Monday, January 05, 2015

The Feminist Dilemma: How to Find a Wet Noodle in a Stack of Brown Bananas

"Any set of basic assumptions opens up some avenues for thought, while closing down others" (Siedentop). Although Christianity provides just such a set of basic assumptions, it required centuries for the implications of these "to be drawn out and clarified -- and even more time would pass before long-established social practices or institutions were reshaped by these implications."

This was a conservative revolution -- the only kind of revolution that actually succeeds -- because it started with the way the world actually is, instead of imposing an abstract ideal on it, which always ends in violence and regression, since it unleashes the worst in man under the guise of the best. See Islam and leftism for abundant examples.

Those twin malignancies close off the pragmatic past in the name of an impossible future, while Christianity tries to open the present to the influence of a higher mode of being, resulting in change that is both organic and rooted, thus more robust (plus in accord with human nature).

Which is why Obama is always urging us to yield to the FIERCE URGENCY OF THE NOW!, so we don't notice what he's really up to. Or in other words, "Time is running out to do something stupid and irreversible. Act now!" (Williamson).

Yes, “'Now!' is a rhetorical short circuit, a way to preempt anyone’s thinking too deeply about a proposition." It is "is the eternal cry of the infantile -- 'What does baby want? Diaper change! When does baby want it? Now!'" (ibid.).

In contrast, positive change preserves continuity, which is a central point of the Incarnation, since it serves to bridge the otherwise unbridgeable gap between man and God. In short, we get the benefits of heaven with all the conveniences of our own embodiment.

But again, it takes awhile for that to sink in and up.

For example, think of how the Islamists impatiently blew up those ancient Buddhist statues, or how the left has been busy blowing up western civilization for the past 50 years or more.

But Christianity planted itself within the existing paganism, and simply Christianized its sentiments, gods, and rituals. Aligning the birth of Christ with the winter solstice "is only the most obvious example" of appropriating "the advantages both of change and continuity."

Doing so was analogous to plugging an existing wire into a higher source of energy. Once plugged in, the energy began reshaping practices, beliefs, and institutions, nowhere more dramatically than in the family. Frankly, it "destroyed the ancient family as a cult or religious association" (Siedentop).

You might say that before there could be a separation of church and state, there first had to be a separation of church and family, and in particular, God and father. The family was still sanctified, of course, but as an icon of God, not the thing itself. Now the terrestrial father had to answer to a higher image.

As a hopefully brief asnide, I wonder how someone ends up being as deeply confused as this toothache with a vagina, who asks -- or tells -- us How to Find a Feminist Boyfriend.

The first thought that occurs to me is to simply find a toothache without a penis, which shouldn't be hard to do, last time I checked dailykos.

But let's be quasi-serious for a moment: the same energy that causes those Muslims to deface works of art is what motivates the left to blow up our own beautiful traditions, marriage being just one of them.

The difference, however, is that the left has been deeply conditioned by the Christian message, where Muslims haven't. Therefore, we see in the left a perversion of Christian principles, or a neopagan rebarbarism of that from which Christianity is supposed to save us, now promiscuously fertilized by faux-Christian principles.

This is analogous to how Islamists use the highest technology for the lowest ends. In other words, they adopt a technology that they themselves could never gave invented -- because they are so primitive -- for the most primitive purposes.

In the case of the left, they take a morality that they lack the principles to invent (let alone discover) -- say, marriage -- and twist it to their own base ends. Leftists, of course, believe in "homosexual marriage." But why? How did they come up with this notion of marriage? That's right: they just stole it. However, being that they are mixing the Christian higher and pagan-lower, they can have no principled objection to polygamy, or inter-species marriage, or sibling marriage, or any kind of arrangement you like, all pseudo-sanctified by that same purloined word.

"How do you spot a male feminist if he’s not at an abortion rights rally wearing a 'This Is What a Feminist Looks Like' T-shirt?"

He's the one not shuddering at that sentence. He's the one in whom your prose doesn't trigger the gag reflex.

"Few guys will proudly say no when asked if they’re feminists."

True, so true. Only 62% of white males didn't support President Unicorn in the last election, so there's still a very large pool of castrati from which to draw.

And if you can read the next sentence without cringing, you are on the shortlist: "feminist daters -- male or female, gay or straight -- aren’t constrained by gender roles." Who knew Angelina Jolie had so many children?

For the feminist, gender is everything, but for the purpose of being nothing. It is nihilism masquerading as gender, for to be a feminist is to treat femininity with the subtlety of an Islamist art critic.

"A true male feminist is supportive of, interested in and enthusiastic about his partner’s career."

There are not many men whose careers interest me. Why should I care what a women does, unless it's something intrinsically interesting, like raising children? (Show me the man who is attracted to a woman because of her job, and I'll show you a pole dancer. --Cousin Dupree)

Did you know that homosexuals aren't perfect? I've never heard a leftist acknowledge this before. For example, there are "gay couples who are so rigid in their gender division" that "one man doesn’t want his partner to work, wants him to stay home with the kids.”

That makes their other problems sound trivial, like shorter lifespans, higher incidence of mental illness and other diseases, inability to sustain monogamy, increased substance abuse, etc. Well. Those are just because mother nature is a homophobic bitch.

"If you’re a woman who wants a man to grab you and kiss you because that’s what sweeps you off your feet, realistically, a feminist man is not going to do that."

No, a feminist man will require you to fill out a signed affidavit in triplicate in the presence of a notary public. And any sweeping will be done with a proper broom and apron, thank you.

You know, "I might be cool with casual sex, but that doesn’t necessarily make me this ‘cool girl’ who’s detached from emotion."

No, in my experience it makes you a conflicted little girl who is using sex to fulfill other forbidden needs that shall not be named. We used to call them "sluts," because their desperation is so close to the surface and they are so easily manipulated by men who have a complementary sexual agenda.

There is no doubt that throughout history there have been women who, for whatever reason, have been conflicted about being one. But only in the modern world do they have so many options to act out their conflict without insight and therefore without hope of change. That's what you call progress.

Is it any wonder Christian women have better sex lives? It makes things so simple when men aren't women and women aren't this:

16 comments:

Tony said...

"feminists"

Shouldn't that word be objectionable to them? Why isn't it now "genderists," or something equally nonsensical?

This business of Christianity, paganism, and continuity got me thinking about Ireland and its re-evangelization. Many in the church have written it off as a lost cause. Pagans are reclaiming the culture. How did the Christians best them in the first place, way back when? What should the Christian response be now?

One strategy might be to find the new topoi of pagan culture (what are they?) and co-opt them as before. But somehow that doesn't feel persuasive to me. The Pope has focused recent attention on the character of church leaders (see his audience to the cardinals), which needs some serious correcting. That's surely a good road, but will it be enough?

I'm reminded of a radical secularist's pointed question to a theist: "We live in an era of unprecedented wealth and well-being, you can live a full and happy life, and we're prolonging life-span all the time. What more do you really want?" That's the question. People are being happily entertained unto death, and materialistic science is solving all kinds of problems. What value-added does Christianity bring to all this?

The question can be rephrased: "you can have all this if you just bow down and worship We."

Sorry, can't do it.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"This was a conservative revolution -- the only kind of revolution that actually succeeds -- because it started with the way the world actually is, instead of imposing an abstract ideal on it, which always ends in violence and regression, since it unleashes the worst in man under the guise of the best. See Islam and leftism for abundant examples."

Indeed. This is why classical liberalism is so creatively grounded in liberty whereas modern liberalism is the polar opposite.
Of course, Islam has essentially remained the same since it's barbaric inception, however has much in common with leftism. Both complement each other in their anti-individulalism, pro-slavery and pro-death screeds.

julie said...

Which is why Obama is always urging us to yield to the FIERCE URGENCY OF THE NOW!

I'm reminded of some venerable person or other from wayback - could have been HvB, or UF, or whatshisname (Percy? Perry?) who compiled a whole book of wisdom from around the world. Anyway. Paraphrasing Somebody, it was said that when one has a revelation that indicates action, one should wait at least ten years before acting. At that point, if one still feels the need to act, wait another ten years just to be sure.

julie said...

Magister - If I weren't generally opposed to starting movements, I'd say there needs to be a new one called "Femininism." For women who enjoy being female, don't consider "motherhood" to be a dirty word, and appreciate men who are masculine.

It probably wouldn't take off, anyway - in my experience women like that are too busy living.

mushroom said...

...they can have no principled objection to polygamy, or inter-species marriage, or sibling marriage, or any kind of arrangement you like, all pseudo-sanctified by that same purloined word ...

When you blow up the dam, you no longer control whose house gets swept away.


there's still a very large pool of castrati from which to draw

There are so many great quotes in this post. Barbed truths abound.

mushroom said...

When I was growing up, and we practiced our penmanship with goose quills, I thought gender only applied to grammar.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"Which is why Obama is always urging us to yield to the FIERCE URGENCY OF THE NOW!, so we don't notice what he's really up to. Or in other words, "Time is running out to do something stupid and irreversible. Act now!" (Williamson)."

This bus ain't gonna drive itself off the cliff.

EbonyRaptor said...

Labels are so confining, rarely, if ever, conforming to real life. What make the use of labels these days so confounding is that they are used to define something undefinable.

Feminist - most people would have a sense for what the word means, but describing what a feminist is and isn't is another thing entirely.

Am I a feminist? I respect women, but that leads me to open doors for them. I'm attracted to what could be described as my wife's work ethic, but it's only one of very many qualities of my wife that I find attractive. And so on.

If put to the question, I would probably have to answer 'no', but that's more because of the popular conception of what a feminist is than the real life workings out of my attitude and relationships with the women in life.

Be real. Be respectful. Love as God loves us.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"And if you can read the next sentence without cringing, you are on the shortlist: "feminist daters -- male or female, gay or straight -- aren’t constrained by gender roles." Who knew Angelina Jolie had so many children?"

And yet the feminazis always choose to act like aggressive men and insist that men act like passive women (or eunichs).
So in effect they don't even follow their own stupid advice.

julie said...

EbonyRaptor - Yes, I don't think anyone here would disagree. Sadly, in many diseased minds these noble ideas would brand you as a hater. Especially that God part, because God is the hatiest hater of them all.

Skully said...

I would think it would get awfully tiring to be as psychotically hysterical as the feminazi's, 24/7/365.
PMS doesn't even come close.
It's as if they wanna turn a period into a library on steroids.

mushroom said...

I always thought feminism meant if a woman could do a job and wanted to do that job, she should be given the same opportunity as a man. I work in software. The two smartest people I've worked with in the last forty years are women. Both of them happen to be good-looking, feminine women, too. They are just really smart. Who has a problem with that?

When I have trouble is when a woman engineer or manager or technician can't be critiqued and evaluated by the same standards we would use for a man in the same position functioning at the same level. That's what feminism means now. Women are off-limits. Unless you are a conservative woman.

Joan of Argghh! said...

When you blow up the dam, you no longer control whose house gets swept away.

Speaking of great truths and barbed quotes...

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Good grief, now this is a thing:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2015/01/activists-hold-conference-in-support-of-queer-animal-liberation/

What's next? Queer virus liberation? Queer plant power?

Rick said...

RE the title of this fun post, I think what you're saying is this feminist problem will solve itself.

julie said...

Ben, I was just reading in Leviticus this morning about all the things they weren't supposed to touch with their gonads, and the reasons for that, which seemed to go beyond merely the distinction between clean and unclean.

No good can come of this; hopefully, as Rick noted, it is largely self-correcting over time, but mind parasites seem to reproduce just fine without actual procreation...

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