"Let Us Hope That The Traditional Woman Is Resurrected And Feminism Forever Banished From The Record Of Man"

Ah, the fall semester of college. The crisp air, the drinking, the mostly-ignorant references to crypto-fascist texts spewed by someone who just took his first philosophy course! Which brings us to "James", a Columbia University student who wrote an "anti-feminist manifesto" on his Facebook page earlier this year in which he references Marx, Eve Ensler, and the Gnostic Sophia. (The Facebook page, which we are not linking to here, is currently set to 'private'.) According to a tipster, James was at a party in Columbia's East Campus dorm this past Sunday where a heated argument broke out after James began jawing to a Barnard student that he's never met an intellectual feminist in his life. (The tipster says the Barnard student slapped him and that the two "had to be broken up before the girl ripped the boy to shreds.") If only James could use those three dollar words to buy himself a clue. A shiny nickel to any reader who gets through James' marginally coherent screed, which is after the jump.

On February 14th, tens of thousands of people will gather together in observance of V-Day. They will hold poetry readings, parades, plays, international gatherings, benefits, and a variety of other celebratory events. But V-Day is not simple shorthand for “Valentine’s Day.” No, V-Day stands for “Vagina Day,” whose goal is not to celebrate the romantic harmony of the two sexes, but instead to protest domestic and sexual abuse by men against women. V-Day seeks to replace the narrative of true love and mutual dependence between men and women with tales of gender oppression and violence. A key component of V-Day is the benefit - staging of Eve Ensler’s lurid play “The Vagina Monologues.” Perhaps it is this play that embodies the ethos of V-Day – the body as the woman’s most important identity-source, the violence inherent in heterosexual relationships and the nurturing qualities of lesbian ones. And perhaps it is this play which in turn embodies the ethos of the feminist movement and gender relations today in America – the homosexualization and corruption of women into earthly creatures moved only by sex and material power, incapable of affirming a natural and sacred feminine identity in favor of an unnatural masculine one.

Modern feminism is more accurately termed “masculinism,” because it rejects all that has been biologically and traditionally inherent to the female sex in favor of a role-reversal whereby females assume male social roles. Feminism holds as its most fundamental goal equality – of station as well as essence – between the male and female sex. The distinction must be drawn between station and essence because the feminist believes that the former and the latter are one and the same – in order for women to be equal to men in essence, they must supposedly occupy equal stations, or social roles. True equality for the feminist is impossible if women are performing different functions than men in the home, in the workplace, and in the civil sphere. Some moderate feminists believe that this is untrue; and that feminism is more correctly championing the simple choice of a woman to occupy whatever social role she prefers – a dangerous and untrue assertion. In the words of Simone de Beauvoir, “No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children…because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” Intellectual feminism is not about choice, and even if it was, such individualism that places the desires of the single woman above the needs of her dependent family is surely bankrupt.

This brings us back to the term “masculinism.” Feminism is more properly termed masculinism because it creates an artificial table of valuations that marks the traditional male social role as inherently superior – a place that women are kept from and must therefore reach upward towards. The feminist sees the male tasks of providing for and defending the family as preferable to the female tasks of nurturing and maintaining the family.

How did this preference arise? Why does the feminist eschew what has always been traditionally female? And why, for that matter, are nurturing, caregiving roles necessarily “female” in the first place? Regarding the first two questions, feminists see traditional male roles as superior to female ones because of the materialism of our modern age. Capitalist society brought with it a message that making money was the most important task a human being could undertake. Capitalism saw men as cogs in a machine whose sole goal was the generation of material wealth; the strong, capable citizen was financially successful whereas the weak and useless were economically unproductive. Obviously, this led to a revaluation of the female place in society. Because women had existed in the home and did not have an opportunity to achieve the riches so vaunted by the capitalist narrative, and because economic achievement had become the most important determinant in the worth of an individual, women were seen as inferior. Their biological disposition toward tasks within the home instead of outside the home was newly interpreted as evidence of female inferiority – if they were not meant to make money, they surely lacked what it meant to be a successful human being. Men were largely responsible for this phenomenon; because it was they who both created capitalist society and then imposed its revaluations on the previously content and secure female sex. But unlike many women, feminists allowed themselves to be duped by this materialism and conformed to the table of values that saw men in terms of their capacity to generate wealth. Feminism came to see the traditional female role in society as one of material disadvantage; and therefore weakness in an absolute sense. Female worth was thought to be directly tied to her capacity to make money. A good example of this type of thinking is Rae Lesser Blumberg’s “Gender Stratification Theory”: “The degree of gender stratification is inversely related to the level of economic power women can mobilize and conversely, the less economic power women can mobilize, the more likely are they to be oppressed physically, politically, and ideologically.” Even Marxist and anti-capitalist second-wave feminists share in this massive con-job; because they, like capitalists, also define women in completely material terms. For the anti-capitalist feminist, female salvation still lies in a manipulation of material instead of a psychological and spiritual realignment. Not until society recognizes the inherent spiritual nature of human beings and ends the tyranny of materialism will the female sex be freed from feminism.

This materialism extends to the very way in which feminists have demanded women identify with themselves: as either economic beings or as sexual beings. There have been two types of female oppression in the mind of the feminist: in the workplace and in the bedroom. Not only have women been denied the opportunity to make money, but they have supposedly also been sexually repressed and denied free expression and exercise of this sexuality. The feminist sees traditional attitudes toward female sexuality as limiting and tyrannical, such as the condemnation of promiscuity and immodest dress, idealization of female sexual unavailability and general “lady-like” behavior, rigid courtship standards and the necessary going-together of true love and sex. The feminist connects “liberation” from these supposedly repressive social standards with an emancipation of women from male sexual tyranny, either through promiscuity or lesbianism. They cry injustice when society is lenient toward the male “cassanova” or “stud” yet harsh upon the “slut” or “harlot”, not bothering to consider the very different nature of male and female sexuality. Thus, the feminist asserts that a woman’s relationship with her body and its sexual activity is the most important process in female self-identity (along with her body and its economic activity). In the words of Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues and architect of V-Day, “the day [feminists] won’t have to be here anymore” will come when “women literally can put on the shortest skirt and tightest top and feel good and that everyone will look at them with great appreciation and great enjoyment and no one will hassle them or make them feel bad or insecure or threatened.” Female promiscuity and destruction of sexual morality is therefore irrevocably connected with the feminist goal of gender “liberation.” Women are viewed completely in terms of their body and its actions rather than as spiritual creatures worthy of idealization and respect. Yes, respect for woman was only possible under the “old” sexual morality – feminist sex-politics eliminates it.

This brings us back to the notion of the “traditional female.” Earlier, it has been said that certain roles – namely, the nurturing of the family – are essentially female. The feminist degeneracy has been set against a tablet of the “traditional female,” but it has not been made clear whom this character is. It will subsequently be discussed what constitutes the traditional female, why this is the case, and why the fulfillment of these roles will lead to social health and harmony.

From the beginning, males and females have been endowed with different biological capabilities. Males have been characterized by an emphasis of certain traits; which include assertiveness, aggression, independence, physical strength, stoicism, rationality, virility and egoism. This is corroborated by the social roles that men assumed in tribal society when man was too primitive to “socially construct” anything. (For that matter, man has never “socially constructed” anything – the term implies that society has independently engineered artificial conceptions of reality – such as gender roles – when in reality nothing can ever arise unless the conditions within society organically and automatically necessitate them). In tribal societies, men had a rigid role as hunters and leaders of family and tribal units. They were “often responsible for all large game killed, the capture and raising of most or all domesticated animals, the building of permanent shelters, the defense of villages, and other tasks where the male physique and strong spatial-cognition were most useful.” Obviously, the male role in society arose because of biological traits. The same is true of woman and her role in society. Biological female traits include heightened empathy, emotion, openness, sociability, physical weakness and sexual passivity – generally, life-giving traits. And in accordance with these biological traits, nature deigned that women would perform social roles in harmony with female characteristics. Women took on a nurturing role; tending to the family, responsible for the bringing-up of children and gathering plant food. In other words, the different biological traits of men and women granted them different roles in society that made the most of these traits. In the words of Cambridge psychology professor Simon Baron-Cohen, “the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, while the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems.” Gender roles thus originated out of natural realities and existed to produce a balanced society. “Opposite” male and female personalities assured that the various needs of society would be carried out properly – generally, the two spheres of inside and outside the home. Some may dispute the use of primitive gender-roles in the construction of this argument, but the truth is that there hasn’t been enough evolutionary time for our species to change biologically from the hunter-gatherer of the Paleolithic. We no longer live in that type of society, but our bodies do – so to speak.

During this time, when gender roles were more rigid than at any other point in human history, women and the feminine were worshipped and respected. “Primitive” cultures, despite their “oppression” of women into specific gender roles, gave birth to such notions as the sacred feminine and the goddess. One may look no further than female representations in the sacred mythology of these societies. Devi in Hinduism, Athena in Greece, Freyja in Germanic paganism, and the Gnostic Sophia are all examples of sacred female representations. Art celebrated feminine beauty, from the Venuses of Willendorf to Botticelli. Femininity became a sacred, divine concept that encouraged the utmost respect of women. This was reflected in strict behavioral codes regarding women that attempted to preserve their integrity and respect as creatures of beauty and mystique. This was trampled upon by feminism, which deprived woman of her sacredness by encouraging the destruction of these behavioral codes, especially those sexual in nature. Because man always considers sacred what he cannot easily reach and common what he can have at a whim, women have gone from a sacred state to a common state. Women are now “free” to be sex objects, because the institutions of chivalry and courtship that viewed women as treasures to be earned have been replaced with a culture of promiscuity that views women as pleasures to be had. The “age of the hook-up” has dawned, women have been deprived of their sacred qualities through the feminist destruction of everything that held woman up as an ideal to be striven for. Now she is common and “free” to give up that which was once guarded with the utmost care: the very essence of the sacred feminine.

The traditional woman is thus one who attempts to retain this sacred feminine by transcending a material view of self-worth and satisfying the traditional identity that nature has granted her. The traditional woman recognizes that man and woman are equal in their differences – like yin and yang, performing different functions that are codependent for the creation of a harmonious and balanced society. She rejects the homosexualization of society whereby this yin-and-yang is destroyed in favor of masculinized women performing functions identical to the male. The traditional woman also casts aside the creeping voice of feminists that encourage her to view herself in terms of the economic and sexual functions of her body. Rather, the traditional woman defines herself by the immortal forces of Nature that are alive within her; transcending the pettiness of the here-and-now for a life in union with the divine. She does not live for a murderous individualism that puts her carnal desires above all else; she lives with the well-being of her family at the forefront and in so doing gains a fulfillment that she never could find in the rat-race or in the sorority house. She does not commit society to unbalance by neglecting the domestic sphere; the backbone of human development. She is secure in the knowledge that service to this domestic sphere renders her equal to her male counterpart, and she casts aside the propaganda of capitalists and communists alike. The traditional woman is the archetype that inspires art, poetry, music and adoration for her grace and sacred qualities. She is everything the material-obsessed and life-denying feminist isn’t. She is also an endangered species; disappearing under the toilsome pressure of modernity. If humanity is to be saved, it is on the back of the traditional woman. Let us hope that she is resurrected and feminism forever banished from the record of Man.
Jezebel.com