In Dorothy L. Sayer’s essay, “The Human-Not-Quite-Human,”* she imagines how strange life would appear to men, if they were always judged in terms of their maleness:
If everything he wore, said, or did had to be justified by reference to female approval. . . if the center of his dress consciousness were the cod-piece, his interests held to be natural only in so far as they were sexual.
There’s a wide range of behavior that’s considered “male.”
Men can be interested in knowledge, sports, or both.
They’re allowed to enjoy solitude, or to be more social.
They can be “alpha males,” or they can be “good soldiers.”
They can choose to raise a family, or they can concentrate on their own satisfactions.
They can be burly, or they can be slim.
All these ways of living are acceptable, if they’re men.
If you’re a woman, it’s another story.
Today, as ever, women are allowed to be intelligent, but not too intelligent.
Then, they’re freaks!
It’s considered good if females are a bit shy, but they mustn’t be “wall flowers.”
It’s attractive if they’re a bit feisty, but only at the proper times.
Woman can be promoted to management, but they mustn’t be too mean, or too aggressive.
Women are pitied if they don’t bear children, but if men don’t participate in their families it isn’t a big deal.
Women can be a bit too fat, or a bit too thin, and they’re bullied for it either way (often by their own gender).
These are the rules, because females are still “the other.”
Feminists have been discussing this issue for many years.
America Ferrera was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar—for expressing virtually the same idea—in Gloria’s speech (written by Greta Gerwig) in 2023’s Barbie:
You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not too pretty that you tempt them too much, or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be part of the sisterhood.
It is much easier to be a “thinking woman” in the 2020s, then it was a hundred years ago (during Dorothy Sayers’ youth).
Then, it was considered extremely odd for a woman to wear pants, earn an advanced degree, or live on her own.
Francesca Wade’s book Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars tells the story of British artists and authors, who enjoyed lives as semi-independent women, in London, during the early 20th century.
The five women are: Hilda Doolittle (a poet), Dorothy L. Sayers (a mystery author and scholar), Jane Harrison (a scholar), Eileen Power (an historian), and Virginia Woolf (a writer).
You can read the complete story HERE.
If we lived in a matriarchal society, we might be as obsessed with a man’s cod-piece, as men are with female breasts (always gazing below their waists, and not into their eyes).
Men might be told that they were “meant for” heavy labor, and to leave all the important thinking occupations to women.
Men might be criticized for shamelessly displaying their abs, and tempting women into lust.
Science-fiction has had a field day with these scenarios (mainly as comedies).
In 2022, pundit Tucker Carlson, issued the strange Fox Nation documentary The End of Men.
In this film, Carlson decries the social and hormonal emasculation of American males.
Carlson postulates that, only by men reasserting dominance over women—and becoming hyper masculine—can the earth be put back on its’ proper axis.
Ads on TV ask people to contribute $19 a week to “stop transsexual athletes”.
This turmoil, over sex roles, is similar to what went on in Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, when women were forced into the breeder role, and discouraged from higher education.
There were a few women who resisted this trend, for example, Sophie Scholl (1921-1943), who helped build the White Rose Movement.
However, most women meekly acquiesced to being helpmates.
Senator Katie Britt—the female politician who read her State of the Union rebuttal speech from her kitchen—also seems concerned with the emasculation of men.
Why else would she turn herself into a Stepford wife?
Kitchens aren’t a bad location to make a speech.
(For many of my co-workers—when I worked from home—their kitchen was their office.)
Senator Britt stated that being a wife and mother is her most important job, and that’s true.
Being a mom is more important than being a Senator.
(That’s why Nancy Pelosi waited until her youngest child was in high school, before she became a politician. Here I am, “woman-shaming;” to each their own.)
The main point of Britt’s narrative, however, was (using her own words) that “the country we know and love is slipping away.”
It all goes back to the MAGA credo that only Trump can mystically eradicate the evils of “wokeness.”
(If a “woke” society would be one that was not patriarchal, not racist, and which accepted homosexuality, I’m with a “woke” society)
In order to prove her main point—that a Progressive America is a nightmare America—Britt told the story of Karla Romero, a woman who Britt did have some contact with (just not one-on-one) in 2023.
However, Romero’s tragedy of being raped (as a 12-year-old), didn’t happen in the U.S., and it wasn’t at the hands of a drug cartel.
The rapes happened during Republican President George Bush’s administration, in Mexico, after Karla Romero was kidnapped by a pimp.
Britt, along with her handlers, used this “alternative truth” to blame President Biden for all of society’s ills, and to convince her fearful audience that only Trump could keep Christian women safe from sexual exploitation (as if any President could).
Britt’s goal was for Trump’s base to identify with her, but she’s a much worse actor than Trump.
(Her inauthenticity disturbed the mass audience, but it still might give her some Vice-Presidential points.)
Another issue that Britt brought up was the “DNA” of America, and how her white pioneer ancestors conquered the continent.
(Like Trump, Britt wants America to believe that only white Christians built this country.)
That section of her speech hasn’t been widely discussed.
MAGA Republicans seem to blame leftist Progressives for the role of women slowly evolving in Western society.
However, studies—like a 6/12/2023 U.N. report—indicate that there’s been no serious “improvement in biases against women in a decade.”
Nine out of ten people (worldwide) still believe that women are by nature less competent, and less fit to govern, than men.
While parts of the world may be headed in a progressive direction, real progress for women is at a stand still, and sometimes (as in abortion rights) going backward.
The theory that women should be subservient to men is based on the old “might makes right” principal.
Women tend to be smaller and to have less muscle strength than men.
Also, our main religions are based on the idea that for men to have control over women is somehow more “natural.”
As a result, since ancient times, there have been many more patriarchal than matriarchal societies.
Women in this country were given the right to vote only 100 years ago, in 1920.
U.S. women were given the right to obtain a credit card (on their own), in 1974.
Women are underrepresented—both in the higher levels of government, and in Big Business—while at the same time being slightly overrepresented in higher education.
Overall, women still earn at least 16% less than men!
Registering disapproval of “societal trends,” by casting a vote for a con-man, is not a good idea.
Those who believe in a white hierarchy—with white men enjoying natural authority over women and non-whites—may think they’d be safe from any “inconveniences” brought on by living under a Trump reign.
If Trump is reelected—although contraception, in vitro fertilization, and abortion may no longer be allowed for poor and middle-class women—they’re convinced that these choices would still be granted to them.
MAGA voters may imagine that they’d be thrilled with “smaller” government, “lefties” cowed into submission, immigrants deported, less regulation of Big Business, the National Guard in charge of cities, and the U.S.A. setting up alliances with right-wing governments (like Putin’s Russia).
Be careful what you wish for.
*Unpopular Opinions, Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), Victor Gollancz, LTD., London, 1946.
