This Lady's Not For Burning...Her Wonderbra

This Lady’s Not For Burning…Her Wonderbra

By: Rachel Marsden

The woman who singlehandedly rescued Great Britain from the clutches of socialism – Margaret Thatcher – once remarked: “I owe nothing to Women’s Lib.”

But full-time career feminists are never too busy to muse about how other women owe them, merely for possessing the same chromosomes. And now it’s Republican VP candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s turn to get an earful.

Alpha-bra-torcher, Gloria Steinem – who, frankly, did her best work while filling out a Playboy bunny outfit for a report in the 1960s - recently dismissed Gov. Palin, in the Los Angeles Times, as an unqualified tool of the “patriarchy”, and offered examples of women whom she evidently considers superior to Gov. Palin:

“We owe [Palin’s position] to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.”

First off, let’s remember that the reason Hillary Clinton didn’t go any further than she did isn’t because of “the patriarchy” – it’s because Barack Obama, specifically, didn’t pick her to be his running mate. There’s your patriarchal face, sweetie – and, if you insist on keeping segregated “team scores”, it’s both black and liberal.

Hunger strikes…picketing…Shirley Chisholm’s political career, focused almost exclusively on her race and gender – this kind of fiddling and symbolism is supposed to be the epitome of progress?

Aside from being from small towns and modest means, Gov. Palin and Lady Thatcher have something else in common: Any unduly emphasized gender differences with their male colleagues began and ended with their hair, makeup and choice of skirts. Other than that, they just got on with it.

What successful women realize, in politics and otherwise, is that there’s really no such thing as “women’s issues” – unless you’re trying to literally make a career out of it. Case in point: Conservative Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, largely shuttered the Status of Women federal agency offices. Miraculously, the status of Canadian women hasn’t tanked - with the sole exception being perhaps these feminists who were parked at The Man’s trough. Why? Because Harper implemented tax cuts and credits that have benefited everyone – including women.

Violence against women isn’t a “women’s issue” – it’s a law enforcement problem. Women in Western society know that a fist in the face isn’t normal, and men know that it’s not socially acceptable to get into a punch up with a woman. We don’t need feminists to tell us that. Granted, they may have some work to do on this front with those of other cultural backgrounds, but feminists – who are typically proud leftists - often get torn between a man’s Allah-given right to oppress one’s wife versus his right to subscribe to a glorious anti-Western culture.

The obliviousness demonstrated by this lot is almost quaint: They’re riled by Gov. Palin’s support of abstinence education – as though kids would never have heard of condoms and shagging if it wasn’t for the herculean efforts of feminists.

This week, CNN featured a Palin critic who denounced the governor’s refusal to implement mandatory paid maternity leave for Alaskan women. Whining about your wage and salary disparity while simultaneously trying to force your employer to pay for you to go off and have kids is rather rich. I can see why that pitch would have fallen flat with Gov. Palin, who was reportedly back at work within three days of giving birth.

Naturally, Steinem persists: “American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.”

Indeed, Democrats are good at talking things up. But again, it’s Palin’s husband who’s at home raising their kids. This isn’t a societal issue, or one that feminists have to stick their noses into – it’s merely a matter of women choosing the right husband. You choose a sexist flake who’s always out with his buddies at the pub? Not my problem, or other women’s, or society’s in general. Next time, don’t hook up with such cad.

Like Palin, Thatcher obviously chose the right hubby, as she said in a 1980 Conservative Party Conference speech: “At Number 10 I have no junior Ministers. There is just Denis [Thatcher] and me, and I could not do without him.”

Feminists are quick to dismiss successful women who don’t sing from their hymn book, oblivious to the fact that the Palins and Thatchers do more for women, as a result of leading with their actions and examples, than any number of feminist bloviators.

It’s because of Margaret Thatcher that poor people were finally able to own their council homes, that they had more money in their pockets because they weren’t being taxed to pay skyrocketing trade union ransoms, that women had a role model who could be both a loving mother and wife while simultaneously eviscerating her male counterparts in parliament.

Actor Matt Damon commented this week – with all the authority one would expect from someone who has great experience pretending to be a fictional worldly spy in Hollywood movies – that the idea of a “hockey mom “ like Gov. Palin possibly having to deal with Vladimir Putin terrified him. Leaving aside the fact that Palin is already in charge of the state that borders on Vladimir Putin’s country, I wonder what Lady Thatcher – who was merely Secretary of State for Education and Science before taking on Russia and reclaiming the Falklands through a war with Argentina – would say about that?

Let’s face it, the feminists’ real problem with Palin and Thatcher – who both successfully confronted the so-called “patriarchy” within their own party – is that they did it over issues that matter, not over the mere fact that they’re women.

If there’s anyone who’s giving the “patriarchy” a boost, it’s feminists who insist on dressing like men rather than celebrating their femininity – and who constantly go cap-in-hand to The Man, demanding more freebies, because they figure women require special exceptions to make a go of it in life.