If you have time to read only one essay today, make it this one:
Our culture is so saturated with feminism that even conservatives and devoutly religious people like me think inside its wheel ruts. This wouldn’t be a problem, except that feminism is antithetical to human flourishing, both individually and corporately, because it has a false view of human nature....Refusing to learn from history and experience only hardens people against the feedback from reality they need to make their lives better through smarter decisions. Thinking that the experience and wisdom of humans across time has a claim on our present behavior allows a form of troubleshooting and decisionmaking using billions of accumulated datapoints. Yes, it requires humility to consider whether your presuppositions and behavior are wrong, but what you may lose in feminist scorekeeping you reap a hundredfold in a richly happy life. How do I know? It’s happened to me.
Joy Pullmann has penned a brutally candid, data-rich essay on the terrible damage the feminist lunacy has done to American women. It should be required reading for every American woman – especially the mothers of young daughters.
I once reflected on this through the mouth of a fictional character:
They talked to a woman from New York City. While still young, she had thrown herself wholesale into the corporate world. "One moment I was just graduating from law school," she said. "I looked down at my desk, blinked, looked up, and suddenly I was an old woman with nothing in the world but money and work." She had had brothers who were dearer to her than life itself, but had lost contact with them after college and somehow never managed to reestablish it.[From The Sledgehammer Concerto]
There are people – feminist activists, mostly – who would condemn and strive to suppress Pullmann’s wisdom as “sexism.” Not so. It is sexism of the very worst kind to tell a young girl, “You have no nature we know anything about. The experiences of billions upon billions of women who have gone before you mean nothing.” Neither Karl Marx nor Adolf Hitler ever attempted a greater deceit.
A woman, with whom I have lost touch, was 40+ when she got married. She was always "on the go"; work work work work work. I know she wanted kids and, having lost touch, I don't know if she had any. But 40 is late!
ReplyDeleteThere's another woman, a consultant, who has to be in her mid 30s by now. She still literally jumps from city to city, friend's apartment to friend's apartment, a nomad. In another couple of years, eggs dried up and she'll have... what?
I've been toying around with a Feminine Manifesto for a few months. I looked at it today, and, after reading this, think it has some possibilities - the history of how we got here, the modern feminist movement (I was on the periphery of it), and some sensible suggestions for the future.
ReplyDeleteI may post it, chapter by chapter, as I write it. If I do, I'm going to be asking for feedback/possible revisions.