Angry Young Feminists

Mark Judge read it, so I don’t have to. Give him some extra credit: now you don’t have to read it either.

I am referring to a new book, The Book of Jezebel. You remember Jezebel from Bible study. She tried to entice people to worship idols instead of God, to forms cults instead of religions. Wikipedia summarizes her story:

 According to the biblical accounts, Jezebel incited her husband King Ahab to abandon the worship of Yahweh and encourage worship of the deities Baal and Asherah instead. Jezebel is said to have persecuted the prophets of Yahweh, and to have fabricated false evidence of blasphemy against an innocent landowner who refused to sell his property to King Ahab, causing the landowner to be put to death. For these transgressions against the God and people of Israel, the Bible relates, Jezebel met a gruesome death - thrown out of a window by members of her own court retinue, and the flesh of her corpse eaten by stray dogs.

Nowadays, for those who missed Bible study and are connoisseurs of contmeporary feminist thought, Jezebel is known primarily as a website that traffics in feminist rage.

To be fair, Jezebel’s editor, Jessica Coen is an exceptionally talented writer. Her site would be better if she would fill it with more of her own writing and less feminist boilerplate.

Personally, I have long found the site a wonderful supplier of self-discrediting feminism. It shows us what feminism has become. Considering how influential feminism is, those of us who have not bought it can read Jezebel to find out what the other half is thinking. Or, should I say, to see whether the other half is thinking.

Being a dedicated reader to the Jezebel website I feel that I have earned an exemption from reading The Book of Jezebel.

According to Mark Judge the book is organized alphabetically—very original, that—with C following B following A. Under each letter you will find, Judge assures us, several items indicating what you, if you are a Jezebel, must hate and several items you must like.

It’s like an encyclopedia, get it:

Under A there is Madeleine Albright and Christiane Amanpour, Allure magazine and Isabel Allende. There’s also Biblical Adam, who represents “male supremacy based on primordial male precedence.” And Adoption, which would be OK – maybe – except “antichoicers would have you believe this is a relatively easy process and a morally superior alternative to abortion.”

What's wrong with adoption? The people who defend it as an alternative to abortion are opposed to abortion. Thus, there shall be no more adoption.

Want to read more about the dread anti-choicers? The Book of Jezebel offers this:

… antichoice does fail to reflect the breadth and depth of the fear and loathing expressed by antichoice activists when it comes to the subject of women having sex without paying a terrible price, either at the end of a coat hanger or in being forced to march down the aisle to marry a guy who sole husbandly qualification is that he turned you on after a few rounds on a Saturday night.

Antichoicers hate women who have sex, women who like having sex and women who hookup. Precisely why the patriarchy would not want women to enjoy having sex is, I suspect, never addressed. Its’ an article of faith, to be accepted as dogmatic truth

People have debated the issue of abortion—when, where, why—for decades now. Yet, anyone who disagrees with the feministically correct position—which means... abortion on demand—whenever, wherever a woman wishes—is branded a misogynist who fears women’s sexuality.

One wonders whether The Book of Jezebel contains, under the letter G, an entry for Dr. Kermit Gosnell?

And then The Book of Jezebel defines anti-feminists as:

People who object to feminism’s goals, i.e. people who often (willfully) misunderstand feminism and/or huge assholes. Notable examples include Phyllis Schlafly, Camille Paglia, Caitlin Flanagan, the entire “men’s rights” movement, proponents of wifey “surrender,” hard-core religious fundamentalists, teenagers who just discovered Andrea Dworkin, Bart Stupak, Mike Pence, and the pope. Not to be confused with thoughtful people who believe in women’s equality but object to the mainstream feminist movement’s tendency to focus on middle-class, white, heterosexual women to the exclusion of everyone else.

If you are not a feminist, you are an ignorant asshole. That pretty much sums it up, don’t you think? It shows how much the Jezebels respect differences of opinion.

Actually, the writers do accept that some people might believe that today's feminism is insufficiently leftist and multicultural.

Other than that group, anyone who disagrees with contemporary feminism is an ignorant asshole.

Who is this book’s target audience? Perhaps the authors are writing for fellow fanatics who believe that the world should be divided into good and evil, between those who share their extreme zealotry and those who, because they reject it, deserve to be drawn and quartered.

One is struck by the mindlessness of it all. One is struck by the shameless display of raw emotion.

Remember the time when feminists insisted that women be respected for their minds? Now they have gotten over that wave of feminism. They want to tyrannize people with their righteous rage.

Why would they be trying to convince us that they, being women, can only make histrionic displays of emotion? Why haven’t they gotten over that shopworn stereotype?

Forty years ago second-wave feminism washed up on our shores. One must say that it has accomplished many of its objectives. And yet, the dumbed-down feminists of Jezebel are in a white-hot rage.

The world that these junior feminists are living in today is a world that feminism, in very large part, has created. Modern women have seen their lives altered by feminism. If they don’t like it, they should start blaming themselves and their feminist foremothers.

The followed Gloria Steinem’s advice and grew up to become the men that they had wanted to marry. They had every right to do so. Now, it seems that they are surprised to have discovered that the men who might be willing to marry them are not the men that they want to marry.

Having become the men that they wanted to marry feminists are facing men who are trying to become the women these feminists did not want to be.

You may want to consider it a crushing irony. You do better to consider it poetic justice.

If their inability to respect the difference between the sexes has made their dating and mating lives decidedly unsatisfying feminists are learning the hard way that you shouldn’t mess with Mother Nature.

No wonder they are angry. It’s all projected self-loathing. It’s time to get over it.

In his review Mark Judge offers his own explanation for the feminist rage he so aptly describes. Unfortunately, he relies on the authority of one Robert Bly, a poet turned men’s-rights activist who created the Iron Man movement a few decades ago.

I would call it an unforced error.

Judge admits that invoking the name of Robert Bly is not going to lend very much credence to his argument. In that he is right. He would have done better to find a more substantive writer, even a research scholar whose work might have buttressed his argument: feminists are angry because there are no more fathers around.

It is altogether possible that feminists are enraged at the absence of father figures. But it is equally possible and perhaps more probable that they are angry about the manifest failure of their own ideology to provide what it promised.