There is a group of people online who habitually appears to engage in doublethink: on the one hand, the females of the species are the weaker vessel never progressing past a teenage stage in their mental development and should at all times defer to male judgement (ever heard of the woman being the most responsible teenager in the house?), while simultaneously all the troubles of modernity come solely from women and it's up to women to change the world for the better.
In other words, women at the same time lack agency completely
AND are the only persons with agency who can produce real change.
Sounds schizophrenic, doesn't it? Like much of what passes for deep right wing commentary on the internet, actually, if you think of it.
Historically speaking, women have always been viewed as more passive and thus having less agency than men (but not totally lacking it, otherwise they couldn't be held responsible for any crime), and by the same principle, men were viewed as the guardians of society, not women, as the s8x which is more active, aggressive, and thus having more agency.
And if women have less agency, you can hardly blame them for all of the world's problems. Some time ago I did a series of historical articles about some 19th century personalities who fought and sometimes died for the new liberal world order, and guess what? They were all men. In every war and revolution, men are always the primary agents with women filling supportive roles, and those internet warriors expecting women to fight their battles for them against the said order, are well, delusional.
The funny thing is that many of the ardent antifeminists online espouse some variant of libertarian philosophy and have a deep-seated distrust of all authority, yet seem to think that women should obey them unconditionally. It just doesn't work this way. First, here is some news for you, guys: Anglo-libertarianism has
never been a tradition in continental Europe or other parts of the world, it's something which the victors of the last war forced upon most countries. For thousands of years, tradition in the West didn't mean "limited government" and "human rights", but rather "blood and soil" and "throne and altar", liberalism and later libertarianism were the result of the Enlightenment.
Also, "rugged individualism" isn't necessarily "right-wing", and not all collective action is wicked communism, either. In fact, there are many countries in the world with a very weak central government, like Somalia or Afghanistan, and yet keyboard libertarians never want to move there, by some reason.
Well, how does it tie to women's question, you'll ask? Simply this: too many of self-professing online antifeminists apparently dream of something like Little House on the Prairie situation, with the nuclear family totally isolated in the wilderness with the wife and kids totally depending on the good will of the father (who doesn't have to be legally married to the mother of his children
so that she will have no recourse at all should he abandon her because government wedding licenses are evil communist statism).
So the woman is totally subjected to the man, who lives in some sort of libertarian paradise. Well, it may sound appealing, but it's hardly traditional. Every community had distinctions between legal marriage, concubinage and just sleeping around. It was Catholic (and later, national) churches which kept records of legal marriages, which were very important since bastards couldn't inherit. In fact, my husband was able to trace his family genealogy to 1400s and guess what? All his ancestors were legally married with church records proving it.
Married couples lived in communities with extended family often near by, and ready to jump in when a conflict arose, with parishioners and neighbours nosing around and laws protecting the vulnerable. Married women always had rights, not only duties and their role as mothers and housewives was viewed as important and revered in society.
You see, the key point is "society" and "community", something which most libertarians have no use for. Do whatever thou will seems to be a leading principle for many, yet this principle comes out of satanism, not Christianity. Feminism didn't arise on its own, because one day women just decided to rebel against their menfolk, it's a part of a much bigger rebellion against authority and God's order. You can't fight feminism while promoting rebellion on other fronts.
That is not to say that we should always automatically obey authorities, even when they are issuing wicked and unjust decrees. There is place for things like civil disobedience, protests etc but the general attitude of rebellion isn't an exception nowadays, but rather the rule. And, as I have mentioned earlier, the same people who deeply mistrust any authority (especially church authorities because
the pastor told them not to j88k off while watching p0rn because all pastors are wicked feminists who always believe women) somehow change their tune when talking about female submission and obedience. Another example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too, I guess.
There is another trend online of constantly blaming working mothers for working. Yes, in an ideal situation, the wife and mother shouldn't work, but many women who work nowadays do it not because of general wickedness but because their husbands fully encourage and sometimes demand it, because of the general acceptance of the bugman consumerist lifestyle with its unending demands, and especially because some are in a fragile economic situation. In fact, those who are pro-family shouldn't favour economic libertarianism, but vice versa, a society which offers more protection to those less fortunate.
I know that my country does it, that's why I'm freer with my criticism but it's not the same everywhere. You hardly can blame all working women for the way the neoliberal system functions and constantly droning on how evil all those working mothers are while not trying to reform the system built on usury and debt is hardly helpful. To sum it up, if your life s*cks, it's not always because some woman is trying to get you. Instead of trying to change
human female nature, may be try to change the society which values financial concerns above all?
