And here is where the whole business turns nasty. The souls of men --their ambitious, warlike, protective, possessive character-- must be dismantled in order to liberate women from their domination. Machismo --the polemical description of maleness or spiritedness, which was the central natural passion in men's souls in the psychology of the ancients, the passion of attachment and loyalty-- was the villain, the source of the difference between the sexes. The feminists were only completing the job done by Hobbes in his project of taming the harsh elements in the soul. With machismo discredited, the positive task is to make men caring, sensitive, even nurturing, to fit the restructured family. Thus once again men must be re-educated according to an abstract project. They must accept the "feminine elements" in their nature. A host of Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep types invade the schools, popular psychology, TV and the movies, making the project respectable. Men tend to undergo this re-education somewhat sullenly but studiously, in order to avoid the opprobrium of the sexist label and to keep peace with their wives and girlfriends. And it is indeed possible to soften men. But to make them "care" is another thing and the project must inevitably fail.
The Closing of the American Mind, p.129.
3 comments:
1. Maybe it isn't necessary to make men care because who needs men when we have the entire "global community" who care! There's a whole world of persons who care, and are simply waiting to be put in charge of stuff in order to have change that we can believe in seriously start happening.
2. Why do we hesitate to put the global community in charge? The only reason I can think of is that the global community tends to keep on being gullible -- for instance, believing in GWB's unprecedented lack of veracity, for instance on renditions and the whole WMD thing in Iraq in order to have a war to ensure that Iraq keeps on exporting oil. And before that, GHWB's sanctions on Iraq that resulted in the deaths of far more Iraqis than the son's war on Iraq did.
3. I think the answer is Jungian analytic psychology to convince the global community that there's a shadow" that always follows goodness and tries to harm the world process. This reality requires the global community to be suspicious of conservatives. Only by instituting a programme that totally consistently dominates and prevents evil can the global community be worthy of having world dominion. Good ideals and motives aren't enough. They must also be "wise as serpents" to keep on top of evil and confine conservatives to a techno mountain of hate as in the movie Buckaroo Bansai.
4. The picture, though, reminds me of one of my least favourite tendencies in the gender I'm oriented to, namely (white) womengirls' erotic unsuspiciousness vis-a-vis the groovy guy who proves how good he is by criticizing capitalism, sexism, racism, uncaringness etc.
I read somewhere it's a trope meme of English and French Romanticism that womengirls are better than men and thus men's desire for womengirls can be exploited to morally improve men. Apparently, (despite Goethe's "the eternally feminine draws us onward [in improvement?]"), German and Russian romanticism deem'd womengirls worse than men.
Maybe womengirls aren't really deceived by the idealism and critical-theory jabber of such guys. Maybe they feel flatter'd in a crazy way that a guy will say critical thinking stuff in order to get laid and move on to the next girl.
True enough, a guy with a conscience for truthfulness and self-understanding will value these qualities in himself more than just doing or saying bogus whatever in order to get laid. Which is in a way insulting to womengirls: we aren't willing to say whatever for the sake of getting sex. ... I suppose our excuse is that we aren't handsome and groovy enough to get laid simply for saying critical theory, and so, faute de mieux we decide to make our statement in truthfulness and self-understanding.
Still, it makes civilization's task more difficult when womengirls will bestow their favours on groovy guys who endorse critical theory for the sake of those favours. ... An early 1970s feminist once placed a brilliant want ad for a commune: "Wanted: a groovy well-built chick to do the cleaning and cooking." Yet this sort of insight finds no purchase in the womangirl's psyche. Womengirls still find granting favours to groovy narcissistic civilization-despisers preferable to waking up to the reality principle. ... You queers don't know how easy you have it. ...
The dude in the picture, with the 'fro and the sign needs to be punched and punched hard. Many times. And by me, a five foot tall alpha female. I have a bigger set than he does.
It was the same thing twenty years ago when I was in college. The guys saying they were feminist (and listening to Sarah McLaughlin without irony) just so they could get laid.
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