A reckoning for contemporary feminism

A recent survey commissioned by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center found strong support among Americans under the age of 50 for the following proposition: Feminism has done more harm than good.

Most Republicans under age-50 agreed with this, and so did many Democrats in that age group. 46 percent of male Democrats under 50 agreed. Nearly a quarter of Democratic women under 50 did too.

What explains the disillusionment with feminism by so many liberals? Michelle Goldberg, a feminist, says it’s due to fatigue:

After four years of Donald Trump, more than two years of a pandemic, and an unending right-wing onslaught, a lot of people with feminist sympathies are numb and exhausted.

A moment’s reflection should be enough to dismiss this explanation. Hostile administrations tend to energize radical movements, not render them numb. BLM, for example, flourished during the alleged Trump “onslaught.”

Feminism itself spread its wings during the unfriendly Nixon administration and it flourished during eight years of Reagan. Furthermore, Trump was defeated in 2020. So even if feminists became exhausted due to demoralization while Trump was in office — a dubious scenario as we have just seen — they should have been reenergized following his defeat.

Finally, consider that an overwhelming majority of Democrats over the age of 50 —approximately 90 percent — reject the view that feminism has caused more harm than good. There’s no reason why older Democrats should be more numb and exhausted by the alleged Trump/right-wing onslaught than younger Dems are.

The numb-and-exhausted explanation for liberal disillusionment with feminism doesn’t wash.

What’s the real explanation? I think the age divide just referenced provides a big clue.

When older Americans think about feminism, we tend to think in terms of breaking down barriers to employing women, insisting on equal pay for equal work, trying to make sure women aren’t denied promotions because they won’t have sex with the boss, etc. The attack on these forms of discrimination has been highly, though not entirely, successful. Thus, people who think about feminism in this way — both Democrats and Republicans — resoundingly reject the view that the movement has done more harm than good.

But I suspect that many younger Americans don’t think of feminism this way. They don’t perceive contemporary feminism as an assault on traditional (and diminishing) forms of discrimination, and it’s easy to understand why they wouldn’t. The movement is fighting different battles these days.

Now it is combatting “micro-aggressions,” in other words any petty occurrence that might cause the overly-sensitive to take offense. It is fighting for female college students who blame bad decisions they make when drunk on men they had sex with — sometimes causing the male students in question be expelled. It attacks men for commenting on the appearance of women, even if the comment is positive.

Contemporary feminism can render the workplace hellish. This happened recently at the Washington Post thanks to a meltdown by feminist reporter Felicia Sonmez.

No wonder younger male Democrats and even a goodly number of younger female Dems are disillusioned.

I wish the Southern Poverty Law Center survey had asked a similar question about the movement for the civil rights of African-American. The results might have been similar to those for feminism.

The traditional civil rights movement pushed for all Americans to be treated the same way, without regard to their race — to be judged on the basis of their character, not the color of their skin. The vast majority of those who think about the movement in this way — presumably older Americans, by and large — would surely conclude that it has done more good than harm.

But today, the civil rights movement pushes for preferential treatment for African-Americans. It strenuously opposes treating them without regard to race. It also refuses to condemn blacks who riot and loot in the name of BLM, and calls for defunding the police even as police officers risk their lives to protect blacks from thugs who terrorize black neighborhoods.

Accordingly, I suspect we would see the same kind of old-young split in attitudes towards the movement for the civil rights of African-Americans that we saw for feminism. And I wonder whether younger African-Americans, whose familiarity with the movement might well be heavily influenced by recency bias, take a significantly more jaundiced view of the movement than their elders do.