Where Have the Women All Gone?

Where Have the Women All Gone?rnby Mark RachornJ ><*fe~«i»”rnThe Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone to join inrnchecking this mad, wicked folly of women’s rights,”rnwrote Queen Victoria in 1870 to Sir Theodore Martin. “Womanrnwould become the most hateful, heartless and disgusting ofrnhuman beings, were she allowed to unsex herself.” Pausingrnonly to add “fanatical” and “idiotic” to Her Majesty’s adjectives,rnand with a century and a quarter’s hindsight to myrnadvantage, I can only admire the Queen’s prescience. It is notrnthat the fishwives and Madame Thenardicrs have grown anyrnfishier—for they were always bad enough—it is rather that thernCosettes and Di Vernons have disappeared. I do not say thatrnwomen ought to be Victorian violets, or that every new freedomrngained by the sex should be repealed, but it is sad to noternhow each advance seems to make women more unsatisfied,rnmore spiteful, and more vulgar.rnIt is difficult to tell precisely when the corruption set in; arnmisogynist might reply sardonically “the Garden of Eden,” butrnI love the ladies too well to join the crabby ranks of womanhatersrnthrough the ages, so my judgment must be more considered,rnthough romantic, and I am forced to choose a timernbefore I was born—the 1960’s, “between the end of thernChattedey ban / and the Beatles’ first L.P.” Although not allrnwomen ran mad during the 60’s, enough did to induct theirrndaughters en masse into the cult of feminism; this, added tornthe revolting politics of the period, and its orgiastic carelessnessrnand general degradation, broke ground for an age that was newrnbut whose vices were old, an age whose roots could be found inrnthe Rome of Elagabalus or the London of the Restoration. Anrneven more violent outbreak of familiar “modernity” can be discernedrnin the eariy 1980’s with the discovery of AIDS and ourrnsubsequent fixation on the medical and mechanical aspects ofrnsex. Since then the “modern young woman” has taken muchrnpride in speaking, acting, and clothing herself very much like arnMark Racho is a writer living in New York City.rnU ^H^Vilrnwhore, while thinking like a puritan. Now there is no longerrneven the romantic pretense of the 60’s; the free love, gentleness,rnand innocence that the imagination paints upon thatrndecade have become the naked and unnatural aggression,rnselfishness, and viciousness personified by the “role model”rnworshiped in a thousand “women’s studies” courses—thernmodern Messalina, Madonna Ciccone.rnHowever, women being women, the newfangled youngrnladies arc entirely naive when it comes to the actual relationsrnbetween men and women—the vulgar loudmouth so proud ofrnher equality and “empowerment” knows less about men thanrnthe shyest Dickens virgin, hence the prevalence of “date-rape”rn(i.e., being taken advantage of). These pitiful creatures sorn”secure in their sexuality” are nevertheless innocent of factsrnthat their unenlightened grandmothers knew, namely thatrnmen are carnal. And as it was women who civilized menrnthrough the ages, their abdication of that role leaves men tornrun riot and act as abominably as ever they did. My father’srnsolicitous behavior toward my mother taught me how decentrnwomen ought to be treated, but the old Adam in me, encounteringrnso many girls ready to buy love and attention at the pricernof a one-night stand, could only marvel and prevail.rnA fundamental tenet of the cult of feminism is that womenrnmust act with all the rudeness, contempt, and brutality thatrnmen sometimes exhibit toward women and toward each other;rnthis is called “empowerment,” and men are supposed to bernfrightened of a “powerful” woman. In fact, men find suchrnwomen laughable. Because we have outgrown our fears of thernfrigid grade school teacher, we are not impressed by HillaryrnRodham Clinton, we have only contemptuous chuckles forrnMadonna Ciccone because we have seen better bodies onrncheaper whores, and our only reaction to the frozen smile onrnthe (surgically improved?) face of Naomi Wolf as she fulminatesrnabout sexism is “cute babe . . . what did she say?” Thernmodern Barbie-bitch responds to this by trying to outdo men.rn26/CHRONICLESrnrnrn