The Hill just ran an article in which Jenna Bush Hager referred to her father, former President George W. Bush, as a “feminist.” Responses to the article on twitter were fairly predictable, including mockery of the idea, some minor meltdowns and a tangential debate on whether or not GWB was a war criminal.
This statement from the President’s daughter, however, opens the door for a conversation about what I call honest feminism. Over the past several decades the left has effectively coopted a movement that began as a crusade for real equality and manipulated it for their own political purposes. Rather than fighting for genuine equality of opportunity, they have turned women into pawns to be used to advance the most progressive of political policies and in the process, they have completely abandoned the core principles feminism.
Feminism is supposed to be a movement that empowers women to think, pursue, achieve independently of and equally to, men. That is, that one’s gender should not impede your ability or right to think for yourself, pursue your ow ambitions and achieve whatever goal you are willing to work and sacrifice for on an even playing with others, regardless of your sex. As such, honest feminism embraces the open debate of contradictory ideas. Honest feminism celebrates a diversity of choices for women and the right for each woman to choose her own path. Honest feminism recognizes that no two women are exactly alike, but every woman has a right to be heard and respected and honored in her choices.
The left, and their twisted version of feminism, fully rejects these ideas. In their minds, “real” feminists are only those individuals who embrace and advance the most liberal policies. In their estimation, if you do not believe that universal healthcare, free college, tax payer funded abortions, gun control, Title IX, Common Core, quotas and many, many other big government, limited liberty ideas are good for America, then you cannot be a feminist.
What’s worse, if you think for yourself, make your own choices, and contradict them in any way, then you are full-out anti-woman, and they are willing to contort themselves into the most hypocritical of pretzels to make their point. Use this past presidential election as the most cogent of examples. During the primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the true intolerant, hypocritical stripes of the so-called feminist leaders in our nation were fully exposed.
Two of the most glaring examples were documented in this article from the NY Times. First, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright suggested, quite bluntly, that women who chose to support Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton, would find a “special place in hell” for not supporting the female candidate. Then, feminist icon Gloria Steinem, while on the Bill Maher show, said that young women who were supporting Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton were doing so to get guys.
“When you are young, you are thinking, ‘where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie’ Ms. Steinem said.”
What an offensive, outrageous, insulting statement. Not only did she declare that young women are incapable of thinking for themselves, she played into the most shallow, petty stereotype of women caring about only one thing – boys.
Jenna Bush Hager said that her father was a feminist because he taught her and her sister that they could be anything. My own father raised seven daughters. He taught us that we could make our own choices, pursue our own dreams and accomplish anything we were willing to work for. Both my father and President Bush are honest feminists. Too many in today’s Democrat party are not.