Like Heather Mallick's piece on Stephen Harper, that appeared in Chatelaine.
Stephen Harper is crushing Canadian women! She announces.
Women are crushed, CRUSHED! I tell you!
Women are crawling in the streets, starving, bleeding from the torture. Their slack-jawed mouths pant for water, as their sunken eyes betray their torment of their existence under an oppressive Conservative government.
Oh dear. Seems Mallick was engaging in rhetorical inflation again.
Women are not crushed.
Women are, in general, doing fine.
By "fine" I don't mean they don't have problems. I mean their problems are manageable and do not require the government's help.
Mallick continues:
But electing a minority Conservative government has been a disaster for women.
Not, let's edit that:
But electing a minority Conservative government has been a disaster forwomen.feminism.
Even that's pretty dubious. He didn't do that much to stop it.
With no day care, an end to the quest for equality, no power, no voice, it is as if Harper's icy dislike has laid a thick grey layer of felt over women in this country.
What Heather Mallick REALLY means when she says that "women have no power, no voice" is that FEMINISTS don't have any power, any voice.
I wish feminists would STOP using "women" and "feminists" interchangeably.
Just because feminists don't have power doesn't mean women don't have power.
It just means your particular ideology has been marginalized, and I bet most people are quite alright with that.
I wish there was a huge consciousness raising to make everyone realize that when feminists insinuate that right-wingers like Harper don't like women it has nothing to do with his actual attitudes about women. All it is is rhetoric. It's femspeak. It just means that Harper doesn't like feminism (no mystery there).
But feminism is not the magisterium when it comes to what women want, what they should have, what their interests are, etc.
Feminists and feminism do not speak for women, and we should tell them to stop speaking like they do.
Harper has absolutely no problem with women. I'd stake the house on it. But feminists have a hard time making that distinction because their ideological filters compel them to interpret disagreement and contempt for their agenda as contempt for women.
Hey ladies-- newsflash: just because a person hates feminism doesn't mean they hate women.
They hate certain ideas. That doesn't make them hate people.
It's very self-serving to interpret disagreement with your ideas as contempt for women, and then label anyone who disagrees as a misogynist.
And then make feminist ideas obligatory in all our public institutions.
I for one will not stand for feminists speaking out as if they held the monopoly on the truth about women's interests, attitudes, beliefs, goals and aspirations.
Women are not a monolith. They are certainly not beholden to any one ideology. Feminists should act like that's the reality. They should stop acting like those who do not live up to their expectations are somehow victimizing women. Because women are not victims.
