Tuesday 9 March 2021

"A peevish, grudging rancour against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism..."



"A peevish, grudging rancour against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology.
    "Is it any wonder that so many high-achieving young women, despite all the happy talk about their academic success, find themselves in the early stages of their careers in chronic uncertainty or anxiety about their prospects for an emotionally fulfilled private life? When an educated culture routinely denigrates masculinity and manhood, then women will be perpetually stuck with boys, who have no incentive to mature or to honor their commitments. And without strong men as models to either embrace or (for dissident lesbians) to resist, women will never attain a centred and profound sense of themselves as women....
    "It was always the proper mission of feminism to attack and reconstruct the ossified social practices that had led to wide-ranging discrimination against women. But surely it was and is possible for a progressive reform movement to achieve that without stereotyping, belittling, or demonising men. History must be seen clearly and fairly: obstructive traditions arose not from men’s hatred or enslavement of women but from the natural division of labour that had developed over thousands of years during the agrarian period and that once immensely benefited and protected women, permitting them to remain at the hearth to care for helpless infants and children. Over the past century, it was labour-saving appliances, invented by men and spread by capitalism, that liberated women from daily drudgery."
~ Camille Paglia from her opening statement to the 2013 Toronto Debate: 'Be it Resolved: Men are Obsolete.'

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1 comment:

MarkT said...

Very accurate and perceptive. It's not just in the ivory tower of universities either. Look at the dominant portrayal of men as bumbling (albeit perhaps likable) fools in most popular sitcoms from the 80's onwards.