Dear Feminists, The Fight For ‘Women’s Rights’ In America Is Over. Let’s Move On.

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Matt Walsh:

The other day I saw an ad for an incumbent Democrat congressional candidate here in Maryland. As you can imagine, it was pretty inspiring. It used important words like “bold” and “leadership” and “effective” and “jobs” and other sweet-nothings that focus groups like to have whispered in their ears. It promised us that the candidate would defend the environment, take away the scary guns, “grow jobs” (whatever that means), protect entitlements, and fight for women’s rights.

Of course we’ve heard all of these things a million times from a million politicians. Still, I couldn’t help but stop and reflect upon the absurdity of it, especially the last part. “Fight for women’s rights”? Why is that listed as an issue distinct from the others? Why is it listed at all? The matter of “women’s rights” was settled a long time ago in this country. Women have rights. Where has this person been for the past century?

That’s a rhetorical question. I know “women’s rights” is an effectively meaningless phrase in modern American society, used by feminists to reinforce a fantasy of patriarchal oppression and systematic man-on-woman victimization. The left relies heavily, almost exclusively, on false narratives, and the contemporary “fight for women’s rights” is perhaps the greatest and falsest of all.

The left talks about “women’s rights” as a thing yet to be fully achieved; women in America are “second-class citizens,” they breathlessly insist. Therefore, they say, the struggle for “women’s rights” is not only apolitical issue, but one of the biggest political issues we face, which is a bit like saying smallpox is one of the biggest health issues we face.

Of course we’ve heard all of these things a million times from a million politicians. Still, I couldn’t help but stop and reflect upon the absurdity of it, especially the last part. “Fight for women’s rights”? Why is that listed as an issue distinct from the others? Why is it listed at all? The matter of “women’s rights” was settled a long time ago in this country. Women have rights. Where has this person been for the past century?

In the Middle East, wherever women are subjugated, so too are Christians of both sexes, Muslims of the wrong variety, people of lower social classes, and basically any other group that isn’t favored by those in power. I dare say Islamic State treats Muslim women (of the right branch) comparatively better than they treat Christian men. So we could break it down and categorize each type of right desecrated by Muslim barbarians — non-Muslim women’s rights, Christian rights, gay rights, ethnic minority rights, etc — or we could just say that Islamic State has a problem with human rights, period. They may infringe on it differently depending on who you are (women are raped, men are cooked alive), but the only ones granted “rights” at all are those who fit into the narrow category prescribed by whoever happens to be holding the gun at any particular moment.

In any case, when the left talks about fighting for women’s rights, they usually aren’t referring to the Middle East anyway. Even though I think the very term “women’s rights” is philosophically problematic, I would have no qualms at all if feminists went to Muslim lands to concentrate all their efforts there. But they do no such thing, which makes the “feminist movement” all the more pointless and intellectually dishonest.

Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton tout their devotion to “women’s rights” on their campaign websites, and neither make any specific mention of the women being sexually brutalized and murdered by Islamists overseas. Instead, they vow to fight for women’s “equal rights” and “equal opportunity” here in America, despite the rather relevant detail that women already have equal rights and equal opportunity here in America. Clinton and Sanders might as well start organizing rallies to repeal nationwide alcohol prohibition and the Fugitive Slave Act while they’re at it.

Of course, liberals will claim women are still deprived of rights because of the “wage gap” and “rape culture” and alleged conservative assaults on “reproductive health,” but even if these were legitimate issues, they wouldn’t have anything at all to do with equal rights. Yes, women are victims of violence in this country (so are men, in fact the vast majority of murder victims are male), but none of the violence is legal. When a woman is raped, her legal rights have not been violated by the State. So even if there were a veritable “rape epidemic” in our society, it wouldn’t be at all an issue of women possessing unequal legal rights or protections.

As it happens, though, while rape is obviously a real and terrible phenomenon, the so-called American “rape epidemic” is a dangerous fable concocted by the left. In fact, rape is another area where women possess morelegal rights than men. Many colleges have rape tribunals set up allowing women to make anonymous rape accusations against men, who will then face severe penalties even if no evidence was ever presented against them. Worse still, if two drunk peoplehave sex on a college campus, the man can be accused of rape the next day on the basis that even a consenting drunk person cannot give consent.

By that logic, women should frequently find themselves expelled or in prison for drunk hook-ups as well, but that never happens. Men are the only ones who can be accused of rape simply because the woman regrets what she did the next day. If ”rape culture” creates unequal legal protections for anyone, it’s men.

Likewise, the “wage gap” is a faulty basis to prove that women still lack for rights in this country. This “gap” is not something instituted by the government, or by anyone, actually, because it’s a work of fiction. Not only does the wage gap not exist, but there’s already been a law passed to alleviate the non-existent problem. It’s a fake problem that’s been fake-solved by bad laws and dumb regulations. Yet, because the “women’s rights” narrative must be supported, we still hear about it. Liberals are never satisfied, even when they get exactly what they want to address an issue they fabricated out of thin air.

When I criticized the “women’s rights” narrative on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, a number of angry feminists informed me that, aside from the wage gap and the rape crisis, women still don’t have equal rights because they “aren’t allowed to control their own bodies.” This is almost always a reference to abortion, but abortion has nothing at all to do with what a woman “does with her body.”

She can control her body all she wants — indeed, if a little more self-control had been exercised to begin with she probably wouldn’t be in this situation — but the question is whether she should be able to exercise god-like control over the body and life of her child. The law says yes, giving her totalitarian authority over two lives. Still, to the feminist, this is not enough. She can legally kill a person, and still this is not enough “control” in her mind. Perhaps she thinks she ought to be able to blow up a preschool while she’s at it. I don’t know.

It’s becoming more and more apparent that feminists are selective anarchists. They want the law tailored to bestow unlimited entitlements upon them, but they do not think the law should restrict their choices at all, ever, to any extent. We’ve learned this lesson time and again throughout history. When you fight against oppression and win, but you’ve become so addicted to the fight that you can’t stop even after the war is over, you will quickly become the oppressor yourself. That is modern feminism in a nutshell.

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If only American feminists could pinpoint target only Christians and capitalists.
But, there have been honor killings of AMERICAN Muslim girls just for acting a little bit assimilated.
There have been beheadings of Muslim wives for merely WANTING a divorce.
There have been murders of women simply for turning down an attempt at Dawa (conversion.)

America’s ”feminists” make the sound of quiet crickets as to these things.
But this is the real war on women in America.

@Nanny G:

Many of those touting “Women’s rights” are the same who are supporting a flood of Islamic Refugees, most who support Shariah law, which embraces the exact opposite of feminism. It is a perverted Democratic feminist hypocrisy behind this that sets aside logic in favor of leftist insanity.

Particularly humorous is the reference to Hillary and Bernie touting their devotion to women’s rights.

Hillary, who viciously attacks any woman that threatens her political career, particularly the women her husband has abused. And Bernie, who actually wrote down on paper that women secretly fantasize about being gang-raped.