Showing Womenists What is a Real Patriarchy Looks Like

July 7, 2002

by Bruce Walker

If the leaders of NOW want to see what a real patriarchy looks like, they should go to Saudi Arabia today or talk to women who survived the Taliban’s long reign of terror in Afghanistan or visit with the survivors of Marxist regimes throughout history.

Why did the women of Afghanistan not rise up and kick out the Taliban? Why is Pat Ireland here, lecturing us about how little we have done to allow women to leave Saudi Arabia, instead of in Riyadh, lecturing the House of Saud? Why are these defenders of women not traveling throughout the Islamic world condemning its men about the barbaric practice of female circumcision? Why are these gals not in Beijing berating the tottering old men who rule in Beijing about the abortion gendercide of baby girls in China?

Because Pat Ireland and all these other cowards have no wish to face the sort of vicious and violent patriarchs against whom they rail so much. These spoiled princesses have long since given up the right to be called "feminists" - a term that great women like Susan B. Anthony proudly coined - and now these ill-mannered little girls should be called precisely what they are "womenists" who do not care one whit about justice, truth, compassion, fairness or honor.

Unlike those champions of equal political and legal rights for all, which once long ago had been noble purposes of the traditional feminist agenda, the hatemongers of "womenism" have as much to do with equality as modern "liberals" (whose name implies concern for individual liberty) have to do with freedom. Womenists simply want to claim as spoils of war as many special privileges and perks at the expense of men as possible.

Womenists are gender imperialists. They have as little in common with the great women of American History as Jesse "Shakedown" Jackson have in common with Frederick Douglass. They want power and not justice. What these aging womenists in their posh, insulated salons of New York and Hollywood do not understand is that women never won a war against men for equal rights.

Do womenists ever wonder why they are free? Do they wonder why the women of Afghanistan did not "win" their freedom as the women of America did? The answer is brutally simple: men have always had overwhelming physical force compared to women. There has never been a war which women have defeated men.

Women have gained rights the same way that other groups which could be overwhelmed by vastly superior force have gained rights: appeal to the moral principles of those who can kill or imprison any enemies. Ponder, for a moment, the inherent absurdity of the womenist argument that women "won" the right to vote.

Women were, according to womenist theology, powerless. They could not vote. They could not instigate a violent revolution. Men controlled commerce and industry. How, exactly, were women able to win the vote? Why has this strategy not worked in Iran or Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia? Why was there never a single women who was a full member of the Politburo (Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union)?

If women lacked the vote, they could not vote in politicians sympathetic to the Suffrage movement. If women had inferior rights to engage in commerce or conduct their lives independent of men, then women axiomatically lacked the financial muscle to buy politicians. If women were at the physical mercy of men, how could they exercise even nominal rights that they might be given - like in the Soviet Union?

Women were given the vote by men, just as blacks were given the vote by whites, and just as non-Christians were given the vote by Christians. This is anathema to womenist theology, which prescribes that men are the eternal and implacable foes of women, just as it is anathema to all the creepy victimologies of the left, which blame all the misery of their disciples to the sinister specter of dead white European men.

For womenists, however, the truth is even more awful: these maligned "dead white European men" gave up more than their exclusive right to vote in order to insure that those without formal political and legal rights gained those rights; they gave up their lives in bloody battles in defense of ideals that liberated all peoples.

Perhaps for this reason veterans, who have seen the full price of the liberty which womenists and others bandy about so casually, are most insistent on treating liberty as a priceless gift - just as mothers, who have carried children inside them and pushed through the pain to bring these babies into the world are often those who care so much about the safety and security of children.

All of us should worry about the unsubtle attempt of womenists to mobilize votes and money to create a fragile, artificial and doomed matriarchy. The foundation of our civility, our individual rights, our democratic system, and our rule of law reside entirely upon groups who have the physical power to dominate and terrorize choosing not to do so.

Whites broke the Ku Klux Klan because it was recognized by a clear majority of whites as evil. Men granted women full political and legal equality because - oh, the womenists hate this! - men loved their wives, daughters, sisters and mothers. Moreover, this love was reciprocated by women to men.

There was no patriarchy in America because those people who had the guns, the muscles, the dollars, and the vote held these instruments of power with the intention to "love, honor and cherish" their wives, to "honor thy mother" and to sing sad and beautiful folk tunes like "My Darling Clementine" reflecting a father’s love for his daughter which transcended the grave. Men and women (not womenists) believed in an America based upon St. Paul’s simple words:

"This is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

All of this, of course, is very hokey to embittered womenists who instinctively assume that America is divided into hostile camps. Yet, here in flyover country, women smile and say "thank you" when I open the door for them, and most prefer to be called "Mrs." if they are married, instead of "Ms."

Here, at least, we are no more fond of matriarchies than patriarchies. We tend to read "Love thy neighbor" without worrying about whether the Lord intended our neighbor to be a man or a woman. In fact, were our neighbor a homosexual, we would still love him and would give him the same loving counsel that we would give to an alcoholic or a drug addict: "You are hurting yourself so much, my friend."

But that is poor America - socially backward and dominated by us yahoos from flyover country. You womenists have done all you can here, so why not charter some cruise ships so that you can travel to Africa and Asia, and so that you can show your sisters how to throw off their oppressors...just like you did in America.

Tell them about all the indignities you have suffered: how men put you on that wretched pedestal; how husbands made you stay home during the 1950s while men had all the fun of going to the office; how husbands once prevented wives from murdering unborn children of their marriage; how men passed laws keeping you from working in dangerous jobs like coal mining and fire fighting; how grandfathers had all the fun at Tarawa and Anzio, while patriotic women were forced to serve in noncombatant military roles.

Yes, cross the oceans to lands where people are judged by their sex and not by their character (you know - the same standard womenists use to judge people) and tell them about your terrible life here in Amerika, the fascist patriarchy.

And then offer to swap lives with them.

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Bruce Walker has been a dyed in the wool conservative since, as a sixth grader, he campaigned door to door for Barry Goldwater. Bruce has had almost two hundred published articles have appeared in the Oklahoma Bar Journal, Law & Order, Legal Secretary Today, The Single Parent, Enter Stage Right, Citizen's View, The American Partisan, Port of Call, and several other professional and political periodicals.

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