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Monday, November 14, 2022

How Toxic Femininity Influenced the Election---and Everything Else in the Culture

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This weekend "The Daily Caller" published this: 

It’s time for conservative women to step up.

For years we’ve heard about “toxic masculinity,” yet what we should really be concerned about is “toxic femininity.”

As results of this year’s midterm election poured in, one thing became abundantly clear—the radical feminist movement of the 1960s has come to full fruition.

In 2011 the late Phyllis Schlafly published a book titled, "The Flip Side of Feminism"--warning the culture to be careful with this developing movement that was birthed in the 1960s.

The book was and is controversial because it is Scriptural rather than "woke." 

No wonder our kids can't even figure out what gender they are.

Be informed, not misled.

The number of single women in the United States is rapidly increasing, and a large majority of them are voting Democrat. Polling from this past week’s midterm elections shows that Democrats led by 37 points among unmarried women.

So what’s swaying these women to vote Democrat?

Women today are told that their happiness and their worth come from a corporate job. That raising a family will only hold them back. That the concept of marriage is an outdated and sexist concept. Women nowadays would rather be beholden to their jobs than to husbands and children because, after all, that’s true freedom. Right?

The extension of this kind of thinking has, in my view, created a cultural fog regarding the difference between men and women.

A recent example is the newly seated Supreme Court Justice Ketaji Brown Jackson. During her nomination hearing she was asked, "What is a woman?" This woman, who now sits on the highest Court in the land, couldn't---or wouldn't answer the question. She wasn't sure.

This is the highest form of confusion. Yet she rules on the most important issues in the United States.

The Caller says, "While the feminist movement of the 1960s preached equality, as the decades have passed by we’ve seen just the opposite occur. Feminists have waged an all-out war against the traditional family and traditional gender roles to create one type of woman — the career-driven, childless woman. Just last week on The View, host Sunny Hostin likened women voting Republican to 'roaches voting for Raid'.”

"These women despise other women who reject the false promises of modern-day toxic feminism."

The writer of the Daily Caller article said, "Look no further than Jefferson County, West Virginia. When myself and fellow stay-at-home mother Jennifer Krouse ran for two positions on the county commission, we were attacked for being traditional, conservative women."

Democrats railed against our campaigns, decrying that I was “tone deaf” and a “stay-at-home mom who posts homemade cookies on her campaign page” and that Jennifer’s love for her country and family was “too extreme.”\

So much for the Left being the party of women’s rights and women’s voices.

The writer, Clare Ath, continues, "If Republicans want any chance of winning future elections, they must engage in the culture wars head-on. And that means engaging the women of this country to embrace traditional womanhood and to reject toxic feminism. We need to build up families, build up communities, and rely on one another rather than the government."

She's right. The family is the indispensable institution, the only one capable of producing the next generation and preparing it for the burdens of productive citizenship. Its ongoing collapse poses the greatest threat to American liberty and prosperity.

Beginning in the 1960s, a rising share of children have been born to single mothers and raised in unstable households. More recently, marriage and fertility rates have fallen to the point that more 30-year-olds are living with their parents than are married and parents themselves. In 2020, only 2.1 million American children were born annually into married families, compared to 3.1 million in the late 1960s, though the population has nearly doubled over that period.

Clare Ath says it was "Phyllis Schlafly and a group of housewives in the 1960s that stopped the ERA in its tracks. While Schlafly won that battle, we conservative women have been losing the war since then."

About Phyllis Schlafly. And women.

I knew Phyllis personally. She was the real deal---wife, mother of 6 children, grandmother to16, excellent attorney, and deeply committed Christian.

In 2011 US News and World Report reported, "With the debate of feminism revived by Sarah Palin's recent claim that she's one of them, Phyllis Schlafly is jumping in with a new book that suggests the 1960s 'women's revolution' movement is ruining women and the country. Written with her niece Suzanne Venker, The Flipside of Feminism provides readers with a new view of women in America."

US News quoted Phyllis' niece: "The bottom line, says Venker, is that, 'Feminism has sabotaged women's happiness.' Worse, she adds, it's flipped male-female relationships upside down. Just one example: Men more than ever are seeking love, marriage, and kids while women want independence."

As Schlafly's niece, Venker grew up seeing an alternative view to mainstream feminists' views on TV and in the media. Now as a mother in Missouri, she's trying to help her aunt highlight what conservatives feel is wrong with feminism and to build a new understanding between men and women.

The book is controversial, especially in liberal circles, for lines like this: "Unfortunately, once feminism came along, women abandoned their pedestal in droves and decided they wanted to share the man's pedestal with him. They claimed they wanted both sexes on the same pedestal to represent equality and prove men and women are the same. Instead, they found themselves in conflict. Since there isn't enough room on a pedestal for both of them, feminists pushed men off to make room for themselves." She added, "That's not equality. That's matriarchy."

Mainstream media and liberal politicians and pundits also take a big hit in the book. She blames them for promoting feminism. 

They are especially critical of the "feminist elite" including Oprah, first lady Michelle Obama, CBS anchor Katie Couric, and Arianna Huffington. "What these women have in common is clout, and they believe they know what's best for women," they write, adding: "The problem is that the majority of women in this country don't have the power—feminists do. And feminists influence liberals as well as conservatives to conform to the feminist message."

Takeaway.

Keep in mind her book was written 11 years ago.

Here are the 5 main points of the book:

Five Ways That Feminism Has Ruined America

1. It hurt marriage. Women want to wait so that they can keep their identities longer and men are finding easy sex, taking away a big reason for marriage.

2. Undermines child-rearing. More kids are in childcare where discipline is lax resulting in an "epidemic" of bad kids, childhood obesity, and bullies.

3. Two-income trap. With both husband and wife working it's hard to live without life's luxuries.

4. Undermines college sports. Title IX has ended many male-only sports at some colleges.

5. Emasculates men. It's better to be a wuss than speak up or mouth off and face charges of harassment or chauvinism.

Clare Ath says, "In order to be truly pro-women, we need to be embracing a pro-family agenda and policies that support the family formation and give women the option to stay at home." 

She continues: "If you’re a mother, the time of being apathetic toward politics is over. You need to step up, get involved, and make your voice known. We need the next generation of little girls to see that marriage and motherhood are things to aspire to rather than detest."

The Bible clearly lays out God's plan for "man" and "women." And family. The further we remove ourselves from God's Word the more confused we become---culturally and spiritually. 

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Faithful. Be Prayerful.