What Is It This Time?

 ... is my exasperated response to essays like this.

An honest reckoning with women’s interests today calls on us to reject the cyborg vision of sexless, fungible homunculi piloting re-configurable meat suits. The cyborg era began with women, and women must reclaim the power to say “no.” In its place, we can pioneer a new but ancient moral consensus. We can lead the charge for solidarity between the sexes.

Honestly, I've been listening to people yapping about "women’s interests" for 50 years and I just don't care any more. This essay was by Mary Harrington who has recently become a darling of the right for her book, "Feminism Against Progress." She's making the rounds on the right wing podcasts, which is where I heard of her and her book. I bought the audio version of it and made it halfway through when I simply couldn't listen to it any more. It was exhausting.

I couldn't put my finger on what it was the wore me down until I saw this.

This is a still from the new Netflix series on Cleopatra where Cleopatra is black. Cleopatra was not black. She was Greek. Still Netflix felt the need to make her black. Because black. How much is enough?

Getting back to the all-new version of feminism, the sentiments that are making conservatives swoon are along these lines, also from her essay:

(I)f you want to be a mother, marriage is not a patriarchal institution designed to oppress you. It’s the minimum unit for human-scale solidarity. Unless you’re very rich raising kids in this atomized context, marriage is not the misogynist option but the pro-women one.

Did you figure that out all by yourself, Mary? Well, aren't you the brilliant one. Thanks so much for enlightening us. From this husband and father who has been through the ringer with women, listening to her prattle about how smart she is and that misogynist beasts like me aren't as bad as all that is no reward at all.

Nowhere in her book or her essays or any of the other feminist / racial justice blather is a syllable about their roles and responsibilities in society. What good are you? What is expected of you? Crickets.

I'm just done with all of this. It's been decades of this stuff and I don't care any more. Don't tell me how oppressed you are because I've lost interest in it. I remember all the way back to the Equal Rights Amendment fights in the 70s and every demand that streets be named for MLK and accusations of racism. Decade after decade of it.

After all that agitation and demands met, you'd think things would have improved, but they haven't. Women's depression rates are higher. Marriage rates are down. Black literacy is pathetic, particularly in places run entirely by blacks. And on and on and on. After all that, what do we get? Yet more books and essays talking about how hard it is to be a woman and Egyptian history blackfaced.

They're like telephone salesmen blasting at you day and night asking if you want to renew your car's warranty. It all makes me shake my head and let out an exasperated, "God almighty, what do you want now?"