There’s an ancient tradition, long upheld by tyrants: killing the messenger for the message. This practice, though barbarous and brutal, isn’t without some twisted sense of logic. After all, if your neighboring potentate has spurned your generous offer to join your glorious empire, anger is a perfectly understandable response. However, killing the offending head of state is often an onerous task. Usually, it’s simply easier to execute the hapless eunuch unlucky enough to have handed you the offending missive.
In an odd twist of fate, feminists have inverted this ancient tradition. Instead of assaulting the bearers of bad news, they attack the bearers of good news.
Take the notion of “comparable wages.” Depending on which erroneous source you consult, feminists usually assert that women make 66-75 percent of what men make. It simply isn’t true. Feminist researchers June O’Neill of the City University of New York (also former head of the Congressional Budget Office) and Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University have established the “pay gap” at roughly 98 percent.
In other words, women with comparable education, experience and skills get paid virtually the same as their male counterparts. In many fields, in fact, women make more (up to 30 percent more) than their male coworkers. Isn’t this good news?
Here’s more good news: Paying men and women differently for doing the same job has been illegal since Congress passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Under this act, if any woman feels she has been discriminated against, she can contact the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and gain access to free government-subsidized lawyers.
If the lawyers can establish the presence of a sex-related pay discrepancy, the woman gets double the pay she should have gotten plus a $300,000 bonus for her suffering. All of this at no cost, or risk, to her. Any woman, anywhere, at any time can avail herself of this opportunity.
There’s good news all around for women today. Women enter college at higher rates than men, roughly 45 percent of women enter college, while only 41 percent of men do so. Women graduate at higher rates, more than half of women who enter college graduate, while only 40 percent of men who enter do so. Women earn most associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
Today’s American women can be assured that they are valued members of society who will be paid a fair wage. This isn’t just good news-it’s great news. In a rational universe, feminists would be marching down the street, screaming, “We won,” at the top of their lungs, all the while giving corporate paymasters the finger. The news that women are not second-class citizens should be a joyous occasion for celebration.
Instead, feminists are lost in a fit of depression. They hold bake sales, where women are offered goods for 75 cents, but men must pay $1. They print bumper stickers that ask, “Where’s my 26 cents?” Answer: in your pocket. They hold Equal Pay Day to rehash statistics from the 1960s which supposedly prove the bias in pay. They attack anyone who has the temerity to question their “wage gap” orthodoxy as misogynists, fascists or “tools of the patriarchy.”
For generations, feminists have constructed their self-esteem around the image of themselves as selfless crusaders fighting the arrogant male overlords. Feminism was rebellion and resistance as a way of life, as a way to define and validate feminists’ existence and moral worth.
For such a person, it’s hard to let go of the reins of resentment and anger. It’s been said that generals tend to fight the current war as if it were the last war. Feminists have never stopped fighting the last war, even after they won. Faced with victory, and a loss of the need to rage, feminists simply turned their backs on their achievements and pretended it was 1955 all over again. Having won the war, feminists lost the peace.
To the emperor strutting about in his imaginary finery, anyone who pointed out his nakedness was an enemy. Anyone who challenges feminism’s facade is likely to be attacked for being the bearer of unwanted news.
Jasyn welcomes feedback at [email protected]. Send letters to the editor to [email protected].