Is Carly Fiorina redefining feminism?
The term is in desperate need of a makeover
“To me, a feminist is a woman who chooses her own life,” said presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina. “The life she chooses could be to have five children and stay home and home school them.”
In June, Fiorina wrote a powerful article called, “Redefining Feminism: The state of women in America.” Fiorina charted her career progress and addressed the deterioration of feminism over the years.
Feminism began as a rallying cry to empower women—to vote, to get an education, to enter the workplace. But over the years, feminism has devolved into a left-leaning political ideology where women are pitted against men and used as a political weapon to win elections.
Being empowered means having a voice. But ideological feminism shuts down conversation—on college campuses and in the media. If you are a man—or a woman—who doesn’t believe the litanies of the left, then you are “waging a war on women” or you are a “threat to women’s health” or you are variously described as “window dressing” —Joni Ernst—or offensive as a candidate—Carly Fiorina.
The progressive view of feminism is not about women. It is about ideology. And their policies are not working for women.
The economic policies of this administration have been devastating: 3 million women have fallen into poverty in the last 6 years. 1 million fewer women are working under President Obama. In California—a state that has been governed by liberal policies for a decade—in California, they have the highest poverty rates in the nation with over 3 million women living below the poverty line.
Today, only 23 percent of women identify with the term feminist. Liberal ideas aren’t the answer. Their version of feminism isn’t working. It is time for a new definition.
Here’s what I told that little boy: A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses. We will have arrived when every woman can decide for herself how to best find and use her God-given gifts. A woman may choose to have five children and home-school them. She may choose to become a CEO…or run for President.
One would think the first woman CEO of a fortune 50 company, one who is strong and empowered would draw respect from the modern feminist community, Tucker Carlson observed. One would think…
And this is where the likes of Salon and others prove Fiorina right (see also: “The progressive view of feminism is not about women. It is about ideology.”). Progressive’s only basis for disagreeing with her is that Fiorina’s political beliefs are not congruent with their own.
How curious that Fiorina, who has remained staunchly anti-choice despite previously running for Senate in California, would acknowledge the necessity of making “all of the information and resources” available to women when it comes to reproductive healthcare decisions. How curious too that she would criticize opposition to Republicans’ over-the-counter birth control plan, which is merely another scheme to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and once again saddle women with the burden of paying for basic healthcare.
What’s scariest about Fiorina’s essay is not that it’s wrong, but that it’s delusional: She displays an understanding of the key issues women face, then asserts that the government should do nothing about any of it. Ultimately, what Fiorina displays is the sort of moral bankruptcy that seems to be rampant among conservatives, especially when it comes to women’s lives. She isn’t promoting a redefinition of feminism, as she suggests. Fiorina is just peddling the same old right-wing bullshit and calling it by a different name. But she should know, perhaps better than anyone, that women won’t buy it.
Heaven forbid women care about something other than birth control! But Fiorina is the delusional one…
Fiorina on the national stage engaging in rational discourse about the current state of American feminism is a welcome departure from the insanity typically associated with the “f” word. She’s a huge asset for the cause of conservatism and one of the best national advocates for true gender equality.
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Comments
I’m not in favor of using gender or skin color or language to allow people to be favored over others but some way has to be found for this woman to be part of the debates.
If she was less than she seems, I wouldn’t concern myself but she has shown a side that I never saw (or heard about) in her previous runs for office.
There has to be a way.
Mrs. Fiorina should be the idol of women everywhere. In comparison to the only other woman running for President, Mrs. Fiorina exudes charm, honesty, compassion and a scary level of intelligence (she can handle more than two electronic devices at the same time). She accomplished things few other woman have, including running for California Senator while undergoing treatment for breast cancer only to submit to a double mastectomy.
More importantly, she has The Donald’s ear. A Trump/Fiorina ticket could be billed as ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and would set the course for a radical return to American Exceptionalism.
She sounds like a classic feminist, to me. Perhaps that is because I was around when the ERA was being debated, before Title VII and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act was passed, and before feminists won their point.
She is also one of the women who made use of her new rights to compete in the world of business and commerce, while the formerly feminist organizations drifted entirely out of their former philosophy and not radical leftism.
Radicals never did like women. They liked to use them, or caricatures of them, to make political points, which is an entirely different thing.
I’m not sure Ms. Fiorina should be our next president, but I’d like to see her in the debates. She fights.
“To me, a feminist is a woman who chooses her own life”.
Which is lovely and I agree, but she won’t “redefine feminism”. To the extent the term currently means anything, it means misandry, Marxism, and muff-diving.
The term has been co-opted by the literally crazy Collectivists, and we might as well say “good-bye” to it. Fiorina should coin a new term…or someone should.
And I would LOVE to see her in the debates. She’s done herself very proud in this campaign to this point.
The opening quote of this post tells me that Ms. Fiorina is pro-woman, pro-family , pro-society and pro-men. It also tells me that she knows that humanity doesn’t have to suffer in shame to protect the fragile glass unicorn ideology of feminists.
Any ideology that promotes misandry and the elevation of women’s interests above men’s is bound to find the bottom of the barrel when they break their glass ceiling.
Once my three-legged editor gets back from touring in Charleston, SC, my pronouns will toe the line.
Probably too late to the party to do any good.
Sommers’s Who Stole Feminism? examined all this pretty well over twenty years ago. And a quarter century before that, Vilar’s far more sinister The Manipulated Man got to the heart of the underlying problem even more explicitly. Neither arrested the stampede.
Fiorina herself is an exemplar of both the “talking dog” and the “Amelia Earhart” effects.
“Talking dog” (“hey everybody, come see the talking dog!”) refers to the fact that a woman can do something excruciatingly ordinary when it’s done by a man, but when a woman does it she’s showered with accolades … basically, merely for being a woman. I myself consider it grossly demeaning; like movie reviewers gushing about how an upcoming starlet can—mirabile dictu!—actually manage to remember her lines.
The related “Amelia Earhart” effect is just a reminder that a woman can fail at the same things a man can fail at, she just becomes more famous for doing it. Except that the memory doesn’t include the “failure” part. Don’t believe it? Ask a schoolgirl what Earhart means to her; if you get an answer at all (“Huh?) it will be something along the lines of “shows that you can do whatever you set your mind to”. The part about “failing to do what you set your mind to” is lost down the memory hole.
Do not redefine evil.
Feminism is evil. Dispose of it.
Genesis 3:13. Read it, ladies. You went first.
“To me, a feminist is a woman who chooses her own life”.
Sounds good, but not logical. Show me the woman (or man) whose life isn’t the product of choices made.
ZOMG…!!!
Check your white, male, cisgender privilege(s)!
As a black, Chinese, single mother, I take VIOLENT exception to your hatred!
(But, yeah, you have a point. There is a difference between ACTIVE choices and PASSIVE choices, but they all lead to the same ends as Rush established in “Free Will”.)
You ra-ciss pig, you…
There is a vast gulf between the women who chose to work in the private sector where one tends to be evaluated on more objective criteria and those who enter academia and government where the standards are more about amassing power and publicity. The media tends to pay the most attention to the later, which is why feminism got so screwed up.
Spent over an hour listening to her speak on Youtube recently. Can’t find anything with which I disagree. She would chew Hillary up in a debate and spit her out. Go Carly!