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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