There’s nothing anti-feminists love more than using their platforms—afforded to them by decades of feminist activism—to tell other women that, actually, feminism is what’s holding them back, and not the powers, institutions, or male politicians that be.
Every headline I’ve read this year where someone like Megyn Kelly—or, more recently, Erika Kirk—suggests feminism is the root of society’s ills has morphed me into a frantic medieval torture rat, desperately clawing my way into someone’s abdomen to escape the heated metal cage placed over my body. Except in this metaphor, I am both the rat and the person suffering the psychological and physical horror of having a rat tear into my intestines.
So you can imagine my mental torment after having read that new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has produced a series of upcoming town halls (in collaboration with The Free Press, of course) that “will address topics” like “Has Feminism Failed Women?”
I welcome discussion and debate about any ideology or political movement, but the right doesn’t want to have a debate about feminism—they want to rant and rave about women supporting abortion rights, and act as if the belief that reproductive healthcare is important immediately turns you into a medusa. (God, I wish.)
This asinine framing also absolves conservative women from having to interrogate and name the powers that have actually failed them, like, for example, the U.S. government, which remains the only developed country without federally mandated paid parental leave. I imagine a microscopic piece of them knows that if they interrogate too closely, they’ll realize their own complicity in failing women by supporting politicians who oppose gender equity.
This new town hall series will be sponsored by ~drumroll, please~ Bank of America! And it will include opinions from at least three men. Among them: a billionaire CEO who publicly admitted to using ChatGPT to raise his baby and a far-right, masculinity-obsessed conspiracy theorist who may or may not have a couch-fucking kink. CBS News later revealed that Liz Plank and Allie Beth Stuckey will be our feminism debaters. Bet you $10 I can already predict every single thing Stuckey, a Christian conservative podcaster, is going to say.
According to The Hollywood Reporter:
CBS says that Vice President JD Vance, Maryland Governor Wes Moore, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have all agreed to participate in the town halls, with the debates set to address topics like “Does America Need God?” “Has Feminism Failed Women?” and “Should Gen Z Believe in the American Dream?”
Since this is just a first announcement, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and believe they’ll also add topics like, “Has the U.S. Government’s Lack of Federal Paid Leave Policy Failed Women?” or “Has America Failed Women by Debating Feminism Rather Expanding the Supreme Court That Ended the Right to Abortion?” or “Has Vice President JD Vance Plummeted the Birth Rate Because No One Wants to Have a Baby Who Might Grow Up to be Like JD Vance?”
But if not, perhaps I’ll host my own town hall on the day that CBS News hosts a “debate” about whether the idea of gender equality has kept women from achieving gender equality. But instead of a town hall, it’ll just be me on a livestream, slowly ripping out my hair and trying to ignore the pit in the core of my soul that feels like a rat tearing a hole through my stomach. Stay tuned!
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