The Feminist Double Standard

The Feminist
Double Standard

Although he increasingly finds himself in the position of the boy who cried "Wolf," still no one can be blamed for opposing a rush to judgment in the latest allegations of sexual shenanigans (and subsequent cover-ups) by Bill Clinton.
However, the real agenda of any political lobbying group can often be discerned by comparing the way that group responds to two similar situations, with only the names of the players changed.
The women's rights movement in America in this century was a fine example of effective legal and social reform, from suffrage to reproductive liberation. (Yes, abortion choice, but many forget that as late as the 1960s even basic birth control information was virtually outlawed in puritan backwaters like Connecticut.)

That said, however, it is the rare man or woman -- having figured out how to raise millions via direct mail and grown accustomed to a five- or six-figure salary -- who can bring herself to say, "That's it. Our job is done. Let's go home."
So we see the March of Dimes live on, seeking new diseases to treat, long after the retreat of polio. So, similarly, has the cause of feminism -- struggling to find new battles to fight -- degenerated of late into the Kaballah-like pursuit of hidden lesbian literary subtexts, or all too often found itself co-opted by humorless anti-capitalist "Equal Opportunity" bureaucrats more interested in torturing unsophisticated small businessmen like butterflies impaled on pins, than in doing anything more for the average working gal than spending their share of her paycheck. (Remember the "Hooter Guys"?)
Mailing lists in search of a mission, these rump feminists perked up quickly when law professor Anita Hill claimed she had been sexually harassed by

then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991, though Justice Thomas vehemently denied those allegations. Furthermore, it even came out that Ms. Hill had followed Mr. Thomas from one job to another, after the supposed harassment occurred.

Yet, at the time of the Thomas-Hill controversy, Democratic Congresswoman (now U.S. Sen.) Barbara Boxer led six other leftist congresswomen up the Senate steps to loudly and profusely condemn the nomination of Thomas, who (in the sheerest coincidence) interprets the Constitution to authorize a less expansive federal government than those ladies prefer.

A few years later, the National Organization for Women called for the resignation of U.S. Sen. Bob Packwood, R-Ore., after a number of women accused him of unwanted sexual advances ... but still before anything was proven in court.

So now, as the line forms to the left for those women who contend Bill Clinton has either had illicit affairs with them, or has improperly sought sexual favors from the unwilling, are these same folks ready to condemn him and take the side of the powerless women this man has allegedly abused ... and whose reputations he then routinely sends his minions

to destroy, should they ever dare speak?
Why, no. Marian Wright Edelman, executive director of the Children's Defense Fund, won't come to the phone, instructing an underling to explain "She doesn't speak personally about any national leaders."
And the National Organization for Women explains in a two-paragraph, generic fax that it is "unable to comment responsibly" on the validity of any charges against the group's friend and champion, Mr. Clinton.
"There is now overwhelming silence from major women's groups who were so quick to indict Bob Packwood before anything was proven true," Republican pollster Linda DiVall told the Los Angeles Times last week. Ms. DiVall sees this as "further proof that these groups exist primarily to serve Democratic administrations and the Democratic Party."
Why this tendency to demand a higher standard of proof when the charges name Bill Clinton? Because he has favored and funded programs these groups advocate, of course, from appointing more radically collectivist women to the cabinet and the courts, to pushing his current $22 billion (for starters) tax-funded day care program to tend the latch-key kids of mothers who only leave home in order

to earn enough pay the taxes on their husbands' paychecks, in the first place.

Why, just this week, the Times reports, "women's organizations are giving the administrations their recommendations for spending $15 million won by the Clinton administration to support family planning abroad."

Including, if recent reports out of Indian and China can be believed, more widespread access to ultrasound examinations, so young couples in those cultures can more easily decide to abort girl

fetuses, and only keep the more socially valuable boys.
Now, surely, there's a program all right-thinking women can get behind.

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127.

§ § §