Feminism

 

Of course the history of this movement (“feminism” ~ not the suffrage movement) has been this radical for quite some time, as one liberal professor[1] explains in his book The Dark Side of the Left:

Among the most important legacies of the 1960s and the New Left is the contemporary feminist movement.(a)[2] Of course, feminism, even its more radical variants, long predates the 1960s. In the decades before the Civil War, radical abolitionists such as Stephen Foster and Abigail Kelley assailed the patriarchal family structure and the “slavery of sex,”(b) while nineteenth-century utopian communities strove to construct alternatives to the conventional bourgeois family, in some cases forbidding marriage in favor of “free love,” in others separating children from their Parents so the young could be raised by the collective rather than the “isolated household.”(c) The term “feminism” itself came into widespread Usage in the United States during the early 1960s, at the height of Progressive ferment.(d) Those who identified themselves as “feminists” in the 1910s sharply distinguished the new “feminism” from the old “suffrag­ism.” For these new self-described feminists, the vote was seen not as an end in itself but as a means to achieve what one activist described as a “complete social revolution” in gender relationships.(e) Their aim was not only the political inclusion of women but a radical restructuring of pri­vate relationships between the sexes. For these early-twentieth-century feminists, the personal was political.(f)

Feminism, then, was not born moderate and then radicalized by the 1960s. From its inception, the term “feminism,” in the minds of both its proponents and its opponents, has been linked with radicalism and even socialism.(g) “Feminism,” as Nancy Cott explains, “was born ideologically on the left of the political spectrum, first espoused by women who were familiar with advocacy of socialism and who, advantaged by bourgeois backgrounds, nonetheless identified more with labor than with capi­tal.”(h) Max Eastman and Floyd Dell, both self-proclaimed feminists and socialists, frequently used the pages of the Masses to plead the case for the emancipation of women, and Randolph Bourne saw Greenwich Village feminism as a leading edge in the radical assault on deadening bourgeois conventions.(i)

[1] In his second paragraph, Ellis quickly points out that he is a lifelong Democrat, a card-carrying member of the ACLU, an environmentalist, a supporter of women’s rights and a federalist.

[2] Richard J. Ellis, The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America (Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 193-194:

(a) See Stephen Macedo, ed., Reassessing the Sixties: Debating the Political and Cultural Legacy (New York: Norton, 1997), especially the chapters by Harvey C. Mansfield, Jeremy Rabkin, and Martha Nussbaum.

(b) See Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex: Feminist-Abolitionists in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978).

(c) Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), especially 86-91. Carl J. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press), especially 197-211, 35363; “isolated household” quotation on 19q. John Humphrey Noyes, History of American Socialisms (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1870 John L. Thomas, “Antislavery and Utopia,” in Martin Duberman, ed., The Antislavery Vanguard: New Essays on the Abolitionists (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1965), 257. Robert F. Fogarty, All Things New: American Communes and Utopian Movements, 1860-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 106, 199, 215; also see 66-72 for a description of the Women’s Commonwealth, or the Sanctified Sisters of Belton, which Fogarty characterizes as “the first feminist collective in the United States” (66).

(d) Nancy Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1987), 3, 13-15.

(e) Ibid., 15.

(f) Christopher Lasch, The New Radicalism in America, 1889-1863: The Intellectual as a Social Type (New York: Vintage, 1965), 90.

(g) Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 15, 35. Ludwig Von Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (1922; reprint ed., Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1981), 74-92. Lasch, New Radicalism in America, 91.

(h) Cott, Grounding of Modern Feminism, 35.

(i) June Sochen, ed., The New Feminism in Twentieth-Century America (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1971), viii–ix, 33-36, 45-46. Lasch, New Radicalism in America, 91.

See more in my chapter on feminism (a more secular critique begins on page thirteen)


“…it’s tragic, I think, that hook-ups and casual sex on college campuses have become the default relationship patterns…. It feels like it’s a dreadful alternative that’s been crafted out of the ashes of the cherished institutions that the women’s movement has looked to run to the ground”

Susan Patton


“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”

Maragret Sanger (letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, Dec. 19, 1939)


Bill Maher: Kathy, why do you oppose a women’s right to choose

Kathy Ireland: Bill, when my husband was going to medical school I underwent a transformation.  Because I used to be in favor of abortion.  But I noticed when I was reading through some of his medical teaching books, that according to a law in science known as the law of biogenesis, every living thing reproduces after it own kind.  That means dog produce dogs, cats produce cats, humans produce humans.  If we want to know what something is we simply ask what are its parents. If we know what the parents are, we know what the thing in question is.  And I reasoned from that because human parents can only produce human offspring, unborn human fetuses could be nothing but human beings, because the law of biogenesis rules out every other alternative.  And I concluded therefore that because human fetuses were part of our family, we should not harm them without justification.

(see more)


“I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don’t know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence…”

Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood (1997)


“They [the women] are never allowed to look at the ultrasound
because we knew that if they so much as heard the heart beat,
they wouldn’t \want to have an abortion.”

– Abortion doctor quoted in New Dimensions magazine, 1990

Invariably, the feminist position on abortion is portrayed as the “pro-woman” position—mostly because feminist leaders have convinced their followers that this procedure is essential to women’s liberty. As Gloria Feldt, former president of Planned Parenthood, said, “‘abortion’ became a symbol of our independence, because reproductive freedom is fundamental to a woman’s aspirations.”

This is also known as the “pro-choice” position. But how do feminists feel about women who don’t choose abortion—and, more importantly, the women who assist them in making that choice?

Don’t be fooled by the deceptive labels and euphemisms. When it comes to “reproductive rights,” feminists have a very specific agenda—one that involves a lot more abortions, but not necessarily more choice.

At Temple University in Philadelphia, Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life of America, faced a tough crowd. As Crisis magazine described the scene, “The 40 or so students gathered to hear Foster are mostly women. Not even the pro-lifers are smiling. The student who introduced her asked those with differing opinions to be respectful. It set an ominous tone. Would they start chanting soon? Blowing whistles? Would they get violent?”

But then, somehow, Foster performed a miracle. She threw the cover off “the dirty little secret of women’s studies departments” — America’s earliest feminists were anti-abortion. In the words of coura­geous suffragette Susan B. Anthony, abortion was “child murder,” and “no matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; but oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!”

Foster then asked the crowd, “If women were fighting for the right not to be considered property, what gives them the right to consider their baby property?”

It was something to think about. From that moment on, even students who had showed up to protest couldn’t help but nod in agreement.

That night, Foster raised a point that feminists dare not discuss: before the women’s movement was hijacked by leftists in the 1960s, abortion was never viewed as a good thing for women. In fact, the prac­tice was unthinkable to individuals like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the mastermind behind the historic Seneca Falls Convention and mother of seven chil­dren. (If Stanton applied for a teaching position in a women’s studies department today, she would be labeled a “Jesus freak” and promptly dismissed.)

“When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit,” Stanton wrote to her friend Julia Ward Howe in 1873.

She wasn’t the only one.

Victoria Woodhull, the first female stockbroker on Wall Street, also became the first woman to run for President in 1870. An early suffragette with a flair for the outrageous, Woodhull epitomized the modern feminist slogan “well-behaved women rarely make history.” (She was repeatedly arrested for her polit­ical activities.) And she too hated abortion.

“A human life is a human life and equally to be held sacred whether it be a day or a century old,” Woodhull wrote. “Wives…to prevent becoming mothers…deliberately murder [children] while yet in their wombs. Can there be a more demoralized condition than this? “

Alice Paul, who authored the original Equal Rights Amendment, was willing to face arrests, harassment, and physical assaults in order to win the right to vote. Later, when 1960s feminists began advocating the repeal of abortion laws, Paul asked, “How can one protect and help women by killing them as babies?” She considered abortion “the ulti­mate exploitation of women.”

Who are the modern descendents of Anthony, Stanton, Woodhull, and Paul? They can be found at Feminists for Life of America, whose founder, Pat Goltz, was kicked out of NOW for her anti-abortion views. On its website, FFL issues a challenge: “If you believe in the strength of women and the poten­tial for every human life…If you refuse to choose between women and children…If you reject violence and exploitation, join us in challenging the status quo. There is a better way.”

FFL reaches out to women facing crisis pregnan­cies and opposes any legislation that might make it harder for them to keep their children—much of which has been proposed by Republicans, proving that FFL hardly deserves the “right- wing” label assigned to it by pro-abortion feminists. In 1996, FFL attempted to dissuade President Clinton from signing a Republican-backed welfare reform bill that elimi­nated additional assistance for babies born to girls under 18. Their rationale? If a pregnant girl couldn’t afford to raise her child, she would have no choice but to abort.

FFL also pressures universities to provide special resources for pregnant and parenting students, a move opposed by many conservatives on the principle that pregnant women aren’t entitled to handouts. But FFL refuses to compromise its mission: to make moth­erhood a viable option for women facing unwanted pregnancies.

FFL is not actively involved in efforts to outlaw abortion. Instead, the group is interested in “system­atically eliminating the root causes that drive women to abortion — primarily lack of practical resources and support — through holistic, woman-centered solutions.”

This is a truly “pro-choice” position—the one that groups like NOW and NARAL claim to uphold. But evidently a lot of feminists do not believe that women deserve better than abortion.

“Who are the Feminists for Life? In a word, dangerous,” began an article in the online magazine Nerve.

“Feminists for what?” the author gasped. “Not a typo: Feminists for Life. As in, against abortion.” The horror!

As the article explained, the women of FFL “aren’t really feminists—a feminist could not force another woman to bear a child.”

Feminist hysteria over FFL indicates that the only “choice” they deem acceptable is the decision to terminate a pregnancy. The way FFL was treated by the Lilith Fair, a feminist music festival organized by singer Sarah McLachlan in the late 90’s, proved that different views on abortion will not be tolerated.

“Women are everywhere. Walking in groups, laughing and talking. Sitting on the grass. Playing the guitar. Reading pamphlets on women’s issues picked up from booths in the Village area,” a reporter described Lilith Fair’s stop in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. “There is also a woman with a gag in her mouth standing in front of one of the booths, wearing a T-shirt reading, ‘Peace begins in the womb, Sarah.’

That woman was Marilyn Kopp, the director of Ohio Feminists for Life. Lilith Fair, despite its stated mission of “raising consciousness of women’s issues,” denied booth space to any group that did not wholeheartedly support abortion as the ultimate cata­lyst of gender equality.

Naturally, Lilith Fair’s feminist organizers were outraged that FFL had the gall to show up at their concert.

“This isn’t a democracy. This is a tyranny,” fumed singer Sheryl  Crow, justifying Lilith’s ban on pro-life groups.

However, some ordinary concertgoers were unimpressed with the notion of tyranny in the name of women’s advancement.

“As Kopp’s friend Denise Mackura stands gagged in front of the NOW booth, a group of teenage girls walk up to her. When they find out what’s going on, they’re shocked,” reporter Laura Demarco wrote. “They see the situation as a violation of civil rights, not a defense of women’s rights. ‘This is wrong,’ says Casey Patton, 17.”

The sight of FFL members standing in front of NOW’s booth with gags in their mouths spoke volumes about the authoritarian nature of the modern feminist movement. As DeMarco observed, “It’s hard to miss the hypocrisy of feminists censoring other women like this… they patronizingly assume women aren’t smart enough to hear all sides on an issue and decide for themselves.”

The prospect of women deciding for themselves is terribly threatening to the feminist establishment—which might also explain their fanatical opposition to Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

Ashley Herzog, Feminism vs. Women (Xulon Press, 2008), 85-91; Also this TownHall article.


Change can happen—but admitting the problem is half the battle.

Feminist journalist and author Anne Taylor Fleming issues a warning. Thirty years ago, Fleming argued that if she got pregnant unexpectedly, she’d have an abortion—she was adamantly opposed to pro-life arguments. Twenty years later, in her book Motherhood Deferred, Fleming wrote, “I am a woman of forty who put career ahead of motherhood and now longs for motherhood….  I belong to the sisterhood of the infertile. I am a lonesome, babyless baby boomer now completely consumed by the longing for a baby. . . . I am tempted to roll down the window and shout ‘Hey, hey, Gloria, Germaine, Kate. Tell us, how does it feel to have ended up without babies, children, flesh of your flesh. Was your ideology worth the empty womb?”‘

Germaine Greer, the 1970s feminist icon who encouraged women to reject motherhood, also paid the ultimate price. “I was desperate for a baby and I have the medical bills to prove it. I still have pregnancy dreams, waiting for something that will never happen.”

But it is Rebecca Walker, daughter of committed feminist Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple (which was revered by the feminist elite and made into a major motion picture and Broadway musical) who was the most courageous in telling the truth about feminism in an article entitled, “How My Mother’s Fanatical Views Tore Us Apart”:

As a child, I… yearned for a traditional mother. . . . I grew up believing that children are millstones around your neck, and the idea that motherhood can make you happy is a complete fairytale. . . . When I hit my 20s, …I could feel my biological clock ticking, but I felt if I listened to it, I would be betraying my mother and all she had taught me. . . . In fact, having a child has been the most rewarding experience of my life…. My only regret is that I discovered the joys of motherhood so late—I have been trying for a second child, but so far with no luck.

Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness…. But far from taking responsibility for this, the leaders of the women’s movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them—as I have learned to my cost…. I believe feminism is an experiment, and all experiments need to be assessed on their results. Then, when you see huge mistakes have been paid, you need to make alterations.

The cultural shift in American women’s plans for the future—toward big careers, rather than motherhood—has resulted in many unfulfilled dreams. The childless women above who regret their choices may represent the extreme result of feminism, but millions of modern women needlessly face fertility battles simply because no one told them not to focus so obsessively on careers, or to find careers that work well with motherhood. No one told them that getting academic degree after degree may be counterproductive if having children, is part of their lifer plan.

The result is that young women give babies no thought whatsoever until they’re holding their own in their arms. Only then do their previous plans fall away, and women find themselves in a quandary. Because they didn’t assume they’d be out of the workforce caring for babies, women are left with an unbearable choice: they either put their children in day care, or they rethink their entire life plan.

Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 171-172. (emphasis  added)


Does rejecting feminism mean rejecting women’s equality? No, because that’s not what feminism is about. Rejecting feminism means recognizing that women don’t need feminism to make them equal to men because they already are equal—just not the same. Does rejecting feminism mean rejecting women’s liberation? Yes—if liberation means liberating women from marriage and motherhood. We have learned the hard way that there is nothing empowering about ignoring one’s biology.

Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 169.


If there is indeed a social revolution under way, it shouldn’t stop with women’s choice to honor their [own] nature. It must also include a newfound respect for men. It was New York City’s firemen who dared to charge up the stairs of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The death tally of New York City’s firefighters was: men 343, women 0. Can anyone honestly say you would have wanted a woman coming to your rescue on that fateful day?

Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 181-182.


Feminist Quotes ~ Radical Feminism Goes Mainstream (*Coarse Language*) ~ These Quotes come from two sources and can be better referenced by them:

  1. Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011);
  2. and my chapter in my book on feminism, Gnostic Feminism: Empowered to Fail.

Author and journalist Natalie Angier begins an article in the New York Times by writing, “Women may not find this surprising, but one of the most persistent and frustrating problems in evolutionary biology is the male. Specifically… why doesn’t he just go away?” (Natalie Angier, “The Male of the Species: Why Is He Needed?” New York Times, May 17, 1994)

In a CNN interview with Maureen Dowd about her 2005 book, Are Men Necessary? Dowd says, “Now that women don’t need men to reproduce and refinance, the ques­tion is, will we keep you around? And the answer is, ‘You know, we need you in the way we need ice cream—you’ll be more ornamental.” (“Are Men Necessary?” CNN.com, November 15, 2005, http:// www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/11/15/dowd.men.necessary/ index.html)

Lisa Belkin, a blogger for the New York Times whose work is provocative but not overly biased, wrote, “We are standing at a moment in time when the role of gender is shifting seismically. At this moment an argument can be made for two separate narrative threads—the first is the retreat of men as this becomes a woman’s world.” (Lisa Belkin, “Are Men Necessary?” Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting blog, New York Times Magazine, June 30, 2010, http:// parenting.blogs. nytimes.com/2010/06/30/are-men-necessary/)

In an article in the Atlantictitled ‘Are Fathers Necessary?” author Pamela Paul wrote, “The bad news for Dad is that despite common perception, there’s nothing objectively essential about his contribution.” (Pamela Paul, “Are Fathers Necessary?” Atlantic, July/August 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/arefathers-necessary/8136/)

For example, in the January 1988 National NOW Times, the newsletter for the organization, said:  “The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist.” (William D. Gairdner, The War Against the Family: A Parent Speaks Out on the Political, Economic, and Social Policies That Threaten Us All, 295.)

Well-known feminist author and co-founder/editor of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem, said the following about feminisms end game: “Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole #@*! patriarch!” (Ibid., 300) [How can a civil rights movement be interested in capitalism?]

One sign of an over oppressive movement is illustrated in The Animal Farm, by George Orwell.  Napoleon, one of the main characters, concerns himself with the education of the young, and forcefully takes two litters of puppies away as soon as they’re weaned, saying he’ll educate them. In effect the “State” are the ones who are charged with educating and rearing them.  Now compare this to a statement made by feminist Mary Jo Bane, assistant professor of education at Wellesley College and associate director of the school’s Center for Research on Woman, and the lesson taught in Animal Farm:

  • “In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.”

(Fr. Robert J. Carr, “No News For You!!” Catholic Online [9-23-2004]. Found at: http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=1364 ~ last accessed 7-29-09; Here is the full quote from Father Carr’s article: “Mary Jo Bane, formerly of the Clinton Administration Department of Health and Human Services one of the major voices in the Boston Globe against the average Catholic’s right to freedom of religion. Bane’s most famous quote is ‘We really don’t know how to raise children. If we want to talk about equality of opportunity for children, then the fact that children are raised in families means there’s no equality. … In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.’”)

Alternatively, Gloria Steinem declared: “By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.” (Angela Howard and Sasha Ranae Adams Tarrant, Reaction to the Modern Women’s Movement, 1963 to the Present: Antifeminism in America: A Collection of Readings from the Literature of the Opponents to U.S. Feminism, 1848 to the Present, 153.)

NEA president/feminist Catherine Barrett wrote likewise that, “Dramatic changes in the way we will raise our children in the year 2000 are indicated, particularly in terms of schooling. … We will need to recognize that the so-called ‘basic skills’, which currently represent nearly the total effort in elementary schools, will be taught in one-quarter of the present school day. … When this happens—and it’s near—the teacher can rise to his true calling. More than a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values, a philosopher. … We will be agents of change.” (Dennis Laurence Cuddy, The Grab for Power: A Chronology of the NEA, 6.)

A Feminist Dictionary, published by the University of Illinois, gives the following definitions:

  • Male:  “… represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. The first males were mutants… the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.”
  • Man: “… an obsolete life form… an ordinary creature who needs to be watched … a contradictory baby-man.”
  • Testosterone Poisoning: “Until now it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’”

(Cheris Kramarae and Paula A. Treichler, eds.,  Feminist Dictionary [Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986], cf. male, 242; cf. male, 246; cf.  testosterone poisoning, 446.)

Feminist author Ti-Grace Atkinson shows her true autonomy when stating, “the institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist.” (Daniel Dervin, Enactments: American Modes and Psychohistorical Models, 244)

Another telling quote comes directly from Atkinson’s own biography, Amazon Odyssey: “The price of clinging to the enemy [a man] is your life. To enter into a relationship with a man who has divested himself as completely and publicly from the male role as much as possible would still be a risk. But to relate to a man who has done any less is suicide…. I, personally, have taken the position that I will not appear with any man publicly, where it could possibly be interpreted that we were friends.” (Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey, 90, 91.)

Marilyn French, feminist author calls all men rapists: “All men are rapists and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes.” (Elizabeth Knowles, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 5th ed. [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999], cf. Freeman, E.A., 324.)

Let us allow Gloria Steinen, feminist extraordinaire, to set the stage with the following praises about her contemporary, Andrea Dworkin, “In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them.” (David M. Friedman, A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, 225.) Why preface Andrea Dworkin?  Because she has this to say about men in general: “Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies.” (Neil Boyd, Big Sister: How Extreme Feminism has Betrayed the Fight for Sexual Equality, 23.)

Dr. Boyd continues with Dworkin’s quote: “In fucking, as in reproduction, sex and economics are inextricably joined. In male-supremacist cultures, women are believed to embody carnality; women are sex. A man wants what a woman has – sex. He can steal it outright (prostitution), lease it over the long term (marriage in the United States), or own it outright (marriage in most societies). A man can do some or all of the above, over and over again.” (Ibid.)

“What Gloria Steinem, Molly Yard, Patricia Ireland and all the rest have presented to you over the last [30-years] years has not been feminist theory.” …. Tammy Bruce goes on to show that Betty Friedan and Patricia Ireland, ex-presidents of NOW, (and others) are involved with socialist or communist political parties or organizations,

  • Do not be mistaken: what Gloria Steinem, Molly Yard, Patri­cia Ireland and all the rest have presented to you over the last 15 years (at least) has not been feminist theory.  Betty Friedan, a former Communist Party member, was only the precursor of the hijacking of feminism to serve other political interests. Some consider Gloria Steinem, the founder of Ms. magazine and probably the second most influential feminist leader, after Friedan, of the last 30 years, to be the one who began blurring the lines between gender and race issues. This might be sur­prising to those who are unaware of Steinem’s involve­ment in socialist politics. In fact, she serves as an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, which boasts of being the largest socialist organization in the United States and is the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. Good for her, but we should know this as we explore what factors influence those who are considered feminist leaders.  Steinem’s influence, combined with the socialist sym­pathies of NOW’s immediate past-president, Patricia Ire­land, explain the co-opting of NOW by leftist ideologues. A 1996 article in Ms. quoted Ireland as saying that NOW “must offer a clear understanding of what it means to be a feminist organization concerned with ending discrimina­tion based on race, class, and other issues of oppression [emphasis mine] that come from a patriarchal structure.” Steinem then commented, “To be feminist, we have to take on the entire caste system.” Ireland details her support of the Communist Party in her autobiography, What Women Want. She admits that her socialist sympathies and participation in pro-Commu­nist rallies in Miami (of all places!) were due in part to the fact that her friend and future lover, Pat Silverthorn, was an activist in the Socialist Worker’s Party. There were problems, Ireland explains, with Silverthorn and her friends being Communists in Miami. “Later, after we’d become close,” Ireland writes, “[Pat Silverthorn] would confide that she, too, had wondered how much more dan­gerous she’d made her life by openly professing commu­nist convictions in that volatile, violent, commie-hating city… Working closely with Pat opened my eyes about the reality of living as a political leftist in this country.”

(Tammy Bruce, The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds, 123-124.)


Researchers have now used MRIs of older kids’ brains to explain the differences. The portion of the brain that pertains to language works harder in girls’ brains than it does in boys’ brains. Infant girls make a great deal of eye contact with one person and show more empathy than infant boys. Infant boys prefer moving objects, which helps to explain their subsequent interest in 3-D and moving toys, such as cars and trucks. They are also more likely to run and jump than girls, preferring active play rather than reading.

Despite such overwhelming evidence of sex differences, American boys are subjected to the feminization process as early as kindergarten. Surrounded mostly by women (and often feminists), both curriculum and activities revolve around the needs of girls and girls’ interests. Assigned stories are in subjects girls like (such as fairy tales), rather than subjects boys like (such as adventure and battles). Moreover, first-grade boys are roughly nine months behind girls in coordination, yet the emphasis in this grade is on sitting still at a desk. Many schools have also eliminated recess, which does not bode well for boys. They are active by nature and need to run around, and when they can’t sit still, teachers and administrators often wrongly attribute this to ADD or ADHD.

Many elementary school teachers, raised to believe in a false concept of gender equality, are reluctant to admit any gender differences between males and females. Some think little boys are just unruly girls. “Boys learn to subdue their more spirited, intrepid behavior in school, their male instincts of competition and individualism quashed in the interest of what’s best for girls as they walk like lemmings over the edge of the radical feminist cliff by the time they reach high school,” wrote schoolteacher and op-ed contributor Jane Gilvary for the Bulletin (Philadel­phia) in “Skinny Jeans, John Wayne, and the Feminization of America” (August 24, 2010).

Experts believe developmentally inappropriate expectations and practices are causing normal boy behavior to be wrongly labeled as misbehavior, and normal learning patterns to be mislabeled as learning disabilities. The result is that many boys become frustrated and discouraged by school in the early grades.

[….]

We can start by raising them to be courageous, principled, and capable of thinking for themselves. Encourage them to embrace their masculinity. When little boys pick up a hairbrush and pretend it’s a gun, let them. When they can’t sit still in school, don’t medicate them. When they like throwing a football around with their dads, do everything in your power to stay happily married to their dads so your boys can do this. When they want to play sports, find a college where Title IX has not wiped out their favorite sports. Teach your sons the virtue of “manliness,” which Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield defines (in his book of the same name) as “confidence in the face of risk.” Men’s role as protector remains vital to civilization.

Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 147-148, 164. (see more)


Paul, who often gets a bad rap for his perceived low view of women, considered at least twelve women coworkers in his ministry.* Paul clearly had a high view of women: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The earliest Christians recited these remarkable, countercultural words as a baptismal confession. Widows, far from being abandoned, were cared for, and older women were given a place of honor. In light of all of this, is it any wonder “the ancient sources and modern historians agree that primary conversion to Christianity was far more prevalent among females than males”?

In recent history, Christians were responsible for the banning of three despicable practices inflicted upon women around the world. Christian missionaries pressured the Chinese government to abolish foot binding in 1912. This practice was done for the sole reason of pleasing men—”it made a woman with her feet bound in an arch walk tiptoe and sway seductively.” In 1829 the English outlawed the Indian practice of suttee, in which widows were burned alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands, because of Christianity’s teaching regarding widows and women. Finally, Western countries influenced by a Christian view of women and sexuality have condemned clitoridectomy (female genital mutilation), a gruesome practice that is still common in Muslim countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Sean McDowell and Jonathan Morrow, Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2010), 230-231.


WHILE I WOULD argue with random liberals on the street, I always kept my conservatism close to my chest when it came to relationships. Being a Republican was a deal breaker; we all knew that—kind of like picking your nose at red lights or stealing tips off restaurant tables. Only Rene and Meredith knew the truth, and, quite frankly, justifying myself to them had become a full-time job. I liked to think of my GOP bent as my alter ego, the smart, conservative superhero itching to burst forth any second to dispel the convoluted beliefs of my new blue state acquaintances. I was waiting for just the right moment to dazzle the ladies at the park or the mothers at Camille’s school with my logic or impress them with my homespun moral values.

But my coming out didn’t happen exactly as I’d scripted. I sat one day with some mothers on the benches that face each other in the middle of Three Bears Park—coveted see-and-beseen seats—where fashionable mothers gab while their kids play nonviolent, character-affirming games in one of Philly’s best neighborhoods.

Suddenly one of the ladies mentioned she’d heard I was writing a column for the Philadelphia City Paper, and all ears perked. “What do you write about?”

“Oh, I write from a red state point of view, to show readers there’s life outside the big city.” I used a folksy voice to come off as charming instead of conservative.

But they were no fools. Claudia Shipman, who was still proudly wearing her Mothers Opposing Bush button weeks after Kerry’s defeat, spoke first. “Are you saying, you’re a—” not even wanting to say the word “Republican” aloud. She said it in a hushed tone like some people say the F word.

This was my big moment. As casually as possible, I told her I voted for Bush and supported the war on terror. I braced myself for a heated debate on Saddam and for barbed comments including the word “strategery.” I mentally ran through a few speaking points I’d gotten off National Review Online and dug in my heels in anticipation.

Claudia’s only response was a rather dejected “But you seem so reasonable.”

The other mothers exchanged worried glances before averting their eyes. I had hoped to trigger an exciting give-and-take, but instead it felt like I had popped a balloon—things just deflated. I think they would have been happier had I proclaimed I was a pedophile on the prowl. Instead, I felt like I’d tricked them into liking one of the prickliest, most off-putting creatures on the planet—a conservative.

To their credit, they handled it with as much grace as they could muster. “You have to meet Louise,” they all said in unison. Evidently there was one other lady in the entire city of Philadelphia who was Republican. “She’s not mean, though,” they clarified.

Several weeks later, I was sitting in Louise’s Delancey Street home, drinking coffee at one of her weekly get-togethers with local women. She introduced herself with a flourish, and I could instantly see how Democrats would overlook her archaic beliefs. She was bright and cheery—a former Philadelphia 76ers cheerleader—confidently offering coffee in mismatched mugs while women casually passed in and out of her kitchen.

“Look what someone gave me! Isn’t this a riot?” she said upon meeting me. She plopped down a book, Dumb Things That Democrats Have Said, right on the place mat in front of me. “I thought you’d get a kick out of it.”

As she flattered around, greeting people who’d dropped in late, I was thrilled to be there—an urban setting where smart women of diverse opinions meet to talk. City life couldn’t get any better than this. I was prepared to meet all my new friends, people who would embrace me and spend hours discussing issues of the day. Months from now we’d be shopping at Tiffany’s, and one of them would turn to me and say, “I knew from the first time I saw you at Louise’s you were the kind of person I wanted to know.”

I snapped out of my reverie when I realized, with horror, that my new friends were entering the room, taking one glance at the book before me, and hurrying to the farthest corner of the room. Louise had left it right in front of me, the social equivalent of having gloppy Kleenexes on your lap. If the book had been titled The Sadomasochist Handbook I’d have gotten a warmer reception. I flipped through it nonchalantly and smiled a disapproving smile. That gosh-darn Louise, I tried to convey. Always joking. But my friendship prospects were disappearing every second the book was visible. I considered slipping it into my purse, but I thought theft might be considered gauche.

Finally Claudia walked through the door, greeted me, and noticed the book. “Dumb Things Democrats Have Said,” she read in a stage whisper, before smiling condescendingly.

“Bringing books like that here will not win you any friends. If you want to be invited back, I’d suggest leaving the propaganda at home.”

I smiled, choosing to act like it was a joke; I didn’t want to incriminate the kind hostess who was obliviously adding cream to people’s coffee.

Another lady chimed in, “You’re smiling because you think we’re kidding. Trust me”—she narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice—”we’re not.”

“I’m not smiling because I think you’re kidding,” I said, hoping to lighten the mood. “I’m just surprised this book isn’t longer.” It went over like a Chappaquiddick joke at a Kennedy house.

Nancy French, A Red State Mind: How a Catfish Queen Reject Became a Liberty Belle (New York, NY: Center Street, 2006), 79-82.


Since women that believe in God are less likely to have abortions, does that mean that natural selection will result in a greater number of believers than non-believers.

(A question asked by a student attending a debate between Dr. William Lane Craig [a theist] and Dr. Massimo Pigliucci [an atheis])


  • Male:  “… represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. The first males were mutants… the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.”
  • Man: “… an obsolete life form… an ordinary creature who needs to be watched … a contradictory baby-man.”
  • Testosterone Poisoning: “Until now it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’”

 Cheris Kramarae and Paula A. Treichler, eds., Feminist Dictionary (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986), cf. male, 242; Ibid., cf. man, 246; Ibid., cf.  testosterone poisoning, 446.


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