The “Women’s March on Washington” is a misnomer. The correct name for the spectacle on Saturday, and a spectacle it was, should be “The Feminist March on Washington” or “The Liberal Women’s March on Washington.” The 1960s “women’s movement” wasn’t a women’s movement either. It was a feminist movement.
The distinction is crucial because the implication of a “women’s” march or a “women’s” movement is that all women think alike, or should think alike, and therefore become part of a sisterhood. Ergo, those who don’t join in are looked upon as backward or strange.
The irony, of course, is that the women who didn’t march, the non-feminist gals, are the truly independent, free-thinking agents. These are the women who are capable of thinking for themselves and who don’t need every conflict to be a matter of sex.
What Saturday’s march in Washington, and the companion marches throughout the globe, proved is that there are two kinds of women: those who believe they’re victims of a society that wrongs them, and those who do not.
The women who didn’t march view the country and its political process positively. They don’t necessarily love President Trump, but they cut him slack because they do like his plainspoken, non-elitist, pro-American ways. They understand why he won, whether they voted for him or not.
Don’t mistake the women who didn’t march as being conservative, per se. Many are libertarian, or even apolitical. What these women have in common is that they aren’t sheep and they don’t define themselves by their lady parts. If they were ever to participate in a protest, which is highly unlikely since that isn’t their style, the gathering would at least have a purpose.
“Simply being a woman,” as Katie Hopkins noted at Daily Mail, “is not enough.”
Suzanne Venker (@SuzanneVenker) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is an author, Fox News contributor, and trustee of Leading Women for Shared Parenting. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
