The Feminist Illusion

I recently purchased Camille Paglia's "Sex, Art, and American Culture". Paglia is a maverick in the feminist movement, if she is considered part of the movement at all. The modern feminist is prone to delusion, nay, obsessed with it. The archetypical modern feminst is a white middle class heterosexual woman, moderately intelligent. She typically attends a high caliber university; the Ivy League is rife with feminists. She seldom studies engineering or other male dominated fields, but instead strikes a blow to the patriarchy by majoring in soft sciences such as sociology or women's studies.

Feminists want to have their cake and eat it too. They do not understand basic risk management, nor do they have the faintest grasp on most other basic life principles. For example, feminists believe that men and women are the same; it is only culture which makes us radically different. Culture is why women cannot pass military training or become fire fighters without a drastic reduction in standards. It is also why there are few women in my engineering classes, and fewer still in my computer science courses. Little girls hug their dolls because culture tells them to. Little boys do not compete because that's what little boys do. They do so because culture compels them.

The problem with the nature/nurture debate is that it is a distraction. Irrespective of the reasons, men and women are majestically difference. It is pig-headed to pretend that a square peg will fit in a round hole because squares and circles are one and the same. Perhaps the circle was bent out of shape, but it must be re-bent before it possesses all the attributes of the square.

Feminsts, save for Paglia and those who follow her, do not understand this. If a man can go out drinking irresponsibly, so can a woman. As a libertarian, I haven't the slightest problem with women playing the fool, though I would warn them that they are demonstrating a particularly glaring idiocy by imbibing in alcohol in an unfriendly environment. With freedom comes responsibility. It is well and good for women to shun the protection of men to swear and drink with the boys. Yet it is preposterous to believe that mixing the sexes in such a manner will have no consequences.

Feminists cannot make up their mind. Worse, they have no idea that they must, in fact, make a choice. As Paglia notes, "Sex, like the city streets, would be risk-free only in a totalitarian regime." The liberated women wishes to walk the streets without the affects which freedom brings. She wants the good without the bad. Freedom is, perhaps, the ultimate double edged sword, and though human beings yearn to be free, the responsibility can be suffocating. Thus, the masses clamor for the Patriot Act and gun control. If feminists would not have the patriarchy of the 50's, they would gladly have the despotism of Big Sister government.

It will be interesting to see if the feminist ever begin to realize how right Paglia is. My guess is they will continue to ignore the facts and press onwards toward the utopia which obviously waits just over the hill. More important, will the feminists push us into totaliarianism before or after their movement, like all other foolish crusades prior, collapses in a muffled scream? The list of reason the republic is caput grows daily.

There is a tangential, and probably offensive, thought I wish to add. Despite revisionists efforts to supress certain inconvenient passages, the Bible is quite clear as to the role of the sexes. Men are the head of the household as Christ is the head of the Church. Men must be willing to lay down their lives for their wives just as Christ died for his bride, and the women must submit to the will of their husbands just as the Church yields to Christ. This last part has fallen quite out of fashion, and while non-believers may follow the fads of the day, those who cling to timeless truth are given no such luxury of making a terrible mistake.