Professional Troll Candace Owens Is Exactly Who I Go to When I Want to Learn About Feminism
PoliticsCandace Owens, in a word, sucks. The conservative provocateur relies on contrarianism and bigotry to maintain her popularity and frankly, writing about her—even to disparage her—is exactly what she needs to continue to book speaking engagements and mindnumbing Prager U videos.
Still, sometimes Owens says something so inane that mocking her is justified. This is why I’m here to point out this wild tweet Owens posted after former President Trump’s speech at CPAC over the weekend.
“If you guys are wondering what actual feminism is, it’s Donald Trump having the courage to stand up on stage and call out the insanity of biological men dominating women’s sports,” Owens tweeted.
Here are Trump’s “courageous” comments about transgender women in sports from CPAC 2021:
Joe Biden and the Democrats are even pushing policies that would destroy women’s sports. A lot of new records are being broken in women’s sports. Hate to say that ladies, but got a lot of new records, they’re being shattered… The weightlifting. Every ounce was like a big deal for many years. All of a sudden somebody comes along and beats it by a hundred… Young girls and women are in sex that they are now being forced to compete against those who are biological males. It’s not good for women. It’s not good for women’s sports, which worked so long and so hard to get to where they are. The records that stood for years, even decades, are now being smashed… If this does not change, women’s sports, as we know it, will die. They’ll end. It’ll end.
What coach—if I’m a coach, I want to be a great coach—what coach, as an example, wants to recruit a young woman to compete if her record can easily be broken by somebody who was born a man? Not too many of those coaches around, right? They are around, they won’t be around long because they’re going to have a big problem when their record is… We’re 0 and 16, but we’re getting better. No, I think it’s crazy. I think it’s just crazy what’s happening. We must protect the integrity of women’s sports. So important. Have to.
This is run-of-the-mill trans panic, delivered from an ineloquent man to an easily impressed audience.
Given Owens’s well-documented disavowal of feminism, why she gives a shit about what is or isn’t true feminism is anyone’s guess. But there’s something hilariously bleak about the fact that anyone would be foolish enough to call Trump—a man with a storied history of misogynistic statements and sexual assault and harassment allegations—a real feminist for having the courage to be a transphobe in a society that is transphobic. Even the biggest Trump stans would likely hesitate to call him a feminist.
But even more revolting than Owens identifying Trump’s concern trolling about cis-gender women weightlifters as feminist praxis is the fact that there are countless self-described feminists (and Trump-haters) who agree with him. J.K. Rowling probably watched that bit and said, “wow, period!”