Ms. magazine devoted its blog yesterday to a response to my “Dependency Divas” report. Or, for those of you who don’t read Ms.’s blog, my “report.” Divas, available on our homepage, is about how the feminist left has abandoned the cause of independence for women in favor dependence on Uncle Sam.
Ms. blogger Christine Cupaiuolo (her “thoughts” are also available on our homepage) asked: “How does asking government to provide or regulate services that the unfettered capitalist marketplace has not been able to provide, or asking government to provide some semblance of equal opportunity in an economic system that privileges established wealth, have anything to do with ‘dependence’?”
Ms. Cupaiuolo has a touching faith in the power of semantics. Her question concedes my argument: that feminists do argue women need government to help them survive in the cold, cruel world. It’s the word “dependency” that’s got her knickers in a twist. Ms. Cupaiuolo links to a site that argues that it’s just the clever linguistic machinations of well-funded (ha!) right-wing thing tanks that’s responsible for the waning popularity of the left, not the poverty of its ideas. It’s a comforting delusion, I guess.
Cupaiuolo paints a bleak picture of what women face in America’s “unfettered capitalist marketplace” (if only!) — all at the hands of the “overwhelmingly male” American aristocracy, of course — and says this rigged game justifies more government. (Washington, as everyone knows, is always fair and just, never promoting the interests of the elite).
But the truth is, American women have never had it so good. Signs of progress are everywhere. As I point out in Dependency Divas, women now comprise the majority of undergraduates at four year universities and are fast becoming leaders in industries that just a few decades ago were totally dominated by men. Have we achieved a utopian realm of perfect equality and justice? No, but the “unfettered” market seems to be doing a pretty darn good job.
It’s sad that Ms. still sees its readers as little more than helpless children who need protection from a rough and tumble school yard. I wish Ms. Cupaiuolo had explained how the feminists’ stance against school choice can be reconciled with their purported desire to create “equal opportunity”.
And I’d like to set the matter straight on who came up with the title “Dependency Divas.” I’m flattered that Ms. Cupaiuolo thinks that White House strategists and prominent pollsters are aiding the devious efforts of IWF to distort language. But neither Karl Rove nor Frank Luntz deserves the credit. “Dependency Divas” was my husband’s inspiration.