The Theoretical "War on Women"

A bizarre occurrence in the NFL flap.  With the expulsion of Ray Rice from the Baltimore Ravens, a triumph was declared for the feminist version of justice, where domestic violence is a travesty to be eliminated at full cost.  Then, in the first home game in Baltimore, a set o women supported Mr. Rice by the wearing of his jersey.  The life-long (aka "indefinite") suspension is rightly being contested.  But the epic battle of the advancement of the feminist ideal has provoked a type of unexpected backlash.

The women wearing the offending jerseys were duly passed off as "duped," but they are representative of a cultural under-current of dismissing the general trends of recent feminist thought.  In a recent episode of Today, notice was made of the group of women who insisted that feminism did not define them, and that this vision of womanhood, not given to notions of patriarchalism, still valued maleness to a degree that feminism was inadequate as a universal principle.  It short, they could conceive of women as women, as men as men, not subject to demasculating tendencies.  The female journalists were quick to point out that feminism had assured all women of fairer treatment and better opportunities.

Which was, technically true, but an irritating avoidance of the true issue.  The great gains that were achieved in the 1970's were not the issue under attack, but the expansion of culture as decisively female in orientation.  Not the 1980's victory, but the 2010's irrationalism.

The issue is the decadence of feminism to a degree of its own variation of sexism.  The journalist who praises the achievements of the female contigient of the 2010 Olympics to the snubbing of the male participants.  The erotic displays of entertainment as the standard of female performance, with the understanding that male reactions to such displays are to be neutral.  To the vapid notion that certain political parties are anti-women because they don't embrace the new feminist vision and could offer critique of the barrenness of the position.

The feminist is fast moving to an arrogance of deserving the terminology of "female chauvinist sow."  Their disdain of the "duped" members of the group may lead to the next phase of the theoretical "War on Women," by making it a civil war.

If such a conflict leads to a clearing of the air on the vision(s) of what woman must be, then it would be most welcome.