The dominant narrative of our day, perverted by the disdain for historical context typical of the Left, sees Western Man’s treatment of Women throughout the ages as an abomination. Yes, the Women of Ancient Athens were generally confined to their households as wives and mothers. But given the seemingly obvious dictates of Nature and the relatively primitive level of both science and political discourse at the time, this hardly seems surprising. Yet 2500 years ago, Socrates and Plato wrote treatises suggesting that Women were intellectually and morally equal to Men and needed to be included in the political processes of the State. And of course they in no way endorsed the inhumane treatment of the opposite sex.
The slow but relentless evolution of Western attitudes towards the role of Women in Society perfectly illustrates Socrates’ concept of Cultural Dialectic. Yes, there was always dissent to what we now deem progressive leaps forward in the liberation of Women, such dissent during the Medieval Catholic hegemony being barely distinguishable from the tyranny of the contemporary Taliban. But as the West emerged from the so-called Dark Ages and the free expression of Ideas began to gather momentum, the liberation of Women from traditionally confining stereotypes became an inevitable reality.
I have before me an article from The N. Y. Times Book Review of Feb. 11 concerning a work entitled “The Wife of Bath: A Biography” by one Marion Turner. Written in Middle English and published between 1387 and 1400, Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” are beloved by those of us lucky enough to have chosen English Literature as their university focus. Among his 24 Tales, perhaps his most memorable presented his readers with Alison of Bath, a courageous, raunchy, whimsical figure who had outlived 5 husbands, including one who was clearly a male, chauvinist jerk. She was, according to Ms. Turner, the first real Woman in English literature and a significant step forward in the cultural evolution of Man’s capacity to understand what it means to be a Woman.
Elizabeth the First ruled England from 1558 to 1603. Her father was a monster who had had her mother beheaded when she was only 3. But these were ugly times in which men were just as often the victims of butchers such as Henry the Eighth as were women. So in spite of today’s simplistic narrative of Western Patriarchal oppression, Britain honored the rules of succession and accepted Elizabeth as its Queen for 45 years. Equally inconsistent with that narrative were the plays of William Shakespeare which included dozens of courageous, intelligent Women who transcended what are now being defined as the oppressive stereotypes of the past. My point is simply that an honest appraisal of the history of England reveals a complex, evolving Culture at odds with the man-hating vision of the Patriarchy endorsed by so many sanctimonious Leftists today.
In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft, the future mother-in-law of the radical poet Shelley, made a significant contribution to the issue at hand with her “Vindication of the Rights of Women.” Jane Austen [1775-1817], while refusing to publish her wonderful works under her real name, did inscribe them with the admission that they had been “Written by a Lady.” The amazing Bronte sisters, writing a few decades later, released their novels under male pseudonyms, as it was still not considered appropriate for Women to publish works of fiction. While both Emily and Charlotte were obsessively shy, the latter, following the success of Jayne Eyre, was presented to London’s literati who celebrated her creative brilliance. Indeed she became friends with figures such as William Makepeace Thackeray, one of the most revered writers of the day. In the same way, while Emily’s Wuthering Heights initially sold poorly and was reviled by the mainstream for its immorality, it was acknowledged by several critics as an unparalleled work of the human imagination. Equally fraught with contradictions, England’s ensuing Victorian Era was a complicated time, one in which Women were denied many of the rights and freedoms granted to Men, even as a Female ruled the country for the latter half of the Century!
As I have stated elsewhere, the radical changes initiated in the 1960s would no doubt have been launched much earlier had it not been for the two World Wars and Great Depression that marred the first two thirds of the century. Films such as 1940’s “His Girl Friday” and “The Philadelphia Story,” for example, featured courageous, intelligent female characters who utterly transcended the demeaning vision of Women apparently shared by most Men. Jennifer Lawrence recently lamented that her role in 2012’s “The Hunger Games” was among the first to present a woman in a heroic light. She was immediately reminded of roles played by Pam Grier and Sigourney Weaver that proved her wrong. But actresses such as Rosalind Russell and Catherine Hepburn, 80 years ago, played Women who were Heroines of the first order in movies written, produced and directed by Men!
In Dec. of last year, director James Cameron said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that testosterone was a “toxin” that Men needed to work out of their systems. While traditional Humanism sees each Man’s attraction to the opposite sex as a moral challenge to be dealt with on an individual basis, Cameron seemed to be implying male sexuality to be inherently evil. His observation entails the same absurd denial of the facts of Human Biology as that espoused by Feminists who belittle Women content to bear, love and raise their children. I am suggesting neither that Women “ought” to want to pursue a career or “ought” to want to be “mere” housewives and mothers, but rather that such decisions are matters of personal choice which will inevitably reflect the complex biological/psychological differences between Men and Women. While rational Feminists certainly do not demand statistical parity with Men in every realm of human endeavor, the contemporary Left is rife with Ideologues whose definition of “social justice” is predicated upon such statistical parity. The contention that their world-view is grossly superficial, of course, will today almost inevitably be denounced as just more male hate speech.
In the final sentence of her N.Y. Times review of Marion Turner’s book, Erin Maglaque says that it “shows the many ways that writers through the centuries have subverted the misogynist canon: none more revolutionary than Chaucer himself.” While I am not certain she would concur, she would seem to be supporting the very notion of cultural dialectic, admitting that the West, as exemplified by the philosophers of ancient Greece, was in fact willing to engage in “progressive” speculations from its very beginning.
It is a sad fact of human nature that those with power will inevitably be tempted to abuse it. One would be a fool to contend that Western History is not rife with examples of Man’s misogynist abuse of Women. But was the West “systemically” misogynist from its inception? Were the Women of Ancient Athens relegated to the roles of wives and mothers simply because of male arrogance? Or is History far more complicated than that?
Why, a thousand years ago, before technology utterly transformed the nature of warfare, would the Women of Europe have been clamoring to die in equal numbers with Men on brutal, blood-soaked fields of battle? How many other onerous activities [i.e., mining, farming, construction, etc.] demanded levels of strength and endurance that precluded most Women from participating? Did the Men of the past conspire to keep them out of such activities because they wanted to deprive them of political power, or because they loved them? Indeed is it in any way sane to suggest that European regimes barely able to provide the basics of economic and political stability to their citizens, ought to have supplied them with day care centers designed to allow Women to escape the seemingly inevitable burdens of their biology? Would any of this have made sense a thousand years ago?
These may seem like frivolous observations, but they represent the sort of historical considerations which the contemporary Left simply ignores in promoting its Myth of Western Patriarchal Misogyny. What is unequivocal is that Western Man, dating back to the era of the Ancient Greeks, frequently challenged what seemed to be the obvious biological dictates of Nature with a degree of intelligence and integrity unparalleled elsewhere. This statement, of course, qualifies me as just another White Supremacist. And so while Iran and other Muslim enclaves have reduced Women to the status of Slaves with only muted responses from our mainstream press, it is apparently an abomination for Western conservatives to make the innocuous, rational assertion that Men and Women are significantly different! Such is the disdain for Reason infecting contemporary political discourse. Such is the sort of “progressive” insanity making any sort constructive discussion between the Left and Right virtually impossible.