gooseshark:
anti-capitalistlesbianwitch:
On Thursday, Gina Haspel, President Trump’s choice to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, was confirmed by the Senate, making her the first woman in that position. That same day, Fox News announced that Suzanne Scott would be the company’s first female chief executive.
There is a distinct lack of feminist celebration over these women ascending in these jobs — an absence that Republicans have criticized as hypocrisy. Shouldn’t we feminists be pleased by these shattered glass ceilings?
While groundbreaking in the literal sense, there is nothing feminist about a woman who oversaw a site where detainees were tortured, someone who refuses to say whether she believes torture is immoral. In the same way, there is nothing “empowering” about Ms. Scott, a media executive who reportedly enforced a “miniskirt rule” for female on-air talent, and who was cited in two lawsuits for contributing to a toxic work environment and retaliating against a sexual harassment victim. (Ms. Scott has denied these reports and the lawsuits were settled.)
Feminism isn’t about blind support for any woman who rises to power. The real political duplicity here is Republicans’ continued efforts to co-opt feminist language while actively curtailing women’s rights.
It’s often conservative women, I find, who are able to rise to some power within the patriarchy as their appeal is that they cater to the boys. They are not shut down not because they are more or less talented politicians, but because they do not challenge the systems in which white men see immediate profit, the way that socialist-democratic, intersectional feminism does.
When wondering ‘Do I stay silent to get ahead, and then make my impact as a woman, or do I say something now?’ ask yourself ‘If not now, then when? and if not me, then who? (Pharrell). There will not be a time, later, when people do not progress to a less racist/sexist/islamophobic state if it is never challenged out of fear.
Opinion | The Myth of Conservative Feminism
Celtyradfem 