A Democratic congressional candidate is attacking incumbent Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Va., for the crime of failing to march in lockstep with progressive feminists.
Jennifer Wexton, running in the Democratic primary to take on Comstock next November, blasted out a press release on Wednesday accusing the congresswoman of “playing politics” with sexual harassment because she’s long been affiliated with the Independent Women’s Forum, a nonprofit that advances conservative perspectives on women’s issues.
Wexton characterizes IWF as a “backwards group” that “undermine[s] the progress that has been made to reckon with sexual harassment and assault.” To make this point, the press release cites three articles on IWF’s website, each of which actually seeks to help women by providing reasonable rebuttals to feminist groupthink. Wexton’s release cites a Washington Post article from 2007 to argue the “original organizing principle for the group was to discredit Anita Hill.” As the article reports, while Hill’s story played out in the media, IWF was conceived “to provide a conservative alternative to feminist tenets,” a cause Wexton is proving very worthy.
The candidate’s obvious goal is to undermine Comstock’s anti-sexual harassment advocacy, simultaneously casting herself as the true champion of women.
“How can Comstock truly be an advocate for victims of sexual assault if she also agrees with the positions and actions of the IWF, which seeks to silence the #MeToo movement and undermine the victims of sexual assault?” the press release asks. (Notice the absence of substantive policy disagreements.)
The sentiment is both absurd and representative of the broader feminist movement’s central problem. If Wexton has policy differences with Comstock — who has actually offered policy solutions to questions about pervasive harassment — she should say so. Instead, she targets Comstock’s affiliation with a nonleftist group. I’m tempted to say Wexton recognizes that and is merely using IWF as a wedge because some campaign consultants told her to. But given the longstanding feminist tradition of interpreting reasonable disagreements with their dogma as anti-woman, I’m not confident.
#MeToo has been successful because it represents the interests of women on a nonpartisan basis, bringing together a coalition much broader than the modern feminist movement’s shrill base. This line of attack against Comstock explains a lot about why feminists struggle to find resonance for their message among women outside of the Democratic Party. Those who happen to fall somewhere to the right of Angela Davis feel they aren’t welcome, and with reason.
