"to hear young feminists today, you’d think that all girls are still chained to kitchen sinks and prohibited by their scary dads from learning to read. They cry endless tears that girls need to be “empowered”, as if somehow this hasn’t been happening my entire life..."
I am a 53-yr-old man from Queens, NY, not exactly a hotbed of upper-crust privilege. The girls (obvs now women) I grew up with are doctors, shrinks, teachers, one is a motivational speaker (!), some own businesses, some manage businesses, my sister is a corporate VP.
For quite a few years now I've been hearing this Handmaid's Tale narrative about oppression and victimization that really makes me wonder what year and country I live in. This insane notion that upscale well-educated Western women have just been freshly released from shackles (and are in constant danger of being re-shackled if Trump or Brett Kavanaugh or Elon Musk get their way) is really a testament to modern derangement and how social media etc has turned some of the best-off and most secure people in history into infantile narcissists.
For centuries various philosophers wondered what people would do once they were freed from the burdens of finding and preparing food, tending to children etc--Marx or Engels said people would fish in the morning and write poetry at night, others said we would pick fights just to feel alive or we would numb ourselves with booze drugs and sex (the latter two ideas being much closer to the mark)--but no one predicted that once people (both men and women) were free to live life as they chose, many of them would pretend to be victims for attention or validation, or to feel special or righteous, or to make money.
It is one of the more shameful aspects of a shameless culture.
Does anyone know of a single transgender man (is that what you call a woman who says she's a man?) insisting to be put into a man's prison? Can you imagine the hell this person would endure as an easy victim of imprisoned lust?
Sexism in culture has not totally gone away but it is not the portrait portrayed by radical feminists either. It would help to return to biblical values (male and female are created in the image of God, there should be chastity before marriage and fidelity after marriage (but, for any who might sit in judgment toward any who have deviated from this standard, there are the words of Jesus Christ who said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"), love thy neighbor as thyself, etc.
That's it. You just summed it up perfectly. The more complicated we try to make simple values, the more we go off the rails; corrupt and pollute our minds, souls, bodies and ultimately our lives. Christians do believe however, that we are all free to do so.
No judgement.
It really doesn't get more complicated than what you laid out above. These simple values are extremely hard to achieve (I have not) but I for one am not going to pretend there is some exciting new wisdom to be found in any ideology beyond Christ's teachings.
Thank you for the article, Jenny-always so happy when you post and thank you to this commenter.
Feminism is not a single homogenous mass. Liberal and radical feminism are very different with different analysis of relations between women and men. You make some valid but rather glib points about media/celebrity feminism but dont engage with more serious feminist analysis on care work, violence against women, sex/gender sterotyping and its jmpact on both women and men. Women like Thatcher and Meir or Ghandi do not disprove feminism - they gain power by aping male ways.
This was a real blast of fresh air:
"to hear young feminists today, you’d think that all girls are still chained to kitchen sinks and prohibited by their scary dads from learning to read. They cry endless tears that girls need to be “empowered”, as if somehow this hasn’t been happening my entire life..."
I am a 53-yr-old man from Queens, NY, not exactly a hotbed of upper-crust privilege. The girls (obvs now women) I grew up with are doctors, shrinks, teachers, one is a motivational speaker (!), some own businesses, some manage businesses, my sister is a corporate VP.
For quite a few years now I've been hearing this Handmaid's Tale narrative about oppression and victimization that really makes me wonder what year and country I live in. This insane notion that upscale well-educated Western women have just been freshly released from shackles (and are in constant danger of being re-shackled if Trump or Brett Kavanaugh or Elon Musk get their way) is really a testament to modern derangement and how social media etc has turned some of the best-off and most secure people in history into infantile narcissists.
For centuries various philosophers wondered what people would do once they were freed from the burdens of finding and preparing food, tending to children etc--Marx or Engels said people would fish in the morning and write poetry at night, others said we would pick fights just to feel alive or we would numb ourselves with booze drugs and sex (the latter two ideas being much closer to the mark)--but no one predicted that once people (both men and women) were free to live life as they chose, many of them would pretend to be victims for attention or validation, or to feel special or righteous, or to make money.
It is one of the more shameful aspects of a shameless culture.
Does anyone know of a single transgender man (is that what you call a woman who says she's a man?) insisting to be put into a man's prison? Can you imagine the hell this person would endure as an easy victim of imprisoned lust?
Sexism in culture has not totally gone away but it is not the portrait portrayed by radical feminists either. It would help to return to biblical values (male and female are created in the image of God, there should be chastity before marriage and fidelity after marriage (but, for any who might sit in judgment toward any who have deviated from this standard, there are the words of Jesus Christ who said "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"), love thy neighbor as thyself, etc.
That's it. You just summed it up perfectly. The more complicated we try to make simple values, the more we go off the rails; corrupt and pollute our minds, souls, bodies and ultimately our lives. Christians do believe however, that we are all free to do so.
No judgement.
It really doesn't get more complicated than what you laid out above. These simple values are extremely hard to achieve (I have not) but I for one am not going to pretend there is some exciting new wisdom to be found in any ideology beyond Christ's teachings.
Thank you for the article, Jenny-always so happy when you post and thank you to this commenter.
Feminism is not a single homogenous mass. Liberal and radical feminism are very different with different analysis of relations between women and men. You make some valid but rather glib points about media/celebrity feminism but dont engage with more serious feminist analysis on care work, violence against women, sex/gender sterotyping and its jmpact on both women and men. Women like Thatcher and Meir or Ghandi do not disprove feminism - they gain power by aping male ways.