Forms Of Power

Return with me to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when it was...okay to write lyrics such as these:

In a little cafe just the other side of the border
She was just sitting there givin' me looks that made my mouth water
So I started walking her way
She belonged to bad man Jose
And I knew, yes I knew I should leave
When I heard her say, yeah

Come a little bit closer
You're my kind of man
So big and so strong
Come a little bit closer
I'm all alone
And the night is so long

So we started to dance
In my arms, she felt so inviting
That I just couldn't resist
Just one little kiss so exciting
Then I heard the guitar player say
"Vamoose, Jose's on his way"
Then I knew, yes I knew I should run
But then I heard her say, yeah

Come a little bit closer
You're my kind of man
So big and so strong
Come a little bit closer
I'm all alone
And the night is so long

Then the music stopped
When I looked the cafe was empty
Then I heard Jose say
"Man you know you're in trouble plenty"
So I dropped my drink from my hand
And through the window I ran
And as I rode away
I could hear her say to Jose, yeah

Come a little bit closer
You're my kind of man
So big and so strong
Come a little bit closer
I'm all alone
And the night is so long

[Jay and the Americans]

"She belonged"...? Female duplicity? Well, yes. The two go together. That's what you get when you oppress a class of people, regardless of their discriminating characteristic: they seek new, indirect ways of flexing their muscle. They "go underground."

We've changed our ways substantially these past few decades. Western women are no longer treated as chattels or lesser creatures. In many ways, they're a legally privileged sex today. (That's just as wrong as subjecting them to unique legal restrictions ever was, but it's a change.) Unfortunately, they're still involved in a contest over the use of their innate assets. It's just not often recognized as such.

Today, the "war on women" is being waged by the Left against women. It takes the form of an undermining campaign, aimed at weakening the Western woman's willingness to use her particular assets in the eternal negotiation with men over her status:

• Women possess sexual allure, and the privilege of granting or withholding sexual access.
• Women possess the power to bear and nurture children.
• Women possess superior domestic-management skills and a gift for tension dispersal.

But the Left, with the able assistance of the gender-war feminists ("the angry ugly-girl fraction of the Left" -- Duyen Ky), has striven hard to weaken women's will to wield those advantages:

• By trumpeting an ethic of sexual indulgence that devalues women's allure and privileges;
• By stigmatizing child-bearing and child-rearing as somehow demeaning;
• By campaigning against homemaking and breadwinner-support as legitimate career choices.

By any objective measurement, this campaign has inflicted damage on Western women. In the usual case, their lives are less stable; they endure more strife and of more varieties; their overall health is less robust; and the satisfaction they take from their life choices is less. They often wind up in middle to late-middle age feeling as if they've "missed out," no matter what courses they've followed.

This is what you get when you buy into an oppressive ethic as if it were an emancipation.

Yes, there are exceptions. There always have been, in all places and times. But exceptions are called that for a reason.

However, as Emerson has told us, "Justice is not postponed." Women are waking up to what's been done to them in the name of a spurious liberation. And they're turning against their former gurus in ever-increasing numbers.