Nicole Ruggle: «The new feminism infantilizes women».»

The new feminism no longer trusts women to assert themselves and negotiate successfully. It treats women like children, when in fact the opposite is true.

L’original article is published in German in Schweizer Monat.

The original aim of feminist movements was to liberate women from the oppression of patriarchal society. A woman should be able to decide autonomously on every aspect of her life. Contemporary feminism, however, reverses this principle. Worse still, it betrays the self-determination of the modern (Western) woman and pushes her back into an immaturity for which she is responsible, by infantilizing her and continually pushing her into a submissive victim mentality.

Support for private initiative in childcare. Mixed teams at all levels of management in business, politics and society. What, at first glance, looks like the left-wing party's propaganda agenda actually comes from the «Women's PLR» catalog of demands. Its president Susanne Vincenz-Stauffacher, participant in the women's strike celebrated by the media and supporter of a women's quota, even pleaded in a podcast for Republik to transform the initial funding of crèches into permanent public funding. Individual responsibility seems to have gone out of fashion, but protecting puppies and helping women into the stirrups are all the rage. If necessary, gender should come before ability.

Playing skill against sex

Playing competence off against sex is a trend that's on the rise. In June 2020, for example, the Socialist Women called for a boycott of «All-Male-Panels». Simply put: organizers who don't present an artificially imposed gender mix on the speaker stage are threatened with having their audience taken away. But instead of encouraging women to get more involved, to organize panels themselves or to acquire the technical knowledge they need to be taken into account, they take refuge in a childish, defiant attitude of refusal.

In the field of family policy, too, demands continue unabated. Socialist Women's central secretary Gina La Mantia, for example, is calling for free crèche places for all. This is a common misconception in social democratic circles, as the term «free» does not exist. Rather, it means that the community should cover the childcare costs of those who decide of their own free will to start a family. But the family is and remains a private matter. On the other hand, La Mantia rightly points out that it is usually women who take a back seat, «with serious consequences for their careers, their economic independence and their pension provision». This is precisely the crux of the problem. Women need to learn to negotiate as hard at the family table as they do at a job interview. It's important to demand sustainable, emancipating family models from your partner, and not to make hasty, ill-considered compromises - for the sake of family peace.

The left and left-wing bourgeoisie have not understood this. They see the taxman as a feminist, class-warfare self-servant who must artificially force emancipation and coercively guarantee it. The question is: how much more emancipating is a society that makes women dependent on the goodwill of politics rather than the tutelage of men? Is paternal protection by the state, which extols the equality of opportunity staged by politics, really preferable to personal initiative and know-how?

A victimized feminism with double morality

This infantilizing victim feminism, combined with a leftist statist faith, then penetrates deep into the tribalist territories of global politics. Thus, the global outrage aroused by Donald Trump's electoral victory in 2016 didn't abate for months. In 2017, the #MeToo debate followed - «believe all women» was the credo of the combative feminist movement; women must be heard when they speak out about sexual assault. At the protests, angry people demanded Trump's resignation, calling him a chauvinist and believing he should be removed from office.

When Tara Reade, former aide to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, accused him of sexual harassment in late March 2020, the ranks of the permanently indignant and self-righteous remained remarkably silent. Biden simply asserted that it had never happened - and the matter was quickly forgotten.

Reade is not an isolated case. In several cases, Biden has been accused of touching women suggestively without their consent or intruding on their personal sphere. Another example is Lucy Flores: this Democratic politician from Nevada accused Biden of abusive behavior at a campaign rally in 2014. Flores describes his behavior as humiliating and disrespectful, and she was ashamed and shocked. She feared she wouldn't be believed or that her accusations would be perceived as politically motivated - the whole affair turned sour.

In November 2020, the same feminist figures who, three years earlier, had loudly opposed any cover-up of alleged sexual assaults, nonetheless congratulated Biden on the web on his election victory. In October 2017, for example, American actress Alyssa Milano called on Twitter, under the keyword «MeToo», for women to publicly share their experiences of sexual abuse and harassment. The hashtag quickly went viral; Milano became the face of the movement overnight.

Solidarity with the alleged victims only manifested itself to the edge of its own filter bubble. Despite accusations of sexual harassment against Biden, Milano endorsed him as a presidential candidate - a decision other #MeToo activists couldn't support. Women must be believed, but this must not happen without men being legally heard and investigated, Milano justified herself. In 2018, however, she had unquestioningly sided with Christine Blasey Ford, a member of the Democratic Party who had made similar accusations against Republican Brett Kavanaugh. The inscription «believe women» adorned Milano's body when she attended an event in support of Ford.

Selective pop starlets

She'll proudly vote for Joe Biden, feminist pop icon Taylor Swift has again made clear in an interview. In 2017, she was voted «Person of the Year», one of the «silence breakers» of the «MeToo» movement, and featured on the cover of the Time, which earned her international recognition. Again in 2018, in a moving speech about her own experience of sexual harassment, she expressed her compassion to «all the people who were not believed». She doesn't know where she would be today in her life if she hadn't been believed.

She received the support of another leading figure in the pop businesssinger Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga went even further, promoting Biden herself at a campaign rally: «We need your hearts - vote like your life and your children's lives depend on it,» she declared from the podium. Biden is «a good man». As recently as 2018, Gaga was full of hope that the global #MeToo outcry would encourage women to speak out publicly against sexual harassment. That doesn't seem to be the case for Reade and Flores, however.

If a potential victim's credibility depends on her political opinions (or those of the alleged aggressor), then feminism, which is responsible for these mechanisms, is not only useless, but counter-productive. The neo-emancipatory feminist movement unmasks itself as hypocritical and incoherent.

Neofeminism makes women smaller than they are. It gives them little or no credit, denies them personal responsibility and allows them to operate mindlessly from the role of victim. Feminist demands for self-determined life projects are easier to live with when they're shouted to the crowd on cardboard placards at glitzy, swaggering demonstrations. But in the reality of those who proclaim self-determination loudest, it doesn't really seem to have arrived yet. Yet there are plenty of women who could serve as role models: women who have asserted themselves against others, women and men alike, by their own means, with their own abilities, successfully.

This article is also available in paper format in Le Regard Libre N°98.

Le Regard Libre translates articles from one issue to the next Schweizer Monat, another Swiss monthly magazine of ideas, hence our partnership. The original articles are available on schweizermonat.ch.