It’s so cool now, and so easy, to bash the patriarchy. What with President Trump’s flaws, a United Kingdom election where women dominated, and all the stupid things men do on a daily basis, it’s far easier to wallop the patriarchal system than call out feminists for their own flaws, including my favorites: lack of perspective and complete and total gridlock of the movement. Not only is “the patriarchy” still an important part of society, it does as much for women and feminism as the movement itself does.
This last week, while Lena Dunham was exalting the feminist qualities of the pineapple in her newsletter — yes, you read that right. She wrote, “It is the pineapple that is still standing after the fast-moving periods of wokeness we have been going through of late” — a fourth woman was arrested in connection with genital mutilation of young women in Michigan.
While some lawmakers are scrambling to deal with it, a simple onslaught of the burgeoning, loud, and always-vocal feminist community would have done the job swimmingly. Yet nary a peep from them about a crime that is heinous and immoral.
While Amber Rose and other like-minded cohorts were stripping down to their bare flesh in order to
promote feminism, video surfaced of a few men who probably align themselves with that selfish, misogynist, lazy patriarchy, who banded together and actually saved the life of a little girl from the Islamic State — an actual violent enemy who takes pride in raping, murdering, and enslaving women and girls.
(Surprisingly, CNN actually featured a story on the U.S. Special Forces hero-turned-aid worker, David Eubank, yet feminists say very little about our men and women in uniform (and other organizations) who regularly fight off the Islamic State and other enemies at their own peril, rescue the defenseless from them, and simultaneously protect their rights to bellyache about how Instagram won’t let them bare their behind for feminism.)
If feminism wanted to actually progress instead of convulsing in circles over a society which has already established much legal and societal gender parity, they’d vocalize disgust over genital mutilation and express outrage that the Islamic State systematically rapes and murders women, leaving their babies behind, to name a few real causes for concern.
While incredible forward-thinking here doesn’t mean additional progress can’t be made, it’s absurd to continue making the case that the United States is in the grip of patriarchy, while women romp in Washington, D.C., holding signs picturing vaginas and wearing pink pussy hats — all while their sisters in real oppression in Syria worry if their daughters will live another year, let alone thrive.
It’s time feminists in the U.S. recognize their own weaknesses: Quit writing about pineapples and baring body parts half of Americans have anyway, and make a fuss over real gender inequality and excruciating oppression here and globally. Oh, and while they’re at it, they may want to nod their pink, pussy hats to the patriarchy trying to fight it.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
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