Bacon's Rebellion

by Margot Heffernan

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
― Virginia Woolf

Sweet Briar College. It’s a unique place. Inimitable, really. Rich in women’s history. The College was built on the will of its founder, Indiana Fletcher Williams, in memory of her deceased 16-year-old daughter. Indeed, it’s a women’s college in the most integral sense.

Over the past decade, though, this small women’s college located in Amherst, Virginia, has been afflicted. Plagued by the same blight that has spread through virtually every province of society.

Gender ideology. It has settled in at Sweet Briar where large segments of the student body stand in defense of admitting the “gender diverse,” including men who think they are women. In fact, many faculty and board members have been swindled into thinking that people can change sex. That men who imagine themselves women should receive special empathy. That we should give into their delusions and call them “women” because they tell us to.

Women must be gracious.  Isn’t this what we have been told since antiquity? Be kind, dear! And isn’t this the same admonition we are given now, in tacit and overt fashion when a man or boy claims womanhood? Be kind, dear, be kind!

by Margot Heffernan

“Only men could oppress women for thousands of years, then turn around, put on a dress, and complain that they are the most marginalized group in society.” — Kara Dansky

Remember the Seven Sisters – the original prestigious and renowned women’s colleges that dot the Northeast? Mount Holyoke College, Vassar College, Wellesley College, Smith College, Radcliffe College, Bryn Mawr College, and Barnard College were designed to replicate the elite educational experience that the Ivies provided for men. By the 1960’s there were 200 all-women’s colleges, many having evolved out of the abolitionist cause.

Women’s colleges have, in fact, shaped generations of females, including Katherine Hepburn, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Martha Stewart, Joan Rivers and Meryl Streep.

Over time, the number of women’s colleges dwindled – there are fewer than 40 in the US now – and the concept seems quaint; antiquated. An anachronism, some say, or an unnecessary hold-off from a bygone era. Fewer and fewer of these colleges are now dedicated solely to the education of women.

But the major assault on historically women’s colleges was yet to come with the seeming arrival of another species of woman, one so put upon and marginalized by a cruel society that an entire civil rights movement was required to level the playing field for “her.”