Prelude

What is a woman” has been the central most controversial question since the release of Matt Walsh’s documentary (see my film review here); however, it has been a long time coming that our conception of a woman, and a man, has very greatly remodeled itself in the Western mind. For equality’s sake we have grown more than accustomed to the idea of women working and men staying at home with the kids—more than accustomed, but defenders that such a thing is not strange, odd, or eccentric to society at all and the time before this acceptance is worthy of taking a ruler to the hand.

Dispelling this new custom is insignificant—people can, after all, do as they please. But it is indicative of a mental shift, a shift in pursuit, or as a result, of equality. Equality is sometimes an abstraction and hard to describe without using it in the description: does it imply commensurate pay? A sameness between people or things? Or a same treatment under the law? Or perhaps the equitable, that is to say fair, treatment under law? In the latter sense, equality is often conflated with equity.

In college, I was once laughed at when I had asked whether inequality presupposes inequity. A snark, and a ridiculing, “yes,” was hurled back at me. But, in fact, because there is inequality does not necessitate that there is inequity. If two people were to have the same equal opportunity but different outcomes, to suggest that there was inequity somewhere along the way would be to consequentially believe that one was wronged. This might be, certainly, but it is not a given. However, when we talk about equality between persons, inequality between them might be easier judged as unfair: some people are more attractive, taller, athletic, or have 20/20 vision; yes, life can be unfair, but can one be right in blaming the material superstructure of society or some metaphysical one?

When the relationship between inequality and inequity is definitively considered a given, it is usually accompanied with nothing less than an ideological explanation as to why it is a given. And from there we might as well study for an undergraduate sociology degree that dives into the constructed language of its reasoning—because listening to anyone explain away such a belief as historical fact is simply a regurgitation of that.

There are two topics when it comes to women that I’ll address here, though only preliminarily. The first is on equality and the patriarchy and the second on the ideal-typical woman, as conceived from the “art hoe”—a topic that I eventually aim to devote an entire essay on.

The common theme that I want the reader to keep in the back of her mind is diversity, specifically its façade. This piece is included in American Pigeon’s magazine issue, The Diversity Myth, where diversity is seen as a political farce chaining groups of people to historical grievances while exploiting their differences to pursue what is really ideological sameness. For women, this means not dismantling the patriarchy, but simply reversing gender roles so that women can assume the hierarchical power once practiced by men, effectively keeping the patriarchy and its gender roles but performed by women; but on the other hand, when we think of the ideal-typical woman, the façade of this political shroud is lifted.

(READ MORE: The Diversity Myth)

Patriarchy

Diversity is that word that politically denotes a class of differences from race, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender and sexuality. As a political concept, Diversity requires the intention of distinguishing these differences and homogenizing them into a protected class with a hierarchy of victims that are not considered as equally represented in society. By ensuring equal representation predicated upon these differences, advocates believe they will create a more equitable (remember that word?) society. In effect, what we witness is an inversion of ‘oppression;’ differences are not so much celebrated as much as the belief that the self-described marginalized must be celebrated. The essence of power is never changed; it is merely sought to be claimed by another group, perpetuating the same grievance onto others that it claims to overhaul for itself.

In the context of women, with Diversity as a politically superficial construct, the patriarchy would illustrate oppression.

In a conversation with Luke Lattanzi, the patriarchy is antagonistically defined as “the paranoid feminist presupposition of a superstructure that oppresses women.” This definition gave birth to a superficial conception of what women should be, which we observe to be not so different from the men from whom they claim to harbor grievances.

He continues,

“The most radical loathe traditional elements of masculinity; and yet, modern feminism idolizes that exact same masculinity. The reversal of these gender roles (normalization of stay-at-home dads, for example), takes the “toxic masculinity” of men and adapts it to women, so that women become more like men: this is somehow viewed as “liberating” while traditional conceptions of womanhood are denounced as misogynistic. 

In reality, of course—or at least in my opinion—the patriarchy is not an abstract construct created by evil men, but rather much of it is evident in mammalian biology, humanity being no different. This is not to say that oppressive structures haven’t existed, but [Jordan] Peterson observed at one point how, statistically, most women like men who make at least an equal amount of money to them, and their preference seemed toward a man who makes more than them. There’s a natural disposition in women, I think, that makes them want to be taken care of by men, and that is an inherently patriarchal thing to want. And yet, much to feminists’ dismay, it isn’t something that can be altered via their manifestos or abstract ideological formulations.”

We have two competing ideas here. On the one hand, women assume the role of the man and denounce their own traditional role as “misogynistic;” on the other, women’s preferences in a prospective mate remains, for the most part, intact, disregarding however many “abstract ideological formulations” the feminists might exert. No matter how intense the imposition of these ideas become, they are not made into social facts because they cannot be internalized to influence the evolutionary psychology that dominates the interactions between women and men.

The equalization of society is measured by increased adoption of the male role: the more independent women become, the more corporate seats they occupy, the more money they earn, the more equal they are. The innate differences that exist between men and women are written off as constructs of oppression, exemplifying inequity, and so permeating inequality. As a result, equality simply becomes the eradication of differences or, as demonstrated in the reversal of gender roles, inverting them.

The Ideal Type

My initial conception of the art hoe is that she is superficially inclined. She knows about art, culture, and can name drop persons from music to film. I was jokingly told once that the art hoe goes to college for exactly this purpose. Politically, they are to the left, persuaded by their professors and colleagues, or only so because it is all their world knows, but are without conviction. It is hard to get the college student to speak what is on her mind but easy to notice the regurgitation of what her environment imposes on her to believe. And so when we take the woman and minus all of the bullshit and superficiality of the world that she inhabits, we get, in the Weberian sense of the word, the ideal-typical woman.

What deems her “perfect” is the essence where she has no strong political convictions imposed by the world she inhabits, but can be composed with man’s rationality and reason, and self-composed with her own desires as she becomes wholesomely her own, which is what makes a good wife. This balance, and denial of the world (and the ideologues who make it up) is equality in its most purest form, i.e., equality without prejudice, equality as in being what one is and wants to be without the expectations of the world tossing her about in one way or another; equality is the absence of the imposition to be any more or less than.

As women have become more “equal”—again, to denote an indistinct linearity, a sameness with men, an appropriation of their role—the less they belong to themselves, and the less they are authentically equal, and the more they are like men.