Who owns you, baby?

You’re so controlling. You never listen to what I say … Why is it always my fault?

Feminist campaign rhetoric around election time is like listening in on a marriage counseling session, or one side of a domestic argument. The couple is on the verge of divorce but never gets there. The wife is threatening to walk out while simultaneously complaining she’s chained to the kitchen stove. She asserts her sovereignty and whines about her victimhood. She insists the times have changed but draws her narrative clout from the past.

That’s what goes through my head while watching a music collage of “You Don’t Own Me” introduced by the original artist, Lesley Gore. If you’re old enough to remember the “It’s My Party” girl, you’ll recall this song, a hit in early 1964 and 10 years later hailed as a protofeminist anthem. The new video (see below), produced by Sarah Sophie Flicker of The Citizens Band, features current icons like Lena Dunham and Carrie Brownstein mugging for their mobile phones and lip-synching, “I’m not just one of your many toys … / Don’t say I can’t go with other boys.”

The point, as various title cards tell us throughout the song, is that there’s an election coming up and some people (code words for Republicans) “plan to overturn Roe v. Wade, immediatly [sic], defund Planned Parenthood, shut down the nation’s family planning program [there is one?], and repeal the Affordable Care Act. Let’s send a clear message on November 4th.” The video was actually released as a public service announcement during the last public crisis (the 2012 election) but evidently the message didn’t get through, because it’s making the rounds again, with only slight changes in its message.

Gore was only 17 when she recorded the song, still young enough to believe that any girl should be able to “Say and do whatever I please.” Sooner or later, every grownup comes to understand that no one can say and do whatever they please, whether they’re male or female. Now in her late 60s, Gore should be wiser than to wrap up the video with: “It’s hard for me to believe we’re still fighting for the same things we were [in 1964].”

I can believe it. If movement feminists keep clinging to the “some people” narrative (i.e., the patriarchy is still trying to keep us down), and insist on labeling principled differences of opinion as a “War on Women,” they’ll always be fighting. As long as they see, or at least present, the opposition as the enemy there will always be armies to recruit, rhetorical weapons to forge, and propaganda to publish. Embattled feminists will always be fighting. But—with future generations of women decimated by abortion and growing numbers of women permanently dependent on government and embittered toward men—they won’t be winning.