January 2, 2018

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Sexual Liberation, Feminism and the Heresy of Equality

Friends,

[In an effort to retrieve some earlier MY CORNER columns, I have updated and slightly revised this one from November 28, 2017.]

The past few  couple of months have been unique in recent political history—unique because since the election of President Trump one year ago the continuing narrative of Russian meddling and interference in our elections, and the possible collusion between Vladimir Putin and the president, have actually been driven off the front pages of most major newspapers…and also from the lead stories on most broadcast networks.

Instead, we have been drenched in a continuous orgy (no pun intended) of lurid stories of how various Hollywood personalities and national politicians have engaged in sexual harassment or exploitation of “powerless women” for over the past forty or so years. Those accounts included a particularly morbid fascination with supposed peccadillos of former Alabama US Senate candidate Judge Moore, actions that he would have supposedly would have committed back in 1977 or 1979, and then unwanted physical contact by Senator Al Franken and Representative John Conyers (who apparently made cash settlements with some accusers).

The reaction from both wings of the political and cultural “establishment,” from the Mainstream Media and their Democrat allies, AND from most of the Republican politicians in the Washington DC “swamp,” has been like that of a nest of hornets all of sudden disturbed by an uninvited intruder. You would think that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, again.

Certainly, a considerable portion of the reaction against Judge Moore bare-knuckled politics. This was most apparent in the establishment Republican reaction against the feared (by the Establishment GOP) Judge Roy Moore in Alabama, with a huge stampede of GOP US senators—before any proof had been adduced, before any accusation had been confirmed—demanding that Moore step aside, and ganging up to convince a large enough share of the Republican electorate to either abstain or vote against him. This is what I have called “the Mitt Romney Rule,” as it was Mitt who first advanced it when the charges surfaced against Moore several weeks ago: “If accusations of sexual impropriety are leveled at a traditional, non-establishment conservative Republican, no need for any proof or corroboration, believe the women.” In other words, every standard of traditional moral judgment and guilt is thrown out the window in the name of a higher political expediency.

There are deeper questions that bubble up through all this: In the midst of the shark frenzy of accusations, the emerging “repressed memories,” the huckstering lawyers like Gloria Allred once again digging up “clients” to accuse this or that man, and the tearful and abject apologies and manifold mea culpas that seem endless, there is something truly sickening and revolting that has been revealed about our society. And it is not just the age-old fact that some men will, if given the chance or opportunity, attempt to take a few liberties with women. Such activity has been around since Adam.

But what is relatively new, at least since the triumph of what is euphemistically termed “the sexual revolution,” is how our society approaches the topic of sex. What modern “sexual liberation” has in fact meant is this: sex has been forcibly dissociated from its traditional and essential matrimonial and procreative purposes and made into a formalized totem and object in its own right. That separation has been a fundamental ingredient, a necessary prerequisite in what is called “feminism,” women’s liberation, and the radical transformation of the roles of women culturally, socially...and sexually.

And that evolving environment has brought with it a whole series of contradictions, a kind of sexual schizophrenia that seems to deeply infect our society.

Consider: Our modern educational establishment, imbued with “liberationist” philosophy, inculcates our youth—I would call it indoctrination—with the following understandings:

--“gender-fluidity,” that is, there is really no such thing as a born “male” or “female,” it’s how you “feel” and how you think of yourself at this or that time in  your life.

--same sex relations are just fine if you both “consent.”

--religious inhibitions are bigoted and harmful and should be rejected.

--sexual “awareness” and education at a very early age is a good and healthy thing.

--transgenderism and other forms of what once were called aberrations are fine—there is no such thing as “normal.”

Of course, these imposed narratives presuppose the essential and undebatable “equality” of the sexes, and not just in commerce or the job market, but in everything, from the military to child raising to same sex restrooms.  Any dissenting view is prejudicial or potentially harmful or “discriminatory,” and violates the inviolate egalitarian dogma.

The irony I have noted in this mind set—and it is ideological at base—is that our educational system, our entertainment industry and our sports personalities drench us in an “if it feels good, do it” climate, and we are taught and encouraged from an early age that sex is purely recreational and that traditional inhibitions are psychologically “damaging.” Yet, when adults cross that magical age threshold of 18 (or whatever it may be) and want to act out those inculcated and “liberated” dispositions and fantasies, all of a sudden they may be guilty of committing the most heinous crimes of the century. It’s like putting delicious steak before a puppy and encouraging him to gorge himself, with no training and no limits on how to approach the attractive and aromatic goody, but the day after he turns age three, forbid it to him and expect him to act like a trained champion in the Westminster Dog Show. What’s a poor canine to do? He’s not gotten any rules or training about feeding time except that earlier he was dazzled by scrumptious steak, and now he’s supposed to think and act differently.

More than a dozen or so years ago, there was a spate of infamous “child abuse” cases centering on various day care centers. The most notorious was the McMartin case in southern California, and then, closer home, the Edenton case. In both situations, it turned out, “social counselors” had coaxed young children, sometimes aged just four or five, into claiming horrendous acts of rampant sexual abuse. In Edenton, at least a couple of youngsters, acting on the “counseling” of “experts,” claimed that “Uncle Bob took us up in an airplane” where he committed his foul acts…. After years of litigation in the courts, plus millions of dollars in court costs, and the ruined lives of dozens of teachers—and students—the charges were found to be false, made up, largely through the suggestion of the “counselors.”

Yet, I remember bumper stickers reading: “Believe the children!”

The paranoid schizophrenia of our modern experts about sex is immense, and it is extremely destructive of those human bonds that make society actually livable.

Our modern society is mired in sexual hysteria replete with “sexual witch hunts” and congressional “star chambers.” It is an hysteria that results from deconstructing our sexual function and isolating it from our totality of being and its integration into a personality. In rejecting the traditional and inherited rules and reasonable standards that have governed us for twenty centuries, we denude ourselves and leave ourselves open to the law of the jungle. If all is permitted, than nothing is permitted. Without accepted moral order, we cease to be in fact Sons of God, but become wild beasts for whom even the laws of Nature mean nothing.

There are several current articles, all of which revolve around this theme, which I recommend and that develop this theme. First, there is John Derbyshire (in VDare.com) on the intellectual template, this new “witch hunt.”  Second, Dr. Jack Kerwick has written an excellent piece that examines sexual misconduct in relation to the broader aims of feminism and the political attacks on Judge Roy Moore in Alabama. [https://amgreatness.com/2017/11/21/sexual-misconduct-feminism-and-the-roy-moore-rule/]

And I also link two short items about the extremities to which this feminist/sexual liberation narrative has gone: the first of them attacks President Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, for hanging the traditional Christmas mistletoe in the White House (obviously “sexist” you know, and “encouraging inappropriate sexual contact”) [https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/11/27/the-trump-white-house-is-hanging-mistletoe-and-some-people-are-freaking-out/23289462/], and the Girl Guides (scouts) in Great Britain inviting transgender girls (who would have all the male genitalia) to share bathrooms with actual females (and be sure not to tell the parents) [http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/11/27/male-guides-share-showers-tents-girls/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20171127]

The ancient Chinese, I think it was, had a saying: “He who tears down a venerable wall, on him will it fall.”  We have, in our revolutionary madness, decimated the wall of natural and healthy separation between male and female, ridiculed and rejected old and tried standards, created new rights out of thin air and bogus science, and expected the results to be salutary—when, in fact, the result has been to produce a society of misfits and barbarians.

Dr. Boyd D. Cathey