Judith Grossman, an attorney, couldn't see it coming.
I am a feminist. I have marched at the barricades, subscribed to Ms. magazine, and knocked on many a door in support of progressive candidates committed to women’s rights. Until a month ago, I would have expressed unqualified support for Title IX and for the Violence Against Women Act. But that was before my son, a senior at a small liberal-arts college in New England, was charged—by an ex-girlfriend—with alleged acts of “nonconsensual sex” that supposedly occurred during the course of their relationship a few years earlier.
What followed was a nightmare—a fall through Alice’s looking-glass into a world that I could not possibly have believed existed, least of all behind the ivy-covered walls thought to protect an ostensible dedication to enlightenment and intellectual betterment.
What this woman didn't understand was that by expressing female privilege she would castrate her son. Women are learning this as their sons are in a state of perpetual childhood, stuck in dependency, and a drain on the single mother's income. The realization that women have failed an entire generation is only beginning.
Martin Luther King Jr. said that no oppressor ever willingly surrenders their power over the oppressed. The oppressed must demand it, must take it. When women protested for their "liberation" there was no counter protest. The voice of the opposition was silent as men leapt to do their bidding. How could an oppressed group have little or no resistance?
Do we see the same thing with men's rights?
The personal is the political and now that women face the financial and romantic consequences of their actions they're beginning to understand that they do not exist in a vacuum. Their son's suicide, false rape charge, joblessness are the consequence. Their daughters's pregnancy, spinsterhood, and anxiety is a consequence. While the trumpets of feminist triumphalism have barely receded the consequence of their actions are no longer deniable. As a wise woman once said, "We can evade reality but we can't evade the consequences of reality."
Good insights.
ReplyDeleteWhat's going to happen to a lot of women (or is already happening) is that these women who had their one designer baby and then ran off with their divorce settlement and chillimony, are going to pay heavily by being treated the same if their one child is a boy.
I know one such woman, who when her only son was three, got her divorce and decided to run off with him over 1200kms from the child's father and extended family. The father's family begged and pleaded with her - they were well connected and well off, and offered to get her a good paying job and even help her afford a house if she would only stay close by so that the family could be involved in the child's life in a meaningful way.
Nope!
She would have none of it. In fact, she told the father that if he really loved his son, he could quit his $90,000/yr job and get a new job nearer to where she was going to relocate. (He didn't, of course - imputed income, anyone?)
Now this kid is getting to the puberty age (we'll see if not having a father is as of little importance as she thought when the kid was three) and in a few more years, she will likely become a grandmother herself.
Hmmm... I wonder if she will still spit and fume about how unfair it is that women can't do whatever the hell they want when ANOTHER woman divorces her only child, and runs clear across the country with her only grandchild(ren) and she is not permitted to be part of their lives in any meaningful way.
$100 says she will suddenly become an anti-feminist and screech about how "unfair" it all is.
What goes around comes around. This lesson has been with us since the beginning. "You get what you give."
I believe we've already hit peak feminism. I think the smarter, more daring women, have realized this and those will lead the exodus away from the hate. Hopefully, feminist will become an ugly word.
ReplyDelete