Carly Fiorina has previously described feminism as a “weapon used to win elections.” Now, she’s offering an alternative definition.
“Feminism began as a rallying cry to empower women – to vote, to get an education, to enter the workplace. But over the years, feminism has devolved into a left-leaning political ideology where women are pitted against men and used as a political weapon to win elections,” the Republican presidential candidate wrote on Facebook Thursday.
Fiorina has frequently compared the familiar ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ philosophy, which she claims enabled her rise from secretary to chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, to contemporary feminism, which tends to emphasize instances of women’s oppression and has developed a reputation of intolerance toward dissenters.
“Being empowered means having a voice. But ideological feminism shuts down conversation – on college campuses and in the media,” Fiorina wrote Thursday. “If you are a man – or a woman — who doesn’t believe the litanies of the left, then you are ‘waging a war on women’ or offensive as a candidate, as I have been called.”
“The progressive view of feminism is not about women. It is about ideology,” she said, adding that “it is time for a new definition.”
According to Fiorina’s definition, “A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses.”
“We will have arrived when every woman can decide for herself how to best find and use her God-given gifts. A woman may choose to have five children and home-school them. She may choose to become a CEO … or run for President,” she said.
In her recent reaction to the women of ABC’s “The View” insulting her appearance during the third Republican debate, Fiorina accused the morning show hosts of perpetuating the “liberal orthodoxy” she claims is ingrained in modern feminism.
“What these women represent is a set of liberal feminists who believe that if you do not agree with them on their liberal orthodoxy that you don’t count, that somehow you’re not a woman,” the only female GOP told Fox News on Sunday.
Fiorina holds the No. 6 spot in the Washington Examiner’s presidential power rankings. She is slated to return to “The View” Friday morning to confront the same women who recently described her as looking “demented.”
