Mockingbird provided an appropriate insight. Hard evidence, not innuendo or accusations alone, must be the basis for adjudicating such a heinous, alleged crime.
Few paid attention, though the talking heads have now picked up the Mockingbird analogy. Moore was widely disliked, so nobody really cared if he took a fall. He was just another embarrassing, Alabama bumpkin who deserved his fate whether or not the accusations were true. Now that someone with a solid reputation is being accused of sexual assault during high school, many people are waking up and finally wondering if the sisterhood mob has gone too far.
I follow the #Walkaway movement and have read thousands of Facebook posts from ordinary women who believe what is happening to Kavanaugh is beyond the pale. They are dismayed by the flippancy of feminists who suggest that even if the preppy white boy isn’t guilty, he represents privilege and should be punished anyway. The feminist mob has embraced guilt by association. Their Handmaid’s Tale costumes do not symbolize female oppression at the hands of a male-dominated society. In truth, their garments identify them as would-be oppressors of other woman who do not wish to be associated with their immature dress-up games and childish temper tantrums.
Many ordinary, independent women in red states could teach young college-educated feminists a few things about self-reliance, grit, dignity, and stoicism. Since many young women these days lack the coping skills even to accept the results of an election or the courage to report a sexual assault, they would benefit from interacting with tougher, more practical gals than the Halloween- costumed handmaids.
Modern feminism is antiquated street theater and nineteenth-century era hysterics. Its core message resonates with few average women outside of academia and other left-leaning white-collar professions. Contemporary feminist ideology creates a truly dystopian world where women are chronically miserable, enraged, and unhappy.
