Rod Thomson

Early American feminism that aimed at women’s right to vote and equality under the law was an honorable and reasonable feminism that many American women supported.

That is not remotely today’s feminism.

In fact, today’s is almost the opposite and seems driven largely by angry, man-hating social justice warriors and purely political partisans demanding unlimited abortions until the moment of birth, plus the rest of the liberal agenda. The evidence for this is following. Like intersectionality identity politics, it is another poison in the American culture that propels ever more division, animosity and strife with no apparent end goal.

In fact, it is so divisive and anti-men, that the more radical leaders — which are tomorrow’s mainstream leaders — do not believe that I should even be having an opinion on the subject, because I am a man.

Many women on the political left actually don’t seem to see this sea change in feminism. They still think it is about equal pay (another myth issue), equal opportunities, equality with men and, yes, also abortion. Sure, those are used in sound bites, but only for the political ends of gaining partisan votes. There is no objective truth underpinning them. Abortion is the animating issue for those leading the feminist charge. The movement apparently will accept any kind of anti-feminist behavior or immoral person as long as they are a Democrat and will vote for abortion at any time. Universal opposition to politically conservative, Republican women demonstrates the party partisanship.

But let’s show the overt partisan politics of modern feminism — which is totally devoid of the origins of the movement and the stated goals of standing up for women — and seemingly only about power for Democrats.

Historic revelations of feminism’s hypocrisy

The first signs of the disease began sometime around Anita Hill, and her less-than-credible sexual harassment testimony that almost sunk the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. Almost none of her testimony was corroborated, and much was disputed by other women in the same office. None of it fit with Clarence Thomas’ known character at the time — or since.

Nonetheless, feminists jumped to support Anita Hill ostensibly because any woman alleging sexual harassment or worse must be believed. But in hindsight, it seems it was only a partisan attack against a conservative justice. Worse for Democrats, a conservative black justice. Thomas was brilliant in his defense, labeling it a “high-tech lynching.”

But the unveiling of partisanship really picked up steam a few years later when Bill Clinton’s penchant for being a serial sexual abuser, probable rapist and disgusting older, powerful married man who took advantage of young women working for him.

The Juanita Broaddrick rape charges are quite compelling and liberals are conveniently seeing the credibility in her claims…now. There were three other women who came forward with credible sexual assault allegations. And of course there was Monica Lewinsky, the very young intern who the most powerful man in the world persuaded to repeatedly perform oral sex in the Oval Office. Powerful men taking advantage of young, vulnerable women is something feminists supposedly decry and a huge defilement of the American trust.

And yet the feminists who intoned so righteously that Anita Hill must be believed for far less on threadbare testimony, worked night and day to shoot down woman after woman after woman who made far more credible claims against Clinton.

Clinton was just shrugged off as being a bit of a good ol’ boy, bit of a libertine, his personal actions were nobody’s business but his family’s and that we all must separate the private man from the public man. I screamed from the rooftops that you cannot possibly separate the two — they are the same man. A man who incessantly cheats on his wife cannot be expected to be honest in his public dealings. And indeed he wasn’t. He lied to his wife. And he lied to the American people.

This was all just more connivance by his defenders to keep a serial sexual assaulter in office because — not to put too fine a point on it — he defended the right of pregnant women to kill their babies up until birth.

The long list of feminist defenders of Bill Clinton

This is just amazing in light of Anita Hill, then Bill Clinton and now the rolling wave of high-profile sex assault predators. Here are what leading feminists were saying in 1998 to keep Clinton in office.

“We’re trying to think of the bigger picture, think about what’s best for women,” said Eleanor Smeal , president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. When conservatives called hypocrisy on the feminists, Smeal said: “It’s a twofer for them. If they can get the president, great. And if they can get feminism, even greater.”

“It will be a great pity if the Democratic Party is damaged by this,” feminist writer Anne Roiphe told Vanity Fair ’s Marjorie Williams in 1998. “That’s been my response from the very beginning — I just wanted to close my eyes, and wished it would go away.”

One feminist infamously said she would perform oral sex on Bill Clinton as long as he kept abortion legal up to nine months. Some campus extremist? Hardly. Nina Burleigh , Time magazine’s White House correspondent when Clinton was President. She wrote: “I’d be happy to give him [oral sex] just to thank him for keeping abortion legal.”

Bill Clinton’s “enemies are attempting to bring him down through allegations about some dalliance with an intern…. Whether it’s a fantasy, a set-up or true, I simply don’t care,” said high-profile feminist Betty Friedan . Or true .

For a more complete list of fairly stunning hypocritical statements by feminists, read this.

Contemporary revelations of feminist hypocrisy

It can sound like modern liberal feminists are coming around to understand what conservatives were saying in the 1990s. Character matters. Private life morals cannot be separated from public life actions. The former will inevitably influence the latter.

Left-wing New York Times writer Michelle Goldberg, who takes shots at conservatives all through this, now writes a column I Believe Juanita: “…her explanation, that she didn’t want to go public but couldn’t lie to the F.B.I., makes sense. Put simply, I believe her.”

It would be tempting to take a victory lap that they have finally seen the light. But in truth, it looks like they just saw the opportunity to knock off Roy Moore and put a Democrat in the strongly conservative Alabama Senate seat, and ultimately go after President Trump.

Why? Three examples explain it.

1) First, when Harvey Weinstein first erupted, followed by other Hollywood people, and media people, and comedians — all leftist Democrats and many major fundraisers — there was no soul-searching on the Clinton years. Even when conservatives kept bringing it up. Nothing.

But when the allegations came out on Roy Moore, liberals sniffed an opportunity. Then and only then did they start to publicly reassess the Clinton years. That’s when Goldberg and several others started saying Clinton should have been forced to resign. That’s just a tad too convenient and far too late.

2) New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, a Democrat, who has a strong but technically unproven reputation for corruption, was in the midst of a long jury trial. He was charged with influence peddling, gaming federal welfare programs, illegal favors for friends who gave him money, and so on. When Democrat leaders were asked if he would be forced to resign if found guilty — they refused to say yes! The jury in that trial ended with a split decision, meaning the judge had to declare a mistrial. But Democrats made their intentions clear.

During Menendez’s trial, very credible accusations were also made that he used underage prostitutes while in the Dominican Republic with his friend and co-defendant (who was found guilty on corruption charges.) These were unproven allegations, like Moore’s, although his name shows up on flight lists for the time of the accusations. And still, Democrats and feminists said nothing about him stepping down. Could it be because the New Jersey Gov. Chris Christy is a Republican and would have appointed a Republican to replace him?

3) Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, another Democrat, and Congressman John Conyers, yet another Democrat, are stepping down at some point or not running for re-election amid a plethora of sexual assault and misconduct allegations. This, however, fits the mode of power. Both will be replaced by Democrats guaranteed, so in that sense, they were expendable to the greater cause of gaining power. Menendez would have been replaced by a Republican, so he has to stay. And that’s how it works.

The feminist mind that openly supports hypocrisy

There is one honest, if somewhat disturbing, feminist on this issue — a true defender of the ends justifies the means.

Kate Harding, co-editor of “Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America” and co-host of the podcast Feminasty, wrote a Washington Post article entitled: “I’m a feminist. I study rape culture. And I don’t want Al Franken to resign.”

Here’s the money section:

“It would feel good, momentarily, to see Franken resign and the Democratic governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, appoint a senator who has not (as far as we know) harmed women. If I believed for one second that Franken is the only Democrat in the Senate who has done something like this, with or without photographic evidence, I would see that as the best and most appropriate option. But in the world we actually live in, I’m betting that there will be more. And more after that. And they won’t all come from states with Democratic governors and a deep bench of progressive replacements. Some will, if ousted, have their successors chosen by Republicans.”

She expounds further.

“In other words, if we set this precedent in the interest of demonstrating our party’s solidarity with harassed and abused women, we’re only going to drain the swamp of people who, however flawed, still regularly vote to protect women’s rights and freedoms. The legislative branch will remain chockablock with old, white Republican men who regard women chiefly as sex objects and unpaid housekeepers, and we’ll show them how staunchly Democrats oppose their misogynistic attitudes by handing them more power.”

And there you have it. Feminist Harding (who is the featured picture with this post), writing in the Washington Post, is giving Democrat men a green light to abuse however much they want, as long as they protect “women’s rights” — by which she means unlimited abortion and contraceptives. That is precisely the argument made in 1998 by Eleanor Smeal, Nina Burleigh and others.

Nothing has changed.

Feminists are revealed in all these cases to be complete partisans, having no underlying philosophy beyond the desire for power to keep abortion legal up to the moment of birth.

That’s a disease.

Rod Thomson is an author, TV talking head and former journalist, and is Founder of The Revolutionary Act.