Quote of the Day:
Imagine, if you will, an audience of little boys — let’s pretend they’re second- and third-graders — forced to sit in an auditorium and listen to Hillary Clinton’s short speech. They swing their legs. They fidget a bit. “The future is female,” Clinton declares, beamed in on a giant screen. What are they supposed to think, other than that girls matter more than they do?
–Heather Wilhelm at NRO
Like Punxsutawney Phil, Hillary Clinton has emerged from her hiding place, but with an even bleaker message. In a (belated) video released in praise of the women's march, the former presidential candidate proclaims, "The future is female."
I must admit that I am unclear on what, if anything, this slogan means. Probably, if pressed (which she won't be because like Phil she has again withdrawn into seclusion), Mrs. Clinton would have a hard time making it any more precise. But it was typical Hillary.
I share Heather Wilhelm's consternation that, after a post-election silence, when Clinton finally emerged, instead of seizing the opportunity to show grace, she instead "decided to go ahead and alienate half of the human race instead." The video, Wilhelm notes, was released in one of those of rich, liberal women in which Hillary thrives. Wilhelm points out that the future-is-female meme isn't even new:
Ah, there it is: the old “future is female” line, back with a vengeance in 2017. It was first trotted out in 1975, according to the New York Times, on a T-shirt designed at a feminist bookstore in New York City. In 2015, the shirt made a comeback, worn by celebrities and devout feminists alike, thanks to a Los Angeles graphic-design studio that is, at least according to the Times, “the kind of place where one can buy clip-on Susan Sontag white streaks for $25 and attend a workshop called ‘Devotions: Self-Care for Modern Witches.’”
The owner of the graphics design studio describes the slogan as having developed in the lesbian separatist movement. She is ecstatic that it has gone mainstream.
Unfortunately, as Wilhelm points out, this anti-male message has become embedded in our culture:
Take Disney’s “Dream Big, Princess” campaign, which informs cartoon viewers that girls can and should do anything they want in life — Astronaut! President! Celebrity chef! — while boys merit no mention at all. Other ad campaigns take a darker note, suggesting that men and women are constantly pitted against each other in the demolition derby of life, rather than partners who work together.
At this year’s Super Bowl, Audi ran a sad-sack advertisement bemoaning the oppression of women, which cited the debunked myth of a large and sinister gender-based “pay gap.” The lesson was clear: Men are the bad guys. The irony of Clinton’s gender-centric “future is female” declaration thickens when you remember that the political Left has spent the past few years rabidly insisting that gender is fluid and that gender identities can shift. Well, whatever. Consistency be darned: At this point in history, the Left seems to have one gear, and that gear is identity politics.
This has been going on a long time. Our friend Christina Hoff Sommers first addressed it in her groundbreaking book The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men. The book came out in 2001 (but has been reissued with some new material). Hillary should get some new material, too.