Feminism's
Devolution from Hoaxers to Whores
by
Kathleen Parker
©2005
"So
was the feminist movement some sort of cruel hoax? Do women
get less desirable as they get more successful?"
Columnist Maureen Dowd posed those questions in a recent
issue of New York Times Magazine in an essay adapted from
her forthcoming book: Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide.
Entertaining as usual, Dowd explored her premise that many
women end up unmarried and childless because they're
successful by reviewing women's evolution since her college
days, which happen to have coincided with my own. We both
came of age as women's lib was being midwifed into the
culture by a generation of women who felt enslaved by
homemaking and childbearing.
Now, in the span of a generation, all that business about
equality apparently isn't so appealing to a younger
generation of women, who are ever inventive as they seek old
ways to attract new men. Dowd writes:
"Today, women have gone back to hunting their quarry . . .
with elaborate schemes designed to allow the deluded
creatures (men) to think they are the hunters."
Dowd, herself unmarried and childless, wonders whether being
smart and successful explains her status. She observes that
men would rather marry women who are younger and more
malleable, i.e. less successful and perhaps not so very
bright.
No one vets the culture with a keener eye than Dowd. Her
identification of trends -- especially the perverse
evolution of liberated women from Birkenstock-wearing
intellectuals into pole-dancing sluts -- is dead on. But
while she sees women clearly as they search for identity in
a gender-shifting culture, she doesn't seem to know much
about men.
Men haven't turned away from smart, successful women because
they're smart and successful. More likely they've turned
away because the feminist movement that encouraged women to
be smart and successful also encouraged them to be hostile
and demeaning to men.
Whatever was wrong, men did it. During the past 30 years,
they've been variously characterized as male chauvinist
pigs, deadbeat dads or knuckle-dragging abusers who beat
their wives on Super Bowl Sunday. At the same time women
wanted men to be wage earners, they also wanted them to act
like girlfriends: to time their contractions, feed and
diaper the baby, and go antiquing.
And then, when whatshisname inevitably lapsed into guy-ness,
women wanted him to disappear. If children were involved,
women got custody and men got an invoice. The eradication of
men and fathers from children's lives has been feminism's
most despicable accomplishment. Half of all children will
sleep tonight in a home where their father does not live.
Did we really think men wouldn't mind?
Meanwhile, when we're not bashing men, we're diminishing
manhood. Look around at entertainment and other cultural
signposts and you see a feminized culture that prefers
sanitized men -- hairless, coiffed, buffed and, if possible,
gay. Men don't know whether to be "metrosexuals" getting
pedicures, or "groomzillas" obsessing about wedding favors,
or the latest, "ubersexuals" -- yes to the coif, no to
androgyny.
As far as I can tell, real men don't have a problem with
smart, successful women. But they do mind being castrated.
It's a guy thing. They do mind being told in so many ways
that they are superfluous.
Even now, the latest book to fuel the feminist flames of
male alienation is Peggy Drexler's lesbian guide to
guilt-free narcissism, Raising Boys Without Men. Is it
possible to raise boys without men? Sure. Is it right? You
may find your answer by imagining a male-authored book
titled: Raising Girls Without Women.
Returning to Dowd's original question, yes, the feminist
movement was a hoax inasmuch as it told only half the story.
As even feminist matriarch Betty Friedan eventually noted,
feminism failed to recognize that even smart, successful
women also want to be mothers. It's called Nature. Social
engineering can no more change that fact than mechanical
engineering can change the laws of physics.
Many of those women who declined to join the modern feminist
movement learned the rest of the story by becoming mothers
themselves and, in many cases, by raising boys who were born
innocent and undeserving of women's hostilities.
I would never insist that women have to have children to be
fully female. Some women aren't mother material -- and some
men don't deserve the children they sire. But something
vital and poignant happens when one's own interests become
secondary to the more compelling needs of children.
You grow up. In the process of sacrificing your infant-self
for the real baby, you stop obsessing and fixating on the
looking glass. Instead, you focus your energies on trying to
raise healthy boys and girls to become smart, successful men
and women.
In the jungle, one hopes, they will find each other.
Kathleen
Parker can be reached at kparker@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5202.
