Larry Flynt wonders what ever happened to equal rights for women. I wonder what the heck he’s talking about. It’s news to this American female that my gender doesn’t share equal rights with men.

Flynt uses the standby “pay gap” line as proof that women are wildly discriminated against in the big bad United States. The Hustler publisher (I know, the irony kills me too) says, “To this day women are paid roughly 20% to 25% less than their male counterparts for doing the same job.”

This claim has been so soundly blown out of the water that it’s almost amusing when leftists bring it up. It’s like watching someone try to convince a group of rational adults that the boogeyman really does live in the closet.

Maybe if Mr. Flynt put down his magazine full of naked ladies long enough to read some real news, he’d find some actual female oppression around the globe. Just last month, The Washington Post published an article detailing a popular medical procedure for Chinese women preparing for marriage –hymenoplasty.

It turns out that Chinese men want their women untouched. That’s not good for the Chinese women that enjoyed being touched, before marriage, and not by their fiancés. Now, thanks to Dr. Zhou Hong and countless others, women can oblige their future husbands with surgical hymen reconstruction.

“We can fix it so everything is perfect, so the men can believe they are marrying virgins,” said Zhou Hong, a physician and director of gynecology at the Beijing Wuzhou Women’s Hospital. “We don’t advertise it; we don’t publicize it.”

Zhou, 44, said most of her patients are sexually active young women who are about to marry and have told their future husbands they are virgins. She said a smaller number want to forget a bad relationship and “start over,” and a few have been victims of rape.

Is this what liberation looks like? Cheating the system?

There’s a reason this procedure isn’t popular in the United States like it is China and in areas with largeMuslim populations. Women in the United States don’t have to lie to their husbands about the state of their virginity, because they have nothing to fear from their men.

Women are of equal value to men in the United States. We are not oppressed. We are not reduced toproperty to be owned by men. Real oppression of women happens when the value of a female is reduced to the level of an electronic device.

Some men who were interviewed agreed about the importance of finding a virgin. “I really care about virginity,” said Xia Yang, product manager for a technology company. “If you go to buy a cellphone, of course you’d want to buy a new cellphone. Who would spend the same amount of money to buy an old cellphone that’s been used for two years?”

Larry Flynt, before you cry me a river about how oppressed I am as an American woman, please think about the fact that I enjoy the freedom of publishing this article. I doubt I’d be able to do so in China or Iran, places where women face real oppression and objectification.

Now please excuse me while I go steal the remote from my husband. Even though he’ll squabble at me, there’s a 50/50 chance he’ll give in and let me pick the channel. After all, I am secure in the knowledge that I am more precious to him than rubies, let alone his new iPhone. That is equality.

Cross Posted at David Horowitz’s NewsReal