View Openings
View Resumes
Featured Partner
Grand Central Political Magazine
Whose Movement Is This?
By Ashley Herzog
"I'm ashamed to be sharing a newspaper forum with you. Your blatant attacks on feminism and the feminist perspective are ignorant. Perhaps you should start embracing the power you have as a woman, instead of fighting tooth and nail to remain in an oppressed unequal society. You shame women, and you deserve nothing more than the barefoot and pregnant, subservient lifestyle you are headed for."
That charming message arrived in my inbox last spring from a self-described feminist activist at Ohio University, where I work as an opinion columnist for the campus newspaper. She was referring to a column I'd written the day before about Title IX, the federal statute that feminists use to dictate their vision of gender equality in higher education.
So what exactly did I say? That women shouldn't go to school? Shouldn't work? Or perhaps that women should be perennially "barefoot and pregnant," as this feminist suggested?
In fact, the column that prompted this message was somewhat more moderate. I wrote that Title IX should be reformed because it was hurting both men's and women's sports teams, as evidenced by the recent athletic program cuts at OU. I recommended we stop pretending that women are just as interested in playing college sports as men are. As I wrote, "College athletic departments should be able to address the unique needs of student athletes as they see fit, without being forced to fill arbitrary quotas."
The column wasn't exactly a call for women to get back in the kitchen--but that didn't matter to the feminists who read it. I had an opinion that they didn't share, and therefore I would wind up "barefoot and pregnant" and oppressed.
It was a pretty harsh indictment, considering that I once called myself a feminist.
Harsh--but, as I'd learned shortly after arriving on campus, typical.
Like many girls my age, I grew up a feminist by default. I was born in the mid-1980s, two decades after the "second-wave" feminists burst onto the national scene. Most of the battles for equal rights had already been won. Women enjoyed Equal Employment Opportunity, made up an ever-increasing percentage of college graduates, and had career options beyond homemaking and raising children. Needless to say, the women's suffrage movement was something out of a history book.
More importantly, by the time my generation came along, the women's movement of the 1970s had seized the culture. The idea that girls were as smart and capable as boys was non-debatable for girls my age. We had goals and ambitions and expected recognition in the classroom. We wanted to play sports without being called tomboys. We dreamed of becoming doctors, writers, scientists--and, unlike our great-grandmothers, we had a reasonable chance of realizing those dreams. Above all, we expected to be treated as boys' equals.
By the time I entered high school, I proudly referred to myself as a feminist, identifying nineteenth-century suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton as my role model in my very first ninth-grade writing assignment. Still, despite my admiration for the heroes of the early women's movement, I found reading biographies of historical women to be less than fully satisfying. I wanted not just to call myself a feminist, but to actually be one. My first step toward real activism was to join a pseudo-feminist group at my high school--a group I'll refer to as the "Equality Club."
I'll never forget my first meeting. I entered the designated classroom to discover a group of dour-looking students, standing in a tight circle, who looked me up and down as I walked in. No one said hello, but there were a few whispers and suspicious side-glances thrown in my direction.
Undiscouraged, I cheerily introduced myself as a feminist who was looking to get involved with various projects at school. For the rest of the meeting, my presence was tolerated, although none of the self-identified feminists spoke directly to me.
The hour that followed was among the most bizarre and uncomfortable of my life. The girls in the club kvetched about abortion rights, lesbian marriage, and the school's "indoctrination" of female students (a program that had apparently escaped my attention). One girl, wearing a "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" pin on her sweatshirt, rolled her eyes when I suggested that we urge the school to require Elizabeth Cady Stanton's biography in the history or English programs. The rest of the group ignored me and moved on to discussing the business at hand, which was planning an event to foster "gay pride" in our high school. The most popular suggestion was an LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) kissing booth.
Finally, I'd heard enough. I raised my hand to voice an objection.
"I know gay equality is an important issue, but it's not necessarily a feminist issue--which is what this club is for," I said. "Actually, I think we could drive away potential members by focusing too much on the lesbian stuff."
What did I know? I was only fifteen.
Needless to say, my suggestion was met with icy glares and more than a few gasps of horror. It was clear that my membership in the Equality Club had come to an end, if only because its members would never welcome me back.
During my years as a columnist for the OU newspaper and contributor for Townhall.com, I've resisted frequent requests that I explain my opposition to feminism. Apparently, a lot of people are shocked to discover a female college student who does not spend her days singing the praises of the National Organization for Women. Feminists fight for my rights, my readers tell me. So why am I constantly criticizing them?
Most people who ask me this question believe that feminists simply want to advance the interests of all women. But this is usually only true in theory.
In practice, the modern feminist movement is not a movement to promote freedom and equality for all women. It operates as a rigid ideology dictating what women should think and how they should live. Women who don't parrot the views of NARAL Pro-Choice America are shunned from the feminist clique. Conservative and religious women are the most likely to become outcasts, but anyone who dissents from the feminist establishment on any important issue is also at risk.
Back in the days when I called myself a feminist, this behavior shocked me. I didn't yet realize that the deceptively simple dictionary definition of feminism--"Belief in equality of the sexes"--is almost never practiced by the feminist establishment that currently controls women's studies departments and various activist groups.
The feminist label has become a front for every imaginable left-wing cause, irrespective of whether it advances most women's interests. Except for their slightly greater enthusiasm for abortion, the policy agenda of feminist groups like the NOW and the Feminist Majority Foundation is indistinguishable from that of the Democratic National Committee.
Just don't say that to a feminist, or you'll be accused of "internalizing your oppression"--just like I was.
---------------
Ashley Herzog is the author of the new book Feminism vs. Women, from which the above piece is excerpted.