No, America Does Not Hate Women
By: Andrew Endymion
Tags: America Hates Women, Hillary Clinton, Midterms, Election 2018, American Women

No, America Does Not Hate Women

Signs of progress or patriarchy?

America isn’t ready for a female president. America still doesn’t believe ladies. America hates women. In short, it’s a grim time to be a female in America.

That is, according to many of the self-appointed voices of feminism in the media and Democratic Party.

One problem: The arguments supporting these dire pronouncements don’t hold up under scrutiny. As with racial equality, the United States still has miles to go before it can completely erase the damage done to gender equality by its years spent as a patriarchy dominated exclusively by white men. However, you can acknowledge this fact while simultaneously acknowledging the nation has made significant progress towards the necessary goal of total equality.

For example, every news outlets will tell you a record number of women are seeking political office. Some have already won—including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley, both of whom authored shocking upsets over long-serving, male incumbents—and many more are likely to do so. California just became the first state to address the historic underrepresentation of women on corporate boards of directors by requiring publicly held companies to have at least one female board member.

Most importantly, the #MeToo movement has brought a small measure of justice to powerful predators as well as their victims across a variety of industries. Hopefully, it has declared, once and for all, that such behavior was never acceptable and will no longer be tolerated.

But 2018 is a midterm year and an especially critical one with President Donald Trump in office.

Consequently, both sides of the aisle are looking for any fuel to spark, then sustain voter enthusiasm. Unfortunately, Dems and their media operatives have decided to use Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation fiasco to revive the “America does not ❤️women” meme that proliferated during and in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Because that worked wonders.

Ever since the 2015 primary season, America has been told repeatedly and vigorously that a vote for anyone other than Clinton was a vote for misogyny. It didn’t matter if you preferred Bernie Sanders’ populist track record, Jill Stein’s environmentalism, Gary Johnson’s libertarianism, or Donald Trump’s anarchy. It didn’t matter if you were genuinely anti-establishment, anti-war, or pro-life. Hillary was the most qualified candidate ever and a visceral hatred of women was the only reason anyone could possibly have for denying her a seat in the Oval Office.

Ah yes, fun times.

At least that’s what Democrat loyalists insisted.

They’ve repeated this false binary in the wake of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation of attempted rape at the hands of Kavanaugh and friend (or friends).

America was told it absolutely must believe Ford’s accusation. It didn’t matter that there was absolutely no evidence to corroborate her account, that Ford could remember few details about the attack with any certainty, or that her version of events suffered from numerous inconsistencies.

You either believe this specific woman or you’re a rape-enabling pig who doesn’t believe any women. A female skeptic stabbed her gender in the back in favor of white supremacy. A male skeptic is an over-privileged (probably white) misogynist who hates his mother, sister, spouse, daughter, and any other female unlucky enough to cross his path.

No middle ground.

This is idiotic because the binaries aren’t just false; they’re laughably, transparently so.

It is clearly true that any women-hating knuckle draggers never considered a vote for Clinton nor gave Ford’s allegation a chance. But it is also true and with equal clarity that there were many good reasons to consider Clinton’s candidacy as well as Ford’s story carefully, and then reject them—Clinton because you were repulsed by something on her lengthy resume and Ford because you required even a scintilla of evidence beyond the accuser’s word.

Intelligent minds can differ as to whether there were persuasive reasons to withhold support from either woman. Intelligent minds cannot differ, however, as to whether there were legitimate reasons to withhold support. There were. Sexism is, by definition, illegitimate. It then follows that sexism cannot be the only explanation for Clinton’s loss or Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

Of course, this won’t stop those Democratic operatives from grinding away on the image of America as anti-women with the midterms approaching.

It’s a message that plays well with the base, but gets riskier outside the bluest of echo chambers. For one thing, it implicitly brings the Clintons back into the national conversation and reminds everyone of their still-exalted status in the party hierarchy. This means Democrats are betting the message won’t alienate uncommitted voters in the middle and on the left who see establishment types like the Clintons as a huge problem.

Noooooooo!!!

They’re also betting those same voters won’t be driven away by the blatant hypocrisy of demanding a person’s gender grant them inherent credibility that supersedes trivialities like evidence or the presumption of innocence (courtroom or no).

Finally and most stupidly, Democrats are betting the message won’t animate the Republican base—right before the midterms—enough to close the GOP deficit in voter enthusiasm.

Given what’s at stake, that’s a helluva gamble.

The strategy didn’t elect Hillary in ’16 and there’s little reason to believe it will work now.