Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The March for Losing Our Girls: Failure of Feminism
I am re-posting my story in honor of the Women’s March on Washington.
In the ’60s, I was little – just entering grade school, as feminism and civil rights were beginning to sprout seedlings. Struggles of gender, race, and the subject of equality were taking form. In the ’70s, well-watered, they bloomed into movements of great change. As I entered my teen years, equal pay for equal work, breaking the glass ceiling, and women’s rights made good sense and were a part of my culture and life. Breaking through boundaries became the norm. Free spirit, be natural (no makeup – no bra!), make love not war, were our mantras. Like any young generation, conservatism and the “establishment” were old school – our parent’s era. Traditional family values were synonymous with anti-abortion, stuffy, boring Bible thumpers – not modern or progressive – not me.
Fast forward to 2015. I read these stats (from the Women of Grace website):
- Eleven percent of young teen girls between the ages 13-16 admit to sending or posting nude or semi-nude photos or videos of themselves. 37 percent admit to sending sexually suggestive messages via text, email, or instant messaging.
- In the US, it’s estimated that one in every 200 girls between 13 and 19 years old, or one-half of one percent, cut themselves regularly. Those who cut comprise about 70 percent of teen girls who self-injure.
- More US teen girls and young women, between 10 and 24 years old, are committing suicide each year, according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Firearms, suffocation/hanging and poisoning, including drug overdose, are the three most common suicide mechanisms.
- Young people, between the ages of 15 to 24, account for 50 percent of all new STDs, although they represent just 25 percent of the sexually experienced population.
- In 2013, a total of 273,105 babies were born to women aged 15-19 years, for a live birth rate of 26.5 per 1,000 women in this age group.
I picked up a copy of Marie Claire, left behind by a vacationer at a property that I manage. The contents included a story about pressure on college girls in sororities to entice fraternities through sex. They are told to go to mixers and instructed on what to do — how to dress and how to act. If you decline, you’re shunned. I was shocked. Another feature story focused on women and depression.
On the radio, I hear a local counselor discussing counseling young pregnant teens. She says they say there is no one to turn to … their parents are busy, and so much social contact is done impersonally online that they feel they have no guidance, no voice.
On “60 Minutes,” I see a lovely young lady of 17, a heroin addict in Midwest farm country – the story highlights the epidemic of hard drugs that have invaded our youth, crossing all income levels, suburbs, country towns, homes with privilege – good grades, opportunity, not inner city strife and struggle.
On the local news, a human trafficking story about illegals using young Hispanic girls for soliciting sex acts, calling them “meat,” and sending the money out of the country. Four southern states including Florida were involved, and several in my own community were rounded up.
Another story on the radio of young women enticed to frequent major sports events – prostitution if you will – and lured into a life of drugs with no way out. I had no idea this takes place.
Recent story about Colorado high school sexting scandal involving more than 100 kids including half the football team.
Transgender and alternative lifestyles have become the norm. Miley Cyrus came out in an interview as a pangender – I had to look it up.
Spring Break 2015 in Panama City Beach – multiple rapes in broad daylight, families leaving the beach because of extreme vulgar language, deaths from alcohol, injuries, so many confrontations with police, no respect, thousands of arrests, that they finally had to change the laws for next year.
Ads target young girls, encouraging them to get implants, Botox, tattooed eyebrows Kardashian-style – be perfect, or at least look perfect at all costs. These are all recent stories; I could keep going.
Back in the ’70s I thought that we were paving a way to giving women new business opportunities, dignity, and respect, but now I am witnessing a breakdown of everything that I thought we were striving for. Somehow breaking through barriers led to no barriers. This is not a backlash toward men. They are at risk too, by the same trash that society is peddling. Anything remotely resembling a moral compass seems to have evaporated – a societal breakdown on so many levels.
Even Marianne Faithfull, the girlfriend of Mick Jagger said in an interview that after a life of drugs and partying that brought illness and loneliness, “I finally found what I must have wanted all along (she’s 60), “peace, friendship, family and love.”
To young women everywhere, don’t buy what society peddles or, like Marianne, have a lifetime go by to learn boundaries are important. Respect yourself. Use your time in school to find your talent, and wait for love. The right person seeks your greater good. Travel, find your spiritual roots and cultivate them, talk and listen rather than text. Appreciate the importance of family and children – they’re the foundation of a healthy society. Ask for help. Time goes by quickly; it has been two generations and we should be in a better place by now. My mantra to today’s girls – “Don’t buy the lie.”
(Image: Water Glass Window Girl, pencil sketch drawing from FB.com/pencil sketching)
Published in General
Women consider only 20% of available men to be above average.
Intra-sexual competition for a topshelf guy is ruthless. The acceptability and marriagability of average guys is declining which has its own consequences.
HAWT guys with options act like it, and the confused signaling that girls receive is unfortunate. You may be attractive enough to have sex with but don’t meet the commitment criteria.
As women consider fewer and fewer men worth the effort, the competition to achieve an acceptable guy is going to become even fiercer. As women delay marriage later and later, fewer men are going to invest in relationships and bias their behavior towards short term endeavors, also invest less in earning and what have you.
As divorce makes marriage punishing, fewer men will prepare for marriage or consider it. Especially for the guys who went about earning and gaining skills to be a nice traditional husband justifying himself for marriage through works.
As women delay marriage the relative power balance changes where men become more desirable relative to women. Younger women have more options than older women, and mid-30s guys are at their peak attractiveness so can extra more bargaining concessions and can date/marry a more attractive younger women who is sweet and nice, instead of less attractive, bitter and cynical.
As more men bias themselves towards short term behaviors, more girls have to get their feet in the door that’s open.
Thank you! More perspectives from men?
As more women date and have sex with the same 20% of hot guys, the other 80% are increasingly pissed.
Nobody wants to be the settle for candidate. Especially when they are reduced to begging for the table scraps from another man’s feast. Nor are they satisfied to be pick up the check afterwards.
Feminism made some big and deep mistakes:
Because of these mistakes, all its gains have been mixed, and in many ways, as you show so compellingly, FSC, women are worse off than before.
Your No. 1 comment must be why there’s an phone app called Hookup – no strings. Men and women are built differently and I think women are finding they have to suppress their natural softness, their emotional side to feel equal – misguided.
Civilization was built by women to civilize men. Biblically a bad woman was always the worst person around and bad meant greedy and for sale in one way or another. Men were helpless when confronted with such women and abandoned the good women, lost their patrimony etc. always regretting it. Feminism defined that same history as male dominated patriarchy, indeed turned that into a religion and in the process are destroying the civilization they built and the leverage that enabled them to do so. They wanted to compete with men in the areas where they could not, physical strength, sexual promiscuity and independence. Want to see the future of this and its confirmation look at welfare ghettos here and London. Men have returned to violent primitive tribes and women run what little civilization remains. They aren’t modern feminists they’re making rational choices given the availability of welfare and the absence of civilized men.
They have to suppress, too, their desire for a deep emotional connection and a long-term commitment.
George Gilder put his finger on it way back in ’80s I think when he wrote that the prime fact of civilization is the sexual superiority of women.
He meant by it that women have the capability and vocation of taming the natural barbarism of male sexuality. If instead we “lower ourselves” to the male mode, misery ensues.
It sounds obnoxious put in shorthand like that. Really, I think his argument is based on the deep complementarity of male/female sexuality.
True, fruitful, committed love between man and woman is the force (the only force) capable of ordering human sexuality toward civilization rather than chaos.
Front Seat – I’m of about the same vintage (started grade school in ’63). I would add two things to katievs’ list of “big and deep mistakes”: (1) common and prevailing acceptance of weak scholarship and questionable data makes feminist “scholarship” doctrinaire and not subject to meaningful scrutiny; and (2) tone and promotion of (what I think can fairly be called) anti-male policies and processes has the effect of eroding meaningful support for feminist principles among many men.
By complicity in accepting the excesses, more traditional feminists have already alienated too many of their most valuable allies. Male analysts and academics understandably shy away from engaging in debate with modern feminists. To do so can be highly career damaging, and most would not view the issue as worth that much trouble. I think it’s mainly upon the minds and shoulders of women to start this fight (and it will be a fight), and then I do think men will come along when they see that there may be some hope.
You asked for solutions, but these are deeply entrenched problems and with 250 words at best I can provide these dubious generalities.
Here’s a possible solution, or maybe the start of one: conservatives could stop pushing feminism on their own children. The work hard and be successful aspect of feminism was apparently very attractive to most conservatives. Today, most conservatives demand economic independence from their daughters, and many push their daughters to be high achieving, with no regard to whether or not the daughters really want to be high achieving. The fact that a very successful 30 year old will find it more difficult to get married than a less successful 20 year old is never mentioned. I don’t think this serves anyone well.
Young women should be discouraged from moving away from home before they are married-young men too, for that matter, unless a great job opportunity is involved. The young people I know who lived with their parents until marriage were virtually all married by age 25, and they were better prepared for marriage in every way, including financially. This idea that kicking teenagers out of the house will turn them into well adjusted adults has not been borne out by reality.
Agree – that working for equality requires learning and re-learning, without making someone the enemy – in this case, men. Questionable data permeates our society to ensure a certain outcome…usually far away from the truth – but you can’t hide fallout.
Great point – there are many successful women who now say “you can’t have it all”. Something has to give – I loved that old movie with Diane Keaton “Baby Boom”. Our priorities have gotten turned around – I have such great respect for mothers (and dads) – the best education, environment, income, comfort level cannot protect them from what is out there today.
Here, here for more observations from George Gilder! This comment is similar to the one made by I Walton above, and I could not agree more. I have teenage daughters whom I am attempting to steep in the ancient wisdom of how male/female relationships are best seen, in preparation for the scary day when I have to send them to college.
This post is a good reminder that I need to do more to show them how the guys they will want are among the 80%, not the “hot 20%.” And send them to schools like Georgia Tech where there are far more males than females.
FSC,
If the left takes up a cause for an oppressed group, you can be sure that whatever policy they support it will do damage to the group they claim to help.
Women and left wing feminism are no different. The left generates hopeless scenarios and when they fail they double down and blame the imaginary power structure. They create a goal that is joyless if not completely impossible for the vast majority of women and then slip the blame for the misery they’ve caused.
‘Just go down the dead end street a little farther’ the left will tell you and ‘soon you’ll come out great on the other side’. ‘Don’t listen to those right wing troglodytes who insist you’ve got to back out if want to get to where you want to go, what do they know’.
Big lies once they get going are hard to stop.
Regards,
Jim
An argument for the existence of God:
The same force (i.e., love) that orders human sexuality toward civilization rather than chaos is also the thing most conducive to individual human happiness and flourishing.
I’m not an anti-feminist, however.
I was raised in a conservative home, taught to scorn feminism. My mother, grandmothers and most of my aunts (highly intelligent college graduates, all) were stay-at-home mothers.
It worked then in a way it doesn’t work anymore, and I didn’t advocate it for my own daughters. (One of them is a stay-at-home mom so far, the other just finished her MS in Statistics.) I regret that I didn’t finish my graduate studies.
My decades of adulthood, together with my studies in Christian personalism (JP II in particular), have convinced me that there a lot more validity in feminism than I’d originally thought.
We just have to learn to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Why did it work then, and why does it not work anymore?
To me, the ease with which people can break the promise of marriage is good reason for women to be self-supporting before they have children.
I saw too many women and their children live in poverty in the eighties because of divorce. I wanted my daughters to be able to support themselves and any children they might have. It wasn’t status I was concerned about. It was financial independence.
About all these statistics–news stories–it reads like Drudge! Things are not going to hell–do not let the stories scare you. Crime rates are going to historical lows. I think abortion numbers are going down, I’m not sure about the rates… Teenage pregnancies are down, too, aren’t they? The 90s, awful though they were in certain ways, were the time when teenage sexuality started to drop significantly–into the early 00s–then, plateau. The numbers I read show lots of good news…
This is not to say that there is no reason to worry–but keep in mind that things are going rather well, better than at any point since the 60s, no?
The exception is bastardy & illegitimacy–those are getting worse over the period.
Now, the other business, with feminism. The ideology is bankrupt, but you have to see the extent to which feminism, aside from its ideology, is a part of the democratic revolution that overtook American society. Nobody knew what to do about it or could do anything about it. Feminism is about women becoming independent individuals–independent at least of the institutions & habits on which they previously depended. More individualism, more individual autonomy.
This is good in some ways, bad in others. Marxism was replaced by capitalism in the ideology: As people notice, now, women are supposed to be like men in terms of capitalist productivity: No productivity, no dignity!
But are women happy? Well, autonomy means they can now blame themselves…
This being my first post – forgive me – how do you copy one sentence to answer back under comments?
I was listening to a song in the car and after, the female disc jockey said “Hey, regarding those tracking apps…if you’re tracking your calories or weight, etc. and using the side apps that come with it for levels of depression (I guess you can get depressed if you are not on goal), then its time to put down the app for a few days – just put it down”. Is this a problem?? My gosh!
Titus, I’m glad you see the glass half full – this is good. But I see a generation of young girls with serious issues, and they seem to be a direct result of a moral decline in values and meaning….. Let’s go to London – I guess a new show for the Wives of London? We have the Wives of Hollywood, Mob Wives, Housewives of New Jersey, Atlanta, Palm Beach – I know it’s for ratings, but what a miserable lot.
I stumbled across London Wives where the young mother, sitting at dinner with her husband and 3 kids says (not to them, but voice-over), I am expected to get married, pop out some kids, be a mother all day, give my husband a (blank-blank) when he gets home, and that is a fulfilling life? They didn’t bleep out the obscenity – this is where we are.
Hello, Front Seat Cat–I’m glad you’ve written your first post–I could not tell this was a first post!–to answer the technical question first–I’m sure I can get that right, but I make no promises about the rest–there is a quote button under each comment. Pres it, then cut out the part you do not want quoted, of course. That’s how it works.
Now, about the apps. Yeah, people do not fear God’s wrath, so they worry about calories. That’s not entirely bad, but like Solzhenitsyn said, there is a howl of existentialism audible behind American consumer happiness.
You’re right that the misery must take it’s toll. It certainly does no one any good–except maybe the people who make a fortune this way. But there has always been in America a screaming vulgarity. This is not so bad. Mores have democratized–vulgarity is a sign of spontaneous feelings & the rejection of the old rules. The implicit argument of democratic freedom–sometimes explicit in every which way: Who are dead people to tell the young how to feel about life’s goings on & what to do about them?
But America is not as terrible as in the ’70s. Except for internet porn. That’s crazy. People for the most part live rather ok lives. The moral decline is not existential. No collapse is imminent. Only men’s rates of suicide have gone up since the economic crash…
Select “quote” and your comment box will show the entire comment – from that you can just delete everything you do not wish to quote in your response comment. It comes in handy for us cheapskates with the 250 word limit.
YES! Feminism basically says there’s no moral obligation to commit to sexual partners or any resulting offspring. Why would anyone think this new standard of morality wouldn’t favor men over women?
In the concept of men and women as complementary parts of a whole, the idea of one sex being superior to the other is nonsensical. Life can’t go on without both sexes. It would be like asking, “Which is more important? The heart or the lungs?” Without either life ends.
It’s bizarre that feminists would trade that model of human sexuality for the current one that clearly disfavors women.
I am sympathetic to this argument, but the women most likely to pursue careers in order to be able to sustain themselves after a divorce tend to be the ones who least need to. If any of my nieces found themselves impoverished after a divorce, I would help in any way possible, but they probably wouldn’t even need my help: their parents are doing very well. It should be pointed out, too, that liberal divorce laws were and are supported by feminists who want to wipe traditional women off the face of the earth.
I am very financially dependent on my husband; if he left me, I would definitely be impoverished, but I don’t care. I just refuse to spend my entire life preparing for a divorce; I also refuse to let feminists wipe me off the face of the earth.
I wrote this post because I have a heart for young girls – I see something here I don’t like – it’s not about sex or college, or changing definitions of what is acceptable. Marci made a good point-women should start careers doing what they love – and be financially independent – absolutely – debt is the enemy, married or single.
But a bigger picture is emerging – Titus, God bless him – sees America still shining from Romania. Today’s news brings a secret service agent texting sexually explicit garbage to what he thought was a 14 year old -an under cover agent busted him. From the top down, nothing is off limits.
In just the past few days, college campuses are resurrecting the protests from 70’s – is an American Spring on the horizon? The tone has been set – from police to teachers, school administrators, parents, employers, your authority is about to be challenged.
Arm your kids with everything you can, keep tabs, share your stories about where you were and how your values changed, if that is the case. They will remember and take it with them.
If kids cannot handle slights, prejudice, envy, difficult tests, a parent not having insurance, money running out, they will not be able to handle the coming conflicts. The stories Claire B. is writing, the refugee crisis on our doorstep, the national debt, doing with less. Hardship is coming and children are ill prepared.
Take this time to shore up your family with what matters.
In the case of young girls, the stats speak for themselves – they are vulnerable – I shared this story about how I grew up because I see the results of what my generation started – some good – maybe a lot of good – as a young woman I faced, as well as my friends, similar challenges that girls face today. But I sense a culture minus the safety nets of the past – strong family with two parents, a strong spiritual foundation, a sense of community and belonging, responsibility, respect for authority, these counteracted the rabbit holes that trip us up. They’re disappearing – what is left to take their place?
Apparently fathers like mine don’t exist any longer to insist upon high GPAs and SAT scores, admittance to first class colleges, and a real job.
Feminism (as in the Betty Friedan kind, not the Jesus Christ kind) sold women a bill of goods and helped to stunt the maturity of generations of young men. In my day (never thought I would say that!), the guy had to grow up if he wanted to attract a woman that would be open to the idea of a lifetime commitment. Now, the guy insists on sex by the 3rd date, or there is something wrong with the girl. No growing up, no self-restraint, just raw appetite.
Any girl worth having is worth growing up for, and any guy worth having will value what he can give to the girl more than what he can get from her. Nobody’s perfect, but applying that one thought would forestall a whole passel of problems and heartache. Ladies, insist on more from guys, and you just might get it. Guys, use your brain and your heart, rather than other parts of your anatomy, and 10, 20, 30 years down the road you’ll look back in amazement at how great your life is and how much more you love your wife than you did when you got married.
{Soapbox mode off}
You can also highlight what you want to quote specifically, and then press the quote button.
You can even do it multiple times, if you want to break it up to look pretty. I’ve found that if you try to insert your own response in a big block of text, the formatting is not good.
Like Like Like!
My daughter is already being told to look for a husband before she is 30. My son not to marry someone over 30.
I don’t make the rules, I just play in the ball game. (Wife and I married at 24 btw)
Sorry to hear this. My mother married at 30 and I at 34 so members of my family have a tendency to believe that quality has a longer than average shelf life.