TIME Magazine has managed to cobble together a list of 12 Women of the Year and, so far as I can tell, all of them have actual lady bits! Yes, some of us can remember the days when the actual wombiness of a list designated as women was a given. But that was before USA Today made Admiral of the Fleet and Goddess of the Seas Rachel Levine a Woman of the Year. It was before Hershey’s Canada created a “with nuts” chocolate bar to celebrate International Women’s Day.
That said, Times WOTYs are for the most part a collection of lefties – usual suspects in the identity politics game. Kate Blanchet is there, and she at least is at the top of her field. Quinta Brunson, who created and stars in Abbott Elementary is having a year. Masih Alinejad is an Iranian dissident, so real props there. But the rest of the list …
Here’s what I learned outside the paywall. (Like you, dear reader, I find life and resources too precious to subscribe to a magazine whose motto is “Yeah, We’re Still Around.”)
Ayisha Siddiqa is Pakistani climate cultist who TIME says is :”making the world think differently about climate action.” Hmm. maybe global warming sounds more legit with a Pakistani accent?
Angela Bassett. TIME says she “knows her value.” That’s nice, but — more important — does her agent?
Ramla Ali: The Somali boxer, TIME tells us, is “fighting for refugees.” Ali “started a nonprofit that offers boxing lessons to women of ethnic or religious minority backgrounds and survivors of domestic abuse.” Good on her (though firearms training might be more practical.”
TIME says that “Phoebe Bridgers is singing her truth.” And maybe sharing her lived experience as a depressed bisexual indy singer who had an abortion?
Anielle Franco has the Owellian title of the “Racial Equality Minister of Brazil.”
Olena Shevenko “is fighting for Ukraine’s most vulnerable people,” according to TIME. So she’s an anti-abortion activist? She evacuates the old and infirmed from the path of advancing Russian columns? Nah.She runs an NGO for women and LGBT types.
“Verónica Cruz Sánchez is helping Americans defy abortion bans,” says Time. From her accompanying picture, it looks like she’s really pissed off that some baby made it out of the womb alive. From what I can gather, she does a brisk trade in chemical abortion pills.
“Megan Rapinoe won equal pay. Now she wants to win her last World Cup,” says TIME. But it doesn’t say whether she’ll go away and leave everybody alone if she does. Rapinoe is good at soccer, sure. She’s also good at resentment, entitlement and being generally unlikeable.
TIME says Makiko Ono, incoming CEO of Suntory wants to “get more women in C-Suites.” A fine idea. It’s hell keeping the executive coffee station stocked. (I kid! I kid! Because I love!) She’s also a fixture at the World Economic Forum, so Ono is TIME’s kinda gal.
So yeah, they’re all predictably woke. But at least these empresses have wombs.