The following topic is worthy of a book. While I’m hardly claiming to deal with it comprehensively, everything I’m about to say is unequivocally true.
Are there multiple examples of Women being treated unfairly throughout Western history? Of course there are. But the notion that Western Civilization has been “systemically patriarchal” in the sense defined by the Left, is a gross simplification of the Truth.
As I have mentioned in earlier blogs, Socrates argued 2500 years ago that Women had much to contribute to Athens’ political life. At the same time, an obvious fact never mentioned by those who maintain that Western Men have always oppressed Woman, is that only the last 100 years or so have been blessed with the sort of economic and technological developments which might enable Women to compete with Men on an equal footing in all sorts of endeavours. How absurd would it have been for Western Europeans to send out armies of Women to engage in hand to hand combat with invading armies of barbarian Men a thousand years ago?
While the above may seem obvious if not trite, Great Britain, the country largely responsible for the culture of both Canada and the States, did not historically promote anything like the sort of systemic oppression of Women we continue to see in many Islamic nations today. As our various sophisticated modes of birth control were unheard of a thousand years ago, women of a certain age were no doubt almost constantly pregnant. It was simple common sense that they should be consigned to the home as the caretakers of those family joys so beloved by their husbands. The Age of Chivalry, that is to say, was born not of an attempt to keep Women politically impotent, but rather of a genuine reverence for the love and beauty they contributed to the human condition.
The literature of Great Britain, as it emerged from the Dark Ages, was rife with suggestions that Women were more than just slaves to their menstrual cycles, indeed were blessed with the same intelligence and courage as Men! Chaucer’s infamous Wife of Bath, a powerful woman who had had multiple husbands, clearly entailed an effort by her creator to explode the stereotypical notion of Women as the docile playthings of the opposite sex. This was 600 years ago. Two hundred years later, the amazing Shakespeare would create dozens of complex female characters that once again challenged the stupidity of any reductive, stereotypical vision of Women!
Yes, in the 19th Century the Bronte sisters and Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Elliot, felt compelled to publish their wonderful works under Male pseudonyms. Yet while they were greeted with some derision when their true gender emerged, they were also hailed by many for the brilliance of their creations. Wuthering Heights and Middlemarch remain two of the most revered works in all of British literature. This would hardly seem to be the result of a Male dominated culture intent on stifling the rights of Women.
I must reiterate that I am not suggesting that Women are not still treated unfairly in certain areas of the socioeconomic realm. But progress towards true Justice, fostered by the West’s “systemic” belief in Free Speech, has been inexorable since Europe emerged from the Dark Ages. While I find much contemporary cinema utter drivel, I love the films of the 30s and 40s, an era in which multiple, brilliant, Male producers, directors and writers sought to expose the complexities of the human condition, including, of course, the complexities of Male-Female relationships. In 1940’s “The Philadelphia Story,” Catherine Hepburn plays a strong, intelligent woman who refuses to be bullied by her ex-husband, played by Cary Grant. While she predictably ends up with Grant, he is exposed in many scenes as a self-centred jerk. The same dynamic is evident in “His Girl Friday” in which Rosalind Russel also clashes with Grant of whose character she says: “Walter, you’re wonderful in a loathsome kind of way.”. While these movies are hardly philosophical tracts on Female Equality, they do conflict with the notion that Western Civilization has “systemically” demeaned Women on behalf of the Patriarchy.
As I have said in previous blogs, the two World Wars and Great Depression seriously impeded the cultural evolution of the West which may very well have launched its assault on Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, etc., decades before it actually did. The influence of the Rational philosophers of the Enlightenment, that is to say, has been an inexorable force in Western Civilization for 300 years, a force making it the most truly progressive civilization on the planet. The idea that it has been “systemically” oppressive towards Women is absurd. Indeed the Freedom of Speech endorsed by America’s Male founders is incompatible with the very notion of “oppression.” While I may ludicrously be deemed a White Supremacist by the contemporary Left, I am unequivocally proud to be a product of what is clearly the most evolved cultural dynamic in all of History. This is not bias, it is Fact!
I am not wealthy nor has wealth ever interested me. My most cherished treasures are the multiple literary and philosophical works to which I was exposed throughout my lengthy university education, an education that occurred at a time when it would have been considered insane to suggest that Western European Culture was of no more value than the cultures of America’s various Indigenous tribes. Yes, common sense has been replaced by Woke Insanity, a dementia that has led our so-called “intellectuals” to simply ignore the unequivocal complexity of Western Man’s ever evolving attitude towards the opposite sex, and declare, in Neo-Marxist fashion, that our culture has always been “systemically patriarchal.”