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Girls Will Be Girls
I had long looked on the feminist project with an indulgent eye, feeling, along with Bertie Wooster, that girls will be girls and must be allowed their little enthusiasms. But I had assumed that after accomplishing the legitimate goals of the movement — equality before the law, and equal opportunity in education and employment — they would depart the field and find something else useful to do with their time, perhaps leaving behind a few stout sentries to defend their gains.
That’s not what has happened. Modern feminists have set about to remake society to comport with two bedrock, inviolable feminist principles. The first of these is that there are no significant differences between the sexes, that any apparent differences are the result of social conditioning from the earliest ages. To suggest that women might (in general) possess innate differences in some characteristic — greater empathy, let us say — is to mark oneself as a misogynist of the first order. The second principle is that any male-dominated organization or occupation would greatly benefit by increasing its female membership, as women bring a number of innate characteristics — greater empathy, for example — which their male counterparts woefully lack. To question this is to mark oneself as a misogynist of the first order.
In their efforts to align the rest of the world with these principles, feminists have encountered an unexpected obstacle: the wrong sorts of things make people happy. They are in the position of the dog food company of legend that went to enormous trouble and expense to develop and market the world’s finest dog food, only to find themselves faced with one minor problem: the dogs wouldn’t eat it. Whereas the dog food maker recognized its failure and didn’t attempt to breed a new sort of dog with a taste for its product, modern feminists are diligently working to produce a new sort of human more amenable to what they have on offer.
Examples of this are everywhere. An article in Psychology of Women Quarterly decried the fact that gentlemanly behavior (described in the article as “benevolent sexism”) makes both men and women happy. As the article puts it, “Additionally, benevolent sexism was indirectly associated with life satisfaction for both women and men through diffuse system justification.” We can’t have that. The article concludes, “Thus, our findings reinforce the dangerous nature of benevolent sexism and emphasize the need for interventions to reduce its prevalence.” Here we have something that makes people happy and so must be stamped out.
A couple of years back a woman named Susan Patton published an article suggesting that female students at Princeton take advantage of a target-rich environment to find husbands. She very sensibly suggested that at no other time would young women be surrounded by so many eligible (and smart) candidates for marriage. She further pointed out that waiting until later to marry is risky, as there are fewer high-quality men to choose from.
Given the rapid declines in fertility for women in their thirties, that sounds like excellent advice for young women who want to marry and have children. She was of course roundly denounced by feminist commentators. The fact is, an overwhelming majority of women do want to get married eventually. Of those, most want to have children. Of those with children, most would prefer to work part-time or not at all. Given that, you would think that if feminists were concerned at all about human happiness they would be urging young women who wish to marry and have children to think about finding a husband and starting a family sooner rather than later. If you think that you would be wrong.
So an effort is afoot to root out sex-based preferences among children, including pressuring toy companies to forgo gender-based marketing, and pressuring schools and daycare centers to stop treating children differently based on sex. (In practice this means trying to get boys to act more like girls).
It won’t work of course. Kids will have none of it. Human nature is too strong and the preferences too deeply rooted to be overwhelmed by a few hectoring feminists at the schoolhouse. Other than making school more miserable than it already is for boys and confusing a few of the more vulnerable kids, the modern feminist program will likely have little effect on human preferences.
What it will do is make the search for happiness more difficult for those young women who accept the premises of modern feminism. Let’s hope they figure it out before it’s too late.
Published in General
And yet, they see no inconsistency between these two principles.
Precisely.
Thank you for this post. Some years ago, one feminist, I can’t remember who, stated that feminism was never about happiness. Feminists could care less about women.
Feminists would say women must be represented in boardrooms, in the government, in the military. Most organizations must have both men and women, or maybe just women sometimes, and in almost human activity. What is the one kind of organization that no longer needs women? Marriage. A marriage that has no women in it is completely acceptable.
Remember, abortion is the jewel in the crown for modern feminists. They believe it is the great equalizer between the sexes. Women will be able to have sex like men without the burden of motherhood.
Ron I have never seen it so deftly put. Good job sir.
I, too, highlighted that paragraph and sent it around. A keeper.
You just don’t get it, do you.
Ironically, nobody hates women as much as feminists do. They truly think there is something wrong with being feminine.
Well stated Ron. I would post it in the breakroom but as I work for a hardware company that is 80% male employees, it would only generate a chuckle and a hardy, “YEP,” from all those, including the women here. LOL No debates to be had on these issue here!
If men and women are essentially the same, why do women need “women’s healthcare” to be subsidized by the federal government? If they didn’t “identify as women” they could get along fine with the health care that men get. I’m confused, in case you couldn’t tell.
I was at a 76ers game maybe 10 years ago, the only time I’ve ever had court-side seats, and my friend (a life-long Democrat important in Pennsylvania politics) pointed at the 76ers dance team, who were performing a suggestive dance, and said to me, “That is why the feminists will never win.”
Amen!
Brilliant!
My sister, sent me a year’s subscription to Ms. Magazine in 1973 or 74. The mag was new and I liked the idea of not being identified by my marital status. Miss or Mrs. as the men only had Mr. for both single and married men. Once the Ms. debate was settled it got into other stuff, bragging about the abortions they all had, so I just tossed most of the latter part of the year and never renewed. It seemed to me, so inane. I loved playing trains with my brother, and playing with his Lincoln logs, trucks and cars. Cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, and we had a great time together. I even had my own cap gun and matchbox cars. My daughters had all those items to play with as well, along with Barbies, my little pony, and Breyer Horses. My grandsons enjoyed all of the above toys as well. I never once said or suggested that “this is for boys or for girls.” It simply didn’t cross my mind as I had so thoroughly enjoyed toys designed for both. My brother even learned to cook and used my little Easy-bake oven. Feminists should be ignored and men should go back to being men.
Viva la difference!
Great post! Feminism has ruined a lot for women.
How far along into his gender reassignment process was he?
Why is it that in Sweeps periods, we never see “A Very Special Episode of Show X” where the smart sassy female dumps her man and aborts his kid? Isn’t that the ultimate in female power?
Remember this from Peggy Noonan? Powerful – a post 9/11 article.
“I should discuss how manliness and its brother, gentlemanliness, went out of style. I know, because I was there. In fact, I may have done it. I remember exactly when: It was in the mid-’70s, and I was in my mid-20s, and a big, nice, middle-aged man got up from his seat to help me haul a big piece of luggage into the overhead luggage space on a plane. I was a feminist, and knew our rules and rants. “I can do it myself,” I snapped.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122451174798650085
You notice she almost never gets the abortion? Sometimes characters assist in abortions help other people get abortions (all though not all that often) but the main characters and their children almost never get the abortion themselves.
Huh. Almost as if the producers themselves see having the baby as a heroic choice.
How could they?
These are the same people who give Obama credit for lower gas prices…when those lower gas prices are due almost entirely to fracking…which they ardently oppose. And on private lands, as Obama has closed off even more public lands to exploration.
These are the same people who give Obama credit for the stock market rise…when the benefits of that rise go disproportionately to Wall Street and the 1-percenters…whom they despise.
Liberals are as dishonest as the day is long. Looking for consistency from them is futile.
All so true.
:)