Feminism is all the rage right now—on college campuses across America, on the Internet, in mainstream media and the celebrity circuit. “All the rage” in more ways than one, since rage is to be feminism’s current dominant mode. Rage over anything: a scientist wearing a shirt with 50s pinups; women forced to, uh, wrap gifts; a college hosting the “wrong kind” of feminist; men sitting with their legs apart on public transit. At a time of unprecedented female freedom and opportunity, many “feminists” seem to be looking for reasons to feel aggrieved.
Small wonder that most Americans say they support equal rights but don’t identify as feminists, or that our best and brightest shun the label. Barnard College sophomore Toni Airaksinen, a first-generation student from a poor family, feels she “should be feminist”; but she also sees modern feminism as “a cult of victimhood” that “panders to women’s traumas and teaches them that they have been victimized solely because they are female” while promoting male-bashing and “intolerance of dissent.”
That intolerance is sadly familiar to those of us advocating for a saner, more inclusive feminism. Leading feminist pundit Amanda Marcotte’s list of “women working tirelessly to attack equal rights for women” is topped by “equity feminism” proponent Christina Hoff Sommers, with me in the No. 2 spot. (One of my offenses: challenging claims that women are routinely terrorized on the Internet.) And, after The Washington Post published my essay critical of attempts to redefine many ambiguous sexual experiences as rape, a feminist editor at the online magazine Quartz tweeted that “we must stop” the Post from “publishing this horrendous, damaging rape apologist.”
Many believe that we should just give up the “f-word” and replace it with a gender-neutral term such as “egalitarianism.” Others, such as Sommers, argue that feminism is still needed. How can we reclaim this movement for true equality, freedom, and fairness -for both sexes – against the “Fauxminist Frequency”?
Pitch a big tent. If people are pro-equality but won’t call themselves feminists, chiding them that they are “really” feminists will only put them off further. Feminists, humanists, egalitarians —shared goals and values are important, labels are not. Nor should there be ideological litmus tests beyond core principles of human rights and equal treatment regardless of gender. That doesn’t require a particular position on gun control, national security, or economic regulation.
Stand against “thought police”. Particularly in universities, there’s a major assault on free speech – in the name of “progressive” goals, including feminism. “Heretical” ideas—questioning claims of a college rape epidemic, suggesting some sex differences are innate—have been redefined as attacks on “safety.” After Christina Hoff Sommers spoke at Georgetown University, the student paper, The Hoya, blasted the group that invited her for promoting “harmful conversation.” Feminist lawyer Wendy Kaminer warns “soft authoritarianism” has pernicious consequences outside academe: “Instead of advancing equality, it’s teaching future generations of leaders the ‘virtues’ of autocracy.”
No “Oppression Olympics”. Current feminist politics stress “intersectionality”—the complex dynamics of various inequities based on race, gender, religion, disability, and so forth. In theory, this approach could make feminism more flexible and help move past simplistic woman-as-victim, man-as-oppressor stereotypes. In practice, it usually turns into a hierarchy of labels in which people are judged on their identities and white “cisgender” males are always the bad guys.
More than 35 years ago, British philosopher Janet Radcliffe Richards wrote, “No feminist whose concern for women stems from a concern for justice in general can ever legitimately allow her only interest to be the advantage of women.” This is an essential principle; but “intersectional feminism” is not the way to honor it. What’s needed is a feminism that treats people as individuals and makes no assumptions about power or privilege based on identity.
Reject cultural excuses for misogyny. Outrageously, identity politics often betray the women who need feminism most: victims of real patriarchal oppression. Since Muslims are included in the progressive martyrology of the “marginalized,” fear of “Islamophobia” can cause feminists to back Islamists over female critics of religious misogyny. At Goldsmiths College, University of London last December, the Islamic Society tried to block, and then repeatedly disrupted, a supposedly “hateful” speech by Iranian-born ex-Muslim feminist Maryam Namazie—with support from the Goldsmith Feminist Society.
Stop battling the ghosts of patriarchy past. The same feminists who get tongue-tied about criticizing the worst patriarchal cultures rail against imaginary “patriarchy” in the West, where women today command massive voting power, run businesses, earn more college degrees than men, have full legal rights, and control their own lives without being subject to male authority. Blaming “the patriarchy” for women’s choices in free societies is an affront to female moral agency.
Show equal concern for men and boys. If feminism is a gender equality movement, it must give equal time to disadvantages affecting males—be it boys’ academic underachievement, disregard of male domestic violence victims, or blatant gender bias in enforcement of campus sexual assault policies. There is evidence of feminist activists, writers and academics belittling, denying or downplaying these problems – and promoting women-as-victims, men-as-bad-guys narratives.
Equal Justice in Sex-Assault Cases. Too often, modern feminism takes its cue from radical law professor Catharine MacKinnon’s 30-year-old dictum that “feminism is built on believing women’s accounts of sexual use and abuse by men.” It is the epitome of sexism to “choose sides” on the basis of gender, or insist that women are entitled to belief.
Stick to the facts. From “women earn 77 cents to a man’s dollar for the same work” to “one in five college women are sexually assaulted by graduation,” fauxminist statistics have evaporated under scrutiny. So have some manufactured outrages—from a college “gang rape” trumpeted by Rolling Stone (it never happened) to the more recent scandal over false reports that Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir Tim Hunt mocked “girls in the lab” as lovelorn crybabies (he didn’t). Too often, the feminist response to such debunkings has amounted to declarations the big picture of sexism matters more than specific facts. It really, really, doesn’t. Sir Tim Hunt, a lifelong mentor of women, revealed that he had considered suicide over journalists’ lies that blackened his name.
Make “work-life balance” a top priority. Whatever role discrimination may play in gender disparities in the workplace, women’s caregiving roles at home are a major factor. Even women who are largely satisfied with these trade-offs often feel the conflict acutely; increasingly, so do men. In a recent Pew poll, 56% of working mothers said it was it difficult to balance work and parenthood—but so did 50% of working fathers.
Don’t shoot the messenger – for bearing GOOD news. Women have much to celebrate, collectively and individually. Yet feminists tend to be surprisingly resistant to good news. A 2013 study demonstrating that female political candidates are not judged more negatively than their male counterparts was met with feminist derision. Crime surveys showing low rates of rape on campus have been dismissed as “a sideshow.” Female technology leaders who say they have not experienced sexism in the industry, such as researcher and designer Meredith Patterson, have been disparaged as ‘gender traitors’. Yet claims misogyny remains intractable are as likely to discourage women as they are to inspire action.
In societies where feminism has had the freedom to flourish, it has made remarkable gains—and will continue to do so if it stops being its own worst enemy. We can beat fauxminism. We must.
