The New York Times has dubbed 2018 the “Year of the Woman.” In some ways it was — but not exactly in the ways progressives and feminists predicted. A cursory review shows feminism (which has devolved into a lack of focus, perspective, and purpose) had little to show for this year.
In January, the Women’s March disappointed from the get-go. I attended the one in Washington and was surprised at how ill-informed the attendees were, how the speakers rallied for policies that actually hurt women, and how it was blatantly biased toward leftist ideology. How is a women’s march that leaves out religious women, conservative women, black women, and pro-life women a march for all women?
Later that month, feminists attacked Aziz Ansari, a Hollywood star, for a being a clumsy date with a woman who was eager to write a scathing, self-referenced review. Feminists’ strangely visceral, personal attack on Ansari backhandedly set the #MeToo movement on shaky footing, after they had it so precariously set up on a three-legged stool — a trifecta of equality, entitlement, and the end of men.
The end of January staved off the already-floundering movement briefly. A reckoning happened, and it wasn’t with a powerful Hollywood producer or actor but the justice and freedom 150 sexually assaulted gymnasts felt when they reminded Larry Nassar, the doctor-turned-scumbag sentenced to a life in prison for his crimes, of how he had violated them. This wasn’t #MeToo: This was simply a human rights campaign on the world’s stage. Many women, despite decades of harboring shame and confusion, got to see the rays of justice peek through the clouds of their suffering.
The momentum didn’t last long. By April, feminist and female comedian Michelle Wolf proved she was as much of a hypocrite as she was boring. Her performance at the White House correspondents’ dinner left everyone thinking: If that’s the best feminism has got, it’s no wonder they are struggling.
The summer of feminism’s discontent brought nothing more than aimless drivel, grasping for any anecdote to keep a narrative that’s always listless from gaining any steady speed: They complained about a wage gap among Uber drivers and even an idea of a female or transgender James Bond. None of them caught on.
The best thing that came out of the summer were reports here and there that since some high-profile misogynists had been caught (Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, and Louis C.K., among others). The paradigm in Hollywood regarding women, their workplaces, and how their colleagues treated them perhaps had shifted slightly.
This fall, I’d like to say even feminists weren’t prepared for what September wrought, but many chomped at the bit at the chance to skewer Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his confirmation hearings. Christine Blasey Ford seemed the perfect accuser, and she appears to have suffered some kind of tragic abuse, though no evidence or corroboration proved Kavanaugh had done anything wrong.
Though to them this was likely the pinnacle of feminism and #MeToo all in one, still, the “Year of the Woman,” Christine Blasey Ford edition, failed. It failed because it was a facade, it was baseless, and it was purely ideological slander in all its premeditated, progressive glory. Not only did women fail, but there was a terrible backlash — never have so many op-eds been written in defense of fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers of society, at risk for false accusations and marred reputations, penned in a fierce mix of verve and righteous indignation.
Even through all of 2018, #MeToo, which didn’t begin as a feminist movement but as a human rights campaign, began to swing so far the other direction it started to lose momentum. Every man became a potential rapist, no matter how slight the “offense,” and every woman became a victim, no matter if she was truly raped or simply a decent liar.
It’s hard to say the “Year of the Woman” saw success when it turns out one of the original faces of the #MeToo movement, Asia Argento, struggled with accusations of her own. Or, equally confusing, the other face of the idea, Rose McGowan, pushed back against the idea that transgender women should join her in the fight against abuse. She wasn’t having it and progressives didn’t appreciate McGowan’s boundaries.
That, in and of itself, became its own subplot among what was supposed to be the “Year of the Woman.” All year long, via lawsuits, firings over pronoun use, or transgender women at the “Miss Universe” competition, liberals had a hard time deciding: Is gender fluid and do transgender people need Title IX protection, or is it really women who deserve special treatment? This paradox, while so apparent to many, escaped progressives entirely until it was nearly too late. Through this, the Left began to eat its own, and feminists became too splintered and unfocused.
Even worse, feminism, like sex, was everywhere this year. Because of this, it simply lost its effect. If everyone is heralded during the “Year of the Woman,” from Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, to Stormy Daniels, to a transgender homecoming queen, who can’t participate in the trend? Suddenly no news story, Hollywood film, or political narrative could function without a feminist thesis at its core. Somehow every story had to be related to women’s rights or lack thereof, and with that blatant attempt to force it down everyone’s throats it lost its power, its sway, its ability to persuade anyone that the wage gap is real, that every man is a lying rapist, or that men and women are hardly different and yet still the latter deserve entitled protections.
2018 was the year of a lot of things, but the “Year of the Woman” it was not. Now that the feminist agenda is more clear in hindsight, it’s a good thing they failed.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
