Is this really what you want?

Nowdays we mock women of the Victorian and Edwardian periods as being impossibly weak creatures who couldn’t bear insult or negative feedback without swooning. Perhaps we shouldn’t. The modern woman apparently is in danger of becoming every bit as incapable of dealing with such things. Question her beliefs and she will swoon–and then reach for the biggest legal stick she can find to silence you so that she need never face a contrary thought again. At least that is what happened in the case of Laura Kipnis, as summarized by Glenn Harland Reynolds’ column in USA Today:

Feminist professor Laura Kipnis of Northwestern University published an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education in February, decrying “sexual paranoia” on campus and the way virtually any classroom mention of sex was being subjected to an odd sort of neo-Victorian prudery: “Students were being encouraged to regard themselves as such exquisitely sensitive creatures that an errant classroom remark could impede their education, as such hothouse flowers that an unfunny joke was likely to create lasting trauma. … In the post-Title IX landscape, sexual panic rules. Slippery slopes abound.”

This article sat poorly with campus activists, who in response reported her for sexual harassment, on the theory that this article (and a follow-up tweet — yes, that’s right, a tweet) somehow might have created a hostile environment for female students, which would violate Title IX as interpreted by the Education Department. Because, you see, female students, according to feminists, are too fragile to face disagreement. And they’ll demonstrate this fragility by subjecting you to Stalinist persecution if you challenge them, apparently.

I remember when Feminism was about women proving themselves the equals of men. Today’s feminists appear to have surrendered the fight and, rather than prove they are the males’ equals, seek to blunt, cushion, and dumb down the rest of the world to make it equal to them. I’m sorry, but I fail to see how that is progress. “Harrison Bergeron” was a warning, not a how-to manual.

We don’t create bright, intelligent, strong women by shielding them from anything unpleasant. As a parent I have to continually fight against the instinct to try and shield my children from the unpleasant things in life. I do my daughter no favors by trying to help her avoid anything negative in life–especially when much of the negativity she experiences comes from other girls. I do nothing to prepare her by simply making her a victim, by convincing her that boys (and later, men) are the enemy and should be silenced.

Especially when many of her mentors to date have been men. She starts high school next year, and wants to join the band. The band teacher, who is male, has been responding quite supportively to her email inquiries, and will be meeting with her this afternoon to give her beginning instruction in her chosen instrument. This man is not the enemy. Nor is her male choir teacher these past two years who has encouraged her musicial pursuits. Nor is her male math teacher who refused to change the requirements of the class just because she didn’t like some of the homework.

Muscles and callouses are built by pushing through resistance, irritation, and strain. We don’t build tougher women by cushioning them from anything that might actually make them stronger. We won’t succeed as a society if we teach our daughters that the only response to contrary opinions is to silence them. We need to teach them to engage opposition, out-think them, and defeat them on their own turf, not just cry until someone with a big enough stick comes to their defense. We need to resist the urge to cloister them away in safe universities where they are told they are a delicate flower who can’t be trusted to defend themselves or face opposition of any kind. It seems ironic that feminists seem to be aware that it’s a nasty, brutish world out there, and yet their response is to create a generation of women who are entirely unprepared to face it. Do they really think that if ISIS were to get a foothold in America that they’d give a crap about Facebook firestorms and Title IX investigations? Do they think they can intimidate them into obtaining clear consent?

Good luck with that. I’ll prepare my daughter differently.