“Although feminism speaks the language of liberation, self-fulfillment, options, and the removal of barriers, these phrases invariably mean their opposites and disguise an agenda at variance with the ideals of a free society.”
– Michael Levin, Professor of Philosophy, City of New York University
In the context of an Official Culture steeped in narcissism, feminism has not been excluded from its influence.
The originators of radical feminism were largely lesbian, seeking active polarisation of men and women rather than integration of values and common ground. Radical feminists believe that men are not relevant to a new society, women being the superior sex, amounting to a form of matriarchal fascism. Some believe that radical feminism and its subtle undercurrent in standard feminism is in fact an outlet and cover for misandry and not created as a natural response to the oppression women have suffered historically. Many of those who call themselves “Third Wave” feminists think of the concept of men’s rights as a personal slight against centuries of feminine oppression:
How could that possibly be credible since we have suffered so much and suffer still ?
How could the feminist movement possibly be making matters worse?
And this is to misunderstand the nature of our social systems which have engineered men and women to be products of its most toxic effects, spiritually and psychologically. Ponerological influences will distort and subvert the purest of movements until we recognise what is really going on. Unfortunately psycho-spiritual corruption of this kind leaves no movement or belief untouched.
The history of subverting positive movements for change is a tried and tested one from intelligence agencies, the 20th Century version of which started back in the 1950s with the rise of political dissidents, most notably within ethnic minority, peace, and civil liberty movements. There is also substantial evidence that such operations are now firmly entrenched within the New Age or human potential movement; within ecology and green politics as well as anti-globalisation activism. This has been especially effective in the U.S. Far from closing down in the 1970s these covert operations have continued apace, and have been taken to new levels of obfuscation and deception in line with the public’s growing awareness and Information Age. But each movement is different. Whereas in some cases it is tasked with creating lies and disinformation and to funnel awareness into intellectual and spiritual cul-de-sacs, in others, it is to stimulate conditions by which certain movements will implode from within taking the positive aspects of the seed idea with it. In the case of feminism and the gay pride movement it has been to promote radicalism and thus subvert the underlying message and thus increase the divide and therefore the emotional and instinctive capital available for the Establishment.
The hugely influential feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinham responsible for planting the misanthropic seed embodied in the maxim: “women need men like a fish needs a bicycle,” was, in all probability a paid CIA asset throughout the 1960s and 70s tasked with routing student communists and then promoting radical feminism.[1] The founder of Ms. Magazine an influential feminist rag, Steinham managed to have this funded indirectly through the CIA and the Rockefeller foundation, the latter of which seems to crop up whenever a branch of social engineering needs some financial support. This makes the assumption that modern US feminism was also a grassroots, natural reaction to men’s oppression rather insubstantial.
What we are seeing in both the US and UK is a strange reversal of gender roles. This does not mean that men are becoming nannies and women racing drivers, rather the emotional fabric of the sexes is undergoing a loss of identity where biological roles that go very deep are being discarded for the wrong reasons. If a woman wants to stay at home and take on the role of housewife – a desperately important role and job in the family unit – she is made to feel as though she is acquiescing to male domination. Yet, this is increasingly not an option anyway. Most women have no choice but to enter the corporate world due to the nature of our increasingly fragile economies. Naomi Wolf stated: “For almost 40 years, that era’s Western feminist critique of rigid sex-role stereotyping has prevailed. In many ways, it has eroded or even eliminated the kind of arbitrary constraints that turned peaceable boys into aggressive men and stuck ambitious girls in low-paying jobs.” [2] While wanting more equality in the workplace, the right to have children while discarding the very real differences between men and women it seems to suggest that a serious revision is in order as to what kind of feminism operates in our Western societies and whether we need that “-ism” at all.
A recent UK study found that “… over 60 percent of young men aged between 18 and 29 are competent ironers, with only 10 percent able to maintain a car and almost half can’t even change a tyre. Three quarters regularly don an apron in the kitchen and almost 80 percent take on housework. Young men are so in touch with their emotions [that] a whopping 85 percent are comfortable crying in front of others.” [3] Most importantly however: “…They are also more obsessed with themselves than any other generation, with two thirds of them striving to attain a perfectly toned body.” This is far from satisfactory for “…women aged 18 to 29 [who] complained that men are not masculine enough with 60 percent saying they’d prefer a man to take control in their relationship.” [4] While over in Canada a pattern that is also being reflected in Europe shows: “…that women have outpaced men in education and earnings growth: 22 per cent of husbands have wives whose income now exceeds theirs, compared to 4 per cent in 1970. The rise in women’s earnings corresponds with an upsurge in their education.” The women were quickly dubbed “alpha wives.” [5]
Addressing the male/female socio-economic divide is obviously a positive aspiration. But has being a “liberated woman” actually reduced the choices rather than increased them? Does being free to have as much sex as you want as often as you want liberate? It would be churlish in the extreme to disregard the chains on women’s sexuality and basic freedoms for millennia. We only have to look at the global sex trade, female circumcision and the drug-addled Nigerian prostitutes on my street corner to see that women and the sexual objectification that still surrounds the female is as prevalent as ever. However, in the Western, feminist, middle-class context we are looking at here, something else has happened as a reaction to that sexploitation.
Strategy consultant Susan Walsh made the point succinctly from her blog Hooking up smart: “Apparently in the femosphere, having a lot of casual sex is a way of communicating that you are confident, and sexy, and have no needs – or at least, not any that might be fulfilled by a male. I believe there are less risky ways of getting that message across.” And ultimately more rewarding and fulfilling – which applies to both men and women.
Walsh shares with us the fact that American men, in selecting among 67 desirable traits, ranked sexual faithfulness and loyalty #1. If women are playing out the feminism dream of being independent, non-dependent, strong and free-spirited which is believed to be equated with the male cliché of “sowing his oats” and “hooking up” as a normal strategy then, as Walsh mentions, this is a very poor strategy, for women who seek a long-term relationship, or life partner. And if the bonding chemical exists in much higher quantities in women than men, and women’s brains are also hard-wired to nurture then this is surely setting up some body-mind dissonance at a subconscious level. Usually these denials come home to roost.
Walsh quotes from The Evolution of Desire (Buss, 1994) to back up her claims:
Studies demonstrate that women’s preferences for short-term mates include availability as a marriage partner. They strongly resemble their preferences for a husband: kind, romantic, understanding, exciting, stable, healthy, humorous, and generous with resources. In other words, women have high standards for both short-term and long-term relationships, or at least that’s how we’ve evolved thus far.
Conversely, men select for very different traits when seeking short-term sexual partners. Compared with their long-term preferences, men don’t want casual partners who are prudish, conservative or have a low sex drive. In contrast to standards for committed relationships, for short-term sex they want: sexual experience, including promiscuity, and a high sex drive.” [6]
This means that men have had both sides of their bread buttered in that they have been praised and lauded when notching up conquests from college to office exploits while women have traditionally been seen as “sluts” or femme fatales when doing the same. And now, thanks to pathological influences from on high, these ratios have become more extreme.
But if men’s natural preference is for women who are faithful and loyal – and women should expect the same from men – then it behooves feminists to understand that doing what men do under largely misguided values is not necessarily true freedom or biologically healthy, given what we know about gender differences. Nor will it increase the likelihood of a stable male-female relationship in the future. Promiscuity is unfortunately a male throwback that is stacked against the female doing the same. Men cannot give birth, after all. Biological differences are inescapable even at a more subtle level. Walsh observes for the male:
“A woman’s sexual history serves as a proxy, or indicator of future behavior. It is not perfect, but men can and do make use of this information when selecting partners. This does not mean that a promiscuous woman cannot find a mate, but it does mean that the pool of men from which she may select has shrunk dramatically. A woman may say, ‘I would never want a guy who felt that way,’ and that’s perfectly legitimate. Still, it’s important that she understand the effectiveness of various sexual strategies in mating so that she may make informed decisions.” [7]
At the beginning of the 21st Century has feminism misinformed and confused rather than offer true liberation where it counts? Does becoming more like the corporate alpha male augment and value the feminine principle of nurturing, cooperation and bonding? When much of our culture is a product of narcissism and psychopathy, it is highly doubtful. Once again, feminism is just as vulnerable to ponerological influences as any other “-ism.” Therefore, there’s a reason why some women no longer see feminism as positive as they can already see that is has been co-opted and absorbed into the Divide and Rule dichotomy so favoured by the Establishment class.
“The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt (1907-1908) (wikipedia)
As journalist Lisa Guiliani passionately explains from a recent article on the same, not all women are feminists and that does not mean they are unthinking or uncaring but often have a more universalist view, where both sexes are seen as victims of the Establishment system:
The Feminist Movement only represents women who THINK LIKE THE Movement. It does NOT represent ALL women. Let’s see how many feminists support my right to express ideas that run counter to their group think. Because they sure as hell don’t represent women who think like me. I am no bible-thumping christian, and I am no deluded false political paradigm swigging ‘Democrat or Republican’. The Feminist Movement does NOT support or represent women who CHALLENGE its group think or its agenda. I am just a woman.
I do not hate men, in spite of and despite any of the bad experiences I’ve had with men or because of the bad men I’ve been involved with, or because of my bad choices and poor decisions overall. And I am a mother, who has seen the negative effects of joining the workforce in my own life – and the irreparable toll it took upon my family over the years. I see what a lot of these feminist ideas have wrought upon the world, and how they’ve flipped this country inside out and upside down.
I don’t think the trade-off was worth it. What have we really gained? More self-respect? More worthless money? A ‘right’ to a bogus vote? More meaningful relationships with the opposite sex? A surefire way to get rid of unwanted pregnancy even as we continue having more irresponsible sex? Wow. So many ‘choices’. How impressive.
Men are so leery of women now, it’s a wonder anyone tries to date us at all. But that’s okay, right? We don’t NEED to date men anymore. We can date each other. Terrific. And while that appeals to a lot of women these days, it does NOT appeal to me. So I’m left to navigate the screwed-up dating world, full of messed up, broken people who present themselves as shiny, happy, successful, shallow, perfect and plastic. [8]
“I consider myself 100 percent a feminist, at odds with the feminist establishment in America. For me the great mission of feminism is to seek the full political and legal equality of women with men. However, I disagree with many of my fellow feminists as an equal opportunity feminist, who believes that feminism should only be interested in equal rights before the law. I utterly oppose special protection for women where I think that a lot of the feminist establishment has drifted in the last 20 years.”
– Camille Paglia, American academic and social critic
The sweeping changes that were brought about by the so-called Sexual Revolution fuelled by the counter culture trappings of psychedelia, LSD and the Kinsey Report suggest that the end result was not at all what the original proponents of free love and equality ever expected. Free love or self-indulgence? Sexual freedom or cheap sex? This is not to say that every aspect of this revolution was bad – not by a long way – but it seems the pendulum has swung back towards its worst aspects and become stuck. This social force has engrained them into present day consciousness as the only way to be; where mutual love and respect of the sexes “… has given us the trashy ‘pornogrification’ of our society.” [9]
If women were “… conned into abandoning self-respect” then men were duped into thinking that such easily “accessible goods” were worth having. In the end, meaningless sex – like the mediocrity of Official Culture on which it derives its sustenance, morphs into a meaningless life. And that is coincidentally, the spiritual malaise most noticeable in 21st century Western society as journalist Bel Mooney eloquently laments:
Health Centre handed out the Pill like sweeties. So you wouldn’t get pregnant – good. But at the same time you had no reason to be careful – bad. Most of us embraced the hippie-esque idea that sexual freedom was a beautiful thing to be celebrated. ‘Seize the day,’ we shouted, and threw old notions like fidelity out of the window. But beneath all those naive and high-sounding ideals, the sexism of supposedly radical and free-thinking men on the left could be summed up with: ‘A woman’s place is underneath.’
As the writer and feminist pioneer Rosie Boycott has said: ‘What was insidious about the underground was that it pretended to be alternative. But it wasn’t providing an alternative for women. It was providing an alternative for men in that there were no problems about screwing around.’
The artist Nicola Lane, another young woman of the age, adds: ‘It was paradise for men – all these willing girls. But the problem with the willing girls was that a lot of the time they were willing not because they particularly fancied the people concerned but because they felt they ought to. There was a lot of misery.’ [10]
For Michael Gurian, the cultural dogma of media stereotypes, though irrefutable is not the main issue. He believes that: “… the foremothers of the ‘70s overemphasized power and go-it-alone independence at the expense of women’s deep need for emotional attachments, including the honorable pursuit of motherhood.” Though much of tradition was deeply flawed so too was feminism in Gurian’s view. He and his wife, family therapist Gail Reid-Gurian suggest a more “logical” and “compromising” approach called “womanism” which advocates “absorbing the best of the past” so that girls’ and women have equal opportunity rights “… but where their yearning for a ‘safe web of intimate relationships’ is recognised and valued.
This of course, extends both ways.
Womanism grew out of the response from black women to racial and gender oppression and has since been taken on by many women in general as an alternative to feminism. Yet, the key difference is what Gurian thinks is the “sacred” nature of motherhood and the symbiosis of male and female potential.
He states:
“… human females and males need to form intimate, long-lasting and symbiotic relationships in order to feel safe and personally fulfilled and in order to raise the next generation safely” […] “Women who never have children are still mothers,”… “They mother communities, other people’s children, the earth itself.” […] Mothering, with a capital M, is the primary goal of girls. I mean by that, mothering the world. My argument would be that females are wired to mother. Some may never have children, but they’re still wired to mother.” [11]
That conclusion would no doubt get many feminists foaming at the mouth at the sheer audacity of such a statement.
Gurian believes that for “the 10 to 20 percent of girls in crisis – especially girls who are abused, disturbed or systematically disrespected…” feminism presents a conceptual framework that can offer a way through. However, he goes on to state that: “…it’s not the right model for the majority of girls who are doing well at any given moment.”
He also makes the interesting link between girls, family and by extension, the loss of community that now defines much of contemporary society. Gurian’s view places importance on the female’s drive for attachment that is higher than the male. Consequently, he envisages the provision of a “three-family system” which includes not just biological parents and siblings but a far wider range of an extended family such as mentors, single parents, day-care providers and individuals from church, the local neighbourhood and school. But these ties must be based on “true bonding” something that could become a strength for women in the correct environment. Without these safeguards and in a society that flows in the opposite direction to true bonding, then that quality becomes inverted, expressing itself as dependency and manipulative strategies to obtain the male.
© infrakshun
As economic realities encroach further into fragmented communities that were once the norm in the pre-cartel-capitalist West, it may just provide the impetus for not only some collective soul-searching but for the natural tendency for human beings to work together and form stronger communities and where the roles of men and women can naturally honour their biological pre-dispositions without compromising their potential. In a more relaxed and attentive environment without strains of radicalism perhaps a return to what is truly important for individual and community survival may reduce the tendency of narcissistic self-preservation and self-promotion.
To that end, Michael Gurian and Gail Reid-Gurian present a summary of the feminist and new womanist principles:
Feminist position
- Our goal as a human race should be gender androgyny.
- Girls suffer more than boys. Males are more privileged than females.
- The non-working woman is not financially independent and thus is potentially a victim of men.
- Masculinity is defective and dangerous. Females must react against it.
- Marriage is an inherently flawed institution and secondary to the needs of women. Achieving female independence is the hardest work of our civilization.
- Key words: power and empowerment.
Womanist position
- Women and men by nature are not the same and do not function in the same way. Human life is passionate and progressive as much because of differences as similarities.
- Women and men are fellow victims of a fear- and violence-based social system and have different but equally painful wounds.
- The ideal situation for a woman is one in which she is valued equally for work within and outside of the home.
- Masculinity is mysterious and we need to understand, clarify, accept and shape it meaningfully rather than fearfully.
- Marriage is sacred and essential to human progress, especially when a couple is raising children. Achieving stable, healthy attachments is the hardest work of our civilization.
- Key words: self-knowledge and service. [12]
Among many who provide alternatives to the current male dominated paradigm and the female emulation which is following closely behind, social and cultural historian Riane Eisler’s scholarly classic The Chalice and the Blade and her Cultural Transformation Theory is vital in this context. She proposes a “Dominator model” that includes both Patriarchal and Matriarchal cultures that dominated humanity based on the idea that one gender was inferior to the other. The second model is what Ms. Eisler calls the “Partnership Model,” which is based on the principle of “linking rather than ranking.” [13]
“Spring Woman” | © infrakshun
She goes on to explain a social disruption of huge proportions that altered the Western Civilisation’s cultural evolution and natural pathways towards partnership. This was caused by invaders who “ushered in a very different form of social organization,” a warrior race who “worshipped the lethal power of the blade – the power to take rather than give life.” [14]
Perhaps this was essentially a huge rise in the incidence of psychopathy and the dominance and separation it has shaped ever since? She explains the ramifications of this shift:
If we stop and think about it, there are only two basic ways of structuring the relations between the female and male halves of humanity. All societies are patterned on either a dominator model – in which human hierarchies are ultimately backed up by force or the threat of force – or a partnership model, with variations in between.
If we look at the whole span of our cultural evolution from the perspective of cultural transformation theory, we see that the roots of our present global crises go back to the fundamental shift in our prehistory that brought enormous changes not only in social structure but also in technology. This was the shift in emphasis from technologies that sustain and enhance life to the technologies symbolized by the Blade: technologies designed to destroy and dominate. This has been the technological emphasis through most of recorded history. And it is this technological emphasis, rather than technology per se, that today threatens all life on our globe.” [15]
This is directly linked to the loss of biological, emotional and ultimately spiritual understanding in both sexes. Technology is still linked to this dominator / psychopathic model whether it is expressed through drone attacks, smart agri-business or transhumanist pop-culture. Moreover, the sexual and religious bias radiating across the last thousand years has perpetuated a desperate ignorance regarding the female and male dominance cycles that ebbed and flowed in ancient times. Largely male educators and scholars were raised from a background of stern Judeo-Christian bias which has overseen the history of education from elementary to University and beyond, where the source of all evil derives from the sin of Eve who was tempted by the Serpent leading humanity to fall from the Edenic State.
Is it any wonder that women were seen as inferior for so long, and that the emasculation of man is now reflecting that disorientation and loss of sexual and spiritual identity? In this context, feminism is as much a part of the dominator system as the overt patriarchy of the past.
Notes
[1] ‘Inside the CIA with Gloria Steinem’By Nancy Borman, Village Voice 1979.
[2] op. cit. Wolf.
[3] ‘British men losing their masculinity’ Metro.co.uk 2010.
[4] Ibid.
[5] ‘Are men being robbed of their masculinity?’ By Zosia Bielski, Globe and Mail Sep. 30, 2010.
[6] ‘The Essential Truth About Female Promiscuity’ by Susan Walsh November 8 2010. http://www.hookingupsmart.com. Walsh quotes from The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating by David M. Buss; 1994.
[7] Ibid.
[8] ‘Thoughts on the Feminist Movement – Why I Don’t Clap along’ by Lisa Guiliani, Sott.net, April 1, 2012
[9] ‘My generation created the sexual revolution – and it has been wrecking the lives of women ever since’ By Bel Mooney, The Daily Mail, 2 December 2009.
[10] Ibid.
[11] op. cit. Gurian.
[12] Ibid.
[13] The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future by Riane Eisler. Published by Mandala Books, 1996.p.xix
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
Photo by Dmitry Ratushny | unsplash.com
INFRAKSHUN 