Feminism Killed Chivalry. And It’s Trying to Kill Real Women.

“When your young daughters go to school, their teachers will tell them that they can grow up to be anything they want to be, provided that they are willing to work hard. The list of examples they give will run the gamut from teachers and doctors to astronauts (Well, they could have been astronauts prior to the dissolution of NASA… but I digress) and even the President of the United States. There are two occupations that will be noticeably absent from that list: “wife” and “mother.”

The two occupations that only a woman can fill will not be suggested to your daughters as worthwhile pursuits. In fact, your daughters will be taught that aspiring to be a wife and mother is the career equivalent to trying out for the Varsity Basketball team in the hopes that you might one day be good enough to sit on the bench and keep score.”

I wrote that three years ago, and it is no less true today. In recent weeks, actress Kirsten Dunst drew fire for having the audacity to suggest that there was value in traditional gender roles. And our own Brandon Morse got an earful for clarifying that point further. So I know even as I write this that there is an army of feminists out there just waiting to manufacture offense at what I have to say. Well, have at it:

I like living in a world where men tip hats and pull out chairs. I like seeing men hold doors, give up seats on the subway, and stand when a lady leaves the table. SUE ME.

And the modern feminist movement has all but choked out what is left of that kind of polite behavior. Chivalry, they call it. It’s antiquated and patriarchal. Oppressive. It’s so stifling and confining to have a stranger offer you his seat when you are obviously pregnant and uncomfortable. It’s horribly repressing to walk through a door held by a man when your hands are full. Right?

The original feminists – Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and others like them – saw women as individuals who had value. They felt that society undermined that value by denying them the right to vote, to run for office, to own property, or to hold a job outside the home without being labeled a “spinster.” AND THEY WERE RIGHT. So they spoke up and they fought the good fight in order to give women choices. They didn’t assign a value to any choice in particular, because to them a woman’s value was intrinsic rather than defined by her choice.

Today’s feminists address women as a collective. They have assigned values to formal education and careers, and in so doing have all but demolished the notion of choice their predecessors worked so hard to attain. And with it, they have killed the notion of an individual woman having intrinsic value. Independence used to be a mark of strength. Now independence is a threat to the constant flow of free stuff. They have glorified as a perennial victim the woman who needs an education, food and a job, but is incapable of achieving those things without being subsidized by the government. They have reduced a multi-colored, multi-faceted jewel to a uterus with legs that is incapable (even if it were allowed) of individual thought because that doesn’t further the narrative.

What narrative, you ask? That women are equal to men in everything except for the things in which they are superior.

Um, no.

Ladies, if you have to tell people that your jokes are funny, they aren’t funny. Likewise, if you have to tell someone that men and women are the same, they probably aren’t. (NEWSFLASH: they aren’t.)

You insist that women are just as capable as men. Great. Prove it. Man up. Get an education without complaining that men are favored in a school environment or demanding that the government provide special scholarships for women. Pay for your own damn birth control. Be as good as men, and you won’t have to tell people that you are because they will know. It will be so obvious that they will say it for you.

If you have to have the standards lowered in order for you to be competitive, then you’re not equally competent. If a woman can’t meet the physical requirements for a certain job, that doesn’t necessarily mean the standards are too high. Sometimes it just means that particular job is better suited to a man. If the standards are lowered in order to accommodate women, that doesn’t mean we have advanced our society in terms of gender equality – it means we have resigned ourselves to being less productive in order to avoid hurting someone’s feelings.

You love a man who can cook and a woman who can be a breadwinner. But when a man provides the income, he’s oppressing those for whom he provides. And when a woman cooks, the only possible explanation is that her husband has confiscated her shoes, impregnated her, and ordered her to fix him a sammich.

You laud men who show mercy, nurture others, and show emotion in public (none of which are bad things, by the way) because they are in touch with their feminine sides. But if a woman dares to show her feminine side in the same manner, we must KILL IT WITH FIRE! (What??? Aren’t women made up of feminine sides?) Instead, you want woman to be aggressive and demanding (which can also be good things) at the expense of all that is traditionally feminine.

But here’s what I don’t understand: you have spent the last few decades demonizing men and all that is inherently male. You spit nails over “the patriarchy” and the perceived oppression that keeps women in Mitt Romney’s binders and underpaid (or under desks) in Democrat controlled White Houses (yes, you bet your ass I went there). And then you claim that all women want is to be recognized as equal to men.

Why? Why claim equality with that which you have proclaimed to be evil, oppressive, and predatory? Why claim equality when you could be better? Why demand equality when you could demand that men be better?

You go right ahead and keep lowering your own standards. As a woman raising daughters, I intend to demand that men raise theirs.