Summary: Every day more people write about the gender wars after seeing what fourth wave feminism is doing to America. Here James Kunstler joins in with a perceptive look at a leading feminist.
“Welcome to GenderWorld“
By James Howard Kunstler at his website. Posted with his generous permission.
The defeat of Hillary, and the elevation of the vulgar Mr. Trump, loosed a fury of women against men in America that now verges on a kind of all-consuming chaos, like those western wildfires turning every product of human endeavor in the burn-path to smoke and ash. All the sorrows of our national life are assigned lately to the wicked white male patriarchy that must be defeated to usher in a satori of female sharing-and-caring.
A case in point is Sam Harris’s dialogue on his “Waking Up” podcast #141: “Has #MeToo Gone Too Far?” He interviews Rebecca Traister (Wikipedia) – reporter with New York Magazine (articles here) and author of the new book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger
To get a sense of the true chaos behind her argument, just have a look at the cover of Good and Mad. Notice that the blood-red title stands against a gray field of the word “F*CK” (asterisk hers) repeated 120 times on a 5 X 24 grid. Deconstruct that. Is it the generative act of copulation itself that she is inveighing against? Should it be gotten rid of? Will that solve the problems of a foundering hyper-complex industrial society?
Ms. Traister might have used the word “power” five hundred times in her conversation with the excessively gallant Sam Harris {Ed. – an incredible 145 times}. The choo-choo train of “post-structuralist” ideology that pulled into the college scene in the 1990s, when she was a student, is based on the idea that all relations between men and women – and all human endeavor, for that matter – come down to questions of who has power over whom. The result, naturally enough, has been an escalating power struggle between men and women that has the potential to tear this society apart.
It has already damaged our understanding of what men and women are supposed to be, and the outcome so far is that men are not sufficiently female and vice-versa. Thus the consecration of “transgender, intersex, non-binary, gender-nonconforming” states of being as heroic, and the demonizing cries of “toxic masculinity” ringing through the ivory towers, the halls of congress, and the corporate C-suites.
Much of this stems from the fact that only in the past half century have men and women tried to occupy the same work-spaces, especially in political bureaucracies. Until fairly recently, men and women existed in rather separate work-and-social worlds, with behaviors that seem weird and quaint today — for instance, the practice of men and women retiring to different rooms for conversation after a dinner party, based on the idea, possibly true, that they had categorically different interests (as suggested by James Damore in his notorious Google memo).
Now, to suggest that there was anything to these divisions of sexual space amounts to another punishable offense, but that is probably the least of the dreary consequences in this contest. The worst part is that we’re burning all our political capital in this foolishly contrived war at the expense of all the other actual tasks we face. If the US Senate put one-tenth of its attention to rebuilding the passenger rail system as it put into the furor raised by Christine Blasey Ford, we might have addressed the awful problem of our soon-to-be obsolete mass-motoring matrix. But then trains are such a male concern. They have so little to do with …feelings!
Apropos of the war between men and women itself, something really bugs me: the deliberate and convenient overlooking of women’s sexual power over men. That is what has been absent in the #MeToo movement, and quite dishonestly so. It’s really something to see the various indignant women of cable news coming onto the flatscreen every night to inveigh against men while dressed, coiffed, and made up like thousand-dollar Las Vegas call girls – except for Rachel Maddow, of course, who opts to present as the nation’s guidance counselor.
In fact, women have tremendous sexual power over men, and it is exactly that which provokes so much of the idiotic behavior that has come to be categorized as “abuse” where men and women intersect and the mists of pheromones perplex the air. It is at least as potent as the power that men supposedly exert in politics and the workplace. And it incorporates a range of behaviors that are subtle and insidious. (Classic literature certainly understands this, but it’s being removed from the curriculum for doing that.) The failure to even acknowledge female sexual power or to dismiss it as inconsequential is just plain dirty fighting – though it’s proclaimed unselfconsciously on the cover of Rebecca Traister’s book: “FCK, FCK, FCK, FCK, F*CK. See for yourself.
Kunstler’s blog is sponsored this week by McAlvany ICA. To learn more visit their website.
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See the video of the interview.
Editor’s afterword
This interview must be seen to be believed. Or better yet, see the transcript at YouTube. As Kunstler says, it is all about her feelings and her ideology. It appears never to occur to her that their might be logic to those that disagree with her, or any validity to their values. She has no empathy for them, and dismisses them with labels, such as “misogynist.” She sounds like one fluent only in Newspeak, unable to express the beliefs of others except as “thoughtcrime.”
She sees the world only in terms of power and tribalism. In her discussion of the Kavanaugh hearings, she shows no awareness that evidence is important – or that false accusations of sexual assault (even rape) are common (examples here). Or that lies are an effective tool for political action (details here).
Note her somewhat incoherent description of the three waves of feminism. Stated more clearly, the first wave was about getting the vote (the suffragettes). The second was about getting equality in schools and work. The third wave was about social justice, restructuring society to produce deeper kinds of equality. The fourth wave has just begun. They seek superiority of women over men. It is easy to test for 4th wave writing. Apply the standard test for bias; reverse the genders. If it sounds grossly misogynist, it is written by a 4th wave feminist.
About Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler (Wikipedia) worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, before working as a staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he began writing books on a full-time basis. Kunstler is the author of 12 novels and has been a regular contributor to many major media, writing about environmental and economic issues. He is a leading supporter of the movement known as “New Urbanism.”
He has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, and many other colleges. He has written five non-fiction books.
- The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape
- Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century
- The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition
- The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Cent
- Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation
For More Information
Ideas! For shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about society and gender issues, about feminism, about marriage, and especially these …
- Feminists’ strategy brought many wins. They’ve abandoned it.
- Forms to sign before having sex. Progress or madness?
- See universities’ programs to regulate sex. The apps are amazing!
- The unexpected response to the sexual harassment crisis.
- MeToo discovers that there is always a counterrevolution.
- Women unleash their rage! Beta males revolt!
Another book about grrl-power rage
Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger
By Soraya Chemaly, writer and activist (2018).
“Relentless and revelatory.”
— “The Perils and Possibilities of Anger” in The New Yorker.
“Urgent, enlightening.”
— “Why women’s rage is healthy, rational and necessary for America” in the The Washington Post.
“A work of great spirit and verve.”
— “Women’s Rage Is the Most Powerful Engine of 2018” in TIME.
“{W}omen aren’t keeping their anger a secret anymore. … a thoughtful and utterly eye-opening book. …Trust me when I say, after reading Rage Becomes Her, you will be more than willing to make noise, too.”
— “A Nuanced Look At The Power & Perils Of Female Anger” at Bustle.
From the publisher …
“Rage Becomes Her is a validating, energizing read that will change the way you interact with the world around you. As women, we’ve been urged for so long to bottle up our anger, letting it corrode our bodies and minds in ways we don’t even realize. Yet there are so, so many legitimate reasons for us to feel angry, ranging from blatant, horrifying acts of misogyny to the subtle drip, drip drip of daily sexism that reinforces the absurdly damaging gender norms of our society.
“In Rage Becomes Her, Soraya Chemaly argues that our anger is not only justified, it is also an active part of the solution. We are so often encouraged to resist our rage or punished for justifiably expressing it, yet how many remarkable achievements would never have gotten off the ground without the kernel of anger that fueled them? Approached with conscious intention, anger is a vital instrument, a radar for injustice and a catalyst for change. On the flip side, the societal and cultural belittlement of our anger is a cunning way of limiting and controlling our power—one we can no longer abide.”
