Even after death, conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly continues to get under the skin of radical feminists, who refuse to let her rest in peace.
On Tuesday, Mic published a post-mortem hit piece titled “8 Worst Things Phyllis Schlafly Ever Said About Women’s Rights,” which chronicles some of the conservative icon’s commonsense replies to feminist nonsense.
In point of fact, as is obvious from the list of her “worst” remarks ever, radical feminists can never forgive Schlafly for opposing the Equal Rights Amendment and for her staunch pro-life and pro-family stance in the face of feminism’s shameful capitulation to the abortion industry.
Staff writer Sarah Harvard faults Schlafly for her remarkably successful STOP ERA campaign, which she launched in 1972. Evolving to become the Eagle Forum, the pro-family group “led widespread grassroots activism that challenged same-sex marriage, transgender rights and abortion access,” Harvard writes.
The eight “worst statements” of Phyllis Schlafly are really just a summary of the conservative response to feminism’s excesses. They include her acknowledgement that there was a “war on men,” her opposition to abortion and transgender foolishness and her defense of traditional marriage.
Labelling her “the face of anti-feminism,” Harvard attacks Schlafly for calling out the iniquities and abuses of the feminist movement in the United States.
“There is a war on men, and [feminists] are very open about it,” Schlafly said. “They don’t conceal it; they brag about it. You read all of their material — they’re always saying they want to abolish the patriarchy. They said that husbands are not necessary in a marriage, they’re not necessary in raising children.”
What Schlafly intuitively understood was that the American feminist movement had betrayed women themselves, and that many women did not identify with the shrill, angry mob that proposed to speak for them.
As Christina Hoff Sommers brilliantly documented in her 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? How Women Have Betrayed Women, the women’s movement was hijacked by radical ideologues who shifted the focus of the campaign from “equity feminism” to the more ideological “gender feminism,” represented in our own day by women like Sarah Harvard.
For example, Harvard says that one of Schlafly’s “worst” remarks ever was a comment that “the ERA proposal to fund abortion and provide rights to gays and lesbians were reasons to oppose the legislation.”
“ERA means abortion funding, means homosexual privileges,” Schlafly said in 1999.
Schlafly also had the gall to point out that college feminists sometimes make false rape allegations to persecute men, a claim that is verifiably true.
In the end, Schlafly’s real crime was her unwillingness to pit women against men. She rejected the neo-Marxist vision of men and women as oppressor-oppressed that American feminism had uncritically embraced.
She also understood that an attack on unborn children through abortion was not “liberating” for woman, but demeaning and ultimately dishonorable.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America and a longtime friend of Schlafly, said the conservative icon was one of her “personal heroes and mentors who inspired millions to the fight against abortion and the disastrous Equal Rights Amendment which would have made abortion a constitutional right.”
Despite Mic’s deficient journalistic ethics in attacking a woman before she has even been laid to rest, the article does provide the opportunity to remember and celebrate the enduring contribution that Phyllis Schlafly made to American culture by calling us to our better nature.
Proof of which is that even after death she still manages to irritate those who sold their souls to the modern feminist movement.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.