Last week, former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss wrote an important piece arguing that cowardice, the refusal of our leaders to speak truth and stand up to the wokeism that has infiltrated their institutions, is the reason our society is where it’s at. The only solution, then, is courage, Weiss says — the willingness to defend what we know to be true and refuse to back down, no matter the consequences.
Weiss shared several examples of people who showed both cowardice and courage amid the woke revolution that has hijacked our culture. But here are a couple more recent examples to help hit her point home.
This week, author Margaret Atwood came under fire from leftist activists for expressing concern about modern-day leftism and what it means for feminism. She didn’t really say much. All she did was share a Toronto Star article titled “Why can’t we say ‘woman’ anymore?” But that was enough to attract accusations of “transphobia” and “bigotry.”
It remains to be seen how Atwood, herself a liberal, will respond to the leftist pushback — if she’ll stand by her concerns like her fellow author J.K. Rowling, or if she’ll cave to the mob and beg for them to take her back. I hope she does the former, because we desperately need more people on the Left willing to push back against the transgender agenda.
Thus far, she has held pretty firm:
Maybe you should read Rosie’s piece? https://t.co/jpkKGMMLdG
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) October 19, 2021
Read her piece. She’s not a Terf. https://t.co/KLMmf0FwAq
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) October 19, 2021
These are early signs of courage. Atwood recognizes that women’s rights depend on a unique feminine identity, one that radical transgenderism seeks to erase in the name of inclusivity. She’s not as outspoken as other feminists, such as Rowling, have been on this subject, but even just sharing an article could be enough to show other people who agree with her generally that they, too, can speak out in defense of women. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.
Now, for an example of cowardice: After initially defending a recent comedy special by Dave Chappelle in which the comedian was critical of transgenderism, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos caved under pressure this week and apologized.
“I screwed up,” he said. “What I should have led with in those emails was humanity. I should have recognized the fact that a group of our employees was really hurting.”
Sarandos said nothing in his email defense of Chappelle’s special that he should regret. Every single word of it was true. He cited Chappelle’s popularity on Netflix, defended the company’s commitment to creative freedom, and dismissed concerns that Chappelle’s comedy would “translate to real-world harm.”
The only people in the wrong here are the Netflix employees who want to punish their company for publishing a show in which Chappelle had the nerve to state that “gender is a fact.” And now Sarandos is catering to them.
We need more Rowlings and Chappelles and fewer Sarandoses. We need people with the courage to stand by the truth, even if it’s unpopular, because it’s the right thing to do. The mob might seem threatening, but the truth is that there are a whole lot more of us — people who understand that a man is not a woman, no matter how much he’d like to be, and that pretending otherwise puts actual women in danger — than there are of them. And it’s time we start acting like it.
