Stomping Their Impeccably-Shod Feet

As I’ve noted in the past in this blog, I am Minnesota’s best feminist.

Now, let’s be honest – I did it, back in blogging’s heyday (from about 2004 throug about 2009) mostly to troll lesser feminists; watching commenters at shriekblogs like “Mercury Rising” rage and thunder against a conservative guy declaring himself the “best feminist” made my heart well with joy.

But at the core, it’s still true. I do believe in the things first-wave feminist sought; things like my daughter and granddaughter being treated equally in the eyes of the law, and accorinding to their actual merits in society and the workplace.

And not only has that battle been largely won, but in some areas of society – the treatment of boys in schools and universities, the effects of family court and the “Violence Against Women Act”, the pendulum has swung a little too far.

But that’s “first-wave” feminism – the part that started with the right to vote, and continues with beating on Harvey Weinstein and Louis CK and Al Franken.

Then, there’s the kind of “Feminism” that seeks to turn women into an identity class and political bloc (progressive, natch). Some call it “Toxic Feminism”, but the technical term is “Second Wave Feminism”. Books could be written on the subject (indeed, they have been – scads of them, mostly garbage).

And in reading the bleatings of the “Feminist Identity” movement over the years, I got the same feeling I used to get when I was beset by angry junior high kids; the solipsistic grasp of the world, the same echo-chamber logic, the same grounding in a world that exists only in fantasy, the same bottomless entitlement.

Camille Paglia noticed the same thing:

My favorite period in feminism has always been the 1920s and 1930s, when American women energized by winning the vote gained worldwide prominence for their professional achievements. My early role models, Amelia Earhart and Katharine Hepburn, were fierce individualists and competitors who liked and admired men and who never indulged in the tiresome, snippy rote male-bashing that we constantly hear from today’s feminists. I am an equal opportunity feminist who opposes special protections for women. What I am saying throughout my work is that girls who are indoctrinated to see men not as equals but as oppressors and rapists are condemned to remain in a permanently juvenile condition for life. They have surrendered their own personal agency to a poisonous creed that claims to empower women but has ended by infantilizing them. Similarly, boys will have no motivation to mature if their potential romantic partners remain emotionally insecure, fragile, and fearful, forever looking to parental proxies (like campus grievance committees or government regulators) to make the world safe for them.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll no doubt say it again – the biggest problem with Ilhan Omar isn’t that she’s Muslim. It’s that she’s a progressive who’s serving as a role model for other immigrants to suck them into the world of intersectional, dysfunctional, identity-obsessed modern progressivism.

5 thoughts on “Stomping Their Impeccably-Shod Feet

  1. This is supposed to be a job of service, but it seems to be just the next rung on the notoriety ladder for Ilhan Omar

    Her rhetoric is an exhausting way to live “identity politics” and a sure path for another Trump term.

  2. Feminism has become schizophrenic. On the one hand, women are just as good as men at everything they do; on the other hand, women are so delicate they must be sheltered and protected at all times. Freud asked: “What do women want?” but today, the answer is “We don’t know but whatever it is, we want it right now. And if we don’t already have it, a man is at fault.”

    That’s fine as long as society can afford to babysit them, but if society’s excess carrying capacity disappears when SHTF due to war, economic collapse, or some other disaster, insisting on being pampered like a hothouse flower will be an evolutionary dead end.

  3. Feminism, like so many other leftist sub-cultures, only exists because 1) they think they have something to say to which “we” should listen and 2) “we” do.

    One of the doyennes of 50s/60s feminism, Betty Friedan, was an ugly, bitchy, (eternally) dissatisfied c-, er, person, who became a spokesman (heh) for a whole bunch of women who happened to be in the media and otherwise in large urban centers who thought being ugly, bitchy, and eternally dissatisfied was important.

  4. Feminism has always been a project of the bourgeois.
    Someone tell me why Barbie is a terrible female role model and Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a great female role model.
    IIRC, there was an episode of Buffy where she tried to advance her education and career prospects and it did not work out. The universe chose her to be a vampire slayer, and anything else she tried to be was a distraction that made her a less effective slayer.

  5. It’s worth noting that Paglia’s U.S. feminists of the 20’s and 30’s went on to build bombers and tanks during WWII, in the SHTF scenario Dokes referenced.

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