with power comes responsibility. with responsibility comes power. feminists: are you ready willing and able to embrace both? for, only with this dual conquest, are the irony and crutch of victimhood reliance diminished and erased, which will allow for sustainable empowerment and success among women within the context of human biological reality: the continued co- existence with men.
biological partnership must be reconciled with societal partnership.
as my articles stand, so do i, waiting for a woman or group of women to begin the callout for all of us to reclaim personal accountability, and to lay claim to the abilities we already have, and to the mistakes we too are capable of making – and have made. for, we women can be equal as aggressors, manipulators, perpetrators and instigators of every last thing we now only accuse others of, that which now is excused and rationalized via current feminist agendas, the victimhood culture, and enabled by the appeasement and coddling of far-left apologists.
in all the power posturing of this anger-based, ever-lower-reaching, latest wave of so-called feminism, true power is in actuality negated via victimhood focus and reliance.
i believe in equal opportunity personal accountability.
i also ask: when will being a lady be considered cool again?
Feminism, Femininity: My Take
Feminists and first world women who stand predominantly on victimhood as platform need to recognize the powers they have, and those they have had from the beginning, and stand on them as well. This power has had many names, uses and incarnations, even when not outwardly or officially acknowledged or labeled as such. This power also includes the power of free will, for women are as equally the sums of their deeds as are men. Wherever there are differences between the sexes – insurmountable, undeniable, physiological and psychological – there are also advantages unique to each sex that rebalance and move forward the playing field we know as Mankind Over Time.
First world women, and in all this I also speak for myself, have the same access to information and ability to choose where, when and how we present ourselves in society, how we conduct ourselves. Our paths are our ultimately our own. As adults, our mistakes and poor choices are also our own. Aside from harassment, abuse and assault as defined and punishable by law, and aside from what fate or luck hand anyone, which are never fair or evenly distributed, we are not nor ever were always or only the unwitting victims. If we persist on blaming only men, or hold only other family members and extraneous others accountable for the misfortunes in our lives, we remain captive to weakness we ascribe to ourselves by default.
Women, like men, are participants in and subsequently potential victims of their own poor choices [1]. Women as sexual beings are likewise, equal to men, capable of being perpetrators, manipulators and aggressors. To stand solely on the platform of victim-recipient is to deny personal accountability and suggest some inherent female inability to assimilate life’s lessons, a lack of practical intelligence that would otherwise help guide our paths in life. It further suggests women are intellectually incapable of processing and applying information that is available to all 24/7, which would warn, guide and assist in making better or best choices for oneself and others. To posture as if we are fully exempt, innocent and hapless victims and to insist on dual standards not only cancels out the root of personal empowerment (knowledge, the capacity to learn, the ability to implement it) but also leans horrifically cliché, antithetical to the ideals of feminist self-empowerment. Vestal Virginalism is not Feminism.
The ongoing “us versus them” (man vs woman) mindset of New Wave Feminism [2] perpetuates anger, whether personally experienced or assimilated via solidarity, into leadership agendas and public persona. The grass is always greener, a fallacy broadcast and implied on social media, hits on many levels, given the current tech addiction epidemic, leaving beta female followers, adherents susceptible to the powerful suggestion of feminist negativity, stuck in non-productive, anti-self actualizing emotional and behavioral ruts, leaving those closest to them (family/partner/offspring) subject to angry projection, neglect and even direct attack. New Wave Feminism seems to provide an alternative as a negativity reliant outlet, as its followers are encouraged to hold on to notions of deprivation and been-done-wrong, and that to vent and complain is to build and then stand on a personal and political platform.
Partnership Denigration: Feminist negativism, separatism and dissatisfaction breed disharmony between adherents and their partners and family, for Feminism’s collective platform is counterintuitive to women’s very existence as female humans. Feminist negativism, separatism and dissatisfaction chip away in particular at the evolutionarily consistent (aka traditional) bio-reproductive familial partnership structure of provider male and nurturer female by damaging the perceptions and self-perceptions of both roles. It seeks to undermine the unifying, cooperative and collaborative co-dependence that defines long-term, partnership – in particular parental partnership – between two committed adults, where skills and focuses are complementary, where efficiency and expertise as illustrated in any successful business paradigm evolve to define two individuals as a successful couple, which I call the Partnership Paradigm.
To share and do for each other, which is a source of personal and paired satisfaction and happiness within a committed relationship, has been skewed negatively and come to be viewed as a form of subservience, thanks to Feminist partnership nay-saying. This confuses and diminishes the emotional and physical aspirationality that allow each member of a partnership to evolve a self-actualized contributingindividuality. Not only does each individual attain a personal best, but the “sum,” of a couple can far exceed its “parts” when the multipliers of teamwork are manifested. Term Accepted to Urban Dictionary 6/21/19
Feminist negativism, separatism and dissatisfaction attack this positively and organically developed co-dependency via social construct by 1) creating, promoting and perpetuating competitive divides between men and women and 2) by pitting the members of a couple against each other. To share and do for each other, which is a source of personal and paired satisfaction and happiness within a committed relationship, has been skewed negatively and come to be viewed as a form of subservience, thanks to Feminist denigration of traditional familial partnership definers.
This anti-committed-partnership trend confuses and diminishes the emotional and physical aspirationality that allow each member of a partnership to evolve a self-actualized contributing individuality. To share has become tantamount to loss, to be perceived as a negative sum game. In the Partnership Paradigm, not only can each individual attain a personal best, but the “sum,” of a partnered couple can far exceed its “parts” when the multipliers of teamwork are manifested. Feminism, with its superficial sexual empowerment focus (testosterone-reliant suggestions of ongoing/multiple partner pursuit, sexual insatiability ideations and masculine display), also denigrates the value and satisfaction potential of partnership commitment by supporting commitment transience (infidelity/serial monogamy, multiple/broken marriages, multiple partner accumulation). Feminists likewise hold affirmativized regard for the resulting “broken” familial households through 1) anti-male support and 2) sole sustainer (you-can-do-it-all-alone) support, which includes governmental handout facilitation to spur reproduction by singles, and the ideological support of the single lifestyle, where the pursuit of outside others for sexual and social satisfaction is prioritized over commitment to dependents.
Most damaging of all, New Wave Feminism fosters the crippling societal climate in which it is OK to default one’s offspring to second tier, incidental consideration. Feminism, with its independence at all costs stance, supports unsustainable reproduction, part of the you-can-do-it-all-alone ideology and foments dissatisfaction from within existing partnerships, where failure is supported via rationales for divorce, infidelity and the romanticization of single parent existence, which is in actuality almost always subsistence and reliant upon shifted dependancies, from governmental to non-partner, extended family members. Convenience and the handing off of children to others, whether due to supposed necessity or entitled “bad mom” time-off trends, are framed as normal, harmless and even beneficial. Additionally, using offspring as human shields and collateral to manipulate the emotional agendas of factionalized adults has been supported, even in courts of law. And in the war against men, the de-masculinization of our sons in efforts to reign in what is inherently their biological and evolutionary legacy as male humans, protectors and providers has become not only accepted but socially, psuedo-intellectually and affirmatively dissected, re-constructed and then championed, which comes at cost to both sexes and all familial constructs.
Has New Wave Feminism formulated these solo-reliant platforms to excuse the society-crippling states that already exist? Is this an affirmativized “personal truth” re-write for so-called modern women, who have been fulfilling their human role as reproducers by thoughtless, self-serving and/or coercive reproduction with unwitting/unwilling males? Materialistic wedding obsessiveness of women, young and now old/post-reproductive as well, feed massive u-name-it-ceremonial industries, where quick-picked male candidates find themselves, befuddled and complacent, standing ready at altars – and paying the bills – is nothing new. Society is already burdened, financially and psychologically, with multiple generations of the resulting offspring – cast off, sidelined, disfavored – of poor partnership choices and broken commitments. Absent or incidental (bio donor) fathers and sidetracked caregivers who cannot evolve past selfish pursuits cost us all at all levels.
Are we dealing with a Feminist rationalization of anti-domestic, non-giving/sharing women of subsequently failed partnerships, who are now faced with less comfortable circumstances and single parenthood? Has the current Feminist climate been formulated by and for women, who (once having embraced Feminism’s full-spectrum of anti-traditional role acceptance) have wound up unwanted and alone and who, thanks to Feminist’s blame-shifting and victimhood culture reliance, also refuse to accept any personal responsibility for their situations? Are fabled Sour Grapes at the root of current, New Wave Feminist individualistic ideology?
Can these women understand that one cannot truly win, achieve or possess that which one also despises and seeks to destroy? To win, achieve or possess that which one despises and seeks to destroy is a construct of war.
Individual Denigration: Feminist negativism, separatism and dissatisfaction likewise confuse the individual aspirational goals and life paths of women as citizens of First World Nations, where women already possess equal rights as granted by law but are made to believe the laws and constructs as they exist are irrelevant because, having been formulated by “the enemy,” men, such laws and constructs cannot possess merit or applicability. But the law, thanks to hash-tagged, populist tactics, has taken a momentary backseat….
2017 was the year career-ending/family-breaking/life-uprooting hashtag retribution usurped the constructs and legacy of our nation’s legal system. #MeToo started out as a specific stand against criminal assault, but was incorporated, logofied and appropriated as campaign platformers, public personalities and celebrities and the entertainment industry in a general sense as an activist press quest and marketing device. Thanks to limelight seeking via Virtue Vetting (read my HP article Disclaimerland & Validation Via Virtue, July 2015) and victimhood platformed activism (ultimately a means of self promotion) and the highly questionable social media campaigns undertaken by underground entities, #MeToo spread indiscriminately, affecting the full spectrum of interactivity amongst all demographics. Mutual misunderstanding, momentary discomfort or disagreement and even bad dates became virtually undifferentiated from legally defined and punishable harassment, abuse and assault. Even the merely and anonymously accused have paid dearly and disproportionately, for to defend oneself has come to be perceived as challenging a movement that mandates 100% participation and unequivocal support. Accusations, tagged and click-propagated by social media algorithms and attention-seeking masses, became bounty hunter, judge, jury and executioner, prevailingly unquestioned and unchallenged in a cultural climate that no longer permits dissent or differing opinion, which has also rendered the founding principle of Innocent Until Proven Guilty moot.
2017 saw Feminist mile markers realized at the motion picture box office, with the top grossing films centered on female characters, about which much hullabaloo was made. Funny, that these were all make believe characters in fantasies and fairy tales. Funny too, that these powerful gals were all young, curvaceous and slender and pretty in the traditional sense of the word. Funny, that while the laws upon which our nation was founded are subject to populist re-writes, some things never change….
2017 was also the year gals’ Vegas getaways officially transmogrified from infidelity dabbling and binge shopping to organized protest festival attendance. The Women’s March on Washington, DC, a Feminist Bitchella, was there for women fortunate enough to possess significant amounts of free time and funds, and with familial commitment to spare. I can only imagine the many working fathers who had to also serve as homemakers, babysitters and chauffeurs to children as their Mommies marched, ranted and chanted, ate, drank and made merry in DC. Celebrity appearances, politicized polarization (only pro-choice abortion advocates were allowed; pro-life advocates were sent home) and profanity-peppered, femmy-edgy speech (utilizing volume and profanity to mimic masculinized power posturing) stoked fires still smoldering with post-election anger of devoted Hillary Clinton adherents.
Other than giving rise to political festivals such as Bitchella and a slew of new not-for-profit endeavors, and for fueling virtue-posturing marketing campaigns (my HP article on Vicarious Philanthropy), the proclaimed plight of women in the US is less a persecution issue as it is the sum of randomly meted out fate or luck, personal choice and familial prioritization, a reproductive bio-reality. What Bitchella served best were media ratings numbers and DC-area hospitality industry and retailers’ bottom lines. True equality in pay (equal pay for equal work) and fair competition for the best hire, both which ensure the strongest Free Market societies, are less the issue; rather, it is affirmatively inflated compensation so that pay equals whatever any male co-worker receives, without consideration permitted for rubrics based on track records, actual experience or output (job and/or pay history). Ditto on affirmatively forced career/job placement, regardless of any job, its mandates, or its pool of candidates, at what I believe will come at a cost to the Free Market, for production and the laws of supply and demand will have been affirmatively skewed and manipulated into agenda-wrangled, compromised states.
Hillary Clinton: I was a reluctant Clinton voter. I am not a fan of hers. I believe that the first female president should be a woman who will not have had to ride a husbandly shirttail into the oval office. As an American citizen, I am not a supporter of nepotistic dynasty rule aka royalty for my country. I wrote extensively on this, my November 2016 HP article Trump Take, or, Hanging with Chad.
Reproductive Full Accountability: Sorely absent from the Feminist agenda outline is the personal accountability embrasure of full, personal reproductive accountability among women. Pro-Planning, Pro-Prev, or some other, catchy/taggable term, with full focus on conception prevention, should be coined and promoted so as to become the next Feminist reproductive platform, applicable to all women on all sides of all aisles. Just as the two party system in the US is lamented as needing a balancing third party, so should the two-sided reproductive argument require a third platform, one that stands upon pre-conception, which would eliminate the insurmountable paradox of anti-life (aka Pro Choice) as being mandated if any woman is to ever have full control of her own body and self. Pre-Conception reproductive control should be regarded as the most elemental form of personal accountability, for it lies at the base of self-empowerment and sustainability. This holds true not only for women, but for their offspring.
When children are sustainably produced, odds increase that they are conscientiously parented and provided for. The result is manageable population growth on individual and societal bases. Because the bio-reality will always be that it is women who bear the children, women should let go once and for all of the futile pursuit that is male contraceptive mandate expectation. In a free society, it is never more than a flawed and dangerous assumption to think one can control other members of society, especially when the “error” – conception or the spread of disease – can occur at random, momentary and impossible to track (molecular) levels. Additionally, women must evolve to no longer seek contrived control or claim-laying of men via unwanted/forced/coercive reproduction (fatherhood). Instead, women should learn to embrace the notion that laying claim to full, personal reproductive accountability is what is best for their own sakes, that it is in any woman’s best interest to do this. When that day comes, the super-charged Pro-Choice vs Pro-Life standoff will at last be set aside, and the societal albatross of unwanted- and unsustainable over-reproduction will diminish, if not disappear. The myriad societal domino effects of crime, violence and abuse will likewise diminish, and Feminism will no longer be needed to factionalize or affirmativize groups or individuals, allowing for an organically strengthened and better accomplished society of women who are organically self-actualized, not affirmatively, which as super impositions of societal elevators and faux accomplishment by definition prohibit true self-actualization, which is always and only a personal journey.
Both men and women should each, individually and for each gender group, fully accept taking control of their own bodies and selves, and this includes protecting self from both STD’s and preventing unwanted reproduction each for their own sakes.
Limelight Polarization: Celebrity entertainers serving as American politicians is a well-established precedent. But they now also pose as our think tank intellectuals, political experts, policy makers and cultural Gestapo, proselytizing via 24/7 media feeds. Celebrity women in particular rose up, out and beyond their male counterparts as vestal activists, safe on their pedestals while leaving the men to teeter on tightrope behavioral judgment lines (virtue vetting), with neither statute of limitations nor situational nuances accounted for. Where celebrities previously took their clothes off to garner attention when careers waned and needed boosting (from nude magazine spreads and covers to on-camera disrobing [from provocative roles to so-called wardrobe malfunctions] to “accidentally” viralized home movies and personal pics), they now take on causes. Audiences (media consumers) still willing to suffer through interminable awards show broadcasts now have to endure as Hollywood’s “best” preach, police and create separation in entertainment realms where, from sport to song, what should unite now only polarizes.
Appropriation Censorship: Founded on platforms of self-promotion and Virtue Posturing, the #metoo campaign is a high-profile arm of a censorial wave that includes attacks on free speech, the quashing of humor, cultural appropriation censorship and aggressive affirmative action that embraces falsehoods, denies facts and succumbs to the mandates of mob appeasement. In my opinion, an Intellectual Appropriation Prohibitionistic era is practically inevitable (see my other article posted at this site). This will target educational institutions and all its instructors and experts, who will lose their positions to those who are affirmatively placed because they inherently “possess” or “are of,” or were victimized by (in this attribute, time, place and connectivity are granted long lines of connectedness per populist sway) or even believe to have been victimized by, by birth or direct heritage, any given subject. 2017 saw this in full sway with Halloween costume Moana-gate, where major retailers acquiesced and pulled product to placate self-righteous activists who claimed that, if one were not “of” a given character, one could neither assimilate or celebrate that character via dress-up (including children), nor even possess the capacity to teach or foster suitable appreciation any character, even if only on the merits of its universally shared, general attributes (read my article at this site on Cultural and Intellectual Prohibition for more).
Free Love Full Circle: Interestingly, promiscuity, the cornerstone of Feminism’s earlier Women’s Lib movement, might be heading to a default reversal, certainly in activist appearance, thanks to #metoo’s resurrection of Vestal Activism and wearing of Victorian-invoking Suffrajet Black. This is an interesting and unintended twist, but could be a welcome one, if it is able to evolve the 21st century adult relationship playing field, which has been rife with tech-facilitated competitive pretense and feigned everything, from identity to intention, from lust to prowess and ageist dream-chasing. This might help reduce the hypocrisy of #metoo, which is based on the collective pretense that women have never played any games to cash in materially or opportunistically, nor preyed upon any man in order to get what they wanted or ahead, using what was once euphemistically referred to as their “charms,” less euphemistically as their “wiles” and “guile.”
Original Power Play: Women can also be just as abusive and manipulative as men. Women have hitched their aspirational wagons to the gravy trains of men they sought to take advantage of, and they have sought payback for ill-fated or failed romantic commitment (reform/save/inspire the man to commitment and providership) attempts, when the targeted men were simply not interested (or at least not aspirationally inspired); in other words, when unhappy endings were the results of fairy tale happy ever after/50 Shades-fix-the-gajillionaire pursuits (read my HP article on 50 Shades of Grey), what I call the “thwarted bride” complex. It would be a brave and equalizing gesture indeed, if a contingency of celebrity women would set a new spot-lighted example 1) by acknowledging women’s/their own capacity to err as equals to men and/or 2) by admitting to their own capacities in sexual manipulation games, in particular the failed ones. How brave it would be of them then to commit equally to the higher standards upon which they and their sisters now insist of all men.
To Err is Human: There are incidents where the woman is a victim. There are incidents where mistakes are made by both parties involved, and there are situations where the victim card is played as a ploy. All possibilities need to be considered without blanket denigration to anyone who challenges the current climate of unequivocal male responsibility. Facts, which should remain above trend-reliant platforming, are lamentably back-seated, thanks to social media’s continuous din and the fact that it is those quick-clicking masses with the most free time on their hands who control the ebb and flow. Facts, which is to say ALL facts and statistics, must remain accessible to ALL, and be considered by ALL, even if they don’t align with the agendas of those who are momentarily enthroned as top influencers or controllers of information and opinion. Dangerous factual side-stepping, whether to placate society’s most volatile demographics (mob appeasement legislation and exception-making) or to skew extremist/one-sided agendas, will only come back at greater cost to all.
As woman, wife, mother and (imperfect) human, I am qualified to appropriate a few hashtags of my own:
#EqualEqualOpportunity
#HotelRoomsAtMidnightAreNOTBoardroomsAtNoon
#ItTakesTwo #PersonalAccountabilityIsPower #WhatDoYouDoAndSayWhenTheCamerasAreGone
#ToBitchIsNotToBuildAPlatform
#DisagreeDebateDontFeignOffendedness
#DontForgetThoseClosestToYou #ItStartsAndEndsAtHome #GlassHouses
[1] Contemporaneous chat threads, when this story was in the news, made clear that the woman accuser had left the bar, drunk and alone, with Josh McNary, and gone with him to his home, not even knowing his name. McNary was forced to stand trial. He was acquitted. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2015/09/02/ex-colt-josh-mcnary-takes-stand-rape-trial/71618026/
[2] Feminism, which gave rise to the 19th century women’s movement and resulting suffrage, should be separated by name from subsequent movements and in particular 21st century New Wave Feminism, which is a wholly different cause with different agendas, strategies and desired outcome, that being primarily the downfall of male humans, going both forward and backward in time.
Added 12/12/18: Read more on Bitchella “Is the Women’s March Melting Down?” Tablet Magazine
Originally drafted: December 2017- January 2018
kimann schultz: issues, advocacy, current affairs 