Miss USA and the Tolerant Feminists
As a beauty pageant winner found out, being a feminist apparently means conforming to one choice and redefining equality.
The lovely Kara McCullough is not only female and a minority, but she is a brilliant nuclear chemist who just won the prestigious Miss USA award. One would think feminists would be salivating over this one, and they are — but for an entirely different reason. Rather than celebrating and commending this brave woman’s marvelous achievements, leftists and feminists zeroed in on a mostly irrelevant point of McCollough’s reception speech, where she declared that health care was a “privilege” rather than a right. After being eviscerated on social media, McCollough quickly backtracked and capitulated, and the raging feminists laid down their coat hangers for another day.
All of this prompts the real question: Are modern feminists truly championing women’s rights, or are they rather pushing a power-hungry, man-hating, zero-tolerance agenda? To ask is to answer.
If feminists truly cared about the best interests of women, they should unite to protect and defend all women regardless of their political beliefs, religious backgrounds, or opinions about health care. Yet what happened to McCullough is nothing new in the radical feminist playbook. As we recently saw in the “Women’s March” in DC, pro-life groups were told to take a hike when they wanted to march with their fellow female Trump protesters. “Intersectional feminism does not include a pro-life agenda. That’s not how it works! The right to choose is a fundamental part of feminism,” feminist Roxane Gay lectured on Twitter. “Horrified that the @womensmarch has partnered w/ an anti-choice org. Please reconsider- inclusivity is not about bolstering those who harm us,” cried another.
Regarding McCollough, one feminist tweeted, “It’s incredibly sad that in 2017, a woman is striving to occupy a position of influence w/ no understanding of what feminism is.” Never mind that McCollough beat incredible odds and is employed in a male-dominated field: that, apparently, is not worthy of feminist celebration.
According to a Vox survey, only 18% of Americans identify as feminists, while 85% believe in women’s equality. That disparity is easy to explain. Feminism has veered so far away from its original purpose that those who believe it is fundamentally about women’s equality are in the minority. Today, feminism is all about choice (especially the “right to choose”), all while American women enjoy more freedom than any other women in the world.
In India, 57% of adolescent boys think a husband beating his wife is justified. In Yemen, women are considered half a witness in the legal system. In Morocco, rape victims are viewed as partially responsible. Meanwhile, in the United States, women are severely underrepresented in … video games. Readers can guess which one of these world crises has received the most coverage from today’s feminists, who would rather nitpick one of their own than stand up for a real cause.
“Real equality,” wrote famous American feminist Jessica Valenti, “is when women have the right to be as drunk and stupid as men.” (Aiming the bar high.) Tell that to the millions of Arabic women who suffer under the knife of female genital mutilation (even in America) or to the countless women in China who undergo forced abortions. Where is the “choice” for these women?
Today’s feminist movement has been poisoned with lies, misrepresentations and unsound antagonism toward anyone who disagrees. Political correctness and victim mentalities have transformed a once-liberating cause into a groundless, unnecessary quandary of narcissism. “Choice” is about conforming to exactly one choice: a leftist social code. And “equality” means shunning women who don’t agree with every particle of radical feminist ideology — including a beauty pageant winner who didn’t appropriately embrace a socialist health care system.