Amid the torrent of anti-Trump sentiments flowing from wealthy celebrities during Sunday night’s Emmy Awards ceremony, Nicole Kidman used part of her acceptance speech to offer laudable remarks on the scourge of domestic violence.
Kidman was named “Best Actress in a Limited Series or Movie” for her role in HBO’s “Big Little Lies” wherein she played a woman who suffered brutal abuse at the hands of her husband. After thanking supporters, Kidman turned to the topic of domestic abuse. “It is a complicated, insidious disease. It exists far more than we allow ourselves to know. It is filled with shame and secrecy,” she said.
Kidman, who has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Australia, took heat from the Left in early January when she said of Donald Trump, “I just say he’s now elected and we, as a country, need to support who’s ever the president because that’s what the country’s based on.”
Emmy victories doled out to shows such as “Big Little Lies” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” have been celebrated in the hours after the ceremony as victories for women and their representation in Hollywood. There’s certainly something to that.
But the media’s impulse to spill significant ink cheering on gains earned for elite women in Hollywood is a reminder of why so many people in this country feel forgotten by those walking the halls of power. Since its inception, the women’s movement has supported female victims of domestic abuse and it would be flat-out wrong to claim activists today do nothing to help those victims. But far too often feminists are wrapped up in hyper-political trivialities, as with recent claims that pumpkin spice lattes promote white supremacy, complaints about “mansplaining” and “manspreading,” and arguments over Taylor Swift.
Over the summer, feminist pundits contended that a dress code in the Speaker’s Lobby of the Capitol building (which applied to both men and women) was an indication that American women live in a society comparable to Gilead, the fictional world of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” where women are stripped of their basic rights, raped, and forced to serve as human incubators for the ruling class of men. Seriously?
That’s not real life, nor are we racing toward it becoming real life because Trump was elected and Republicans support pro-life policies. But for too many women in this country, the domestic abuse endured by Kidman’s character in “Big Little Lies” actually is a real thing.
In Hollywood and in the media, dissing Trump and championing progressive causes is low-risk and high-reward, though the industries would have you believe it’s the other way around. It’s easier to earn applause from your peers and clickbait coverage from the press by taking self-congratulatory swipes at Trump than it is to reflect on less-partisan causes.
Despite the cries of coastal progressives, most American women don’t feel as though they live in “The Handmaid’s Tale” because Washington journalists have to wear sleeves in the Capitol or because the Trump administration paused implementation of Obama-era regulations monitoring equal pay. But the suffering of the thousands of women who endure horrific domestic abuse around the country is very real, and it’s a greater tragedy than Jennifer Lawrence or Amy Schumer‘s multimillion dollar paychecks being out of whack with their male co-stars’.
With that assessment, most feminists would likely agree. But their actions should reflect their priorities. And right now, they give the impression those priorities are skewed. Kidman’s Celeste Wright, and her peers in lower income brackets, are real. Offred of “The Handmaid’s Tale” is a fantasy unlike anything that exists in modern America. Before fighting the figment of Offred, feminists should consider whether Celeste might be more worthy of their time and resources.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
