‘I’m Not A Feminist’: What Kara McCullough Taught Me To Say Proudly – OpEd

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By Holly Ashe*

For a working-class girl, who’s studying and working at the same time, let me be honest about something that I always wanted to declare: “I am not a feminist.” That F word has been captured by the intersectional postmodern left, given a complete makeover, and is now heading the realm of an authoritarian and fascistic campaign while proclaiming to be an emancipatory reform movement. This once truly and proudly progressive word helped women win some of the biggest battles, including fairness and free speech, among many others. Now the neo-feminist establishment is tarnishing the work of our foresisters, destroying the foundations of what was being built to create a world that man and woman can live side by side in total fairness, while dividing the movement further in race and completely manufactured gendered terms.

The latest victim to be attacked by this aggressive and mephitic army, just because they simple don’t agree with the extremism and bigotry these people are preaching? Our very intelligent, sexy heroine Miss USA Kara McCullough.

For the uninitiated, McCullough works as an emergency preparedness specialist in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response after earning her Bachelor’s degree in chemistry; at the age of 25 years old she just won Miss USA, and has been inducted in the National Society of Black Engineers and the Golden Key International Honor Society. Not only is she incredibly intelligent, she is also fiercely independent. Standing in front of the world, in one of the biggest competitions of her life, being judged on the kind of person you are, she decided to not sugar coat her opinions on equality and feminism, saying the brave words I started this article with: “I am not a feminist.”

The internet obviously lit up instantly, with sisterhood trolls gathering together to coerce and attack the tenacious scientist. Blasphemy, heresy, stupidity… I read it all on our illustrious Twitter hashtags (we all know how much I adore hashtags) none truly informing us curious audience, as to why not being a “man-hating” feminist is a bad thing.

This isn’t unique. Recently in the West, the postmodern liberal left seems to have some curious ideas as to what constitutes as real problems for women in the real world. Dare to go against the conventional wisdom? You will be treated as a heretic–won’t matter even if you’re a woman. Men have a higher suicide rate by a huge gap, only 6.7% of the prison population are female in the US, and boys are coming out of school with less qualifications than girls are. Domestic violence towards men has risen, and issues like forced marriage, with one in five forced marriage victims being men.

You probably won’t hear that much. The PC crazy world we now live in have put pussy on a pedestal (so to speak!), so high that no one can reach their evangelical prowess. God forbid anyone with a penis say anything remotely sensible, without showing the deferential treatment, you get the bizarre charge of “mansplainin”. These neo-puritans have taken sexism to another level and reversed it.

It’s baffling that this needs to be mentioned, but if one compares the problems that women are facing around the world to these embarrassingly privileged liberal middle class sisterhood, the differences are startling. Just a couple of days back, I read Western feminists are fighting an existential battle against “manspreading”, the slightly irritating action of a man basically power posing on public transport, which arguably creates slightly less room. Feminists have taken to this with great aversion, especially in Madrid, where they are now “cracking down on manspreading”. Compared to that, in Turkey, a staggering 86% of women have suffered domestic abuseBetween 100 million and 140 million women are subjected to female genital mutilation around the world, but mainly in Africa. How about the abhorrent female rights in Saudi Arabia? Recently a 19-year-old Pakistani girl has been sentenced to death for being raped by her cousin at gun point.99% of women and girls in Egypt surveyed by UN Women had experienced some form of sexual assault with little to no help from their justice system.

Even being a hard-core feminist doesn’t exclude you from the imperious opinions from fellow hard-core feminists. Not even a woman’s march could satisfy some intersectionalists, as females there were apparently too able bodied and white.

A typical glimpse of the intersectional feminist world is the woman who aborted her baby because he was male. How have we gone from fighting for woman’s vote to being so disgusted and repelled to the opposite sex that we don’t even want to give birth to them? Is a feminist’s wet dream a world where the men are sent to a deserted waste land only used for their seed, while women live in a utopia of non-belligerence, and a society which is more interested in privilege then actual problems? Bit like a Rick and Morty episode I watched, where they send sex robots to the savage and feral men on the outside, get them to mate and impregnate the machine, then once the sex of the baby has been confirmed, they’d choose to either throw the baby away to the wasteland (if it was a boy) or keep it (if it was a girl).

If these are the women Kara McCullough, does not want to associate with, then let it be on record, that these are the same women I don’t want to associate myself with either. It’s hard to say you’re not a feminist, when you believe in fairness for women, but that does not mean women are superior to men, nor does it mean that every man is an evil misogynist who believes you belong in the kitchen.

This movement is not benefitting anyone. It isn’t out there making changes to women’s in needs lives. All it is doing is belittle my gender, the female gender. It’s logically contradictory to claim you’re weak and need safe space, but you’re also strong and needs to be respected. Life isn’t like that. It’s confirming the stereotypes of glamorized weakness and victimhood, that we women took so long to desperately shake off, that we are equal and we don’t have to be in a juvenile battle of sexes to prove that we’re capable enough to survive in this planet. If they put half the energy they use in moaning (yes, moaning) about mansplaining, why simultaneously moaning about men not helping them, and put that energy into highlighting the real inequality that is harming and killing women worldwide, maybe we would have a fairer world. And a less whinging one too.

About the author:
*Holly Ashe
is a London based fashion and culture writer. She was previously published in Vogue International as a fashion designer and a start-up business entrepreneur. You can follow her on twitter @hollyroseashe

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This article was published by Bombs and Dollars

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