I remember last year talking to a female journalist over the phone about a story she wanted to do on single parents. At the time I was new to understanding what feminism was about and how fathers were being affected by it.

She told me that she had been part of a documentary team who interviewed Jim Bagnall and that she couldn’t understand why there was so much anger. It had thrown her and she backed away from mens’ issues. I guess women generally don’t hear words as much as they see reactions when it comes to men.

But since I had the chance to meet Jim Bagnall and learn about him I was able to tell her what he was about and what a remarkable man he is and where his frustration was coming from. It is really sad that the men’s movement has been so misunderstood by the public especially when what they were trying to tell the public was vital information.

But now women are starting to listen and starting to speak out. Especially if they are mothers.

You see, it is not just fathers feminism is attacking. It is also mothers. Feminism is socialism and communism. Why do you think it has had so much power and able to change things so quickly?

“Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism.” – Catharine A. MacKinnon, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State (First Harvard University Press, 1989), p.10
“A world where men and women would be equal is easy to visualize, for that precisely is what the Soviet Revolution promised.” – Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (New York, Random House, 1952), p.806
“The Women’s Caucus [endorses] Marxist-Leninist thought.” — Robin Morgan, Sisterhood is Powerful, p. 597

I am so proud to be a woman and a mother when I see my own gender standing up and speaking out. I just feel so good and encouraged when I read the articles women are writing questioning feminism and it’s promises are unravelled to basic truth.

Look at Rosemary McCloud from the Dominion Post and her article. She questions whether women can have it all and has come to the conclusion that it is wrong to expect women to cope with being a mother and competing with men. She questions motherhood and tells us of the wonderful side of being a mother and the hardship.

And then she looks at politics.

This is why National’s Katherine Rich would not join her then leader, Don Brash, in attacking solo mothers, for which she was demoted. And it’s also why she has decided to quit politics at the next election, despite the certainty of a Cabinet post if National is elected. She’s chosen to be a mother to her two young kids because she’s not a paragraph of dogma in a feminist manual but a human being, and the brave feminist model just wasn’t working for her any more.

I’d once have been embarrassed at acknowledging motherhood as pivotal in life, but life changes you. Even clever people struggle with having it all, and after 40 years the world of action is still geared toward men and single women, despite the rhetoric: the odds are still stacked against mothers.

To prove my point, a new woman politician is about to be sworn in as a Labour MP. Louisa Wall is a former champion netballer and rugby player, Maori, bright and personable, just five years younger than Mrs Rich — and gay. For her there won’t be heart-wrenching crying in the night, conflicted loyalties, the guilt of saying goodbye to small children. She can have the best of one world — which is fine — but we persist in claiming that women can realistically hope for two.

Keep speaking up ladies. Our children are depending on us.