Perhaps no “-ism” has harmed our society more grievously than feminism since it got hijacked in the late 1960s by radical secular leftists like Gloria Steinem who popularized Irina Dunn’s declaration that “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
The original feminist goal of achieving equal rights for women was reached in the 1970s, and American women are the planet’s most powerful and free: legally, educationally, economically, and politically – and this is a wonderful achievement.
But modern feminism is merely leftism with all its disdain for Judeo-Christianity, (heterosexual) marriage, capitalism, and the rule of law. What does it say about so many of today’s feminists that their most hated book is The Holy Bible?
The institution most mercilessly attacked by modern feminists is the family. As author Dennis Prager points out, the ultimate reason why leftists push so hard to normalize same-sex marriage is to try to indoctrinate the public into believing that children do not need a mother and a father, especially a dad. It is no surprise that feminists push for in vitro fertilization for same-sex couples to further eliminate the need for traditional marriage.
To be fair, have other phenomena also weakened the American family over the last 60 years? Absolutely – and many. But what other movement has so aggressively targeted the traditional family for destruction as has post-1960s’ feminism? Indeed, as George Will points out, women’s studies textbooks portray heterosexual marriage as an oppressive prison for wives.
Contemporary feminism’s contempt for men has contributed mightily to a record increase in U.S. divorces and now a 40+ percent illegitimate birth rate. Indeed, the collapse of the traditional two-parent family is modern feminism’s most devastating legacy. This is because, with millions of fine exceptions, the data show children from fatherless homes are many times more likely to drop out of school, abuse alcohol and other drugs, be promiscuous, commit crime (even President Obama admitted a boy reared without a father at home is 20 times more likely to end up in prison), live in poverty, commit suicide, and fall prey to the other social pathologies.
Today’s feminist leaders seek to destroy all remaining stubborn differences between the sexes, dismissing masculinity and femininity with the mantra that “gender is a social construct” created by a rabidly sexist culture. So President Obama lifted the ban on women soldiers serving in combat. But since few female recruits meet the physical requirements of their male counterparts, their standards are dramatically lowered, putting all soldiers in combat at more risk.
Just as Marxists seek to craft a new revolutionary man who is classless, stateless, and atheist, radical feminists seek to construct a new androgynous person, neither traditionally male nor female. So they push “gender-affirming medical care” for children suffering gender dysphoria where they are prescribed dangerous “puberty-blockers” and even get their breasts removed and genitals surgically altered. Most suffer devastating – and permanent — consequences. Feminists also pressure public places to adopt unisex bathrooms, and they staunchly support transgender biological male athletes competing against female athletes.
Indeed, how ironic today’s feminist organizations refuse to help all the young ladies now losing trophies and athletic scholarships to transgender biological men. In the 1960s and 1970s, traditional feminists rightly demanded female athletes enjoy equal access to school sports. Yet today’s radical feminists are conspicuously silent as biological male athletes routinely break female sports records, shattering so many hard-working female athletes’ dreams of college scholarships. When brave traditional feminists like tennis champ Martina Navratilova dare speak out against this injustice, today’s “woke” feminists promptly seek to “cancel” them.
While traditional feminists wanted more career choices for women, today’s leftist feminists redefine “choice” as abortion rights all nine months of a pregnancy, and taxpayer-funded. Many stigmatize femininity and ladies who choose to marry a man and stay home to rear healthy children. A feminist friend angrily told me the very word “lady” was “insulting.”
But the top target of today’s feminists’ wrath is masculinity itself. So the now thoroughly feminist American Psychological Association even condemns “traditional masculinity.” In recent years feminist teachers’ unions and educrats have too often treated boys in school as “defective girls” (Christina Hoff Sommers), banned games like dodgeball and tag for being too masculine, and suspended boys for daring to draw a soldier or play with a pretend gun.
This is the Brave New World of radical feminists who are true social revolutionaries seeking to deconstruct ancient healthy norms. Because so few have children, they are fervently feminizing the entire academic curriculum. Traditionalists ignore them at their peril.
Dr. Douglas Young is a retired political science professor at the University of North Georgia.