Conservative feminists like men, and other differences
On October 7 Slate posted a slew of opinion pieces by prominent feminists responding to the question, “Who gets to be a feminist?,” since conservative women have lately been counterclaiming the title from liberals.
I found the response by pro-abort Christina Hoff Sommers, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the book, Who Stole Feminism? to be enlightening and helpful on 2 counts.
Sommers identified women’s issues that are much more pressing than the legal freedom to kill one’s own children, all dire.
And Sommers recognized conservative women as “male-friendly. They don’t view men as the collective enemy as liberal feminists often do…
The guardians of feminist purity are not amused by the idea of right-wing girl power. Rebecca Traister and Anna Holmes, for example, recently specified that members of the sisterhood may not oppose “reproductive rights”…
Millions of women, for reasons of conscience, cannot bring themselves to support abortion on demand. According to a 2009 Gallup Poll, 49% of women are pro-life.
Even if you are pro-choice (as I am), it is both unsisterly and impractical to organize a “women’s” movement that excludes – and often demonizes – half of the American adult female population.
After all, there are many other pressing issues: embattled women’s groups in oppressive societies like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the Congo are fighting barbaric practices such as child marriage, honor killing, stoning, and genital mutilation.
If the women’s movement would drop the purity test on abortion it would find millions of Catholic and evangelical women eager to join the next great wave of feminism: the emancipation of women in the developing world….
Conservative feminism is pro-woman but male-friendly. If boys are languishing academically, if blue-collar men lose most of the jobs in the recession, or if innocent young men are falsely accused of heinous crimes – as several members of the Duke University Lacrosse team were in 2006, with campus feminists at the head of the mob – conservative feminists will speak out on men’s behalf.
The feminists now in power in our universities and in Washington see the world differently – as a zero-sum struggle between men and women, in which their job is to fight for women. But that is not the attitude of most women, whether conservative or liberal in political outlook. Men are their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons; when they are in trouble, so are the women who care about them and, in many cases, depend on them.
If conservative women wish to describe themselves as feminists, and if they offer a new model of women’s empowerment that large numbers of American women find inspiring, even determined feminist bouncers like Traister and Holmes won’t be able to keep them from the party.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Great quote! Thanks for putting that together:)
Historically, the suffragette movement was about equality in voting (it began before women had the right to vote and was the movement that secured the right to vote). It was in the late 60’s/early 70’s that “feminists” started using consequence free sex as a supposed equalizer. By that I mean that, instead of holding fathers responsible for the children they co-created, the new feminist wanted to make women like men by giving them the ability to simply walk away from parenthood. Why this ever became ‘reproductive rights’ I will never know. It has not done one bit of good for our society to start killing children by the millions. Women are more objectified today than ever before in history. Even without the right to vote, women were more valued by men than they are today. Of course we love our right to vote and we’re not putting THAT genie back in the bottle. But ‘reproductive rights’? That has got to go the way of the dinosaur: Abortion must be made extinct. Not children, just abortion itself. Keep the kids, lose the murder.
I think this article is brilliant – and I have to concur – abortion allows men to use women, even to the point of death of their children and death to women who have children over the man’s wishes.
Even during the last life-chain here – the only support for abortion & the only negative comments, gestures and yelling came from (you guessed it): MEN.
I used to call myself a feminist, until feminism took a turn to mean that you must support abortion to be truly a feminist. I am now a feminist no more.
I am a conservative feminist, I like men but NOT sexually, how’s that for an answer. You cannot keep men from raping women, it is not going to happen, try taking some injectable Testosterone for awhile, then you’ll comprehend what increase in libido really means, there will always be men who will not be able to control that drive period.
Laura: If it was about too much testosterone, they’d be womanizers or johns, not rapists. Rape has way more to do with control and anger than it does with lust.
“If conservative women wish to describe themselves as feminists…”
I don’t need Sommers’ or anyone else’s permission to describe myself as a feminist, thank you very much. I am taking back the term from the anti-male pro-aborts who do not deserve the label because they are not the least bit interested in real femininity.
A real feminine woman does not kill her own child and she does not hate men. Nor does she find a woman’s value solely in her employment. A real feminine woman understand her worth as a woman the way God made her to be — different from a man, complimentary to a man, precious in her own right and blessed with the gift of co-creating new life with Him.
Ooh, there’s that ultra feminist rape theme we’ve heard tell about.
Boys need fathers. It was my father who told the boys not to hit girls and to listen to their mother.
What is a feminist?
A feminist is any woman who realizes who created her and that he has a purpose for her life. She accepts that purpose and dedicates her life to finding and fulfilling it and thereby discovers her destiny.
What is an anti-feminist?
Any woman that refuses to accept him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Is there any question at all why the vast majority of old-school-feminists are just plain angry and miserable? I think they know they’ve been hoodwinked by old Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies. But…it’s never too late.