UPSIDE DOWN FEMINISM

Drag Queen Queen.

The American popularity of BBC-WGBH's Downton Abbey soap opera caused me some consternation. Now, the popularity of Netflix's The Crown has given me some cause to speculate about one aspect of today's feminism. I am not using the word "feminism" in reference to any specific social or political organization's platform. The time of NOW (National Organization for Women) has passed. That organization once dominated the feminist landscape in the U.S. in a similar way that HRC (Human Rights Campaign) once dominated the gay rights landscape. Both have been eclipsed by the paradoxically divisive rise of social media.

I began to ponder upon the obsession with gender reassignment on the part of the Far Left, including certain neo-feminists, and the Far Right, including hyper-religious, conservative women. Both camps are enthralled with male-to-female transgender people in particular. Less so, interestingly, with female-to-male transgender individuals. 

Male-to-female transgender individuals have traditionally represented the most outlandish female stereotypes in dress and mannerisms. Prior to the current wave of physiologically modified transgender people, drag queens, male-to-female transvestites, were notable for their contempt of gender-role hypocrisy and conservative masculinity/femininity. Their mimicry of women was an overblown satire of female roles in a male society. This was often a metaphor for the plight of the effeminate male in gay male society. 

What do the British soap operas I have mentioned have to do with this? The portrayals of women in both are laced with political messages about feminine roles. I am disturbed by something else. The couching of female-male politics in the powerful, luxurious settings of manor houses and palaces belies the commonality of those in both genders who vie for dominance. Ultimately, the issues boil down to the age-old struggle for power between men and women, particularly for control of their children, their money and their legacy. 

Focusing on bathroom privileges is a distraction from the real struggle. Public gender-separated bathrooms are a symbol of the male-female contention for territory. And territory (land) ownership has been a symbol for human power in most human societies throughout human history. Today's feminist power lust is where I see feminism as straying from its better ideals. 

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The ascension  of women to geopolitical power in the context of nuclear weapons, war, ideology has corrupted the essential message of earlier feminism. Today's powerful women are simply mimicking powerful heterosexual men. The quest of these women is the same domination that men have practiced throughout human history. Wielding the same weapons of war and chaos. Maintaining the same social and economic discrepancies. 

Angela Merkel has disrupted the stable and prosperous state of Europe with her policies on migration. Theresa May fends off the Brexit process in the same way as her Conservative male counterparts would have done. Hillary Clinton relished the White House war room and cheered the murder of a world leader by vigilantes. Yes, these women may be living up to the powers portrayed in Downton Abbey and The Crown, but those powers were established by powerful men through war and murderous intrigue over centuries. Those powers still hinge on money, breeding and inequality of opportunity.

Young women today are understandably divided in their opinions of what constitutes a feminist ideal. Some women seek to liberate themselves through sexuality, perhaps mimicking gay men, whom they have seen make political and social progress in The West by proudly asserting their liberated sexual identities. But being a an out-and-proud cock-teasing slut will not liberate anyone, especially when those same slut warriors run to the conventional institutions of society crying "Rape!" at any minor provocation. Some women are seeking liberation through economic superiority. But propagating class discrepancy by exploiting capitalism is not personally liberating over the long term. Some women are seeking liberation by denigrating men as a group. The radical feminist-separatists of the 1960's-1970's tried this, but they failed to live up to any higher ideals or achieve any greater happiness than others before them. 

The feminism which attracted me in my early adulthood (1968-1980) was based in a cooperative model of a voluntarily egalitarian society. Rather than focusing on gender or sexual identity, that feminism was committed to shifting the focus to accomplishment and cooperative roles in getting the work of society done. It was a feminism which valued feelings, expressed articulately and received fairly, not hysterical reactions in the media. It was a feminism which valued science, psychology and self-empowerment through education. That feminism has gradually been corrupted by religion, economics and politics since the ascension to power of Ayn Rand's followers in The West, starting with Ronald Reagan. 

Feminism is indeed upside down today. Rather than uniting women behind the finest aspects of female neuro-chemistry, which fosters gathering knowledge, nurturing, patience, moderation and cooperation, women have become divided by greed and lust for power over men, as played out in entertainment media, posing as political reporting. Sexuality itself has has always been a useless focus. It is ruled by the libidinous and subconscious. Gender itself has been used as a wedge, instead of a useful modifier in the interactions between men and women in society. Society's health itself has become irrelevant under the shadow of relentless identity politics in mass media. 

Maybe the women of Downton Abbey and The Crown appeal today because they do subscribe to a relentless individual responsibility to the greater society, even if the societies they answer to are inherently inhuman and unjust.