Andrew Sullivan relates his concerns about how the current concerns about sexual aggression by those in power is being misinterpreted by leftist-feminists:
I mention this because in our increasingly heated debate about gender relations and the #MeToo movement, this natural reality — reflected in chromosomes and hormones no scientist disputes — is rarely discussed. It’s almost become taboo. You can spend a lifetime in gender studies and the subject will never come up. All differences between the sexes, we are now informed, are a function of the age-old oppression of women by men, of the “patriarchy” that enforces this subjugation, and of the power structures that mandate misogyny. All differences between the genders, we are told, are a function not of nature but of sexism. In fact, we are now informed by the latest generation of feminists, following the theories of Michel Foucault, that nature itself is a “social construction” designed by men to oppress women. It doesn’t actually exist. It’s merely another tool of male power and must be resisted.
This is, however, untrue. Even the newest generation of feminists concede this on the quiet. Although they will organize to shut down an entire magazine to prevent an airing of an alternative view of gender, they are not currently campaigning to shut down the Planet Earth series because it reveals that in almost every species, males and females behave differently — very differently — and there appears to be no “patriarchy” in place to bring this about at all. They know enough not to push their argument into places where it will seem to be, quite obviously, ridiculous. But it is strikingly obvious that for today’s progressives, humans are the sole species on this planet where gender differentiation has no clear basis in nature, science, evolution, or biology. This is where they are as hostile to Darwin as any creationist.
And what of it?
I know this must be a pain in the neck for most women. But it’s who we are. It’s a blessing and a curse. It’s called being male, this strange creature, covered in hair, pinioned between morality and hormones, governed by two brains, one above and one below. We can and should be restrained, tamed, kept under control. But nature will not be eradicated. And when left-feminism denies nature’s power, ignores testosterone, and sees all this behavior as a function entirely of structural patriarchal oppression, it is going to overreach. It is going to misunderstand. And it is going to alienate a lot of people. If most men are told that what they are deep down is, in fact, “problematic” if not “toxic,” they are going to get defensive, and with good reason. And they are going to react. So, by the way, are the countless women who do not see this kind of masculinity as toxic, who want men to be different, who are, in fact, deeply attracted to the core aggression of the human male, and contemptuous of the latest orthodoxy from Brooklyn.
And men, especially young men in this environment, will begin to ask questions about why they are now routinely seen as a “problem,” and why their sex lives are now fair game for any journalist. And because our dialogue is now so constrained, and the fact of natural sexual differences so actively suppressed by the academy and the mainstream media, they will find the truths about nature in other contexts. They will stumble across alt-right websites that deploy these truths to foment an equal and opposite form of ideology, soaked in actual misogyny, and become convinced that every sexual interaction is a zero-sum battlefield. They will see this as a war between the genders, not as a way to advance the freedom of both. They will fight back, and in this tribalized culture, the conflict will intensify. Suppress debate, ban ideas from civil conversation, and you won’t abolish these ideas. You will hand them to the worst bigots and give them credibility.
It’s an interesting column, full of food for thought. For me, there’s a couple of things here.
First, a concept I’ve mused on for a while, that of the basic reality of having evolved as an animal in which the two genders fulfill different roles, as basic as the sperm-carrier and the baby-bearer, into which the wildcard of self-aware intelligence has been inserted, an intelligence fully capable of upending traditional roles, trying new approaches to the hard problem of lots of people living together, all constrained by the continuing pressures of evolution. The intelligence has allowed us to explore the concept of justice, of a justice shorn of any link to our animal physiology, and how to apply such.
And to evaluate the results. Evaluation can be formal – or informal. From Andrew:
This week, in the New York Times, Tom Edsall bravely exposed the politics of this. He looked at the data and found, believe it or not, that gender-studies feminism is not shared by all women by any means, and is increasingly loathed by men — and not just older men. “2016 saw the greatest number of votes cast by young white men in the past 12 years — markedly higher than their female counterparts,” says Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, a psychologist at Tufts. Their support for the Democratic nominee dropped by 15 points from 2008 to 2016. Edsall reports that “a Cato 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey found that a bare majority (51 percent) of Democrats believes that calling out sexism is typically justified and not designed to shut off discussion. In sharp contrast, Ekins wrote, about three-fourths (76 percent) of Republicans and two-thirds (65 percent) of independents believe it’s primarily used as a tool to stifle debate.” Two-thirds of Independents now suspect the sincerity of most claims of sexism.
The other thing for me is, knowing Andrew is Catholic, I have to wonder how this all plays out for him, theologically speaking. “Made in the image of God,” no? This all makes God look fairly bad, even if you allow for some flim-flam about Satan spoiling the whole lot of us apples. It seems to me that the more we hew to reality and walk away from insupportable superstitions, the more likely we’ll be to find workable solutions to the problem of having animal bodies and persistent notions of justice and fair play.
