The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Could It Be Any More Obvious?’

Posted on | September 30, 2014 | 87 Comments

“I don’t know why people are so reluctant to say they’re feminists. Maybe some women just don’t care. But how could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word? . . . Feminism always gets associated with being a radical movement — good. It should be. A lot of what the radical feminists [in the 1970s] were saying, I don’t disagree with it.”
Ellen Page, interview with the Guardian, July 3, 2013

“I’m here today because I am gay.”
Ellen Page, Feb. 14, 2014

She was right. It could not be more obvious if it were stated as a declarative sentence: “Feminism is a journey to lesbianism.”

Still, we must not ignore the chicken-and-the-egg question: Which came first, Ms. Page’s lesbianism or her feminism? We don’t know, although when a gay gossip blogger “outed” Ms. Page in 2011, I defended her right to privacy (“‘Outing’ Ellen Page: The Politicization of Sex and the Sexualization of Politics”). The feminist maxim that “the personal is political” has always seemed to me a formula for divisiveness, to say nothing of its explicit invalidation of any idea of social good that transcends narrow self-interest. In feminism, extreme individualism becomes a justification for collectivism, whereby the personal grievances of any woman are transmogrified into political demands delivered as an ultimatum on behalf of all women.

The fact that a majority of women reject feminism, per se, has been claimed by feminists as proof that most women are too stupid to know what feminism actually is. However, when the convergence of feminist theory with lesbian practice is demonstrable — “Could it be any more obvious?” — we must presume that women comfortable with their own lives are fit to judge their own interests, and reject feminism rationally. Under a limited government that protects the liberty of individuals under the Rule of Law, we have no political need of any theory to explain Ms. Page’s homosexuality. Feminism says otherwise.

“The radical feminist argument is that men have forced women into heterosexuality in order to exploit them, and that lesbians, in rejecting male definitions of sexuality, are undermining the patriarchy. . . .
“Lesbianism is . . . fundamentally a challenge to patriarchal definitions of women.”

Celia Kitzinger, The Social Construction of Lesbianism (1987)

Some have claimed lesbians are “born that way,” a claim rejected by radical feminists who insist that their lesbianism is a deliberate political act of resistance to male sexual oppression. Some feminist psychologists, notably Lisa Diamond, argue that women’s sexuality is flexible and adaptable, so that shifts in female orientation — straight to lesbian or lesbian to straight, or the endless indecision of “bisexuality” — are not surprising. Yet radical feminists, including psychologists like Professor Celia Kitzinger and Professor Dee Graham, insist that women who “choose” heterosexuality can never do so freely, because heterosexual women are either brainwashed into it or coerced by what Professor Graham called male “sexual terror.”

What would be the reaction of a happily heterosexual woman upon being told that her normal attraction to men is a mental pathology akin to post-traumatic stress disorder? We don’t know, because Professor Graham’s theory has never been subjected to the widespread public ridicule it deserves. Yet when an unhinged feminist blogger declared that normal sexual intercourse “is always rape,” it was Professor Graham’s theory which informed her claim. How many other unhappy women have talked themselves into lesbianism with the assistance of feminist theory?

“Sex, love and romance seem like natural events — instinctive, unlearned, and universal. For example, think about a kiss. Perfectly natural, right? . . . Yet in many cultures, kissing is unknown. . . .
“Strange as it may seem, sex, like kissing, is not a natural act. In other words, sexuality is not something that can be understood in purely biological terms. Instead, it is a social construct.”

Mary Crawford and Rhoda Unger, Women and Gender: A Feminist Psychology, Fourth Edition (2004)

The etiology of Ellen Page’s lesbian preference (or of any other woman’s preference) presents itself as a subject for political debate only because feminists insist the personal is the political. Radical feminism demands that lesbians must come out of the closet, because a woman’s purely private preferences cannot be useful in the political struggle against male oppression. Having made this young woman’s intimate life a public spectacle, however, feminists insist that no theorizing about Ellen Page’s sexuality is acceptable unless it conforms to feminist doctrine. So it is unacceptable to describe lesbianism as a problem. No one can be permitted to explain homosexuality as a socially harmful maladaptive response in the context of developmental psychology. If Ellen Page had sought therapy to help her understand her same-sex attraction and to attempt to learn coping strategies that would make it possible for her to live a normal (which is to say, heterosexual) adult life, the Southern Poverty Law Center might sue the therapist. It is now evidently a hate crime to say that gay people can live straight lives.

FACT: 97.7% of American women are heterosexual.
They outnumber lesbian/bisexual women (2.3%)
more than 40-to-1. Why do feminists believe
it is wrong to call heterosexuality “normal”
or to say what is normal is also natural?

A free society can tolerate disagreement, but feminism is implacably hostile to freedom. Feminist pioneer Simone de Beauvoir once made this clear, after Betty Friedan remarked that women should have the choice to stay home and raise their children. “No,” replied Beauvoir, “we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”

Beauvoir said this in 1975, and you might think that her declaration of feminism’s totalitarian aspirations — seeking the power to abolish the traditional family by decree — would be more widely known. Yet if that 1975 quote is taught in any Introduction to Women’s Studies course, it has escaped my notice. The fact that Women’s Studies textbooks are edited by lesbians has not escaped my notice, but this potentially significant correlation is not generally acknowledged by college administrators. One suspects that American University’s proficiency at indoctrinating “raging lesbian feminists” isn’t something they advertise to the parents of prospective students. Honesty is perhaps not the best policy if your business model involves charging parents $20,000 a year to fill their children’s heads full of radical ideology.

Yet we return to the chicken-and-egg question of Ellen Page: Which came first, lesbian sexuality or feminist ideology? You think about this when you see lesbian feminist Carmen Rios describe herself as someone who “failed at being normal.” This is the sort of frank admission I truly appreciate; feminists are rarely so honest. Did Ms. Rios earnestly try to find happiness in heterosexuality before she became a Women’s Studies major? Has she ever tried, outside the framework of feminist theory, to explain her failure to become normal? It is vain to ask for such an explanation; feminism has long since become the only framework within which anyone talks about female sexuality. Even the defenders of “traditional family values” often speak the rhetoric of feminism, however unwittingly. You’re more likely to find a college student fluent in ancient Greek or Latin than to find one who can discuss sex in a way that doesn’t conform to feminist ideology. To speak of romantic love between men and women nowadays requires us to learn a lost language.

Thanks to the tip-jar hitters, today I ordered from Amazon ($98.24) five more books about radical feminism, including Theorizing Sexuality, a recent academic textbook by two British feminist professors, plus Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality, Volume 1, An Introduction, which is essential to understanding Judith Butler’s theory of gender. My intention to dismantle Professor Butler’s theory presents a challenge that is both daunting and mystifying.

On the one hand, it is daunting in the way that any multi-thousand word writing project is always daunting. My career as a journalist required me to orient myself to cranking out daily bylines in a hurry, not spending several days on one massive treatise. However, what is mystifying about the challenge of dismantling Professor Butler is that no one has ever debunked Gender Trouble before, as the key to doing so seems to me so obvious. Three key sources — Foucault, Monique Wittig and Gayle Rubin — form the intellectual crux of the theory that Professor Butler turned into a 200-page bestseller.

Each of these sources is flawed and biased and, except as a sort of special pleading for the social and political acceptance of homosexuality, Gender Trouble cannot be viewed as a useful contribution to the understanding of “gender” (sex roles) or human sexuality. Certainly, Professor Butler’s Big Idea about the performativity of gender is an intriguing concept, but it is really only a restatement (in gay-friendly terms) of what any careful student of developmental psychology has always known. To be a man or woman, to take on the adult duties and responsibilities of manhood and womanhood — especially as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers — requires young people to psychologically adjust themselves to those roles. Conversely, if one wishes to avoid these adult roles, to find a justification for not marrying or becoming a parent, then your psychological need must find an argument to rationalize your unwillingness or inability to perform those socially necessary duties. And this is what Gender Trouble really is, a psychological defense mechanism (rationalized self-justification) dressed up in intellectual theory.

Because the fundamental problems of Professor Butler’s theory seem so glaringly obvious to me, and because Gender Trouble is one of the most influential texts of the past 25 years, I am mystified that no Ph.D. — a psychologist, biologist or anthropologist — has undertaken the task of dismantling her argument. To say that “gender is a social construct” (as Professor Butler’s insight is usually phrased) is really no different than saying “sex roles are socially necessary.” That is to say, if we wish men and women to form stable families through marriage, to procreate and care for their young, then boys and girls must learn the behaviors and attitudes necessary to success in this work. Adulthood requires us to escape the egocentric selfishness of childhood. We cannot be successful adults if we are unwilling to suppress infantile narcissism and do what is good for others (for society), and the responsibilities of adulthood — marriage and parenthood — are certainly incompatible with reckless sexual hedonism. Because the social good conflicts with our immature selfishness (the imperious “I-want-it-now” demands of our inner Veruca Salt), then what society requires of boys and girls in their growth to becoming men and women can be said to be “socially constructed.” However, it is an error to say that, because the duties of adulthood limit our egocentrism, society is wrong and our ego is right.

Once upon a time, people sought psychological counseling to help them cope with the demands of adulthood. Nowadays, the hopelessly maladjusted enroll in Women’s Studies courses, where professors teach women they are unhappy because they are oppressed.

As a substitute for therapy, perhaps feminism is useful. As politics, it’s divisive. As a basis for public policy, it’s insane. Believing you’re a victim of heteronormative patriarchy — “gender roles,” “the male gaze,” etc. — may help unhappy women feel better about themselves. Yet their sense of entitled victimhood leads them to denounce the rest of us as haters for not joining their feminist pity party, and these denunciations require a response. What we say in response is likely to hurt their feelings.

My response? Baby, I get paid to bring the pain.

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!





 

 

Comments

87 Responses to “‘Could It Be Any More Obvious?’”

  1. Wombat_socho
    September 30th, 2014 @ 8:30 pm

    Camille Paglia ripped a lot of these feminists up one side and down the other for being poor scholars and worse writers in both her essay collections, Sex, Art, and American Culture and Vamps and Tramps. One particularly great line: “Today’s feminists seem intent on proving the old slander that women can neither think nor write.”

  2. robertstacymccain
    September 30th, 2014 @ 8:36 pm

    As a matter of fact, Camille Paglia this week ripped the “He for She” campaign. I meant to work that into this post, but it didn’t fit the flow.

  3. M. Thompson
    September 30th, 2014 @ 8:37 pm

    My guess on why there’s been no attempt at a debunking: to do so would require treating it as a Serious Matter, and a waste of time. Sadly, the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

  4. CrustyB
    September 30th, 2014 @ 8:45 pm

    When she was stumping for “Inception” Ellen Page was asked who she would “incept” in real life.

    “Sarah Palin,” she said. She would “incept her with holistic compassion.”

    Yes, I’m sure the mother of five, including a Down Syndrome child that 50% of women would have murdered, needs a “holistic compassion inception” from a vapid, 20 year old dyke.

  5. RS
    September 30th, 2014 @ 8:55 pm

    No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.

    No where is the enforcement of de Beauvoir’s view more pronounced than in the modern academy. Any female professor, especially in the humanities, who has the audacity to try to rear children can kiss her career “goodbye.” Child-rearing is deemed to be a betrayal of feminist ideals. The private sector is excoriated if women are treated differently following an absence to rear children; In academe, such disparate treatment is the norm. Indeed, it is a virtue.

  6. Adobe_Walls
    September 30th, 2014 @ 9:19 pm

    “To say that “gender is a social construct” (as Professor Butler’s insight is usually phrased) is really no different than saying “sex roles are socially necessary.”
    Absolutely brilliant and concise and to the point. One of your best.

  7. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    September 30th, 2014 @ 9:20 pm

    I love Camille Paglia…oh wait, does that make me a feminist!

  8. robertstacymccain
    September 30th, 2014 @ 9:31 pm

    Thanks. To say that “roles” are required by “society” is not to say that we are oppressed. President of the United States is a “role,” and investment banker is also a “role.”

    Wife and mother are “roles”; (a) these roles are extremely valuable to a functional society; and (b) only women can fulfill those roles. Are women oppressed by the social incentives to marriage and motherhood? Or is it the case — as seems evident — that the women who complain most about “gender” (by which they mean sex roles) are not exactly the most ideal candidates for these roles? When Judith Butler was a young woman, were fellows queuing up on their knees, branding diamond solitaire rings and begging for her hand in marriage? I think not.

    Feminism is one vast sour-grapes rationalization, and the attack on “gender” is just one aspect of that phenomenon.

  9. Zohydro
    September 30th, 2014 @ 9:34 pm
  10. Zohydro
    September 30th, 2014 @ 9:37 pm
  11. Adobe_Walls
    September 30th, 2014 @ 10:08 pm

    Sour grapes make sour whine.

  12. Isa
    September 30th, 2014 @ 10:13 pm

    this might just be me being crazy, but i’m not fully convinced that Ellen Page is gay. there’s still this lingering thought that this whole thing is a publicity stunt to keep people talking about her.

  13. ChandlersGhost
    September 30th, 2014 @ 10:18 pm

    Here’s a place to start with Judith Butler.

    http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm

  14. ChandlersGhost
    September 30th, 2014 @ 10:24 pm

    Surely you aren’t suggesting that a young actress has succumbed to a hipster fad that’s at least 20 years old.

  15. trangbang68
    September 30th, 2014 @ 10:45 pm

    Who be this Ellen Page?

  16. Daniel Freeman
    September 30th, 2014 @ 11:13 pm

    Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.

    You have to appreciate people who say what they mean.

  17. Isa
    September 30th, 2014 @ 11:20 pm

    i’m just saying, celebrities have done weirder things to keep themselves in the public eye. this… “conversion” just doesn’t seem genuine to me.

  18. Dan
    September 30th, 2014 @ 11:47 pm

    Don’t be silly. She even has that “look”. I always knew she was queer, and it was only a matter of time before she came out. And ironically being gay is not a big help for an acting career, especially for a woman.

  19. Isa
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:05 am

    i doubt that. Hollywood’s had a real hard-on for LGBT recently. “coming out” could be an easy way to keep from getting fired or dropped from a production, as well as getting praise from sympathizers.

    do you remember the hazing The St. Louis Rams got from the media when they cut an openly gay rookie for reasons unrelated to his orientation?

  20. Adobe_Walls
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:11 am

    Yeah but the Rams player was a first of his kind breakthrough actual and pretend lesbians in Hollywood are ubiquitous.

  21. Dan
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:13 am

    Uh, no. The irony is that regardless of whether or not the Hollywood community embraces the LGBT community, gay actors are bad for business, especially in mainstream films. Why do you think to this very day actors are still in the closet? You don’t think a leading man type has his career seriously impacted by being a well known homosexual? It pretty much destroys their chances of being romantic leads a opposite females. Seen Ellen Page play a heterosexual romantic lead since she came out? Remember she was Juno, too.

  22. Dan
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:16 am

    It’s a well known secret that John Travolta is a homosexual, and to this day leads a heterosexual life with a wife, and always deny’s his orientation. He’s not the only one either.

  23. Dan
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:18 am

    Sports are not the same as being an actor where you are paid to sell a fantasy.

  24. Isa
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:26 am

    well, if it’s that well know, then it’s not much of a secret, is it? 😛

  25. Isa
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:28 am

    the differences are irrelevant to the point i was trying to make.

    anyways, as i said, it could be just me being needlessly paranoid about celebrities. i could be wrong about this whole thing.

  26. Isa
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:29 am

    Neil Patrick Harris seems to be doing fine.

  27. DeadMessenger
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:35 am

    I certainly do. And had I been there, I would have said, “Shut your pie hole, crazy woman; nobody cares what you think”, thereby saying what I mean.

  28. K-Bob
    October 1st, 2014 @ 1:44 am

    if by :”in the closet” you mean, “hey, why mess up a great publicity-getter?” then sure.

    Those accusations keep some folks in the celebrity news. All they have to do is not go around denying them, and wa-laa, thirty column inches per year, at least, for free.

    Far more are riding that GBLT-train to success in Hollywood, Disney Corp, and politics.

  29. K-Bob
    October 1st, 2014 @ 1:47 am

    Who as evewyone wemembows, was de chief bad guy in Wawrd of dee wings

  30. Phil_McG
    October 1st, 2014 @ 6:18 am

    I agree that she has a lesbian vibe. I wasn’t shocked when she sprang out of the closet.

    Being a famous lesbian is probably not going to help her get leading roles in movies, but her career already peaked with Juno (2007). I don’t think she’s been the lead actress in a commercially successful film since.

    Her problem is that she’s no longer young and cute enough to play a snarky teenager, and she’s not sexy enough to win the sort of parts Jennifer Lawrence and Scarlett Johansson get offered.

    So she’s Janeane Garofalo 2.0 – she’ll probably do well in supporting roles such as being the sarcastic friend in romcoms or the sardonic sidekick in comedies. But nobody’s going to pay money to see a film on the strength of it having Ellen Page in it.

  31. McGehee
    October 1st, 2014 @ 6:36 am

    I can’t help but respect her, and I’ve tended to find it hard not to like those I respect.

  32. RS
    October 1st, 2014 @ 8:37 am

    What the hell just happened here????!!!!!????

  33. AlamoCityPundit
    October 1st, 2014 @ 9:04 am
  34. Eric Ashley
    October 1st, 2014 @ 11:28 am

    A good chunk of Leftism’s mental furniture is ‘The Fix Is In’ stuff, and once you say that there will be real competition, they get very offended.

  35. Dan
    October 1st, 2014 @ 11:30 am

    But they do deny them.

  36. Matt_SE
    October 1st, 2014 @ 11:31 am

    How long before we find out that Ms. Page suffered some form of trauma in her past? Maybe a sexual assault perpetrated by a woman, like in the case of Vanessa Williams:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nikki-gloudeman/vanessa-williams-sheds-li_b_5597721.html

    (sorry about the link to HuffPo)

  37. Dan
    October 1st, 2014 @ 11:32 am

    Neil Patrick Harris is not a leading man, and the subject of female fantasy. does NPH play the hero in many films?

  38. Dan
    October 1st, 2014 @ 11:34 am

    Again, of homosexuality was so celebrated, and accepted within Hollywood their would be no reason to deny, or have rumors. They would just be out.

  39. Art Deco
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:05 pm

    Agreed. It’s atypical for lesbianism to be unadulterated, and she is young and moderately handsome. Another time, another place…

  40. Art Deco
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:05 pm

    No, it’s well known Travolta is married with children. The rest is tabloid fodder.

  41. Art Deco
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:13 pm

    I do not recall celebrities making a public point of lesbianism prior to Ellen deGeneres’ stunts in 1997, and deGeneres was a comedienne, not someone who’d be considered for dramatic parts in a romantic or domestic role. Rosie O’Donnell is another comedienne (and fat loutette).

  42. Art Deco
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:14 pm

    He was an ordinary comedic actor who’s characters did have a romantic or tomcat aspect.

  43. Andy Fox
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:17 pm

    “They outnumber lesbian/bisexual women (2.3%)
    more than 40-to-1. Why do feminists believe
    it is wrong to call heterosexuality ‘normal'”

    Homosexuality is aberrant, no matter what worldview is applied. Under an a-theistic worldview, homosexuality does not propagate the species, and thus is a failed and aberrant path.

    Under a religious worldview, it violates explicit prohibitions, at least under the big 3 religions, unless there is willful ignorance imposed upon the texts.

  44. Finrod Felagund
    October 1st, 2014 @ 12:33 pm

    He’s making a Sauron/sour-on joke.

  45. Adobe_Walls
    October 1st, 2014 @ 1:50 pm
  46. Bob Belvedere
    October 1st, 2014 @ 2:33 pm

    Part of the problem is with the understanding of the meaning of the word ‘role’.

    Too many in this modern age think the word only means ‘acting’, ‘pretending’. This is one of the meanings of the word, but certainly not the main, root one, which is what you mean.

    This is another example of the decline of Right Reason in The West. For the majority of people, their knowledge is now a mile-wide, but only an inch or two deep.

  47. RS
    October 1st, 2014 @ 3:03 pm

    I got it. I was amused and gave him an up vote, if only for the effort deployed to get to a deplorable pun. Such things must be acknowledged in this life. Dare I say, K-Bob’s contribution to this thread in that comment is more significant to Humanity than Judith Butler’s entire academic oeuvre.

  48. K-Bob
    October 1st, 2014 @ 3:51 pm

    Occasionally, sure. But really, when people in the media insist on claiming Palin said she “could see Russia from my house” it’s clear that denials are pointless, and make the accused look weak.

    So no, they issued a few denials, and they ignore the accusations. If they really were ticked off about it, they’d sue the pants off of gossip rags that keep floating the claim.

  49. K-Bob
    October 1st, 2014 @ 3:52 pm

    That’s like saying “If highways were really for cars, people would drive on them.”

    Your premise is so bizarre that whatever you follow it up with makes zero sense.

  50. K-Bob
    October 1st, 2014 @ 4:01 pm

    I’m thinking we need a “Talk Like Fudd” day.