Vixens, Harridans, And Toxic Femininity - The Sequelae Of Women's Liberation

Much has been made these days of toxic masculinity and how men are congenitally predatory, abusive, and dismissive of women - ogres, troglodytes, prognathous throwbacks to grunting Neanderthals.  Combined with whiteness, toxic masculinity becomes a poisonous potion, a virulent viral plague. Betty Friedan and Simone de Beauvoir only hinted at the ugly nature of men; and it took another generation to fully expose their innate, foul brutality.  Men were now the enemy. 

However, Edward Albee turned the tables in  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf .  Martha is drama's harridan - a brutal, man-hating, vixen - and his George is the weak, sorry victim of her fury.  

There is some hope at the end of the story - they have so flayed each other to the marrow that perhaps there can be a new beginning; but real life's episodes, certainly as brutal and venomous as Albee's will turn out badly. There is no way that a couple with such profound psychological drivers and pitiful weaknesses can possibly go on from such an emotional holocaust. 

Tennessee Williams, whose characters are often timid, shy women looking for love - Alma of Eccentricities of a Nightingale is perhaps the most telling - has also created characters of the very opposite disposition.  Maggie the Cat is a duplicitous, treacherous woman who wants only money, reputation, and dominance but he can't hold back his admiration of this beautiful, stunning example of feminine will. 

Ibsen and Strindberg created strong willful women who despite the strictures of a socially conservative Victorian society bested men at an every turn.  Hedda Gabler, Rebekka West, Hilde Wangel, and Laura in The Father are consummate manipulators understanding men's weaknesses and foibles and taking every advantage of them. 

Shakespeare's heroines are cut from the same cloth.  Rosalind, Viola, Portia, the other women of The Comedies tolerate their inferior suitors, make fun of them, and then, as society demands, marries the best they can.

So given this social, emotional, and political ebb and flow why are women still a protected species? The American Left in classic doublespeak has championed women as the superior sex, but demanded protection from naturally predatory, abusive men. Yet Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Strindberg have shown that women need no protection and with intelligence, savvy, will, and ambition can get what they want from men. 

 

So why have modern women been so insistent on taking their pound of flesh, hectoring the disappointing men they marry? Why have they stayed married despite all signs that point to dissolution and preferred to nag, irritate, and badger instead?

The image of the hag, the badgering, incessantly critical, unhappily married, resentful, unpleasant woman should have been long ago relegated to the archives.  Successful modern day women have either acquired enough financial capital to leave a bad marriage; or have, like Shakespeare’s heroines, figured out how to get the best out of their husbands and their marriages to satisfy their needs; but most women still have neither sorted out their independence nor learned from the Strindberg playbook.  

Instead, women go toxic with their bickering, bitching innuendoes and never confront men on the battlefield, equal in strength, open and martial in their intentions, courageous and honest.  They are still confused, caught between their patriarchal upbringing and modern 'Be All You Can Be' propaganda.  They are examples of toxic femininity - the unspoken sequelae of sexual liberation. 

Belinda Potter was one of these women.  Not unintelligent or clueless and a woman with a perfectly good career, social position, and family, and certainly a woman who did not need to resort to the shrewishness of the put-upon wife, Belinda took her daily pound of flesh. 

She, despite her publicly calm, confident demeanor, was petty, nasty, and unpleasant at home.  There was something innately twisted about her, some unavoidable detritus from a patriarchal past, some dutiful warnings from a very harried mother, that made her avoid the usual quid-pro-quo contractual dialogue with her husband - something she was very good at in the office - and go after him with extreme grievance 

Women cannot simply leave men alone - there is some unstated, but hardwired rule - giving an inch means capitulation, losing a hard-won foothold, taking a step back to patriarchy, nominal respect, and demission to second-class citizenship. 

Marriage is no longer the limiting, No Exit prison it used to be; but most women still treat it that way.  Confined within its arbitrary borders because of psycho-social imperatives set down in childhood, women are betwixt and between and cannot help flailing away at the men they have agreed to wed.  They may not be Albee's Martha, but a close approximation. 

Belinda had loving but somewhat imperious father who ruled his mother with draconian efficiency but treated his daughter like the princess in the castle; so from her earliest years she was conflicted - princess or dutiful, obedient consort.  She loved her father but as society began to feminize, she doubted his integrity, and adopted the then-current meme - men were no good. 

She treated her male suitors with diffidence and with an unbendingly critical judgement found none of them suitable.  She was wary of the virile, confident men and dismissive of the demurring and patient.  She was a role model for uncertain women, and a harridan to the men who gave her wide berth. 

Motherhood complicated the issue - men were necessary, and that meant some kind of arrangement. Of course she could opt for single motherhood - picking a genetically suitable lover and having his child whether he agreed to it or not - but that option too had been compromised by her upbringing.  As overweening as her father had been and as complaisant as her mother was, it was still a proper nuclear family, an ideal at the time. 

So Belinda took the middle road and got married to a decent, passably attractive, promising father and acceptable housemate; but it wasn't long after marriage that she resorted to her old ways; but within the confines of marriage her diffidence and judgmentalism became a pound-of-flesh affair. The nitpicking, and low resolution but continuous hectoring began. 

Belinda, however, never counted on this man's reaction.  She erred in her judgment and picked one with more gumption and male prerogative than she thought; and in short time he was in bed with any number of willing, desirous women. 

Now what? she wondered.  This was not in the program, outside the design.  Men were supposed to heel, not jump and run.  

Her first instinct - again thanks to her mother - was to let it ride.  This disruption was only the result of an imbalance,  a temporary maladjustment of ying and yang.  He would come back like all men, and the marriage would return to normal. 

Her second instinct was of course to take him to task, confront him, give him his orders and rechain him to the doghouse.  

When he did return - that is, ceased his tomcatting and resumed normal, expected husbandly duties - she didn't confront him but upped the vixenish pressure, and made life miserable for him, sending an unmistakable signal which only forced him to leave once again.

One might be tempted to feel sorry for Belinda, caught as she was between the Scylla of background and traditional upbringing and the Charybdis of feminism; and overlook the pound-of-flesh syndrome unfortunately common among women in similar circumstances; but generosity is hard to come by.  This nasty transitionary period has simply widened the sexual divide.  Men, emerging from the penumbra of feminism and progressive cant have become more assertive.  Marriage is a porous affair, a permeable arrangement.  Mistresses, lovers, and paramours - always men's privilege - are back, exposed, and out in the open. 

Hard as it might be, women will have to put up or shut up - a harsh, and previously unconscionable idea, but the new algorithm. 

Belinda stuck with it.  Divorce was so tiresome.  Gradually she became like Vita Sackville-West wife of Harold Nicholson in the famous open marriage of the early Twentieth Century.  The hectoring, whingeing, nitpicking, and badgering stopped.  She had fewer lovers than her husband - again a reversion to her early life - but it wasn't quantity that mattered.  It was the paradigm - and no one was happier than her husband who had it all - beautiful young lovers and a wife and children to come home to. 

Why Conservatism Is Gaining Universal Appeal - Natural Law, Common Sense, And Culture

There have been remarkable conservative victories in Latin America, a region historically socialist, and the Presidents of El Salvador, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Panama have taken strong stances on crime, public spending, taxation, and individual rights.

Nations in Western Europe have followed suit with Italy's President Giorgia Meloni leading the way, followed closely by likely winners in the next elections, Le Pen of France and Farage in Britain, Wilders in the Netherlands; and an Eastern Europe led by Poland and Hungary have become conservative stalwarts. 

 

This conservatism is bold, aggressive, and undaunted.  Bukele in El Salvador has redefined civil rights, stating unequivocally that the rights of the ordinary Salvadoran citizen to live in a peaceful, crime-free country trumps the rights of criminals; and accordingly he has rounded up members of the violent MS-13, Mara Salvatrucha gang, incarcerated them without the usual democratic due process, and has turned the country from one of the most violent in the hemisphere to the safest. 

Javier Milei of Argentina has made no bones about calling the socialist Left 'mierda', bloodsucking parasites on the body politic, taking money from the most productive and wasting it on unaccountable, fairy tale programs with no discipline, no objective indicators, and nothing but vain, self-serving, give-away appeal. 

Meloni of Italy has said she is proud of Italy's history, culture, and Christian leadership, and has refused the blandishments of the Left which has led to the uncontrolled illegal immigration from Africa, a Muslim wave which has threatened social stability and cultural integrity.  She has ruled that no LGBTQ proselytizing will not be allowed in Italian schools and that gay marriage and parentage is no longer officially recognized.  

 

Marine Le Pen and Marion Marechal in France have been even more defiant and have vowed if elected to cleanse France of the anti-democratic, divisive, hateful Muslim invasion. Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch of the UK have both denounced illegal, Muslim immigration and have said that legendary English culture is being eroded, derogated, and destroyed because of this unwanted influx. 

Sanae Takaichi, the new president of Japan has said that there will be no Muslim immigration to Japan, that no mosques will be built, and that despite the country's falling birth rate, she refuses to destroy its homogeneous culture.  

China, while officially Communist is socially conservative and committed to the universal extension of Han culture, adherence to Confucian values, and nationalism. Vladimir Putin is as committed to Russian cultural, social, economic, and political hegemony. 

These leaders and their constituents laughed at America during the Biden years - an unrecognizable country of fiction, absurdity, and self-indulgence.  The very idea of the gender spectrum, let alone transgenderism was unconscionable; and the lionization of the black man, former slave drawn from the African forest for his physical strength and fertility, was equally unthinkable.  Integration perhaps, but undeserved honor and privilege? Never.  

Americans might overlook the ghetto in the name of identity but not the rest of the world. Open borders are tantamount to erosion of the state, culture, and the nation. 

The arrival of Donald Trump has been welcomed by these countries.  Even America's adversaries, Russia and China, have given Trump respect.  He is a member of their Machiavellian realpolitik club, and such members can do business together.  The rest of the increasingly conservative world has looked to America for leadership and example. 

This conservatism is fueled by three things - natural law, common sense, and culture.  No one but America's progressives can look at history and see peace and internationalism in the offing - a naive misreading at best and a profound ignorance at worst. 

Self-interest is the driving force of human nature and has been played out in every social arena from family to tribe to region to country. Countervailing force, defiant opposition, territorialism, and hegemony have been the human rule since the first settlements and will continue.  Geopolitics should be based on that understanding, nothing more. 

Americans with their gender focus have rejected natural biological law just as they have dismissed the absolute of human nature.  No one but American liberals claim that sexuality is a matter of choice.  Such ignorance is remarkable. 

It only takes common sense to realize that open immigration will destroy the cultural underpinnings of a culture, will lead to a dismissal of nations' storied past, and will alter the central ethos forever.  It takes only common sense to realize that a nation without border integrity will be overrun, taken over, and weakened. 

Perhaps because America is such a new country without the thousand-year history of its adversaries and allies, and because it has no central moral, religious, or philosophical ethos, it defies the concept of culture.  Yet France, 'the eldest daughter of the Catholic Church', the nation that saved European Christianity from the Muslim invaders, is profoundly and historically 'cultural'.  So is Italy, Russia, China, and Japan. 

No nation has been successful without such a central, universal, cultural core.  Ethics and moral principles are important and the same ones have characterized the highest civilizations since Greece and Rome. 

The Left cries racism, xenophobia, nationalism, sexism, and homophobia; but these are empty threats, built on fictitious, unfounded, fabulist imaginings. National cultural integrity is not xenophobia but an expression defining human society since its origins.  

Traditional marriage and parentage is not homophobic but subscription to natural law, Biblical injunction and demographic reality. Pie-in-the-sky public spending has bankrupted, corrupted, and destroyed the strongest countries.  Idealism is for religious worship not public policy. 

The American Left still cannot get over the victory of Donald Trump and his fulfilled promises of returning the country to its originalist roots. No president has been so hated, vilified, and been the victim of such inchoate attacks.  The Left’s failed vision, one without historical validation and defying logic is empty of policy, salient ideas, or resonance.  Hatred is the only thing left in the armory. 

The Left looks with horror at the conservative wave across the globe and sees it as only a temporary setback to progressive ideals.  Their day will come. 

Perhaps. History has its surprises and vagaries; but such a reversal is unlikely since conservativism is based on historical appraisal, objectivity, human nature, and reality. Progressivism is based only on idealism, hope, utopianism, and fancy. 

Big Talkers, Butt-Ins, And Bores - The Curse Of The Vaporous And The Charm Of The Politician

Lena Barton was a big talker - an incessant, unstoppable, determined and woman who lurked, waited and pounced. She did not discuss or listen.  There was a djinn inside her which demanded exit.  Whether her hydrangeas, her health, or her boys, they needed out. Tapped within they did not exist; but when voiced whether to interested or uninterested listeners, they lived. 

 

The origins of this talkativeness - or rather this need to talk - were vague - Lena could only remember as a young child feeling the need to talk and to talk a lot.  Speech was a gift not to be wasted. It existed solely as a part of her whether or not it was listened to.  It was her own shamanic ritual, a purging of feelings which had built up in the night.  She told about her dreams and her nightmares, expanded and elaborated them the more she told about them until they had a life of their own and were no longer a part of her. 

 

At Sunday Mass she thanked God for giving her such eloquence - a kind of second, separate but equally important nature.  She could create worlds with her voice, translate imaginings into physical shapes, sounds and smells.  God had been particularly generous when it came to creating her out of a lump of clay. 

In adolescence it - her volubility - turned into gossip.  She couldn't help herself when she heard a rumor - like her speech, a foundationless thing which sprang up without reason or warning - and carried it, embellished it, and spread it.  Rather than isolated as the source of unattributed, unsubstantiated claims, she became a kind of Cumaean Sibyl - a prophetess, a seer - all of which gave her an unusual ascribed agency.  She became the arbiter of all things social - which boys were interested in which girls, who was anointed and who was left out.  Girls came to her for advice, for prophecy, and for guidance. 

Her college years began badly.  No one, it seemed, was that interested in what she had to say - a girl who rattled on was the take - but soon enough she found her voice and her calling. Although campus radicalism was of no interest - a desperate flogging of others on a grand scale for recognition - she was sought after for her by then marvelous prolixity.  Not only could Lena talk and be listened to, she could inspire and motivate.  It mattered little whether or not she believed in what she spoke, it was the articulation which counted - the cadence, the rhythm, the tonality, and the passion. 

Lena was a vaporous person - a woman without substance, principle, or purpose whose voice carried weight; and she used it to her advantage. If people listened, nodded, agreed or not, it made little difference. It was the swaying that gave her credibility and worth. 

It was magic, this ability to turn heads, to turn skeptics into believers, the indifferent into the committed. She had passed on not one iota of wisdom or good sense. It was her words, her gift of gab, her carefully crafted prolixity which did the job. People who heard her were delighted and convinced; and she, having found her calling, was satisfied. 

Opposites attract goes the old adage, and in a way it was true for Lena although with some codicils.  Brent Mayberry was also a big talker which if the old saw were true, she would have stayed clear; but Brent was a different kind of talker.  A bulldozing, voice-over talker.  Hearing a discussion on Joyce, he interrupted with reminiscences of County Cork, the six-pack of Guinness he had downed on the moors, and the lovely dark-haired blue-eyed maidens on his watch. 

He was a man who could not tolerate anyone else's voice. It was not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing but one of center stage.  He could not stand to be left out, a trait he inherited from his mother who no matter what the subject offered either confabulated history, statistics, citations or something from her own store of personal trivia.  

The woman was a tedious bore, demanding attention, claiming against all reason that she was right and it happened the way she said, and Brent got the picture.  He couldn't help himself when it came to discussion.  Drawing on fiction, imagination, and presumption he like his mother kept up the front and added pain to misery as they dominated and bullied their way into every conversation. 

 

So the relationship between Lena and Brent turned out to be a vaudevillian pas de deux.  She began with some impossible confabulation, and he interrupted with more of his own.  Before you knew it the conversation had become theirs and theirs alone, a world apart, disconnected from reason, rationality, and reality. 

One can only imagine their pillow talk, unless freed from the strictures of polite society, they were able to get to the heart of the matter; but the greater likelihood was that they stepped on each other's overtures and turned foreplay into a whodunnit of sexual conundrums. 

Lena waited for the opportunity to talk about Ralph at Wayne State, Bobbie at Ole Miss, and Ferdinand still at home, an assumption of interest that went far beyond neighborliness.  I was supposed to care until after many months of these hijackings I realized that nothing she said mattered to her either.  It was the telling that was important, not the import or the reception.  I could have been a block of granite for all it mattered to her. 

Big Talkers - The Psychosocial Dimensions Of A Compulsive Disorder was a monograph published by Duke University Press by Harold Underwood, PhD, Chairman of the Psycho-Psychiatric Department of the Medical School in which he chronicled the life of what he called 'the needy prolix'

The Needy Prolix needs no introduction, for she has been all our tables, interrupting, diverting, a virtual baboon hungry for attention.  She is obtuse, obvious, and niggardly but cannot stop talking. Somewhere in childhood her personality was distorted and reconfigured into that of an incessant, intolerable bore.  That of course is the popular appraisal. Professionally she is a sick puppy, in need of a reality check and brought back to the here and now. 

For that introduction Underwood was questioned by the editorial review board for what might be considered inflammatory speech but he convinced them that such a preamble was necessary to put the illness in relief.  He didn't condemn these Needy Prolix individuals. Others did, and that was the point.  

Lena was not hauled off in a straightjacket - not that kind of mental illness - although I avoided her like the plague when I saw her coming.  Other than that devilish prolixity, she was not a bad sort, but that is not the point either. I pitied her husband and had no sympathy for her until I read the Underwood sequel which delved further into the painful 'miasma of doubt' that people like her suffered. 

I was still not convinced, but chastened for my summary dismissal of a disturbed woman. I didn't run away when I saw her coming.