Is modern feminism a self-defeating movement? How the Women’s March in DC reveals the inherent weakness of state-sponsored feminism:
Female Dependence on “The Man”
Independent women are a treasure to the church and the world. Let no one deceive you to believe that somehow a woman is intrinsically defined by her relationship to a man. But one must ask, what is independent about demanding the government to pay for your every whim and fancy? Birth control, abortion, and even tampons are described by marchers as fundamental entitlements of each and every woman. To a large degree, these entitlements are a present reality for the overwhelming majority of women in America. So why march? They march because of the threat of infidelity by the new administration. Feminism in its marriage to the state is awakened to a new husband in the Trump administration.
Is this the progress envisioned by women’s rights advocates? Begging a man to preserve their rights and entitlements? Or was feminism intended to be a movement of equality and independence where women held their own apart from the goodwill of men? Perhaps feminists once imagined a country where they reclaimed their own personal sovereignty and retained their individual rights apart from the dictates and handouts of the State? Instead, modern feminism has anthropomorphized the state, that is changed it into the form (morphé) of man (anthropos). In Trump, they discover how this man-state is not always amiable. Their dependence on the state dropped them into the most vulnerable section of Alexander Tyle’s cycle of history, the chamber just before bondage.
“Big Brother” & the so-called right to privacy
The most controversial of women’s rights are related to the right to privacy. This is how the U.S. Supreme Court described abortion in the 1973 Roe V. Wade case that has now led to the death of millions of women in the womb. Yet is feminism a principled approach to the right to privacy? Can a movement that gives ascent to the surveillance programs supported and defended by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have any real claim to a principled idea of privacy? At the same time does the paper thin case for abortion as a “privacy right” jive with the licentiousness of modern feminism? We are led to believe the lie that feminism is a movement to protect the private sexual behavior of women. This is contradicted by how the goals of sexual liberation lead to their increased exploitation and objectification in the public sphere and in media. From raunchy female comedians like Amy Schumer to the vagina hats at the DC march, feminism in its modern context has abused the right of privacy to define women as sexual objects.
The real right of privacy of the 4th Amendment is sacrificed at “Big Brother’s” altar of privacy from moral censure. The cost is the politicization of sex at the expense of a woman’s dignity. Abortion itself represents the sad contradiction in the feminist idea of privacy: a woman strapped down, legs in stirrups, and vaginally invaded.
“Uncle Sam” and equitable pay
A historic argument against female domesticity was the robbery of a woman’s labor in childrearing. The “cult of domesticity” is maligned as a patriarchal attempt to enslave women. As women joined the workforce they certainly faced an uphill battle in receiving equitable consideration for then male-dominated positions and the pay disparities were considered a form of oppression. Modern feminists insist there is an ongoing battle in this arena related to a “pay gap.” Some argue that the pay gap is as large as a twenty percent disparity between men and women. This twenty percent pay gap is seen as a massive injustice demonstrating the continued tyranny of misogyny in a patriarchal culture.
But what if the threat to women’s income in greater than the income disparity and greater than twenty percent? If we are concerned about the twenty percent loss that some may experience, how much more should feminists be concerned about the even larger cut that Uncle Sam is taking from women?
Federal and State income taxes coupled with payroll taxes add up to a fifty-percent tax rate here in California. A rate that increases as women raise their pay. So that if the pay gap ended today – Uncle Sam would take an even bigger chunk away from women. Perhaps these taxes are the simple shards from breaking through the glass ceiling?
Do modern feminists not see how they feed the beast of their own demise? They created a culture that abdicated individual responsibilities for government dependence and constitutional protection for moral ambiguity.