7 women working tirelessly to attack equal rights for women
Sadly, these women find it personally advantageous to reject feminism and continue perpetuating sexist social norms
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A lot of people assume the term “female misogynist” is an oxymoron. How can a woman be opposed to the fight to help women achieve equality? The sad fact of the matter is, as long as there has been feminism, there have been women who find it personally advantageous to reject feminism and instead argue for continuing social systems that perpetuate women’s inequality, male dominance, and even violence against women. (There were even plenty of women who were willing to argue against women’s suffrage back in the day.) Here is a list of nine women who have made a career out of opposing women’s struggle for social, political and economic equality.
1. Christina Hoff Sommers. Sommers is a pioneer in the art of arguing that it’s men who are actually the oppressed class in modern society. Her 2000 book The War Against Boys tried to argue, falsely, that feminists are ruining young men’s lives by oppressing them through the educational system. (Somehow those distressed young men continue to graduate and go on to have better job opportunities and make more money than their female peers.) She was most recently spotted offering her support to an organized online campaign to harass a young video game developer over her sex life.
2. Cathy Young. While Christina Hoff Sommers specializes in facetious claims about imaginary feminist oppressors, Young focuses on minimizing the problems of sexual abuse and harassment of women. Recently, she made a shoddy and dishonest claim that men get harassed more than women online, a claim that necessarily leads to the conclusion that women’s greater stress over harassment must be the result of their inferior constitution. Young also objects to the new movement to pass laws requiring men only to have sex with women who want the sex, on the grounds that men can’t be expected to handle something as simple as reciprocity.
3. Jill Stanek. Many women have found their calling in attacking contraception and abortion access, but Stanek, an ardent blogger, brings a hatefulness and obsessiveness that helps her stand out from an already unpleasant crowd. After getting old enough that unwanted pregnancy stopped being a personal concern, Stanek “discovered” that contraception has been evil all along, dedicating much of her blog to arguing that pregnancy prevention is a uniquely modern evil. Stanek also notoriously celebrated domestic violence, arguing that men should hit women who have abortions. “That spontaneous slap was the reaction of a real man who a woman had just told she aborted his baby,” she said of a notorious scene in Godfather II in which a gangster hits his wife. “Compare that to the modern-day cowardly male response, ‘It’s your choice. Whatever you decide, I’ll support you.’”
4. The Politichicks. Ann-Marie Murrell, Morgan Brittany and Dr. Gina Loudon are Internet video hosts who run a show called Politichicks and have a new book out arguing that women don’t actually want the equality feminists are fighting for. They laid out their philosophy recently on Fox & Friends. “Beyoncé’s argument,” complained the host, “is that it’s okay for women to be sexual beings just like men are sexual beings.” The Politichicks agreed that this was absolutely outrageous, arguing that feminists are actually “sexualists” and that feminist insistence that women like sex just like men do encourages violence against women.
