I was chatting with a
feminist in the street the other day. How did I
know she was a feminist, you ask? Because she was
talking to me without the aid of a male, which
was obnoxious, totalitarian, a turn off, and
therefore lesbian behavior. Whenever one
encounters these man-less gals, the first
question that pops into ones head is "What
do you femlesgals want, for heaven’s
sake?" So I asked her, through my husband,
of course.
The feminist said, "We
want a world in which we are all liberated; where
we don’t obey orders in institutions we had
no part in creating; where we can walk freely
without fear; where marriage and motherhood
aren’t the sole reason for being; where we
are appreciated for who we are and what we do,
not how we look or how much we weigh,
where…"
I cut off her vague
ramblings, well, my husband did, since I
haven’t had an independent thought since
1955 when I was 12. "That’s the trouble
with you femlesgals, you don’t really know
what you want. So you ramble on irrationally,
trying to compensate for the fact that you
haven’t got a man." I grasped my
husbands arm, lest I fall over from the exertion
of this conversation, and to keep the feminist
from stealing my hubby.
"Don’t you know
that the feminist stranglehold on our nation is
over," I burbled. "How do I know this?
Because I read it (well, my husband read it,
reading being a bit much me) in the Wall
Street Journal. In an article titled
"Feminism Loses Support," Jo Anne
Randall reports that the High-Waisted Thigh
Trimmer by Nip, Tuck & Boost, advertised in
the Hanes Place mail order catalogue, is sold
out! This girdle encases a woman’s body from
rib cage to mid-thigh, promising tummy-tucking,
bun-hugging, thigh-trimming control, similar to
encasing a sausage." Jo Anne says this event
marks the end of feminism, just as the Berlin
Wall coming down marked the end of history. Of
course, the article was written in fun, because
the author was clearly a feminist, by dint of the
fact that she wrote a column for the WSJ,
but no matter.
"If a thigh trimmer is
sold out, then so is feminism, because feminism
was about letting it all hang, shake, sag, and
jiggle," I said to her through my husband,
since talking, standing, even breathing without
his aid while wearing the Thigh Trimmer, was
impossible.
The femlesgal started to
utter an independent (therefore bitchy) thought,
but I burbled on, "Thank goodness for the
Thigh Trimmer, because, in a few months, feminism
would have turned boys and men into the second
sex. In fact, it already has. How do I know?
Because read about it in the Boston Globe.
Clark University professor, Christina Hoff
Sommers, author of "Who Stole
Feminism?," is taking a two-year fellowship
at the conservative American Enterprise Institute
to write (among other things) a book about
American boys, a group she maintains is in danger
of becoming ‘the new second sex’ in
schools."
Our feminist pointed out
that the article said Sommers was moving her
husband, Fred, and 12-year-old son, David, to
Washington with her and wasn’t that a
feminist thing to do?
"No," I shrieked,
almost passing out with not having breathed
recently, due to the girdle. "I’m sure
there’s a man behind all her books, and that
her earnings are going into a trust fund for her
son. I’m sure soon she will give it up,
following her own teachings, and never be heard
from again. Besides," I twittered,
"she’s only echoing what Michael Gurian
says in The Wonder of Boys, a new book
about how the decline of traditional families,
shifting values, and the loss of positive male
role models has lured boys away from the
direction we hope they’ll grow. Gurian says
that in helping to right social wrongs against
girls and women we have created new myths in a
single party line of feminism: That men have
inherently more power on this earth than women;
that masculinity is responsible for the
world’s ills, and feminism for the
world’s salvation; that men are the only
dangerous ones; that males and females are only
different because they’re socialized to be
different. Also, boys are suffering because in
the last five thousand years, one book, Reviving
Ophelia, has claimed that gals are neglected
in schools, particular teen gals. This book has
caused a total neglect of boys and their
needs!"
I paused, or rather my
husband/interpreter paused, to rest my feeble
brain. Our feminist was about to utter an
independent thought again (i.e., a diatribe),
when I limped on. "Using the stories of
Pinocchio and Jack and the Beanstalk, plus tribal
rituals and warrior culture, combined with almost
no data whatsoever ,except conversations with a
few ‘patients,’ Gurian makes a
compelling, well-researched case for renewing our
commitment to boys. He says that boys are boys
because of their high testosterone which makes
them hit people and turn toys into guns. Which
makes their brains different: they turn on like a
machine, do a task, then turn off. Also males are
in competition with others males and their sperm
for the female’s egg. Males’ sperm
needs constant arousal and high testosterone. Not
enough testosterone, a boy will come out of the
womb looking like a girl. (I’m not making
this up, get the book.) We need to provide a way
for boys to compete, do combat, and perform so
they can feel worthy. War and sports help with
this. Also older male mentors (and their books),
like Gurian, uncles, shop teachers, ministers,
coaches, and extended families can help boys
become constructive in war and sports instead of
destructive in gangs."
Our feminist was getting
very angry now, i.e., her true castrating lesbian
nature was coming to the fore. But I didn’t
not want to listen to her politically correct
jargon about independence and liberation, i.e.,
dogmatic attempts to keep us from shopping for
oxygen-depriving under garments and makeup to
enhance our servant/sex objectness, items we feel
no pressure to buy, in spite of the constant
barrage of advertising, which is in no way
dogmatic or coercive or anti-gal in any way.
I stammered on,
"Gurian says that women are winners in
current income earnings and that the single
goal—equality in the workplace, which has
become an obsession of many feminists—is
only one of the important goals in a human
community. What we have not noticed is the danger
that change holds for men. Gurian says gals must
let boys alone so they can develop their tribal
culture, and so elder men can have a role in the
raising of boys, teaching them the art of
husbandry, where he can provide, protect, and
nurture those he is called on to love, among
other things."
"This book sounds a
lot like Robert Bly’s Iron John, said
our self-assured (therefore, obsessed) feminist.
"Don’t you think it strange that both
Bly and Gurian use, as models, stories from times
and cultures where women had few, if any, rights
whatsoever?"
"You see what not
having a man does to a gal?" I remarked.
"You are bitter, irrational, and hateful.
Plus you have lied to us all these years about
wanting independence. How do I know? I read about
it in the Boston Herald. An article by
Margery Egan tells us all about Kate
Roiphe’s article "The Myth of the
Independent Woman," published in a recent Esquire
magazine, clearly the right place for
objective thinking about gals. Says
Roiphe, ‘I was out to drinks with a man
I’d recently met. I’ll take care of
that, he said, sweeping up the check, and as he
said it, I felt a warm glow of security, as if
everything in my life was suddenly going to be
taken care of. And I really, really liked that
glow,’ admitted 28-year-old feminist author
Kate Roiphe. ‘I thought how nice it would be
to live in an era when men always took care of
women.’ And she pictured a lawyer with a
creamy leather briefcase going off to work, while
she remained at home working idly on her
dissertation, when she wasn’t ordering
flowers, fretting over the dinner menu, or
soaking in the bath in the townhouse he bought
for her."
My husband, who was telling
the feminist this on my behalf, stopped for a
moment. "What’s wrong, honey," I
simpered.
"I don’t know.
Suddenly, I saw myself soaking in a tub while you
took care of me in the townhouse you bought with
wages earned from writing a book trashing
feminism. And I liked it," said my husband.
"Honey, snap out of
it. Remember, Kate was 23 when she published The
Morning After about how what we commonly call
‘date rape’ is not rape at all but bad
sex that is regretted the day after."
My husband shook off the
tub soaking image, and let me lean on him again.
He continued, on my behalf, "Kate goes on to
say, ‘This fantasy is one that independent,
strong-minded women of the nineties are
distinctly not supposed to have, but I find
myself having it all the same. And many of the
women I know are having it also…Why
shouldn’t we find a man who will take care
of us the way our fathers did.?’ One Kate
Amara, a 25-year-old TV producer, seems to agree
that Kate is a voice of honesty in a sea of PC
feminist should-think. She actually admitted that
she wants a guy to pay. Plus, were she to be
hassled in the bar while her guy is paying, she
wouldn’t feel bad if her guy punched the
hassler in the nose. ‘You still want a guy
who’s bigger than you and puts his arm
around you and makes you feel, well, taken care
of.’"
Our feminist tried to point
out that, if this so-called feminist Roiphe was
so into being cared for, why was she publishing
books and earning a living. Also, why was Margery
Eagan writing a column about it in the Boston
Herald instead of being at home soaking in the
Calgon, bought with the $20 bucks she managed to
get off her hubby that morning before he headed
to work with the creamy briefcase?
My husband and I ignored
her, as we were seeing each other again with new,
romantic eyes; the thought of me soaking in a tub
bought by him, the thought of him caring for me
like a father was turning us both on. A recent ad
home furnishings in Architectural Digest, a
magazine I often leaf through (but never really
read, as that would be too feminist) came to my
dependent mind. In the ad, a leotard clad woman
functions as a combination coffee table, magazine
rack! I got so carried away, I assumed the coffee
table position. His breathing quickened. His ears
perked. He poured coffee. He put his feet up. He
pulled a copy of Esquire and read more
about "The Myth of the Independent
Woman." I wiped a little coffee spill of the
coffee table, which isn’t easy to do, when
you’re the coffee table.