Empowerment for the “Julia” set

In response to Julia, Get Your Gun!:

The seeming paradox between talk of feminist “empowerment” and government dependency is easily resolved by realizing that the Left has sold many women a sense of empowerment in the Rousseau sense of authenticity.  The government “empowers” them to express themselves and take charge in areas that really matter by providing for those basic needs of education, finance, health, etc.  This is the rationale of “positive rights” – no one is truly “free” who must worry about the roof over her head, or the bread upon her table. 

This applies to family issues as well.  The feminist vision of subjugation is the “barefoot and pregnant” woman shackled to her kitchen.  Pregnancy itself is viewed as a form of oppression, which is how abortion becomes a sacrament of liberation.  People with such a world-view become very, very upset at the suggestion that responsible choices should have been made before conception.

With that in mind, self-defense becomes yet another duty the State should take charge of, in order to “liberate” its charges.  Our new female gun owners clearly don’t see it that way, but the leadership of the “women’s movement” is going to view their assertion of Second Amendment rights as horrifying, not empowering.  And they’ll accuse gun-happy Republicans of “controlling” these women through fear and paranoia.  I agree that this gun-control moment should be a golden opportunity for conservatives to make the counter-argument.  There are plenty of women who have used firearms to defend themselves and their families who could help them do it.