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10/18/03 Feminism's Bankruptcy When I saw the latest column on Feminism by Anna Quindlen, I assumed there was going to be another study supposedly demonstrating the perpetuation of the "glass ceiling" or showing women's income not being in parity with men's. What I discovered, to my surprise and amusement, was another demonstration of the bankruptcy of Feminism. Some of the major tenets of feminism are undeniably true:
The rest of feminism is morally, ethically, and biologically bankrupt, as Quindlen's latest work serves to demonstrate. At some point (the details do not interest me here) a brand of feminism arose that was not satisfied to open doors of opportunity, but strove to blur all distinctions based on gender. While conceding (reluctantly) that there are physical differences between men and women, this feminist attitude maintained that these differences are cosmetic, and that, except for the advantages of women's temperament (men are violent, selfish creatures, and if women ruled the world, it would be a kinder, gentler world all around), there are, or should be, virtually no distinctions between them. This is the logic that gave license to promiscuity for women: if men could sow their wild oats, so should women, and feel just as little guilt or remorse as the men apparently did. It gave license to no-fault divorce, by asserting that a mother is as good as a mother and a father, since there is nothing a father can do for a child that a mother cannot (odd that they rarely if ever made the converse argument, I suppose because, as I mentioned, they regarded men as venal, violent creatures). In general it devalued marriage, since men play no vital role in the life of the liberated woman, and yielded a society of cohabitating sexual partners with no permanent ties whatsoever (call it the Seinfeld-Friends effect, which reduces life to a series of "affairs" with a rotating field of partners, and no real lasting meaning to any of them). My own observations have taught me to believe that none of these trends has benefited women. Many men at least always believed they wanted to be able to have more sex with less commitment, and that is exactly what they got. I see little evidence that most women really feel fulfilled in the end when they've had dozens of partners and no one will marry them. But the study produced by Quindlen really demonstrates the problem: even after decades of onslaught from Feminism trying to change the truth, men are still men, and want what men want, and women are women and want what women want. The study concluded that undergraduate women at Duke University feel great pressure to make themselves sexually attractive to men, and this sexual attractiveness has little to do with their intellectual abilities. Duh. Virtually any beer commercial is enough to demonstrate that men are turned on sexually by extraordinarily superficial (and in many cases even artificial) features. What disappoints Quindlen is that women don't resist the pressure to conform to men's expectations. But in order for them to resist the expectations, they have to find some other way to have their own needs met. And since for most women meeting their needs means finding a mate or some approximation of a mate, they have to provide what it is that the potential approximations want--superficial sexual features. Ironically, feminism has put young women more at the mercy of men's superficial passions than they were before it took hold. Conventional wisdom prior to the 1960's held that there were two kinds of women: those you had sex with, and those you married. Now there is, in the superficial popular culture, only one kind of woman: the kind of woman you sleep with until you get tired of her and move on. So, in the old days, if a woman wanted to get married, she had to be physically attractive in her prime and play hard to get. Perhaps her husband to be was not going to be a virgin, and perhaps he was not even going to be perfectly faithful to her, but he would not leave her when she got older and lost the blush of her youth. Now, if a woman wants to keep a man who won't marry her, she has to stay more superficially attractive than that endless supply of twenty-year-olds with breast implants. In the old days, there were (more than just superficially) desirable women who would not have sex until they had a real commitment. Men by and large conceded that they would have to yield a commitment eventually. Now there are so many otherwise desirable women who don't hold out for a commitment that men don't have to give in to any of those who want to hold out, creating immense pressure for them to give in if they hope to have even an approximation of a mate. Quindlen's brand of feminism expects young women en masse to stop trying to be superficially attractive, so that men will just suddenly start shopping for the smartest girl for casual sex. It expects older women not to be worried about losing men to a smarter girl who may come along down the road, because women don't need men, anyway. It expects men to act like women when it comes to choosing a mate. Well, Anna, it ain't gonna happen. Some of us out here, men and women alike, have seen through the hypocrisy of your brand of feminism, and we're still holding onto the positive values inherent in the old way--the positive values being the baby that you threw out with the bathwater. Children are more important than careers (for both men and women). The freedom for a woman to choose a career does not give her or her husband the right to neglect their children. No one should have sex without a permanent commitment. Women want (and should want) the commitment more than they want sex, and men want sex (and should be frustrated in that priority) more than they want the commitment. The day feminists stop trying to frustrate reality is the day they will cease to frustrate themselves. As it stands today, they are pursuing a pipe dream, and leading all those young women down the garden path. What a topsy-turvy world. Modified: 09/10/2004 |
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