Young Women’s Leadership Summit 2019, Friday, June 7, 2019, in Dallas. (Turning Point USA)
This past weekend in Dallas, Texas, Turning Point USA hosted its Fifth Annual Young Women’s Leadership Summit. Starting back in 2015 in a small Chicago suburb, the event has grown from its initial attendance of 83 young women to this year’s total of 1,400. It is the largest gathering of its type anywhere in the country.
Right now, there are six women officially running for president on the Democratic side of the ledger. All of these women profess themselves to be strong on “women’s issues.” By their own definitions and use of language, being strong on “women’s issues” means taking the position held by various team left constituents.
If these are true “women’s issues,” then that means they are topics that should be debated by women and for women. I have some news for Democrats. I have the negative side of the “women’s issues” debate team ready to begin. I hope it's OK to have 1,400 team members on stage.
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The speakers at our event were not just women. We had a variety of male speakers who believe in helping to empower women against the encroachment of big government into their lives. The women who did speak, however, represented a powerhouse collection of some of today’s most outspoken female voices; voices for fairly applying the Constitution to all and against treating all women as a collection of helpless damsels who need government to assist them at every life’s turn.
Young Women’s Leadership Summit 2019, Friday, June 7, 2019, in Dallas. (Turning Point USA)
One after another they took the stage. Former Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and a host of others. Each had their own unique message emanating from their area of expertise and personal passion.
All of them carried the same theme: You are empowered. You do live in the greatest nation on Earth. Nothing can stand in your way but yourself. You can fight back against socialist-minded feminists trying to enlist the government to speak for you under the invocation of your name.
Young Women’s Leadership Summit 2019, Friday, June 7, 2019, in Dallas. (Turning Point USA)
I’m always a bit awe-struck by what the young women attendees share with me in terms of how they view the conference and the efforts of TPUSA. Each year my reaction becomes more amplified because as elected leaders, media, and celebrities increase the intensity of their public professions of what it means to be a woman and what government has to do for women, the strength of the comments I hear from our attendees increases.
Charlie Kirk, Founder of TPUSA and Allie Stuckey, Young Women Leadership Summit Chairwoman opening night of Turning Point USA - 2019 Young Women’s Leadership Summit, Thursday, June 6, 2019, in Dallas. (Turning Point USA)
Allow me to share some of the various lines of thought that were expressed to me this past weekend from 1,400 college-age conservative women:
“I am very pro-Trump. The media keeps telling America that women hate the president, but I’m a woman and I am fully in support. Why are they lying? What else do they lie about?”
“I am tired of having people assume that I’m a liberal just because I’m a woman. It is so sexist to just try and label me because of my gender. I can think about issues and ideas just as well as any man can and come to my own conclusions.”
“I thought I was all alone. It is amazing to be around other women who see the world the same way I do. On campus, we are forced to keep our ideas to ourselves and hide them from classmates and professors.”
These young women are every bit as “fully female” as are Alyssa Milano, Rachel Maddow, and all the others who profess to speak on their behalf. Liberal-socialist women generalize about women as if they are some sort of monolithic voting block of disenfranchised, victimized citizens. They use their positions of celebrity and power as if to say “If only you were me, I know this is what you would say. Certainly, it is what you should say if you were me.”
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Another thing that stood out at the YWLS is that these ladies do not perceive men as being inherently threatening to them. They appreciate both the similarities and the differences that exist between the sexes and they do not see tearing down traditional male roles as being central to their own advancement. They feel that being a woman has nothing to do with how someone else views being a man.
I want to extend an invitation. I would like Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Marianne Williamson to attend a women’s town hall meeting which I will arrange and for which I will provide funding and the audience. I will get as many of those 1,400 young women I met this past weekend to attend. If these presidential candidates say they are strong on “women’s issues” then they have an obligation to engage all women on all issues.
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