Regarding the first aim, no decent man or woman opposes the concept of equality of the sexes. But people who do not call themselves feminists have a problem with the feminist notion of equality: Most feminists have conflated equality and sameness. And that's a huge mistake; the sexes are equal, but they are different.
A second major problem regarding the feminist claim of aspiring to women's equality is that feminists frequently provide false evidence to prove that women are not treated as equals.
The best-known example is the false statistic that American women earn about 25 percent less than men when they do the same work for the same amount of time.
Another example was relentlessly expressed during Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency, and has been especially expressed since her defeat: the assertion that she was the victim of misogynistic comments and that she lost because she was a woman. None of it is true. But it keeps feminists thinking of women as victims -- and people who think of themselves as victims are rendered weak.
That brings us to the second goal of feminism: enabling women to be strong and making women strong.
In one of modern life's bigger ironies, feminism has actually achieved the very opposite. In America today (as opposed to, let us say, Saudi Arabia, where it does take strength to be a feminist), the more stridently a woman identifies as a feminist, the less strong she is. Feminism has created what is undoubtedly the weakest generation of women in American history. My grandmother, who never heard the word "feminist" and never graduated high school, was incomparably stronger than almost any college-educated feminist I have ever encountered, or the many I have listened to and read.
My grandmother (and I suspect yours) would never have felt the need to retreat to a "safe space" when encountering an idea with which she differed. Yet we have a generation of young feminist women that is so weak that even if a woman comes to the women's campus to argue, for example, that when all relevant factors are taken into account there is no gender wage gap, they seek the comfort of stuffed animals, balloons and Play-Doh in "safe spaces." They also need "trigger warnings" alerting them that they may read something that disturbs them.
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I first suspected that feminism was a cover for weakness when, as a young man, I engaged in a public dialogue with the mother of modern feminism, Betty Friedan. At one point I said something with which she disagreed, and after calling me a "male chauvinist piglet" she stood up and walked off the stage. No man I have ever argued with has done that -- and, believe me, I've said far tougher things to many men than I did to Ms. Friedan. (For the record, she voluntarily returned to the stage after I neither apologized nor asked her to return.)
Nothing has changed since that evening (which was some time around 1980). Feminists still find intolerable words that men routinely use when addressing other men with whom they differ.
During one of their presidential debates, Donald Trump called Clinton a "nasty woman" in response to an attack on him. His remark was universally condemned as sexist by feminists -- both male and female. But didn't Trump mock Sen. Marco Rubio's height, label Sen. Ted Cruz "Lyin' Ted" and offer other similarly negative descriptions of male competitors? (And by the way, tens of millions of American women also find Clinton to be nasty.)
Modern feminists are afraid of life. They are afraid of differences of opinion. And they're especially afraid of men.
As one example, The Boston Globe reported in 2014, "A realistic-looking statue of a man sleepwalking in his underwear near the center of (the all-female) Wellesley College ... has caused outrage among some students in just one day after its Feb. 3 installation."
(I admit that I, too, was outraged about that statue -- outraged that an idiotic sculpture of a man sleepwalking in his underpants is considered art, and that it was placed there by the college's Davis Museum.)
A petition signed by hundreds of Wellesley students said, "It has already become a source of undue stress for many Wellesley College students."
Clearly, hundreds of Wellesley College students are very weak.
Feminists are (SET ITAL) outraged (END ITAL) and (SET ITAL) unduly stressed (END ITAL) by much of life itself, particularly by all but the most feminized men.
Nearly every time the words "misogyny" and "sexist" are used, they are untrue and only reinforce the conviction that feminists are weak.
When Donald Trump used the moniker "Miss Piggy" in speaking to the Miss Universe who gained nearly 60 pounds within months of winning her beauty title, that was neither sexist nor misogynistic. It was insulting.
And when Donald Trump privately boasted to another man that he was so famous that women would allow him to "grab them by the p----," that, too, was neither sexist nor misogynistic. It was juvenile.
The male desire to touch the bodies of just about every woman they are attracted to is -- trigger warning -- normal. It has nothing to do with hatred of women or viewing women as unequal. Gay men want to touch the bodies of just about every man they find attractive, and they don't hate men or consider them unequal. Such is male sexual nature. Strong women know this. Weak women, aka feminists, and their fellow male feminists (who are just as weak) deny it. It's too painful for them to deal with.
You want to know what women are strong?
Here's an example: any young woman who announced in a college class that as much as she may want a career, she is more interested in finding a good man to marry. In other words, any young woman who announced that she isn't a feminist.
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