It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. And feminists seem to have embraced this message wholeheartedly. According to the latest memo from feminist headquarters at Smith College, right- (er, left-)thinking women must now oppose Christine Lagarde as a commencement speaker.
The first female director of the International Monetary Fund, Lagarde has so offended the sensibilities of hundreds of Smith students that she has decided to pull out of her speech next week.
The online petition launched against her notes that the IMF “has been a primary culprit in the failed development policies implanted in some of the world’s poorest countries.” That, in turn, has led to the strengthening of “patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide.”
You wonder how the left always finds a way to excuse the behavior of Third World dictators. It used to be that these tyrants were just reacting to colonialism. Now young liberals can continue to blame the West by blaming the IMF.
But at least you have to say these Smith ladies are standing on principle. They object to a woman in the position of IMF head the same way they would presumably object to a man.
One wonders where these women were when Ayaan Hirsi Ali was all but disinvited from Brandeis University a few weeks ago.
Here’s a woman trying to overturn patriarchal systems that oppress and abuse women worldwide and the feminist voices are nowhere to be found. Oppressing women is OK, apparently, as long as it is done in the name of some perverted form of Islam.
Well, maybe.
There is that whole bunch of women protesting Boko Haram, the terrorist group that kidnapped 200 girls from their school in Nigeria. Maybe now that Boko Haram has put out a video of some of the girls being forced to wear hijabs and pray in Arabic, feminists will believe there is some connection between radical Islam and the oppression of women.
Then again, there is probably a reason that when Michelle Obama and Ellen DeGeneres demand the terror group “Bring back our girls,” they don’t mention that one translation of the words “Boko Haram” is: “Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad.”
The truth is that although feminism makes all sorts of universalist claims about the rights of women, it is a deeply inconsistent philosophy. Just look at the way Monica Lewinsky was treated.
Sure, she’s not the most sympathetic figure. Neither were Bill Clinton’s other mistresses.
But they were all thrown under the bus in the name of advancing the feminist agenda.
Even Juanita Broaddrick, the nursing home administrator who said Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her, was studiously ignored by the feminist establishment. In service to the greater cause of liberalism, feminists can even deny the benefit of the doubt to rape victims.
The summer of the Lewinsky scandal I lived with an elderly aunt in Manhattan. She was a proud feminist, a woman who put herself through college, married late and broke the glass ceiling to become an executive at a powerful advertising agency. And of course she was a loyal Democrat.
One day, I came home from work to see her yelling Monica on the television: “You little bitch! You ruined my president!”
If the idea of feminism is to make universal claims for women, it has failed miserably.
Not even for the most basic issue of fair treatment under the law will those carrying the feminist mantle stand up for their sisters.
Shelly Sterling has recently been told by the NBA that she will be forced to sell her property because of racist comments her soon-to-be-ex-husband made to his mistress. Mrs. Sterling is not the most sympathetic of figures. She may even share her husband’s detestable views.
But here is a woman who is an equal owner of a very large property and she is going to be forced by the other owners (all men, no less) to sell her share for no other reason than that she is married to a schmuck.
If you claim to be in favor of some broad concept called women’s rights, you can’t just defend the women who say the right things or dress the right way or support the same political candidates you do.
Modern feminists have done nothing but confirm that old gender stereotype: Women are fickle.