If you or someone you know is planning on watching the Golden Globes, you’re going to hear a lot about how women are an oppressed group and more needs to be done to achieve equality in America.
Actresses have promised to wear black to show their solidarity in ending sexual assault and harassment in the workplace by holding men and companies accountable. They’ve promised to make the Golden Globes a wake-up call to a society that is still ruled by “the patriarchy.” Mostly, they will be demanding equal pay for women, taxpayer-paid birth control, broad abortion access, and more women in positions of authority.
In other words, the show won’t be about who has the best acting skills; it’ll be a platform to advance politicized messaging that has little to do with concern for sexual abuse victims.
“We call for a significant increase of women in positions of leadership and power across industries,” the Time’s Up Now campaign states on its website.
In addition, we seek equal representation, opportunities, benefits and pay for all women workers, not to mention greater representation of women of color, immigrant women, and lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women, whose experiences in the workforce are often significantly worse than their white, cisgender, straight peers. The struggle for women to break in, to rise up the ranks and to simply be heard and acknowledged in male-dominated workplaces must end; time’s up on this impenetrable monopoly.
The Golden Globes will be riddled with statistics on how women don’t hold as many positions of authority as men and how they’re not making as much money as their male colleagues are. “We still have so far to go,” they’ll say. “The days of women being oppressed are over.”
Don’t be fooled by this rhetoric or distracted by their passion. Even if you’re not, don’t let those you know be duped, especially young people, who are more susceptible. Displays like this matter in our culture because they do have impact. This is a fact many conservatives often fail to realize or admit—a grave mistake that has put them on the defensive in the culture war.
It’s Worth Combating the PR Push with Facts
Cultural erosion takes time, and entertainment, the arts, and popular culture are powerful vehicles to bring about political and social change. Education also plays a significant role, but in a culture awash in celebrity worship and an exorbitant amount of time watching films and television, the influence of the entertainment industry on our psyche and values can’t be ignored. This is why it must be held in check by citizens themselves.
When speaking about women in the workplace, they’ll use the term “pay inequality,” as if women are doing equal work but not getting equal pay. You’ll hear it a lot. This, however, flies in the face of the law. Equal pay for equal work was established in 1963.
The Equal Pay Act requires that men and women in the same workplace be given equal pay for equal work. The jobs need not be identical, but they must be substantially equal. Job content (not job titles) determines whether jobs are substantially equal. All forms of pay are covered by this law, including salary, overtime pay, bonuses, stock options, profit sharing and bonus plans, life insurance, vacation and holiday pay, cleaning or gasoline allowances, hotel accommodations, reimbursement for travel expenses, and benefits. If there is an inequality in wages between men and women, employers may not reduce the wages of either sex to equalize their pay.
As a group, men do make more money than women, but it’s not because women are being denied equal pay for the same jobs. It’s because women put other priorities, such as having children, before pursuing lucrative careers. The wage gap is due to women’s free choices, not male oppression.
Feminists, however, don’t want to accept the messy consequences of having free choices. Instead, they want to force or intimidate women into being what they demand them to be, and ironically, that’s often to be more like a man.
Equal Outcomes Are Not Compatible With Equal Freedoms
Just as the Time’s Up Now campaign statement says, some women want equality of benefits—they want outcomes to be equalized. But people aren’t born with the same natural gifts. Some people are simply more talented than others. Likewise, men have strengths women don’t. Women have strengths men don’t. We value both in our society—or we should.
Naturally, these differences don’t always translate into the same careers, duties, or roles. To artificially force industries to equalize outcomes will require violating unique individuals’ politically protected rights.
At the Golden Globes, you’ll hear statistics about how men dominate leadership positions at companies or in politics. Feminists will try to convince you this is unfair and proves that men oppress women by keeping them from succeeding. The statistics will likely be correct. More men do hold more positions of authority, because many of these positions require masculine traits, such as risk-taking in a competitive environment, or because more men have maintained an uninterrupted career path to earn these positions, or because not as many women are interested in these positions of authority, particularly in politics.
Men Aren’t All Innate Abusers
Driving this demand for women to be in more leadership positions—especially in the context of sexual harassment allegations—is a grotesque belief that men are inherently abusive and should be replaced by women. Feminists believe that women need to represent women, women will be better for women, and women alone speak for and protect other women.
This notion borders on downright evil. It places a person’s sexuality at the core of his or her identity, not his or her humanity. The truth is men are not inherently physically abusive, just as women are not inherently manipulative and emotionally abusive. Men can and do represent the interests of women because we share a common humanity, and women’s issues can be protected and promoted by a man as well as a woman.
As for a man in a leadership position threatening women’s safety, this has nothing to do with masculinity. It has everything to do with character. There are millions of men across this nation in leadership positions who have never abused their employees. There are fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons who have never been violent toward a woman. In fact, most are loving and protective. To say men must be removed from leadership because they’re a threat is to disrespect countless men whose lives are a testimony to the contrary.
Using Sexual Abuse Victims to Advance Different Causes
Given the fact that most men aren’t sexually abusive, we do not have a “culture of sexual violence” in America. We have individuals with bad character and a few industries that have turned a blind eye to the despicable actions of some men because of lust for power. Women in Hollywood and the media have been as complicit as men in remaining silent—just ask Meryl Streep.
No doubt we’ll hear heartbreaking personal stories and political statements couched in humor, all glowing with Hollywood polish and refinement, but the glitz and glam don’t negate the fact that the fundamental message is not primarily about sexual abuse victims, no matter how many they line up for the world to see. It’s about the advancement of a brutal ideology opposed to everything that undergirds America and a free society.
The demand for equal outcomes is inherently totalitarian because a government that coerces equality of outcomes will necessarily rob citizens of their rights and liberty. “From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently,” Friedrich Hayek said in “The Constitution of Liberty. “Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.”
