NOR HELL A FURY, LIKE A WOMAN SCORN'D.
How appropriate to these times. The symbolic "woman scorn'd" of today is, of course, Hillary Clinton, failed candidate for U.S. President in 2016. Even though it is plainly evident when examining the facts about the election that Ms. Clinton lost the election, as opposed to Mad Donald winning it, many women in America remain incensed. This is particularly true of women in the upper economic and cultural classes, such as media stars of various ilks.
So, now we have the backlash against unfair men. Sexual harassment of pretty women by powerful trolls, the seduction-game-gone-wrong in some cases, has been trended and hash tagged. This wave merges with another wave of White Privilege claims by people of color, despite their rapid ascension to full majority in the near future in the U.S. and throughout the world. Women already hold a small majority in the U.S., 50.8+% since 2010's census.
So, why are women so peevishly complaining of victim status in an electoral republic, like the U.S.? And, likewise, why are non-Whites so ineffectual at attaining their goals in the same system? I speculate that both groups have been far too long dependent on White heterosexual men to do the heavy lifting in society. This may explain why so many young White men rapidly surrender their so-called White privilege in the face of feminine or racist attack. There is a definite secondary gain in doing this. But that secondary gain may not benefit society as a whole, despite alleviating the pressure on individual White males to perform as leaders and innovators.
One exemplary myth of the new identity politics, reignited by Black Lives Matter, is this one: Black slaves built this country (U.S.). Black slavery most definitely benefited certain elites in The South during slavery's reign. Great fortunes were amassed on the backs of slaves. Private wealth was accumulated in the South while public infrastructure languished. The poverty of public infrastructure and institutions in the South contributed greatly to the defeat of the Confederacy by a Northern Union which had built up a considerable infrastructure and public wealth largely with paid labor. The selfish exploitation of Southern slaves also differed from slavery in ancient times, when slaves, usually imported aliens captured in raids and battles, were put to work on public infrastructure as well as private domestic labor. This freed the indigenous male population to protect and expand territory for the society as a whole.
The pyramids of Egypt, the roads of Rome, South American pre-colonial structures, all built in a large part by slaves. However, in the U.S., the train systems which connected two U.S. coasts were built by freed slaves on wages, alongside Chinese and Irish immigrants. Subways were built with paid labor. Highways were built largely with paid labor. The car industry was built with paid labor and eventually employed a large percentage of Black workers.
Similar myths have developed in feminism. Women have had the right to vote in the U.S. for nearly a century. Prior to that, women in America had achieved greater equality in law than their counterparts abroad. One example is inheritance. Widows in America inherited wealth from their dead spouses while their counterparts in many countries still became penniless dowagers when their spouses died. The inheritance in those societies immediately passed to the eldest male child or closest male relation. The simple fact that many of America's wealthiest women opposed suffrage initially speaks to the ambivalence of many women when confronted with the choice of taking independent responsibility for their lives and lives of their offspring. The fake oppression narrative, fostered and clung to by Black Lives Matter and New Wave Feminists, is an attempt to take power without assuming full responsibility for its inevitable repercussions. It is playing both sides against the middle.
The feminist rage which bubbled up after the U.S. Presidential election of 2016 is simply an eruption of a dormant volcano of heterosexual gender relations. Hillary Clinton is not adored by most women. She is not the True Messiah of Feminism. Far from it. Ms. Clinton represents the essence of bourgeois sexism. She is the angry bourgeois woman who wants it all, but does not want to be held accountable for how she attains it. Hillary is not the Biblical Judith. She has not personally beheaded any sexist tyrants. She is married to one.
A certain class of women have vented and vented since November 2016. The last ones standing now seek to use faux-rape allegations to enforce a new Puritanism on American society. I suppose they are trying to sabotage the last vestiges of the Sexual Revolution out of spite. It brought feminism to light in an earlier age. But, because it has not delivered absolute power to those women who seek it, it too must be destroyed. None of this will last. As producers of offspring, women often live in a useless hormone-driven quest for safety, perfection and permanence in a Universe which offers none of these. As their scorn turns to resolve, perhaps women interested in feminist ideals will progress to an understanding that gender alone is indeed irrelevant to human intelligence and how it is applied through logic and science.
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