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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
I posted this on my personal blog a while ago. I still think it’s the worst part of Feminism. This came out while I was in college.
http://rushbabe49.com/2012/07/20/the-single-most-destructive-slogan-in-recent-memory/
Love is a battlefield.
Highlight the words you wish to quote, then click on “quote” in the row at the bottom of the post you’re quoting.
There is no Jesus Christ kind.
We’re loathe to admit this, but women who plan on spending the next decade or so focusing on “financial independence” and “finding themselves” don’t want a guy who’s into commitment.
Women value male traits like loyalty and reliability when they’re looking for a husband. We’re training girls to not even think about marriage until they’ve had plenty of time to ensure that they need not be financially dependent on a man.
Thus, the other more feral sexual instinct kicks in, not the desire for stable maturity but for the HAWT badboy who gets her excited.
It’s not just that “there’s something wrong with the girl” if she doesn’t give in fast enough, “there’s something wrong with the guy” if he doesn’t push for it.
We readily acknowledge male sexuality’s dark side but refuse to acknowledge that women aren’t angels either.
I agree with Titus that things aren’t all bad. Teenage and premarital sex have always existed, and the statistics don’t demonstrate total collapse. However, it seems like most girls and women have given up power over their bodies and their lives. Without religion or other cultural controls to give them confidence, it’s harder to say “no,” especially when the most glamorous examples of female success are the fashionable and popular women who flaunt their sexuality.
Much of Christianity’s wisdom is that its moral prescriptions are based on the most insightful and correct assessment of human nature known to man.
Thus its sexual restrictions and sex role prescriptions aren’t based on a desire to keep us from having fun or to oppress or control women but instead on helping us deal with our animal instincts in the best way possible.
Yet even Christians twist passages to mean the opposite of what they actually say or claim that certain things don’t apply to us because they were based on “archaic” ideas we’ve grown past. Paul said women shouldn’t do certain things or act a certain way, but he wasn’t as insightful as we are now. He only said that stuff because he had to, a “reflection of the times.”
So our “advanced” ideas lead to uninspired and uninspiring men and miserable and lonely women, but heaven forbid even we Christians actually examine what the Bible actually says about how we should structure our sex lives, marriages, and families. We’ll just yell “man up!” at the lazy men and it’ll all work out.
Nice to see you posting again, Martel!
I’m a broken record here on Ricochet about the “Men’s Rights” movement and the Family Court fiasco. I’m glad my younger daughter married before 25 and had a baby before she was 30.
There was a time when much of the hysteria about male domination – and thus women’s plight – came from a combination of political activism both within and outside the academy. Within the groves of academe which, unfortunately, attempted to lend credibility to the feminist positions, the extremists went so far as to proclaim all commonly accepted knowledge as a male creation and thus dangerous to women. Their polemics led them to see as their mission nothing less than the transformation of society into a ‘gyno-centered’ world on the grounds that a woman’s point of view was far superior to that of any man’s.
This is nothing short of hubris, but it is hubris on stilts to suggest – as they did – that logic and rationality are antithetical to a woman’s way of thinking and that therefore the tools of logic and science must be replaced with the far superior female instruments: focus on feelings and anecdotal evidence. This way of ‘thinking’ led mathematics professor Dr. Margarita Levin to dryly remark, “One still wants to know if feminists’ airplanes would stay airborne for feminists’ engineers.”
Ah, but you fail to recognize that “a very successful 30 year old will find it more difficult to get married than a less successful 20 year old” only because men are immature and threatened by successful women.
Women are attracted to successful men. Because feminism teaches us that there are no fundamental differences between the sexes, the only reason men aren’t drooling over Oprah is that they’ve been improperly socialized. Just like all the boys in school who are acting like defective girls, men are actually defective women.
–sarcasm off–
Great and insightful comment.
Brian Epstein certainly had the eye; did he not? :)
One thing that would improve the situation is for a pool of good paying jobs that didn’t require several years of runway and were forgiving to significant breaks – like for having a child.
If it could be done asynchronously, meaning perhaps several hours in a day, but flexibly any hours you wished.
This is out of left field, but imagine the reduction in pressure on the decisions to marry and have children, for instance.
Regardless of whether you think this is fantasy: it sure would be desirable.
I’m not talking about dull jobs – I’m talking about rewarding engaging ones. Think high-end personal and professional services.
It’s increasingly possible to design jobs like this. I certainly don’t claim to have cracked the code, but at work (small, small biz) we’ve been experimenting with virtual personal (fashion) styling.
Don’t tell me successfully styling someone (women in our case) so they feel absolutely confident and beautiful wouldn’t be a kick and make you feel great (if you were, um, actually a talented stylist).
I have a mind to do it for coaching kids in math via Khan Academy like I do with my own kids (I’ve posted on it prior), but that will have to remain a wish for now.
Anyway, if you could reliably earn . . . say, $30/hr whenever you wanted in roughly whatever volume you wanted, much of feminism as discussed here would be . . . neutered.
Thank you :) I should mention, though, that I didn’t get married until age 36, although I wasn’t very successful, and I suspect that if I had been, my husband would not have given me a second look. Feminists would accuse my husband of being afraid of strong women; he has always just made it his business to stay as far away from feminists as possible.
I disagree with the feminist claim that women who don’t want careers are not strong, so needless to say, I also disagree with the claim that men who don’t want to be married to career women are “afraid of strong women”.
You’ve also successfully avoided the frequent feminist fallacy of projecting your own experience on the entire rest of the human race. You seem to recognize your own successful marriage at your age was exceptional. Many others assert stuff like “I got married at 36 and made it work–that’s what you should do, too!”
I also liked your point about conservatives and other ostensible anti-feminists adopting so many feminist assumptions. “Sure, I hate feminism, but I’m going to ensure my daughter is a high-powered career woman who never has to depend on any man” isn’t exactly going to strengthen the traditional family.
I am definitely an exception, and I totally recognize that. Being single was really only fun and carefree until about the age of 25, after that it was miserable. There is no way of knowing for sure, but I suspect that I would have married much younger if I had lived in a society with more traditional expectations; the reason I waited so long was because I knew that I didn’t want a career, and I couldn’t stand the thought of being married to a man who would want me to have a career. But I was always afraid to say that. Luckily, I eventually met a guy who offered what I was looking for without my having to ask for it. But I spent a lot of very lonely years before I met my husband.
Yet those lonely years appear to be at an end, and an end to loneliness certainly seems to be what you deserve.
Thank you so much, Martel :) My husband was definitely worth the wait :)
In a world gone mad, it’s good to see little success stories like yours. They give me hope.
With all due respect, I’m giggling at the reaction this comment would evoke from my very traditional and conservative father. He would most assuredly launch into his favorite “There are no free lunches” speech. :)
As an aside, feminism in the 70s and 80s was nothing but a fashionable diversion for most of us and really did advocate personal career choices. Women should stop whining and continue to do whatever they want. No one is stopping them from being stay at home moms or running for president; most certainly not anybody from NOW. Few of us could even identify the woman running that show in 2015!
For decades, feminists have treated stay at home wives and mothers with derision. Many or most feminists are telling their sons not to marry women who do not want careers, so with all due respect, someone is stopping women from being stay home mothers. This does not even cover the liberal divorce laws which feminists support which make it difficult for women to stay home.
Feminists heap scorn on both women who don’t want careers and on men who would prefer it if their wives didn’t have careers. And if there is no such thing as a free lunch, then why, again, do feminists demand affirmative action?
Perhaps, but who really cares what they think? I don’t!
I don’t care what they think, but I do care what their sons think. Women are not the only ones who have been brainwashed by feminism. It is simply not possible for a woman to stay at home unless she has a husband who will allow her to, and feminists have done everything in their power to denigrate men who want to support their wives. If feminists want to take credit for the good things they have done, then they should take responsibility for the bad things they have done, of which there are many.
I honestly believe you’re describing an outdated trend. It is positively chic for wives to be stay at home moms now because it denotes economic affluence on the part of the husband. I know this because my sister-in-law (married to a Hollywood writer/producer) tells me so. :)
I honestly believe that your sister-in-law may be very out of touch with most people :)
Although, to be fair, the women I know who don’t want their sons to support their wives would never identify as feminists. They just see themselves as protecting their sons from being taken advantage of by evil women; in many cases, they themselves stayed home with their children, but now they want to deny that possibility to their daughters and daughters-in-law. They are horrible people, but they would never call themselves feminists.
I think that wheat in modern feminism is a needle in a haystack.
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.
I think feminism is full of passive-aggressiveness and projection. Here is a perfect example. The woman has unhappiness and probably ingratitude about her current situation in life, which she likely gets from feminist media more than from the way her husband treats her or the way her life really is, and she projects that onto her situation and others, as if anybody has ever actually told her that is all her life is supposed to be. There’s no accountability for the choices she freely made, no working to change her situation a bit or talk about her situation to her husband in a healthy manner. Just whining, and I’m sure envy of her husband’s daily routine, which he could tell her isn’t 100% perfect like she probably thinks. And if she did get a job, and put her kids in day care, there would be a whole new set of things to be resentful about, mostly pushed onto her by the same influences that made her want to go back to work in the first place.
I imagine your “N” at 34 was not high either. This is about playing the odds.
I know that people don’t like uncomfortable truths, but they are true nonetheless.
The biggest meaning in my life comes from my kids. I work hard to support my family. My wife is the one that gets to see them grow up. I just show up on nights and weekends.
Society goes on and one about women being happy and fullfilled, and does not care at all about men. It is a funny thing though, in that I know far more many men who are happy most of the time than women. Has it always been this way, or have women become less happy over time?
I think there is a world of differences between the promises & prophecies of the feminists of two generations ago & the blame they deserve for how things turned out.
Deeds & speeches are not that easily correlated; feminism did not cause this situation, either the part it loves or the part it hates.
Feminism did not cause the anti-Vietnam war protests or the race riots in big cities or the political assassinations of Kennedys & of MLK or the students occupying colleges across the nation (I do not know where they clustered or dominated) or the crime waves (these hit different places differently & at different times–NYC only went to hell in the ’80s). Or the economic crisis in America & the oil shocks & political crisis of Watergate afterward. There was a massive change hitting American society, part of which was caused by some parts of American society, & for a while it got really ugly. It’s far less worrying now. Also, good things like civil rights were not due to feminism either… Most of the big changes…
Else, I fear your argument would forced you to say, the situation at the end of WWII caused feminism as well. & so on, going backwards…
So I don’t think it’s ok to blame feminism as an ideology for political changes. Feminism was not that important, & a big part of whatever importance it did have is derived from the coming democratization. Feminist speeches did not make the difference. & speeches blaming feminism will not either.