Posted on 12/10/2019 6:12:25 AM PST by karpov
There are a handful of dictums in the modern feminist discourse that are so omnipresent, so incontrovertible, so apparently obvious, that, whenever they are pronounced, the only appropriate reaction is enthusiastic head-bobbing. Or, if you prefer, solemn brow-knitting. Like two plus two equals four, these dictums are axioms, not to be discussed, let alone contested.
Challenge them, however, and you’ll see how easily they fall apart. For example, consider the adage “What will we tell our daughters?” Each time I hear this phrase, I remember Emmeline Grangerford from Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Miss Grangerford spent her short life writing funereal poetry and died of disappointment, aged fifteen, after failing to compose a satisfactory eulogy for a deceased neighbour called Whistler because she couldn’t find a word to rhyme with his name. What will we tell our daughters? Why not tell them the same thing we will tell our sons, our friends and colleagues, our Thursday night poker group—and that should be whatever is the fairest and most honest analysis of the situation. What else is there to tell? To imply that our daughters require a special dispensation because they are too fragile to handle reality is very Emmeline Grangerford indeed.
Another apparently undeniable tenet is “We need a female perspective.” Editors use this to justify the publication of dull women writers. But there is no such thing as a female perspective. Or a male perspective, for that matter. Our perspective is based on our individual experience and is therefore fundamentally subjective. Two years ago, a Sunday paper asked me to write an article about being a woman in the City. Tell us how you were harassed and discriminated, the editor instructed, and how hard it was to work among men.
(Excerpt) Read more at quillette.com ...
Strange that Madame Curie and Amelia Earhart didn’t need role models decades ago. Why are today’s girls so helpless? They aren’t, but thousands of feminist activists and authors make their living by repeating this myth.
The concept of a female role model to help girls become good wives and mothers would be abhorrent to the feminists today.
What they want are female role models so that girls can grow up and be men.
Well stated and much more eloquently than I could have done.
I sometimes help host an all girls aviation seminar.
It’s easier to point out the bad female role models, like Hillary, the Sex and the City gang, Gloria Steinem, etc.
How about Big Mike? Saw her ugly face on Today program this am.
I don’t know about Marie Curie, but I’d bet that Amelia Earhart would never have done the things she did if there had been other women doing the same things.
For a lot of people, achieving things has a lot less to do with having a particular role model and a lot more to do with overcoming limitations other people put on you. Tell me I can’t and I’ll find a way to prove you wrong!
The only time I was truly worried about what to tell my children (daughters or son) was when millions of women across the country took to the streets wearing pink p***y hats.
Girls and even grown women need feminine role models, not just female role models. The modern Western woman has lost all her charm.
America abounds with great women and great female role models. She always has. It’s just that the intellectual and moral mediocrities who champion the decadence of Western Civilization are incapable of recognizing them.
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