By D.C. McAllister
Monday, June 12, 2017
J.K. Rowling lost it on Twitter when she unloaded on a
guy who called U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May a whore. While I initially
cheered her on, the fist-pumping quickly stopped when her tirade devolved into
a politicized feminist screed.
Here’s Rowling’s 14-tweet rant:
Just unfollowed a man whom I
thought was smart and funny, because he called Theresa May a whore. If you
can’t disagree with a woman without reaching for all those filthy old insults,
screw you and your politics. I’m sick of ‘liberal’ men whose mask slips every
time a woman displeases them, who reach immediately for crude and humiliating
words associated with femaleness, act like old-school misogynists and then
preen themselves as though they’ve been brave. When you do this, Mr Liberal
Cool Guy, you ally yourself, wittingly or not, with the men who send women
violent pornographic images and rape threats, who try by every means possible
to intimidate women out of politics and public spaces, both real and digital.
‘Cunt’, ‘whore’ and, naturally, rape. We’re too ugly to rape, or we need
raping, or we need raping and killing. Every woman I know who has dared express
an opinion publically has endured this kind of abuse at least once, rooted in
an apparent determination to humiliate or intimidate her on the basis that she
is female. If you want to know how much fouler it gets if you also happen to be
black or gay, ask Diane Abbot or Ruth Davidson. I don’t care whether we’re
talking about Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon or Kate Hooey or Yvette Cooper or
Hillary Clinton: femaleness is not a design flaw. If your immediate response to
a woman who displeases you is to call her a synonym for her vulva, or compare
her to a prostitute, then drop the pretence and own it: you’re not a liberal.
You’re a few short steps away from some guy hiding behind a cartoon frog.
Rowling seems surprised that a man of noble liberal stock
would behave in such a way, but from my vantage point as a conservative writer,
it’s more common than not. I won’t deny that conservatives have bashed me a few
times, but I’ve suffered verbal abuse mostly from liberal men and women.
Verbal Abuse Is
Standard on Social Media
Like many female writers and politicians, I’ve been
called everything from “d-mned c-nt” to “filthy whore.” A liberal gay man who
was angry that I criticized normalizing transgenderism threatened to rape me
with a Glock. When I advocated voting for Ted Cruz in the primaries, Trump
voters called me an elitist hag.
Later, when I advocated voting for Donald Trump in the
general solely as a political strategy given the corruption, anti-American
ideology, and failed policies of Hillary Clinton, Black Lives Matter men
threatened to rape me, and both liberals and “principled” NeverTrump
conservatives called me a mail-order slut sold by Putin to Trump.
Yeah, it’s ugly out there, especially on social media.
Notice I didn’t go on a rant complaining about being abused. I don’t know many
conservative women who play the girl card when they’re verbally assaulted in
the political arena.
Liberal women, however, are quick to respond with a whiny
gripe when they’re attacked, despite their silence when conservative women,
such as Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, and Michele Bachmann, along
with many others including my lovely female colleagues at The Federalist, are
denigrated in the vilest ways by the golden boys of liberalism. In this, Rowling
has thankfully deviated from the norm by coming to the defense of a
conservative woman.
The Fault Is
Identifying Liberalism With Support of Women
While I think Rowling and others who react to
name-calling mean well, their case for civility is undermined by their own
political philosophy, ethical propositions, and hypocritical feminist ideology.
Rowling makes it clear that she’s a liberal who has high expectations of
liberal men. For her, liberalism is synonymous with treating women with
respect.
The implication here is that other political views are
inherently disrespectful to women: To be liberal is to be pro-woman. To be
anything else is to be anti-woman. This is why conservatives are dismissed as
misogynists, stigmatized by a false label, before they even open their mouths.
They’re not liberals, so they must hate women—so the narrative goes, and
Rowling, a preeminent storyteller, does well advancing it.
In truth, liberalism is not pro-woman. As Rowling and the
rest of us have observed on numerous occasions, liberal men can be just as
abusive to women as any can other men. This is true for politicians,
businessmen, entertainers, teachers, or store clerks. Anyone who denies this is
simply lying to herself. Just consider the behavior of Anthony Weiner, Ted
Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and any number of rappers. Liberalism is no pathway to
sanctification.
Yet these men are often excused because they hold to a
political philosophy that is considered pro-woman. A liberal politician might
drive a woman off a bridge and leave her there to die, but he’s still adored by
the liberal cabal because he’s pro-abortion. Given this history of liberal
hypocrisy, Rowling’s willingness to call out a liberal Twitter follower should
be applauded. However, her argument is deeply flawed because her faith in
liberalism is misplaced. The supposition that liberalism itself is pro-woman is
a myth.
Progressivism Is
Worse for Women Than Conservatism Is
The fact is, liberal policies hurt women more than
conservative policies do. Big-government health-care increases costs and
reduces quality of care for women. Abortion puts women’s health at risk and
kills millions of little girls, devaluing life and leaving women struggling to
overcome trauma from self-inflicted violence. Welfare programs that perpetuate
broken families make women dependent on the state instead of being free
individuals.
Higher taxes rob women of the freedom to keep their own
property and spend their earnings as they see fit. Countless regulations on
businesses reduce the size of the workforce, cut wages, and hurt women who want
to provide for themselves and their loved ones. Increases in federal programs
undermine the effectiveness of local and state programs that are the real
safety nets for women who can’t provide for themselves or need help.
Centralized government makes politicians unaccountable to
female voters, fosters corruption, and ushers in a cultural serfdom that
generates inequality and dependence. Taxpayer-paid birth control takes money
from hard-working women and gives it to women who refuse to take personal
responsibility for their sexual choices. Wealth redistribution in the name of
compassion takes economic opportunities, jobs, and education from one woman and
gives it to another in the name of mythical material equality. This is
political theft that leaves women poorer and less free to make choices for
themselves.
Liberalism Is
Oppression
I could go on, but suffice it to say, liberalism isn’t
the panacea feminists imagine it to be. It doesn’t free women from oppression.
It is oppression. It’s bondage to state power. It reduces a woman’s control
over her own life. It makes her less free, less equal, less secure, less
prosperous, and, ultimately, less happy. Rowling’s diatribe about the supposed
glories of liberalism regarding the dignity of women is based on a false
premise—a lie that has seeped into the consciousness of too many, blinding them
to what liberty, equality, and happiness truly look like.
Showing respect to women is not a “liberal” principle
born of leftist political dogma. It’s a moral principle. It’s an objective
value based on the do-no-harm principles of natural law and human dignity derived,
not from fickle manmade constructs, but from the immutable imago Dei. Given liberalism’s rejection of natural law and
objective values in favor of moral relativism and subjectivism, it has no basis
on which to censure a man’s words or actions. The moral relativism of
liberalism provides no authoritative basis for Rowling to criticize anyone.
Liberalism rejects the meta-narrative of objective value,
leaving individuals to determine their own moral values for themselves: “What’s
right for me is right, and you can’t tell me any differently.” If we lived
alone on islands, this wouldn’t be a problem, but since we live in society with
others, these subjectively defined values are not evaluated according reason
and a common understanding of objective morality, which fosters respect, but
imposed on others through compulsion, intimidation, and force. Despite this
fact, Rowling puts liberalism at the center of her moral universe—a failed
proposition because it’s a universe bankrupt of morality except what the most
powerful determine.
Feminists Do
Precisely What Rowling Is Complaining About
The final flaw in Rowling’s rant is her demand that
liberal men stop defining and criticizing women in light of their femaleness.
“If your immediate response to a woman who displeases you is to call her a
synonym for her vulva, or compare her to a prostitute, then drop the pretence
and own it: you’re not a liberal,” she says. Yet, ironically, it’s liberal
women themselves who thrust their vulvas to the forefront of just about every
issue. They’re the ones who are steeped in identity politics and can’t see a
person as an individual but only part of a categorical whole—gender, sexual
preference, race, and infinite other “idenities” that eventually creep into
intersectionality.
Liberal women constantly define themselves by their sex.
“I am woman” is screamed from every corner of society, assaulting the senses
like George Orwell’s Two Minutes of Hate. Everything is woman-centered. First
female scientist, first female doctor, first female president, women’s issues,
women’s health, women’s day, woman’s march, p-ssy hats, vagina suits, vagina monologues,
vaginas, vaginas, vaginas. What started years ago in first-wave feminism as a
reaction to men seeing women only in light of their sexuality has led to women
seeing themselves only in this same light.
Feminists today are the ones who’ve put woman’s genitalia
on parade and demanded that men genuflect before their sex. Liberal men have
complied, positively affirming feminist demands and allowing female subjective
morality to be imposed on them. Some of these saps even go so far as to call
themselves feminist men.
Why, then, is Rowling so offended that a man like this
negatively responds within the same gender-identified context? He’s actually
being rather consistent, don’t you think, not to mention exercising his
subjective rights in a universe of relativism? He’s been told to see women
through the grid of their sex, not their humanity, individuality, and certainly
not through any objective morality. When he lashes out, still focusing on her
femaleness, except this time in a negative light, who are feminists to
complain? They can’t change their narrative just because their feelings are
hurt.
Feminists have a choice. They can either continue to make
their sex the primary issue in every political, social, and cultural debate,
and thereby live with consequences of being seen, judged, and treated according
to their vulvas. Or they can stop being hypocrites and treat everyone as
individuals, each unique and not merely a part of a category in some
intersectional paradigm.
They can stop advocating liberal policies and ideologies
that hurt women, and they can embrace conservative principles that promote the
dignity of women and men as self-governing individuals. Finally, they can
reject relativism, which gives them no defense to oppose hostile forces in a
morally bankrupt world, and embrace objective values that promote virtue,
peace, and respect. The choice is theirs.
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