In January, it was a march. In February, it’s become a movement: a developing, inelegant phenomenon quivering with the latent energy of a post-march high. The covers of Time and the New Yorker recently featured a certain cat-eared pink hat. Organizers have developed 10 action steps for the first 100 days.
At USA Today, author Heidi M. Przybyla argued that “The march’s biggest asset — that it was completely organic and grass-roots — is now its challenge going forward.” Nascent march group organizers in New Jersey are hoping their collective acts as a clearinghouse on reproductive rights, climate change, and a free press.
In a four-part series on the social science behind the Women’s March, the Washington Post asked whether a movement “embracing such wide-ranging goals — from protecting immigrants to stopping climate change, from racial justice and religious diversity to reproductive freedom — [can] channel its support into sustained political action.” The Post suggested that Marchers shared a “common elevating goal,” though really, they had none. The Post stabbed weakly at a unifying hatred of the new president as its cause célèbre.
The Women’s March Wasn’t For Everyone
As we may not be rid of the pink hats anytime soon, we ought to consider the incongruity of the worldwide Women’s Marches, which proved more than some of their attendees had bargained for. Marchers’ multiple, varied motivations could be precisely the blocks upon which local organizers find themselves now stumbling.
One Saturday in January, some five million feminists gathered across the globe, a sea of pink that roared from L.A. to Copenhagen. They threw their fists in the air and chanted, “No Hate! No Fear!” The March’s siren song, “The Rise of the Woman = The Rise of the Nation,” was a palatable aphorism that spoke of no real agenda. That was not by accident. The Women’s March was not a march for every woman.
As the pictures and footage surfaced, it became clear that the feminism of the Women’s March was a grotesque caricature of its origins. This was not Susan B. Anthony’s party. What were once ERA picket lines, became cries of “Free Palestine.” What was once the 1979 Iranian protest by women against hijabs, became American-flag hijabs on placards hoisted high. It was “pussyhats” and the c-word and abortion on demand and female genitalia on our faces. How egalitarian!
How Intersectional Feminism Took Over
Except that it wasn’t. It was a vulgar, sacrilegious, overly-sexualized advancement of an agenda not only hypocritical in its application, but disingenuous about its motivations. The March was just more identity politics at play—disheartening for those who were foolish enough to believe we could be of any religion, political affiliation, or voting history to get behind it. You know, as long as we were women.
But we failed to read the fine print. Those with views on equality stemming from, say, the right to exist in the first place were shut down. With Planned Parenthood acting as “premier sponsor” of the event, it’s little wonder alternative perspectives were not tolerated. Once notified of their pro-life stance, March organizers dropped The New Wave Feminists before the ink on their posters was dry.
The intersectional feminism of the March wasn’t immediately visible. Straight, white women were tolerated, but certainly not exalted. The organizers wanted to make sure the march “[was] led or centered around women of color, or it will be a bunch of white women marching on Washington.” As a result, some feminists couldn’t help but feel that the real agenda of equality had been hijacked in favor of an illiberal liberalism.
This is the kind of double-speak at which the Left is so adept: where differences are celebrated, but only if they’re the right ones; where partisan mitosis continues until the only causes left to champion are those of the transgender, bisexual, Muslim illegal immigrant trying to get a late-term abortion.
The March’s ‘Equality’ Hid A Radicalized, Selective Agenda
Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards took the stage in her pink power suit but said nothing of Margaret Sanger’s overt racism. Planned Parenthood’s hidden eugenics, Sanger’s comments on the “deterioration of the human stock,” all leading to the abortion of a disproportionate number of black babies: nothing was said of this at the Women’s March. The March’s advertised “equality” hid its dirty secret: some people are still more valued than others.
The list of 50+ partners read like a who’s who of the radicalized Left, representing everything from climate change to gun control to stronger unions. Throughout, there remained an emphasis on the kind of manufactured terror that galvanizes progressives toward Obama’s promised “fundamental transformation of America.” The organizers of this “grassroots” movement may as well have been an Obama transition team.
The signs read: “Pu**y grabs back,” “Hysteria is the only appropriate response! Panic!” and “Why are you so obsessed with me?” printed over female reproductive organs (though it would seem that the ubiquitous “pussy hats” and foam vaginas had already answered the question).
Speakers Shared a Highly Partisan Message
Speakers were among the Left’s most assiduous cohorts, including Ilyasah Shabazz (Malcolm X’s daughter), and Zahra Billoo (of the Council on American Islamic Relations). With raised fists, marchers pawned chants from Assata Shakur, the Black Liberation Army member convicted of murder in the ’70s. Donna Hylton, who spent 27 years in prison for her participation in the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a gay man, took the dais alongside Cecile Richards. A predictably agitated Michael Moore howled, “We have to take over the Democratic Party…The old guard Democratic party has got to go,” thereby dispatching with any notions of the march’s non-partisanship.
Actress America Ferrera warned, “We are every single one of us under attack.” Ashley Judd delivered a long-winded monologue that was part Tennessee Williams, part spoken-word porn: “Our pu**ies ain’t for grabbin!” Madonna (ever the paragon of restraint and discretion) had a simple message for “detractors” (i.e., Trump): “F**k you.”
Were these our feminist heroes?
Linda Sarsour, one of the lead organizers of the Women’s March, was vocally defended by the perversely profitable Southern “Poverty” Law Center when criticized for her adherence to Sharia law. Sarsour’s celebration of her Sharia compliance was downright laughable at a “woman’s march.” Sharia calls for the complete subjugation of women—including rape, female genital mutilation, “honor killings,” and the murder of homosexuals.
Post-march, it came to light that Sarsour has family ties to international terror group Hamas, as well as the Council on American Islamic Relations (C.A.I.R.), which the Justice Department deemed to be a co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial. As far back as 2014, Sarsour was publicly defending C.A.I.R., though the United Arab Emirates classified C.A.I.R. as a terrorist organization that same year.
Feminist Roseanne Barr called Sarsour’s bluff, tweeting: “woman who helped organize th #WomensMarchOnWashington supports killing every Jew in th Middle East & th subjugation of all women #WAKEUP.”
Most Muslims also oppose abortion after 20 weeks. Yet there Sarsour stood before a cheering throng, pronouncing herself a “proud Muslim woman,” an adherent to a religion more incompatible with broadminded liberalism than any in the world.
The Women’s March Did Nothing For Actual Women
In the ultimate ironic twist, billionaire George Soros was the March’s pied piper. With ties to more than 50 partner groups, the same man who backed the violent Ferguson protests powered an event with similar vitriol. What remains of the March’s façade of inclusivity and non-partisanship has started to crumble. Salon unsurprisingly tried to dismiss Soros’ participation in a Glen Beck conspiracy theory. A little digging revealed it was Salon that had actually been duped.
Among those participating in the historic March were those whose lack of information on its actual agenda had profiteered the Left and its monolithic, make-no-concessions narrative. With enough pink and some language on social justice, the organizers had rightly predicted women adhering to a basic definition of “feminism”—the theory of equality of the sexes, regardless of their views on Sharia or the unborn—would clog the Metro stations with their signs.
These women have come to learn that their diverse and disordered march had been coordinated in large part by a capitalist pro-abort, an Islamic misogynist, and one very rich man.
