The upcoming Women's March has been roiled in controversy and in-fighting. It has been accused both of catering to minority women and white
Freaks and Gigs pic via Foter.com
women too much. It's progressive organizers have been accused of anti-Semitism and hobnobbing with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a man who stands for everything—misogyny, homophobia—that progressivism stands against.
It would be a mistake to dismiss such bitter feuds as merely birthing pains or a clash of personalities that happen in any embryonic (no pun intended!) movement, I note in my column at The Week. The fact of the matter is that if the Women's March can't overcome its internal differences and agree on an agenda, it's because women's problems today pale in comparison to those faced by other groups. Women confront discrimination—but less by virtue of being women and more by virtue of being members of some other, more marginalized or reviled group. So it makes no sense to try and shoehorn these other groups into a mass feminist movement.
"The sooner American feminists realize this, the easier it might be for the left to identify an authentic social justice movement focused on eliminating real oppression faced by genuinely marginalized groups, not relatively marginal concerns of powerful ones," I note.
If American feminists want to march somewhere, they should try joining their sisters in Kerala, India, where five million women formed a human chain to protest actual gender discrimination this month.
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