In truth, feminism as espoused by the 2nd-wave forward jumped the shark a long time ago, but things reached a fever pitch in 2014. This was the year that the cave-dwellers usually confined to websites like Tumblr and Jezebel made a break for the mainstream, making us all dumber for having listened to them. Feminism of this stripe is like a particularly bad infection; even after a good round of antibiotics, it can still come raging back. A year of blunders is unlikely to rid us of this far-left philosophy, but we can at least appreciate how it fell flat on its face.
The UVA Rape Case
Rolling Stone, for the first time in decades, was relevant again in 2014. After running a shocking expose written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the magazine was responsible for putting rape culture on trial. The details of a horrifying gang rape at the University of Virginia had many wondering if it wasn’t about time to shut down the fraternity system altogether.
Unfortunately for them, it all turned out to be hogwash. It took only a little effort on the part of real journalists to expose this story as the fraud that it was. The writers who had used it as an excuse to rail about the patriarchy maintained that the “facts” of the story weren’t important, but anyone with a brain left in their heads had already stopped listening.
The Hobby Lobby Decision
Feminists went ballistic when they realized that the Supreme Court had chosen to rely on the Constitution rather than the writings of Andrea Dworkin to decide the Hobby Lobby case. Ruling that the crafts chain was permitted to refuse to pay for abortifacient birth control, the highest court in the land drew the ire of angry liberals everywhere. They couldn’t understand how a right guaranteed in our founding documents trumped a woman’s right to abortion pills. What kind of a crazy world is this, anyway?
Let It Go
At first, the blockbuster success of Disney’s Frozen was heralded as a step forward for strong female characters. Feminists, of course, weren’t satisfied. Instead of acknowledging the movie’s subversive characters, they went on the attack. There’s no “roster of female supporting characters,” whined one article. “They have ginormous eyes,” wrote the Big Bang Theory‘s Mayim Bialik on Frozen‘s star sisters. Another feminist decried Princess Elsa: “Are we really so frightened by the concept of the empowered feminine that we are unable to even entertain the possibility of a rational and constructive woman who also exhibits great power and authority?”
Ah, feminists of 2014. You made us laugh, you made us…well, mostly just laugh.
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