![\"Sex.Assault.Rape\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/9\/2014\/12\/Sex.Assault.Rape_-600x399.jpg\")
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Modern feminism is getting embarrassing. There\u2019s a reason why\u00a0so few women<\/a>\u00a0identify as feminists: It\u2019s less a true \u201cwomen\u2019s movement\u201d than the public face of hysterical leftist intolerance \u2014 combined, of course, with utterly bizarre (and bizarrely stupid) ideas.<\/p>\n While I had numerous brushes with extremist feminists in law school \u2014 women who declared that all (heterosexual) sex was rape and often responded with literal screams to classroom speech they didn\u2019t like \u2014 it all felt fashionably fake. Surely no one took that level of extremism into the real world, did they? Then my wife encountered a lesbian couple in Ithaca, N.Y., who was raising their\u00a0child to be \u201cgenderless.\u201d They refused to call him a boy or girl, allowing him to \u201cchoose his gender\u201d identity during his teenage years. And, apparently,\u00a0they are not alone<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most people \u2014 including most liberals \u2014 believe that kind of behavior is insane. NPR, by contrast,\u00a0writes a glowing profile<\/a>\u00a0of women raising their \u201cboychicks.\u201d It\u2019s hard to craft a more nauseating self-parodic paragraph than this self-identified \u201cqueer-identified male-partnered monogamist\u2019s\u201d description of her son:<\/p>\n She describes her boychick, born in March 2007, as a \u201cmale-assigned at birth \u2014 and so far apparently comfortable with that assignment, white, currently able-bodied, congenitally hypothyroid, cosleeper, former breastfed toddler, elimination communication graduate, sling baby and early walker, trial and terror, cliched light of our life, and impetus for the blog. Odds are good he will be the most privileged of persons: a middle class, able bodied, cisgender, straight, white male.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The true insanity is not that there are crazy people in this world \u2014 there always are (I can tell some stories after 45 years in church) \u2014 but that modern feminism actually strives to elevate\u00a0the crazy, the stupid, and the just plain hysterical into the realm of actually relevant cultural and political commentary. Consider these examples:<\/p>\n 1. A woman (who likely identifies as a feminist herself) quite sensibly writes that\u00a0college girls should drink responsibly<\/a>\u00a0as a form of defense against sexual assault, and other feminists call her a\u00a0\u201drape denialist<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n 2. A feminist hero writes\u00a0about an extended period of grotesque sexualized conduct involving her sister \u2014 conduct that would lead the Left to write any conservative woman out of respectable society \u2014 and\u00a0prominent<\/a>\u00a0feminists<\/a>\u00a0rush<\/a>\u00a0to her defense (though, to be fair, it seems that to some in the feminist world, defending Lena Dunham is a \u201cwhite feminist<\/a>\u201d thing to do).<\/p>\n 3. A man helped remotely guide a spacecraft onto a comet \u2014 let me say that again,\u00a0a man helped remotely guide a spacecraft onto a comet\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 but to some feminists\u00a0that\u2019s less important than his geektastic shirt<\/a>.<\/p>\n The stupid is so very strong here. The list could go on and on. In fact, we should never forget that perhaps the single-most stupid political argument in modern politics \u2014 that you\u2019re waging a \u201cwar on women\u201d unless you completely support requiring all employers of any faith or no faith at all to provide employees with free contraceptives and abortifacients \u2014 was adopted enthusiastically and wholeheartedly for at least two full years by one of our major political parties.<\/p>\n This is a movement that seems to be all about short-term gains, mostly through name-calling and other forms of online bullying, at the expense of any long-term intellectual coherence or even basic integrity. But in the long run\u00a0how many women want to be identified with a movement whose champions can\u2019t even listen to a mildly controversial speech without having to walk out to keep from either\u00a0blacking out or throwing up<\/a>? How many women want to be identified with a movement that is currently arguing over whether the\u00a0founder of Facebook\u2019s preference for plain T-shirts is sexist<\/a>?<\/p>\n All of these reactions display\u00a0a level of hyper-sensitivity and emotional fragility that every woman I know finds repugnant. Treating women as equals in our culture and politics is simple fairness. Modern feminism, by contrast, has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with the special pleading of its entitled\u00a0commentariat.<\/p>\n Treating women as equals does not mean that we ignore differences \u2014 men and women tend to have different strengths and weaknesses, different likes and dislikes, and will often choose different career paths, family roles, television shows, books, and movies. In fact, men and women tend to\u00a0like<\/em>\u00a0that they\u2019re different and celebrate those differences.\u00a0Feminism has reacted to this\u00a0obvious reality by either arguing that our myriad differences are\u00a0mere social constructs or by arguing that \u2014 to borrow my wife\u2019s excellent summary of feminist philosophy \u2013\u00a0men and women are the same, except when women are better<\/a>. After all, it wasn\u2019t long ago that one prominent feminist argued that our entire \u201cpostindustrial society\u201d was just \u201cbetter suited to women<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Feminism doesn\u2019t really have a philosophy. It\u2019s barely even an ideology. It\u2019s mostly just a series of temper tantrums thrown by a small, privileged minority. And, unless it changes, it will soon be irrelevant.<\/p>\n This article first appeared on\u00a0National Review Online<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Read more on the\u00a0Patheos Faith and Family Channel<\/a>\u00a0and follow\u00a0David on Twitter<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Modern feminism is getting embarrassing. There\u2019s a reason why so few women identify as feminists: It\u2019s less a true \u201cwomen\u2019s movement\u201d than the public face of hysterical leftist intolerance \u2014 combined, of course, with utterly bizarre (and bizarrely stupid) ideas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1317,1316,854],"class_list":["post-7960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-feminists","tag-modern-feminism","tag-npr"],"yoast_head":"\n