Conservatives are used to being called names: racist, sexist, transphobic, and the list goes on. Typically, these charges are rooted in policy differences: If you oppose DEI and racial quotas, the Left will call you racist. If you oppose men competing in women’s sports, you’re a transphobe. These labels are weapons used to advance political narratives, and typically deserve the same attention as an unhinged, all-caps comment in your X feed. They should be ignored.

Yet when it comes to sexism, conservatives should consider how their messaging makes the sexist charge stick with women who otherwise might join our movement. Conservative leaders aren’t misogynists, but particularly when speaking to and about women, they are sometimes tone deaf.

Take the issue of marriage and family life. For good reason, conservatives frequently trumpet evidence showing the benefits of marriage and family formation. Children raised by married parents enjoy a long list of benefits. Married women and men are less likely to live in poverty, have better health outcomes, and report higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction than their single counterparts. This is important information for the public to have.

Yet efforts to raise awareness about the benefits of marriage and family formation frequently come across as denigrating childless or unmarried women. Conservatives may think they are countering nihilistic TikTok influencers and gender studies professors who seem driven to convince impressionable young women that marriage and children are the enemies of good mental health, while an OnlyFans career offers true fulfillment. Yet the persuadable women most likely to hear conservatives’ counter messages are women who already recognize the benefits of marriage and children, but who find themselves outside those institutions nonetheless.

Today, nearly 20% of women over age 45 are childless. According to a Pew survey of childless adults, nearly 40% admit that they once wanted children. That’s almost certainly an understatement since many childless adults likely don’t want to admit, even to themselves, that they regret missing this irreplaceable part of the human experience.

Additionally, about one-quarter of children are being raised by a single parent. Those single parents don’t need to be told how much easier it would be to have another adult helping to give their kids all the love and support they need. They live it every day.

Touting the benefits of a happy family life can seem not so much instructive as rubbing it in. Done wrong, this messaging risks not only alienating childless and unmarried women, but all of those who love them. When women hear that messaging, they don’t solely think about how it impacts them, but also the people they love and worry about the most: their dear best friend who hasn’t found a husband; their beloved, recently divorced sister juggling kids’ schedules and costs. Married women with children will reject those who they see as dunking on their loved ones.

Conservative leaders should also keep this in mind when addressing work-life issues. Of course, parents should know how vulnerable children are in those first months and years of life, and why investing time in them is so beneficial. Yet, when done wrong, those messages can sound like attacks on working women — many of whom would love to downshift their careers but feel like they can’t afford to do so.

It is certainly true that facts don’t care about your feelings. Political leaders must make policy decisions grounded in clear-eyed reality. Yet it is also true that feelings are often unmoved by facts. That is why, when communicating about sensitive and deeply personal issues, policy leaders must be careful in how they communicate those realities, because poorly chosen words can do far more damage than good.

Republicans do not want to be seen as a party that only values married mothers or only women as mothers. The party also welcomes single women, widows, lesbians, and divorcees — any woman — so long as she shares the core conservative beliefs that personal responsibility, limited government, and free markets are the foundation of a flourishing country.

Republicans should be succeeding in winning women over. Democrats have spent recent years denigrating the very concept of womanhood — as if being a woman is a costume that you can put on and take off. Conservatives took the lead in defending women as a distinct group worthy of equal opportunity and protection under the law. Women saw this and recognized conservatives as the champions of common sense and core women’s rights.

Conservative policies are fundamentally pro-woman: Women thrive in a safe, secure society with a robust economy offering plentiful opportunities for people to pursue their own visions of happiness. This policy vision needs to be communicated carefully, in a manner that shows that women — all women, not just married mothers — are valued and can find a home in our movement.

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Carrie Lukas is the president of the non-profit Independent Women’s Forum. Follow her on X at @carrielukas.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Longtime Daily Wire readers are no doubt familiar with Xi Van Fleet — an activist, scholar, and survivor of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Xi has done more than most to shed light on the horrors of Chinese communism and to sound the alarm about the rising threat of socialism in the United States. We were proud to publish her scathing portrait of Zohran Mamdani and her five-part series “American Maoists: Warnings From The Cultural Revolution.”

Today, we’re honored to bring you an exclusive excerpt from her forthcoming book “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.” Co-authored with Chinese dissident Yu Jie, the book explores how American academics, writers, and politicians helped Communist China become a global superpower.

In the excerpt below, Xi and Yu examine three little-known American journalists who helped sell Mao’s lies to the world — and warn that Xi Jinping is working to do the same with American journalists today. — Tim Rice

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Edgar Snow, Agnes Smedley, and Anna Louise Strong — three Americans from the Midwest — were collectively known in China as the “Three S’s,” the leading Western journalists who made an immeasurable contribution to the Chinese communist cause, with Snow regarded as the most influential of the trio.

In 1984, the Smedley-Strong-Snow Society of China was established under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences to honor their contributions. The society organizes commemorative events, preserves archives, and promotes research on their roles in advancing the Chinese Communist movement. And all three of the S’s were individually featured on postage stamps issued in China.

Because Smedley and Strong were openly Communist and connected to the Communist International, their work was often dismissed in the West due to its overt ideological slant. Snow, by contrast, was seen as an independent voice. This perceived neutrality gave his work greater credibility in the West, making it arguably more deceptive and dangerous.

Today, the CCP is actively seeking new “Snows” for Xi Jinping’s “new era,” those who can fulfill a similar role as Edgar Snow in promoting China’s narrative on the global stage. In 2021, the CCP media outlet China Daily launched the Edgar Snow Newsroom, aimed at recruiting foreign reporters to engage in propaganda work for the CCP. Evidently, there is no shortage of candidates for the CCP to choose from.

The widespread popularity of the work of the Three S’s can be attributed to the historical context of the 1930s. During this time, the United States was still recovering from the Great Depression, which had deeply shaken confidence in capitalism. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal introduced socialist policies, reflecting a broader leftward shift in American society.

Interestingly, Edgar Snow noted in Red Star Over China that Mao Zedong held a favorable view of President Roosevelt, even expressing interest in learning about FDR’s New Deal. Mao was likely inspired by FDR’s large-scale government initiatives aimed at rapid economic transformation.

In this historic environment, writings that glorified and promoted Chinese Communism unsurprisingly found a receptive audience among American readers, who were increasingly exploring alternative economic and political ideologies.

Later, Edgar Snow’s 1936 visit to China and extensive interviews conducted with Mao Zedong  marked the beginning of the CCP’s campaign to cultivate allies among American influencers, particularly journalists and writers. From there, the party steadily expanded its network of “old friends” to encompass government officials, military leaders, politicians, policymakers, and, eventually, the upper ranks of major corporations and business elites.

One might argue that these influencers were merely deceived by the Chinese Communists. But the truth is far less forgiving: they were deceived because they wanted to be. They saw not what was real but what they longed to see. They heard not the truth but what confirmed their ideals and fed their convictions.

Though they came from diverse backgrounds, they shared one defining trait: a left-leaning political orientation, ranging from liberal sympathizers like Edgar Snow to committed communists like Agnes Smedley and Anna Louise Strong. History has shown, time and again, that the ideological leap from liberalism to communism is often alarmingly short.

These bleeding-heart liberals helped legitimize and elevate a regime that would go on to unleash unimaginable human suffering. Safely removed from the consequences, they never lived under the tyranny they helped glorify. Many never paused to reflect on the reality that every word they wrote in praise of the Communist Party came at the cost of real human lives — millions of them.

Words can kill, and the pen can be as deadly as any bullet. This tragic chapter of history must not be forgotten.

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Xi Van Fleet and Yu Jie are authors of the forthcoming book “Made in America: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Enabled Communist China and Created Our Greatest Threat.”

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.