feminine MISTAKE
Tue, 23 Aug 88 16:17:27
this is from 'IN THESE TIMES'. it's a review of a recent book by DOKTOR
toni grant, ' beING a WOman: fullfilling your feminity and finDING lOVE',
by susan DOUGlas.
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THE FEMININE MISTAKE.
boy, have i been a dunce. i misguidedly thought that the reason i'd been
out of sorts as a woman the past seven years was because things like the
justice dept.'s assault on affirmative action, the increased feminization
of poverty and the incessant attack on reproductive freedom to name just a
few causes of female depression.
Yes, i'll admit it: i've been kinda moody since JAN.20, 1981, and i tended
to blame my irratibility on others, particularly a few jowly, privileged,
PINK-cheeked white men in WASHINGTON. I was even known to use the word
PATRIARCHY now and then. but now that i've read the best selling 'beING
WOman' by DOKTOR toni grant, a "pioneer in media psychology" who hosts
a call-in show for the lovelorn, i realize just how misplaced my anger
has been.
my analysis of the female condition under REAGANISM has been all wrong.
i've been so busy looking at silly things like social structure and economic
practices that i failed to identify the real enemy. toni grant, PH.D opened
my eyes to the truth: the real reason i;ve been unhappy in the 80's is because
i've been duped and lied to by FEMINISTS.
"in her incendiary new book", proclaimed a full-paged add in the new york
times book review, "DOKTOR toni grant explodes the myth of 'liberation.'"
the WOMEN's movement brought us nothing but misery and e women have only
ourselves to blame. it is FEMINISM that is singlehandedly responsible
for female "stress, anxiety, depression, compulsion, addiction and exhaustion."
THE AMAZON BUNGLE: while women may have deluded themselves into thinking they
cared about equal pay for equal worth, or incresed educational and occupational
opportunities, DOKTOR toni grant knows better. actually, we don't give a hoot
about these things; we desire only to be "taken, transported, ravished, swept
away, carried over the threshold of love in the arms of a valiant hero." while
reading this i felt the spark of recognition, for, secretly, this is how i
REALLY feel whenever i see SYLVESTER STALONE, OLIVER NORTH or HUGH HEFNER.
the problem for women today isn't that some men in power are TROGLODYTES, it's
that women have become what DOKTOR toni call "AMAZONS". FEMINISM has turned us
into overeducated, uptight, promiscuous, male-bashing shrews incapable and
undeserving of love. the AMAZON travels in packs. whenever she encounters a
man her tendency is to "draw her sword and go straight for the jugular and
castrate wherever she senses WEAKNESS." such behaviour is generally unpopular,
and it is grant's mission to help us get in touch with our softer nature and
"embrace or lost feminity." for FEMINISM, argues DOKTOR toni, "cripples female
power." REAL power comes from eyelash fluttering, tongue biting and toilet
scrubbing.
quoting two knowledgeble AUTHORITIES on contemporary american women, carl
JUNG and sigmund FREUD, grant notes that "women do not know themselves."
but grant knows that, first and foremost, women are "passionately concerned
about LOVE." a REAL woman is "psychologically pre-conscious" and operates in
"a natural intuitive fashion, utilizing her feelings as opposed to her
intellect. she doesn't think analytically or strategicaly about what she does
at all. she just IS."
MAN-nifest DESTINY: in one of the many pathbreaking ideas in the book, grant
puts forward the revolutionary new concept that "biology IS destiny." this
means that ALL women are genetically programmed to be passive, submissive
and deferential to men. the WOMEN's movement denied this IRREFUTABLE fact,
and "the more extreme elements of the FEMINIST and SEXUAL revolutions"
propagated what grant calls "the big LIES of liberation."
one such LIE maintained that "a woman's attractiveness to men would increase
with her achievements." PREPOSTEROUS, exclaims grant. "the contemporary woman
did not anticipate that being overeducated might hamper her ability to RELATE
to men...research statistics that the higher a woman's education, the less
apt she is to MARRY." this hit HOME. first, i realized that as an educator i
was doing a cruel disservice to the women students i encouraged to attend
graduate and professional shools.
SECONDLY, i knew DOKTOR toni was talking about my very own MARRIAGE and that
i better share my concerns with my husBAND. "i'm so glad you brought this
up," he exclaimed with relief. "you know, i just hate it when we sit around,
have a few beers and talk about politics or the media or education. when we
go back and forth about ideas, it's so, well...castrating. couldn't you take
up needlpoint and talk about the thred, or just smile and listen and never
say annything? our relationship would be so much better that way."
the other BIG LIES of libaration, such as the myth that men and women are
fundamentally the same, the myth of one's unrealized potential and the myth
that "DOING is better than BEING", have made today's woman "and imitation man
at WAR with actual men." these AMAZONS "deserted their men and their children
or rejected the entire notion of MARRIAGE and FAMILY; they "went to ORGIES" and
"participated in ODD sexual arrangements" (a stage of the WOMEN's movement that
i, unfortunately, missed out on). today's WOMEN "fix their own cars and leaky
faucets, travel ALONE, pay their OWN bills and wield their OWN credit cards."
that's me, all right. just YESTERDAY i rebuilt the ENGINE BLOCK.
men hate these independent, self-suficient types. in another pathbreaking
passage, DOKTOR grant astutely observes that "boys will be boys; there is no
getting away from it." just as all WOMEN are alike, so are all men. what guides
men, in everything they do, is CASTRATION anxiety. because of this "men need
to be right, and smart women know this and let them." men "do resist
domesticity; they are hunters by nature and their natural instinst is to run
free.' in another shimmering analogy, grant reminds us that "a fish, like a
man, wants to swim free. he has a natural attraction to the bait but an
aversion to the hook."
SWEET SURRENDER: all this is, of course, "rooted in gender biology: men
physically go 'downward'; that is, they penetrate women. moreover, it has
to do with man's biological NEED for dominance and CONTROL." women have to
surrender to male willfulness and, sometimes, this is a tad fustrating. DOKTOR
grant recommends DEEP BREATHING as "enormously helpful in the SURRENDER
process." those women resistant to this SURRENder process are explicitly to
"respiratory illness (blocking of the BREATHING passeges)." and for years i
thought i had hay FEVER! now, by just saying "YES MASTER, whatever YOU say,"
several times a day, i can throw out those decongestants forever.
grant cites THE TAMING OF THE SHREW as a primer for how women SHOULD be
trained and SUBDUED. if a man points to the sun and insists it is the moon,
the smart WOMAN, the WOMAN with REAL power, smiles and agrees.
this book saved my marriage and CHANGED my life. i now realize that the
WOMAN "makes of breaks the harmony of a home," that the WOMAN is "the glue
of an enduring relationship." successful relationships between sexes are
ENTIRELY the WOMAN's resposability - men are too TIRED and overWORKED to
have to do this sort of THING. i have come to see that i "take a SECRET
PLESURE in dominance by men" for i have learned "what every sadomasochistic
aficionado will know: SUBMISSION can be downright RELAXING."
so i'm going to stop bitching. no more yelling at images of ED MEESE or
ORIN HATCH on tv. there's no SEXISM out these; just HUFFY, deluded,
unFEMININE women who don't know how to keep their lips zipped. my needlepoint
is on the way, and tonight i'm going to wash my hasBAND's feet with my hair.
then i'll start on those BREATHING exercises.
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it also says at the end of the article that SUSAN is selling her HUGE
collection of CRAFTSMAN power tools cheep.
frater luXNoir