Ever clearer – Sturgeonism
We received good feedback from the original article, which is encouraging (see link below). That the political Left seems to have a huge problem with women may be controversial, but the case is becoming daily clearer. We repeat what was stated in the first article, that the political Right is hardly squeaky clean as regards women, but at least that spectrum of politics does not seem to hold the same fundamental antipathy towards women and womanhood. If any readers are unsure about this then you may want to review our original article.
Why have women not, so far, picked-up on this as a social offense? Why are women not deeply offended at the Left’s attempts to undermine womanhood and deny women’s safe spaces? Why, we might ask, “Sturgeon”?!!! Is ‘Sturgeonism”, at its heart, a detestation of women, despite any trademark high heels and the oversized eyelashes that constitute that political brand?! Note this is not about the SNP, but it is about the political Left generally.
Divide and Conquer
Today there is a troubling recognition that many (too many?) women do not value womanhood and vie incessantly with each other. On this basis, perhaps, they are an easy target group for those who attack, and want fundamentally to neutralise, them. Even more disturbing, it appears there is persistent intergenerational rivalry amongst women, that is deeply damaging:
Writer Victoria Smith has just published “Hags – the demonisation of middle aged women” (Fleet, 368pp, £20). Here is a useful review in ‘The Times’ – https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hags-by-victoria-smith-review-the-demonisation-of-middle-aged-women-qz639rzlj .
The key thesis of Smith’s book is that women (especially younger women) will attack those who seek to defend them. We think of the extreme and extraordinary hatred for writer J K Rowling. Once the darling of Generation Y, today demonised by that same Generation Y, simply because Rowling believes (as do most of the public) that a man cannot ‘become’ a woman. In the words of ‘The Times’ “this eloquent, clever and devastating book describes the last remaining acceptable prejudice, one that is now posited as progress: the loathing of older women. I wish younger woment would read it as the dumest thing about joining a witch hunt is you’re only burning your future self”.
The poltical Left adroitly ‘weaponises’ intra generational female rivalry. Divide and conquer, indeed. Harking back to the 2010 general election in the UK. Prospective prime minister Gordon Brown called a woman a bigot, but she voted for him anyway! It is perhaps depressing that women fail to stand up for themselves; equally depressing, that their men-folk fail to, as well.
A Divine perspective
As this is Christian Comment we must try to understand this in the big scheme of Mankind’s (and Womankind’s) determined rejection of its Judeo-Christian root. The Biblical account of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11) reminds us how our Lord Jesus stood up for a defenceless and guilty woman in the face of a murderous mob. How typical, we might say, that no man had been “caught in the act”, but just the woman. And she had become a political pawn! This is surely a hugely powerful Gospel message. Today women remain political pawns. Think of the ‘liberation’ of abortion, or the ‘liberation’ of sharing your safe space with men who have self-identified as women. God made us male and female, and He did so for very good reasons. When God had completed creation, He declared it “good”. And fundamentally, so it remains, with God knitting us together in our mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13) as male or as female, with differing yet complimentary roles to fulfil in this, God’s wonderful creation.
The State against women
The State is not shy about undermining womanhood. This is true in all cultures and across political persuasions. At time of writing there is a scandal in Iran about the poisoning of girls on a wide scale, at schools. Thus far, the Iran authorities have accomplished little in response to this assault and seem reluctant to find and deal with the culprits. In Iran women are definitelty second class citizens. Yet so many on the Left of western politics seem to ‘hold a candle’ for Iran, presumably because of its ‘revolutionary’ stance, and its permanent opposition to USA and to Israel.
In March 2021 the UK Metropolitan Police were strongly criticised for their handling of a public demonstration following the horrific murder of Sarah Everard. Likewise police in the UK took a heavy handed approach to women protesting against a transgender group. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-lgbt-crime-idUSKCN1SJ1WL . In both cases, women were relegated to the bottom of the pile.
Let’s all be equal ….
The political Left pays great lip service to enabling, or even compelling, women to become the equals of men (which possibly presupposes in the Left’s collective mind that they are not intrinsically ‘equals’).
The gift of career equality can, in harsh practice, boil down to managing career and family, and then ‘farming off the kids’ to others to raise! A friend told me “we had a big diversity training session at my place of work pushing recruitment and promotion of women, at which one of those present protested that she actually wanted to take a break from work to raise children. She is Indian and felt she was being coerced by Western values”. Can this contemporary concentration and emphasis on women working at child-bearing age be translated to an attempt to undermine traditional families and motherhood? All this, before we consider the huge issue of shared toilets and the need for safe spaces.
The Left as a death cult ….
In the broader scheme of things, a few people are now commenting on the Left as a death cult, which is a very accurate perpective, in so many ways. From a casual search: https://newswithviews.com/the-far-left-death-cult/. Obviously the Left also hates men, the unborn, the older and wiser, intellectuals (anyone who might challenge their thinking – we’re back to Gordon Brown’s “bigot” knee-jerk reaction). In Communist countries women are granted the dubious privilege of fighting and dying in the armed services, which we in the West are now trying to emulate. Today some male military veterans openly worry that training (and therefore western military capability) is being diluted so as to create a “level playing field” for strength and endurance. As far as it known, so far no transgender women have applied to become male soldiers! But it may happen ….
Illusion
There is also a potentially dangerous illusion that women are being sold – principally by the political Left as part of their “woke” narrative – that women can match and ‘beat’ men in every way. That’s called being ‘equal’.
We can get tired (and bored!) hearing Bond girls/women boasting about being “James Bond’s equal” in interviews. This has become something of a modern mantra. For some years now, TV and movies portray women beating up men in combat. A Christian friend told me “I used to teach karate and did some judo. At the risk of stating the obvious, women defeating men is totally unrealistic except in very rare cases”. At some point the pushing of a fantasy leads to inevitable pain when it collides with reality: https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/sas-who-dares-wins-viewers-26788499. Society needs to do a great deal more to protect women (think of rape convictions, for example). Whilst self-defence training can be helpful, fantasy isn’t the answer. In truth, the best defence for a woman is to avoid dangerous situations, no matter how unpalatable that truth may be.
Another version of the “powerful woman” in today’s media is the goddess/witch figure. Amazon has exploited this for example with their “re-woking” of Lord of the Rings (“Rings of Power”), which, despite predictable rave reviews in the MSM, has been slated by some viewers as utter rubbish! Here, too, we see ‘Amazon women’ (put intended!) as warriors and defeating men with occultic powers. As someone said to the author, trying to get women to emulate men (“soft transgender”, maybe) or embrace the occult, is hardly helpful!
Sad though it may be, the political Left wants to eviscerate women. Trouble is, too many women just do not care.
Lastly, to provide a more positive understanding of how women can and should play their God-designed roles within the context of the assembly (or ‘church’) here is a helpful perspective from Mary A. Kassian. Mary is an author, speaker, and professor of women’s studies at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She is the author of several books, Bible studies, and videos, including Girls Gone Wise and The Right Kind of Strong: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/women-teaching-men-how-far-is-too-far
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Last month’s article: https://christiancomment.org/2023/03/01/the-left-hates-women/
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