Cate Blanchett: My Moral Compass Is 'In My Vagina'

A few days before International Women’s Day, when anti-Trump protesters planned to strike for “A Day Without a Woman,” actress Cate Blanchett said that her moral compass is “in my vagina.”

“It’s all about, as you move forward in life, what’s your moral compass — where does kindness and humanity sit in a really brutal world?” Blanchett, best known for her role as Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, said on “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert Saturday.

Colbert asked her, “What is your moral compass? Where does kindness and humanity sit in a brutal world?”

“It’s in my vagina,” Blanchett quipped, as the audience broke out in laughter and applause. The actress then pretended to leave the set, as if she’d said all there was to say.

Blanchett’s statement was intended as a joke, but it arguably reveals the mentality of much of the “women’s movement” against President Donald Trump. Protesters involved in “A Day Without a Woman,” organized by the same people behind the “Women’s March” after Trump’s inauguration, seem driven by a less-than-rational anger at the sitting president.

The event’s website described the event as standing up against the forces of “fear, greed and hatred.” As International Women’s Day began, Trump himself tweeted his respect and honor for women, which might seem surprising to those protesting him as the ultimate misogynistic bogeyman.

But there is an explanation for this sub-rational marshaling of protesters, and it comes in Blanchett’s own words. At the “Women’s March,” hundreds of women — and men! — dressed in vagina costumes, and there was a campaign to knit “pussyhats” beforehand. In a world where “The Vagina Monologues” are considered “empowering,” this might not come as a surprise so much as a national cultural embarrassment.

There are feminists who identify with a certain part of their anatomy, and they do indeed act as though that is their “moral compass.”

Indeed, the Huffington Post’s Rebecca Shapiro called the vagina-moral compass declaration “another reason to love Cate Blanchett.”

But what does this declaration say about feminism, the anti-Trump marches, and American society in general? What does it tell America’s boys, who lack that most sacred of conscientious body parts? What do these protests tell the children whose schools have been cancelled because teachers care more about a political statement than they do about educating children? What do these messages tell employers who see their workers demanding leave for an ostensibly moral cause?

While some see a triumph for women, others see degradation. PJ Media’s Susan L.M. Goldberg explained how the “Women’s March” “reinforced every negative stereotype about women ever.” Debra Heine noted that the “Day Without A Woman” should really be called “A Day Without Left-Wing Women Who Vote Democrat And Want Bigger Government Controlling Everyone’s Lives.”

How does a vagina become a moral compass? And if it were indeed a moral compass, why does it sound more like Harry Reid and Barack Obama than Mia Love and Nikki Haley? Contrary to the liberal narrative, women are not all angry social justice warrior progressives, and the moral compass doesn’t rest in a sexual part of the anatomy, or in the Left’s nexus of identity politics. If it did, there would be no good reason to trust it.

Yes, Cate Blanchett was joking. But all good jokes have a basis in reality, and “A Day Without a Woman” shows exactly what that basis is. Blanchett wasn’t calling on women to let their conscience be guided by their genitalia, but it seems a lot of people are.