Women Who Inspired Me in 2020
From conservative to woke, from Christian to gender fluid. Where else will you find Lena Dunham and Candace Owens on the same list?
Last week, I outlined a host of reasons why I think feminism has created delusions, sown divisions and allowed itself to become a tool of the elites.
After a terrifying week of Big Brother Tech shutting down dissent, I would like to cheer myself up with a list of women who have inspired me, taught me and entertained me in the last year or so.
There is an unclaimed space right now for women to showcase and assert their talents outside the skewed framing of feminism. We should absolutely celebrate the creative power of the feminine: we just don’t need feminists to do it. In fact, stepping outside that perpetually adolescent paradigm gives us greater freedom to appreciate truly diverse women’s work.
Here are some women who I am particularly impressed by. Some align with my own political and moral viewpoint, others do not. It doesn’t really matter, because opinions don’t really matter. What matters is the quality of the work they put out.
1. Camille Paglia
Camille Paglia is the closest thing I have a to hero. Her sharp edges, her rapid fire speech patterns, her embrace of outrage are all thrilling adornments to what is her core significance: she understands human nature better than any other commentator. Her book Sexual Personae electrifies me. She has also spoken about a very important distinction that is normally ignored: to most “ethnic” and working class women, feminism isn’t wrong as much as it is utterly, bewilderingly, pointless. What could Betty Friedan possibly offer to an old Italian grandma whose pride and joy is in her family and her home, and who rules as a matriarch? What can Internet feminism teach a French Arab woman who works in a factory and comes home every night to feed an extended clan? How does convincing women they are oppressed help them? Paglia is a strong delivery mechanism for this message, with her immigrant Italian family background and her fluid gender identification and her unsurpassed knowledge of history, art, and religion. If you want to understand human relationships in all their infinite variety, you have to read Sexual Personae.
2. Anna & Dasha of Red Scare Podcast
Maybe it’s because of their Soviet heritage, but Anna Khachiyan and Dasha Nekrasova are delightfully subversive. They remind me of myself twenty years ago, when I spent most of my non-working hours in endless conversations with girlfriends. We were as irreverent, as cutting, as lewd, as insouciant as these two hipster hotties. One of my biggest beefs with the tone of Internet feminism, at least when it’s delivered by the well-meaning white woman, is its overweening emphasis on kindness. Kindness is great, it’s a fine thing to practice around children and animals. But it cannot be a creed. A surefire way to create rage and disappointment is to base your worldview on kindness. When it’s not reciprocated (and it almost never is) the bitterness you feel builds up quite a head of steam and needs a release or it will blow. That’s when sharpness is needed, and women are great at delivering sharp words. Anna and Dasha are often criticised for being “cruel” by the sheltered Pollyannas who seem to make up the bulk of female-oriented Internet content. They are not cruel, they just aren’t fake-nice. They are not seeking approval for their goodness. They are too smart for that. It’s a fine balance to pull off, being a huge bitch while also providing real commentary. But they manage it with aplomb.
3. Lena Dunham
Poor Lena Dunham. I worry about this girl. But damn is she talented. Her show Girls was a revelation in frankness and neurosis and did not flinch from making its protagonists deeply awful. But they were human, and I loved them. Girls was the surprising antidote to the cult of kindness and goodness. This honesty about flawed women was revolutionary. The show was slyly satirical in its send-up of crazed, entitled, status-obsessed Millennials. Lena Dunham was the mastermind behind it all. Then the woke mob — driven as it is by resentment and petty jealousy — came after her. Real-life Lena (unlike Hannah Horvath) was too sweet, too needy, to stand up to them. She’s embraced the woke lingo and crusades, going so far as to say she would not make another show with four white girls as protagonists (good box-ticking there); and has generally made a habit of apologising for her existence. Her battles with her health have also been concerning. She hasn’t made a new show or movie. She looks terrible and seems to have endured the pandemic mostly alone. She seems uncomfortable with her talent and the success it rightfully brought her. I want to give her a hug and tell her she’s great, and to — quoting Brendan Behan here — fuck the begrudgers.
4. Beyoncé
And on the other extreme of the female confidence spectrum we have Beyoncé. I fully realise this is old news, but she’s amazing. Thing is, I didn’t take her all that seriously as a singer until I watched Homecoming recently, which lead me to listen to her album Lemonade, which I still can’t quite believe she had the balls to make. The personal backstory is compelling, but it would be tawdry without the truly genius production and virtuoso vocals from Beyoncé. Her willingness to expose her vulnerability over her husband’s infidelity is taughtly balanced by her Amazonian fierceness, and left me genuinely scared by her power. Is she an evil genius or is she a magnificent goddess? That’s a weird question to ask, but I’m asking it.
5. Candace Owens
Candace Owens looks like she could have been prom queen in a 90’s after-school special but instead she took a sharp right turn at BLM Plaza and now is one of the Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse, coming to make you cry guilty white liberal tears. Watch her rip into a pair of white women racial justice advocates at a Congressional hearing here.
“It’s ironic that you have three Caucasian people here testify and tell you what their expertise are — you want to know what my expertise is? Black in America. I’ve been black in America my whole life, all thirty years, and I can tell you you guys have done the same thing, every four years, ahead of the election cycle, and it has to stop.”
I almost feel sorry for those who try to debate her. She has no time for your false beliefs. She has no mercy for your attempts at ally-ship. She’s done being told by white folks that she is oppressed. I admire her ability to verbally slice and dice any opponent. Personally, I would not want to be up against her in a debate. She’s an absolute powerhouse.
6. Anne Friedman
Aaaand…back to the guilt-ridden white ladies. There is not a single word in Anne Friedman’s weekly newsletter that I agree with. But it’s so good! It’s pithy, it’s zeitgeist-y, it’s beautifully designed. It’s a leader in its field and it’s very much in line with my tastes, though miles away from where I am politically. But the form of her newsletter — and its huge success — is an inspiration. Plus, it’s important to keep abreast of your intellectual opposition.
7. Azealia Banks
I never listened to Azealia Banks’s music, and she always seemed like the kind of girl you do not want to get into an argument with on the subway. But her posts on the “right-wing” social media site Parler, before it was executed for daring to host opinions hostile to the Democratic Party, were hilarious and interesting. Like Candace Owens, she’s so over guilty white people. She is just a lot more vulgar and swear-y.
“Also, I’m REALLY Tired of these white men who think parroting liberal rhetoric from twitter is somehow impressive or sexy to black women. Black women are extremely sharp and very aggressive. If we are dating any white men this year they must be conservative. I like white men who exercise their White privilege and take full advantage of it. Who wants to sleep on a full size mattress in a studio apartment with some Liberal hipster wearing some stinky ass thrift shop flannel and eating Trader Joe’s curry while you listen to him complain about all the white guys who decided to not be a bum? Fucking pitiful.”
Enough said.
8. Bevelyn Beatty
Ok, this one is totally out of left field. I am an atheist raised by two former Catholics. Evangelical Christianity is about as foreign to me as Confucianism. But as I watched with horror the deranged Joker’s army of Antifa/BLM “activists” rampage through cities across America last summer, I felt the presence of darkness. They are lost children to be sure, but lost children can do immense harm. Into the fray wades Bevelyn Beatty. I first saw her in a video back in June in which she explains to a group of perplexed white women (who look like they’ve never thought it possible that a black person would be pro-Trump) how terrible Biden is. Bevelyn is an interesting character — a young, black women from a broken home who found Jesus and is filled with that fervour, travelling around the country as a street preacher with an ever-growing social media following. She even got stabbed last year in DC by teenagers and was seriously hurt. Despite my atheism, I’m starting to see that there is a battle for good versus evil, dark versus light. I find a spiritual dimension creeping into my worldview. And what I notice about Bevelyn is a luminescence — a glow. Maybe there is something to ‘Jesus is the light of the world’ after all.