The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Feminist Fantasies

Posted on | June 8, 2016 | 79 Comments

Several years ago — I could look it up — I interview Phyllis Schlafly about her book Feminist Fantasies. Mrs. Schlafly, in many ways one the most influential American woman of the 20th century, laughed about how “tough” feminists sometimes claim to be. Certainly few of them had the steely strength of Mrs. Schlafly who, during World War II, worked her way through college at a defense plant where her job included test-firing .50-caliber machine-gun ammunition. One of the columns collected in Feminist Fantasies is about the 1997 movie G.I. Jane, which Mrs. Schlafly correctly describes as “a psychological lesson designed to abolish the stereotype that men and women are different, and to make Americans believe the myth that women can perform in combat just like men.” Good luck winning a war with a military organized according to social justice ideology.

The title of Mrs. Schlafly’s book came to mind today when I saw a Tumblr blogger’s GIF sequence of a scene from Agent Carter a Marvel-inspired ABC series that ran for eight episodes before being canceled last month. The scene shown on the Tumblr blog was a tedious example of Hollywood feminism: A simplistic caricature of a sexist male — in this case a soldier — expresses a stereotypical sexist attitude toward the heroine, who then responds by knocking him out with one punch.

Let me begin my criticism of this by saying that I hate at least 90% of the “entertainment” produced by Hollywood over the past 25 years, and in general, I can’t stand the comic-book superhero fantasies that have become major profit generators in recent years. Spiderman, Iron Man, Wolverine, Captain America, whatever — it’s all so much childish crap, as far as I’m concerned, and I can’t believe adults would pay money to see it. My disdain for fantasy is quite general, however. Whether it’s Harry Potter or Alien or The Matrix, I’ve never been a fan of science-fiction or “sword and sorcery” dramas. The original Star Wars movie and the first Indiana Jones movie were rare exceptions to this, primarily because those films were inspired by classic 1930s-1950s adventure serials, and also because Harrison Ford was perhaps the best wisecracking movie hero since Clark Gable. At any rate, I outgrew comic books when I was 14, and have never been a fan of superhero movies, so the Marvel-inspired Agent Carter wasn’t the kind of thing I’d watch, even if it weren’t for the feminist propaganda factor. How many more times are we going to see TV networks and movie studios invest in crap projects that get absurdly gushy critical reviews — because all critics are obligated to praise anything with the Feminist™ brand — only to watch the film or TV series fail as a commercial venture? Who wants to sit for two hours in a movie studio, or for an hour on their sofa at home, watching what is for all intents and purposes a feminist sermon in the Cult Temple of Social Justice?

This token “diversity” of many TV and movie casts nowadays — does every police homicide unit in America now have a Puerto Rican lesbian detective? — is a sort of low-level background noise TV viewers have become accustomed to, but why does it seem so many of the plot lines are being scripted by writers who studied Critical Theory in grad school?

Are people turning on prime-time TV to watch entertainment or to be lectured about race/class/gender oppression? Nowadays, network crime dramas and situation comedies are as predictably political as Soviet cinema during the Stalin era. It seems almost as if all the scripts are being issued by a Central Committee of the People’s Ministry of Correct Entertainment, a group of propaganda commissars consisting of representatives from the NAACP, the SPLC, GLAAD, the AFL-CIO and NARAL, under the guidance of David Brock and Anita Sarkeesian.

Of course, merely to mention how politicized entertainment has become is to invite the accusation that you are a sexist, racist homophobe, and I wouldn’t mention it at all, except for the fact that Hollywood’s liberal propaganda campaigns are harmful and dangerous. For example, the type of “Strong Empowered Woman” feminist morality tale in the Agent Carter scene — where she knocks a man unconscious with a single punch — is apt to induce in young women a sense of inadequacy: “Why can’t I be strong and brave like that?” One notices that, during the past 20 years or so, there has been a skyrocketing increase in reports of depression and anxiety among young women, and why? Among the several factors involved, I am certain that no small part of the problem is that girls are now under constant pressure (from parents, from peers, from schools, from media) to live up to a feminist ideal. Every middle-class girl nowadays is expected to aspire to the ideal of becoming an independent, successful career woman. She must be smart! Be strong! Be empowered! And if she doesn’t become high school valedictorian and graduate with honors from Yale, she considers herself a worthless loser.

That academic fast-track competition is a pressure cooker, and there’s a high burn-out rate among Boy Genius types whose parents insist they simply must go to an Ivy League school. Why on earth would parents want to shove their daughters into that kind of meat grinder?

Look, my daughters are both highly intelligent. My oldest graduated college summa cum laude and, at age 27, is already the vice-principal of an elementary school. My youngest has never made less than an A, and she scored 99th percentile on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Yet I don’t want any of my children, boys or girls, to enter that Nerd Olympics where they’re locked into an all-or-nothing academic gladiatorial combat against the overprivileged offspring of the decadent plutocratic elite.

Let the rich folks send their kids to Brown and Columbia, Stanford and Duke, Oberlin, Occidental, Georgetown and Northwestern. Having seen the kind of wicked immorality that typifies the students and faculty of such schools, I wouldn’t want my children anywhere near those “elite” campuses. The Ivy League Is Decadent and Depraved. No responsible parent would let their kids attend an anti-Christian school like Harvard, and the road to Hell is paved with Yale diplomas.

From the warped value system promoted at our “elite” universities emerges the dangerous feminist fantasies promoted by Agent Carter.

It’s highly symbolic, you see: The American soldier is the villain in this scene. Beyond the standard feminist depiction of white heterosexual males as perpetrators of sexist oppression, the Hollywood elite never misses a chance to express its anti-patriotic, anti-military sentiment.

Feminism is a hate movement that calls itself “social justice.”





 

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

79 Responses to “Feminist Fantasies”

  1. Finrod Felagund
    June 9th, 2016 @ 10:30 pm

    Obviously we need a tax on private educational endowments that are larger than $1 billion.

  2. Finrod Felagund
    June 9th, 2016 @ 10:31 pm

    Do yourself a favor and stay far away from Deadpool, then.

  3. Finrod Felagund
    June 9th, 2016 @ 10:33 pm

    Avengers managed to keep it confined to a chunk of Midtown. Captain America even tells Iron Man not to let anything get more than three blocks out (“turn it back or turn it to ash”) at one point.

  4. Joe Joe
    June 9th, 2016 @ 11:51 pm

    Now, you’re asking the Left to be consistent. Good luck with that. 😀

  5. DeadMessenger
    June 9th, 2016 @ 11:57 pm

    Of course. Forgive my ignorance. =)

  6. DeadMessenger
    June 10th, 2016 @ 12:00 am

    Oh sure. Bet you wouldn’t resort to stereotyping when you need yer pants mended, huh, big fella? Crossing you off my pie list right now…

  7. jmshigham
    June 10th, 2016 @ 12:11 am

    Not the slightest argument from me – a very great woman, Phyllis.

  8. Mr. Saturn
    June 10th, 2016 @ 5:26 am

    Yeah and it wasn’t like she was fighting with Cap and the Howling Commandos. She was a support, intelligence officer.

  9. Mr. Saturn
    June 10th, 2016 @ 5:27 am

    Having only watched Fury Road once, I don’t recall much beating up of men by Furiosa.

  10. M. Thompson
    June 10th, 2016 @ 6:14 am

    Uff da!

    I get really good pie from my wife. Made with apples from her parents orchard…

    (I’m hungry at the thought of it.)

  11. Dana
    June 10th, 2016 @ 6:43 am

    Canoe believe that he did that?

  12. gunga
    June 10th, 2016 @ 6:44 am

    Strength, discipline, confidence, endurance are all benefits for anyone taking up martial arts. Just please don’t suggest that it gives petite feminine girly-girls the ability to magically knock out men with one punch to the jaw.

  13. Dana
    June 10th, 2016 @ 6:45 am

    I’m still trying to figure out how Nick Fury, a sergeant during World War II, is head of SHIELD in 2016, since he’d have to be around about 102 years old by now.

  14. M. Thompson
    June 10th, 2016 @ 8:00 am

    How is Domestic Beer like sex in a canoe?

    It’s F—— close to water.

  15. Mr. Saturn
    June 10th, 2016 @ 8:16 am

    I think they decided to eschew Fury’s Infinity Formula aided longevity in the movie universe. Or at least they haven’t said anything about it. Probably for the best.

  16. Mike G.
    June 10th, 2016 @ 8:33 am

    That’s why I drink Modelo. It’s a Man’s beer. 😉

  17. Quartermaster
    June 10th, 2016 @ 9:42 am

    He saved the city by destroying it.

    Hey, it worked in Vietnam.

  18. Quartermaster
    June 10th, 2016 @ 9:44 am

    He was a very young Sgt. Very young.

    It was kinda funny that back in the 60s he was both Sgt. Fury and head of SHIELD at the same time.

  19. Quartermaster
    June 10th, 2016 @ 9:49 am

    When I was still in the Navy I met some German sailors who had pulled into Norfolk. They tried the US version of kegelbahn and then asked about US beer. Not being a beer drinker myself, I asked the guy running the Snack bar at the Navy Bowling Lanes for what he thought was his best US beer in stock and bought 4 12 oz cans for the Krauts to try. They weren’t at all impressed.

    Given that the major beer brands were generally started by Germans, US beer was pretty sorry at the time. They thought it was much too watery. I have no idea what they would think of the current crop of craft beers. One local craft brewery here in the WNC mountains is run by a guy from the Black Forest. He does make very good Root and Birch Beers.

  20. M. Thompson
    June 10th, 2016 @ 9:54 am

    Considering that base bars are almost all gone, it’s almost impossible to drink on base these days unless you’ve got your own.

    And I was out in Washington, where it seems that every place of decent size has its own craft brewery.

  21. Quartermaster
    June 10th, 2016 @ 10:56 am

    The generic term “Snack Bar” does not refer to a “bar” meant for drinking. One Post or base, those would be found at the clubs. The Snack Bar at the bowling alley at the D&S Piers at NOB NorVA also sold beer.
    I’ve heard the “clubs” have gone away on bases. Going to the ‘O’ Club with someone that “had paper” on you is not a wise move, when it used to be part of unit camaraderie.

  22. Greg
    June 10th, 2016 @ 12:31 pm

    I just have to say, if a woman hits me, and I find out about it, there will be consequences.

  23. Stephen J.
    June 10th, 2016 @ 1:12 pm

    I wanted to like Agent Carter, I really did, because I find Hayley Attwell hot and because I liked the character. But it made the mistake all consciously feminist stories do: it refused to allow any prominent character to come off as better, more dangerous or more impressive than the heroine, which is the death of drama because it ruins any sense of a legitimate conflict with real stakes — the only conflicts Peggy was ever able to “lose” had to be the ones shown to be stacked against her by unfair circumstances right from the beginning, like her status in the OSS office. I wound up eventually so bored with the story that I never even bothered to watch the finale of season 1 or any major part of season 2.

  24. Virtue signalling is not salvation. [Gal 6] | Dark Brightness
    June 10th, 2016 @ 2:32 pm

    […] virtue is signaled. There is but one problem with that. The progressive agenda is bad for you, even the more benign parts of it. We put our young people under too much […]

  25. Strelnikov
    June 10th, 2016 @ 8:42 pm

    Re the gif, the thing which worries me is the possibility that impressionable young women will believe that women in general are physically superior to men. In real life, the woman in the gif would get slapped silly, at a minimum. I’m afraid these women will get injured, raped and/or killed following Hollywood’s example.

  26. Strelnikov
    June 10th, 2016 @ 8:42 pm

    Whoring?

  27. JT
    June 11th, 2016 @ 12:59 pm

    The worst instance of girl punching I saw was when I accidentally
    watched an episode of Buffy the TV series. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s
    pencil wrists totally don’t sell the damage. Another Whedon creation
    River Tam’s Summer Blau, who seems very sweet and feminine the few times
    I’ve seen her out of character, was supposed to turn into some
    super-human killing machine.

    At least Kristy Swanson looked like she could hurt you a bit if she kicked you.

  28. Neptus 9
    June 13th, 2016 @ 3:43 am

    Current entertainment will become a laughable, quaint example of another generation’s naive grandparents’ ideals.

    Right now it simply bores almost everybody.

  29. News of the Week (June 13th, 2016) | The Political Hat
    June 13th, 2016 @ 12:58 pm

    […] Feminist Fantasies Several years ago — I could look it up — I interview Phyllis Schlafly about her book Feminist Fantasies. […]