Women and children, feminists and misandry

Have you ever gotten in trouble or received a nasty look when holding an elevator door for an ultra-feminist woman, or pausing when the elevator door opens for all the women inside to get off or for those waiting outside first to get on? If you live outside America’s two Crazy Coasts, know with a certainty that this is not the era of “Ozzie and Harriet” and “Father Knows Best.” Donna Reed? Howzabout crazy left Joyce Reid of MSNBC? Father Knows Best? More like: “Father Is an Idiot and Is Barred by a Restraining Order from Seeing the Kids.”

Please, Jews of Israel. Do not adore America and seek to emulate its culture. Instead, see in America a model of how a very beautiful Idea can be destroyed in a single generation when not moored in Torah guidance.

In this era, you may get yelled at by a crazed Feminist who is ragingly insulted that you, an antediluvian man, have treated the woman as though she is any different from a male. What were you thinking by offering to open the car door for her — that she is too dumb to open a door? Or by allowing her to exit the elevator first — that she is unable to find her way out of an elevator car if there is no one to “mansplain” how to egress?

Gender is “fluid” now, a variation on water incapable of freezing. Men are women (e.g., Biden’s Admiral Rachel Levine and Olympics Bruce — er — Caitlyn Jenner) (yukhsa!), women are men (e.g., Lia Thomas), some are neither (e.g., Demi Lovato, Judith Butler), and others are both (here’s a sampling). Woke corporations and universities expect employees, especially professors and deans, to identify their pronouns: He/Him/His? She/Her/Hers? They/Them/Their? (Mine are: Me/Myself/I. My friend in New Jersey is You/Youze/Awlayouze.) Gender. Cisgender. Binary, Non-Binary.

The United States Supreme Court now has its first confirmed idiot, a woman of absolutely no distinction whatsoever, whose most famous moment in the public eye came when she could not define what a woman is. No? Truly no? In the world of Identity Politics, every woman knows precisely what a woman is if she needs a job and the employer is meeting quotas. All the gender fluidity disappears when a non-binary They/Them/Their applies for a federal grant for a “woman-owned business.” Suddenly “their” manifest a crystal-clear gender, as binary as two electric plug adapters.

Is the corporation looking for a woman to meet a government quota? Is a university looking for a Black woman? Is Joe Biden? Is the university looking to boost its already-majority-woman student population? In each case, you can bet those applicants come well prepared to set forth their “Womanness” (so to speak) as Elizabeth Warren was prepared to present as an Indian in order to get her Harvard job. Surely, there is a next-generation Liz Warren right now applying in Cambridge trying to prove that he, she, or they is an Arab Muslim, notwithstanding that we know there are at least 20 Arab and Muslim student groups already at Harvard.

At that moment, when there is money to be made, a job to be had, a grant to be sucked in as with a vacuum cleaner, rabid feminists hide their ideology and play their intersectionalist gender advantage, bursting out singing Carole King lyrics just as Ketanji Brown Jackson surely conveyed when interviewed by Ol’ Uncle Joe who’s movin’ kinda slow at the Junction: “You make me feel. You make me feel. You make me feel like a natural woman.” (Too confusing to try the Shania Twain variation: “Man! I feel like a woman.”)

We who are not progressive and woke get lectured constantly, called misogynists as we are called racists, homophobes, Islamophobes, and whatever-else-they-got. (Forbophobia for not reading Forbes? Fobophobia for not liking key fobs?) The late Rush Limbaugh reflected the exasperation and fury of normal mainstream society when he lashed out at radical extreme “Feminazis.”

There is no question that women must be paid equal pay for equal work. Two teachers with identical levels of seniority in adjoining public school classrooms, each teaching their respective second graders the same assigned curriculum on appreciating transgenderism and evaluating whether they are “trans,” should be paid the same if they are equally skilled. Manifest unfairnesses are unacceptable, and certain public and individual insensitivities and discriminations over the centuries were blatantly wrong. We are a better society for having rectified matters rooted in honest-to-goodness misogyny. But, as with almost everything in our culture — or what once could be called “culture” — the cause of women’s rights has gone berserk.

In America, Karine Jean-Pierre (less French than French Toast, french fries, or French’s mustard) is Biden’s black female incompetent spokesperson. Kamala Harris is his black female incompetent Veep. Ketanji is his new black female sub-mediocre Supreme Court justice. The list goes on and on.

Y’know who loses out even more than Jews? Black men. They only check off one box, not two-fers like the ones who are “Possible Pregnancy Potential Persons.” Every movement by liberals and their progressive woke betters sets back black men, with the exception of race hucksters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, by a generation.

And that is what is strikingly odd about the prior Hostage Deal that Israel’s two “Conceptzia” War Cabinet leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, agreed to contract with Hamas-ISIS. They got out some women and some kids but no men. Couples, families were broken up.

In return, Israel released three times that many convicted Arabs who had been duly imprisoned after receiving fair trials. In addition, Israel agreed to pause its war effort to give Hamas terrorists (i) some much-needed breathing space, (ii) a chance to relocate from positions that Israeli ground forces had identified, (iii) ample fuel to power their tunnel ventilation systems and lighting, heat and air conditioning, for their 300 miles of underground tunnels, (iv) a chance to resupply their rocket-propelled-grenade and anti-tank launchers whose missiles had been fired until empty, (v) an opportunity to move hostages still in captivity to new tunnels and other locations deeper south in Gaza, and so much more.

Quite a deal, by which both sides implicitly admit that one Jew’s life is valued at three or more Arab Muslim lives. (And, indeed, past Israeli moronic hostage exchanges even have seen, by mutual agreement, that a single Jew’s life is valued at more than 1,000 Arab Muslim lives.) (So, if Hamas murdered 1,200 Jews, should proportionality allow Israel to kill 1,200,000?)

So what about men? Aren’t men “privileged”? Where is the privilege when men actually need it?

Suddenly, the rabid Feminists retreat back to Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and every woman character in opera history except for the outlier stabbers, Tosca and Lucia di Lammermoor. But isn’t that “sexist,” contracting to release everyone but men who are not senior? Historically, of course, it would be proper, if making such an idiotic deal, for Israel to press first for its women and children. When the Titanic went down, Isidor Straus famously allowed his wife, Ida, to have his spot on a remaining lifeboat, so he drowned. That was gallantry. Ida refused, so drowned with him. That was romantic.

But Feminists say they don’t want gallantry now. Now they want to serve in the army, chop wood, drive trucks, mine coal, and do road work. They are equal. Gillette razors stand with them condemning toxic masculinity and in effect emasculating American men.

And yet, in the Hamas Hostage Deal, there is no feminism. No wokeness. No intersectionality. The women go free, and the men remain in Gaza. Feminists are silent, pausing briefly like Susan Sarandon to celebrate Jewish suffering.

The hypocrisy stinks, as does everything else about that deal. And about extreme feminists.

Adapted by the writer for Arutz Sheva from a version of this article that first appeared here in The American Spectator.

To receive Rav Fischer’s Weekly Extensive Torah Commentaries or to attend any or all of Rav Fischer’s weekly 60-minute live Zoom classes on the Weekly Torah Portion, the Biblical Prophets, the Mishnah, Rambam Mishneh Torah, or Advanced Judaic Texts, send an email to: [email protected]

Rav Fischer’s recent high-energy no-holds-barred encore interview with the Jewish Republican Alliance appears here. In it, he discusses Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, the sicknesses on America’s college campuses, opines on Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Charlie Kirk, Tucker, Candace, the ADL, and the 2024 election.

His 10-part exciting and fact-based series of one-hour classes on the Jewish Underground liberation movement (Irgun, Lechi, and Haganah) and the Rise of Modern Israel can be found here. In it, he uses historic video clips of Irgun, Lechi, and Haganah actions, decades of past Arab terrorist atrocities, as well as stirring musical selections from the Underground and video’d interviews of participants, to augment data, statistics, maps, and additional historical records to create a fascinating, often gripping, and scholarly enriching educational experience about issues that remain deeply relevant today as Israel engages in an existential war in Gaza against Hamas terrorism.