Joan Walsh is wrong about Ivanka Trump, but right to speak her mind.
The progressive MSNBC contributor sparked backlash after slamming Ivanka Trump for taking her father’s seat at the G-20 summit while wearing a “girlie” dress, arguing her feminine attire didn’t signal adequate seriousness about making a difference in the world.
“God bless her, show it off, but don’t then tell us that you’re crusading for an equal place for women at the table because you’re not,” Walsh said.
Conservatives often critique feminists for their reflexive impulse to silence subversive thought, rightfully speaking with reverence of free speech as an engine for productive discussion. Even bad ideas can generate constructive conversations, that’s why we want, for instance, college students to feel comfortable engaging in open and honest debates on campus.
We also slam feminists for demanding conformity and purity of thought from their peers, so Walsh’s willingness to express an unpopular opinion isn’t objectionable, especially given that she even acknowledged during the segment that it would be controversial.
In fact, I want to hear more progressives subvert feminist orthodoxy when they’re so compelled — that way we’ll actually know what these women believe, rather than what they are intimidated into going along with.
The more we hear honest opinions from someone like Walsh, the more we can debate why those opinions are wrong.
In this case, it seems as though a deep hatred of the Trump family prompted Walsh to temporarily suspend her feminism. As she sees it, Trump is anti-feminist, thus the rules of feminism do not apply to her. Would Walsh have even thought to make the same argument in a hypothetical scenario where Chelsea Clinton was, literally, in Ivanka’s seat?
Feminists have fought for decades to disentangle femininity from connotations of weakness. By that logic, Trump’s decision to sit at the G-20 table in a hyper-feminine dress could actually be considered a powerful feminist statement. I suspect that argument would be made to justify the wardrobe choice were it made by someone such as Chelsea Clinton or Michelle Obama.
Fighting for equality between men and women, especially in professional spaces, is not achieved by denigrating femininity as unserious, but by boosting it. Contending that femininity has an inherent professional unseriousness implicitly equates masculinity with competence. It is not helpful to Walsh’s own cause.
But we never could have had this conversation if she were too intimidated by the inevitable backlash, from both her ideological peers and detractors, to speak her mind in the first place.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
