We knew that self-awareness isn’t exactly a defining characteristic of progressive Twitter crusades, but Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards blundered into a feminist faux pas recently.
Richards was Twitter campaigning for “facts” on Monday, including such indisputable “facts” as praising Obamacare for no-copay birth control and asserting the government saves $7 “for every dollar invested in publicly funded family planning programs,” and that PP “leads the country” in medical standards for reproductive care. She also shared this “factual” little gem:
The Daily Signal’s Kelsey Harkness responded:
The study in question tracked the careers of 4,300 women born between 1943 and 1954, and analyzed their careers based on their access to the birth control pill (approved in 1960) between the ages of 18 and 21. One of the study’s authors, Martha Bailey, noted “remarkable wage gains” over the lifetime of women who were able to obtain the pill during those few years. Bailey went so far as to say the study may have understated “the pill’s broader influence,” saying, “It also likely affected the decisions of companies to hire and promote women.”
That may be true, but Richards’ blunder is still just that. For all her supposed advocacy for women, she attributes wage gains to the pill, not to women working hard, taking risks, making sacrifices, and bringing their brains and talents to the game. Hmm. So in order to gain equality in the workforce, women needed to take drugs. By her other “fact” tweets, one gathers that Richards still believes women need the pill to compete with men and maintain parity in the workplace.
Sadly, She’s Not Saying Self-Control Is a Success Factor
So the biggest factor in your career success is how you manage your lady parts. Richards is saying: Women, you need the pill to be as good in your careers as men are. That’s not a very empowering message. Feminists, if they are at all consistent, should read this as: I can’t believe you think I need the pill to be good at my job and make as much as men do.
Because men and women are essentially equal in every way, right? That’s part of the feminist platform. Yet here is the president of Planned Parenthood asserting that no, actually, you need a daily pill (and in case that fails, unfettered abortion access) to stay baby-free so you can continue your career uninterrupted by motherhood.
Mothers are also going to read this as an assertion that babies are career anchors. Tsk tsk, you should have stayed on the pill, ladies, and then you’d be strutting into the boardroom in heels instead of schlepping a baby down the hall in your socks to change another diaper.
Of course, the assumption underlying Richards’ praise of the pill is that women have no control over their reproduction apart from hormonal birth control. Babies would just be popping out right and left, because women have zero awareness of the fact that sex makes babies (fertility window? What’s that?), and zero awareness that abstinence keeps babies from being made, and clearly the oppressive and irresponsible men can’t be trusted with protection either.
Oh, and of course there’s nothing to the idea that lots of women actually like and want babies, especially not when they could be pushing papers in an office all day instead. Obviously, despite women’s high college graduation rates (they probably needed the pill for that, too), women are so stupid and uneducated that they need drugs dispensed, at no cost to them, so they can be competitive in the labor market. Factually speaking.
In Fact, Women Need All Sorts of Special Treatment
Not only that, but they might need extra time off work as well because that period they get every month, because they are women, is so debilitating. The Italian parliament is considering legislation that would give women who experience painful periods three days of paid leave every month. If a European country does it, it won’t be long before California (the land of special snowflakes) and several east coast states follow suit.
Never mind how we chide men on their drama when they get a cold: “Buck up, Buttercup. Try being sick for a week every month!” Now we, “the fairer sex,” need some extra help from…the patriarchy? I mean, to expect us to do this whole job thing without other people buying our birth control and paying for our menstrual leave is simply oppressive.
But then, we always knew progressives promote victimhood and the entitlement mentality. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a feminist, in service to those tenets, would go so far as to minimize the strength and contributions of women to society by saying the drugs are what really made the difference.
Women shouldn’t accept such soft bigotry. We are more than our lady parts, and far more capable than leftist feminists give us credit for. So thank you for the facts, Cecile Richards, but I’m quite confident women can thrive apart from your assistance.
