Having lead with an apology, I’ll follow with a correction.
Previously, I wrote: “woman is not a chair.”
This isn’t strictly true.
Woman is a chair. Or, in the very least, woman is very much like a chair.
But before I get into that, I have to say something else:
Feminism is a paper straw.
And to illustrate that, I need to tell you a story:
Once upon a time, there was a country called The United States of America.
It declared independence from its paternal regime by thundering like a sanctimonious teenager with a social media account whose first post goes viral:
“We👏hold👏these👏truths👏to👏be👏self👏evident👏! That👏all👏men👏are👏created👏equal👏!”
This young upstart got its independence. And a few decades later it descended into civil war—a civil war ostensively about the independence of its constituent states in relation to one another, and the federal government that stood over them. A key component of this conflict concerned the institution of slavery, which stood in direct contradiction to that viral “all👏men👏are👏created👏equal👏!” post.
This institution of slavery was largely based on race, with some ethnic components at play. After the dust settled, slavery was abolished—and so began in earnest a perennial problem the United States had already been grappling with:
How to get a multiracial (née multi-ethnic) society to go down smoothly?
If all men are created equal, shouldn’t they be treated equally? Shouldn’t they treat one another equally? And how is this to happen smoothly, with the minimal amount of inter-group strife?
The solution struck upon was Segregation. Segregation was a paper straw: tasked at getting the multiracial society to go down smoothly, it worked somewhat, but was unreliable, prone to falling apart, dirtying the drink and generally unpleasant on the mouth—for some more than others, of course.
Decades passed, and that original post—“all👏men👏are👏created👏equal👏!”—went viral all over again, nagging the United States to fulfill its once proudly professed ideal. This Segregation thing was sort of fine, in theory, but in practice it gave rise to more friction and less equality than was wanted. There had to be a better way.
The innovation to Segregation, conceived in a flash of brilliance, was Colorblindness. Colorblindness was a plastic straw: it was synthetic, but stable, and it didn’t break down as soon as it got wet. By ignoring melanin quotient and focusing on character content, it was supposed, the multiracial society might proceed toward a more perfect union.
Again, decades passed. And that damn viral post kept nipping at America’s heels. If “all👏men👏are👏created👏equal👏!” why had fifty years of focusing on character content not resulted in outcome equality? Why were some races lagging, while others maintained their higher ground?
And furthermore, that plastic straw of Colorblindness—sure, it wasn’t as flimsy as Segregation, but it could still be bent to preserve these disparities—of resources, status, representation, you name it.
There had to be a better way. Some very smart people came up with a more better straw. It was called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and it would address the differences and disparities directly, by making all citizens of The United States keenly aware of past harms, present wrongs, and future goods.
But the thing is, in practice, Equity was another paper straw. It even seems to have been designed to be worse than what it replaced. Like you were supposed to be uncomfortable when using it. Like I t was supposed to interrupt the process of getting a multiracial society to go down smoothly. By making the drink, so to speak, taste like paper and red-tape and thousands of pages of academic jargon. The selling point seemed to be that all this worseness was for the best, because it revealed the reality of the multiracial society.
To recap:
Segregation sucked at sucking
Colorblindness sucked—but not at sucking
Equity sucked at sucking while claiming that sucking at sucking is actually a good thing
An aside: the plastic straw bans implemented throughout Progressive-leaning precincts trace their origin to a 9 year old boy’s environmental campaign, which isn’t built upon the soundest data. Read about it here.
Now, before tackling how feminism is a paper straw, I’d like to get into how woman is a chair.
Here, I reach the limits of language, so I must rely on image:
I could meditate on these two works of art for hours; years; ever. In my heart of hearts, it feels like an insult to call them “works of art”—but that’s another essay.
These two works speak to me directly—pervasively, immediately. They pull me into a state of preverbal awe. The profundity of my love for Mary derives from the profundity of her love for the babe she bore and the man she mourned. The amount of sheer acceptance Woman has for the life she aides into existence, and the death she is powerless to prevent, evokes in me a deep sense of gratitude and humiliates my proud, self-serving heart.
In confessing this, I am revealing a bias, or at least a deeply felt conviction that is religious in nature and hierarchical in principal. Were I to organize all iconography that stirs me, and divide it by sex, at the top of my personal pantheon of women would be the mother. Motherhood, then, is to me the highest ideal of woman.
This informs my antagonism toward the paper straw that feminism invariably becomes, perfectly encapsulated in this statement from our second Catholic president:
Now, feminism—like the women it claims to represent—is not a monolith. If feminism was magically personified, and you met her at a community mixer, her name tag would read “Legion.” As such, there are many paper straws that I could point to, but for now I’ll focus on this one in particular.
The above is an instance of neoliberal feminism. Meaning, the feminism tasked with liberating women from private duty and allowing them to partake in the public market.
I have less than zero qualms with women participating in the open market—be that the market of ideas, or business, or politics. My umbrage is roused and targeted at that paper straw of “caregiving.”
In the President’s statement, “care” is something that restrains women. It is something she merely “has to” do. What any self-respecting woman wants to do, according to the neoliberal framework, is to be free to work. How is she thus freed? She hires a caregiver. The private, dutiful act of tending her old and young relations—those who are unable to partake of work—is offshored to professionals who possess expertise far exceeding any woman’s mere natural, familial relation to those she cares for.
Not only does this solution suck—the woman out of the home and taxes out of the woman—but it sucks at sucking. The wasteful bureaucracy wins, the impersonal economy wins, while the natural relation of woman to life and life to woman is lost.
What then is the plastic straw?
And might there be a single plastic straw that bests all or most of the paper straws the feminisms have to offer?
I believe there is—but I can’t promise it’ll be easy to swallow.
Good men are and always have been the plastic straw feminism has tried and failed to innovate on.
In the case of the paper straw of caregiving, a good man will support the woman and share in the work of care.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen that any woman who loves men, and takes the time and effort to cultivate the good in them, is not long for feminism.
To extrapolate constructively: all feminisms that don’t concern themselves with cultivating the goodness in men will only lead to the paper straws of intrusive government and divisive politic and cultural frenzies that—in their rush to free men and women from having to rely on one another, to cultivate the good in one another, to find through the other a natural relation to life—plunge generations into deconstructive frenzies of endless liberation and libertinism.
Some feminisms might have the cultivation of the good in men within their purview, but too many describe men as oppressors, aggressors, tools of “the patriarchy”, in need of shaming and gelding and restraining or manipulating in order to gain power over and through.
This is not the way.
As the Apostle Paul wrote: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”
I will end with this: “If I speak of the relation of sexes and genders, but overlook out love, I describe only resounding gongs and clanging cymbals.”
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Very very thoughtful Benjamin - keep this up and I might even have to subscribe!
These are excellent Benjamin. It's so hard to describe gender meaningful when everything offered is either Gender Ideology or Gender Criticism. I'd been wondering whether anyone would be attempting this in these conversations.
Sometimes it seems like the best of them just reluctantly acknowledge that men and women are different for practical reasons. But it's incredibly refreshing seeing men and women honor each other in their differences, wanting to see the best brought out of each other - which is hard when the very suggestion that motherhood is the ideal of woman comes across as offensive or reductive.
Thinking of fatherhood--whether literally or in spirit--points the way for much of my delayed maturity, the ideal for me as a man.
I didn't know what you're describing would be called gender positivism. I'd probably say I'm that!