Feminism And Western Cultural Legacy

[Ilya Shambat]

In Salvation Army’s magazine “Others,” a feminist author said that Western literary legacy encourages wrongdoing toward women. She specialled out for this “Beauty and the Beast” and “Little Mermaid.”

She said that the message of “Beauty and the Beast” is that violence leads to affection. This does not begin to be the message of “Beauty and the Beast.” The true message of “Beauty and the Beast” is that a woman has been able to turn someone from being a bad person to being a good person, and he in return helped her get away from a creep who was aggressively wooing her. There is nothing misogynistic about this message; in fact it is highly empowering toward women.

She also said that the message of “Little Mermaid” is that a woman leaves behind everything that she knows in order to be with a man whom she’s never met. We see the exact same thing, from the opposite direction, in “Cinderella.” In “Cinderella,” a prince who is sought after by many women chooses a woman whom he’s never met and knows nothing about. A case can be made that these tales encourage irresponsible choices in relationships; but in neither case do we see misogyny.

So we have feminists savaging the Western literary legacy without producing anything approaching it in beauty and intelligence. It is most certainly easier to rail against the Western cultural legacy than it is to produce beautiful and intelligent work. We see the same behavior with right-wingers, who find it easier to rail against “the liberal academia” than they do to practice science or scholarship.

The Communists attempted to remake the world, largely for same consideration as the feminists. Some people agreed with them and some did not. I get falsely portrayed as a misogynist because I refuse to let these kinds of feminists shape my view of the world. They are crying wolf. A real misogynist – such as many Muslims and some Christians and Hindus – would have them beaten to death and thrown to the dogs. Whereas I have intelligent refutations of their claims, which I present in a calm and respectful manner. Nobody who’s had to deal with real misogynists would call me one. I simply refuse to accept wrong beliefs.

Is everything that has come out of feminism wrong? Not at all. I find merit in, for example, “I-feminism,” and I agree with the life-affirming feminism that was practiced in 1960s and 1970s. But there is much less to recommend Andrea Dworkin or Catherine McKinnon. These women are jerks, and their influence on society has been a terrible one.

I do not believe that there has been much done by way of refuting wrong trends in feminism; and there should be. A lot of what these people are doing is wrong. In this case, they are condemning works that are much better than anything that they have produced themselves. And that makes them a destructive influence.

A destructive influence becomes a transformative influence when it comes up with something valuable that has not been done before. If feminists are serious about being a transformative influence, they will be producing their own stories. We see some of that in such books as “Heather Has Two Mommies” and movies such as “Bratz.” This is encouraging. And it is a much more valid direction for feminism to take than is condemning beauty and love or teaching women to be mean and paranoid or calling people misogynists who are not.