Palin And Bachmann, Not Steinem, ARE Feminism

by John Hawkins | August 17, 2011 4:38 am

The fire has long since gone out in the belly of the liberal feminist movement in this country. Now it’s just another group of bitter, harpy careerists railing against men, pushing abortion, and encouraging young girls to act like sluts. If every liberal feminist icon in the country disappeared tomorrow, it would probably be generally beneficial to women because any good they’ve done was so long ago. Still, a few of them, like Gloria Steinem[1] want to relive their glory days and they’re trying to be relevant again by disparaging modern feminist icons — conservatives like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.

Gloria Steinem, a leader of the women’s liberation movement of the seventies, was feted at a luncheon on Wednesday in celebration of the HBO documentary about her life, Gloria: In Her Own Words. We were curious what the feminist icon thinks about women like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, who are not housewives, yet support traditional values and oppose abortion. “They’re there to oppose the women’s movement. That’s their job,” Steinem said, accusing the two politicians of “selling out” the women’s movement. “That’s just the way it is; it’s inevitable. Think about Phyllis Schlafly; there have always been women like this.”

Later, during a speech, Steinem elaborated. “I can testify, the very same things people were telling me 30 or 40 years ago – it’s against nature, you can’t do this, my wife is not interested – all these [people] are now saying, well, feminism used to be necessary, but it’s not anymore. That is the new form of obstruction. And, of course, it’s accompanied by the other natural thing that happens if you have a big social justice movement: You make jobs for people who sell it out. So we have Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, who are on my list of ‘the women only a man could love.'”

For the record, Gloria Steinem has never done ANYTHING for people like Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin.

It’s super that Steinem founded Ms. magazine, protested the Vietnam War, campaigned for George McGovern, touted abortion, and told everyone not to get married, “You become a semi-non person when you get married. The surest way to be alone is to get married,” but if she’d been aborted at birth it’s doubtful that conservative feminists would have been negatively impacted in any way, shape, or form.

On the other hand, Bachmann and Palin are redefining feminism not by telling everyone who’ll listen that only people who agree with them are feminists, but by their actions. They’re both beautiful pro-life women with successful marriages and large families who’ve had productive careers and have become leaders of men through merit. Neither of them got where they are through Affirmative Action or because they married the right man, like Hillary Clinton. Neither of them is angry at men. Neither of them had to abort their children to get ahead. Neither of them needed to be handed anything by a liberal to get where they are.

In fact, if you’re a young woman, you couldn’t have much better feminist role models than Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann and that is a big part of why the Left hates Palin and Bachmann so much.

Endnotes:
  1. Gloria Steinem: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/08/gloria_steinem_sarah_palin_and.html

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