PrintMay 17, 2008
Twilight of the goddesses - The Ragnarok of Feminism
Feminism has been dying the death of a sick old woman. Shackled to the political party that opposed women's suffrage, just as blacks are manacled to the political party of the Ku Klux Klan, both captives levied en masse as foot soldiers to fight the political party of Susan B. Anthony and of Abraham Lincoln, the party of all the original feminists and all the original abolitionists, feminists, like civil rights straw bosses, long ago sold their political soul. So, when Hillary Clinton is pilloried by the radical Left, her protests of victimhood produce no feminist outrage, because feminists cannot afford to speak too loudly against their Leftist masters. They know their place.
Even when Hillary is treated with gross unfairness by the Left (and one must try hard to be unfair to Hillary Clinton!) the mice of feminism do not squeak: Their devotion is to those men who feed them smidgens of power; the really care little about women or ideals or fairness. They are aging, tired, weak, dull and sour. And they know their place.
Feminism was hijacked decades ago. Once it was connected to the Republican Party and those notions of individual merit, personal liberty and legal equality which that party championed. Then the Left and other totalitarian groups began to seize a once noble movement and transform it simply into another cog in the political machine.
It began almost a century ago. One of the leading feminists in Italy was Margherita Sarfatti. She was a Socialist who became a leading Fascist. She was also the editor of two major Fascist periodicals, the biographer of Mussolini, and his mistress of many years. What Sarfatti wanted was power and access to men with power. Feminism was a fulcrum to help her get near power and glamour.
In America, one of the most celebrated feminists was Betty Friedan. Not only was she a communist, but she was a Stalinist-style communist. From September 1939 until June 1941, Friedan opposed America helping Britain fight the Nazis. She did not do this passively, but aggressively, traveling with eight other Stalinist feminists from Smith College to Washington to protest Lend-Lease, being opposed by morally serious people right up to May 1941 for being a tool of the Nazis, until, at last, Hitler invaded Russia -- then she flip-flopped. Friedan, like Sarfatti, simply used the sloganeering of feminism to connect herself to totalitarian movements that promised her attention and power.
How ill has the sick old woman of feminism become? Around the world today, Moslems perform horrific "female circumcision" on young girls, imprison women for the "crime" of having been raped, men murder daughters and sisters in "honor killings," and crowds stone women to death for alleged "adultery." Where are the squawking feminists while these monstrosities are being performed? These sick, tired old ladies are sitting silently in their cages, afraid that their squawking might help President Bush -- a much greater crime to their owners than the very real, very savage treatment of millions of women. These women know their place.
Why, precisely, do these chattel slaves of Leftism feel obliged to hate Bush? He opposes abortion (just like Susan B. Anthony did) , but is preventing a doctor from murdering a mother's unborn child the clearest or greatest crime against women (even for those people who assume abortion helps women)? What else has President Bush done to offend these feminists? That is about it. All the remaining feminist complaints about President Bush are, upon closer examination, simply parroting Leftism, not feminism, and have little, if anything, specific to do with women.
Women who actually cared about women would care about how particular men treated women. President Bush adores his wife. There has not been even a hint of any marital misconduct on his part. He and Laura have protected and loved their twin daughters. President Bush also deeply reveres his mother. His whole life bespeaks respect and admiration for women.
What about Bill Clinton? He was a serial adulterer. He used his power and position to molest and terrorize women. The evidence is strong, perhaps overwhelming, that Clinton brutally raped a woman. Even his consensual adultery involved a young intern whose welfare feminists pretend to value.
Hillary, the feminist champion, not only endured these indignities, but used her own very public humiliation as a vehicle to snatch a Senate seat and then to make a run for the White House. The precedent both these horrid people made has pulled any effort to protect women from sexual degradation much harder. Both are, if anything, anti-feminists.
But they larded out goodies to feminist bureaucrats. They have made speeches exalting "feminists" like Anita Hill (who, like Hillary, testified that she silently endured her concocted sexual harassment, despite being a civil rights attorney, so that her career would not suffer - what honor!)
The façade of modern feminism is dying -- in the defense of the indefensible Bill Clinton, in dead silence when confronted with genuine crimes against women by enemies of America, in the demand that Hillary step aside so that a junior senator with no experience can win the White House for Democrats.
The real moral battles of feminism were won long ago. Women have had the vote for almost a century. Women had been admitted to advanced professions for just as long. Most of the wealth in America is owned by women. Most voters in America are women. Feminism really has no moral purpose any more. But it does have the purposes that attracted Sarfatti, Freidan and Hillary. As a ladies' auxiliary of different incarnations of totalitarianism, rotten modern feminism can earn raw power, and raw power alone drives the engines of feminism.
Even the ladies' auxiliary club of the Totalitarian Movement inevitably must yield ground to men. In the bitter, rough and amoral struggle for raw power, women simply cannot compete with men (that is a compliment to real women, not an insult.) Hitler was propelled into power largely by gaining the women's vote in Germany. Mussolini made feminist visitors to Italy swoon when he talked about his support for women's suffrage and the importance of women in Fascism. Stalin had lots of movements and propaganda supporting women's rights in Russia.
Yet none of Hitler's power partners were women. Sarfatti ultimately left Fascist Italy in 1938 and Fascist support for feminism was forgotten. None of the members of the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party were female. When brute force -- state or party power -- reigns, then women will also be second class citizens.
It is the Twilight of the goddesses today. The world is staggering toward totalitarianism, and that certainly includes the Leftists in free democracies who hate the freedom and hate the democracy which prevents them from grasping raw power. Hillary was never going to become the master of America. Feminism is a cruel joke played on women. It is no more "pro-women" than the Nazi Party was "pro-German" or the Ku Klux Klan was "pro-white people." Just as the Wagnerian catastrophe of Nazi produced a horrible Ragnarok for the German people, so feminism is producing a needless savaging of women.
