In 2017, somewhere in Texas, a distinguished leftist judge wears a pink “pussyhat” in a courtroom to show her support for “women’s rights.”
To say that the left has descended
into the realm of self-parody is an understatement. Rather than making jokes about American public
policy, they have effectively, and unknowingly, become the joke.
Take the recent “Women’s March,” which
resulted from a strong marketing campaign, ample funding by leftist support
groups, and which enjoyed much media coverage and fanfare.
Prior to the event, former Obama
speechwriter Jon Favreau urged women to “put on [their] entire armor” to march
on Washington the morning after Trump’s inauguration.
Sure, putting on “armor” to peacefully
protest a legitimate election sounds silly to most people. But as Connie Wang at Refinery29 looks to remind all the privileged males out there (should
they choose to be identified as males), “all women know how certain outfits can
make us feel bigger and stronger and more warrior-like, which comes in handy in
moments where we need to feel those things.
Like now.”
So, in their self-righteous fury,
these mighty Valkyries donned their pink “pussyhats” and full-body vagina suits
to fight the patriarchal status quo.
But which women’s rights, exactly, were
they so ridiculously fighting for?
Let’s examine the “Values and
Principles” stated by the March’s organizers:
We believe that Gender Justice is
Racial Justice is Economic Justice. We
must create a society in which women, in particular women – in particular Black
women, Native women, poor women, immigrant women, Muslim women, and queer and
trans women – are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however
they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural
impediments.
When you create a statement for mass
consumption like “Gender Justice is Racial Justice is Economic Justice,” it’s
clear that your agenda is not truly about women’s rights and that you seek to
co-opt other leftist grievance narratives to provide ballast to your
cause. But it’s also quite clear that
the terms you cite are malleable beyond their having any meaning or value at
all.
What is meant by this sentence? Is it suggested that redistribution to
provide benefits to women for abortions, contraceptives, and sex-changes is
what they’re fighting for? Are we to suppose
that this is the same as demanding that white people pay the penance of their
presumed racial “privilege” by providing reparations for slavery? And all that is the same battle fought by
those suggesting that the government should redistribute wealth from the
affluent and middle class to provide for the poor?
The “Values and Principles” of the
Women’s March continue:
We firmly declare that LGBTQIA Rights
are Human Rights and that it is our obligation to uplift, expand, and protect
the rights of our gay, lesbian, bi, queer, trans, or gender non-conforming brothers,
sisters, and siblings.
If you ever wondered how Democrats
lost middle-class, workaday Americans, look no further than that sentence and the
evolution which led to it. First of all,
unless you’re incredibly attuned to the grievance narrative being peddled by
the radical left, you likely notice that the acronym has added a few letters to
the sequence since you’ve probably last seen it referenced. The LGBT agenda has become the LGBT+ or LGBTQ
agenda, which has now apparently become the LGBTQIA agenda to include
“intersex” and “asexual” (or “ally”) individuals. Honestly, I don’t know why I even bothered to
look it up, as it’s likely that another letter or two will have been added by
the time these thoughts have been shared.
Are these the most pressing matters
facing America today? Be truthful. You, like most people, would probably roll
your eyes and laugh at anyone who suggests that they are.
But returning to Connie Wang, it’s not
important to agree with all the reasons for the Women’s March. “[P]ick the issues that speak most personally
to you,” Wang suggested, to ensure that “aspects of your identity… are
represented too: Maybe you’re afraid to wear your hijab.”
A sensible person cannot help pausing
for a moment to reflect upon the irony in this social justice warrior’s
invocation of the hijab, an extremely clear symbol of the historic and
religious subjugation of women, as a symbol of women’s empowerment and
liberation in the neo-leftist’s incredibly disjointed formulation of thought.
It’s so easy to see that some lifelong
feminists cannot help noticing.
Emma-Kate Symons notes in an op-ed at the New York Times, “And why
is a woman seen wearing a heavy veil pulled tight to cover her neck – not even
a headscarf – emerging as the symbol of the rally? Yes, Trump is singling out Muslims, but must
we play his reductionist game?”
Incidentally, Symons’s beef with the
march seems sensible enough: “It saddens me to see the inclusive feminism that
I grew up with reduced to a grab-bag of competing victimhood narratives and
rival community-based but essentially individualist identities jostling for the
most-oppressed status.”
It saddens her because the march was
not about feminism, but about perpetuating the victim status of certain
identity groups that have little, if anything, to do with women. One has to wonder how she’s missed what most
of America has not – the New Left, and the Democrats who have embraced them,
have no other platform beyond the creation and perpetuation of victimhood
narratives.
The “Women’s March” was not about all women, of course. After all, 42% of women voted for Donald Trump -- not exactly a fringe
group, and certainly not represented in the political motivation for the
march. The marchers represented you only
if you want, and are willing to demand, taxpayers to continue financing
abortions via Planned Parenthood’s federal subsidies, whether one agrees with
the practice or not. They represented
you only if you think that men can be women if they feel like it, in spite of
all scientific facts which refute that position. They represented you only if you believe that
America is an evil, racist place where your having a job or wealth is due to white
privilege, and justice means giving such a job to a poorer person of color
simply because they happen to be poorer and/or a racial minority. They represented you if you believe that the
Keystone XL pipeline is an anathema to Mother Nature, rather than a conduit
linking products to manufacturers and thereby creating jobs and more affordable
energy resources. (Yes, among the “Values and Principles” of the March, “environmental
justice” is cited. How that pertains to
women is an enigma to everyone but the organizers.)
In short, the “Women’s March” did not
represent you unless you are a social and economic radical in the vein of
leftist radicals. And unless you espouse
those same principles, you are alienated altogether.
It’s as if Democrats have learned
precisely nothing from the thorough electoral flogging they’ve endured these
last eight years, having lost over 900 seats in state legislatures nationwide,
twelve state governorships, both chambers of Congress, and now the presidency
within that timeframe.
Let’s be perfectly clear. Democrats did not lose November’s election in
spectacular fashion because Americans have shifted rightward to some insane
degree, as they would have you believe.
They lost this election because Democrats have shifted radically
leftward over the years, both economically and socially, and have thus
abandoned the center-left constituency and the ideals that once bulwarked their
seats of power.
This radical shift to the left is so
pronounced that the left’s representation now appears as little more than
caricatures, and their demonstrations are only taken seriously amongst
themselves. Americans, for the most
part, have turned their thoughts to more practical things such as jobs,
national security, our diminishing stature on the world stage, and our
seemingly perpetual surrender of wealth and sovereignty to the political elite.
I, for one, hope that the New Left
continues to be utterly oblivious to the realities which are making them politically
obsolete.
So by all means, little snowflakes – keep
marching.
William Sullivan
