Femmotopia
You will not believe me, but I was once a strict egalitarian when it came to the whole man-woman question.
I became disillusioned with the prospect of equality between the sexes once I began to suspect that the partisans of that equality proposed to abolishing romance.
It is not the women’s right to vote and own property the feminist wants, or she be content with the West and be up in arms against Arabia. So what does the feminist really want? I intend this as a philosophical rather than psychological question: I am asking what the inevitable and logical consequences of the feminist position are.
By equality, I mean equal legal rights. Our society does not have laws allowing a man to kill an unfaithful wife, but a wife be unable even to divorce an unfaithful husband. Our society does not have laws that bypass elder female heirs to vest the entail in the eldest male heir.
At the risk of making a straw-man argument (straw-person?) I submit that the feminist wishes for the homogeneity of the sexes. They wish for human customs not to take into account the differences, biological and psychological, that obtain between the sexes. It is their expectation that, once human customs no longer take into account the differences between the sexes, that a statistical equality of sexes will obtain in all fields: 50% of soldiers, weightlifters, lawyers, doctors, firemen, soldiers, bridegrooms, and fathers will be women, 50% of nurses, teachers, mothers and brides will be men.
We can examine the consequences of this position by visiting the feminist utopia in a thought-experiment:
I have often wondered what will happen when and if the feminist utopia is created, and women compete with men at things men do better than women, like killing people, throwing balls through hoops, and opening pickle jars. Won’t the women in that society just be frail men? A frail women is a figure of respect and reverence; a frail man is a figure of contempt. Women held to the masculine standard are sissies, or eunuchs.
Once the female firemen let a certain number of fat guys burn in building the gal is too slight to haul to rescue, or lose a certain number of ball-games or wars, one assumes the women of femmotopia, to preserve their self-respect, will specialize in those fields where they have a natural skill, such as mothering or nursing, and take pride in that. Perhaps the women would begin to decorate themselves, to emphasize the features they have which men do not share, in order to make themselves alluring to the opposite sex by emphasizing the differences.
If this emphasis spilled over into behaviors, the fairer sex might begin to act in little ceremonial ways to remind their suitors of their femininity, such as letting the men hold open doors, tip hats, hold chairs. Feminists are no doubt aghast that a girl might pretend to be weaker and more helpless than she actually is, as dishonest and demeaning; what the feminist overlooks is that the point of a mating dance is to attract a mate.
Perhaps next in femmotopia, the boys, to attract the fairest of the fair, would begin to act like jerks, i.e. would go out of their way to act bold, aggressive, fearless, and strong. They might learn how to change a tire.
I assume in femmotopia no one reproduces the species, or perhaps they leave their eggs in the sand to fend for themselves, like lizards. If they do reproduce and care for their young, unfortunately, the partner who gives milk is the wiser choice to leave at home with junior while the mate with all the territorial aggressive instincts is the wiser choice to put his god-given pigheadedness to work advancing a career. In marriage where the woman marries beneath her, such as a doctor or lawyer marrying a carpenter or actor, it might be financially wiser to send the woman out into the jungle and leave the man to do the mothering; but I would assume the girl was not thinking about her children when she decided to marry down rather than up. The gold-digger instinct is a good deal less selfish than it is usually made out to be: nature gave the bird the desire to have a well-feathered nest, not because the bird is
vain, but because the egg needs warmth.
At this point femmotopia would be a society specialized according to sex, the very thing the sex-hating crowd hates.
Let us assume one more step in the evolution of femmotopia. Let us assume that men, by and large, do not care to raise, protect, and educate the children of another man. Let us assume that humans would be offended, rather than welcome, the survival strategy of the Cuckoo, who plants her eggs in the nests of other birds, so that her child steals the food and kills the chicks some hapless other mother works so hard to get. Let us assume therefore that the men in femmotopia would object to raising the children of other men. If so, certain steps must be taken to ensure that the children produced by his mate are his: perhaps a ritual promise to ensure the fidelity of the mates. We can call it marriage.
Humans know how powerful the sexual instinct can be. Many will doubt that mere humans, by a vow alone, could restrict their sexual appetite to one partner. Such doubts would be ameliorated if the mates, before marriage, showed by their behavior that they were capable of exercising self-control of the sexual appetite. In extreme cases, some mates might even refuse to marry any potential mate who did not show such self-control. Brides might prefer chaste bridegrooms; and bridegrooms might prefer virgin brides.
At this point, the society would reverse the damage done by the sexual revolution, and restore to her proper monarchy the goddesses of Venus, Vesta, and Juno: Love, Hearth, and Ladyship.
Not to dwell on too obvious a point, but the sexual revolution was a revolt against the sexual pleasure and habits of mankind, an iconoclastic rebellion to destroy the ritual and respect that once surrounded this most mysterious, delicate, potent and passionate of human emotions. Whatever one might say about sex in the modern age, one cannot say it is mysterious, romantic, or delicate: I direct the reader’s attention to the difference between Romeo’s balcony scene and Clinton’s scene with his cigar, by way of example.
When Hugh Hefner ushered in the sexual revolution, he cast it in terms of liberating women, each to “do her own thing”, and express her inner sexual nature. What Mr. Hefner overlooked is that pornography is, by its very nature, public, and therefore indelicate, commercial, and therefore unromantic. It is also immodest. Pornography is, however, sexual in nature. It should have come as no surprise to him that feminists denounced him for being exploitive and unfair to women. He was shocked: he thought he was on their side. He did not know what side the feminists were actually on.
Here are the clues: read a feminist writer. Find out if she is for or against abortion. In case where, for example, mothers drown four or five children in a bathtub, find out if the feminist gathers money for the legal defense fund of the child-murderer. In cases where laws are being debated, find out if the feminist favors or opposes expanding harassment laws to cover every nuance of speech and behavior a gentleman courting a lady must abide-by. Find out if they want divorce laws to be lenient or strict, to make it easy for couples to split, or difficult. Find out if the feminist thinks virginity is an admirable state, or contemptible.
After a time, you may begin to suspect, as I do, that it is all the panoply of femininity the feminists wish to deconstruct: romance, courtship, marriage, children, love. St. Valentine is the enemy of the feminist; Cupid, their imp; Hymen, their arch-devil.
When Gloria Steinem wrote her famous op-ed in the New York Times, defending Bill Clinton’s sexual predation, urging that powerful and ruthless men should be allowed to prey on young and defenseless women, many commentators on the Right were shocked that a feminist would advance a doctrine so hostile to womenkind. Those commentators misunderstood the root and the nature of feminism. Clinton was treating his victims as objects, not as ladies. Had he paid court to the ladies, winning their hearts with flowers and poetry and conspicuous displays of manliness, courage and chivalry and honor–in other words, had he acted the part of the Man instead of a dickless wonder–then and only then the scorn of the feminists would have opened their floodgates of bile.
Feminists are in rebellion, not against the patriarchy, but against their own feminine natures. It is not “sexism” they hate: it is sex.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
