In a brightly lit video marking her first public remarks since the inauguration of President Trump, Hillary Clinton smiled her way through a brief statement to attendees of the Makers conference in Palos Verdes, California.
The content of her message, however, did not reflect the video’s cheerful aesthetics.
Though she began by repeating the vapid feminist declaration that “The future is female,” Clinton proceeded to implore conference goers to “Please, set an example for every woman and girl out there who’s worried about what the future holds and wonders whether our rights, opportunities and values will endure.”
Clinton’s unfortunate decision to traffic in this pessimistic rhetoric feeds the overarching feminist narrative that the lives of American women are imperiled by villainous patriarchs scheming to strip them of their human rights. It is fearmongering, plain and simple.
It is also the feminist movement’s favorite recruitment strategy.
In a widely-celebrated Super Bowl advertisement calling for an end to the (debunked) wage gap, Audi featured a father pondering what to tell his daughter about inequality in the workplace. “Do I tell her that despite her education, her drive, her skills, her intelligence, she will automatically be valued as less than every man she ever meets?” he wondered.
It is highly unlikely the average American woman feels that she is automatically “valued as less than every man she ever meets.”
Like Clinton’s assertion that women are wondering whether their “rights, opportunities, and values will endure,” the dark world of Audi’s advertisement is out of touch with reality.
To quote Christina Hoff Sommers, American women are the “freest and most self-determining in human history.” This is an incontrovertible fact, the implications of which are felt by women across the country who enjoy the opportunities provided by our remarkable country every single day.
From feminist misinformation on the wage gap to faulty sexual assault statistics, the feminists’ portrayal of modern life does not reflect the world in which women live.
This disconnect between the dark overtones of the feminist movement and the lives American women lead is powerful. A survey released in January by the Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation found that less than half of women believe the feminist movement today is focused on the changes they want to see.
If the newly-energized women’s movement continues to cling to these antiquated narratives depicting modern life as a suffocating patriarchy, its failure to resonate with women will persist.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
