Lena Dunham and the Politics of Vagina

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“If you’ve ever watched Girls or have been aware of the things Lena Dunham says, you’d see a portrait of narcissism and entitlement. …
“It is the idea that the women on the show are entitled to men wanting them. Despite any flaw — whether it be physical, emotional, or a lack of accomplishments — they are owed a relationship with a man. Based on this premise, any poor behavior or lack of interest in their appearance cannot be the cause of why he didn’t call back.”
— Amy Otto, Nov. 12

“Why is it that every single issue of Cosmo has a ‘how to masturbate’ article or a ‘how to have better orgasms’ article or some variation thereof? And why are these magazines in racks at the supermarket checkout line, so that the minute your kids learn to read, they’re confronted with cover-blurb headlines like ‘Super Sex Secrets to Drive Him Wild’? …
“If you’re not happy with your sex life, you’re not going to find the answer in Cosmo.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, June 28

More than a century ago, Karl Marx’s colleague Friedrich Engels first used the term “false consciousness,” a concept that was developed by later Marxist-Leninist thinkers to explain why the proletariat failed to respond to communist calls for violent revolution. Workers who did not share the Marxist sense of class struggle — who did not share the radical agenda of overthrowing the bourgeois state, abolishing religion and the market economy — were said to be in the throes of false consciousness. Opponents of Marxist revolution, it was said, were deficient in knowledge of the historical processes of material development, and therefore influenced by “myths,” including the belief that they might improve their condition under the existing industrial capitalist system.

What does this have to do with Lena Dunham’s vagina? Everything.

Dunham’s show is a sort of propaganda for postmodern feminism, and Amy Otto critically examines the tenets of this ideology:

So since the central conceit of feminism (that one is owed a man’s attention) cannot be questioned — yet results in women being quite incapable of sustaining a relationship — we must pretend that obtaining said relationship is no longer important. We wouldn’t want to dispute the tenets of feminism:

  • He should love you and put up with any behavior you throw at him.  Its “quirky” and not deranged that you question him about everything he feels at every moment.
  • You don’t have to be particularly accomplished or worthy of his time. Being a woman is enough. You go, girl!
  • You are as beautiful as a supermodel no matter who you are — and men who dare to seek out a woman of similar or slightly higher attractiveness are craven idiots. You deserve a man as handsome as you would like him to be.
  • If it’s something that females experience, everyone else should pay for it too.
  • Corporations purposely pursue “sexist” strategies to exclude 50% of the market. Society is so inherently sexist that profit comes after the deliberate exclusion of women.

I say all these things as someone who was fed this nonsense by our culture and who partially bought into it for years — years of being single I might add.

You should read the whole thing, because her point is that beliefs about sex and relationships — beliefs influenced by popular culture, including Cosmo magazine and TV shows like Lena Dunham’s Girls — have a meaningful impact on politics. This is why free-market advocates are mistaken if they think they can win the War of Ideas strictly by making libertarian arguments for economic freedom, while ignoring the so-called “social issues” that are involved in the Culture War.

Yes, there are pro-choice lesbians who embrace economic liberty, but when you start examining electoral demographics and opinion polling, you find a strong correlation between the bourgeois lifestyle (marriage, religion, property) and the bourgeois belief system. Anyone who has examined exit polls understands that the “gender gap” could more accurately be called the “marriage gap” or the “religion gap”; disadvantages for Republicans among women voters are mainly a function of whether women are married and attend church regularly.

In 2012, 53% of married women voted for Romney, whereas 67% of unmarried women voted for Obama. While the published exit poll data did not correlate gender and church attendance, we do know that those who attend religious services weekly (whether male or female) voted 59% for Romney, whereas those who never attend church voted 62% for Obama. Those who believe that abortion should always be legal voted 76% for Obama; those who believe abortion should always be illegal vote 79% for Romney.

‘Giddy, Sex-Starved and Desperate’

There are some who look at data like that and draw the incorrect inference: “Social issues are hurting Republicans! The party is too beholden to the Religious Right!” But ask yourself this: Do the irreligious, the unmarried and the pro-abortion voters otherwise support the Republican agenda? Or, as I believe could be demonstrated — if sufficiently detailed data were available — is it the case that support for economic freedom is strongly associated with the bourgeois values represented by poll data on marriage and church attendance?

And don’t you think Democrats know this?

Annica Benning says this controversial ad for ObamaCare “portray[s] women as giddy, sex-starved and desperate”:

Amy Runyon-Harms, executive director of ProgressNow Colorado, defended them, saying: “People get upset when you portray women as independent.”
That is interesting — independence can now be defined based on sexual promiscuity?
In fact, the underlying message is not independence, as government-funded birth control doesn’t convey any form of personal independence, certainly not financially.

But that’s just it, see? Democrats want women to be “independent” from men — i.e., unmarried — so that they will then be dependent on government. And if these allegedly “independent” women are “giddy, sex-starved and desperate,” they’ll eventually need a scapegoat to blame for their miserable loneliness: Blame the oppressive patriarchy! Blame “corporate America”! Blame Republicans!

Defining “independence . . . based on sexual promiscuity” not only undermines marriage, but it also (a) results in women being infected with diseases, for which they require medical treatment, (b) creates demand for legalized abortion, and (c) fosters unwed motherhood, with more children growing up in poverty. The propaganda of Lena Dunham thereby helps grow the Democrat Party coalition.

And what about basic Judeo-Christian bourgeois morality, which Engels derided as “false consciousness”? It’s not just about sex, you know. The strongest possible condemnation of the liberal Welfare State can be summarized in four words: Thou shalt not steal.

It is fundamentally wrong to demand that government give you “free stuff” you have not earned, paid for by the taxes of people who work hard for their money. Amy Otto notices the “narcissism and entitlement” in Girls, which we might also call simple selfishness.

An irresponsible, self-centered attitude — Veruca Salt demanding, “I want it now” — is really what contemporary feminism is all about. Disassemble the ideological infrastructure, get past all the elaborate pseudo-intellectual rhetoric, and feminism is about the avoidance of responsibility: “Bad things happen to me because . . . sexism!”

It’s like the lazy young hippie punk with no skills who nevertheless refuses to take a “dead end job” at a fast-food restaurant because he’s not about cooperating with The Capitalist System, man.

‘A Culture of Complete Anarchy’

The same bourgeois morality that discourages sexual promiscuity also encourages hard work, thrift and honesty. Values matter, and the values upon which the American republic was founded were not the values celebrated by Lena Dunham’s Girls.

If America is to endure, to find the strength of will necessary to recover from the disastrous policies of the Obama administration, it will need a faith powerful enough to inspire courage. Pastor Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle has a few words:

Rather than moral absolutes governing what’s right or wrong, Driscoll said that there’s a general view that people should be true to themselves — that they should essentially stand by their feelings and desires.
“We’ve shifted from a worldview where there is a God who makes laws, and they apply to you, to whether or not there is a God it does not matter — ‘I don’t recognize any laws external to me. The only thing that guides me is my own internal convictions,’” he said. “Authority has shifted from external to internal, from God to me. And what you end up with is not a discussion of morality but a defense of personality. And that’s the world we live in.”
Driscoll believes that there is “a culture of complete anarchy in the name of tolerance and diversity.”
“One in four women sexual assaulted, one in six men, people that are sexually addicted, sexually assaulted, sexually abused, rampant debt, broken families, suicidal,” he told TheBlaze. “The number one category of prescription medication is antidepressants. Somebody’s gotta stand up and say, ‘This ain’t working — we gotta try something else.’”

If we are heading toward “a culture of complete anarchy,” why? Because we have rejected “a God who makes law,” so that the law is whatever we want it to be, including a law that compels insurance companies to let you stay on your parents’ policy until you’re 26, including a law that compels pro-life Christians to pay taxes used to fund abortion and contraception for irresponsible women who don’t want to pay for the consequences of their degenerate lifestyle.

The Politics of Vagina — the “narcissism and entitlement” celebrated in Lena Dunham’s Girls — is defended by feminists for the same reason ProgressNow Colorado promotes “independence . . . based on sexual promiscuity.” Democrats know who votes for them and why, and they know that “a culture of complete anarchy,” without morality or religion, will yield more votes for Democrats.

Of course, this culture will also destroy America as we know it, but destroying America as we know it is what Democrats are all about.




 

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!

 

 


241 comments

  1. I know one woman who is owed a man’s attention (and so do you McCain) and I’d better be giving it to her if I know what’s good for me.

  9. Melanie of the Victory Girls on the lovely Miss Dunham:

    What impressed me about both Honey Boo Boo and Hannah (the character Lena plays in “Girls”) is that both shows attempt to entertain via vulgarity. If we define “vulgarity” as the lack of good manners or taste, both shows have an abundance of it. The vulgarity might be in language (both shows), excessive references to bodily noises (Honey Boo Boo) and bathroom activities (Honey Boo Boo – with humor – and Girls –without the humor), trivializing important issues (Girls) or glorifying excess body weight (both shows). Yes, everyone burps and farts and goes to the bathroom. Few people have a model’s body. Does that mean we want to see and hear about the noises and body fat on a TV show? (Well, okay, since both shows have a dedicated following, the answer for many is obviously “yes.”)

    In one “Girls” scene, one of the characters is sitting on the toilet – bare butt and all. Another character is standing there talking to her – handing her toilet paper. As they chat, a guy friend walks in, they talk some and then he leaves again. The scene is contrived to send the message that all really cool 20-somethings have no issues with sharing their poos with friends. The sex scenes are contrived to be boring because really cool 20-somethings have so much sex that it’s no big deal.

    What I take away from Miss Dunham’s show is that the with-it, totally cool hipster life isn’t quite as great as they want us ti think. The wonderful, sophisticated life that the young adults think ought to be theirs is a life of completely bourgeois living, even if they think they shun the values of the bourgeois: a life of owning your own home — or, for the hipsters, that great apartment in Manhattan — but that means a life in which you don’t have to have a (non-romantic) roommate to make the rent, and a life in which your monetary worries concern whether you can afford a particular luxury, and not whether you can put food on the table. The hipsters are owed, owed! that great, professional job, at the top salary, because they worked hard for that degree in Theater Arts or Women’s Studies, without any concept of the notion that the great professional salary accrues to those who actually produce something, those who actually have to work for a living.

    And, for people like Miss Dunham, it’s all a façade anyway: she does have to work for a living, and she does have to be conscious that she produces something that people will want to watch, because, if she doesn’t, she’ll be just one more poor fat girl. If she weren’t talented in the way that she is, and hadn’t hit on a salable show idea, she’s be just another one of her intellectual peers: the unemployed Occupods.

    Miss Dunham’s show is, in fact, the Occupods in (semi) real life: some (not all) having jobs, but not the jobs that they want, and not the jobs that pay for the lifestyles of the people they desperately both want to be and not want to be, their parents.

  10. I think the contrast between Miss Dunham and the now-much-copied ad is hilarious: Miss Dunham and the hipsters believe, as you have said, that they just plain deserve attention, but if you look at “Susie,” the girl in the ad, you are looking at a size 3 (maybe) model, in her skinny jeans and peep-toe heels, who we all expect to be able to bed “Nate.” Mrs Bloggerlady’s Lena Dunham Rule 5 shows us the reality of life and sexiness of women a lot more common than “Susie.”

    The ugly truth is that feminism, as it developed, has been a disaster for women. As a friend of mine has put it, the Sexual Revolution is over, and men won. We’ve gone from burn your bra feminism — something I wholly appreciated when I was in college — to one in which women marry much later, and wind up having to compete ruthlessly with other women, so they’ve been forced into stilettos as everyday shoes, wonderbras, thong panties — which I also appreciate — and, as our host has written about previously, the need to shave their genitals, just to keep up with the next girl in the stilettos, wonderbra and shaved nether region. Somehow, the obvious lesson of the past, that men still paid attention to and wanted women before they even started shaving their legs, has all been lost.

  12. What I take away from Miss Dunham’s show is that the with-it, totally
    cool hipster life isn’t quite as great as they want us ti think.
    ===========
    Well noted. It’s like these are young people too stupid and too vapid to take on real, serious issues afflicting the world, so they become more and more blasé, bourgeois, and promiscuous. Becoming increasingly slutty and sleazy about sex is the only barrier they toying with transgressing, being incapable of any change in a more mature sense.

  14. If it has not already begun, you will shortly be accused, I predict, of a recently invented thought-crime called “slut shaming.” Nobody, you see, is permitted to have an opinion about anybody else’s behavior. That would be “mean.”

  16. This Girls show makes me nauseous – it’s so trashy.

    My lastest Internet incursion against the Sleazy Generation was here:

    http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/10/02/sexism-alive-and-well-in-teenage-generation-z

    An article against “slut-shaming.” Even though I agree with some of the points made by the author regarding related issues, what stood out to me the most is the strident tone of many of the young people commenting who think anyone judging or holding them accountable for anything is committing a crime against them.
    I don’t think there has ever been in the history of Civilization anything similar. That young people have wanted to rebel, that’s quite normal, but that they have wanted to rebel and think no one had any right in questioning what they were doing seems to be not the norm.

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