Feminism's devolution from hoaxers to whores

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Feminism's devolution from hoaxers to whores

Nov 2, 2005

by Kathleen Parker

 

Email to a friend Print this page Text size: A A "So was the

feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? Do women get less

desirable as they get more successful?"

 

Columnist Maureen Dowd posed those questions in Sunday's New York

Times Magazine in an essay adapted from her forthcoming book: "Are

Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide."

 

Entertaining as usual, Dowd explored her premise that many women end

up unmarried and childless because they're successful by reviewing

women's evolution since her college days, which happen to have

coincided with my own. We both came of age as women's lib was being

midwifed into the culture by a generation of women who felt enslaved

by homemaking and childbearing.

 

Now, in the span of a generation, all that business about equality

apparently isn't so appealing to a younger generation of women, who

are ever inventive as they seek old ways to attract new men. Dowd

writes:

 

 

"Today, women have gone back to hunting their quarry, with elaborate

schemes designed to allow the deluded creatures (men) to think they

are the hunters."

 

Dowd, herself unmarried and childless, wonders whether being smart

and successful explains her status. She observes that men would

rather marry women who are younger and more malleable, i.e. less

successful and perhaps not so very bright.

 

No one vets the culture with a keener eye than Dowd. Her

identification of trends - especially the perverse evolution of

liberated women from Birkenstock-wearing intellectuals into pole-

dancing sluts - is dead on. But while she sees women clearly as they

search for identity in a gender-shifting culture, she doesn't seem

to know much about men.

 

Men haven't turned away from smart, successful women because they're

smart and successful. More likely they've turned away because the

feminist movement that encouraged women to be smart and successful

also encouraged them to be hostile and demeaning to men.

 

Whatever was wrong, men did it. During the past 30 years, they've

been variously characterized as male chauvinist pigs, deadbeat dads

or knuckle-dragging abusers who beat their wives on Super Bowl

Sunday. At the same time women wanted men to be wage earners, they

also wanted them to act like girlfriends: to time their

contractions, feed and diaper the baby, and go antiquing.

 

And then, when whatshisname inevitably lapsed into guy-ness, women

wanted him to disappear. If children were involved, women got

custody and men got an invoice. The eradication of men and fathers

from children's lives has been feminism's most despicable

accomplishment. Half of all children will sleep tonight in a home

where their father does not live.

 

Did we really think men wouldn't mind?

 

Meanwhile, when we're not bashing men, we're diminishing manhood.

Look around at entertainment and other cultural signposts and you

see a feminized culture that prefers sanitized men - hairless,

coiffed, buffed and, if possible, gay. Men don't know whether to

be "metrosexuals" getting pedicures, or "groomzillas" obsessing

about wedding favors, or the latest, "ubersexuals" - yes to the

coif, no to androgyny.

 

As far as I can tell, real men don't have a problem with smart,

successful women. But they do mind being castrated. It's a guy

thing. They do mind being told in so many ways that they are

superfluous.

 

Even now, the latest book to fuel the feminist flames of male

alienation is Peggy Drexler's lesbian guide to guilt-free

narcissism, "Raising Boys Without Men." Is it possible to raise boys

without men? Sure. Is it right? You may find your answer by

imagining a male-authored book titled: "Raising Girls Without

Women."

 

Returning to Dowd's original question, yes, the feminist movement

was a hoax inasmuch as it told only half the story. As even feminist

matriarch Betty Friedan eventually noted, feminism failed to

recognize that even smart, successful women also want to be mothers.

It's called Nature. Social engineering can no more change that fact

than mechanical engineering can change the laws of physics.

 

Many of those women who declined to join the modern feminist

movement learned the rest of the story by becoming mothers

themselves and, in many cases, by raising boys who were born

innocent and undeserving of women's hostilities.

 

I would never insist that women have to have children to be fully

female. Some women aren't mother material - and some men don't

deserve the children they sire. But something vital and poignant

happens when one's own interests become secondary to the more

compelling needs of children.

 

You grow up. In the process of sacrificing your infant-self for the

real baby, you stop obsessing and fixating on the looking glass.

Instead, you focus your energies on trying to raise healthy boys and

girls to become smart, successful men and women.

 

In the jungle, one hopes, they will find each other.

 

Kathleen Parker is a popular syndicated columnist and director of

the School of Written Expression at the Buckley School of Public

Speaking and Persuasion in Camden, South Carolina

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