Phyllis Schlafly: Some Lies Feminists Tell

I never cease to be amazed at the falsehoods that the feminists repeat so often that they have gotten many people to believe them. Take, for example, feminists’ statements about the U.S. Constitution. So many times when I debated the Equal Rights Amendment, my feminist opponent would say, we need to amend the Constitution with the Equal Rights Amendment because the Constitution says “all men are created equal.” Of course, the Constitution doesn’t say that at all. That’s a line from the Declaration of Independence. Then the feminists argue that, anyway, we should put women in the Constitution. But why? The Constitution doesn’t mention men in the Constitution, so why should it mention women? The Constitution is a beautiful sex-neutral document, using only sex-neutral words such as person, resident, inhabitant, elector, inventor, senator, member, representative, and we the people.

One of the biggest feminist lies is that, even if feminism is outdated, women owe a debt of gratitude to the feminists of the 1960s and 1970s for creating the education opportunities women have in America today. That’s nonsense.

Educational opportunities were available to women long before the modern feminist movement was born. I worked my way through college, competing with all the guys at a great coed university, and got my degree back in 1944. Then I went to Harvard Graduate school, where there was no discrimination against women, competed with all the guys, and got my Master’s degree in 1945. My mother received her college degree at a great university way back in 1920. Those opportunities were there for women who wanted to take advantage of them. The fact is, American women are the most fortunate class of people who ever lived.