Have a read of this. I bet you won't be able to look away.
I read this
article and felt sick and sad and angry.
I was sickened
by the goings-on in this Western excuse for ‘fun’ and ‘entertainment’ called
‘clubbing’. I was saddened by the way in which this feminine/feminist quest for
self-empowerment has been conflated with being sexually available (but ‘never
aggressive!’). And I am angry that 100 years of feminism has led us to this:
under-dressed young girls staggering around in stilettoes, under the influence
of drink and drugs, being accosted and handled by random men. These questing
women are full of bravado and empty of moral substance.
I put it to
you that the reason the writer, an intelligent young woman and self-professed
feminist, cannot reconcile the paradox of being strong and independent, yet
somehow enslaved to masculine approval, is that there is no reconciliation. As
long as feminine empowerment also is seen to encompass licentiousness, there will be no
satisfactory answer to this paradox.
I thought we
had put that old canard to rest: the one about how, in order to be a feminist,
a woman has to behave like a man. I thought that we had evolved from that. And
these women are not even trying to behave like decent men; they are trying to
behave like the men that they would actually not want to have anything to do
with- and so it turns out. After a night of drinking and dancing, a type of
dancing which resembles sexual foreplay and probably is in fact foreplay, they
feel, not fulfilled and powerful, but deeply disgusted.
You can try to
dress this behaviour up as female self-empowerment, but in the end it is just
another free pass for men to behave like animals. And to debase themselves as much as the women they ‘hook up’ with.
I know that
not all men are like this and neither are all women seeking this sort of
‘empowerment’. But this is a cultural behaviour which, as with the hippie
chicks of the 70’s and the Grrrrls of the 90’s, can only lead to self-loathing
nihilism; because if this is what we were placed on this Earth to do, frankly,
I see no point to existence either.
A thought
keeps creeping into my head: The few female Muslim converts I have spoken to
and whose autobiographical accounts I have read, talk of how the hijab- and worse, the niqab- frees
them. It frees them from the tyranny of the male gaze. Islam is seen, not as the stifler of female autonomy, but as the protector of
the honour of women. So, all I think about is how a Muslim woman can be beaten
for insubordination, and how her children ‘belong’ to her husband, and how she
can be divorced unilaterally by her husband’s recitation of a few short
sentences, and how he can take other wives, and how girls are killed by their male relatives for behaving in a
dishonorable way- say, by having a boyfriend, or by being raped. But the flip
side which the ex-Western converts see is this cherishing of female modesty and
honour. As long as she does what she is told, I guess. Furthermore, Islam, as well as other religions (including my own), or other strongly cohesive groups which have a common goal
and thus give meaning to life, is something to belong to, something which is a much greater that the individual.
So I can’t
help seeing that the Western obsession with the individual and her rights and
entitlements, coupled with this post-feminist concept of female empowerment
(which goes way, way beyond the original feminist ideals of suffrage and equal
pay, and takes the ideal of freedom of choice down into the gutter), is a
headlong slide into nothingness.
There are no
rights without responsibilities. There is no freedom without meaning and purpose.
This mindless quest for a ‘good time’ can only, will always, debase the
individual, male or female; the lack of self-control, the conquering of the
conscience, and the aftermath of mindless coupling will only lead to emotional numbness
and self-loathing.
So, young
ladies, at risk of sounding old-fashioned (such an insult!) I say that if you
want to be self-empowered, you need to choose to behave in a relatively modest and
self-disciplined way. Respect yourselves. Because G-d put us all here for a purpose; the challenge of
life is to discover this purpose and to honour our own humanity, rather than
debase it in the jungle. You don’t have to be a nun, but you have to find out
where the line is, and try to stay on the right side. I’m not advocating that
everyone should follow my religion and level of observance; but faith in a Divine
Plan and purpose and meaning are a lot more powerful than simple youthful
optimism, which quickly becomes corroded by the toxic culture of the ‘hook-up’.
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