On Wednesday night, Tucker Carlson announced that the patriarchy had finally died.
"The patriarchy is gone, women are winning, men are failing," the Fox News host said.
Carlson's proclamation came within a weekly segment titled "Men in America," which he chose to run in March — during Women's History Month — to highlight the challenges American men face and stress that women are fighting against oppression that doesn't exist.
"'The patriarchy is thriving,' [our leaders] tell us. 'Men are in charge and they succeed precisely to the extent they thwart the progress of women,'" he chanted. "'Society is a zero-sum equation in which a man's gain is a woman's loss. This is wrong and we must rectify it.' That's the message. It also happens to be the core assumption of second wave feminism which became popular 40 years ago just as many of our Baby Boom leaders were coming of age."
"And yet none of those assumptions are true today," Carlson continued. "None of those assumptions are true today. America has changed completely. The patriarchy is gone. Women are winning. Men are failing."
Over the past month, Carlson has designated feminism as the new "f-word," and stated his belief that feminism today is a "zero-sum game" and that feminists want men to suffer — a patently untrue distortion that appears designed to whip up Carlson's base.
Though it has been 100 years since women were granted the right to vote and significant progress has been made since, gender inequality persists in the modern world.
Working women still earn less than men for the same job. In 2017, the World Economic Forum said "equality is in retreat" for the first time since the group started following the issue in 2006. The organization described 2017 as a "a bad year in a good decade," noting that the global gender gap will take exactly 100 years to rectify, compared to 83 last year, at the current rate of progress.
But modern-day feminism is not just about equal pay. It is about inclusion and fighting to equal rights for all American citizens. It is about dismantling society's gendered ideas about parenthood and mental health. It is about ending rape culture and adopting a sex-positive attitude. Ultimately, feminism is not about gender at all, as the movement seeks to demolish harmful gender stereotypes completely — an egalitarian goal that benefits everyone.
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