OPINION:
Disagreeing with someone is an expected part of life. Moreover, it’s a requirement for an exciting and valuable cultural and political life. But then there are hypocrites and frauds, and that’s the core of the problem threatening the progress we hope to make.
Last week, at an “ideas festival” put on by the Center for American Progress (the leftist think tank that brought us the debacle of Barack Obama, and is run by people like Hillary Clinton enforcers John Podesta and Neera Tanden), New York’s Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand declared that the 2008 financial collapse could have been avoided had women been making the decisions.
“If it wasn’t Lehman Brothers but Lehman Sisters, we might not have had the financial collapse,” Ms. Gillibrand told her audience. Here’s what this columnist had to say about that comment on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program:
“It was stupid, it was insulting. It is sexist. And it’s the argument that misogynists make. What she was referring to is a study that says because women are risk-averse, they would have taken less chances, and so Lehman Brothers would have been just fine.” I continued, “It is gender stereotypical, it is based in sexist expectation that women are going to behave a certain way because of their sex. It’s insulting, it’s misogynist and sexist.”
Many Americans have been working for generations to smash the myth that women’s futures were determined by their gender and controlled by hormones; the argument for millennia has been that women predictably act in certain ways because of their sex. With a stunning illustration of a lack of self-awareness, Ms. Gillibrand’s attitude erases women’s individualism and reinforces sexist stereotypes that women, naturally, are timid, afraid, unwilling and incapable (because of their sex) to take bold action.
Make no mistake: Women are as capable as men of making good and bad decisions; being bold and being timid; being aggressive and being passive.
If having a misogynist attitude about women was not enough for New York’s feminist senator, she also equates stupid decision-making for risk-based decisions. Women take risks every single day. We take a risk going out in the world; we take a major risk getting pregnant and having children; we took risks fighting for suffrage, and against the university and the military status quos. Women’s history is a history of risk-taking, which is how we as individuals and as a nation move forward.
This myth that women are somehow organically predisposed to be passive wallflowers is also the argument misogynists make as to why women will never be truly great in their field, or create great art, or make great military leaders — because of the idiotic notion that women don’t have the guts to make a difference since they’re too afraid to step out of a safe space comfort zone.
In my first book, I explain that racism, sexism and homophobia live on the left. The fact that it’s the 21st century and a Democratic woman senator is making this argument proves my point. Ms. Gillibrand is often discussed as wanting to pursue the presidency. Ironically, she is arguing that a woman should never be president, which is a job that requires taking on the biggest risks of all.
We’ve seen what a “risk averse” presidency looks like, and it was brought to us by a man — Barack Obama. Too afraid to deal with ISIS, too afraid to enforce his own red line on Syria, too afraid to save our heroes in Benghazi, too bored to care about the economy, too self-absorbed to actually want to govern, in Ms. Gillibrand’s world, Mr. Obama was the first woman president.
In the meantime, another New York Democratic politician, Hillary Clinton, has endorsed incumbent New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his bid for re-election, despite the fact that he is facing a surprisingly serious primary challenge from actor and activist Cynthia Nixon, exactly the kind of woman that Hillary has been telling people they should vote for.
Just a few weeks ago in India, Mrs. Clinton told an audience that women voted for President Trump because they were controlled by the men in their lives. During the 2016 election, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright campaigned for Mrs. Clinton, warning women everywhere, “And just remember, there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
More likely, it’s a place for hypocrites and frauds filled with walks in the woods and glasses of chardonnay.
• Tammy Bruce, president of Independent Women’s Voice, author and Fox News contributor, is a radio talk show host.
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