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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
Here’s a really good article on feminism by Mr. Harvey Mansfield. He argues that feminism was primarily a matter of getting more fairness or justice understand as equality for women & has been remarkably successful, & in a remarkably peaceful way. But then because of the concern with justice alone, the effects of justice on American society were ignored–most of the article is an attempt to understand the price paid for justice.
I agree, the trick is getting women to own the opportunity costs of their life choices. Apparently opportunity costs are oppression these days.
I have nothing additional to say that has not already been said. Just great post. Liberal values have undermined the family, and so destroyed the foundation of western society. From that you can see a thousand tentacles of dysfunction.
Divorce culture has broken a lot of social trust, and even feminists (being the least self-aware people in the world) are protective of their little brothers from “the dumb [redacted]es and sluts” that are out to do him wrong. But I just sip my drink, smile, nod, and offer a “do tell.”
If your conservative father would launch into such a speech for a woman, it merely indicates how deeply ingrained into society feminism’s premises have been adopted, even for conservatives.
Finding a capable man to bring home the bacon to enable a woman to focus on raising the children to manage a home is nothing even close to a “free lunch.” Per feminism, women devoting themselves to the most important job in existence (raising humanity’s next generation) are wasting their time and “selling themselves short.” Being a good wife and mother requires skill and commitment, and no role is more essential. Anyone who equates this with laziness misses the point entirely, and the fact that conservatives do so is proof that feminism has had way too much influence.
It started out as a “diversion” for upper middle class women, but the “empowering” “option” of working is now virtually required. Even lower-class men used to be able to earn enough money to support a family. Now, only those men with pretty high salaries can even consider it.
Maybe nobody’s “stopping” them from being stay-at-home moms, but considering how inaccessible such an option is for most families, they might as well.
Case in point, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (movies and TV shows with Captain America, Daredevil, etc.) is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s replete with “empowered” female scientists, secret agents, businesswomen, and “strong women” of all sorts.
Yet in the latest Avengers movie one Hawkeye had a traditional wife and Black Widow expressed disappointment that she couldn’t have children, and feminists went ballistic. They say they just want to give women choices, but so much as even hinting that women have the choice to stay at home to raise kids, even in a “universe” where women never do that, is heresy.
Thus, the MCU won’t make that mistake again.
You hit the nail on the head.
Yes, it’s quite chic for wealthy women to become housewives, usually after spending a few years “finding themselves” in their careers.
But doing so is a luxury, and anyone who thinks otherwise lives in a veritable bubble. Girls are strongly encouraged to focus on their jobs over relationships. Men are trained to think that women who don’t want to be a CEO are somehow weak. Jobs for women that began as fun for rich women are now the only way most families can survives.
Yet there’s no problem because the wives of Hollywood producers think it’s cool to quit their jobs.
And never mind the stranglehold feminism has on pop culture, academia, and government, EThompson doesn’t buy into feminism so we can just ignore it.
All good points – I see these statistics and news stories as part of a viral sickness that is spreading through our culture, with the most vulnerable showing serious physical and psychological symptoms – self-medicating, porn addiction, depression, even predatory behavior. This has serious implications for society as a whole, presently and in the future.
I think what feminism taught us originally, is that you can pursue your career dreams and have a family (or not), whether as a hair stylist, a business owner, a scientist, a caretaker – any and all have value. But the distorted message that disrespect, vulgarity, abuse, (and that’s what these stories show), is now acceptable and inevitable, is deeply wrong. Young men need to hear from women and they need to hear from men, the truth about expectations in relationships – I suspect both sides may hear things they don’t like or know.
The first comment from Guruforhire spells it out – an honest answer about what he and his friends face from women today.
You can select only a part of the comment you want to answer (hold left mouse button down while dragging over the desired text to select it, it will change color), then when you click the comment button only that text will be inserted into your comment.
Sex (Eros) is a battlefield. Love (Agape and even Phileo) is not. Agape is self-denial for the benefit of another. Phileo is mutually beneficial conduct, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Modern media, movies, books, magazines, concentrate on Eros and ignore Agape though they sometimes scratch the surface of Phileo. So young people are given a skewed view of the whole picture and have been since at least the ’60’s.
Another way to analyze this is, Eros seeks what pleases me, Phileo seeks what pleases us, Agape seeks what pleases her/him. It takes maturity, physically, emotionally and spiritually to move beyond Eros to Phileo and then to Agape, both for men and women.
Who taught you all this stuff?
The name Greeks would use for love of brothers in arms is certainly philia & that is in the immediate sense a battlefield: Loving one’s own is always going to mean killing some strangers.
Unless you’re a slave–then loving whoever has no war-like consequences… Although, come to think of it, even slaves might be moved by one form of love or another to fight.
As for what eros used to mean, if you’re not satisfied with common sense–falling in love with someone–the old teaching is that eros is the revenge of the oldest gods against the youngest.
But in the common sense erotic love is what enslaves men to women for whom they would do anything, act however shamelessly, break any oaths, & lose their minds.
What you seem to have in mind about erotic love is being loved, not loving–it is the beloved who gets what he wants & could be called selfish without misleading anyone. The lover is more complicated.
In the age of the Greek philosophers, they also used eros to talk about philosophy & what people would call passions today. Citizens can conceive a passion–be erotic about–other cities; men about hunting; &c.
I leaned more towards “what feminism seemed to have taught us originally, is that you can pursue your career dreams and have a family (or not).” Modern third-wave harpies are what we complain about today, but a lot of first and second wave feminists were extremely bitter, too. Some good women were their allies, but Friedan and the like didn’t just want to give women the option to opt out of families, they didn’t like families, period.
Moreover, feminism is a subset of leftism, and leftism is inherently totalitarian. Those feminists who disliked housewifery assumed that all women disliked it, that hidden in every housewife was a CEO or microbiologist just dying to break free. Friedan felt oppressed, so by extension all women were oppressed by traditional roles and child-rearing. The Outlier Amplification Effect left the impression that women in general were hurt and dissatisfied.
(continued below)
But if too many women voluntarily opted to stay at home despite their newfound freedoms, it would disprove the very notion that the whole system was corrupt. Therefore, we had to change the culture to emphasize the stifling nature of home life, to denigrate women who opted to focus on their husbands and children as either brainwashed or weak, to tell men who wanted a housewife that they were too weak to handle “strong women,” to push girls who have no interest in science into pursuing it as a career while accusing whatever desirable professions without “enough” women of sexism (not too many complains about there not being enough garbagewomen, though).
Repeatedly tell someone who’s perfectly content about all the fun they’re missing out on and eventually they’ll believe it. In article after article, I’ve read about college-aged women feeling guilty about wanting a relationship with a man that would interfere with her career, feeling warped because she’s perfectly normal, that she should care so much more about career advancement than she’s naturally inclined towards.
Most children’s shows encourage girls to be aggressive, so normal feminine girls inclined towards softness and caring soon feel like a fundamental part of who they are is a flaw.
Men are miserable. Women are miserable. But the family is dying, which is exactly what the left’s been craving ever since Rousseau.
Rousseau never wanted to destroy the family, nor was he a lefty. It is better to avoid involving political philosophers in the disagreements about policy & community unless you really want to have a discussion about philosophy. You might otherwise claim Plato wanted to destroy the family & Aristophanes & however many others who wrote anything like an argument against the family!
Good point – I read a story that Boston is booming and not enough people to fill jobs? Showing kids more than one way to make a living? I agree – tax credit increases for children and families, wouldn’t having more money give you more time with your children? But how could this improve the immoral cultural decline that we are witnessing? It seems to be crossing all borders of society.
My favorite lines about Rousseau come from Patrick O’Brian’s character Stephen Maturin:
Well, I do not have the gentleman’s charity. The callousness of the man is astounding. But his teaching is otherwise-
The educational system as advocated in Emile was most decidedly anti-family.
He may not have been a lefty himself (the term didn’t exist yet), but leftism would not have been possible without him. Whether or not he’s actually responsible for the abuses that followed in the French Revolution is up for debate, but the head-choppers absolutely loved the guy.
Regardless, his notions about the degrading effects of society on man and the totalitarian ways in which the General Will would have to undo the damage have influenced nearly every totalitarian to follow. Even if the totalitarian in question didn’t follow Rousseau himself, he almost invariably followed somebody who followed Rousseau (or followed somebody who followed somebody who followed Rousseau, etc.).
Doesn’t the callousness belie the teaching?
I enjoyed Paul Johnson’s book Intellectuals. He eviscerated a number of people, including Rousseau…
Martel, I wonder if this bitterness has translated into today’s young women not knowing what the answer is, so they try to just conform to please (both men and their bitter moms) instead of gaining confidence from a healthy set of standards? How do we reach them?
I don’t know anyone except a few that can afford not to work – it takes two incomes, but I can’t believe that working or not, has brought us to a place of such confusion and despair for young women. Look at WWII, when men went to war, women went to work, but we still had decency, respect, protection mechanisms in place to support the heart of family life. Maybe we can still learn from the older generation?
They’re getting it almost everywhere, including lots of ostensibly Christian churches.
A good place to start is the Bible and its discussions on family. The way it advocates wives and husbands interact is usually the opposite of what most moderns advocate. (For countless examples, see dalrock.wordpress.com)
I’m aware that society is largely secular, but today feminism has far more influence over Christians than vice versa. There’s no way that traditionalists will have any hope of influencing society at large when they don’t even follow their own traditions.
The best way to lead is by example, through healthy men married to healthy women, properly guiding and setting examples for their children.
As for the propaganda wars, that’s a bit tougher. For starters, we need those who know better to call the idiots out on their crap whenever and wherever they see it. It’s not easy, but it’s possible to get people to see Truth if you actually try.
Modern women are in a no-win situation. If they want to follow their maternal instincts, it goes against nearly everything they’ve been taught since birth. It means they’re weak. It just feels wrong.
If they buy into what they’ve been told and dive into a career, more likely than not they’ll find themselves even more unfulfilled. Thus, no win.
Another example I haven’t mentioned yet is casual sex. Women aren’t wired to hop from bed to bed, but Sex in the City culture tells them its empowering. Yet instead of feeling empowered they feel broken and used. They then think something’s wrong with them.
As far as reaching them. it’s hard to develop a Grand Blueprint in a blog comment, but we’ve got to stand up for Truth, fully aware that us men will be called misogynists, women will be accused of weak apologists for oppression. Some approaches are more effective than others, but right now we’re hardly even making an effort.
No effort=no results.
Women working in the factories (mainly in Britain) is actually where a lot of this started, and it accelerated in the US with Rosie the Riveter. It didn’t hurt that generation a whole lot because they had a much firmer foundation to start with, but that’s when a lot of the seeds were planted.
A woman working doesn’t wreck the family, per se. Women feeling that the purpose of life is empowerment does. Rosie the Riveter was largely content to let her husband take back his traditional role after the war, largely because that’s how she was raised to think things should work.
But some of them romanticized their glimpse of “independence” just a bit too much and became feminists.
It’s one thing to work during a time of crises or economic need, something else altogether to be told that you should love your career, and there is something wrong with you if you don’t. I worked for a long time as a waitress, and now I work part time helping my husband with his business. I don’t mind working if it is necessary, but I just can’t be bothered putting on some huge song and dance about a career that I supposedly love. I am not that good of an actress :)
The line from that song could not be truer today and made me wonder if kids don’t know that it’s even worth fighting for, or is making demands, walking out, putting on a hard shell or refusing to discuss, the message of today? It’s never out worked well in other settings. When do you abandon the battle?
Mr. Johnson is unfortunately British. His judgments about philosophers are laughable. Read his account of Socrates: The man is neither competent nor aware of his incompetence. I’ve read thousands of pages of his histories & he has all sorts of interesting things to say. When I was a kid, I read his history about America–it can be quite riveting & it keeps you busy a few days…
The funniest part is when he mentions Xenophon, the most noble of all ancient writers. He dismisses him with the accumulated mindlessness of generations of Brits. It’s the second coming of Victorian mindlessness. Old English writers–Earl Shaftesbury still knew what a nonpareil genius he was. Now, he’s worth nothing to people who think they can judge philosophy.
Back to Rousseau. The life & teaching are different. Whoever says Jefferson was lying in the Declaration because he owned slaves is a fool. Jefferson should have freed his slaves, but his judgment failed him there. Unlike Washington, for example. But his teaching was serious nevertheless. So with Rousseau–his understanding of politics & the modern predicament is independent, at least for the most part, from his terrible deeds-