I did something just now which I have not done for a good long while. I read a feminist’s rant. If you are curious, you can read it for yourself here. The post is titled “Why I don’t want women to become ‘equal to men’,” which I thought had potential for containing some true insight. I don’t particularly want to be equal to men either. A lot of the post goes over all the ways in which men have problems, create problems, contribute to problems, and are misogynistic to their very cores. The author’s point is that while women are “oppressed by the patriarchy,” men are also harmed by it. They are just too dumb to notice. She dreams of the day when men and women can work together to entirely dismantle the toxic patriarchy which is so harmful to everyone.
Why did I read the whole thing? Because I was hoping she would put forth some positive vision of what she thinks women have to offer the world. She lists some policy changes that would be included in her non patriarchal Utopia, and this is the brief version of it:
A world where the patriarchy no longer controls women, kills female babies because they were unwanted, hacks off vulva and clitoris of women, revels in porn, excuses everything with rape myths, positions ‘woman’ as the ultimate insult to men, sells women’s bodies and denies women the right to healthcare and advice about their own reproductive systems.
The thing is, I love a lot of these ideas. We have a radical feminist who seems to be acknowledging both that abortion kills a baby and that a disproportionate amount of the time it’s the baby girls that are killed. Of course I’d like female genital mutilation to end. I’d love to live in a world where porn and rape and human trafficking don’t exist. Inasmuch as women are actually denied healthcare and good advice about their reproductive systems, these too are problems I would like to see solved.
So where’s my problem? There’s not a compelling anthropology underpinning her view. I want to know what she thinks of ἄνθρωπος (humankind) and inasmuch as ἄνθρωπος is different between ἀνήρ (man) and γυνὴ (woman), what are those differences? What is man? what is woman? A lot of what she advocates for are true human goods that we should all be advocating for. But some of the things she takes to be problems I hesitate to get on board with.
For example, why shouldn’t guys balk at the thought of some other guy calling them a girl? I think insults like “you’re such a girl” have a lot less to do with a negative attitude towards women and a lot more to do with the simple fact that boys are not girls. It’s like, why is it insulting to be told that you look like a monkey? Because you are not in fact a monkey. For a monkey to look like a monkey is a beautiful thing and there is a kind of dignity to it. For a man to resemble a monkey implies that he is not living up to his dignity as man. Likewise, it is a beautiful thing for a woman to be a woman. But for a man to resemble a woman is not proper to his nature as man. So it’s insulting. I’ll grant that when these sorts of insults are used in order to perpetuate a shallow understanding of the differences between men and women it’s a problem. Boys shouldn’t be shamed for crying, for example.
But I’d also like to challenge the notion that girls are just so much better at handling their emotions in a healthy way. That’s simply not true. Learning how to handle emotions in a healthy way is hard all around. Girls have a tendency to hold onto things – both harms and hopes – in a way which prevents our true flourishing. I have an idea, which I’ll develop more in a later post, that space is a really helpful way of conceptualizing the feminine interior. We have this space inside of us which is really freaking sensitive (regardless of how we come across to people) and we have to learn to pay attention to what’s happening in it.
Maybe the argument to be had is that society grants us permission to have emotions, while it ubiquitously suppresses the emotional lives of men. If that’s the issue at play I have two responses: On the one hand, I see what you’re saying with regards to men and will grant that this is something we should have a good think about. And that conversation needs to involve a lot of men. On the other hand, I don’t agree with you that society is ok with letting women have emotions. Society grants permission for women to be happy. If women are angry they are bitches, and if sad it’s probably just because it’s their time of the month. This all points to a really shallow understanding of the range and depth of human emotions, human experiences, human nature.
In conclusion, I find contemporary feminism as incoherent as ever. While it advocates for some truly excellent things, its philosophical presuppositions are deeply flawed (the post was saturated with Marxist terminology) and its anthropology is shallow at best.
I promise the next post will be biblical.
gloria ad Deum.
Luke 2:19 