Feminism is such a spent force that feminists have taken to revisiting their past failures.
One of the great failures of feminism in the 1970s was the Equal Rights Amendment, which never garnered the requisite public support to be written into the Constitution.
Believe me, if I didn’t enjoy the same civil and political rights as American men, I’d be out there demanding them. But I don’t lack rights or opportunities (maybe I have even more than the guys now, given the preferences women get nowadays).
But now feminists are reintroducing the ERA.
One can only speculate that they are trudging this ancient path because, frankly, they can’t think of anything else to do. Reintroducing the ERA will give feminists another whack at ranting about faux repression by the patriarchy.
Indeed, Martha Burke has taken time off from her very important crusade to open the rosters of golf clubs for millionaires to more millionaire woman golfers to speak with Women’s Enews about the ERA:
“In this environment, much of our agenda won’t go very far,” said Martha Burk, chair of the Washington-based National Council of Women’s Organizations, an umbrella group of nearly 200 women’s rights groups that was founded in 1983 after the amendment was defeated. “I don’t think Republicans will allow it to come up for a vote.”
The Enews article portrays the ERA as “a prize [feminists] have been fighting for since 1923, when suffragist Alice Paul traveled to Seneca Falls to unveil the first equal rights amendment at the 75th anniversary of the storied 1848 Women’s Rights Convention.”
The problem, of course, is that we women already have acquired our rights — thanks, in part, to the pioneer feminists who led the movement before it careened off the path into demands for special treatment for women.
Working to pass the ERA today is about as relevant as getting billionaire women into a golf club in Georgia.