If you want to know how to combat the social justice snowflakes of the liberal-Left, read what they’re writing. As unappealing as this sounds, it really is the best way to understand their progressive sentiments and pseudo-humanitarianism, and eventually dismantle their arguments.
Feminist blogger Luvvie Ajayi recently released her first book, “I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual,” a collection of essays on life, culture, social media, and fame. If you can get past the overuse of alliteration, painfully cheesy puns, and perpetual whining, you will gain insight into what has to be the most confusing, nonsensical social justice cause of our day: feminism.
Ajayi’s chapter on feminism is proof of a movement so progressive that its own proponents can’t even define it: “Believing that people should make their own choices about their own lives is ultimately what I think it means to be a feminist,” she writes.
According to Ajayi, “everyone should be a feminist,” because feminism is really just about “believing that women, and everyone, really, have the right to live life on their own terms.”
Sounds pretty unobjectionable, right? It even sounds, dare I say, conservative. Too bad not a word of it is true.
“Womanhood should be defined by each person for herself, because we are not all the same, and there’s no one way we can define it as a group,” Ajayi writes.
But if feminism is as subjective as Ajayi professes, why do people even use the term — and choose to define their entire existence on such? One word: victimhood.
Like most progressive movements, modern feminism purports to laud equality, tolerance, and freedom of expression as its primary goals. The truth, however, is that feminism promotes two unappealing visions of equality, neither of which could be considered “tolerant.”
Some feminists have attempted to reach equality by disarming and devaluing men. For these women, equality demands that the status and intrinsic worth of men be lowered for the sake of female liberation, independence, and “leveling the playing field.” This is the “fight the patriarchy” and “the future is female” group.
An alternative and more radical form of modern feminism asserts that equality demands total transcendence of sexual and all other differences — complete uniformity in role, in pay, and, consequently, in perceived value. This view not only attacks men, but any person whose beliefs or values challenge the progressive feminist agenda. I call this camp the “feminist fascists.”
“Ideology can go to hell,” Ajayi writes, “when the people who practice it consider themselves the gatekeeper.” Super tolerant.
Here’s the problem with that sentiment: Feminism is an ideology of sorts, which Ajayi even admits. And every ideology, or worldview, makes a truth claim, even if that claim is that anything goes.
The truth is, modern feminists aren’t OK with ideologies that contradict their liberal beliefs. People like Ajayi use the word “equality” to legitimize their claims of victimhood. They have the superpower of finding new ways to be perpetually offended.
Christina Hoff Sommers, AEI scholar and host of “The Factual Feminist” weekly vlog, explains how the feminist movement evolved into something its founders never intended. Instead of defending the dignity of women in the workplace and in the voting booths, today’s “intersectional feminism” unites women “at the intersection of propaganda, neurosis and rage.”
“They are bullying people now,” the “Who Stole Feminism?” author asserted in a recent interview with fellow feminist Camille Paglia.
Luvvie Ajayi notes in her book that the feminist movement has earned a bad reputation by “becoming synonymous with white women and that insidious white privilege.” Hoff Sommers agrees, and to an extent, so do I.
In her interview with Paglia, they discussed how a sort of “bourgeois protection” is being demanded by women who are least likely to experience any form of discrimination. Think: white middle-class college women and celebrities.
Ajayi writes that feminism “has been cruel by not equally prioritizing … the issues of women of color … and basically any woman who isn’t straight and white.” According to the 30-something blogger, people who question the purpose of the feminist movement “live in a dreamland” where “women are already equal.”
The irony here is that Ajayi’s adoption of “you do you” feminism only worsens this problem.
According to Sommers, intersectional feminism actually emerged in the black and Latino communities as a response to a women’s movement that attended “only to the needs of highly professional, middle class, upper middle class women.” Its main purpose was to address problems pertaining to cultural, racial, and economic minorities.
“But,” Sommers noted, “it has been appropriated by mostly middle class white women on campus.”
The term “safe space,” she added, was originally coined by early black feminists who congregated privately to discuss issues without any censorship from white feminists who didn’t have to worry about racism. As Ajayi notes, “They might be called ‘bitch,’ but we get called ‘n*gger bitch,” (edited).
Again, this is a valid criticism of the modern feminist movement, which is why it’s so mind-boggling that Ayayi, a black woman, would ascribe to an ideology that undermines any legitimate claims of oppression.
This is the tragedy of confused liberal feminism. Feminists today don’t want their “dignity” affirmed. They don’t want “justice.” They love their victim privilege too much.
Modern feminism isn’t about improving the lives of women; it’s radical progressivism by a different name.
“I just want women to be able to thrive, and my form of feminism is pretty simple: I do what I want to do and know I have the right,” Ajayi concludes the chapter.
Luvvie Ajayi does a disservice to any legitimate feminist causes by defending an ideology that doesn’t discriminate between special snowflake syndrome and genuine attacks on human dignity. To that I say, “Luvvie Ajayi, I’m judging you.” (For more from the author of “Modern Feminism: Lies, Bullies, and Whiners! Oh My!” please click HERE)
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