Armed with common sense, Anita Blair attacks feminism

Insight on the News, Nov 24, 1997 by Stephen Goode

`A feminist is a person who irrationally puts women ahead of men and frequently ahead of children,' warns the head of the Independent Women's Forum. `The word has taken on a meaning, much like racism.'

The Independent Women's Forum is a voice for women who don't hear themselves in America today," Anita Blair, the IWF's executive vice president, tells Insight. "We come from all walks of life. What keeps us together is our devotion to getting at the truth and using common sense and logic to arrive at good decisions.

"In this world, the biggest enemy to truth and common sense and logic is probably feminism," she adds. The IWF publishes a monthly newsletter, Ex Femina, and the Women's Quarterly journal. No one in America attacks contemporary feminism with greater wit, learning and utter devastation than Blair and her group. What's refreshing too is that Blair is optimistic about a decline in feminisms appeal to the young. "I see some hope that the excesses of feminism are going to meet some resistance with the new generation, if not with people my age who seem to be wallowing in it," she says.

Insight: What does feminism want these days?

Anita Blair: I really believe that what we see as feminism, quote, unquote, today is basically the tool, the servant, of elite women to get their way at the expense of less elite women -- women who maybe don't have a lot of talent, brains and money.

They are the ones suffering from the breakdown of the family, suffering from the welfare state, whether they're a part of it or whether they're paying for it. Radical feminism has caused a lot of suffering for a great many of those women. We have large numbers of women. Who are forced into the workplace unwillingly when they have young children they'd rather be with and we have large numbers of people who find themselves unwillingly raising children on their own. Both men and women, but primarily women. I'm sure that was not the intent of the people who signed on to women's liberation, but that's what we have.

Insight: What went wrong?

AB: I think that the momentum [of feminism] carried it away. I think there are always lurking around the fringes of any movement people who are quite willing to take it as far as it will go. Really destructive-minded people. I think feminism -- just like a lot of other "isms," Marxism for example -- is eager to push things as far as they will go, because as far as they're concerned that's what it's going to take to topple the establishment that they don't like.

Insight: What needs to be done?

AB: Look, there is no substitute for a mother! By and large the best option for any child is to be with its mother in the first critical years of life.

As the discussion moved around the room two weeks ago at the meeting of our national advisory board, it turned to the flat tax, because if moms need to be home with their kids, and I think most women do want to be home with their children or at least have the flexibility to be at home most of the time with the kids in those early years, then something needs to be done. That something is surprising. What is it that's driving them into the workplace? It's not boredom. It's an onerous tax code, which in a typical family [means] one person is working simply to pay the government, with tax rates what they are. So one of the first things I'd do is fundamental tax reform which not only would give relief to families but would put a bridle on government and naturally limit it, I hope. Once we say, "Look, government, you're only going to get so much money," then government would have to look closely at what it would be able to accomplish with that money.

Insight: What else needs to be done?

AB: At the same time that I see government withdrawing from these ineffective activities it has been involved in, I would like to see the other institutions of society built up. Churches; families; schools; businesses; the military. These are all the institutions that have been "marched through" in the last 30 years. If they're not under the artificial constraints that have been forced on them to create perfect equality among all people, then they can focus on what they truly should be doing and have the freedom to be able to do it.

If we didn't have to rely on Bill Clinton to give us the opportunity to learn to read, we'd all be better off! [Laughs.]

Insight: How would you define radical feminism?

AB: The same way I define feminism. I won't call myself a feminist and the reason is that word has taken on a meaning much like racism. A racist is somebody who irrationally puts his own race ahead of others and a feminist is a person who irrationally puts women ahead of men and, frequently, ahead of children.

In many cases, I think they're playing out their own Freudian drama on the policy stage saying, "Well, my first husband walked out on me, or I never had dates in high school, so all men are bad."

The women's movement really did "move on." Of course, it had a ready-made audience: 52 percent of the population. It caught on, and boom! It was in 1977 or 1978 that feminism should have declared victory and gone home and said, "Now let's go on to some other social issue." All that was needing to be done had been done. Thereafter it was just continued momentum that actually was pretty destructive.