feminine-genius

Women are losers

...in the gender wars, that is. Suzanne Venker gives a good outline of what has gone wrong in the last 50 years:

Women aren't women anymore.

To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.

In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.

Now the men have nowhere to go.

Ms. Venker is pretty blunt in explaining why women--many of whom want to get married and start families--cannot find men who will cooperate, for the number of men wanting to rear families is diminishing by the year. Perhaps they've retreated into the world of uncommitted (sterile) sex and video games, which certainly doesn't tax them or call out their better selves.

It's all so unfortunate – for women, not men. Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever. It's the women who lose. Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing male nature they're forever seeking a balanced life. The fact is, women need men's linear career goals -- they need men to pick up the slack at the office -- in order to live the balanced life they seek.

So if men today are slackers, and if they're retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they've played to bring about this transformation.

I've read the author's book, The Flipside of Feminism, which was good as far as it went (using an entirely secular framework) but didn't review or recommend it because the Christian worldview goes so much deeper. Furthermore, at first glance it would seem that men have come out the winners since they escape both sexual frustration and responsibility -- but we know better. They are also losers, for their manhood has been sacrificed to vice and mediocrity, which will never fulfill their heroic hearts.

Still, many wonderful young women have simply inherited this mess and are at a loss of how to proceed. We didn't get here overnight, and turning it around will take more than a generation. Imagine one chaste, determined girl trying to pursue a more healthy relationship with men. They have all been raised in a milieu saturated with lust, and they've learned that women are culturally bi-polar: saying they want one thing, but themselves used to rampant individualism and elastic morals; they say they want to be pampered by knights in shining armour, while insisting that men pitch in and do the dishes while they're at it. (Even the Catholic mom blogs spend a lot of time wondering about how to balance modern motherhood with traditional wisdom and older marital constructs.)

Recovery isn't impossible, but it will take time. For now, we must drill it onto our own heads and those we mentor that we have to be counter-cultural, we must live without the normal safety net of a large peer group or understanding institutions. We walk by faith, and not by sight, and in these "gender wars" that faith may be singular and counter-intuitive -- but it's the only way to true happiness.

Women aren’t women anymore.

To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.

In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.

Now the men have nowhere to go.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/24/war-on-men/#ixzz2DGdYLa38

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/24/war-on-men/#ixzz2DGdYBRw9

Women aren’t women anymore.

To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.

In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.

Now the men have nowhere to go.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/24/war-on-men/#ixzz2DGdYLa38

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/24/war-on-men/#ixzz2DGdYBRw9

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/24/war-on-men/#ixzz2DGdNnsXb

To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.

In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.

Now the men have nowhere to go.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/24/war-on-men/#ixzz2DGdNnsXb

To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.

In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.

Now the men have nowhere to go.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/11/24/war-on-men/#ixzz2DGdNnsXb

 

Horizontal lives

Count on our secular government subsidies to place constraints on little girls:

 

As Christians, we are not boxed in by materialism and money. Or importance according to the world's standard. We encourage vocations--which may or may not include paid work--remembering that the greatest component is the gift of self. That covers motherhood (spiritual, adoptive, and physical), professional outlets, caregiver tasks, mundane jobs, and the fluid dynamics of the average lifespan.

Raising girls to think that "important" careers (doing them for a loooong time!) may distract them from what God finds important--or essential in a given moment. Let's not shackle girls to such shallowness, as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) noted in 1932:

The spiritual nature of woman is as little considered as the principles of her historical development. Not only is violence being done to the spirit by a biological misinterpretation and by today's economic trends, but also by the materialistic and fundamental point of view of opposing groups (Problems of Women's Education).

Surely, no one could argue with the need to educate girls, but it's the nature of the education that we dispute--especially formation that ignores their "spiritual nature."

Tired old clichés

Thirty years ago called--they want their banners back. Cherie Blair (wife of former UK Prime Minister) leads the charge into cultural oblivion:

Blair suggested that children raised in households with a full-time mom lack a sense of independence and can’t make their way in the world because their moms don’t have “professional ambition.” “I also want to be the best possible mother, but I know that my job as a mother includes bringing my children up so actually they can live without me,” she remarked.

Soooo, that essential education is supposed to start in infancy -- by dropping the child with paid caregivers who will begin the task of explaining that mother has better things to do? And then extensive pre-school programs, and then after-school care until the child is old enough to be a latch-key kid, and then ... hope for the best? Why not just set up state-run orphanages with weekend visits for parents?

Every psychological serious study screams that this woman is wrong (the same woman who not only wants her children not to need her, but told the world that her fourth was a contraceptive snafu).

But, all that said, I think we need to consider the frightfully small demographic she's targeting: the "yummy mummies" who "describe young, attractive women who live on their husband’s wealth, staying home full-time with their children."

Adding that women who decide to get married to rich men and “retire” at home are unfulfilled and “dangerous,” Blair said, “you think how can they even imagine that is the way to fulfil yourself, how dangerous it is.”

Ignore the fact that many women sacrifice a great deal to be home with their children; ignore the fact that tight economies make it increasingly difficult for single-income families to persevere; ignore the fact that more than half of children are not sharing a home with their biological fathers; ignore the fact that marriage is often not on the radar screen for many couples with children (refusing even the attempt to establish stabibility for the sake of their children); and ignore the fact that, until this generation, marrying a man with a steady income was considered highly prudent. What has possessed these women not only to abandon their own children (while calling it the best formation possible) but to insult all women who choose differently?

Such is the insecurity of feminists -- and it always has been thus. Getting an education isn't enough -- feminists must also rig all the schools so that boys are handicapped and girls surrounded by hyper-esteem programs. Being pro-abortion isn't enough -- feminists must also indict those who choose to bring their crisis pregnancies to term, calling them selfish and unworthy of the "sisterhood." Enjoying the workplace isn't enough -- feminists must also trash all those who prioritise their children, even for the few years when the children are quite young and benefit by their mothers' presence.

Ah well, like all pro-choice women, only some choices are valid, and those are justified by pummelling all the rest. The story includes this non-surprising factoid:

Blair said her view of motherhood was shaped by her own experience of her father abandoning her mother when she was a child.

Woe to those who scandalise the little ones...  Poor dear.

Reaping the whirlwind

I believe that feminists have sown the wind, in their rejection of the traditional family, esteem for motherhood and collaboration with men. In that sense, having deconstructed so much of the societies in which they live, is there any wonder that they've found themselves filled with furious anger?

Like our love, women’s anger — the simmering rage toward our families, our mates and assorted males that can turn even the calmest woman’s expression into The Death Look — is always there. Even when it’s the last thing on our minds.

Wow. I can honestly say that I have no such simmering, pervasive rage, even on the worst days--nor does anyone I know. Perhaps something's very very wrong in the way they've ordered their lives? My take is at Catholic Lane.

The "work-life balance" myth

Suzanne Venker has posted a very good piece at NRO about why careers will naturally be negatively impacted by decisions that prioritise family. It's the nature of reality.

What we never talk about is where this feminist utopia [of balancing work and family] leaves employers. Employers can not — they must not — be responsible for helping parents manage their family lives. If employers can afford to offer part-time employment, fine. If they can afford to allow their employees to take off an endless string of days and still make money in the meantime, more power to ’em. But come on: such businesses are few and far between. Employers are in business to make money. They may be sympathetic to the The Problem, but they cannot solve it.

This piece is similar to what I found in her new book, The Flipside of Feminism. While I promised a review, I'm not usually in the habit of doing negative reviews (at least not for the "good guys"). The book was good -- as far as it went. It was hard-hitting, enjoyable and completely conservative, but also entirely secular. There was a thin veil of Protestant virtue about it, but that veil hasn't sufficed to keep the country on track thus far, and it wasn't enough to recommend the book (though as a gift to non-religious recovering feminists, it would be great).

We know how America is supposed to work, and we know what rules should govern the workplace. All of that was covered very well, but Catholics know that there's more to life than a secular work-life dichotomy, and that secular paradigm never attempts to factor in vocation, a family wage, the hidden cost of vice, and the priorities that faith demands, etc. Apart from realigning the public sphere along Godly principles (which isn't going to happen any time soon) we will have to settle for these secular guidelines -- while providing a witness for something transcendent in our own lives. A challenge, indeed, but this wasn't the book to help with that quest.

Two aging feminists

They may have burned their bras, but that didn't mean that they really wanted to go natural. Natural fibers, yes; natural aging, no. Organic food, yes; organic fertility, no. Shunning the conventions of the traditional family and a God-centered society certainly didn't mean shunning their own conventions once they were established -- and their own included as much sterile sex as possible with whomever they chose. The sexual revolution has hinged on the belief that intimacy need not lead to babies, nor should it be reserved for life-long marriage. Unfortunately, that premise has utterly changed the landscape in our world -- and not for the better.

Gloria Steinem has few regrets:

[She] wishes she’d “fought harder” for things she believed in. One of the choices she doesn’t regret, however, is not having had children.

“I was in Mumbai at a women’s center a few years ago, and they asked whether I regretted that,” says Steinem. “I thought, if I tell them the truth, I’ll lose them. But there was no point in lying, and so I said, ‘No, not for a millisecond’ – and they applauded. Because they don’t have the choice.”

I do commend her for fighting against female genital mutilation and for showing the dark side of Playboy's bunny ranches, but her advocacy for women obviously comes on her own terms, which is based on a zero-sum game. According to gender feminists, women can only succeed at the expense of their motherhood. That undermines both complementarity and healthy families.

Jane Fonda, another icon of empowered women, has made her own beautiful life of cosmetic surgery and artficial hormones -- so that she can still frolic with male friends despite her age:

In one of her most candid interviews, Fonda, 73, happily tells of taking the libido-boosting hormones and advises other women to try what is still a controversial treatment.

"Here's something I haven't said publicly yet: I discovered testosterone about three years ago, which makes a huge difference if you want to remain sexual and your libido has dropped," she says.

"Use testosterone. It comes in a gel, a pill or a patch."

But she adds: "I had to stop because it was giving me acne. It's one thing having plastic surgery, but it is quite another to have adolescence acne. That is going too far.'

Well, one must set some boundaries, I suppose. The trickle-down effect of examples like these is found all around us, in the promiscuity of youth, the broken families, the cohabitation (not only of the young, but with the parents of many children, who endure living with virtual strangers in their own homes). One might be confused by the seeming "good works" of Ms Steinem, who does go beyond herself to work on behalf of so many other women, but if you study the issues, her goal is singular: to free women from the shackles of culture, marriage, and children.

The heart of the difference is whether they advocate for persons or individuals. The former are social creatures integrated in a larger society, while the latter are atoms, floating freely and seeking their own goods. The Catholic message is always to remind us of the personhood of others, and through that prism to promote that which supports human dignity and a strong society. Ultimately, feminists have agitated for abortion, contraception, no-fault divorce, sexual license, micro-loans for women, and [many of them] for legalisation of prostitution. None of these things advance the dignity of the human person, nor do they strengthen relationships between men and women, and often they harm or kill children. But then, feminists don't think about the children, "no, not for a millisecond."

It's not over yet, and there is always time for repentance. God grant these two and their adoring fans the wisdom to see the truth about love, the rewards of selfless generosity, and the beauty of "man, fully alive."

"You'll have to ask a woman"

Talk about a major dodge. Timothy Geitner was either 1. aware of the predatory atmosphere around DSK and the IMF and did nothing; or 2. unaware of it, being incredibly obtuse. But remember? When he was nominated as Treasury Secretary, Obama insisted that he was so smart that we had to overlook his delinquent tax record. Here is that brilliance on display:

 

Simple courtesy. One learns manners as a form of charity, to be kind to others. Treating women with respect has historically been intrinsic to being a gentleman, but now knowing what women like and don't like is as mysterious to men as whether or not there's been life on Mars.

Is this the fault of women who send scrambled messages about what's appropriate, or is there a higher code, still embedded in the Good Ol' Boy network, that says randy men get a pass when they're successful--either at slaying woolly mammoths or dragging wimmen back to the cave. 

ADDENDUM: I just saw Matt Archbold's excellent comments --

It seems to me that this faux feminism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Here's the thing Timmy boy -a real man stands up for women when they need standing up for. I'm not saying a woman can't stand up for herself but a man turning a blind eye to a predator isn't a man. He's a coward.

The Swedish utopia -- aint.

 

Nothing shocking, but only a confirmation of what we instinctively know about family relationships and what makes children (and parents) thrive. Full article here, including this discouraging information:

Sweden has offered a comprehensive daycare system since 1975; since the early '90s, negative outcomes for children and adolescents are on the rise in areas of health and behaviour. While direct causation has been difficult to prove, many Swedish health-care professionals point to the lack of parent involvement beyond the first 16 months as a primary contributing factor. Psychosomatic disorders and mild psychological problems are escalating among Swedish youth at a faster rate than in any of 11 comparable European countries. Such disorders have tripled among girls over the last 25 years. Education outcomes in Swedish schools have fallen from the top position 30 years ago, to merely average amongst OECD nations today. Behaviour problems in Swedish classrooms are among the worst in Europe.

After some more Q & A's with Mr Himmelstrand, we discover this plaintive voice in the combox:

Thank you Mr. H for telling it as it is!!! Here's a newsflash from a grown-up child who was in F-T daycare her whole childhood: Being outsourced makes you feel unloved, like your parents want to get rid of you in order to do more interesting things than spending time with you. Even if your parents *say* they love you, their actions speak louder. Parents, ask your little children what they think about daycare. If they scream, ''Mommy, daddy, don't leave me! Don't go!'', listen to your children!!! You'll save them from real emotional scars that last all life long, and here's talking from experience.