Echidne: On Flannel Knickers and Feminism

The Concerned Women of America is a group of anti-feminists, a little like the Independent Women's Forum except that the latter group would wear G-strings and the Concerned Women long flannel knickers. And the Concerned Women have a male as their spokesperson. Otherwise the two wingnut organizations are pretty much in agreement about what has caused all the problems of this country: feminism. Except when feminism has been totally ignored and ridiculed and proven faulty. But even in those cases all that is wrong in the world (abortions, latchkey children, women with beards, impotent men, messy houses, divorces, the decline of America's military power and so on and on) is the fault of feminism. Though it has also been totally defeated and was ridiculous to begin with.

This short summary may explain why I don't write about these groups' ideas very much. To criticize them I have to chase an idea around a circle, leap over cooked-up evidence and turn around a corner just to find that the idea has morphed into its opposite. And everything they propose is covered with this slippery slime of emotional references to mom and apple-pie and how much better times were when women didn't have the vote.