Bad Campus Feminists Leading Nice Young Ladies Into Consensual Sex And Volunteer Work

If there is anything I love, it is a good "FEMINISM IS DESTROYING THE WOOOOOOORLD" screed, and an article published today by the James G. Martin Center For Whining About College Students Being Too Liberal titled "Campus Feminism: The Real War On Women" does not disappoint.

In said article, writer Shannon Watkins argues that while the whole "women's equality" thing may seem like a good idea, it is actually a very bad idea because it basically turns nice innocent women into man-hating sluts who do volunteer work that aligns with their political and social beliefs, thus making them tools of the radical left/Democratic establishment! Also it makes them sad : (

On the surface, feminist ideals seem to have the good of all women in mind: After all, who would characterize him or herself as opposed to women’s “freedom” and “equality”?

But a closer look at campus culture reveals that, in order to be considered “pro-woman,” one must accept a narrowly defined set of values—values that many women find unrelatable, if not repulsive. This includes the glorification of abortion, the rejection of masculinity, and the exaltation of sexual liberation.

Golly! It is almost as if these "feminists" don't even know that all of that is illegal . Clearly, if they were really "pro-women" they would want to give women the right to die of sepsis from illegal and unsafe abortions, they would encourage their fellow women to be more sexually repressed, and they would never criticize men or anything they do, least of all the way in which our notions of masculinity affect the larger culture.

Watkins tackles the sexuality issue first, by complaining about "hook-up culture," "sexual anarchy," and, uh, lesbians?

One example of how colleges promote hedonism is the annual “Sex Week” sponsored by colleges and universities across the country. Organizers of the week’s events claim that it is meant to teach students about how to have fun and safe sex. Porn stars and sex workers are frequent guest speakers throughout the year.

This Valentine’s Day, for instance, UCLA’s LGBT center hosted a workshop entitled “Sexy, Safe, and Consensual” where a sex worker, holding a whip, spoke about “bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, sadism, [and] masochism.”

Yes, surely there is nothing worse than sex that is "Sexy, Safe and Consensual." Why can't they have workshops with titles like "Fun With Thinking About England: Monty Python skits and fish 'n' chips recipes to consider while performing your wifely duty"? Why, it's almost as if colleges think students are legal adults who can have whatever kind of sex they want so long as it's consensual!

Even worse, sometimes college students have to read books . And not just any books, mind you, but books written by people whose very existence is morally objectionable:

This celebration of sexual license invades students’ classrooms and reading assignments as well. The graphic novel Fun Home , which depicts explicit lesbian sexuality, frequently appears on college’s recommended summer reading lists and on course syllabi. But students who objected to reading the book on moral grounds were mocked and dismissed by those inside and outside academia.

I, too, have heard that colleges often make students read dirty books! Like Chaucer! Rabelais! Balllllllzac! 

Oh, and Nabokov, Miller, Lawrence, Bataille, Roth, etc. etc., but they all wrote about dirty heterosexual sex so it's all good and wholesome.

Of course, if you have "moral objections" to reading a memoir by a lesbian, then maybe you are not quite ready for college and/or life, because lesbians exist whether your "moral grounds" approve of them or not.

But that is not all. Far from it. This modern campus feminism practically encourages young women to not have serious relationships, as those relationships might hinder their goals for the future.

Prominent feminist Hanna Rosin, for example, argues that “feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hook-up culture” because it eliminates women’s need for men. According to Rosin, women are the ones perpetuating hook-up culture because it allows them to keep “their own ends in mind.”

Oh, the horror. It is so weird that women might not want to deal with a serious relationship in addition to their studies and their work. It is almost like they are going to college in order to pursue a career rather than a husband!

In addition to all this rampant consensual, enjoyable sex happening, Watkins is also very upset about the way these campus feminist movements are nefariously plotting to lead these näive young women into a life ofcrimevolunteer work that aligns with their political beliefs.

But today’s feminism also has a side that is not even about women; the objective is to use feminism to draw women into the larger leftist political project. A quick glance at programs sponsored by college women’s centers reveals how feminists recruit college women for all types of political purposes. Take, for example, a program sponsored by the women’s centers at both Duke University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill: The Moxie Project. As a Moxie Scholar, a student earns a summer stipend while volunteering as an activist in local organizations such as the North Carolina Justice Center, Lillian’s List, and NARAL Pro-Choice. These organizations advocate policies such as on-demand abortion, lobby for liberal politicians, and help advance other explicitly liberal policies.

This would be fine, of course, if it were conservatives doing the same thing. For instance, if it were Patrick Henry College working to get their conservative Christian home-schooled students into the White House as interns, that would be okay. There would be nothing nefarious about that. In fact, later in the article, Watkins lauds organizations on campus that advocate not having sex and advance conservative policies and ideas.

She quotes one Moxie Project scholar even flat out admitting that feminism is a GATEWAY DRUG. A gateway drug that leads to noticing inequalities that affect other people, and probably also heroin.

Feminism is kind of like the gateway drug to social justice; you realize, like, everything else is wrong with the world after you realize there’s [sic] systematic inequalities about something as simple as gender…I really want to put what I preach into practice.

What these college students don't understand though, Watkins notes, is that feminism is actually teaching them to think that men are bad.

Feminism today has positioned men in the cultural cross-hairs. Wade, a feminist academic at Occidental College, goes so far as to say that it is “masculinity itself that has become the problem.” Another feminist writer, Jennifer Wright, argues that women are afraid that “men will murder them” if they do not give into their sexual advances.

Pssht! These ladies! Just because once a month or so we hear a story about a man killing a woman because she rejected his sexual advances, or because sometimes those men go on shooting sprees and murder a bunch of people, that is no reason to assume it's going to happen to you. Unless it does, but then you will be dead and you won't care. See! Problem solved!

Perhaps the saddest thing of all, however, is that feminism is not making women happy!

If mainstream feminism were a movement that truly fought for the well-being and freedom of women, then it is confounding that the social and cultural “wins” it has achieved over the last several decades has not resulted in greater overall female satisfaction and happiness. Perhaps that is why a growing number of women are tired of the radical feminist lobby’s claim to be speaking for all women. (In fact, only 23 percent of all American women self-identify as feminists.)

You know what? I'll buy this. At least a little. I do think it's possible that, in certain ways, certain women were happier and less satisfied before the feminist movement. There is a reason they say "ignorance is bliss." Questioning things is anxiety-inducing, being aware is depressing, and striving for more by definition means you're not satisfied. Never mind that it was practically a woman's job to at least appear to be "happy" and "satisfied" in those days, and it would have been considered unseemly for her to be otherwise.

We can be unhappy and unsatisfied now, and openly so -- without fear that experiencing those feelings is going to lead to us being sent to a doctor to cure our "hysteria" with vibrators or to a sanitarium to have someone shove an icepick into our brains. We can experience the full range of human emotions, freely, and that is pretty awesome. This isn't an argument against feminism, it's an argument for it.

Ironically, this whole article is a fabulous argument in favor of feminism. Go forth, women and femmes, and men, and everyone else -- have awesome, consensual sex, read books, do volunteer work, and feel your goddamned feelings. Because you can. And you have feminism to thank for that.

[ James G. Martin Center ]

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