Keep Right – Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
Feminism destroys more women’s lives than any imagined patriarchy. Its marriage to the broader left has caused it to espouse mutually exclusive stances that are undermining the lives of those women foolish enough to give feminists credence.
Of course, the reader may fairly wonder what right I, a 58-year-old cisgendered, straight, white (well,… Hispanic), conservative, Christian man has to comment on the self-appointed saviors of the fairer sex. Oh, and I am bald, bearded, and fat, too. I can hear Greta Thunberg demand, how dare I! Precisely who do I think I am?!
Who do I have to be? Women are human beings, and share the human condition with the rest of us. For political gain, our common humanity is consistently denigrated by those who push identity politics like a narcotic.
While women are distinct from men and children physically, psychologically, emotionally, and functionally, they do not have a distinct society all their own. University Women’s Studies departments notwithstanding, there is no women’s history that can be studied in isolation from human history. Unless mythic Amazons are to be the focus of study, women are a part of human culture and civilization and can only be rightly studied in this broader context.
Like all leftists, college and university feminists turn what is straightforward and universal into something contorted and exclusive. Instead of seeing women as individuals capable of charting their own destiny, feminists grind incessantly at a Marxist narrative of male oppressors and their female victims.
Such assertions are rooted in febrile emotionalism rather than in objective reason. The details are tediously predictable, possessing no nuance and requiring no thoughtful evaluation.
Men and patriarchy are bad. Women have been victims for far too long. Now is the time for the sisterhood to rise up. The future is female.
How tiresome. Simply replace women with the ethnic minority of your choice, or with the workers of the world. Replace men with European colonizers or with entrepreneurs. This is nothing but the same sad song of Communism.
Like every other form of identity politics, Feminism empowers activists, and not the people that they claim to serve. Proclaiming that they sympathize with the disenfranchised, these would-be saviors want to lead the dispossessed to victory over their oppressors.
Its cost is measured in broken lives, shattered hopes, fragmented families, and needless pain. Like all forms of identity politics, feminism is a scheme to strip individuals of their agency.
Feminists claim that a vast patriarchal conspiracy has doomed females to the bondage of serving men and children. This call to envy demands that every proud female should seize control of her life and chart her own course as a strong, independent woman.
In the feminist dream, this new woman seeks fulfillment as a competitor, achiever, and leader. Liberated from the regressive gender stereotypes of submissive femininity, she will beat men at their own game. Thousands of generations of unfulfilled females will be redeemed as women take their rightful place above the knuckle-dragging, hairy-scary men.
For the past half-century, increasing numbers of women have accepted this outlook and have employed it to pursue ambitious personal careers and widespread progressive social change.
At what cost? An ever-increasing proportion of illegitimate births, single-parent homes, endlessly deferred marriages, and perpetually delayed pregnancies have produced intensifying miseries for lonely men, fatherless children, and for women themselves.
For many modern women, mindless careerism has not been a fit substitute for a loving husband, children, grandchildren, and a rich home life. Women now share with men high rates of premature death by stress-related illnesses.
There is a value in the biological imperatives and globally traditional social norms that have shaped human existence for both genders. It has always been a lie that men have previously had a significantly better life than have women. Globally, most men, both past and present, live lives under oppression.
Our ongoing struggle to improve the universal human condition has virtues which are lost when one embraces narrow zero-sum-gain identity politics. Only in the evolving liberty of Western civilization have women, along with every other formerly disenfranchised group, come closer to having opportunities for wide-ranging fulfillment. Feminists, if women ever needed you they do not anymore.
