Top ten feminist fiascoes of 2014

Charlotte Allen looks back at 2014, and brings us the top ten feminist fiascos of the year:

The “gang rape” hoax at UVA: A three-hour serial sexual assault atop a pile of glass shards as a fraternity-initiation ritual?

Wendy Davis: Even though Davis’ bedazzled supporters threw almost $40 million at her feckless campaign, she still lost by 20 points to Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott.

Rotherham: Now there was a real rape culture: nearly two decades of sexual assault, exploitation, and trafficking of teenage girls, mostly by British-Pakistani men, that had been covered up by British authorities for fear of stirring up anti-Islamic sentiment.

#Shirtstorm: In mid-November scientists managed, for the first time in human history, to land a robot on a comet hurtling through space some 25 million miles away from Earth. But the reaction of feminists was: Who cares? They were fixated on the fact that one of the physicists, Matt Taylor, wore a shirt printed with ladies in lingerie during a live screening of the feat.

Hobby Lobby: The Supreme Court ruled on June 30 that a federal religious-freedom law permitted the crafts-store chain to refuse to pay for certain kinds of birth control for their employees on the ground that they could be abortifacients.

The Nine West shoe ad ragefest: Nothing inflames a feminist more than the idea that women primarily want to be wives and mothers. So when Nine West launched a series of ads for stilettos over the summer with such slogans as “starter husband hunting” and “first day of kindergarten,” feminists clutched their pearls so tightly over the supposed damage to women’s “self-esteem” that they nearly decapitated themselves.

The Great Spider-Woman Sexist Derriere Scandal: Feminist ire detonated after the leaking of Italian graphic artist Milo Manara’s comic-book cover showing Spider-Woman clambering over the top of a skyscraper with her behind stuck up in the air. “A male hero would never be placed in the same physical position,” sniffed one commentator. Then it turned out that a male hero -- namely Spider-Man himself -- had been placed in the exact same position, with his behind stuck up in the air, on the cover of one of his comic books.

F-Bombs for Feminism: Someone actually thought it would help the cause of women to dress up little girls in princess costumes and video them as they dropped the f-word more times than Leonardo di Caprio in “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Amanda Marcotte: This Slate XX regular and overtime tweeter was the feminist gift that kept on giving throughout 20014. Top Marcottism of the year (on Dec. 5): Calling the people who disbelieved Rolling Stone’s now-debunked UVA rape yarn “rape apologists.”

“Ban Bossy”: Whatever happened to that? In March, celebrity Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was making the media rounds to promote her plan to encourage girls to be leaders by making sure no one ever used the b-word around them.

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