Feminism is no longer interested in women's rights, it focuses on identity rights
Young American women are in precipitous free fall. When they are not agreeing to be "choked" during sex, opting for "lazy girl jobs" on TikTok, becoming stay-at-home girlfriends, raving about a Barbie doll movie, or dressing like Taylor Swift, they are out marching or sitting in for everything except women's rights.
It is a sorry sight to behold: college-age American women committing civil disobedience on behalf of savagely misogynistic terrorist organizations; hypnotically joining in Muslim prayers on campus and happily donning hijab – even as Muslim women in Iran and Afghanistan are being jailed and even murdered for refusing to do so.
There they are, these faux-feminists, speaking on panels and demonstrating for prison reform and against the police.
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Like the Democrat Party, they too are no longer interested in a sex-based Equal Rights amendment but in an amendment geared to Identity Rights. In their view, it is only "fair" that transwomen, (aka men), be allowed to compete with "cisgender" women (aka real women), in sports, occupy women-only jails, share locker rooms, showers and bathrooms with those who menstruate, get pregnant, give birth, breast-feed, experience menopause, etc.
Feminists have embraced transgender ideology as part of the switch from equal rights for women to LGBT rights. (Fox News Digital)
This includes experiencing certain privileges but also double standards and outright discrimination that do not usually apply to those who are socialized as boys and men.
The disaster upon us is not due to second-wave feminism but to its abject disappearance.
And, as a leader, often described as an "icon," of feminism's second wave, I know what I'm talking about.
I remain proud of our original ideals, analyses and activism. We had an opening in history, and we easily gained the world's attention, if not everyone's approval. As a "wave," we emerged between 1963-1975, and we consisted of three mighty tributaries.
In 1963-1964, we formed a civil rights organization for women: The National Organization for Women, which launched class-action lawsuits and held demonstrations for women's sex-based legal, reproductive, economic, political and social rights.
In the late 1960s, we marched, protested and famously took over offices, joined consciousness-raising groups, organized speakouts, raised the issues of rape, incest, sexual harassment, woman-battering, pornography, prostitution, the sexual objectification of women and a woman's right to sexual pleasure.
Finally, throughout the 1970s, we also introduced feminist ideas within our professions and at universities. More women became physicians, lawyers, judges, scientists, business executives, etc. than ever before.
In other words, we entered previously all-male professions even as we continued to serve as nurses, childcare providers, teachers, office managers, and, of course, as mothers and wives.
University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines react after finishing tied for 5th in the 200 Freestyle finals at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships on March 18th, 2022, at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta, Georgia. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
By the 1980s, our most visionary work had been disappeared from the American college curricula. Women's Studies rapidly became LGBTQ studies; racism trumped sexism as a core concern; prison reform for Black men erased all interest in shelters for battered women and rape crisis centers.
Ironically, anti-capitalism/anti-imperialism/anti-Americanism as well as "intersectionality" were neat ways of denying Islamic gender and religious apartheid and a long history of Islamic imperialism and anti-Black slavery.
It was also a conscience-free way of deserting and betraying women in the Middle East, Central Asia, India and the Far East, many of whom were victims of genital mutilation, sexual slavery and honor killings.
Today, American teenagers have begun dressing as if they are celebrities i.e., half naked in public – except they lack the bodyguards and the money that celebrities command.
Studies reveal that too many women are willing to have sex "as if they are men" but without experiencing sexual pleasure. Tragically, these trends continue.
Second-wave feminism was far more focused on the right not to become mothers against our will than we were on the right to become mothers and to be able to raise our children in stable family environments, without risk of extreme poverty, and without the risk of losing our children unjustly. I was one of the feminists who stood against this.
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I wrote three books about mothers and children and organized speakouts to discuss these subjects so crucial to women.
At the time I covered the Mary Beth Whitehead case in New Jersey, the first contested surrogacy case, I was attacked by many liberal feminists who saw education and economics as the prime requirement for motherhood. Biology was not important.
By the 1980s, our most visionary work had been disappeared from the American college curricula. Women's Studies rapidly became LGBTQ studies; racism trumped sexism as a core concern; prison reform for Black men erased all interest in shelters for battered women and rape crisis centers.
In our time, those who truly care about biological or adoptive motherhood are primarily men and women who are more traditional than anti-traditional. They are not statue topplers or history revisionists.
Such pro-family believers are usually more religious than secular, tend to be classical liberals, not left-wing radicals. Few self-styled faux feminists are among them.
Here's something interesting. I recently co-led a grassroots team which rescued nearly 400 women from Afghanistan. Guess who assisted us? Religious Jews, religious Christians and religious Sikhs. And, thank God, some second-wave style radical feminists who have long been on the front lines against pornography, prostitution and trafficking were right there to help.
Younger grassroots women? They continued to provide good lip service ("Taliban bad, American military worse"), but did no heavy lifting.
Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D, is an emerita professor of Psychology at City University of New York. She is a bestselling author, a legendary feminist leader and a retired psychotherapist. She has lectured and organized political, legal, religious and human rights campaigns in the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, Central Asia and the Far East.
