Shallow American feminism ignores human suffering

It seems like every day a new preposterous feminist idea makes its way into the news cycle. I read an article recently about giant inflatable boobs popping up all over London to help remove the stigma of breastfeeding. I’m a mother, and I breastfed two babies. I know it can feel awkward in public. Nursing my baby beneath an enormous boob towering over the street is a surefire way to make me feel ridiculous. But feminism doesn’t think. It reacts. Actually, it overreacts.

Between “mansplaining,” “manspreading,” and “himpathy,” I can’t decide which one is a more pathetic cause for complaint. Feminism today seeks to create problems that aren’t really problems, so women can then react in righteous indignation and garner attention. But instead of doing anything positive for women, it paints women as nagging, fragile, and intellectually weak.

Meanwhile, women and girls across the world are victims of egregious human rights abuses occurring every single day.

According to the World Health Organization, 3 million girls are at risk for female genital mutilation (FGM) every year. Today, there are more than 200 million females who have suffered this brutal ritual that takes place in 30 different countries (mostly in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia). It’s a painful and violent procedure—often performed on infants—that involves the removal of the clitoris, has no medical benefit, and can result in death.

This heinous practice even happens in the United States. In late 2018, charges were dismissed in a FGM case in Michigan, where two doctors were charged with cutting at least nine girls. A judge ruled the United States law banning FGM as unconstitutional.

Where was the feminist uproar over this? Where were the marches? Where was the outrage? Oh, I remember. They were hard at work, getting the Christmas classic “Baby It’s Cold Outside” removed from the radio for being a little “rapey.” (Insert hand-to-forehead exasperated emoji.)

And in March of 2019, while American women were busy arguing about the intersectional feminism of “Captain Marvel”—a fictional character—a real female human rights attorney in Iran was sentenced to 38 years in prison, and 148 lashes. Why? Because she defended women who peacefully protested Iran’s compulsory hijab law. The editorial board of the Washington Post wrote, “She is a woman of extraordinary courage, and her jailing is an affront to all who believe in human dignity and the rule of law.” And while there were murmurings across social media about her sentence, the injustice did not receive the collective indignation that white men received from feminists during the opening weeks of “Captain Marvel.”

In February a documentary about the plight of menstruating girls in India won an Oscar and tons of media attention. You’d think this would help American feminists wake up to the freedom they enjoy every day. But no. Even as we see images across our televisions and phone screens of suffering throughout the world, nothing seems to curb the intensity of feminist victim culture in the U.S.

The lack of recognition feminists have for what other women have achieved for them is infuriating. Just 100 years ago we couldn’t even vote. Now we have all the rights men have. We’ve achieved success in academics, science, business, and medicine. We’ve traveled to space. We have the freedom to pursue whatever we want.

But this isn’t enough for feminists, always on the prowl for new ways to be angered by perceived injustices. Take the pay gap, for example. The notion that women don’t get equal pay for equal work has been debunked repeatedly. Yet, feminists continue to be outraged by it.

Representation is another source of anger for many a rabid feminist. It couldn’t possibly be that women just aren’t as interested in working in certain industries as men. It must be discrimination causing the inequity.

Then of course there’s the manspreading and mansplaining, and all the other nitpicking issues that label behavior everyone participates in—regardless of gender—as a form of misogyny.

I can’t think of anything more embarrassing than the world’s freest and most privileged women whining about “microaggressions,” while females across the planet suffer daily abuse because of their gender. In fact, more females have been killed because of their gender than any other modern-day genocide, according to The Invisible Girl Project—a non-profit fighting to end gendercide (the systematic murder of a particular gender) in India. The current iteration of feminism is good for nothing but revealing the most self-centered, petty, and insufferably blind members of our society.