Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Biden’s Absurd Gender Strategy

National Review Online

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

 

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have no clue how to deal with the many crises their administration has created, exacerbated, or failed to get under control, but as of last Friday they now have a 42-page gender strategy. Gender strategy?

 

Yes, the “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality,” the first-ever such declaration because in the near-quarter millennium of this country’s existence no one ever thought we needed one, lays out a list of goals and aspirations and solutions to alleged problems whose existence keeps being asserted without evidence. “Health care,” for instance, is a strange action item to list as a gender crisis when women outlive men in this country by 5.7 years and that gap has been growing over the past decade. But of course the “women’s health” issue that most excites the imagination of progressives is the continued right to exterminate the unborn. By the progressive definition of “equity,” in which disparate outcomes are proof of unfair treatment, national gender equity would mean curtailing women’s lifespans and/or increasing men’s.

 

In an environment in which so many boys and men are unenthusiastic about higher education that nearly three-fifths of college degrees go to women, the report suggests we should feel outrage about “the girl studying hard, despite the barriers that stand in her way.” If there are gender barriers in education, a 60–40 split suggests they work against males. “Equity” in this case seems to mean taking a lopsided outcome and making it even more imbalanced.

 

As is usually the case with feminist calls to arms, the stated mission of aiding females quickly broadens into an all-purpose pursuit of social justice for the large majority who claim marginalized status: Among those described as needing more federal “equity” are “Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.” Since even a centimillionaire feels the bitter sting of inequality when contemplating the lifestyle of a billionaire, it would appear that the Biden definition of unfairly treated people in need of federal uplift includes more or less everybody.

 

With a cosmic level of obtuseness, the report worries about how “in Afghanistan, the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of a generation of girls and women are in jeopardy, threatening the future and security of the region.” Whose fault is that? As for the stated goal of “ending gender-based violence,” why stop there? If Biden and Harris possess the secret to stopping (unjust) violence, it seems a shame that they’d only bother with a small percentage of it. Nearly 80 percent of homicide victims are male.

 

The Biden gender strategy is a tired reiteration of longstanding Democratic Party strategy: convince most Americans that they’re oppressed minorities, and that only federal action can right all wrongs. In reality, American women are largely alarmed by the same cascade of woes that concern men: the never-ending toll from COVID, inflation, the border crisis, supply-chain delays that are denuding store shelves just in time for Christmas, the way our children are being educated. The gender strategy won’t deflect the public’s attention from the Biden administration’s abysmal record on all of the above.

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