From Equality to Orthodoxy

How Feminism Was Hijacked by Ideologues and Became the Engine of the Hard Left

Once upon a time, feminism was about getting a seat at the table. Today, it is the table—bolted down, policed by the ideological hall monitors of the hard left, and off-limits to anyone who dares to question the new orthodoxy.

I. The Original Deal: Feminism as Equal Rights

Early feminism had a simple, compelling premise: equality before the law. The right to vote. The right to work. Equal pay for equal work. Legal recognition of women as full citizens. You didn’t have to be on the left or right to support that. It was a bipartisan moral imperative, and by the late 20th century, most of those basic goals had been achieved.

But success often brings mission drift. And feminism, instead of declaring victory, metastasized—reshaping itself into a sprawling ideological program of grievance, censorship, and social control.

II. The Party Takeover: Feminism Becomes the Heart of the Democratic Left

Look at the current Democratic Party. Its figureheads are not just women—they’re ideologically committed feminists. Consider Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, both of whom ran against Donald Trump and both of whom weaponized feminism in different but equally cynical ways.

• Hillary Clinton’s feminism is technocratic, elitist, and brittle. It’s feminism with a Goldman Sachs honorarium. Her version is about breaking the glass ceiling for herself while quietly reinforcing the class ceiling beneath her. She invoked gender when convenient, but discarded #MeToo when it came to Bill. Her model of feminism is about power, not principle.

• Kamala Harris, by contrast, cloaks her authoritarian instincts in a more performative "representation" narrative. Her smug, dismissive debate line—"I'm speaking"—was hailed as a feminist mic drop, but it masked her deeper role as an enforcer for the establishment. This is the feminism of deference to the state, where “believe women” conveniently dies when the accused is Joe Biden.

Meanwhile, the Squad—AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib—represent feminism’s most militant incarnation: intersectional, anti-capitalist, and almost theocratic in its moral certitude. This isn’t about equal rights; it’s about moral domination through identity. Theirs is a feminism that declares dissent to be “harm,” speech to be “violence,” and disagreement to be “misogyny.”

These women are not the fringe anymore. They are the party’s moral center of gravity.

III. Feminism in the Media: The Church of the View and Maddow’s Ministry of Truth

What would a post-modern religion be without a priesthood? Enter The View, a clucking coven of corporate feminism where nuance goes to die. It’s a daily struggle session masked as daytime television.

And then there’s Rachel Maddow, high priestess of neoliberal orthodoxy. Her evolution from contrarian Rhodes Scholar to pandemic propagandist is a case study in institutional capture. Feminists once questioned Big Pharma and Big Government. Now they are the enforcers. Maddow smeared skeptics, cheered mandates, and helped build the scaffolding of censorship—all while presenting herself as the guardian of truth and womanhood.

IV. The COVID Conundrum: “My Body, My Choice”—But Only Sometimes

Nothing revealed the hypocrisy of modern feminism like the COVID era. These same women who screamed “My body, my choice!” when it came to abortion, lined up to cheer for forced injections, digital health passports, and social exclusion of the unvaxxed.

Let’s be blunt: A movement that celebrates bodily autonomy in one domain while vilifying it in another isn’t about autonomy—it’s about control. It’s about obedience to a broader ideological framework that supersedes logic, consistency, or human dignity.

What happened to reproductive rights being private? What happened to skepticism of male-dominated medical hierarchies? The COVID response exposed the lie: Feminism, at least in its modern form, will sell out its own principles if it means upholding the larger power structure it now serves.

V. The Psychology of Feminism Gone Wild

So what drives this? How did a movement rooted in justice become a punitive social crusade?

There’s a case to be made that what we’re seeing is maternal instinct without boundaries—nurture weaponized into surveillance. The drive to protect becomes the drive to control. The do-goodism of the PTA morphs into full-blown tyranny when it meets politics, media, and public health.

It’s also virtue signaling on steroids. In a culture where status is no longer defined by achievement but by moral posture, feminism offers the ultimate badge: I care more than you. But when empathy becomes performative, it’s no longer empathy. It’s theatre.

And finally, there’s the need for an external enemy. Classic feminism took on tangible injustices—discrimination, underrepresentation. Today’s feminism invents micro-oppressions to stay relevant. The patriarchy must be everywhere, even if it means redefining "violence" to include a wrong pronoun or a skeptical eyebrow.

VI. Conclusion: A Movement in Need of a Reckoning

Modern feminism didn’t just lose the plot—it burned the script and started writing a new one, where liberty is oppression and obedience is empowerment.

This doesn’t mean women’s rights no longer matter. Of course they do. But a feminism that sacrifices principle for ideology, or fairness for tribalism, becomes indistinguishable from the very systems it once opposed.

It’s no longer about empowering women—it’s about empowering the right kind of women, in the right jobs, with the right opinions. Everyone else is collateral damage.

Feminism once said, "Let us in."
Now it says, "Get in line."