What a Man Can Do)

Today we are looking at an example of a campaign that was built on a faulty premise that led to extreme results beyond its original intentions: feminism. This movement has had a few campaign slogans, but arguably the most prominent were the ones that begin with “What a man can do…”

Interestingly, there have been three variations of this slogan, each going further than the last. In the late 19th century it was, “What a man can do, a woman can try.” Then, at the start of the 20th century, under the suffrage movement, it became, “What a man can do, a woman can do as well.” Then, still later, it became, “What a man can do, a woman can do even better.”

Obviously, the last two versions of the slogan are explicitly untrue. In reality, we understand that biological differences make certain things possible for men and impossible for women and vice versa. Of course, the falseness of the statements was part of the design, making them provocative and controversial. One might say these statements were never meant to be taken literally, just as a rhetorical flourish.

Fair enough, but that raises the question, “what are the long-term effects of founding a movement on a faulty premise?” Even if the faulty premise is tongue-in-cheek, can it really portend good things down the road when that is your foundation? Perhaps it is effective at getting the changes that you want today, but what sort of changes are likely to follow later on?

From Twisted Beginnings)

A movement that accepts a lie at its origin is a movement with a twisted foundation. It is somewhat misaligned with reality at the very beginning, and it is sure to become even more misaligned as more and more structure is built on top of it. This is especially true when we realize that yesterday’s rhetoric becomes tomorrow’s dogma. In my experience, there are many that have taken the provocative, tongue-in-cheek message of “what a man can do, a woman can do as well,” and actually believe it literally. They take it as an undisputed fact that men and women are totally equal in all regards, and that leads to some shocking conclusions.

Most recently, this line of thinking was clearly a main contributor to the transgender movement, which fully embraced the idea that there was little or no difference between a man or a woman, and that one could become the definition of the other at will. I think it’s safe to say that such a notion was far from the mind of old-time suffragettes, but this is simply the long-term consequences of the seeds that they, themselves, planted.

This is an example of a campaign built upon an explicit lie, but what about a campaign built upon implicit lies? We’ll look at an example of that tomorrow.