This Is What a Feminist Looks Like

feminist-facebook-800x430In Nigeria and Iraq, Muslim armies are selling women as slaves. Iran hanged a woman for fighting off a rapist. ISIS was more direct about it and beheaded a woman who resisted one of its fighters.

But we don’t have to travel to the Middle East to see real horrors. The sex grooming scandal in the UK involved the rape of thousands of girls. The rapists were Muslim men so instead of talking about it, the UK’s feminists bought $75 shirts reading, “This is what a feminist looks like” which were actually being made by Third World women living sixteen to a room.

This was what a feminist looked like and it wasn’t a pretty picture.

The same willful unseriousness saw Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a survivor of genital mutilation and an informed critic of Muslim misogyny, booted from Brandeis by self-proclaimed feminists. Meanwhile the major feminist cause at the moment is Gamergate, a controversy over video games which can be traced back to a female game developer who slept with a video game reviewer.

Professional feminists have spent more time and energy denouncing video games than the sale and rape of girls in Nigeria and Iraq.

That is what feminism looks like and there is something seriously wrong with that.

Women Against Feminism touched a nerve because professional feminists know that few women want to identify as feminists. Polls have found that the majority of women view feminism negatively. Even among young women, the feminist label doesn’t come close to breaking the halfway mark.

Professional feminists respond to the negative feedback by claiming that feminism is simply equality. But if feminism were equality, women, and for that matter men, wouldn’t dislike it so much.

A feminist looks like a professional activist wearing a $75 t-shirt made by slave labor while proclaiming that she is a feminist. It isn’t fighting for the rights of women that makes her a feminist. It’s the pricey fashion statement of someone who toots their own horn while exploiting less fortunate women.

The professional feminist is not there to help women, but to promote the agenda of the institutional left. She will turn campus rape into a political cause while criticizing every rape prevention measure, from a rape drug detecting nail polish to self-defense for women, for not dealing with rape culture. Stopping rape doesn’t interest her. Exploiting the abuse of women to fight a culture war does.

Her concerns are limited to causes affecting upper class young women and the overall political organizational needs of the left. That’s why she will veer erratically from inflating college rape statistics to arguing for illegal alien amnesty despite the high number of rapes committed by migrants.

But the women being raped generally won’t be found on an Ivy League campus.

And that’s also what a feminist looks like.

The institutional left can’t call out Islam for sexism, homophobia and racism because it has already inducted it into its political coalition. And that’s why feminists can’t talk about the mass rape of young girls in the UK without stepping on a political landmine. Those courageous women who do talk about it, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Pamela Geller, represent the principles that feminists only claim to stand for.

It’s easy to take shots at gamers, but discussing the rise of honor killings, genital mutilation and domestic abuse among Muslims migrating to the West is dangerous territory. That is why Ayaan Hirsi Ali had to be silenced so that she wouldn’t show up the professional feminists trying to pretend that their mass distractions of video games, subsidized birth control or celebrating “sex workers” are real feminism.

Modern feminism is defined by talking non-stop about the things that don’t matter to avoid talking about the things that do. It long ago stopped being a movement and became a series of distractions. When feminists actually hit on a relevant issue they quickly scramble to avoid talking about it. That’s what happened with the viral Hollaback video of a woman walking around New York City and being harassed by minority men. The video quickly went from a hit to an embarrassment as feminists realized that they had unintentionally documented something that they could not talk about.

Feminism is filled with things that it can’t talk about. That’s why it long ago hit a dead end. It is too afraid of being politically incorrect to be relevant. It can’t advocate for women and so it frantically stirs up micro-controversies that are irrelevant to 99.99% of women. Its obsession with Gamergate as the biggest threat to women since the time that Miss USA suggested that women should take self-defense classes is another reminder of its inability to meaningfully address the problems facing women today.

Professional feminists don’t want to fight rape; they want to fight an intangible “rape culture”. They don’t want to help women. Instead they want to exploit the problems facing women to advance their own agendas and careers. They are part of a movement cut off from ordinary people and rooted in academia. Few women want to identify as feminists, because feminism doesn’t identify with them.

Feminism can’t talk about the problems facing women because it is a prisoner of the left. It’s a fundraising gimmick, an election turnout gimmick and a way to sell pricey shirts.

The War on Women meme has jumped the shark. Senator Mark Udall was mocked, ridiculed and written off by his own Democrats for his cynical abuse of the meme. An attempt by a congressional candidate to invoke it during a debate in New York was met with uproarious laughter.

The last election cycle had reduced feminism to subsidized birth control. This cycle wiped it off the map entirely. The next election cycle will bring us Hillary Clinton as the ultimate feminist candidate. Hillary built her career and won elections on the strength of her husband’s name. Polls show that she appeals to voters because they think her husband is part of the package deal.

If Hillary wins, the first female president will be a woman who got the job only because she refused to divorce her husband after he cheated on her because she hoped to exploit his political connections.

That too is what a feminist looks like.

Hillary Clinton laughing at her client’s rape of a 12-year-old girl from a working class family or Carol Costello chuckling over the assault on Bristol Palin reminds ordinary women what feminists really think of them.

Feminism no longer speaks to women. It has become a privileged sorority for actresses, politicians, media types and academics who don’t actually like women. Especially working class women.

The public face of feminism should be Ayaan Hirsi Ali, but instead it’s the neurotic privileged pettiness of Lena Dunham. Feminism has become a lightweight movement heavy on pop culture and phony outrage and unbelievably light on content. It speaks all the time, but it no longer has anything to say.

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  • Patriot077

    Great column, Daniel! Any substantive issues involving women were mocked and sneered at … now all they deserve is for real women to mock and sneer these feminazis! They are truly a joke, and I think they jumped the shark with that video last week using innocent children to spout the foulest gutter language while wearing seductive costumes and makeup. It was nauseating to see and hear.

    • ca1

      agreed patriot.. i regret having view that video.. i think there needs to be an investigation regarding who’s responsible and who are the parents who allowed their young girls to be used in this provocative video.. feminists are narcissists…..

      • Patriot077

        There should be an investigation as I believe it is abusive. Even die hard lefties must see that it is in no way conducive to a healthy childhood. It really is nauseating to this G-ma.

        • ca1

          i viewed the video on blue states website(think i clicked a link from another website)… you may be disappointed to read the comments from those who are likely die hard lefties… i left a number of comments as i wasn’t able to hold back my outrage…..

          • Patriot077

            You are braver than I. I can’t go there. Especially if they think it is really cute and cool, cutting edge. They are sick.

    • Patriot077

      Someone doesn’t like my comment and is busily downvoting it. Mature adults that they are, they can’t stand a real woman voicing an opinion they disagree with.
      Games that don’t amount to any more than their “movement”.

  • SCREW SOCIALISM
  • UCSPanther

    “Feminism no longer speaks to women. It has become a privileged sorority
    for actresses, politicians, media types and academics who don’t actually
    like women. Especially working class women.”

    Couldn’t have put it any better.

    • A Disqus User

      When we have: Africa for Africans, Asia for Asians, White Countries for EVERYBODY, what do we have over periods of time?

      We have fewer and fewer White children

      When we mix more and more non-Whites with fewer and fewer Whites in the same living space?

      In time, White extinction. Its genocide because this doesn’t happen by
      chance. It is being forced upon Whites just like a rapist does not take
      no for an answer

      How is this not White geNOcide?

      Anti-racist is a code for anti-white

    • MLCBLOG

      Good to see you’re still here, Panther.

  • ina rome

    Hit it out of the park again!

  • Elizabeth capecod

    If they weren’t so stupid, they might begin to know how stupid they are.

    • http://www.acameronblog.com Graham7720

      lol

      • Elizabeth capecod

        :-)

  • ina rome

    It can’t be said any better. Thank you for your work!

    • Demopublicrat

      Homophobia doesn’t exist, it is merely a slur.

      • Well Done

        IMO “homophobia” refers to the rather presumptive pseudo-psychoanalysis that anyone who “doesn’t like queers” does so because he’s afraid he himself is queer. Which might be true of, like, 1% of guys who profess to “not like queers”… but that’s enough for activists. It’s called a meme, they run with it until it takes on a life of its own, like a father teaching his kid to ride a bike.

        • Demopublicrat

          Homophobia doesn’t exist, it is merely a slur.

    • laura r

      dont forget phyliss chessler. she lived in the middle east & married a muslim. she does speak out.

  • Guest

    !!!

  • jwmiller

    ‘War on Women’ connivance began with ‘Feminist movement’. Boils down to ‘Want some candy, little girl?’

  • dwayne roberson

    The same “folks” hijacked the “humane” movement years ago. “A dog is a rat is a boy”.

  • halevi

    Excellent column again! You really know how to sum up an issue.

  • tagalog

    “This is what a feminist looks like”? You mean a T-shirt with irregular writing on it so you have to stare at it in order to be able to read it, giving the woman wearing it a chance to say “Up here”?

    • Well Done

      Best reply to such a T-shirt is a terse “I don’t read cursive”.

  • AnneM040359

    A real feminist is someone like Pamela Geller or a Briggete Gabrial.

  • Chester

    Damn! Greenfield rayriced those irrelevant hypocritical feminist blowhards.

  • Chester
    • ca1

      ooooh dear..

    • wileyvet

      E.T. phone home. WTF?

      • Fed Up

        LOL

    • ratonis

      Grraaahhhhhhhgggghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (The native language of a feminist).

    • SCREW SOCIALISM

      She’s got the neck of a 90 yo woman.

    • MLCBLOG

      Eeeuuuww. Gross!!

  • nimbii

    As a recovering psychology/sociology major (yes, both), I can find no counter argument to the article.

    Feminists pick a gnat from their soup to make room for a camel.

  • Scar

    The feminists who ordered the shirts had to take the lowest bid so they could fit them into their budget…proving that they’re actually evil capitalists! Their hypocrisy knows no bounds. Oh, and another fabulous article, Mr. Greenfield.

  • rebaaron

    “The public face of feminism should be Ayaan Hirsi Ali.”

    Wouldn’t that be something! I would join.

  • laura r

    good read. i fail to understand this college rape thing. its mostly made up fiction. this was never discussed when i was in school, because it didnt happen.

  • Tom G.

    Insightful, incisive, brilliant. Thanks, Mr. Greenfield.

  • Fed Up

    Take a good look you very-modern girls of the west at the REAL patriarchy. The rising tide of islam is the most fierce, implacable, unforgiving patriarchy there ever was and they mean what they say about conquering the world. It makes those scary bedtime stories about Ward Clever and feminine mystique oppression you tell each other in sorority dorms children’s cartoons by comparison.

    I don’t think it’s a surprise at all the graying nags of NOW and fainting girls of college clubs would much rather avert their gaze from real slaughter, rape and enslavement of women preferring instead to scold their own for made-up offenses. Contemporary feminism is part of the leftist, totalitarian project first and putatively concerns itself with women second. Think of all the obsessions and bugaboos of leftism that are gussied up in separate noble “causes” or other as the various brands a huge conglomerate manufactures. Think GM and it’s past lines of autos or Proctor and Gamble and it’s many disparate products. They are each purportedly concerned with the rights of this one or that one but the one thing they all have in common is to further the aims of the conglomerate which is to hate and destroy America as we know it.

    And the primary tactic of Leftism, Inc.’s brands within each’s purview has always been to seize on any issue, real or made-up, and/or mascots they can use and ride to hate their own first, most and always in the ongoing project to tear us down. They certainly can never unite in common cause to defend their own because defending their own means acknowledging it’s worth defending.

    In this case, to turn their support to the hundreds of millions of women kept in real oppression under pain of torture and death would instantly deflate their hysterical indictments against their own society by comparison and by many orders of magnitude. Indeed, it could be the death of modern feminism by ridicule, that most effective killer of poseurs and pretenders. In an instant it would have the dramatic effect of acknowledging that there really is cruel and merciless, societal wide patriarchal oppression and it’s not here and never really was. It might just acknowledge that modern women of the west have it better than any women who ever lived before even unto approaching something like true equality. In effect, it would be tantamount to switching sides from aiding and abetting the enemy as Leftism, Inc. always does to fighting for your home and countrymen.

    It has brought libs and leftists to the point of now standing openly or silently with those who are the murderous antithesis of everything every liberal ever said she believed in. It’s how the first ever woman and lesbian police chief of Minneapolis could recently honor “Hijab for a day” and cheerfully go about covered and why Brandeis retracted a proffered honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali due to her “islamaphobia” in speaking truths she and all the women of her native Somalia lived preferring instead to keep their primary mission of indicting their own on point.

    Defending and apologizing for islamism at home and ignoring it abroad retails under the brand of “multi-culturalism” and because it’s so effective to their larger cause is a one way street. It has come to be one of Leftism, Inc.’s marquis brand these past years. On that bustling boulevard homegrown mascots lose in any head-on collisions just as black Americans are learning about illegal immigration and feminists, gays and other of its brand’s mascots will learn more and more as time goes by.

    So, it’s about time you very-modern girls of the west take stock and reassess which cause is real and truly worth fighting for because if ever the creeping dark night of sharia should come your way the left will not be there for you. Just ask your “sisters” weeping under the real patriarchy instead of those who by their silence aid and abet the merciless ones striving relentlessly to put you under it, too.

    • Lightbringer

      Great post, Fed-up. It should be published on its own as an article.

  • truebearing

    Brilliant piece, Daniel. You have reduced the false movement to its essence…yet another leftist cloak and devious babble.

    Like the Civil Rights movement, the environmental movement, et al, the Left moved in, took over, skinned the cause and used the hide to disguise a typically mysogynistic/misanthropic agenda.

  • wileyvet

    The hardcore feminists true intent was to absolutely destroy society by destroying the family unit. It was a “War” on marriage and families in order to create total civilizational chaos. They have spent decades vilifying men, and see everything through the prism of gender Marxism. Like most leftists it is about the “revolution”, the continuing struggle, the sense of belonging to something bigger, relinquishing the individual mind to the group. This becomes so important that it overrides all common sense, rational thought and logic.
    Like the commies of the past that needed to destroy Judeo-Christian values to implement its wretched Utopia, so it is with the feminists. The societal stabilizing influence of the family also stands in the way of their goals, thus it needs to be attacked and ultimately eradicated, to usher in the feminist Utopia they seek. Run by sickly looking vegan, Burkenstock wearing, hirsute dykes that no man would touch with a ten foot pole, the movement is merely bitter and evil. The rabid hardcore represents only their twisted worldview, inculcated in academia with women’s studies programs, and has nothing to do with actual women. Anger and dishonesty, and a malevolent intent is all they know. It is they who are the real “wreckers” of society.

  • Laurie Davis

    I would like a t shirt that reads ‘this is what feminism DOESN’T look like: a woman who puts up with a spouse that cheats over and over again.”

  • Kafir911

    Feminists are as relevant as the PETA crowd. The feminists don’t say boo about how women are treated under Sharia law. The PETA nitwits pee their panties about how lobsters are cooked but never say boo about the barbaric way animals are butchered in the preparation of halal meat products. The World’s #1 Oxymoron: Liberal Logic.

  • Michael Durham

    The “feminist” movement, by and large, is a crypto-Marxist movement. Their adherents’ America- and Western-hating ideology always trumps their pseudo-feminist posturing. Which explains their systematic indifference towards, or oversight of, Islam’s deplorable treatment of women. Indeed, Leftism and Marxism are allies of Islam. Ultimately, so are “feminists”. They’re all ruthless, vile death cultists.

  • johnnywood

    I wish I had said that:-)

  • Lightbringer

    It’s no wonder that the “feminists” hate accomplished, intelligent, religious, fertile, and yes, pretty women like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. Those two and many others like them are a reproach to everything the dull-witted, unaccomplished, atheistic, childless, and yes, ugly women of the left stand for.

  • liz

    “It speaks all the time, but it no longer has anything to say”.
    How ironic that feminists have become the epitome of the old stereotype of women – the old biddy who nags and complains so incessantly that no-one – especially not the men in her life – listens to her anymore.

  • ratonis

    Feminists are, and always have been, stupid.

  • dwayne roberson

    Progressives will continue to do what they do best. Take a wonderful word…feminine…elegant grace, maternal beauty, loving charm, and proceed to fundamentally transform it into an ugly antithesis. Keep your hands off of our vocabulary!

  • laura r

    tee shirts w/messages are tacky, & expensive to buy. never wore one even as a teen. then again, those days we didnt over share.

  • MLCBLOG

    Nail on the head again, Mr. G.

    It reminds me of going from white suburbia to the inner city in the 1960′s when we white liberals/radicals/rabble rouser/feminist/and whatever else we needed to be to wreak havoc, oh year antiVietmanwarnicks (I have since repented) and being so presumptuous as to think that we were going to “help” the poor black people (this was even before they were Black but that is another discussion) to improve themselves when we could barely manage our own lives. The condescension of it all still amazes me. We were clueless at the time however, being immune to our own foibles, and I only realized how we might look when I actually began to hear some of the so-called victims we were supposedly going to “help.” They did not disguise their (very valid) disdain for us. How insulting we were just by our stance and presence in that vein!! A highly valuable experience overall.

  • Renegade Quark

    Spot on. I didn’t get the Tee Shirt thing at first and thought it was a shirt for men and that the meme printed across the chest was meant to indicate that feminists tend to be flat-chested women who look like men. Sorry, but that’s what I thought.