How Feminism Fails

“Among the ‘strong-minded women’ who met to attend the convention was Amelia Bloomer – The lady who goes in for breeches and buncomb.”

Bird On A Wire

Sir, thou dost wound me mightily!

Dress historian Abby Cox quotes a catty article from 1853, describing feminists as women who subscribe to pants and nonsense – You know, that crazy stuff about women being full people who deserve rights.

“I didn’t actually wanna bring it up, because of some personal biases towards it. It gets brought up a lot when people talk about feminism and clothing in the 19th century, so [it was] kinda me being like, ‘Ugh!’ 

“I also just kinda hate the 1850s as an aesthetic period, so I’ve never really been interested in studying it.

“However, for this discussion, it is important. It was a brief moment in sartorial history. It happened in the United States, it was tied into women’s rights at the time. However, it was a failure.”

Learning from feminism’s failures will keep us from repeating the past. No one remembers the 1850s for the drastic shift in women’s attire. Women’s pants came almost 100 years later, modeled by movie stars during the Great Depression.

Abby’s flustered, but she tries to explain why Bloomers didn’t change Victorian fashion, “They were too contrarian. They were too shocking, and so people didn’t take them seriously.

“By not operating within a broader social acceptability, how can [they] make any sort of progress towards equality?” Dropping out doesn’t solve anything – Just ask your nearest Baby Boomer.

Mama Says

Well, my bottom line is doing just fine!

But in the 2021 hustle economy, everyone’s a salesman. We’ve learned to sell ourselves to college admissions boards, to employers, to potential clients and subscribers, and to each other. Branding is the name of the game, and Bloomers were terrible branding.

We can do better.

The Medium Becomes The Message

“I’ve been reading news articles from the 1850s, and what’s interesting is that when these newspapers are talking about Amelia Bloomer, Susan B. Anthony, and this reform movement, they don’t ever actually talk about their points – The messages that they stand for.

“What they talk about is what they’re wearing, specifically the Bloomer outfits with the tunics and the trousers. So, they’ve gotten attention, but it wasn’t the attention that they wanted. It wasn’t the attention that worked.

My heart ached for the sweet Aussie lady in my video this week, pleading for empathy from Katy Montgomery. She spoke from basic truths but stumbled defining her terms, and Katy’s fidgety obfuscation was a perfect example of the kind of willful misunderstanding we’re dealing with.

The kind of willful misunderstanding that broadcasts ulterior motives.

To actually make progress toward the liberation of female people from invisible cages, we gotta sell it: “Susan B. Anthony stopped wearing this outfit. It was distracting from the actual message and what she wanted to promote.” 

Flexibility of method is imperative in support of the message, because context is queen. We gotta know our position backwards and forwards, but we can’t assume that being right is going to be enough!

Mourning

But it’s not fair!

Style Over Fashion

When we come prepared, the debate is short – Bad behavior follows the exposure of logical inconsistency, and the reasonable party becomes readily apparent. 

This whole contrarian idea, it doesn’t work in this society – You have to fit in, and then make changes. This whole Bloomer thing is a perfect example of that. These clothes turned them into, for lack of a better term, a bit of a freak show.

Abby means this quite literally. She quotes the Brooklyn Daily Eagle from 4 February, 1853: “During her stay in the Capitol, she called on a tailor and got measured for three pair of tight-fitting cassimere trowsers. The tape with which he took her dimensions is kept in a glass case, and exhibited to bachelors at a shilling a sight.” 

Nothing if not for your pleasure, right fellas? Gross.

Abby argues for practicality, “The original idea of creating the Bloomers could have come from this very genuine place, and I can see where, initially, getting the attention could be a viewed as maybe a good thing.

“But then, when they’re not making headway and people are not moving past their clothing, then the message of equality is lost. Susan B. Anthony made this realization, and she stopped wearing the outfit.

“She started wearing a red shawl, and she became known for that, that was how you recognized her.Ironically, it was Contrapoints who I heard say something about creating the taste with which you are to be enjoyed, something like that.

Refusing to accept the cover story we are fed is not enough. We must create our own context for our side of the human story. We can shift the angle by keeping our balance and refusing to be moved.

You Catch More Flies With Honey, Honey

“The Bloomers thing is something a lot of people like to hold onto because it’s this interesting thing, but I think it just doesn’t fit into the context of the female experience.The strongest forms of feminism grow from the seed of women nurturing ourselves, rather than the embers of our patriarchal trauma.

In Love

…Did you say something, Gary?

Abby tells us the story of the Pattle Sisters, Notorious for their artistic and eccentric friends. They wore clothing they created themselves that went against standards of the time.

“It wasn’t masculine clothing that they were wearing, they were just designing their own kind of scandalous dresses. And they pursued their own artistic and creative endeavors,” such as early fantasy photography.

As a bonus, she also explains away the bogeywoman of ‘White Feminism,’ apparently without realizing it –Their social position gave them the space to be this way. Historically, we see women in higher social positions having room to be more eccentric, and pursue progressive agendas. Once the upper classes accepted these ideals, acceptability would trickle down to the middle and lower classes.”

Today’s scandal is tomorrow’s old news.

Context Is Queen

Looking through the lens of Class is illuminating, but the lesson these stories teach us defies social hierarchies. It might be easier to shake things up using your social clout, but sometimes an idea just doesn’t fit.

Akhenaten was Pharaoh of Egypt when he launched his new monotheistic religion, but his ideas were buried after his death in 1334 BC.

Divers pulled the first computer from an Ancient Greek shipwreck, its devastated designer’s name long forgotten.

There are piles of good ideas whose time or place had not come, dooming them to history’s trash heap.

Into The Distance

And women are not ideas!

“Forty years later, we have split skirts for sport. It’s not like women didn’t wear bifurcated garments in the 19th century, it was the context of how they wore them that matters.”

Exactly. Feminism should be built in the context of women’s needs, not as a reaction to men.

Women Are Not Men

The Bloomers Revolution was undercut by the very notion that imitating men would bring freedom. We still seem to buy into the inherent assumption that women should be more masculine to be taken seriously. Many sacrifices have been made pursuing men’s vision of freedom, precious skills and knowledge wasted on a fundamentally flawed goal.

This brutal (and, again, seemingly willful?) oversight is not some historic relic. There are destructive consequences when the gaping holes in current feminist philosophy become doorways for those curious enough to go looking for them. Waiting on the other side are some pretty savvy right-wing weirdos, ready to validate whatever instinct is bothering you.

The Prattle Sisters’ fairy pictures are more fun than Suffragettes in their underwear – And they don’t force you to into awkward situations! The humanity of women is a basic truth, and it should be an easy sell.

Feminism should be piecing together women’s vision of freedom, but we have lost the thread in the hustle and bustle of the larger cultural argument a long time ago. Many of us aren’t even sure exactly what we’re fighting for, but we’ll know it when it’s gone.

The Friendly Face Of Propaganda

The new Daily Show is pretty bad.

Unhappy Reader

Hon, do you have the clicker?

Jon Stewart recently rejoined the conversation on his own non-network show, a little grayer but with his signature energy intact. He’s back to his consciousness-raising schtick, covering topics like gun violence and economic inequality with the deft balance we came to expect during his 16-year tenure in the Daily Show anchor chair.

Your Replacement Is Here

Trevor Noah has always seemed more scripted to me. His tone changes pretty drastically when he’s off-script, his natural rhythm peeking out to reveal a softer, even pensive style. Ironically, these are the moments he looks most natural as Stewart’s successor – Trevor is also kind, but firm. Jovial, but principled.

But this tonal shift doesn’t happen very often on the show. Jon would sometimes chuckle underneath his lines, a winking acknowledgement of some personal discomfort. He came across as struggling to recite things he didn’t believe.

Trevor is more professional. When he’s on, he’s on, delivering his lines with the same bouncy energy regardless of their content.

This week he came in hot, hopping quickly from one cherry-picked blurb to another. Punchlines fastened to the end of each factoid according to the familiar formula. Jon Stewart could be a bit predictable after absorbing his style for so long, but watching Trevor reminds me it was also because Jon let events write the jokes.

Step Into The Wayback

As a random example, let’s check out Stewart’s Daily Show’s coverage of that time Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face (Original airdate 13 Feb. 2006): A few quick news clips roll by, and when the camera cuts back to Jon his expression alone gets a laugh. He lingers there, eventually only muttering a tongue-in-cheek “Thank you, Jesus!” for the comedy goldmine.

Having let the initial moment land, Jon then launches into his summary, “Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt at a political supporter’s ranch – Making 78-year-old Harry Wittington the first person shot by a sitting VP since Alexander Hamilton!” This absurd fact functions as the punchline.

Adult Human Female

There’s a natural rhythm if you go with the flow!

After some laughter, Stewart continues, “Alexander Hamilton, of course, was shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington was mistaken for a bird.” Punchline number two is more humorously-worded facts.

He mocks the eyewitness’ tone-deaf storytelling – ‘The Vice President took aim at the bird and shot and, unfortunately, Mr. Whittington was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty well.’  Again, Jon’s face tells the tale before he opens his mouth. “‘Peppered,'” he repeats through a smirk, “Yes, there you have it – Harry Wittington ‘seasoned’ to within an inch of his life.” This simple pun was practically handed to him, a simplicity Jon acknowledges by stealing cheeky glances heavenward.

Nothing To See Here

Compare this to Trevor Noah’s news monologue this past Thursday: “There’s a lot going on today – The new Adelle album drops at midnight, which means you’re about to be able to tell who’s going through a breakup through your walls.” Nothing inherently funny about Adelle putting out an album – But her music is so sad!

“The judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial took a bathroom break and let Kyle be the judge while he was gone, which I’ve never seen before but he swears is totally normal.” A made-up story meant to illustrate the judge’s bias. Invoking imaginary events just robs the segment of any power to criticize real ones.

“And two men who were framed for the killing of Malcolm X fifty years ago were finally exonerated.” Ok, this is kind of a big deal, right? “Which means the real killer could be anyone in this room,” says the 37-year-old. He pauses and looks around, acting spooked as a creepy sound cue plays.

Then he picks the patter right back up without missing a beat. “But, while American news is always breaking, it’s also good to remember that other countries have news, too.”

Interview

Shit, now you tell me!

Fair enough, but so far we’ve seen one non-news story, one made-up story, and the only interesting thing was presented last with no analysis whatsoever. Not even so much as a reminder of what happened all those decades ago.

And Now, For My Next Trick

A flashy globe graphic flies by, carrying us into the international round-up bit. Russia is sabre-rattling again. Migrants are crossing borders. Trevor gives some facts about the situation in Belarus, then compares a dictator weaponizing desperation to, “When your parents start cooking with peanuts to get you to move out of the house, because they know you’re allergic. It’s a dick move!” This joke borders on irresponsible, considering peanut allergies kill around 150 people in the US every year.

But the nonsense just keeps flowing – “We can’t let anything happen to Poland – That’s where all our water comes from!” Cue a random bottle of Poland Spring whooshing past. This pun is a non-sequitur, Americans’ continuing obsession with bottled water is not relevant to European politics.

The facts feel sharp, but the comedy reads like an afterthought. Connected to nothing, it illuminates nothing.

Moving right along, Ethiopia is collapsing and any Americans there are on their own. Trevor goes for Jon’s old rhythm here, mockingly paraphrasing the State Department – “In Afghanistan, the US government staged an all-out airlift. Meanwhile, in Ethiopia, they’re like, ‘might we suggest Priceline.com?’

“What do they mean when they say the State Department will help you book a commercial flight out? That’s not helpful – people know how to book flights! That’s like going, ‘Hey, do you need a ride? Open Uber on your phone, then you hit Request A Ride. Best of luck, buddy!'”

But Trevor is from Africa, you know. Please understand, this is a complicated and sensitive story.” You might have started with that! The writing on this Daily Show is inverted, burying anything interesting under layers of saccharine fluff.

Pink Princess

It’s real, if you just believe hard enough!

The Callback

A female voiceover tells us India’s capital is choking with smog, “According to a report from the University of Chicago, this toxic air is ten times worse in Northern India than anywhere else in the world.”

Trevor compares it to the steam vents in New York City, “Which, by the way, what is that shit? I’ve lived here for many years, and I still don’t understand what that is.” You just called them steam vents, dude!

Sometimes, he just seems really clueless  – “One detail I like from this story is that the Indian government put together an environmental ministry panel on air pollution, who confirmed that the air was, indeed, polluted.” That clip clearly said University of Chicago! These people make too much money for this level of incompetence.

And the commercial tie-ins are crammed in so tight, this one took my breath away: “This is a great example of why we all need to move to cleaner energy. It is expensive, but it’s also hella expensive to shut down your economy whenever your city turns into a sandstorm from ‘Dune.'” This level of shilling is sort of impressive, in its own twisted way.

He pivots hard, dumping us unceremoniously into the segment’s last spot, “And, like most things in the world, this story was made in China.” Hmm, do I detect a hint of satire? It’s like being haunted by something forever at the edge of your vision.

Finally, The Real Story

At eleven minutes in, we learn that international Tennis star Peng Shuai is missing. After accusing a prominent politician of raping her, Shuai’s social media account was quickly locked down, then deleted. She herself hasn’t been seen in weeks. A CNN clip tells us, “censors have all but scrubbed this woman from the Chinese internet.”

The supposed email released by Chinese State media has strong Old Soviet vibes: “I’m not missing, and I hope Chinese tennis will become better and better.” You’d think Shuai’s continued participation would be the best guarantee of this, but I won’t be surprised if we never see her again.

Trevor appears appropriately appalled. “This is really disturbing – Someone speaks out about sexual assault, and then China’s government just makes them disappear?” This seems to be what happened, yes. Bare minimum achieved!

Pissed Off In Purple

Great, great… And they pay you how much for that??

But his little rant is interrupted mid-sentence, replaced by a graphic and Chinese voiceover informing us Trevor has gone on vacation. Hilarious.

The laughs have been few and far between, but the very end is where Comedy Central’s true colors bleed through – “It’s one thing for your government to come after you, it’s another thing for them to make you just never exist! 

“They scrubbed the Internet of anything about this Tennis player. Do you know how hard it is to get stuff off the Internet? Only China can do that!” Exactly how sure of this are we, anyway?

“If you have embarrassing pictures online, just move to China and talk shit about the Communist Party. They’ll clean up your reputation in no time! I mean, yeah, you’ll be locked in a basement somewhere but, hey, at least you didn’t get canceled.”

But isn’t that exactly what happened?? Peng Shuai said something the Establishment in her country didn’t like, and they silenced her! They were just extremely thorough about it.

“This also really puts into perspective when people in America complain about being ‘censored by Big Tech.’ Peng Shuai literally does not exist on the Internet anymore! Yeah, maybe Trump can’t tweet right now, but you can still Google him.” How lucky we are, to still have access to information!

I Like Big Brains

Trevor references a rap song from 1990, abruptly ending the segment in a last blast of irony.

Rap music pushed the censors, testing competing loyalties to money and propriety. Money won handily, record companies slapped stickers on the albums and raked in the cash. It was said we were sliding down a slippery slope of indecency – If you let black men express themselves, who knows where it will end? They might be hosting talk shows someday!

But Trevor does rappers and other comedians dirty with this argument – Censorship isn’t great, but at least it’s not kidnapping!

Where exactly is that line? In the UK, people are being summoned for questioning by the police over their social media posts. The dubious legality of this is almost overshadowed by the implied threat of detainment – Police have been known to shoot first and ask questions later, figuratively and literally. If you go in, there’s a chance you won’t come back out any time soon.

Sure, the implied threat of something isn’t the same as it actually happening. But is that single step enough insulation for a free society? The slippery slope has been declared a fallacy, but we might want to revisit that. The Chinese government doesn’t have any legal right to disappear people, but the widespread fear eliminates the need for such niceties.

Creeper

When you feel safe turning your back, that’s when they’re most dangerous!

Belittling the sense of injustice Westerners feel watching today’s creeping authoritarianism is akin to telling little girls to ‘just not look’ at the penis in the locker room. Your discomfort is your problem – It’s certainly not induced by any changes in the environment, and it’s definitely not justified. Whatever stirring you feel is probably some kind of phobia, and your fear is invalid.

Ten years ago, Jon Stewart’s viewers polled as more informed than those who watched the Actual News. Trevor Noah’s Daily Show is a transparent exercise in propaganda, trading on the reputation Stewart built. I can only assume that most of his viewers are too young to see what’s changed.

And this is just one obvious example. As much as I don’t want to see it, our whole environment looks curated, consciously directed toward some things and away from others. No one’s gonna convince me there isn’t at least as much comedy gold out there!

Bad nights like Trevor’s seem to offer a peak behind the curtain, implying none of it is an accident. But just relax and watch the show! Everything is ok as long as the funny man is cracking jokes, right?

 

 

Witches: The Heroine’s Journey

“Magic is a female fantasy and a male nightmare.”

Witch 1

Did you know witches are human Rorschach tests??

The Witch has endured for millennia as a symbolic challenge to male supremacy. She represents our innate understanding of the power structure we live in, her different forms expressing our shifting feelings about Woman regaining her place on even footing with Man.

Magic was traditionally Woman’s purview – Our friends the Ancient Greeks, founders of Western civilization, worshipped a Goddess of Magic called Hecate. Hecate’s three faces are reminiscent of the traditional phases of a woman’s life – Maiden, Mother and Crone.

Kristen Leo rambles pleasantly for over 15 minutes before making the interesting observation that men and women tend to portray magic differently. She says of magical stories written by women, “magic is a medium through which characters can empower themselves and help others.”

Kristen points out that men’s depictions of magic focus on revenge and curses – “It’s really fascinating how often we see female empowerment, when it’s expressed symbolically through witchcraft, being perceived as a threat by the male psyche.” The evil witches of so many fairy tales show us men’s perception of women’s challenge to their authority. 

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

Joseph Campbell famously distilled all of Myth and Legend into one storyline: The Hero’s Journey. In collating so many ancient tales, he managed to leave the female perspective out of his sweeping synopsis of symbolism entirely. 

He did eventually realize he’d forgotten half of humanity, describing Her importance, “If the male is on top, and the female subordinate all the way, you have a totally different system from that when the two are facing each other.” 

He wades into some pretty deep mystical waters, describing how we made sense of ourselves in the early days through symbolism: “Everything in the field of Time is dual – Past and future, dead and alive. They always come in pairs.

“Most of us put our minds on the side of the ‘good’ against what we think of as ‘evil.’ Put your mind in the middle. That’s to say, ‘I know the center, and I know that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are temporal apparitions.'”

Devil Girl

It’s all relative, darling!

That is to say, on a deep level, we understand that our perception is not reality. But our perception is all we have to go on, so we struggle to express concepts that lay beyond it. Larger patterns and systems are described in broad strokes, the meaning lost as cultural understandings shift.

This is the crack that allowed male supremacy to creep in. Traditional philosophy tainted the ancient symbol of Woman as Lifegiver by declaring all Life sinful. You make life? Who wants that?? If I weren’t alive I’d be with God right now!

Woman’s embodiment of natural forces, her evident closeness to the life-giving Earth, was defanged for the purpose of harnessing and taming it. 

“When A Woman Thinks Alone, She Thinks Evil.”

During the surge of development known as The Enlightenment, the infamous Witch Trials were a violent but symbolic reinforcement of Patriarchy. The power structure resorted to blood sacrifice to reestablish itself amid the chaos.

But that overcorrection was itself an admission of insecurity.

It took them quite a lot of effort to push us down, you see. Brutality is the classic method, but progressive civilization demands increasing decorum. Violent coercion is so barbaric! The assault became psychological – Every idea must be made consumable by Patriarchy or snuffed out.

Wit And Folly uses Star Wars as the standard modern telling of The Hero’s Journey. We’re reminded that Luke’s final act against his enemy is not revenge, but compassion for his dying father. 

Joseph Campbell tries, in his own way, to impart that the two Journeys need each other, because their balance is the resolution of the human story. 

But lately, most prominent women display a single-minded assertiveness traditionally used as shorthand for masculine greatness. We are told this is progress – The Witches are all good now, nothing to see here!

The Hero’s Journey wears a feminine mask, but the destination of the Hero’s Journey is compassion and deference – For Woman, this is a road to nowhere.

Finding Woman’s Road

Building on Campbell’s work, Maureen Murdock gave us The Heroine’s Journey –  “Today’s heroine must utilize the sword of discernment to cut away the ego bonds that hold her to the past, and to find out what services her soul’s purpose.

“She must realize resentment toward the mother, put aside blame and idolization of the father, and find courage to face her own darkness.

“Her shadow is hers to name and embrace”

Witchy Bath

I just gotta be me!

In rejecting the passive role of subordinate, she learns to be assertive. Suppression of the Witch is to deny Woman her own Journey. 

With And Folly also pulls from Navajo legend, where Woman (the Earth) speaks to the Sun, her lover: “Remember – as different as we are, you and I, we are of one spirit.

“As dissimilar as we are, you and I, we are of equal worth. As unlike as you and I are, there must always be solidarity between us. Unlike each other as you and I are, there can be no harmony in the universe as long as there is no harmony between us.

Our society is in a death spiral because, in his lust for power, Man villainized Woman and all she stands for – Even Life itself. 

Dr. Campbell tells the story, “Whenever one moves out of the Transcendent, one comes into a field of opposites.” Woman, giver of Life, brings us into this world of duality, where we experience isolation and suffering.

But Old Joe is optimistic, “I think it’s a really childish attitude to say ‘No’ to life, with all its pain. To say, ‘this is something that should not have been.'” 

Man remains a petulant child so long as he refuses to accept his own suffering. For most of history, he’s been determined to distract himself instead, through conquest or inebriation. Whatever he couldn’t forget, he blamed on Mommy.

Mommy

You’ll always be my little boy…

The Witch Within

I recently asserted that the female mind does, in fact, exist. We tend to be caring, but sad. To me, this looks like the legacy of civilization strapping us to the birthing bed. But life in a female body creates a different perspective that’s sorely missed. Universal rejection of that perspective makes civilization into a death cult.

We need to recognize that Woman is not lesser. Women are not weak, and feminine traits don’t indicate weakness. The Hero’s Journey demonstrates over and over and over that compassion demands strength.

But he will never reach his destination until he accepts that the Heroine waiting there can’t be his subordinate. She is the Witch in all her liberated glory, enduring her own adventure to face him. She is the giver of Life, the inspiration of all his striving. And no amount of sky scrapers or oil rigs will change that.

The Witch is just Woman, the real one outside of Man’s head. If we are brave enough to sharpen our sword of discernment – our critical thinking – we can begin adding the Heroine’s Journey back into the human story. If each of us embarks on her own adventure, we can begin to regain some collective balance.

Summon your inner Witch – The world is counting on it!

The Veil: Civilization Isn’t For Us

We are taught that Ancient Greece is the foundation of modern civilization.

Greek 1

All you other civilizations are just imitating!

Politics, Philosophy, Law – even Democracy itself was supposedly invented there, and we are still living in the paradigm created by the likes of Aristotle. We still discuss the Great Thinkers, offering reverential deference to the first glimmer of our present culture.

Enter: The Veil

Thing is, this seminal societal flowering was misogynist as all hell! These precious pillars developed during the first methodical clamping-down on the agency of women.

That’s right – Ancient Greece invented the Burqa.

They called it the Tegidion, meaning ‘little roof.’ In her BBC program The Ascent of Woman, Dr. Amanda Foreman describes how it served as a symbolic extension of a father’s or husband’s house, which gave women official protection.

From other men, presumably.

Veils were first popular in Assyria as ancient virtue-signaling among upper-class women. The Greeks adopted and adapted them in reaction to, as Dr. Foreman says, “a deep phobia of the female body.” 

This profound revulsion came from, “the idea that women’s inferiority wasn’t Man-made, but rooted in Nature.” As the lesser human, Woman had to be controlled. 

Aristotle, as the Father of Philosophy, saw women as just another topic for his intellect. Dr. Foreman has Dr. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones of Edinburgh University summarize Aristotle’s foundational sexism – “Basically, women are imperfect men, they haven’t quite reached perfection, because they haven’t had semen to create what is the essence of Man.”

Leave it to a man to figure his ejaculation as the source of rational thought!

The thinking goes that, since women only grow life with the addition of semen, semen is the source of life. Woman is just the vessel.

By about 500 BC, veiling was common practice for women in Athens – The cradle of modern civilization.

White Veil

Does this make you feel like a Big Man??

They were the ones who codified the idea that women are inferior, and wove it into the foundation of our society. And for them, the veil symbolized that Woman was never really allowed out of her husband’s house.

Reflecting on a collection of small votive statues draped in various styles, Dr. Llewellyn-Jones is moved to say, “Women’s lot in Ancient Athens was closer to a woman’s lot in Afghanistan under the height of Taliban rule than anything else.”

How Far Have We Really Come?

Broadcast in 2015, the title of Dr. Foreman’s miniseries is bittersweet. According to both Vogue and many recollections, 2015 was also The Year of Trans Visibility. It was the year Jenner became Caitlyn, Laverne Cox was People’s Most Beautiful Woman, and TLC introduced us to Jazz.

In the few years since, it’s been tempting to think Woman’s ascent has ended. But, contrary to her pithy television header, Dr. Foreman stresses the point, “The simple truth is, our story has never followed a straight line from darkness to light.

“The real history of women is full of swings and reversions, with liberties gained and lost from one era to the next. 

“You can judge a civilization by the way it treats its women.”

Add this to the list of tests our society is badly failing. But the misogyny we’re fighting is nothing new. Its littermates are important things we now see as neutral, such as Politics and Art. The same men who decided women were lesser beings also bequeathed to History stuff like Democracy and Theater. 

But it’s been demonstrated many times over that these things are not inherently misogynist. Men and women are not so different that a system created by one can’t be mastered by the other.

Cleo

And never forget, that goes both ways!

Compare Greece to Egypt, where a parallel framework developed emphasizing equality for the masses – Even the occasional female Pharaoh! Dr. Foreman cheerfully describes Egyptian art, “replete with couples lovingly holding hands, even wearing the same clothes. Ancient Egypt embraced both the masculine and the feminine. 

“A shared life, rather than reproduction, was the purpose of marriage.”

These two interpretations of relations between the sexes have existed in tandem forever. One reliable signal of how things are going is how free women are with their clothes.

Clothes Express The Woman

I wrote this Summer how clothing has long been a source of power, authority and even income for women. The Industrial Revolution took this out of our hands, imposing a sort of postmodern conformity and creating a paradox of choice – Too many options make deciding on one impossible, so we stop trying. We think about other things.

Like new social media, which is training young women to hunt down and eradicate whichever part of them doesn’t look like a Kardashian.

Then there’s the makeup all serious women are expected to wear, to the point we don’t even know what a natural woman’s face looks like. We laugh when men are clueless or surprised by our body hair, but we can’t lay all the blame on media. Too many of us are following these practices if these men don’t know better from their mothers, sisters, aunts and friends. 

Patriarchy has continued to evolve as its defenses have been torn down. These days we’re playing Chess, not Checkers. I don’t expect Western policy to insist on anything so obvious and easily-resisted as the Burqa any time soon.

Ankle

Y’all just love getting a peak so much!

But as we have gained hard autonomy, soft power has congealed to control us in other ways. Our apparent freedom disguises the box we still live in, our private lives shrinking more and more as we come to understand that we aren’t really allowed to leave Big Brother’s house.

We know in our gut that none of us is really safe. We see the Taliban reigning terror on the women of Afghanistan and feel it deeply, viscerally, perhaps in the quiver of the source of all this insanity.

Pandora’s Jar

Despite their obsession with male honor, Ancient Greek myth features many powerful goddesses. Pandora, famous for her box, was their First Woman. In her curiosity, she couldn’t help but open the box, unleashing all pain and suffering onto the world. 

Dr. Llewellyn-Jones, reading from Greek, tells us, “What she comes with is a ‘pithos’ – the Greek word for a jar. 

“The Greeks had a thought that a woman’s womb was shaped like a pithos. So, really, Pandora, being made the first woman, comes with the first womb.

“And when, inevitably, that womb gets opened, what flows out is all the evils of the world.”

These men always tell on themselves, don’t they? They created the Polis – the State – for themselves and put women in charge of the Oikos – the Homestead. The Greeks drew a hard line between women and the world, which they insisted was their domain.

So, Pandora unleashed all the evils of the world – The men of the Polis!

The heaping of blame for all the ills of the world – that men themselves were perpetrating – continues today. Don’t forget, Dear Reader, that four months ago we all had to sit through the ‘If-you-don’t-like-it-don’t-look’ defense of a sexual predator! If you didn’t want to be part of some man’s fetish, you should have just stayed home.

Pandora

Hey, this isn’t what I ordered!

We feel our sisters’ struggle because, on some level, we understand that civilization as we know it was explicitly not made for us! It was made by the flourish of Man ascendant, standing on Woman’s back even as he denigrated her.

And the old No Girls Allowed! sign is still on the wall!

We are all victims of this system, in one way or another. Vengeance is not the answer, or we risk becoming what we hate. But the urge many of us get to just walk away is probably based in something more than apathy.

We should be shouting our story through a bullhorn! Feminism must be the custodian of women’s history, and Dr. Foreman has done us all a great service.

I look forward to a time when all veils come down, and we can go back to sharing life instead of fighting over it.

 

Not Like Other Feminists

The Internet can be a dangerous place, but the rabbit hole I fell down this week goes much deeper than I anticipated.

It all started with Abby Cox. She’s one of my favorite YouTubers, and she put the brakes on her whole video concept this week to address a glaring issue she found in her research.

You Won't Believe This

You won’t believe this – Women are being undermined in media!

Girlhood As Internalized Misogyny

Abby is an historical costumer with several years in a living history museum under her belt. In comparing recent remakes of classic historical fiction to older productions, she noticed an uncomfortable trend: “I’m frustrated,” she tells us, “by the reliance on ‘Girly-Bad, Boy-Good’ clothing defaults that our feminist characters are shoved into!”

Abby focuses on Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, showing clips illustrating the recent masculinization of Jo and Anne. “In the 2019 version, we have Jo looking like she slept in a barn! And [she] is wearing distinctly masculine clothing on top, with just a skirt on the bottom.”

At first glance, this looks like historical costumers in film have lost the thread. 2019 Jo wouldn’t look out of place on a modern college campus, which a real Victorian lady certainly would!

But Abby’s impassioned pleas rang in my ears for days after I watched her video, bringing me back to a fight I’ve had with myself as long as I can remember.

I think we do a disservice to ourselves and everyone else who grows up female if we write off the Othered Girl without taking a long, hard look at her, and why she has been with us for long.

I’m Not Like The Other Girls

There’s something thrilling about boldly doing things women were forbidden from for centuries. For too many during Jo’s time, being Not Like The Other Girls got you committed. In later decades, there was a good chance you’d be lobotomized, too. The infamous case of Rosemary Kennedy is a late entry in a long tradition of ruthlessly crushing women who were just a little too smart.

It all starts to add up when you learn that ‘schizophrenia’ was once a catch-all for difficult patients.

This history may not play a direct role, but I think most young women go through this to some degree – The urge to hide your ‘girly’ hobbies or inclinations in order to be taken seriously. And, later, just to avoid being seen as an object.

I don’t think that we have come out on the other side of this yet, collectively. That we are still using masculine as shorthand for intelligent after 200 years shows just how suppressed women truly still are. And it’s also kind of embarrassing.

Embarrassing

Can you still respect me, now that you know my shameful secret??

Other Girls Are Dumb

All things feminine are still routinely rejected and put down in our culture. Powerful female politicians cut their hair short and wear boxy pant suits – Like they’re admitting they don’t belong, and are trying to blend in! 

Visual media has been flirting with pornography for ages, only recently making some self-conscious adjustments. So, instead of the Damsel In Distress, we see her reciting the Hero’s lines. As if there are only two options.

Music and fashion are even worse, the role of sex icon is assumed for women there. To challenge this is to play Russian Roulette with your career.

The overall message is very clear: Girly = Bad, Boyish = Good. The term ‘girly’ often just means ‘frivolous.’ ‘Girly girls’ are seen as shallow and vain, sometimes even evil!

If this tainted messaging were limited to high heels and tight skirts, there’d be nothing to talk about. But the ‘girly’ label extends to lots of things, many of them skills with roots in women’s history. Certain personality traits, even entire categories of emotion, have all been tagged ‘feminine’ and shunted to the margins of our culture.

Basically, anything patriarchy can’t use to generate wealth for itself is classified as a potential threat and squashed.

Even the lovely Miss Abby Cox – Who devotes the first three minutes of this video to Woke disclaimers – can feel the cringe: “As much as I love and appreciate the resurgence of historic costume dramas, I just want to beg the writers and designers to stop playing into this ‘Not Like Other Girls’ trope for the progressive female protagonist. 

“It’s lazy! And harmful storytelling, with its implication that other girls are inherently not feminist.”

Here, Abby names the first problem with not being like other girls – It’s putting down others to lift yourself up.

Learned From The Best

What can I say? I learned from the best!

Women Are Men, And We’ve Always Been At War With Femininity

Little Women is about 40 years older than Anne of Green Gables, Louisa May Alcott publishing its first edition in 1868. In Alcott’s depiction of her era, Jo’s pursuit of an education and career made her Not Like Other Girls. We tend to see this as positive, because education is the great leveler.

Education enables you to see yourself as an authority in the world, and to question that of others. Male-oriented establishments of all stripes resist the education of girls to this day, sometimes with lethal force.

Abby tells us how the historical costume dramas she is upset about actually create many of our ideas about the past. Redressing the female heroines of the period as butches (Transmen??) projects our rejection of girly things backward onto them, creating the illusion of tradition. A false history.

And clothes are a really great example of how the subversion of women plays out. Fiber Arts Expert is a role women share across many times and places. We have often used this necessary, practical skill to our advantage. Our clothes are a means of self-expression, communication and advertisement. Even a lucrative career!

The advent of machine manufacturing in the 19th century enabled the male-oriented establishment to take this from us. More than that, we were enticed to give it up willingly with the promise of free time and effortless chic. The shift of mentality to the ‘modern’ lifestyle clinched the deal.

Sewing is frivolous now, too – Why spend time making something when you can just go to the store? Time is money, you know. Don’t you wanna get you some??

And another corner of women’s culture dies.

Just One Of The Guys

The second problem with Not Like Other Girls is that, yes, inevitably you are like other girls in some ways. Instead of just rejecting what we recognize as bullshit, we project these negative stereotypes onto other women.

It’s another indirect admission – Sure, women are shit. But I’m the exception!

Bararella 1

Do you love me yet, Daddy??

Competition for men’s attention gets a lot of ink, but we ignore that men have the Home Court Advantage! Kissing their collective ass gets us access to the status they hoard. Taking on masculine social signals is the tip of the hat that says, ‘No challenge here!’ 

Everyone behaves as if it’s assumed that Woman Bad. This consistent drip-drip-drip demonization of the feminine plants a feeling of alienation in us when we engage in anything inherently female-oriented, sending us crawling out of our skins to avoid guilt-by-association. We feel relief when our femaleness is less highlighted, and powerful in men’s clothes. 

But we can’t be men, and their methods don’t always work for us. And just as we began to ask, ‘What were our methods again?’, it became transphobic to talk about. 

The stress seems to be getting to us, every forum I frequent is rife with paranoia. Rigidity is setting in, and factions are forming. Which is a damn shame, because I know I’m still working on my own self-loathing and internalized misogyny. Dealing with this shit alone is getting really old.

Occasionally, someone – Usually someone on her way out – will proclaim exasperation with the whole situation. She will marvel at how women turn on each other, ‘It’s almost like they don’t want to be liberated!’

But not me, I’m not like the other feminists!

Woops! Internalized misogyny strikes again. It’s really a pity no one is keeping score, because we’re gunning for the all-time record.

Bitch Fight

Holy shit Karen, I just wanted to borrow them!

It’s the ultimate divide-&-conquer strategy – Implanted in our own worldview, Woman Bad keeps us in line from within by keeping us insecure in ourselves and isolated from one another.

Life Finds A Way

There’s some life left in us – Our survival instinct has drawn us to gather, chipping at the edges with things like Believe All Women! But it’s going to take time to undo centuries of self-loathing. Small, stable communities are forming here and there, but we need a rallying point.

To achieve the liberation of women, we have to know who we’re talking about. Some women excel in the kind of achievements men are so fond of, but many of our talents lie elsewhere. Progress for feminism will begin with an honest re-assessment of who and what we are.

We are different from men. Denial of this simple fact has cost us dearly – So much that the male-oriented organizations of the world have finally deemed us irrelevant. Outdated. Woman Classic is out of production, and Woman 2.0 is already rolling off the assembly line.

We have enabled all of this by refusing to take ownership of own definition. If none of us is like the other girls, then who are girls, anyway? Patriarchy has lots of ideas.

Only we can speak up for us. If we’re not sure what to say, approaching each other with forgiveness would be a good place to start.

Why Do Men Run the World?

The film begins with a man in a kitchen. It’s the scene of a revolution, he says, where men and women are renegotiating the human power balance.

By The Wrists

This isn’t what I meant by ‘holding hands’!

When you don’t get much time to sit and read, a good documentary can be the greatest thing.

I found one that really pulls it all together. And it’s over 25 years old!

Dr. Gwynne Dyer is another new name to me. He’s getting up there these days but still maintains an active publishing and speaking career. He even has a Twitter.

He’s a journalist and historian who’s taken his education and experience and synthesized a unique perspective. He uses it to spell out the origins of Patriarchy.

He explains why it first emerged and how it’s become an outdated handicap.

Filmed in 1992, the backdrop of the inaugural festivities of President Bill Clinton provides its starting example of The State. Militarized, hierarchical.

Then he takes us all the way back to the cave times. Hunter-gatherer societies were different depending on their circumstances. Some were warlike boys’ clubs, but others were egalitarian.

Dr. Dyer tells us that, before agriculture, there is little evidence of one sex being considered superior. Then with the advent of farming – “probably invented by a woman” – men suddenly lost their role.

A Men’s Revolution

During the village time, the members of the village discussed things and came to a consensus of how things would be. But women oversaw the homestead.

Hilda Reaps

What can I say? I make things grow!

Fertility goddesses reigned supreme. Hunting was no longer necessary, and men took a back seat. He tells us archeologists find 100 female fertility figures for every one male figure from this period.

But perhaps most gut-wrenching of all was that, at the birth of the concept of Wealth, a man’s property was passed to his sister’s child when he died, not his own.

You might not know who a child’s father is, but you always know who the mother is.

Dr. Dyer tells us about “the makings of a revolution, ….so old it’s not in the history books.” Men took over and spent thousands of years taming the power of female sexuality.

As agricultural villages coalesced into nation-states, a full quarter of the early Mesopotamian laws were restricting what women could do.

Huda Lutfi taught history at the American University of Cairo in 1992. She had many amazing things to say in this film. She was studying women in Medieval Islam, which meant reading between the lines.

Women in Medieval Islam are invisible. They wrote nothing and left no records. She says she knows what they were doing by what the scholars wanted them to stop doing.

Why Would Our Men Do This to Us?

Why did men, who basically cared about their mothers and wives and sisters and daughters, cooperate in such a scheme?

As civilization became bigger and more complex, tyranny was the only way to keep everyone together. Ruling by terror was the only way to communicate to the masses.

Dr. Dyer shows us how the great pharaohs’ tombs are surrounded by hundreds of other graves belonging to servants and slaves. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Welcome to civilization.”

Despair

How could you do this to me, Babe??

Defending Their Country Gave Men Status.

These men who stepped up to fight other aggressive men offered men in general a much-needed status boost.

“Sure,” says Dr. Dyer, “you’ll have to obey us but you’ll have control over your women. And your property will go to your sons when you die.”

And Patriarchal religions tied it all together, the Universe a perfect hierarchy with God at the top. Then man, then woman.

The tyranny necessary to create and defend a nation is fueled by soldiers. If women have freedom, the birth rate drops because babies are a lot of work. And women develop other interests.

Reducing women so our only place in society is childbearing is how you get enough soldiers to win.

“Men Were Never Oppressed.”

Dr. Dyer tells us how global mass communication is chipping away at “the old ways.” Global culture is, by its very nature, more cooperative. More feminine, I suppose, if only by virtue of women participating at all.

One thing that hits me that Dr. Dyer doesn’t really dwell on is, “men were never oppressed.” When women have freedom we don’t use it to lock men away. A woman-lead society is a more equal society.

I believe part of this is because of innate differences in perspective. The interconnectedness of people can be a brutal force in your life when you make people with your body.

And when that body and the world remind you of this possibility incessantly.Film Capture

Patriarchy Will Fall

A record number of women were elected to Congress in 1992. One of them was Elizabeth Furse from Oregon. She tells the story of taking the group picture on the steps, she was at the top, in the back.

Just in time, two white men stepped in front of her. “There’s no me, it’s almost like I’m not there.”

Above the pageantry of the 1992 inaugural parades, Dr. Dyer tells us that Patriarchy is slowly collapsing.

After 5,000 years, Patriarchy is not just in our institutions, it’s in our heads. But it is not in our genes.

“The problem is not ‘human nature,’ it’s that mass societies are still trapped inside the ancient machine they built thousands of years ago, to deal with the problems of thousands of years ago.

Lifeguard

Just stay right there, okay, cutie? You know, forever.

“The machine called Patriarchy was the only way to run an early mass society. It was refined into both a killing machine and a breeding machine as the early mass civilizations started fighting one another. And we conquered the whole planet with it.

But now, our weapons have become so destructive that we can no longer afford to fight major wars. And we don’t actually have to live in patriarchal dictatorships anymore. Mass communication means that we can be democratic.

“Patriarchy no longer makes sense as an institution.”

From Soldier To… Daddy?

As a white man and military historian, he has no ax to grind here. I think this makes his words that much more insightful.

He leaves us in the kitchen where we began, saying men and women are renegotiating the most fundamental human partnership. He offers this as reason for hope.

He doesn’t specify what partnership he means but, as he shares a bite with a little girl in the final shot, the meaning is clear.

Reproduction and raising the next generation is both the biggest burden and the biggest opportunity we have to impact the future. In modern times, women have asserted our rightful place of power in the system.

We don’t want to enslave men. We want our reproductive capacity to not be weaponized against us.

Dr. Dyer’s hopeful tone stands out to me because many of us are good at pointing out where Patriarchy fails us, but so few have an inkling where we are going from here.

He leans into snark a few times, making his own feelings clear: Patriarchy is on the way out, and everyone will benefit. Just as a natural result of the evolution of society.

This information should be everywhere. It should be in children’s books and kitchen conversations.

Understanding our past will enable us to consciously create a better future. So few of us have any real understanding of the causes or the effects of the societal structure we live in. We tend to take it for granted (or even claim it doesn’t exist!)

We can’t afford to go stumbling into the future without a strong understanding of ourselves.

Watch the movie, it’s less than an hour long. It explains everything.