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Feminist Fantasies (the Latest)
Townhall.com ^ | September 21, 2012 | Susanne Fields

Posted on 09/21/2012 5:35:08 AM PDT by Kaslin

Certain feminists, like children discovering that certain words shock their mommies, like to talk dirty. Or at least naughty. Naomi Wolf climbs on this bandwagon once more with her eighth book, "Vagina: A New Biography." She joins aging shock jock ("jockette"?) Eve Ensler in shouting the word in a marketplace crowded with female monologues.

Wolfe, who helped Al Gore with his "earth tones" to make him more attractive to women in his presidential quest in 2000, imagines that she has grown up now and seeks to prove it by "liberating" a certain word in the female anatomy.

Contemporary feminism sprang from the heads of smart women who, like Athena, sprang from the head of Zeus. They changed the way women asserted themselves. Some of their rhetoric suffered from hyperbole, about bra burnings and witch sightings, but the most credible of the sisterhood addressed legitimate complaints about prejudice against women in the workplace and the objectification of women as sexual objects in cultural stereotypes.

Wolf's new revelations are what's wrong with so many contemporary feminist perceptions that gain such easy attention (and notoriety). Middle-class women have attained so much of what they sought in work and love, for better and for worse, that they've become sexual satires of themselves. They cheerfully gave up childhood dreams of a knight on a white horse, but they're disillusioned and unhappy now when they find themselves on an old gray mare in the rodeo of life.

As a revolution, it produced low-hanging fruit, ready for the picking, and the revolution coincided with the development of the pill, which gave women the ability to determine whether they would bear children, when and how many. The changes didn't usher in a perfect culture, as revolutions rarely do, but women got a new way to think of their bodies, their abilities to work outside the home, and how they could combine work and nurturing. This inevitably opened Pandora's box, letting loose all manner of new and unexpected vices, abusing language and love.

Naomi Wolf gives her repetitious sexual signature a patina of faux scholarship, claiming insights in the tradition of transcendence, described by William James in "The Varieties of Religious Experience," the moments of glory articulated by the poet William Wordsworth (when he finished his dance with daffodils) and the sublime as achieved through meditative states, such as those of the Dalai Llama. That's quite a tradition for someone with a taste for displaying sexual habits.

The experience of the mystical, transcendent and shining elevations that enable a woman to connect with the divine, or "greater self," Wolf writes, is available to all women in their "multi-orgasmic capacity." She writes: "Producing the stimulation necessary for these mind states is part of the evolutionary task of the vagina. Philosophers have spoken for centuries of a 'God-shaped hole' in human beings -- the longing human beings feel to connect with something greater than themselves, which motivates religious and spiritual quests."

If this argument sounds like a late-night skit for "Saturday Night Live," it's not. She is deadly serious about her spiritual "journey," and one reviewer, Toni Bentley, tartly observes that "so many women are taking journeys these days that I am surprised anyone is ever at home."

The reviews of "Vagina" are often coupled with discussions of Hanna Rosin's much-publicized book "The End of Men and the Rise of Women," in which she describes how the "new woman" has become the man she once railed against. As women become the dominant sex in education and in the workforce, they find their opposite sex, no longer so opposite, reduced to a passive partner.

Although Rosin argues that the heartaches of women in the college "hookup" culture are exaggerated, she concedes that two-thirds of the women in one survey of 20,000 only wished their last hookup had turned into something more than a one-night stand. They hope, wistfully and often desperately, that they will still marry and have families. This is evidence that some women reflect seriously on the nature of their trade-offs and the changes wrought in male-female relationships.

All this data, of course, must seem superfluous to women of other cultures, particularly women in Muslim cultures, where many must conceal their bodies, often in heavy wool armor, lest they unleash uncontrollable lust in their men. American society remains in the vanguard of women's rights in a democracy where we don't (yet) have to apologize for free speech, no matter how far-fetched or even irresponsible the speech may be.

These ladies overstate their case to the point of becoming foolish and even ludicrous, but Naomi Wolf, Eve Ensler and Hanna Rosin expose one great lie broadcast in the current presidential campaign. There's no such thing in America that could remotely be called a "war on women."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: family; liberalwomen; marriage; waronwomen; women

1 posted on 09/21/2012 5:35:12 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

“Shocking” is defined by her looks....


2 posted on 09/21/2012 5:36:45 AM PDT by traditional1 (Don't gotsta worry 'bout no mo'gage, don't gotsta worry 'bout no gas; Obama gonna take care o' me!)
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To: traditional1

That picture is real, I thought it was a photochop job.


3 posted on 09/21/2012 5:40:11 AM PDT by svcw (If one living cell on another planet is life, why isn't it life in the womb?)
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To: Kaslin

4 posted on 09/21/2012 5:47:13 AM PDT by JoeProBono (A closed mouth gathers no feet - Mater tua caligas exercitus gerit ;-{)
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To: JoeProBono

This is why Putin was willing to give 0bama more time, because he knows that 0bama is the biggest vagina of all.


5 posted on 09/21/2012 5:52:05 AM PDT by mkjessup (Jimmy Carter is the Skidmark in America's panties, 0bama is the yellow stain in front!)
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To: traditional1
Look any philosophy thats central focus is your genitals it is not deserving of respect.....if your god is your sex organs your following a false one
6 posted on 09/21/2012 5:53:03 AM PDT by tophat9000 (American is Barack Oaken)
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To: svcw
That picture is real, I thought it was a photochop job.

What is seen is a profound misuse of Beauty
Beauty is a form of Power,
not greatly different than Strength and Intelligence

Men are, unfortunately, getting quite immune to it's misuse
And as such, Immune to it's proper uses
Kindness, Caring, and Control

The perception of Beauty is deteriorating all around us
As is Humility and Gratitude

And Satan Laughs

7 posted on 09/21/2012 6:00:48 AM PDT by HangnJudge
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To: Kaslin
Penis envy....feminists look down in anguish, where is it? , there has to be something there, but alas it is missing, an empty void....if only I had a penis, they lament...
8 posted on 09/21/2012 6:37:20 AM PDT by B212
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To: HangnJudge

Feminism is institutionalized narcissism. Narcissists abuse those closest to them and die alone in many cases. Rush was right in his NAG euphemism for them.


9 posted on 09/21/2012 6:37:41 AM PDT by Luke21
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To: Kaslin

so according to modern feminists, a woman is only a vagina. to bad they miss out on the whole person.


10 posted on 09/21/2012 6:57:10 AM PDT by camle (keep an open mind and someone will fill it full of something for you)
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To: camle

Funny... her head actually looks like half an ass.


11 posted on 09/21/2012 6:59:30 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter knows whom he's working for)
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To: MrB

LOL~! modern feminism sure seems to demean modern women...


12 posted on 09/21/2012 7:53:05 AM PDT by camle (keep an open mind and someone will fill it full of something for you)
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