Woman – pride or shame?

Notice that the political left in America, for more than half a century, treats the concept woman with scorn. None will ever admit it, but they do, nevertheless. Nothing else can explain their politics, the thrust of “women’s studies” or “gender studies,” their literature, or their drama. Your editor uses the possessive their deliberately – for all these things are unattractive, damaging, and deserve replacement.

What does the left think it means to be a woman?

To the political left, to be a woman is to be a victim. That goes double for non-white women, which is what intersectionality and intersectional feminism (a variant of critical theory) mean. And of what is she a victim? Does a man find her physically attractive? Then he regards her as a sex object, therefore one without dignity. Does a woman ever look up to a man, regarding him as a hero? Then she must suffer from “Stockholm Syndrome,” bestowing dignity on an oppressor. The world of the left has no room in it for a woman actually proud to be one.

That is why the left’s political leaders heap scorn on all the things that make a woman unique. A woman, and only a woman, can incubate a new human life and bring that life into the world. People should celebrate that. But no – the left embraced abortion on demand, regarding pregnancy and childbirth as a prison sentence. (Never mind that Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood for a racist motive – to limit the births of “undesirables.”)

A matter of strength

Worse, they look at the relative physical weakness of women and cry that this makes them inherently vulnerable. That applies only if men and women are at perpetual war – as Susan Brownmiller (Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape) asserted. At first they denied any physical differences and insisted on total parity in police and fire departments, and the military.

Today they embrace a failed male athlete (Will Thomas) who:

1. Opted for surgical mutilation and hormonal poisoning,
2. Changed his first name to “Lia,” and then
3. Passed himself off as a woman and joined the women’s swim team at the University of Pennsylvania.

This man pretending to be a woman then proceeded to smash – or outright steal – all the women’s swim records. And the left takes pride in this! See how a man becomes a woman, to even the strength score!

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) might be copacetic with this. But Thomas’ teammates most emphatically are not. Neither are “biological” (which means: real) women who lose out to this “passing man.” Fortunately the Governor of Florida, from which state “runner-up” Emma Weyant came, understands the real issue. He boldly proclaimed Emma Weyant the real winner. In this he would have had the support of the attendees at the NCAA swim meet. They greeted Thomas’ finish with stony silence – and then cheered loudly for Weyant. (And when Thomas and Weyant stood at the reviewing stand, some attendees cried “Boo!” against Thomas.)

What kind of feminism trashes what a woman might be?

That sorry spectacle has caused some to question the value of “feminism” to women. But this is not the first time. As this “amateur” pop-culture critic reported three years ago:

the Walt Disney group totally eviscerated the popular Marvel Comics universe with their adaptation of the Captain Marvel story. A woman accepts training from a male warrior – and then turns against him, on the advice of another woman, and sides with the enemies of her civilization. The problem: Mr. Stan Lee, who created the Marvel characters, envisioned these enemies as the enemies of everything and everyone civilized. But here we see another flaw of the political left: they cannot recognize conscious evil. No enemies but what you make – and in this case the White Male Patriarchy makes all the enemies. And the women must redeem their civilization – even if that means leading it to its destruction.

Is this what being a woman is about? Having no heroes, and destroying everything that came before her? How feminine is that? Not at all, obviously.

An ironic twist from the last century

The “woke rot” had not even begun to take hold in the 1960s, even when “Women’s Liberation” exploded across American TV news in 1968. As evidence, your editor cites the last original Star Trekepisode, “Turnabout Intruder” (S03E24). This story illustrates exactly the flaw in a movement that imagines woman as vengeful virago, instead of achiever.

In this story, Janice Lester, Ph.D, one of James T. Kirk’s old flames – with whom he had a stormy affair while he was studying at the Academy, an affair that ended badly – has since become an archaeologist. On a planet holding nothing but ruins, she discovers a stunning artifact – that can literally switch souls between bodies.

With such a discovery, she could win the “Nobel and Z-Magnees Prize” and a university chairmanship. But instead of reaching for that, she reaches for catty vengeance. She murders all her archaeological team, then sends a distress call, knowing that Kirk’s ship will respond. When he comes to her rescue, she exchanges bodies with him, using that device.

She should then simply kill her old body – and his soul. But one thing after another, interferes. Eventually – after a loyalty crisis that results in outright mutiny – the transference reverses itself.

After that, Captain Kirk observes,

She could have been a wonderful woman, if only … if only …

And his executive officer (in James Blish’s excellent prose adaptation) answers,

If only she had been able to take any pride in being a woman.

The larger question – the place of woman in civilization

A thriving civilization properly honors a woman for being one, and especially for doing that which a woman, and not a man, can do. But this holds no interest for the Liberal Globalist New World Order. They want the human race to die out, except for themselves. So, to serve that end, they make women feel second-class merely for being women. When they tell you,

A woman can be just as good as a man.

what they really mean by that is,

A woman is no inherent good unless she tries to be a man.

At the same time they welcome men who pass for women – again, after surgical mutilation and hormonal poisoning. All this is of a piece with the Globalists’ plan for Zero Population Growth – or population decline.

But they might have “jumped the shark” this time. The University of Pennsylvania Women’s Swim Team refused to accept Will “Lia” Thomas as a teammate. Another woman who came one place shy of qualifying for seeding in the NCAA Women’s Swim Meet wrote a letter of protest. So did former women swimmers from the University of Arizona. (And incidentally, NBC Sports electronically retouched a photograph of Thomas to make him look more feminine. Astute observers saw through that.)

So don’t believe the Cancel Culture Crowd when they proclaim victory here. They have instead awakened real women to what they signed onto, without knowing it.