From a column by Carey Roberts:
It's a condition that's known to be chronic, progressive, and highly contagious. With my own eyes I've seen bright, caring women fall under the sway of its deceptive allure. They soon begin to speak and act like someone possessed.
Its initiates are taught that women are "strong and invincible," but at the same time are the victims of an implacable patriarchal conspiracy. These self-contradictory beliefs induce a stress-producing condition known as cognitive dissonance. To relieve the discomfort, the girls are instructed to immerse themselves in the radical ideology.
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The solution is a 12-step self-help program — you guessed it: Feminists Anonymous. With no apologies to the Friends of Bill, here are the 12 Steps to gender recovery:
1. We admitted we were powerless over feminism — that our lives had become bitter, lonely, and meaningless.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. (That's right, Him. Now's the time to get rid of that Wiccan broomstick stashed in your closet.)
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. (Hint: Humility is the first step in the path to self-awareness.)
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character — despite the self-professed good intentions of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.
7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. We made a list of all men and women we had harmed, living and unborn, and became willing to make amends to them. (Practice saying, "I'm sorry" in front of the mirror each morning.)
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would be impossible, or would injure them or others.
10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. (If you haven't already taken your name off the Feminist Majority alert list, do it now.)
11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to feminists, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Over the years I've seen far too many families destroyed, too many men broken, too many children harmed, and too many women forced into "choices" that they later came to regret.
These women deserve our compassion and understanding. Let's put an end to the insanity.
