“I am a feminist,” declared former President Bill Clinton at the start of his election campaign. Americans smiled at the thought of a male feminist-a man in favor of equality. That label, however, has very different implications today than when it first blossomed during the suffragette movement.
Michelle Easton, president of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, spoke to more than 200 college students at the Young America’s Foundation conference in Washington, D.C., about the modern liberal feminist movement and its left-leaning agenda.
“Feminists don’t want women in politics,” Easton said. “They want liberal women in politics.”
Women such as Gloria Steinem, Hillary Clinton, and Melissa Ethridge-all liberals-are praised by women’s rights activists. Easton calls for balance in the equality ideology, asking feminists to recognize conservative successful women as well.
Instead, she claims that feminists “demonize” conservative women such as Ann Coulter, Phyllis Schlafly and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutcheson.
“Feminists called Hutcheson a female impersonator,” said Easton. “Somehow, she’s not a real woman because she’s conservative?”
Women’s studies classes and majors have “popped up like toadstools” in universities, according to Easton. She has fought liberal feminist curriculum in higher education by promoting an alternative women’s studies book, Great American Conservative Women, a collection of speeches from conservative female figureheads.
“Feminism is not a philosophy. It is an ideology,” said Easton. “Philosophy is seeking truth but ideology has a political agenda, seeking the ends, not the means.”
