Call It "Encouraged Helplessness": Feminism Has Become A Movement For Female Disempowerment
Feminism, as of late, seems to be one big push to inform women that they are fragile little things -- powerless victims.
This does something pernicious -- it women that they cannot protect themselves and that they are at the mercy of men. Conveniently, demonizing all men as perpetrators just waiting to act out is an integral part of this.
Could feminism's "encouraged helplessness" (a takeoff on psychologist Martin Seligman's "learned helplessness") be...a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Lexa Frankl is a pseudonym -- for a Tennessee-based therapist -- and this person writes at Quillette:
Feminism is supposed to be a movement committed to female liberation and empowerment, and over the years it has done much to advance those goals. Today, Western women are as free as women have ever been at any time in world history. We are free to choose our educational institutions, we are free to pursue a career path of our liking, we are free to marry and love who we want, sleep with whomever we like, and say and think whatever we wish.But by demanding that women renounce personal responsibility, contemporary feminists and sexual assault activists reduce adults capable of agency and choice to children capable of neither. This is a disempowerment trap, and it was only once I was able to accept responsibility for my own actions that I was able to reclaim my sense of autonomy, repair my shattered self-esteem, and move forward with my life. Instead of embracing a distorted view of the opposite sex, or blaming my upbringing, or surrendering to the passivity of inert victimhood, I emerged from the experience stronger and freer, with a greater sense of self-worth, and a more realistic understanding of the world.
This perspective has not received a hearing in the wake of the Weinstein revelations. Any rational discussion of moral responsibility has been drowned out by the deafening hue and cry about institutional misogyny and structural male oppression and rape culture from those unwilling to admit any ethical distinction between systematic sexual predation and traumatic experiences not unlike my own, in which poor personal choices have contributed to personal sorrow. Instead, everything has been indiscriminately slung together under the #MeToo hashtag's furious outcry of indignation.
Those who stretch the definition of sexual assault to absolve themselves of responsibility for their own choices, or who wilfully ignore the self-evident facts of human nature whenever they conflict with the false rhetoric of their political doctrines, are doing the cause of women's safety no favors at all.
On a related note -- on where this "encouraged helplessness" can lead:
Women increasingly seem say women are too delicate to be in the workplace, where knee grazes & texts to ask for dates are now pillory-worthy. https://t.co/OqUsxDMBpb
— Amy Alkon (@amyalkon) November 10, 2017
The Goddess writes: Feminism, as of late, seems to be one big push to inform women that they are fragile little things -- powerless victims.
I don't think that's quite right. The victim part is correct, but powerless? On the contrary, they (along with everyone else) is being taught that there's power in victim status.
Victim culture is toxic.
Patrick at November 11, 2017 2:30 AM
I've written about this countless times here -- calling feminism a demand for special rights under the guise of equal rights and a way to unearned power over men. But it is through telling vast numbers of women that they are helpless that this transpires.
Amy Alkon at November 11, 2017 4:58 AM
The power does not go to the individual victim, it goes to the group, which means the group leaders get power by stealing it from the individuals. Group leaders have an interest in making and keeping as many victims as possible.
iowaan at November 11, 2017 6:35 AM
Marxism is based on an oppressor and an oppressed class. In the absence of an oppressed worker class, the oppressed have been designated as brown people (even rich oil sheikhs) and women. As a class, demanding a fix for oppression has been a successful political strategy, to a point. But in the case of feminism, the increasingly shrill cries of oppression when women make up 60% of college students and have the courts in their favor and do in fact make the same as men can only be sustained if women are helpless. For example, in the example of Louis CK in his hotel room, the women could have said no, or could have left, but didn't because he was so powerful (ie famous) that they were helpless pawns in his sex game. Please. this same strategy plays out in campus assault cases where the woman claims to have been assaulted in a dorm when she took her own clothes off and when there were hundreds of people who would have come to her aid if she screamed. Helpless. It is a great excuse for bad decisions, and a great way to get unearned power over men. There is a great new song by Charlie Puth "attention" that bears on this.
cc at November 11, 2017 10:28 AM
Says the woman who hasn't been in a workplace for decades.
Look, crazy lady. Most women go to work to work. To trade labor for money. We do NOT want to think about whether a compliment is just that or is a lead in to something more sinister. We do NOT want to worry about those who would see something innocent and make a federal case out of it.
There ARE women in the workplace, much like yourself, who seem to want All Of The Attention From All Of The Men and who are very sad about the new, more professional rules. I would argue that you and your ilk are the ones that are too fragile to be in the workplace if you need a steady diet of male compliments.
Right?
Anonymousie at November 11, 2017 5:31 PM
Anonymousie - who the hell are you talking about? You clearly don't know anything about Ms. Alkon.
Radwaste at November 12, 2017 3:12 AM
> Says the woman who hasn't been
> in a workplace for decades.
That's insane. Her career is hers entirely, crafted by her own hands from her own effort: She's the quintessentially independent businesswoman, one who's never been *out* of the workplace.
What's up with *you,* Anonamousie? Ever cash a paycheck? Ever earn the money?
Crid at November 12, 2017 11:39 AM
"There ARE women in the workplace, much like yourself, who seem to want All Of The Attention From All Of The Men and who are very sad about the new, more professional rules. "
My, my. Mousie is awfully catty. Which of those women who are more successful than you do you like to spread gossip about?
Cousin Dave at November 12, 2017 12:53 PM
So what we're seeing in the media now is utterly predictable -- accusations against men (some of who are dead and can't defend themselves) of assaults supposedly committed decades ago. Impossible for the man who is accused to defend himself against. For the Left, this strategy is a win-win. It helps them establish #YesAllMen and keep their supporters in a state of perpetual anger and victimhood. At the same time, they create alarm fatigue so that honest, provable accusations get buried in the noise. This allows Hollywood and the ruling class to go back to business as usual.
Cousin Dave at November 12, 2017 12:58 PM
"We do NOT want to think about whether a compliment is just that or is a lead in to something more sinister. We do NOT want to worry about those who would see something innocent and make a federal case out of it."
Boo frigging hoo.
Thought policing isn't the answer. If you need Big Brother to police speech in the workplace, the workplace you belong in is the one in your own kitchen where there's a device for baking brownies.
"I would argue that you and your ilk are the ones that are too fragile to be in the workplace if you need a steady diet of male compliments."
Kind of cunty.
And of course anonymous. Pathetic.
As a woman who isn't some fragile little flower, I post in my own full name. It keeps me from getting any, uh, cuntier than I'd get to a person in real life.
Amy Alkon at November 13, 2017 2:45 PM
Again, as I've said before, there's a difference between a compliment and harassment. If you -- like this cuntyperson posting anonymously -- are an emotionally frail little thing who is disturbed by, "Hey, nice haircut!", well, then you can tell the person who said it to you. You can tell them you would like them to never say such a thing (HORRIBLE! HORRIBLE THING!) to you again. Then if they persist -- and persist -- they are harassing you.
Otherwise, suck it up, or admit that you don't have the adult stuff to be in an adult workplace and go work in a nursery school or like place.
Amy Alkon at November 13, 2017 2:47 PM
Re the Frankl article (and all similar articles), what I don't get is this:
If, as I assume, today's college students are binge-drinking far more than their parents did, why in the world can't we focus on THAT instead and what that does to your long-term health and ask them far more questions as to WHY young people think they need to drink so much? (As I mentioned in another thread, in my extended family, drinking only to get drunk - especially on an empty stomach - was considered the opposite of being an adult. No one had to say so out loud; everyone could see that from each other's behavior.)
If such a non-political approach results in far less drinking, multiple goals could be achieved far more peacefully and thoughtfully. It goes back to the old saying: "Persuasion is better than force." Women and men alike choose to drink less when they decide they WANT to, not because others are scolding them for drinking, directly or indirectly. Besides, as someone said: "If you have to drink to have fun, it's not fun."
lenona at November 13, 2017 5:36 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2017/11/11/feminism_now_en.html#comment-6633345">comment from AnonymousieAnonymousie is the same disturbed woman who left a comment on this post under the name "Bitchlasagna."
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2017/12/04/man-bashing_dis.html
Amy Alkon at December 4, 2017 6:44 PM
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