In the Toronto Star of July 2, Catherine Anderson, a longtime university professor in the fields of gender studies and linguistics, defends the application of “critical thinking” to her two subjects. Various students over the years, she says, have complained that her courses were “too political.” But simply presenting them with the facts without teaching them how to interpret them, without teaching them how to Think, is, she suggests, utterly valueless. I agree. The question posed by her article, however, is whether she herself is actually capable of Objective Thought, or just another spokesperson for the dominant political bias of our era!
The term “Patriarchy” is used throughout the piece with utter disdain, implying the history of Western Man to be a never ending saga of Males heartlessly oppressing Females. But is this moral indictment justified by the facts, or does it actually validate the charges of those students who claimed Anderson is “too political”?
There are a host of realities which led to the social/political/economic relationship which evolved between the Sexes throughout Western European history. Technological innovations now allow Women to fill roles which would have seemed absurd to the Ancient Greeks. Under siege by an invading army of Barbarian Males, would it have made any sense for the Athenians to counter with an army of Females bound to engage them in hand to hand combat? Has the invention of the Uzi not radically altered the answer to this question? Has access to Birth Control not allowed Women a degree of freedom unheard of even 100 years ago? Are these the questions of a male, chauvinist jerk, or is it an unequivocal Fact that there were some utterly valid reasons for the norms endorsed by the Western “Patriarchy” over the centuries?
Anderson proudly declares that the “evidence” she has presented to her students leads “to conclusions that challenge the patriarchal foundations of our white colonial society.” The terms she uses are key, those aspects of Western Civilization loathed by the Left being its Whiteness, its Maleness, and its assumption that its colonial exploits were perfectly justified given the primitivism of those it encountered throughout much of the rest of the world. But just as Western Man’s historical treatment of Women was shaped by factors that made perfect sense in their day, so his introduction of Western Culture to other peoples seemed perfectly justified given the Rational, Pragmatic standards endorsed by most intellectuals 500 years ago. Today, John A. McDonald’s references to Canada’s Indigenous as “savages” is deemed outrageously arrogant. But those given to this opinion are judging him from their Postmodern perspective which he would have found outrageously stupid. The implicitly Marxist notion that all Truths are but expressions of Bias in effect puts Reason to death! To judge the past from this perspective, as does Catherine Anderson and indeed most on the political Left today, is to ignore historical context, to in effect say that people throughout history ought to have viewed the world from their 21st C. perspective, ought to have seen all Truths as but rationalized efforts to “oppress” those who did not share those truths. This is but to say that so-called Critical Theory is ideological, narrow-minded and arrogant to its very core.
As usual I must defend myself with a disclaimer. Of course Western History is rife with examples of Men treating Women unfairly and Colonialists behaving badly. But while the contemporary Left would suggest that Western Culture implicitly sanctioned such injustices, I would argue that, for example, whatever abominations were committed in Canada’s Residential Schools in no way invalidated the integrity or benevolence of their intent. Sir John A. clearly believed they would lead Canada’s Indigenous to more productive, fulfilling futures. The gross scam of “critical theory” is to simplistically equate the Cultural Values of the West with the sins of those who rationalized them to justify their vileness. My point is simply that in spite of the convictions of “scholars” such a Prof. Anderson, the White, Western European Patriarchy has in fact been the most truly Progressive force in all of human history.
Did you know that Plato, 2500 years ago, argued that Women, confined to their roles as mothers and housewives in Ancient Athens, ought to be included in the city’s political processes? Did you know that Socrates’ concept of Dialectic implicitly repudiated any oppressive regime [i.e., the Patriarchy] by asserting that Freedom of Speech and Conscience were essential to genuine Human Progress? Yes, the so-called Dark Ages radically slowed the progress of Western Civilization, the Inquisition, begun in the late 12th C., entailing a disgusting abuse of power by the Catholic Church which would last several centuries in various European nations. But in England, for example, there remained a level of cultural freedom which allowed Geoffrey Chaucer, 600 years ago, to create the wonderful Wife of Bath whose powerful personality utterly repudiated the patriarchal stereotype of Women as mindless slaves to their reproductive organs. My point is that the contemporary Leftist narrative of the West as the most oppressively Patriarchal force in all of history is truly simplistic. England’s reception of the Nineteenth Century’s wonderful Bronte sisters may perhaps serve to illustrate this fact. They will be the subject of my next blog.