Margaret Thatcher (played expertly by Meryl Streep) stood against all the things feminists hate. (Reuters)
When it comes to the feminist version of history (sorry — herstory!), it’s hurrah for Gloria Steinem. She started a magazine nobody ever read. And cheers for Billie Jean King, the tennis player who proved a young professional athlete could beat a 55-year-old slob.
Give it up for Indira Gandhi and Hillary Clinton, who proved that you could sweep into power on the coattails of your dad or husband, and by all means let us celebrate Oprah Winfrey, who proved that you could spin mystical mumbo-jumbo, airy empowerment talk and perpetual wounded victimhood into a billion-dollar sisterhood racket.
What about the most important woman of the 20th century, Margaret Thatcher, the subject of this week’s Oscar contender “The Iron Lady”? Here feminists get quiet. Demure, even. They let the gentlemen take over the conversation while they retreat to the next room.
Or else they attack her. In her first campaign to lead Britain, in 1979, a popular slogan launched by feminists was “We want women’s rights, not a right-wing woman.” (In her 1983 campaign, the Left boiled this down to “Ditch the bitch.”) A newspaper columnist put the common feminist view thus: “She may be a woman, but she is not a sister.” Opponents in Parliament dubbed her “Attila the Hen.”
“I owe nothing to women’s lib,” Thatcher said, and at another point she remarked, “The feminists hate me, don’t they? And I don’t blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison.”
Yet Thatcher is among the most effective living ripostes to so many of the things feminists say they hate, such as:
* Being judged superficially based on style. Thatcher was said by some to be “sexy” — Christopher Hitchens used the word to describe his early meeting with her at a party — but she largely ignored the fashion game. She stuck with her frozen-nimbus haircut and boasted about shopping for undies at Marks and Spencer, an unglamorous mid-market chain.
* Being defined by a man. Hillary Clinton, standing by her husband amid excuse-making for his legendary adultery, famously said, “I’m not some little woman standing by her man.” Though Thatcher’s husband, Denis, was a successful businessman, after her rise began, no one doubted who was the senior partner. Jim Broadbent shows with his twinkly-eyed performance in “Iron Lady” how Denis became increasingly amused by his secondary role, jovially calling her “the Boss.”
* Getting ghetto-ized. Far from fixating on stereotypically female issues such as the family, health and education, Thatcher was a research chemist and tax lawyer who steeped herself in economics and foreign affairs.
* The mommy track. Though Thatcher was a loving young mother of twins when she was elected to Parliament, when the opportunity came, she didn’t let her home life interfere with her ambitions. In a poignant scene in “The Iron Lady,” Meryl Streep portrays Thatcher as simply stiffening her upper lip and driving away from her children as they call after her.
* Being made to play nice. A central complaint of feminism is that “society” conditions women into being deferential to men and not seeking power. Thatcher, whose most often-quoted line is, perhaps, “There is no such thing as society,” is seen in the film berating then-US Secretary of State Al Haig, who is left quivering in her wake. Thatcher gave us the new verb, “to handbag,” with the feminine accessory becoming a rough synonym for steamroller.
A writer for the lefty British paper The Guardian harrumphed, “[Thatcher] had little interest in improving the public image of women, or in furthering other women’s careers; she had no interest in peace, or sundry other matters that might be considered “feminine” . . . On a practical level, she improved women’s lot not at all. But for those of us whose world did improve, who saw opportunities swing open and had the background, wealth, education and circumstance to maximize them, she did something unmatchable. Is it churlish if I carry on hating her anyway?”
Feminists will probably carry on hating Thatcher for the twin faults of rejecting left-wing policies and demonstrating their feebleness, but there is a whiff of sexism about the suggestion that a real woman must support liberal dogma instead of thinking for herself.
Thatcher bettered the lives of Britain’s women and men by decreasing income taxes (which were as high as 98 percent for investment gains), defeating the unions whose demands amounted to a tax on every household, decreasing regulation and privatizing inefficient state-run industries. In an astute 1989 profile for Vanity Fair, Gail Sheehy wrote, “People refer to Thatcherism as if it were a coherent, worked-out ideology. What it really is, in my view, is a reflection of her character. The ultimate self-made woman, she has created a religion of herself. And from her character and ambition flow her policies.” Sisters should be proud.
Kyle.Smith@nypost.com