Late last month the president affirmed that he is no feminist: “I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone.”
Though a blip in the administration’s chaos, it shouldn’t pass without comment, as it is emblematic of a broader trend that demands attention – and resistance.
That trend is a vigorous backlash against ‘political correctness’ – a trend the President has consistently stoked and bent to his benefit. We must heed this trend for what it says of the American worldview currently being projected to our citizens and the broader world.
To the president, feminism implies women are more important than men and deserve preferential treatment. Such thinking is mirrored in the “all lives matter” rejoinder to Black Lives Matter.
This is at best ignorant misunderstanding, and at worst insidious misrepresentation. What feminism proposes is not that only women are valuable, but that women are valuable too; not Only Black Lives Matter, but Black Lives Matter Too.
Are these affirmative statements – that women and black lives are valuable – necessary? Sadly, infuriatingly, yes, they are. Despite cultural mythologies that suggest otherwise, American society unfurls on an uneven playing field, warped and pocked by systemic, structural factors. Our society conspires to tell women they are less important, to tell African-Americans their lives are less valuable.
The purveyors of the ‘political correctness’ backlash – the president chief among them – will tell us that ‘political correctness’ is nothing more than inane delicateness demanded by overly sensitive individuals – and that such sensitivities erode the Rugged Individualism American Spirit (a construct itself fraught with patriarchal norms). This is false; ‘political correctness’ reveals deeply embedded implicit societal messages, and forces us to consider how to address the systemic, structural elements that warp our society’s playing field.
A great America is no Only society, but a Too society.
Jonathan S. Peterson
Bernardston