Last night on the International Day of the Girl, the Network of enlightened Women (NeW) chapter at George Washington University hosted a panel discussion on why Modern Feminism and the Third Wave Feminist movement do not speak for all women. Panelists included Karin Agness Lips, the founder of NeW and Senior Fellow at IWF, Emily Jashinsky, graduate of George Washington University and current commentary writer for the Washington Examiner, and IWF’s very own Julie Gunlock, the Director of the Culture of Alarmism Project.
The toxicity of the Third Wave Feminist movement is easily seen on college campuses, making organizations like NeW and events like last night all the more important. Often times a conservative voice is lacking in the curriculum, let alone a female conservative voice. However, Gunlock and Lips agree that relations between the feminist movement and the majority of women who don’t consider themselves feminists didn’t used to be so vicious.
And the attacks are just that, vicious. Many conservative women face harsh criticism online, and in the classroom if they speak up about their political beliefs. While Jashinsky stressed the importance of reading the defining literature on both sides of the argument, Lips suggests that when dealing with the name calling that often comes with taking a stand against the traditional leftist feminist voice, to “talk about what the real secondary consequences are for their policies.” By turning the conversation into an intellectual debate, all of the panelists agreed that conservative women would have the upper hand.
Where are all of these radical feminist ideologies coming from? And what makes them seem so prevalent in the feminist movement? Gunlock and her work at IWF focuses on conservative women in pop culture, and how they are never portrayed in a flattering light and almost always fall into the tropes that the Third Wave Feminists use against us. Gunlock argued that it is because “popular culture is not conservative”, further calling it “overwhelmingly liberal”.
Because the left “can’t comprehend being pro-women and also a conservative”, Lips continues to push NeW on campuses across the country in order to give women without a voice, a platform to speak openly about their beliefs.