'THE END OF FEMINISM'


July 25th 1999


The next issue, Number 38, will appear on August15th 1999.





"Feminism is now a thing of the past" - according to some fashionable talk in middle class circles in the richer countries - "its objectives have now been achieved". The main thrust of this essay is the claim that such talk is, at best, insular and, at worst, downright absurd.

In its insular aspect, 'the end of feminism' is exemplified by such less-than-global middle-class things as equal property rights, female suffrage and a general perception that the most important jobs are not necessarily a male preserve. It is even considered perverse that women should not be admitted as full members of such august bodies as the Marylebone Cricket Club (the stuffy upper crust of the game that remains as the loosely defining feature of the British Empire ...... of immortal memory). Many of the churches now admit women priests and Margaret Thatcher was the first woman Prime Minister in the UK. (Some people, confounding her sexuality with some of her other attributes, are inclined to hope that she was not only the first but, so help us, that she will be the last - but I digress).

If however we look both at the essential biological facts, and at what actually happens to women then we find that feminism is not dead but rather that it has hardly yet been born. Moreover, even among the fortunate minority of womankind, there is still a great deal yet to be attempted let alone to be achieved.

Before going more fully into this, it is useful to attempt a broad answer to the question - what is a feminist? The definition offered here is that a feminist is a person who perceives that there is general systematic relegation of women to second-class human status and that the entire human race is the worse for this and that we all have an interest in ending this inferior status in all its aspects.

It is also proper to assert two things in amplification of the notion of human status: one is that inferior status does not, of itself, imply cruelty although it can and often does underwrite cruelty - one's dog does not have human status but many owners are anything but cruel to their dogs. The other is that women and men are not the same - the phrase 'equal but different' is neither meaningless nor evasive; the notion of a generalised human being is of strictly limited value. Feminism is a major matter, directly, for half the human race and a major matter, indirectly, for the other half. The diminishment of women is the diminishment of all of us.



Underlying the human scene are some relevant facts about our species that are independent of culture; they are facts about the human species per se ...... and nothing short of a major evolutionary shift, over which we have little or no control, will alter them.

One is that men, on average, are bigger and stronger than women; the other is that the pro-active sexuality of the human male is, on average, vastly in excess of what is now required either for reproduction or for the delivery of sustained affection to his female mate(s). Many women will readily admit these facts to be the case. There is also a third fact - not immediately relevant to feminism - that, in human beings, sexual precocity precedes personal maturity by several years.

What the implications of these facts are to the apologists of Design Theory is a problem for those apologists to ponder; suffice it to say that no Design Theorist has ever, so far as we know, postulated a Designer who is inept, feckless or malevolent; such a Designer would be of little use to those who think they need someone 'out there' to worship and to petition. Again I digress!

Returning to the first and second facts cited above, together they lead to a chilling inference .... that rape is endemic in human society. This is true both in respect of explicit rape and also in respect of fast-talking seduction to which the woman succumbs for the sake of peace and the avoidance of explicit violence. It is irrelevant, but true, that many rapes have more to do with with the assertion of dominance and control than with sexuality per se ....... but the fact remains that were men not generally bigger and stronger than women then the use of sex for such assertion would not be generally feasible.

Fear of rape underlies, more or less consciously, many a woman's life and her main counter to it is the practice of feminine guile - the more or less subtle use by women, for their own ends, of the overt sexuality of the male. Rape cannot be explained away on the comfortable notion that 'she asked for it' but that does not alter the fact that the art of asking for it ..... but not quite sufficiently to 'get it' ....... is part of the female armoury. There is such a thing as sexual one-up-womanship and until this, along with rape, evolves out of the human scene, the basic aim of feminism - the end of female diminishment - will not have been achieved. The end of feminism is about as fatuous a notion as the Second Coming or the End of the World.

So much for generalities; what is actually going on?

First, regarding the fortunate middle classes, we have to be very sceptical about the benefits of the undoubted fact that many wives and mothers now have full-time, often career-oriented, employment. The truth is that, in all too many cases, the husbands still expect their wives to do all the housework on top of their outside employment; indeed the husbands simply take this for granted and, if the wife sees the need to employ domestic help then it is she who is expected to pay for it - out of her own salary.

Even in cases of role reversal - the husband choosing to be the 'housewife' while the wife is the breadwinner .... even in such cases the man often tends to leave it all to the woman. It happens that, a few years ago, I chanced to meet, in a mutual friend's home, an attractive lady, in her prime, with whom I am now on the sort of terms that enable frank conversation to be easy and interesting. (She is young enough to be my daughter and I would be proud indeed if she were). She is a busy career woman complete with (what is now called) a partner . On one occasion she wondered, almost casually, what she could cook for their evening meal; it was simply taken for granted that he would have nothing ready for her in the way that would have been entirely normal had the boot been on the other foot. The ensuing conversation has no necessary place in this Atheist Thought but interested persons may care to refer to my internet publication, LADY GODIVA for a more or less accurate account of it. My friend's case is by no means unique.

Another matter, that ought to be thought reason enough to maintain feminist pressure, even among the fortunate middle classes, is the fact of marital rape. The vow of wifely obedience that is still (optionally) part of the marriage service is, in reality, a wife's lifelong consent to any sexual demands that her husband may make quite irrespective of her wishes on any particular occasion. It is only quite recently that the courts have begun to recognise marital rape as an offence in law; traditionally, the marriage vow has been taken to mean that, within marriage, unconsented sexual activity, on the husband's part, is a contradiction in terms in that the vows taken by the bride are, effectively, ongoing consent binding for the rest of her married life.

To this day, wife-beating, often associated with marital rape, is by no means unknown among even the 'advanced' societies of the world where feminisim's victory has, allegedly, been complete.

So, even among the fortunate professional classes in such countries as the UK, feminism's 'victory' is somewhat hollow.

When we consider what goes on in the 'developing world' we find that feminism, so far from being victorious, is still scarcely a twinkle in its motherŐs eye.

In India, not so many years ago, the death of a man was often followed by cremation of his body - reasonably enough - but the living wife was often burnt to death at the same time so that they could, supposedly, be together in the hereafter. This vile practice is now illegal in India and is only rarely practised today.

In parts of rural India there persists (although illegally) the practice of initiating girls into the status of 'jogins'. This is a ceremony whereby the girl's parents (usually poor and acting for money) cause her to be 'married to god' - which in practice means being ritually raped by the village bigshot and then consigned to a dwelling in which she is the sexual plaything of any man in the village who cares to make use of her. These wretchedly abused women generally age, and die, very rapidly as a result of repeated rape and perpetual pregnancy. If they try to escape they are pursued and punished severely. There are now more and more cases of jogins being rescued and liberated to lead normal lives. When I was in India, a few years ago at the Atheist Centre in Vijayawada AP, I witnessed the civil marriage of a rescued jogin woman to a man of her free choice.

In (Christian) Ethiopia, and probably elsewhere, marriage is often customarily effected by a man abducting, and raping repeatedly, a girl of his choice and if she becomes pregnant then the marriage is finalised. If she does not become pregnant then she is discarded in favour of another abductee.

Marriages, arranged by male relatives of the parties and without consideration of the bride's preferences, are everyday occurrences in many countries. They are tantamount to conspiracies to legitimise lifelong rape - unless it so happens that the woman might have consented freely had she been asked. Women trying to escape from this form of institutional sexual slavery are often punished with great severity by their husbands and other male relatives.

In some Islamic countries it is considered wrong to inflict capital punishment upon a virgin woman even if she is convicted of a capital offence. How very proper! But, no ...... the way round this is for her to be raped by a prison warder on the night preceding execution; in many cases the wretched woman is ceremonially married to the intended rapist before the rape actually happens.Quelle finesse!

In Iran, prostitution is a capital offence and women convicted thereof are liable to be buried up to the neck and then publicly stoned to death. Stoning is regulated very strictly; the stones must be not so small as to cause no great pain but not so large as to kill rapidly; equally the 'target woman' has to be at such a distance from the stoning mob as to make direct hits reasonably probable but not very easy to achieve. These regulations are designed to make the execution painful and prolonged to a degree that it is held to befit the crime the woman has, supposedly, committed.

People who take a global view of what actually goes on in the world are simply displaying ignorance or insensitivity if they claim that feminism is a won battle. Such people should 'get real'. Feminism, like much else, is always with us in silly forms but feminism, taken realistically, needs to be with us as far into the future as we can foresee.





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