Thursday, November 29, 2018

Yet more feminist regret

Dennis Prager had this call from a woman on his radio show:
I’m 50 years old with four college degrees. I was raised by a feminist mother with no father in the home. My mother told me get an education to the maximum level so that you can get out in the world, make a lot of money. And that’s the path I followed...

I want to tell women in their 20s: Do not follow the path that I followed. You are leading yourself to a life of loneliness. All of your friends will be getting married and having children, and you’re working to compete in the world, and what you’re doing is competing with men. Men don’t like competitors. Men want a partner. It took me until my late 40s to realize this.

...It’s hard to find a partner in your late 40s to date because you also start losing self-confidence about your looks, your body. It’s not the same as it was in your 20s. You try to do what you can to make your life fulfilling. I have cats and dogs. But it’s lonely when you see your friends having children, going on vacations, planning the lives of their children, and you don’t do anything at night but come home to your cats and dogs. I don’t want other women to do what I have done.

...I’m stuck now because I go to work every day. I smile like I love it, but it’s very painful to not plan a vacation with someone. It’s painful to not have a Thanksgiving dinner with someone. You sit home alone and you do nothing.

Somebody asked me the other day, ‘Why did you stay single and never have kids?’ There’s answers: Because I was brainwashed by my mother into this. But it’s hard and it’s shameful to tell people, ‘I don’t know. I ran out of time.'”There’s not a good answer for it except ‘I was programmed to get into the workforce, compete with men and make money.’ Supposedly, that would be a fulfilling life. But I was told that by a feminist mother who was divorced, who hated her husband—my father.

She tried to steer me on what she thought was the right path, but feminism is a lie.

I didn’t realize this until late in life. I want to tell women: Find someone in your 20s. That’s when you’re still very cute. That’s when you’re still amiable to working out problems with someone. It’s harder in your 50s, when you’ve lived alone, to compromise with someone, to have someone in your home and every little thing about them annoys you because you’re so used to being alone. It’s hard to undo that, so don’t do what I did. Find someone in your 20s.

The reactions I read toward this were interesting. There were women in their 30s who were especially upset with the idea that women should focus on finding someone when in their 20s.

I've come to understand this response as follows. Liberal modernity began with the ideal of "voluntarist choice" - of individual choice being "liberated" from tradition, authority, social norms and so on.

Patrick Deneen, in his book Why Liberalism Failed, argues that there was a second major aspect to this project, namely a different attitude to nature. Humans now stood outside of nature, and sought to gain mastery over it, in order to better realise wants and desires. The earlier liberals still thought of human nature as relatively fixed and aimed to manipulate the natural world, but later liberals took things a step further by seeing human nature itself as something that could be transformed.

The point is that those women who react so sharply to the idea that it is preferable to find someone when in your 20s are not just suffering from a lack of inborn prudence. They are the products of a 300 year old experiment, the point of which is to overcome natural limitations rather than to prudently work within them. A modernist mind recoils at the idea that aspects of reality, i.e. of the nature of things, might limit our choices. It therefore becomes "offensive" to assert that there is a season to things and that we cannot simply choose as we wish, when we wish.

It is assumed by some women that there are no natural limitations and that claims that they do exist are attempts to assert an unnatural and oppressive external control (the patriarchy).

A person who believes that there are no natural limitations will not be as concerned with making prudent choices. And if there are negative life outcomes, they are more likely to blame an oppressive restriction on their liberty by some malevolent force.

10 comments:

  1. It is assumed by some women that there are no natural limitations and that claims that they do exist are attempts to assert an unnatural and oppressive external control (the patriarchy).”

    You capture so which wisdom so concisely

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  2. It is sad experiment indeed. I am 50 now. I was also raised by a divorced and jaded mother. I can still hear her mantra ringing in my ears "never depend on a man". This went against every instinct of my core. I struggled through my twenties and early thirties trying to find contentment in the business world on a career path. It didn't feel natural and I thought it was because I was lacking skill or emotional maturity. Thankfully, my faith in God (which my parents lacked) and my fortitude saved me. Somehow, I listened to that little voice that encourage me to leave the hamster wheel and follow my gut. I wasn't married until age 36. Thankfully, I love my husband and have been blessed with two children. However, if I had been led without feminism, I would have married much sooner, had more children, and been much wiser earlier on. To think how much time and money was wasted spinning in that hamster wheel...all for nothing. Femininity is something to embrace, cherish, and nurture. I reluctantly admit, its been a challenge to rid myself of the competitive nature and lower the guard I built trying to be a "career woman". I am glad I see it now and will do everything I can to lead my daughters on a more deeply fulfilling path. Sadly, it is against most of what the world teaches.

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  3. At what point can this disastrous ideology be considered a crime? "Corruption of a minor" perhaps?

    I am torn over this. Because these types of girls are very distant and snotty early in life, desperate and clingy before they get too old, and then cold/angry spinsters later on. They deprived a man of a wife, and possibly of a position on a company. Men do indeed get the last laugh- but should we take it?

    I want to mock this woman, troll her, laugh at her and call attention to her plight; for entertainment purposes only. Simultaneously, I want to console her, rescue her, turn back time for her. If I could sacrifice my life to turn back time for her I would.

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    1. Anon, there are so many of these stories. I only draw attention to the occasional one - it would get too repetitive otherwise.

      I agree with you that there is damage not only to the woman herself but to others. And yet the responses on social media to the story were about 60% against her message. Many women thought it "offensive" to suggest that there might be any time frame for women to form a family, or that women were best placed in terms of attractiveness and fertility to form a family in their 20s.

      There is a major battle to be fought on this issue and it won't be an easy one to win. It's as if there are two "modes of being" for a woman. One is the "sexually liberated" one of "seeking alpha male sexually" which women think of as exciting and as avoiding having to settle. But it's disastrous for the individual woman and for society in the long run. Women who spend their formative years in this mode sometimes feel themselves "hitting the wall" and suddenly decide to seek a family man, but too often it's not sincere and once they have the children and the house they feel resentments toward their husband and divorce.

      The other mode is the one that was encouraged in pre-liberal Western societies, one that deliberately toned down female sexuality, so that it would fit within both the rewards and the duties of family life. Hence, some emphasis on modesty, on a humble outlook, on temperance and frugality, on service, on respect.

      In other words, a society has to make a choice. I don't think you can have "expressive individualism" combined with sexual liberation combined with "grand passionate romanticism" and still have successful family formation and low divorce rates.

      It's especially difficult for women. I do think men can have passionate romantic feelings for women and still loyally love just one woman, his wife, over the course of a lifetime. But men need to understand that it doesn't easily work this way for women. So if you switch on the female mode of being, you're less likely to have a successful culture of marriage. The emotional intimacy men seek is more likely to be found when the "big love" ideal is toned down, to better fit how women process relationships.

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    2. I am the "Anonymous" from 2/12/28

      Great comment sir. There is much to digest in what you've stated. Sadly, I don't think we'll win this battle, at least not without the cost being much too high. If the sanity you've described is to be restored; it will likely be imposed- they will not learn, not en masse at least. As far as 'settling' is concerned, the average guy is more than good enough for most women. Having the woman in his life can cause him to 'rise to the occasion' and be the supposed 'alpha' that she is seeking. She doesn't want to do any work however.



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  4. I'm seeing another verion of this with a different framework but the same result. It's the happy couple in their thirties who don't want kids because the expense and effort involved in having kids will stop their current party and travel lifestyle. And what happens? The happy couple get past child bearing age, tastes change, the male finds a new partner of child bearing age and the female is left without the true love, childless and often rewriting history. Blaming the male for talking her into this idea of not having kids because they were going to party forvever. It's so gaspingly stupid, just the idea that the party will go forever let alone ignoring the delights of having children that when I hear it I sometimes can't help myself. The idea is not to be intrusive but I've found myself begging these people to reconsider having children. It's kind of unbearable to watch if you're close to them.

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    1. I know a couple like that, they recently divorced though.

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