Today’s Young Feminists
Their blinkered view of sex with men as
no more than drunken, brief, rough,
debatably agreed on and unpleasurable.
If young feminists have a genuine beef with the
dating culture that they’ve inherited from their
boomer and Gen-X mothers, the combination of false
assumptions, rage, and self-delusion they bring
to their complaints promises more sorrow to come.
Neither their falling-out with Second Wave
Feminists nor their catalog of bad dates has
made a dent in the feminist certainty that
male-female differences in sexual behavior
can be chalked up to toxic social messaging.
They assume that if we dismantle the patriarchy
– whatever that means – men and women will stroll
arm in arm back to the garden of Eden.
There they’ll find affection, mutuality, and
orgasms with any stranger whom they find tempting,
just as the original sexual revolution promised.
The counter-revolutionary feminism is utopian and deeply
naive about the tangled knot of human motivation.
They’re no less credulous about their own motives.
“Women are so strongly socialized to put others’ comfort
ahead of our own that even when we are furiously
uncomfortable, it feels paralyzing to assert ourselves,
Women have been taught, by every cultural force
imaginable, that we must be ‘nice’ and ‘quiet’
and ‘polite’, that we must protect others’
feelings before our own. That we are there
for others’ pleasure.”
This is nonsense. The patriarchal culture provides young
women a media diet of “bad-ass” females, from Mulan to
Lara Croft, from Buffy to Sara Connor of The Terminator.
There’s not a nice and quiet one in the bunch.
Educators, marketers, and parents paid daily homage
to “girl power,” and over the past months of #MeToo
revelations, young women have wielded it aggressively.
A few quotes: “Every single man to be put on notice
and feel vulnerable,” just the way women do.”
“Was I worried about the possibility of a man being
falsely accused? Not in the least.”
“It’s unfortunate, sure, that men who may have
sent women ‘creepy text messages got lumped in
with a bunch of (alleged!) rapists, but I really
can’t muster the energy to care. It’s good to
make men feel fear.”
Powerless women suffering at the hands of dominant,
abusive males: the description may be apt for
Weinstein’s and Lauer’s episodes, but applied more
generally to contemporary sexual relations, it’s a fairy tale.
In press reports, #MeToo heroines frequently project
themselves as fragile innocents.
NPR honcho Michael Oreskes forcibly kissed a young
woman looking for a job when he was working at
the New York Times. She wasn’t just angry at this
objectionable encounter; she was devastated.
“He utterly destroyed my ambition,” she said about the
two-decade-old incident.
The woman who accused Al Franken of “grabbing
a handful of flesh” around her waist during
a photo op was similarly ravaged.
“Al Franken’s familiarity shrunk me.
It’s like I was no longer a person.
We spend our whole lives afraid,”
This is sheer demagoguery. Its main purpose is
to evoke pity for women and rage at men.
Inflammatory exaggeration and self-dramatization
are not the only reasons to doubt that the young
women’s reformation will succeed.
The movement lacks a realistic appraisal of our
fallen nature—both male and female.
Women will always be gatekeepers; the biological
mechanics of sex and the facts of reproduction demand it.
So does the reality of female choosiness.
As Nora Ephron once said, musing about her
ex-husband, a lot of men “would have sex
with a Venetian blind.”
Essentially, American culture is puritanical. Feminism
is no exception, despite its so-called counter-culture.
All it’s managed to do is pave over puritanism
with egoism. Now America is full of self-absorbed
sexually dysfunctional man-hating women who only
know how to relate to emasculated lap-dog boys
with man-buns, earrings, and skinny jeans.
Then they escape from their frustration by
retreating into the collective narcissism
and pseudo-empowerment of social media
solidarity movements like #metoo.