Posted on 05/23/2003 7:29:29 AM PDT by robowombat
Feminism's Third Wave by Angela Fiori
Last Friday's article on date rape by Murray Rothbard in these pages brought back a lot of college memories (not many of them good). By the end of his essay Rothbard cut to the real motive of the feminists: the campus date-rape campaigns of the early 1990s weren't motivated by a genuine concern for the well-being of women. They were part of an ongoing attempt to delegitimize heterosexuality to young, impressionable women by demonizing men as rapists.
The only point I'd add is that the regulations the feminists were proposing applied only to men, not to the hordes of lecherous dikes teaching in "Wymyn's Studies" departments whose most prized occupational perk is brazen sexual harassment of young women with complete impunity.
What a difference ten years makes. The newest twist of feminism finds men guilty again, but in an exquisitely tortured way (e.g., Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Why There Are No Good Men Left). Taking their cues from Betty Friedan's Second Wave (the First Wave of feminism being suffrage), young women since the late 1960s have increasingly bought into the idea that building a career instead of a home and family are of central importance to their lives during their early twenties to mid-thirties (ironically their prime years for bearing children).
Today's young women thus climb the corporate heights, entering dream careers earning six- and even seven-figure incomes. They acquire beautiful sports cars, commodious homes, and the respect of hundreds to thousands of subordinates in hectic Palm-Pilot worlds.
Sometime in the midst of this material utopia, New Single Woman suddenly finds herself in an epic crisis: she's 35 to 40 and still unmarried with no prospects in sight and rapidly expiring eggs in her ovaries. This leads to a furious hunt for a hubby who's every bit as brilliant, gorgeous, sexy, hip, financially successful, and personally accomplished as she is and guess what? He's nowhere to be found. Ergo, "There are no good men left."
If you think this is a joke, it's not. It's feminism's Third Wave, where women run to expensive relationship consultants like Barbara DeAngelis (who's been divorced 4 times), join speed-dating groups, and post photos of themselves on Yahoo! Personals to few takers. What could be the problem? First, guests who arrive at the party five hours late can't legitimately complain that the buffet has been cleaned out. Gorgeous men (like women) go to the earliest and highest bidders. If you're a 35 to 40-year-old corporate spinster, it's time to give up on Brad Pitt, honey. If you want a hubby bad enough, you'll just have to settle for a...(gag!)...average mortal man. Sorry.
(What's interesting is that absurdly high standards – or inexplicably low ones as we'll see later – is the obvious diagnosis with most of these women, but it's never the diagnosis that our popular culture gives them. It's always, "Oh, you poor thing. You're so wonderful and men are just too stupid or mean to admit it.")
Feminism proclaimed that for women to be fulfilled they had to adopt the career ambitions of workaholic men, the sexual promiscuity of John F. Kennedy, and the cynicism of Gloria Steinem (the pre-married one, that is). Can you think of any demographic group other than women who would have bought into this prescription for complete disaster and then cried victim when the Bunker Buster of Inevitable Biology crashed through the roof and blew up in their faces? Think Wile E. Coyote. No, think of someone much dumber.
Women were designed by God for marriage and motherhood and deep down they have an innate desire for it, no matter how sublimated nature can be to social idiocies such as feminism. What's so remarkable about the feminist charade was how long a run it had before a few women caught on to it. It didn't even pass muster as a leftist ideology, focusing on material objectives such as money, prestigious jobs, and physical possessions. It was utopian ("You can have it all") but in the end really not much more than pseudo-intellectual hedonism.
There's a saying from some older culture to the effect that the quickest way to destroy a rival society is to ruin its women. It's a dictum undoubtedly coined by some man who probably didn't begin to grasp the stunning magnitude of the self-destructive instinct that is so much a part of Collective Woman. (These are the inexplicably low standards alluded to above.) While I have a great deal of sympathy for her family, no one will ever convince me that Laci Peterson didn't see an abundant number of red flags before marrying the creepy Scott. Sociopaths aren't made overnight.
Out here in California the Peterson case is being compared to the O.J. Simpson murders and yet an O.J. verdict is entirely possible if Peterson gets even a majority-female jury. Women on the Menendez jury almost got their wish to free the murderous Lyle and Erik just because they found them handsome. (One female juror actually expressed sympathy for the brothers "because they no longer had parents." Uh, the brothers no longer had parents because they murdered them, stupid!)
As for the Peterson case, forget the grisly discovery of the needle-nose pliers on Scott's boat with Laci's hair in them. Anyone with a brain knows that innocent men don't bleach their hair and beard and run off to San Diego with a load of cash and survival gear. And yet Scott gets dozens of love letters, cards, and flowers every day from women all over the country who want to marry him and have his baby because he's good-looking. It's not easy to imagine a similar phenomenon vis-à-vis men, as down in San Diego all Kristin Rossum ever got from men over the last two years were death threats for running off with her boss and fatally poisoning her husband. Ditto for even better-looking women such as Susan Smith and Pamela Smart.
The problem goes way beyond Laci Peterson, Nicole Brown Simpson, and the 36 women murdered by the handsome but thoroughly evil Ted Bundy. (Michaud and Aynesworth report that scores of beautiful blondes were vying for Bundy's attention at the July 1979 trial in Miami where he was first sentenced to death. Bundy's last wife Carole Boone married him on February 12, 1980, the day of his third death sentence for slitting the throat of 12-year old Kim Leach, mutilating her genitals with a knife, and stuffing her lifeless body under an abandoned hog shed. Incredibly, Boone believed in Ted's innocence until Ted himself finally dissuaded her right before his 1989 execution.)
Earlier this year many men were so taken with the beautiful and supposedly genteel star of The Bachelorette, Trista Rehn. Rehn, who eventually chose handsome firefighter Ryan Sutter as her husband, has to be glad her new hubby didn't look too close into her past. Some of the disturbing skeletons include, among heavy slutting with different men, a significant stint with a very creepy-looking tattooed ex-con. The man, with the ironic name of Brian Bachelor, bears an uncanny resemblance to the tattooed criminal wife beater Tommie Lee, whom the beautiful actresses Heather Locklear and Pamela Anderson both married and divorced.
Average men continue to be outraged by this perennial female adulation of either sociopaths or extremely good looking men who use them up and move on. They see no rationality in such a warped set of preferences. The key word here is rationality. The default mode of thought in women is not rational, it's emotive. Criminals and philanderers are interesting and mysterious – that's the key. It's irrelevant that they offer no real future. In a nutshell, they're crass entertainment like ditzy afternoon soaps. (I know so many of you men were certain there was some stunningly profound answer to this question, but there isn't. Sorry for the letdown.)
All of this is exactly what decent men should wage a revolution against. They are the ones called upon to pick up the pieces of shattered relationships and foot an enormous bill as both stepfathers and taxpayers. Today, the staggering cost isn't just financial in terms of ready-made dads drafted to foot the bill for two or three of another man's kids (or thousands as taxpayers). The cost is emotional as well. Good men don't like to admit it – for fear of being pegged as wimpy – but off the record many express deep resentment at having to struggle to build sexual intimacy with women who have been sexually plundered by so many past partners.
My great interest is in the churches (Catholic and Evangelical alike) where it's an even sadder story in singles groups, where innocent, bookish, never-married men like my brothers who have been in the church since their teens, are perversely brought together with cynical, used-up, divorce-battered women still looking for either criminals or movie stars. The ones who finally wake up (usually in their 30s at the earliest) have nothing to offer these men as they either don't want or can't have any more children. (The age of 27 – not 40 as many women mistakenly think – is when a woman's fertility begins its rapid decline.)
The largest immediate hurdle is that our society is so steeped in feminist double standards that not even most men recognize them anymore. Can you ever imagine a book being written by a man (never mind published by a big New-York house such as Broadway) entitled Why There Are No Good Women Left? You can already hear the howls of indignation from Oprah, The View, and conservatives such as Joe Farah who recently cheered the cause of automobile murderer Clara Harris. (Thankfully Farah didn't express a desire to marry Harris. He'd have to be female to do that.)
Can you imagine Hollywood making a movie such as Shallow Hal (2001), only this time with two average-looking career women who discover that it's better to choose their mates on the basis of their personalities rather than their physical appearance? You can't, and it's not because today's women aren't superficial: indeed, most are now as bad as the worst men precisely because they've so insulated from criticism on that point. It's "sexism" or "misogyny" to point it out. Indeed, the most brazen female superficiality is now sold and encouraged as "female empowerment."
If there is ever going to be any restoration of sanity, it's decent men who have to lead the way back and first by understanding what all the upheavals of the 1960s are now costing them (not just the sexual revolution which turned today's dating women into prostitutes). Keep in mind that running after sociopaths while simultaneously claiming that "There are no good men left" is just the latest twist in this 40-year-old female Superscam – and the tip of the iceberg at that.
A good start would be to look at how the 52% female portion of the population got classified as a minority and thus eligible for unofficial affirmative action. A second interesting question is how the sex with the higher life expectancy got its own wing in most hospitals (along with children). A third angle would be a comprehensive study of the family court system to see how the average man's probability of winning custody of children stacks up to the average woman's. After that take a look at which demographic group is most fervently eroding the Second Amendment and leading the charge toward the full federal takeover of U.S. health and day care. (All of these latter horrors would never have been a reality in Canada without the decisive support of women at the ballot box.)
Maybe not with respect to marriage, but in terms of resistance to all this escalating nonsense, the question of where all the good men went is a valid one. To the decent men, if you think you're getting the shaft economically and socially now, just continue to sit back like a bunch of feminine cowards and let things continue to deteriorate. You ain't seen nothin' yet.
The default mode of thought in women is not rational, it's emotive. Criminals and philanderers are interesting and mysterious – that's the key. It's irrelevant that they offer no real future
Brilliant.
There's a saying from some older culture to the effect that the quickest way to destroy a rival society is to ruin its women. It's a dictum undoubtedly coined by some man who probably didn't begin to grasp the stunning magnitude of the self-destructive instinct that is so much a part of Collective Woman. I think the author misses the point here. No one picked up on this. But when you have a culture of women coarsened as described above, they make terrible wives and mothers. They don't teach their daughters (who will be the arbiters of the relationships they form with men) to have lofty ideals, to fear God or to be good friends. The only thing they know is getting whatever they can out of life--by hook or by crook. This makes for the next generation being quite short-changed.
Not to digress, but it's no wonder the rational takes back seat to the emotive--the educational system fosters just this approach. Consider a typical "thought" question: You are a slave at Jefferson's Monticello. What do you think about his idea that 'all men are created equal?'" While it is true that thinking is becoming more and more emotive, it still remains a particular trait of the debased woman.)
I didn't follow the Laci thing, but from what little I know she appeared to be a happy young wife and was not disordered. It's very sad. Sometimes bad things do happen to good people. Not true of Nicole, whose life was tragic, but it sounds as if her value system was quite scewed as the women mentioned in the article.
Double standards abound, but the real tragedy is that the standards, they are a-changing to be anti-standards. The only resistance to this is to remember that the ends don't justify the means, to think for the long-term over the short-term and to espouse holy ideals.
Sad as these twisted people have, with significant support from the left, made great progress in destroying the family.
No, no, never believe this. Feminism is inherently evil. There can never be a "good" feminism anymore than there can be a good Marxism. In its root and branch, from its origin, in all of its works, in all of its resulting death, depravity and destruction, feminism is evil. Here is what pope Pius XI said to those who thought you could have a "good" socialism (just replace "socialism" with "feminism" and the same argument holds):
One section of Socialism has sunk into Communism. Communism teaches and seeks two objectives: Unrelenting class warfare and absolute extermination of private ownership. Not secretly or by hidden methods does it do this, but publicly, openly, and by employing every and all means, even the most violent. To achieve these objectives there is nothing which it does not dare, nothing for which it has respect or reverence; and when it has come to power, it is incredible and portentlike in its cruelty and inhumanity. The horrible slaughter and destruction through which it has laid waste vast regions of eastern Europe and Asia are the evidence; how much an enemy and how openly hostile it is to Holy Church and to God Himself is, alas, too well proved by facts and fully known to all.The other section, which has kept the name Socialism, is surely more moderate... The question arises, or rather is raised without warrant by some, whether the principles of Christian truth cannot perhaps be also modified to some degree and be tempered so as to meet Socialism half-way and, as it were, by a middle course, come to agreement with it. There are some allured by the foolish hope that socialists in this way will be drawn to us. A vain hope! Those who want to be apostles among socialists ought to profess Christian truth whole and entire, openly and sincerely, and not connive at error in any way.
And numerous are the Catholics who, although they clearly understand that Christian principles can never be abandoned or diminished seem to turn their eyes to the Holy See and earnestly beseech Us to decide whether this form of Socialism has so far recovered from false doctrines that it can be accepted without the sacrifice of any Christian principle and in a certain sense be baptized. That We, in keeping with Our fatherly solicitude, may answer their petitions, We make this pronouncement: Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we have mentioned, cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth.
It is also a lie put out by certain feminists that the original founders of the feminist movement were "pro-life." Read this article by Carol Iannone to find out more about these original founders:
Feminism has no Moderate Side
Here's an excerpt:
"It was here that the Seneca Falls "Declaration of Sentiments" was signed, setting forth the ideals of the women’s rights movement... Much of the Declaration smacks of today’s "Feminazism" — owing less to the American Founding than the French Revolution, redolent less of 1776 than its own year, 1848, the year in which the Communist Manifesto was first published.Think of the "consiousness-raising sessions" of the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies. There is a direct line from the Hegelian view of history to the Communist Manifesto to the Feminist movement.The Declaration advances a Marxian view of the total oppression of one sex by the other from the beginning of time, proclaiming that the "history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her." Also Marx-like, it portrays the curious willingness of woman to cooperate in her own "social and religious degradation" as a type of false consciousness imposed on woman by man.
If Pia de Solenni is a "Christian feminist," check out post #46.
Excellent point. We can see it happening all around us. The upcoming generation of girls are incredibly coarsened already. I think the author would agree with you. When she said, "a dictum undoubtedly coined by some man who probably didn't begin to grasp the stunning magnitude of the self-destructive instinct that is so much a part of Collective Woman," I think she was referring to exactly what you described, although this sentence wasn't very clear.
How many of them will have twentieth anniversaries?
Being married is different from having a boyfriend that won't dump you.
This is exactly the type of hair-splitting that Pope Pius XI spoke against. No matter how you slice it "socialism is utterly foreign to a Christian conception of life." And feminism even more so, since human life is even more basic than economics and property.
She is a courageous and true defender of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Catholic Church
I'm sure this may be true, although I've never heard of her. She may be honest and sincere. But she's misguided if she thinks she can be a "Christian feminist." And if she thinks that she is doing this in order to win over the feminists, she's equally misguided. Pope Pius XI specifically condemned that approach. We can only win them over by presenting to them the fullness of Catholic truth in all its entirety. There can be no such thing as "meeting them halfway."
I'm inclined to agree that word feminism itself has so many connotations that trying to redefine it is not a good idea. But to imply that anyone who supports the idea of a "Christian feminism" is not faithful to Catholicism is ludicrous. I am sure you are well aware that the current Pope has spoken many times about "a new feminism".Perhaps the Pope isn't quite Catholic enough?
JOHN PAUL II ADVOCATES "NEW FEMINISM" NOT BASED ON "MACHO" MODELSAffirms Woman's Decisive Role in Defense of Life and Democracy
VATICAN CITY, MAY 19, 2000 (ZENIT.org).- This morning John Paul II called for the promotion of a "new feminism" free of "macho" categories and stressed that at this time "women have a singular, and perhaps determinant, place in thought and action in defense of life and democracy. The Holy Father expressed these thoughts when he received the students and professors of the "Auxilium" Faculty of Educational Sciences, an institution headquartered in Rome and dedicated especially to the support of woman, as inspired in Don Bosco's pedagogy.
The Pope said that the key to achieve the objective of giving woman the space that corresponds to her is the promotion of "a plan of man and woman rooted in the Christian vision of life." "The human being, man and woman, is an image of God, not only as an intelligent and free being, but also as a relational being, who finds truth and the fullness of his own realization in communion and the gift of self."
Life and Democracy Threatened
"In face of the threats against life, both the daily ones as well as the ones programmed scientifically and systematically, which challenge the very meaning of democratic coexistence, it is necessary to apply enlightened and wise educational proposals, creative and shared plans," continued John Paul II. And these proposals call for "the rediscovery and promotion of the profound, interior human dimension of integral education enlightened by the evangelical view."
In this "cultural change in favor of life, women have a singular, and perhaps determinant, space for thought and action. It is for them to become promoters of a 'new feminism' that, without falling into the temptation of pursuing 'macho' models, can recognize and express the authentic feminine genius in all the manifestations of civil coexistence, overcoming all forms of discrimination, violence and abuse," stressed the Pope.
"The challenge to which you are called consists in giving the anthropological view of the person man-woman, according to God's plan, and of translating it into adequate pedagogical categories that are scientifically valid," he concluded.
You are quite right. Perhaps is has something to do with those 70 hour workweeks. :)
2. A world which makes such an absolute option for efficiency, a world which so approves of a utilitarian logic, a world which for the most part thinks of freedom as an absolute right of the individual and conscience as a totally solitary, subjectivist court of appeal, necessarily tends to impoverish all human relations to the point of considering them finally as relations of power, and of not allowing the weakest human beings to have the place which is their due.From this point of view, utilitarian ideology heads in the direction of machismo, and feminism becomes the legitimate reaction against the exploitation of woman.However, so-called feminism is frequently based on the same utilitarian presuppositions as machismo and, far from liberating woman, contributes rather to her enslavement. When, in line with the dualism just described, woman denies her own body, considering it simply as an object to be used for acquiring happiness through self-fulfillment, she also denies her own femininity, a properly feminine gift of self and her acceptance of another person, of which motherhood is the most typical sign and the most concrete realization.
When woman opts for free love and reaches the point of claiming the right to abortion, she helps to reinforce a notion of human relations according to which the dignity of each one depends, in the eyes of the other, on how much he is able to give. In all of this, woman takes a position against her own femininity and against the values of which she is the bearer: acceptance of life, availability to the weakest, unconditional devotion to the needy. An authentic feminism, working for the advancement of woman in her integral truth and for the liberation of all women, would also work for the advancement of the whole human person and for the liberation of all human beings. This feminism would, in fact, struggle for the recognition of the human person in the dignity which is due to him or her from the sole fact of existence, of being willed and created by God, and not for his or her usefulness, power, beauty, intelligence, wealth, or health. It would strive to advance an anthropology which values the essence of the person as made for the gift of self and the acceptance of the other, of which the body, male or female, is the sign and instrument.
It is precisely by developing an anthropology which presents man in his personal and relational wholeness that we can respond to the widespread argument that the best way to fight against abortion would be to promote contraception. Each of us has already heard this rebuke leveled against the Church: "It is absurd that you want to prevent both contraception and abortion. Blocking access to the former means making the latter inevitable". Such an assertion, which at first sight seems totally plausible, is, however, contradicted by experience: the fact is that generally an increase in the rate of contraception is paralleled by an increase in the rate of abortion. The paradox is only apparent. It must be noted, in fact, that contraception and abortion both have their roots in that depersonalized and utilitarian view of sexuality and procreation which we have just described and which in turn is based on a truncated notion of man and his freedom. It is not a matter of assuming a stewardship that is responsible and worthy of one's own fertility as the result of a generous plan that is always open to the possible acceptance of unforeseen new life.
It is rather a matter of ensuring complete control over procreation, which rejects even the idea of an unplanned child. Understood in these terms, contraception necessarily leads to abortion as a "backup solution". One cannot strengthen the contraceptive mentality without strengthening at the same time the ideology which supports it, and therefore without implicitly encouraging abortion. On the contrary, if one develops the idea that man only discovers himself fully in the generous gift of himself and in the unconditional acceptance of the other, simply because the latter exists, then abortion will increasingly be seen to be a senseless crime.
An individualistic type of anthropology, as we have seen, leads one to consider objective truth as inaccessible, freedom as arbitrary, conscience as a tribunal closed in on itself. Such an anthropology leads woman not only to hatred of men, but also to hatred of herself and of her own femininity, and above all, of her own motherhood.
More generally such an anthropology leads human beings to hatred of themselves. Man despises himself; he is no longer in accord with God who found his human creation to be "something very good" (Gn 1:31). On the contrary, man today sees himself as the destroyer of the world, an unhappy product of evolution. In reality, man who no longer has access to the infinite, to God, is a contradictory being, a failed product. Thus we see the logic of sin: by wanting to be like God, man seeks absolute independence. To be self-sufficient, he must become independent, he must be emancipated even from love, which is always a free grace, not something that can be produced or made. However, by making himself independent of love, man is separated from the true richness of his being and becomes empty.
Opposition to his own being is inevitable. "It is not good to be a human being" - the logic of death belongs to the logic of sin. The road to abortion, to euthanasia and the exploitation of the weakest lies open.
You said it, not me. Anyone, even if he's the pope, who promotes feminism in anyway, is undermining Catholic practice and belief. One might also point out that in this news report he is saying that feminism is important for the defense of democracy, neither of which the Church should be supporting.
Notice that he refers to an "authentic feminism" as a speculative thing that doesn't actually exist. So he does not pretend that any really existing feminism is anything other than destructive.
But it is incredibly imprudent for someone in Ratzinger's position to speculate about the potential existence of an imaginary "authentic feminism." This is precisely the kind of sloppy thinking and ambiguous expression that would never have seen the light of day from the magisterium before Vatican II.
It is precisely by developing an anthropology which presents man in his personal and relational wholeness that we can respond to the widespread argument that the best way to fight against abortion would be to promote contraception.
Here is where Ratzinger reveals his dangerous and un-Catholic mindset. He participates in the Hegelian approach to post-conciliar theology. It is heresy to say that the Church can only respond to an evil if it develops a new anthropology. No, the Church does not need to develop any new anthropology. It needs to teach the truth of unchanging Catholic doctrine. Contraception and abortion are both intrinsically evil, and so they are both opposed to the truth. To demonstrate the abyss between the truth of Christ and the evil of contraception and abortion requires only a knowledge of the perennial theology possessed by every generation of the Church from the Apostles 2000 years ago until today.
Only in today's corrupted hierarchy could the man with the obligation to defend Catholic dogma make such an outlandish statement in which he claims that Catholic teaching cannot be defended without the aid of a non-existent anthropology.
Sorry if you're getting pinged to any articles that don't interest you. I don't remember what made me put you on the list, it was a long time ago. But please just let me know and I will remove you immediately.
The other day I happened to hear a group of these gals chatting among themselves. They were all divorced with kids. They were absolutely white-hot indignant that they were meeting single guys who bolted when they found out that the women had kids. These gals had an attitude of "how dare you not want to take responsibility for me and the kids I had with my previous bad-boy husband?"
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