Part One
It's a way of looking at things, anyway. Surely feminism is a good thing? A great thing, even? It has liberated untold numbers of women from slavery to the home, the kitchen, to husbands. Surely it is good that they can stand on an equal footing, be free to carve out their own lives. Unfortunately, I don't think it's actually quite like that.
Feminism has been, in the main, a recruitment drive for Empire, the status quo, the way things have been set up to be; for 'the Establishment', if we talk in slightly outmoded terms. Feminism has invited women, not to be free, independent, authentic, individual, but to become fully active members of the System. This is how it has panned out for the vast majority, at least.
The campaign has been remarkably successful. Now women can do everything that Empire approves, but which were once solely the province of men. They can have careers, make plenty of money, compete in the workplace, become bureaucrats and politicians, go out on a Friday night with their female buddies and vomit all over the High Street at 2 in the morning. It's a grand life.
I see very little liberation in the lives of many women I see. Some - especially the middle-aged ones - really are like slaves, a role they seem to perform happily in a 'this is the way to live' kind of way. Safe in the deception that they are independent, go-ahead modern females. The talk is of 'equality'; but equality in what? It is the equality to participate in a way of going about things which leaves a whole lot to be desired. Nothing new, nothing life-enhancing, nothing interesting in it at all.
This is the key. Hypothetically, I suppose, it could have been different. But nobody, man nor woman, asked females about the possibility of actually changing the way that things happen. The programme, the agenda, is fixed; the values, the aims, the aspirations remain unaltered. Women were invited to sign up to a predetermined blueprint, and they have (in the main) fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
Some feminist academics, in particular, look at the ills of society and point the finger: patriarchy. Patriarchy. Patriarchy is the cause of the evils of this world. From what I can make out, their agressively marketed 'solution' is almost the same, just dressed up in ever-so slightly different clothes. More rules, more regulations, more don'ts, in order to create a utopian world where all distinctions between men and women have been effectively eradicated, so that 'sexism' no longer exists because it is no longer possible. 'Patriarchy' as defined by such academics is replaced by state, corporate, academic, maternal/paternalism. The System rules OK, the System rules completely. This is the genderless nightmare, far beyond anything that Orwell could come up with.
Rarely has there been a culture whose mainstream has so excluded the feminine. The sacred feminine, the divine feminine, if I may so write without sounding too cliched. Take the political thread. Thatcher, Hillary, Merkel, Saint Teresa of Westminster, the Sturgeon, Christine Lagarde, the IMF woman. A more macho bunch of bruisers it is difficult to imagine. Should we be searching for the results of a century of 'equal rights for women' - this is it.
Part Two
The skeleton of what has become 'Part One' above was lying around in my in-tray for quite a while (yes, by the way, real in-tray, and hand-written on real, touchie-feelie A4 white paper). I don't aim to devote overmuch space on Pale Green Vortex to politics, parapolitics, underlying agendas and manipulations etc: there's an endless pit of that nonsense to uncover should one so wish, and there's a point beyond which it's not very good for the soul. Nevertheless, without those basic recognitions and understandings, we're a bit lost. It's like trying to climb a mountain by using only one leg.
It was during the run-up to the victory of the Trump that I considered doing something with this discarded draft after all. As a final desperate move to stop the Trump juggernaut, the sexist card was played. As if by magic, all manner of claim and accusation emerged about Donald Trump speaking and behaving in not very nice ways with various women. In the emerging world, until recently at least, the sexist card, along with the racist card, has indeed been the trump card. There is nothing more criminal than being branded a sexist or a racist. I used to tell a story to my wife about the Latin American culture from which she hails. It doesn't matter if you've killed a few people in the morning; so long as you turn up for lunch wearing a clean shirt and with a straight tie, that's all that matters. There is an equivalent in our western cultures, especially those based in protestantism. It doesn't matter what you did this morning - how many lies you told, how many people you deceived, how many innocents you conned - so long as you didn't say anything racist or sexist.
What interested me was how the 'Trump-is-an-unelectable-sexist' ploy failed. Those blinded by political correctness, those who believe their own publicity, may have found this puzzling. Disturbing, even. The thing about Trump is not so much the words that actually come out of his mouth; like many others, I shall cringe at some of his policy decisions. It's the subtexts, the unconscious messages, that do the business. In this case, the message went something like this: I am man, and that seems to mean something important, though I don't know what. You are woman, and this is important too. I am who I am; you are who you are. We are different. There are differences. This is OK. This is important.
The message comes through the distorted filters of Trump's power complexes, and arrives on the dinner plate in unedifying form. Yet, nevertheless, there it is. After decades of wave upon wave of tedious programming that we are all the same and should be treated as being the same (not, mark you, as not better or worse - just not different), along comes somebody who doesn't play that game. For this, the people of the U.S.A. gave mighty unconscious thanks.
Then there is the interesting and highly-publicised case in England of Nicola Thorp. She was sent home from her work for refusing to wear the high heels that the company stipulated she should wear. Result: outrage, righteous indignation, equality for women at work, blah blah blah. Now I, for one, would never wish for anybody to have to go through unnecessary pain or discomfort while at work for the sake of looking a bit sexy. It's a poor deal for women who have spent years with feet contorted by footwear at work, only to then be subject to painful bunions in later life as a result. At the same time, if I had gone to the trouble of starting my own business, I wouldn't want some other busybody telling me what my employees can and cannot wear at work. If I wish to stipulate that anyone working for me should wear baggy clown's trousers, purple bow tie, droopy false moustache, and an orange sombrero, that should be my business, and mine alone. Should I fail to get any decent recruits, then I may have to reconsider the situation.
So it should be. Most people setting up their own business nowadays are not actually setting up their own business at all. Their personal autonomy is negligible. They are setting up an arm of the State, of Big Brother's empire. The plethora of rules and regs makes their enterprise nothing more than an expression of a programme, an agenda, a predetermined system of values and ideology. This is how things work; conform or else is the motto. The details of that conformity are, in a sense, irrelevant. It's the presumption of superiority by those who insist that there are no superiors, that we are all 'equal' and the same, that really sucks. Mercifully, the ruse has been seen through, by some at least. The mask of feminism has been seen for what it is: a cover-up job for something else entirely.
Image: What lies behind the mask? Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
Fool, Dark Fairytale Tarot
