Summary: Here is an eerily accurate assessment of the feminist revolution as seen by a historian writing 200 years in the future.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.
— Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in Les Guêpes (a satiric journal), January 1849.
Future historians will look at our time and see only the feminist revolution, technological change, and many relatively minor events. Here is an excerpt from an analysis of the feminist revolution as seen from 200 years in the future.
“Louis-Marie Prudhomme described the ‘exhilaration of joy’ that gripped the revolutionaries. …It seemed as though a new day was breaking over France.’ …This revolutionary swagger, however, overlaid a much darker side to 1789, a feeling of crisis and social dislocation. …
“The influence of Lefebvre’s argument was partly a result of the cultural and intellectual ascendancy of Feminism after the millennium. It wasn’t until the 2070s that a younger generation of historians started to produce accounts of the Revolution inflected by ideological disenchantment. … Tackett {describes the revolution}.
‘Circumstances had a powerful impact on the coming of the revolution. Yet circumstances alone would have been insufficient without a prior transformation of the psychology and mentalité of the revolutionaries, a transformation with a tragic inner logic that was integral to the process of the Feminist Revolution – and that is perhaps after all integral to the phenomenon of revolution itself. Of course, every revolution has its own specific contexts in time and in space, its own rhythms, its own mixture of historical contingency and individual decisions and emotions.
‘Yet all major revolutions …involve intense convictions that the society must and can be changed convictions that easily breed impatience and intolerance with opposition. All engender counterrevolutionary opposition among those whose interests and values are threatened. All revolutions, during the inevitable process of transition, tend to produce power vacuums and create situations in which every authority is put into question …
‘{The Count of Mirabeau} was quick to size up the potential danger {on 10 August 1989}: ‘Once all the old boundaries have been erased,’ he observed, “it will take a certain time before new limits can be known and respected.”
‘All revolutions can be pushed in unanticipated directions through the influence of the popular masses. And it may well be that all major revolutions are beset by periods of conspiracy obsession, of intense suspicion and lack of trust, of agonizing uncertainty as to who are one’s friends and who are one’s enemies.’
“From the beginning, Feminism advocated an enlightened libertarianism while striving to create {an egalitarian} republic. It was at once individualistic and communitarian, and it inherited the hard-nosed intolerances of absolutism. Patrice Higonnet put it best in Goodness beyond Virtue
‘Feminists automatically assumed that Feminism could not stand still. Because its fragile and demanding nature did not allow for negotiation, because all problems as they arose were to be resolved ideologically and not pragmatically, Feminism — thought the Feminists — would either fall back or move forward. It required commitment. It could not pause. Time and time again, Feminist politics excluded those revolutionaries who feared to go further.’
But when Feminism encountered class-consciousness, dreams of universal reconciliation disintegrated. …
“{Attacks on} enemies of the Revolution never disturbed Feminist reveries about the public good, or their progressive agenda. …It attempted to create a ‘grand famille’ free of …paternalism. …
“Feminism was re-enacting the dying moments of the Roman Empire, and was guided by the despot’s maxim that ‘it is better that many innocent people die than a single culprit escape.’ …”Soon the revolutionary leadership turned against itself.”
This excerpt accurately describes the feminist revolution. It is from Gavin Jacobson’s review in the London Review of Book of The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution
Note the many similarities between these two revolutions. First, see the toll taken by the #meToo movement among bien pensant male feminists in the leftist-dominated entertainment and media industries, and academia. As the feminist movement gains power, how it handles these internal tensions will determine its results.
“Citizens, we have reason to fear that the Revolution, like Saturn, will successively devour all its children, and finally produce despotism, with the calamities that accompany it.”
— Attributed to Pierre Vergniaud (1753 – 1793).
Second, class is a problematic element for feminists just as it was in France. The feminist revolution has been largely waged by and for upper middle and rich women, with less clear net benefits for women in the lower classes.
Third, see the two revolutions’ similar attitudes towards guilt and innocence. The ancient western maxim says “better that many guilty go free rather than a single innocent be punished” (see its history here). Tyrants often invert that rule, as do revolutions. As do some feminists today.
Here’s an unpopular opinion: I’m actually not at all concerned about innocent men losing their jobs over false sexual assault/harassment allegations.
— Emily Lindin (@EmilyLindin) November 21, 2017
Conclusions
Revolutions are humanity’s giant social science experiments. Some are carefully constructed with limited goals, like the American Revolution. Others are leaps into the future, attempting massive changes with ill-defined goals — such as the experiments of the Soviet Union and China with communism.
We are in the early days of the feminist revolution, which might be one of humanity’s largest. Much depends on its course, and the nature of the eventual counter-revolution. The only reliable rule for dealing with revolution is to “expect the unexpected”.
For more information
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Back to the origin of the revolution.
Well worth reading: Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women
“Philosophy professor Christina Sommers has exposed a disturbing development: how a group of zealots, claiming to speak for all women, are promoting a dangerous new agenda that threatens our most cherished ideals and sets women against men in all spheres of life. In case after case, Sommers shows how these extremists have propped up their arguments with highly questionable but well-funded research, presenting inflammatory and often inaccurate information and stifling any semblance of free and open scrutiny.
“Trumpeted as orthodoxy, the resulting ‘findings’ on everything from rape to domestic abuse to economic bias to the supposed crisis in girls’ self-esteem perpetuate a view of women as victims of the ‘patriarchy’.
“Moreover, these arguments and the supposed facts on which they are based have had enormous influence beyond the academy, where they have shaken the foundations of our educational, scientific, and legal institutions and have fostered resentment and alienation in our private lives. Despite its current dominance, Sommers maintains, such a breed of feminism is at odds with the real aspirations and values of most American women and undermines the cause of true equality. Who Stole Feminism? is a call to arms that will enrage or inspire, but cannot be ignored.”
