Kay Hymowitz is, unfortunately, typical of the propagated and propagandized positions of modern women writers’ views on gender issues.
While she slanders young men for choosing lifestyles that are in their own self-interest, she celebrates similar types of “selfish” behaviors in young women.
Am I imagining this schizophrenic take? Absolutely not. Look for her article, “The New Girl Order,” written 12/07, and lay it side-by-side next to her article lambasting young men. If feminism has made a great deal of fuss over overturning double-standards based upon gender, they’ve proven themselves quite competent in creating their own double standards.
This has been a growing problem with modern feminist thought for some time. The concerns of women in society are legitimate. The burdens of human sexuality are unequal in physical and psychological terms. But behind the veil of so-called egalitarian purpose that was the promise of feminism, the second wave of feminism took several reactive terms for the worst in embracing reactive “solutions” to human sexuality and reproduction, and have masked their seriously flawed reactive sexual positions with flawed concepts of social equality.
Where is the real support in feminism for a young mother? Feminists have utterly failed in developing a social recognition and social reward system for the most unique contribution of women as a gender to society–that of carrying and delivering children. Is that sexist, or just the blunt truth? What does either gender do in the day-to-day of society that couldn’t be substituted for the other gender, except for this facet of life, which is essential and critical to the continuation of society as a whole? There’s lip service, but you don’t see a million women marching on Washington for mother’s rights and advocating real-world ways for a woman to balance her time with children with that of contributing to society as a whole, or receive social status and value for being a mother (or as well, ways to better integrate fathers into the care of their young, as they should, and as feminism should actively encourage as a so-called progressive movement). Instead, you see feminists marching for the right to abort pregnancies. Where is the support for low income, unwed mothers? There’s lip service, but feminism really aims at enabling the wants and needs of college-educated, middle class and above females.
Where do you see feminism supporting real efforts to encourage and support mutually rewarding, cooperative relationships between men and women in intimate relationships? You don’t, you hear lip service, but then you get VAWA legislation and divorce on demand support, and family courts that most men now understand are hopelessly biased against fathers, all “reactive” solutions when relationships are dissolved, but I don’t see any “proactive” measures advanced to help keep people together. You get constant propaganda and campaigns painting men as abusers and women as helpless victims, even in the face of statistical evidence that women aren’t always victims (the percentages I show of perpetrators of DV indicate the general percentages are 60% men/40% female, a noticeable difference, but not large enough to completely absolve millions of cases in which women are the aggressors). Women simply ARE NOT violent under feminism. EVER.
Feminism like to choose their syndromes, and lay down specific double-standards in how they are applied. In Europe, PMS can be used as a mitigating factor in certain criminal trials. However, feminism dictates you can never discuss PMS in any context which implies that women’s psychological states are affected by biology, because that would make them different than men, and a version of individuality most resembling a male seems to be their paradigm for everyone. But feminism absolutely and vehemently dismisses PAS (Post-Abortion-Syndrome) as an absolute myth, doing a great disservice to women who may have psychological issues before or post-abortion. Are all women intensely happy before and after an abortion? That’s the myth used to constantly reinforce the bizarre idea that abortion is about female liberation. Absurd? Remember the “I had an Abortion” campaign not too long ago? I’m not writing this from a standard pro-life position (I know how feminists like to polarize opposition immediately), but rather from the position of concerned son/brother/husband/father. 1973 should have been the year we all realized feminism wasn’t quite the movement we thought it was, by taking such an flippant way out of the deep issue of human reproduction and choices we make. I warn my daughters of the fallacy of this strange position on careless heterosexual interaction. The potential consequences to an irresponsible male are nothing compared to the real consequences to an irresponsible female. That’s not a matter a social movement can change at this point in human history–that’s primal human biology. Girls get pregnant, boys don’t. Girls have abortions to end unintended pregnancies (and the way out “well what about rape?” I always hear, and to that, I ask “well, what about the 90+% of abortions that occur because of completely consensual activity where an unintended pregnancy occured?”) Taking a reactive stance against this reality does women more harm than good in the long run. If abortion is not capable of being a complex psychological, emotive, and ethical decision for some women, why aren’t abortion clinic waiting rooms happier places, full of women celebrating their womanhood?
In many ways, men have distinctive advantages in our societies. But the answer is not to villify and strangle men who either would consider committing to marriage or are already committed to marriage. In the search for “equality,” feminism has assumed that men and women are equal. That is not true egalitarianism. Egalitarianism should open the playing field and specify the prosocial outcomes which are desired so that all have “equality of opportunity.” Feminism supports the idea of “equality” imo because its an easy way out. If men and women are “equal,” then we should see “equality of outcome” for both genders. Feminists can then point out that in certain framed instances, women do not produce the same OUTCOME, and they therefore can use this fact as a basis for the argument that they are exploited, repressed, or otherwise VICTIMS of society, and are due redress, compensation, and special preferences to ensure “equality.”
Ultimately, feminism will probably derail itself, and it will lose any remaining credibility to be a truely progressive, lasting force in shaping society. In practice, feminism has proven to support reactive, anti-social measures in the quest to advance individual female self-determinism in society. I think feminism tried to tackle very complex sociodynamics and failed.
