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Feminist Amy Siskind: Trojan Horse to the
Conservative Cause?
Last Tuesday, 51% of the female electorate pulled
the lever in favor of the GOP candidate to the U.S.
House of Representatives. And for the first time in
recent memory, a majority of women voted
Republican.
Refusing to concede defeat, the National
Organization for Women promptly instructed its
members to organize. And to the Gender Guerillas,
“organize” includes infiltrating the
conservative ranks.
Exhibit A is Amy Siskind’s recent
editorial, “The Republican Party’s
Historic Opportunity with Women,” in which she
purports to offer advice to conservatives on how to
attract the female vote: dailycaller.com/2010/11/08/1694712/
But before we take a look at her manifesto
– er, column – we might first ask, Who is
Amy Siskind and what does she stand for?
Co-founder and president of the offbeat The New
Agenda, Siskind is an unabashed proponent of
abortion rights: “I am pro-choice and
reproductive rights are important to me,” she
boasted in her August 30 Huffington Post column. So
when Nancy Pelosi jettisoned insurance funding for
abortion services from the health reform bill,
Siskind savaged the Speaker of the House for the
mortal sin of “betraying the
sisterhood.”
Siskind is amazingly candid in laying out her
vision of a gender utopia. In her November 23, 2009
column in No Quarter, Siskind writes,
“A major element in our battle for equality is
getting women into positions of power. The hope is
that these leaders, once in place, would promote
women’s issues and promote the next generation
of women leaders.”
None dare call that zealotry?
Siskind is clearly bewildered by female
politicians like Sarah Palin who have not attained
true feminist class consciousness. But in the end
she counsels her readers that “Republican
Women are not the enemy.”
So if making-nice with conservative females
represents an uneasy but necessary compromise,
exactly who is the enemy? “Republican men
running against Democratic women,” we surmise
from her Huffington Post essay.
So what’s wrong with Siskind’s
“The Republican Party’s Historic
Opportunity with Women” column?
Well, let’s start with her creative
re-imagining of history.
In her opening paragraph, Siskind proffers this
remarkable claim: “For the first time, women
voters preferred the GOP.”
Well, I guess that’s right if we ignore the
1980 elections in which 46% of women voted for
Ronald Reagan and 45% chose Jimmy Carter. And
according to political scientist Jo Freeman, women
favored the Republican candidate in every
presidential contest from the passage of the 19th
Amendment in 1920 until 1980.
How’s that for striking out on the
electoral Truth-O-Meter?
These factual errors quickly morph into a
comical propaganda routine with Siskind’s
assertion that “women voters have decided
almost every presidential election since
1960.”
Not so fast, according to David Paul Kuhn, who
wrote in The Neglected Voter that white males were
the pivotal factor behind GOP wins in five out of
the previous seven presidential campaigns. And not
true, insists former Brandeis University professor
Linda Hirshman who remarks, “With the possible
exception of 1996, women have never voted a
candidate into the White House when men thought the
other guy should win.”
Then the article draws inspiration from the
Tinfoil Hat crowd, claiming that as of 2008,
“gender equality was no longer a core tenet of
the [Democratic National Committee].”
This statement is so mirth-provoking that I
won’t devote editorial space to refuting it,
except to refer the reader to a column I wrote
earlier this year: www.renewamerica.com/columns/roberts/100401
Siskind can’t resist taking a couple cheap
shots, calling the GOP “a bunch of white guys
fighting it out for power.” Then she berates
Rep. John Boehner for “surround[ing]
himself with a bunch of white guys, taking his
party backwards.”
If that wasn’t enough, this past Friday
Siskind’s organization issued a breathless
alert, “How Women Held Their Own on Election
Day.” Since women had voted equally for the
two parties, Ms. Siskind goaded her readers -- with
bolded emphasis in the original, “now BOTH
parties will fight for women’s
voters!”
Siskind wrapped up the alert by issuing a feisty
challenge to Democrats and Republicans alike:
“We say: let the bidding war begin!”
Three days later, Amy Siskind published the
factually-challenged column outlining her vision of
a gynocentric social dystopia.
So don’t be surprised if other feminists
come along in the weeks and months ahead, claiming
to enlighten knuckle-dragging white-guys on what it
means to be a card-carrying conservative.
* * *
Carey
Roberts probes and lampoons political correctness.
His work has been published frequently in the
Washington Times, Townhall.com, LewRockwell.com,
ifeminists.net, Intellectual Conservative, and
elsewhere. He is a staff reporter for the New Media
Network. You can contact him at E-Mail
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