by Rabbi Dov Fischer in The American Spectator

Have you ever gotten in trouble or received a nasty look when holding an elevator door for a woman or for pausing when the elevator door opens for all the women inside to get off or for those waiting outside first to get on? If you live outside the two Crazy Coasts, know with a certainty that this is not the era of Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best. Donna Reed? Howzabout Joyce Reid? Father Knows Best? More like: Father Is an Idiot and Is Barred by a Restraining Order from Seeing the Kids.

In this era, you may get yelled at by a crazed feminist who is ragingly insulted that you, an antediluvian man, have treated the woman as though she is any different from a male. What were you thinking by offering to open the car door for her — that she is too dumb to open a door? Or by allowing her to exit the elevator first — that she is unable to find her way out of an elevator car if there is no one to mansplain how to egress?

Gender is fluid now, a variation on water incapable of freezing. Men are women (e.g., Rachel Levine and Olympics Bruce), women are men (e.g., Lia Thomas), some are neither (e.g., Demi Lovato, Judith Butler), and others are both (here’s a sampling). Woke corporations and universities expect employees, especially professors and deans, to identify their pronouns: He/Him/His? She/Her/Hers? They/Them/Their? (Mine are: Me/Myself/I. My friend in New Jersey is You/Youze/Youze.) Gender. Cisgender. Binary. Non-Binary.

The United States Supreme Court now has its first confirmed idiot, a woman of absolutely no distinction whatsoever, whose most famous moment in the public eye came when she could not define what a woman is. No? Truly no? In the world of identity politics, every woman knows precisely what a woman is if she needs a job and the employer is meeting quotas. All the gender fluidity goes down the toilet like so much micturation fluid when a non-binary They/Them/Their applies for a federal grant for a “woman-owned business.” Suddenly “their” mammary glands, vulva, and that thing that sort-of rhymes with “Dolores” manifest a crystal-clear gender, as binary as two electric plug adapters. Is the corporation looking for a woman to meet a government quota? Is a university looking for a Black woman? Is Joe Biden? Is the university looking to boost its already-majority-woman student population? In each case, you can bet those applicants come well-prepared with crayons to draw a matching pair of their 23rd set of chromosomes. They are as prepared to set forth their “womanness” (so to speak) as Elizabeth Warren was prepared to present as an Indian in order to get her Harvard job. Surely, there is a next-generation Liz Warren right now applying in Cambridge trying to prove that he, she, or they is an Arab Muslim, notwithstanding that we know there are at least 20 Arab and Muslim student groups already at Harvard.

At that moment, when there is money to be made, a job to be had, a grant to be sucked in as with a vacuum cleaner, feminists hide their ideology and play their intersectionalist gender advantage, bursting out singing Carole King lyrics just as Ketanji Brown Jackson surely conveyed when interviewed by Ol’ Uncle Joe who’s movin’ kinda slow at the Junction: “You make me feel like a natural woman.” (Too confusing to try the Shania Twain variation: “Man! I feel like a woman.”)

We who are not progressive and woke get lectured constantly, called misogynists as we are called racists, homophobes, and whatever-else-they-got. The late Rush Limbaugh reflected the exasperation and fury of normal mainstream society when he termed these radicals and extremists “feminazis.”

There is no question that women must be paid equal pay for equal work. Two teachers with identical levels of seniority in adjoining public school classrooms, each teaching their respective second graders the same assigned curriculum on appreciating transgenderism and evaluating whether they are “trans,” should be paid the same if they are equally skilled. Manifest unfairnesses are unacceptable, and certain public and individual insensitivities and discriminations over the centuries were blatantly wrong. We are a better society for having rectified matters rooted in honest-to-goodness misogyny. But, as with almost everything in our culture — or what once could be called “culture” — the cause of women’s rights has gone berserk.

And that is what is strikingly odd about the disastrous hostage deal that Israel’s two lunkhead War Cabinet leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, have agreed to contract with Hamas-ISIS. Under the terms of the deal, through its first four days, Hamas-ISIS would release 50 people at the rate of 12–13 a day, and Israel insanely would release three times that many: 150 convicted Arab terrorists who had been duly imprisoned after receiving fair open trials. In addition, Israel agreed to pause its war effort to give Hamas terrorists (i) some much-needed breathing space, (ii) a chance to relocate from positions that Israeli ground forces had identified, (iii) ample fuel to power their tunnel ventilation systems and lighting, heat and air conditioning, for their 300 miles of underground tunnels, (iv) a chance to resupply their rocket-propelled-grenade and anti-tank launchers whose missiles had been fired until empty, (v) an opportunity to move the 200 hostages they still are holding to new locations that the Israel Defense Forces will have to identify all over again, and so much more. Quite a deal, by which both sides implicitly admit that one Jew’s life is valued at three or more Arab Muslim lives. (And, indeed, past Israeli moronic hostage exchanges even have seen, by mutual agreement, that a single Jew’s life is valued at more than 1,000 Arab Muslim lives. So, if Hamas murdered 1,200 Jews, should proportionality allow Israel to kill 1,200,000?)

But here’s the thing: On top of all else, the deal specifies that Hamas will release only women and children, and seniors.

What about men? Aren’t men “privileged”? Where is the privilege when men actually need it?

Suddenly, the feminists retreat back to Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and every woman character in opera history except for the outlier stabbers, Tosca and Lucia di Lammermoor. But isn’t that sexist, contracting to release everyone but men who are not senior? Historically, of course, it would be proper, if making such an idiotic deal, for Israel to press first for its women and children. When the Titanic went down, Isidor Straus famously allowed his wife, Ida, to have his spot on the remaining lifeboat, so he drowned. That was gallantry. Ida refused, so she drowned with him. That was romantic. (It was also something else.)

But feminists say they don’t want gallantry now. Now they want to serve in the army, chop wood, drive trucks, mine coal, and do road work. They are equal. Gillette razors stand with them condemning toxic masculinity and in effect emasculating American men.

And yet, in the Hamas hostage deal, there is no feminism. No wokeness. No intersectionality. The women go free, and the men remain in Gaza. Feminists are silent, pausing briefly like Susan Sarandon to celebrate Jewish suffering.

The hypocrisy stinks, as does everything else about that rotten deal. And about extreme feminists.

Originally published in The American Spectator