Why are Modern Feminists Such Wimps? — a guest post from Lulu

Modern feminists protest loudly and without risk about “rape culture” and abortion, while ignoring the horrors that Islamic countries inflict on women.

Modern Feminists and Islam

The suffragettes who literally risked life and limb to get women the right to vote were heroes who began the process of achieving equal rights for women at a time when many basic rights were denied. Women didn’t have the right to control their own money, they lost custody of their children in the event of a divorce, married women could not work, women could be legally battered by their husbands, and women were widely regarded as a mentally weak sex and inferior to men intellectually.

Authorities in both American and Britain severely persecuted the suffragettes. When suffragettes protested arrests that violated basic civil rights, the authorities responded by force feeding them with energetic brutality. Suffragettes from all walks of life knew that their family, friends, and community would stigmatize and abandon them for the stands they took. Yet their moral clarity and bravery prevailed in the end.

Modern feminists today should take note. The women protesting so vigorously a hundred and more years ago were heroes.

Today, it is easy to see that modern feminists have lost their way in every sense. They no longer fight to defend women in need, here or abroad. They fight fake fights against safe targets that will back them up (universities, university men), or safe targets that are too vulnerable to fight back (unborn babies or university men due to Title IX).

Feminist displays are certainly dramatic. Take for example the young woman at Columbia University who carried her mattress around as a school project for an entire academic year as a statement against a rape charge that was so unbelievable that even Columbia’s administration did not take it seriously. Nevertheless, was allowed to continue her protest at Columbia and received national acclamation from a fawning media.

Another example of modern feminists run amok is the Rolling Stone story alleging a vast culture of fraternity gang rapes at the University of Virginia. That the Rolling Stone reporter never bothered to verify the story highlights the fact that whether these incidents actually occurred was less important than the message that women should always be believed.

Finally, what could better symbolize how far modern feminists have fallen from the suffragettes than the thousands of women who marched in Washington DC, and around America, wearing pink pussy hats and vagina shaped headgear to speak symbolically on behalf of vagina power and, utterly without the saving grace of irony, to protest against their claim that America objectifies women All these events had either shock power or high emotionality. In the end, though, all stood for nothing —  neither a particular pressing need for women, or the truth. The women who marched with vagina hats were not shackled suffragettes, they were fruits of the suffragettes labor. They were empowered, emboldened, lucky women who sadly were fighting for absolutely nothing.

For years now I have wondered why NOW and other feminist organizations concentrate on only two things: abortion and the so-called “rape culture” they claim is prevalent on college campuses. Regarding the latter, they endlessly claim that one in four women is sexually assaulted on campuses, a number matching the very worst of statistics for those poor women trapped in war zones who risk rape every time they try to collect firewood.

This one-in-four number is so terrible that one would think we need a National Guard presence on campuses — yet the women decrying this epic disaster don’t behave as if it is that terrifying at all. They send their own daughters to study in these hotbeds of assault and don’t even bother to give most of them self-defense training. Many of them are students in the same places they claim are as dangerous as war zones.

Why is this? One-in-four is catastrophe. If NOW believes things are as bad as they say they are, they could and should respond in ways that go beyond mere Title IX legislation. For example, they could organize volunteers to guard vulnerable female students at parties and to protect and accompany those who are drunk and whose inhibitions have dropped to keep them from being alone with a potential exploiter. Perhaps they could advocate for legislation to get universities to do the same. There is a risk, of course, that students would resent this as intrusive, but as was true for Prohibition, modern feminists could reasonably argue that these limitations are a small price to pay to protect the one in four. Right?

The other cause dear to modern feminists — in fact, NOW’s existential cause — is abortion rights. My opinion is that one should understand what one is supporting and what one’s opponent believes, though this is a minority view. I therefore think it essential that women who advocate passionately for unfettered and late-term abortion should actually know what happens to the fetus during an abortion and know what happens when an aborted fetus is born alive.

Think about it: NOW’s concern is a return to the horrors of back alley abortions. Pro-Life advocates are concerned that Planned Parenthood makes a profit selling off the body parts and organs of the babies they abort. These concerns could be addressed through discussion, not histrionics, but they are not. I suspect that few women looking to NOW for guidance have heard of Kermit Gosnell. Perhaps they do not wish to know.

Even as modern feminists focus obsessively on a non-existent rape epidemic and refuse to address the reality of abortion, there are catastrophic crises women around the world, especially in the Islamic world, face on a daily basis.  It seems that the outspoken feminists and feminist organizations have forgotten these women. Some of the disasters against women occur abroad, but some have reached our own shores.  When a NOW employee who had never heard of many of the challenges facing women other than campus rape and back alley abortions told me that NOW only addresses domestic concerns, I made sure that the list of true crises facing women includes issues both foreign and domestic.

International Crises That Affect Women

Female Genital Mutilation: Throughout the Islamic world (with a small dash of non-Islamic African enclaves), little girls literally are getting their clitorises hacked out to deny them lifelong sexual pleasure. Another common treatment, whether or not the clitoris is first excised, is to sew up the girls’ labia to preserve their virginity. Not only does this make their first sexual experience a nightmare of torn flesh and blood, in the worst cases it leaves the girls able to urinate only in drops, increasing risks of UTIs, and makes them unable to practice decent hygiene during menstruation.

Honor Killings: The murder of a woman by her family members, often because she has violated a patriarchal norm or religious tenet and desires to make choices of her own. Just recently, in Pakistan, a 12-year-old girl’s family members kidnapped her and sold her into sexual slavery. When she was finally rescued from this horror at aged 17, her brother killed her and tossed her body into a well to preserve the family’s “honor.”

Restriction of Rights: Not letting a woman leave her home without an approved male escort. Not allowing a woman to drive. Not letting a woman choose her own marital partner. Not letting a woman appear in public without her hair or face covered without facing imprisonment or other persecution. Valuing a woman’s testimony as less than a man’s in court. Requiring a witness to a rape to accept a woman’s testimony. Considering victims of rape to be adulterers subject to punishment. All of these are normative laws in the Muslim world.

Forced Marriage of Girls to Adult Men: Marrying a minor child to an adult male, resulting in very painful intercourse and a child giving birth too young an age, damaging her physically. This is the norm throughout African and the Muslim Middle East.

Fistulas and other Women’s Health Issues: Women who have suffered this devastating and stigmatizing condition, often due to childbirth at too young an age, desperately need medical support and public education. In poor countries, and countries that don’t value women, that support is denied them.

Fighting against Legalized Wife Battery: Television programs educate men on the proper techniques of wife battery according to the laws of their faith in many parts of the world.

Sexual Assault against Women: Fighting against the practice of large groups of men encircling women, trapping her in the center while grabbing and stripping her. Speaking out against legislators who minimize these crimes and journalists who cover them up. This used to be a common practice in the Muslim world and happened to CBS reporter Lara Logan in Egypt. It’s now also becoming the norm across Europe, wherever Muslim refugees have entered in large numbers.

Sexual Slavery and Using Women as War Booty: Throughout the Muslim Middle East and Africa, women and young girls are sold as sex slaves. They are put on public display, raped, used as war booty, and unwillingly turned into suicide bombers.

So far the silence to all the above-mentioned issues has been deafening. Perhaps that is because these events have taken place primarily in the Middle East, South Asia, Africa and recently, Europe. Perhaps NOW is less concerned about the fate of these women because they don’t see their situations on a regular basis and they don’t happen here. So they speak out instead on fluff and fake battles.

But do none of these things happen here?

Domestic Crises That Affect Women

There have been honor killings in the United States but the feminists have said nothing.

Last week two doctors and a third person were arrested for performing female genital mutilation on seven-year-old girls in the United States. This indicates the presence of a wider problem, including bringing children across state lines for the procedure. Why has NOW been silent about a practice that denies women sexual pleasure and is the abuse and torture of female children? In some parts of the world. the percentage of women subjected to this practice approaches 100%. Could anything be done to women that is more symbolic of the denial of women’s rights?

Why don’t feminists seem care about what they say they care about? Is abuse different depending upon the identity of the perpetrator and the victim?

Why are feminists so cowardly if the abuse is committed in the name of Islamic faith?

Finally, as our culture rapidly changes, feminists are faced with challenges raised by the trans movement. I ask feminists why they have been silent when female athletes have had to compete against trans athletes who compete either with natural-born male strength or artificially induced male hormones. When these born men or chemically augmented women win, is this not unfair to born women?

Lately, women are being told that discussing their menstruation, wearing pussy hats, and breastfeeding persecute those “women” who do not menstruate, do not have breasts that can feed a baby, and who have male genitalia. Honestly, modern feminists and NOW, it is high time you defend women and their womanhood. If you don’t, the suffragettes’ hard-won gains will be lost to a bizarre new interpretation of gender.

Women are losing because modern feminists, by their silence, defend sharia’s abuses over women’s rights.

Women are losing because modern feminists are getting waylaid by the trans arguments, some of which hurt actual women, such as women athletes.

The bottom line is that modern feminists have failed to speak up for the most vulnerable and exploited women on our planet and fail to protect women from their encroaching loss of rights due to the scientifically suspect redefinition of what constitutes a woman.

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton must be rolling over in their graves.