Big Think claims that the U.S is among the “top 10 worst countries to be a woman”

July 25, 2019

Apart from the obvious methodological issues, like Big Think not providing any details on the “500 experts” they surveyed, their fields of study, the questions they were asked, how the information was collected – You know, basic data gathering disclosures—Big Think’s patently ludicrous assertion that the United States is a worse country for women’s rights and safety than misogynistic hellholes like Iran (not on the list), Indonesia (not on the list), and Sri Lanka (not on the list) reveals the flaw in in the woke left’s desperate need to smuggle their faux sense of oppression in on the backs of others’ legitimate struggles. What’s worse, this isn’t the first time such an absurd narrative has been forced.

While I am an ardent feminist and will not accept any assertion that patriarchy and misogyny are dead in the west, I am not so ignorant as to believe the struggles women face in a country like Canada can be in any way compared to the severity of the cruelties a woman in Somalia might experience. I, thanks to the tremendous effort of the women who came before me, am relatively certain I will not have a bottle of acid poured on me today, or be accused of witchcraft and tortured in public (save for in the metaphorical sense). But claims like those Big Think asserted this week do a tremendous disservice to the left, painting us as self-absorbed sycophants, and making feminism—still absolutely necessary today, even in the west—an utter joke.

Like a completely unmindful, self-invited party guest trying to force their way into a conversation of which they were not included, entitled western leftists often massacre the definitions of once-powerful words like “oppression” and “abuse.” They would rather have the meanings of the words be changed to conform to their situations than to accept their situations simply do not meet the definitions of the words. While waxing quixotic about the nature of “power plus privilege,” western leftists refuse to acknowledge the greatest power and privilege is the ability to control language—something they do very, very well and without an ounce of shame.

In this modern era where he who is the most oppressed gets the biggest seat at the table of discourse, language manipulation has become a veritable Make-A-Wish for deranged western leftists who fetishize victimization.

Wish to be a victim of racism? Wish granted in the national parks, milk, farmer’s markets, and craft beers. Of sexism? Look no further than air conditioning, summer, movie kitchens, and Peppa Pig.

The recent appropriation of the word “genocide” in the context of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls tragedy by the woke is another example of demanding language conform when situations do not. My article noted, realistically, that no matter how shitty individuals might be towards Indigenous folks, none of the Canadian government’s actions met any definition of genocide. For that I was attacked ruthlessly, told to , and even . My employers received letters demanding my termination, and some may have also been sent to my University.

The woke simply could not conceive of a situation where they were not the center of attention, or where their manipulation of language disadvantaged and mocked those significantly more vulnerable. The subject of my undergraduate thesis and Masters research was the nation of Myanmar, which has been struggling to maintain its sovereignty since its independence from two colonial powers and one military junta.

Plagued by internal civil wars between adversarial ethnic groups, the word “genocide” has been weaponized against the small state numerous times and carries significant connotations for its future. In this case, broadening, or otherwise cheapening the definition of a word to meet the ideological appetites of western leftists might actually have the domino effect of further isolating and destabilizing an entire country.

The people at Big Think think they know better. And so they tweeted a very woke tweet. What does it matter that activists, desperate to be victimized by anything, are making their point at the expense of suffering women in dozens of countries significantly more oppressive than the United States?