This reminds me, in a good way, of the hidden structural similarity of capitalist and communist systems. Both reduce man to the Homo economicus, a soulless fleshbot intended for purely utilitarian ends. By stripping the subject of everything that is not objective, which is too say externally observable and measurable, the essence of the subject is erased and only a parodic shell remains.
This is such a brilliant assessment and speaks to the paradigms that underlie all extremist movements. I know I have written something good when it is strong enough in principle to be applied to other important problems that are similar in kind.
Been thinking about this post all day, so yes, it was thought provoking stuff.
Why do we gravitate towards caricature of the feminine? The substitute can never do when the genuine article is available. That the Potemkin Woman so thoroughly eclipses the real must then be because so few of us have any direct experience of the highest and most spiritually inspiring archetype. The disappearance of such ideals from public life is the necessary precondition for cargo cult femininity to thrive as it has.
And of course, exactly the same principle applies to the fate of the masculine in a world denuded of the authentically heroic.
बलात्कार: जिहाद का हथियार। यहूदियों और मुसलमानों की जड़ें और रीति-रिवाज समान हैं। बलात्कार जिहाद का प्रमुख हथियार है। मुसलमानों ने औरतों से बलात्कार करके ही अपनी संख्या बढाई थी।
Reducing man to Homo economicus... until only a parodic shell remains is what the livestock farmer does when he lacks empathy. Those who see themselves in the role of livestock farmers, and us in the role of livestock lack empathy.
We good people must have empathy for one another. Disassociate from the pathocrats.
Interesting article. Perhaps I haven't been exposed to the abuse of the trad movement that you complain about. I guess I feel very differently though.
For a young lady to reject, for example, college, in favor of pursuing marriage and family is the height of an individual and soulful choice. To WILL any thing is to reject all that is inconsistent with your choice. Kieerkegaard's definition of a knight, in fact, is someone who focuses the whole of their being on a single desire and gives up everything else for the One Thing of ultimate value, which would certainly seem to include a woman who gives up the world for her family.
All of the most traditional women I know are very into the reading of old books, too difficult for most in our society now, and many enjoy shooting or athleticism. So I guess we have just encountered very different strains of this movement. Certainly 'mommy bloggers' of any stripe can be obnoxious though, but some would say that of other types of bloggers too.<<
That is so interesting what you say about Kieerkegaard! I admit I was exposed to my ideas through the reading of Don Quixote and The Idiot primarily. I loved both these stories.
The type of traditional woman you speak about seems like the intelligent and virtuous type who SHOULD be the face of such a movement. However, the mainstream version of traditionalism that a young woman encounters in her rejection of the leftist feminist narrative, is just as superficial and vapid as her leftist adversaries. I am glad you have not encountered them.
I loved the first two Don Quixotes part three got I guess over elaborate for me. Never read the Idiot.
I guess the face of any movement is never the best of it, especially on Social Media. I was actually thinking about a girl I knew nearly twenty years ago. Her father and I were planting a church together, she was 18 or 19, a talented violinist, very bright, a lot of experience working with Evangelical charities. She was telling us one night over dinner about her grandmother giving her a hard time because she didn't intend to go to college, she wanted to focus on preparing to be a wife and mother, I should point out that she had a lot of support from her immediate family in this, big community group. But the grandmother was saying, 'well if this happens you won't be prepared and if blah blah blah what will you do then?' And I said, 'yeah Rachel what if you get attacked by ninjas'
We can only prepare for a few limited scenarios. Which is my problem with 'preppers', how do you pick which apocalypses to prepare for, when the preparations are mutually exclusive?
I suppose we should remember that almost everyone on social media is what we used to call a poser. It is a place for neophytes and those who are very changeable. And want to make a show, frustrating, and shallow but it has its uses. Anyway, enjoying discovering your writing.
Love is the key element in any successful relationship. The World has confused Love with just material pleasure. We need to rediscover the beauty, the depth and the importance of true sacrificial Love.
We are so lost and nothing is more symtpomatic of this than our understanding of and treatment of women. However, I think this duality of ignorance you point out might be be understood on a spectrum. While the "trad" undertanding is superficial and can be clownish, the leftist understanding is subversive and demonic.
I'd love for you to write more about the profane versus the sacred and their relation to the market economy. As I've aged, I've come to think that my job as a mother and a woman is to manage mine and my children's exposure to the market. I see so many "trad" moms with instagram accounts that expose their children to scrutiny under the guise of mommy blogging. They seem to embrace their "femininity" while selling private family moments for likes.
I think they are embracing their femininity, but femininity like masculinity has both a dark and a light side. All women are prone to voyeurism to some degree. This is why they overshare, especially online. It is the prerogative of the female nature to be seen. Mommy blogging appears to me to be a version of this dark side in fulminant form. It can be innocuous if the child's privacy is protected, but more often than not it is for the woman's ego.
I think you have highlighted something really key to the discomfort I feel about the "trad" meme that's been gaining popularity. I think there should be narratives and memes that make the so called "trad" life choices of marriage and children the most common choice, but the collectivist treatment of "women" goes against the individualist philosophy that I think should undergird what we do. How to blend the need for community with the requirement of individual responsibility is the great tension that I don't think any real philosophy can solve, given my beliefs about the fallen nature of humanity and nature. But we can at least try to avoid jumping off the cliffs on either sides.
This is such an interesting question that I had not considered. The clash between the woman's duty to her society vs her duty to herself as a sovereign individual is a non trivial question. (One that man face also). I think this is why Jane Austen's novels are so compelling even hundreds of years later: they examine these very questions.
Jane Austen's novels are indeed so compelling because of the tension between community (which I think is a more conservative and important concept than "society") and individual truth. She is the best!
“...life will put her in a position where the caricature can no longer hold her and the illusion cracks.” I like the dimension you opened up to at the end.
[26] The fairies are not to be seized on, and brought to answer for the hurt they do. So also the ecclesiastics vanish away from the tribunals of civil justice.
[27] The ecclesiastics take from young men the use of reason, by certain charms compounded of metaphysics, and miracles, and traditions, and abused Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else but to execute what they command them. The fairies likewise are said to take young children out of their cradles, and to change them into natural fools, which common people do therefore call elves, and are apt to mischief.
[28] In what shop or operatory the fairies make their enchantment, the old wives have not determined. But the operatories of the clergy are well enough known to be the universities, that received their discipline from authority pontifical.
[29] When the fairies are displeased with anybody, they are said to send their elves to pinch them. The ecclesiastics, when they are displeased with any civil state, make also their elves, that is, superstitious, enchanted subjects, to pinch their princes, by preaching sedition; or one prince, enchanted with promises, to pinch another.
[30] The fairies marry not; but there be amongst them incubi that have copulation with flesh and blood. The priests also marry not.
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds.
"The right wing trad movement’s discouragement of women from pursuing education of any hobbies that are “masculine” stems from their belief that these activities will “masculinize” her."
But this is, in fact, true. We become what we do. If you spend a lot of time on athletic pursuits, you become an athlete. If you do drugs and get high all the time, you become a druggie. That we become what we do is taught in the Bible, by C.S. Lewis, psychology (see Jordan Peterson on the subject) and understood as traditional wisdom. If you want a feminine, nurturing wife, marry an elementary school teacher; if you want a more masculine wife, marry a lawyer.
This does not mean the traditional occupations and pursuits of one sex should be forbidden for the other sex. It's simply a matter of degree. No man is 100% masculine, and no woman is 100% feminine. We each have degrees of the opposite sex, but the more we cultivate the actions of the opposite sex, the more we become like the opposite sex. Again, such should not be forbidden, but at the same time the fact of this dynamic should be recognized and not denied.
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol No. 23 – Instilling Obedience
❝That the peoples may become accustomed to obedience it is necessary to inculcate lessons of humility and therefore to reduce the production of articles of luxury. By this we shall improve morals which have been debased by emulation in the sphere of luxury.❞
I don't know if I would agree that traditionalism reduces women to a baby factory with legs and arms to clean and cook. I don't find Chivalry represented here which, I would think, is an important part of traditional view of women.
I think Megha that if we take the Trad woman presented as attempting, or purporting, to describe a complete femininity then your criticism is totally justified. That is, if a woman says, 'My femininity has content and meaning because of my beautiful milk jugs that delight my husband and satisfy my baby', then without a doubt that lady has missed something. But, if we take the Trad woman as a polemic, an invective and contrast to the Trans woman, then I am inclined to be more generous to her. If the woman says, 'My femininity has content and meaning, as compared to your Trans femininity which is empty and meaningless, because your breasts are fake and useless whereas mine are the vessels of divinely ordained wifehood and motherhood. I am to my family an echo of Eden, you are a presentiment of Dystopia'. It may be that the comparison is unstated and implied, but perhaps context is meant to evoke the comparison?
Miss Lilly, you totally mischaracterize the traditional view of women, then blast it with the same bazooka you use against feminists. Rather than using the feminist view of traditionalism, perhaps you could discover real traditionalism's view of the world...not just women? Feminism is a historical "flash", here today, gone by noon. Traditionalism has withstood the test of time. Learn it, embrace it, love it.
Where do they find these people? This is liberal gibberish written by a woman who apparently doesn't have a life. It appears she has precious few real world experiences. If she did, she'd cite them in this article. I choose to participate in reality, not quote someone else's.
I am married, have travelled the world, have multiple degrees and have lived in multiple cultures. It's wild that you need appeals to authority to make judgements about ideas, what today we call "citations". Clearly something has ruffled your feathers and that's the only reason you are resorting to ad hominems, and those too baselessly. It's very embarrassing for you really.
This reminds me, in a good way, of the hidden structural similarity of capitalist and communist systems. Both reduce man to the Homo economicus, a soulless fleshbot intended for purely utilitarian ends. By stripping the subject of everything that is not objective, which is too say externally observable and measurable, the essence of the subject is erased and only a parodic shell remains.
This is such a brilliant assessment and speaks to the paradigms that underlie all extremist movements. I know I have written something good when it is strong enough in principle to be applied to other important problems that are similar in kind.
Been thinking about this post all day, so yes, it was thought provoking stuff.
Why do we gravitate towards caricature of the feminine? The substitute can never do when the genuine article is available. That the Potemkin Woman so thoroughly eclipses the real must then be because so few of us have any direct experience of the highest and most spiritually inspiring archetype. The disappearance of such ideals from public life is the necessary precondition for cargo cult femininity to thrive as it has.
And of course, exactly the same principle applies to the fate of the masculine in a world denuded of the authentically heroic.
बलात्कार: जिहाद का हथियार। यहूदियों और मुसलमानों की जड़ें और रीति-रिवाज समान हैं। बलात्कार जिहाद का प्रमुख हथियार है। मुसलमानों ने औरतों से बलात्कार करके ही अपनी संख्या बढाई थी।
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/67b
Reducing man to Homo economicus... until only a parodic shell remains is what the livestock farmer does when he lacks empathy. Those who see themselves in the role of livestock farmers, and us in the role of livestock lack empathy.
We good people must have empathy for one another. Disassociate from the pathocrats.
As above, so below: we are treated by society as we treat the world, and by those higher in the chain of being as we treat those lower.
Feminism: A Jewish Psyop to Demonize White Women
MGTOW = Mostly Gay Transgendered Or Wimpy
http://www.renegadetribune.com/the-psychological-operation-to-blame-white-women/
Interesting article. Perhaps I haven't been exposed to the abuse of the trad movement that you complain about. I guess I feel very differently though.
For a young lady to reject, for example, college, in favor of pursuing marriage and family is the height of an individual and soulful choice. To WILL any thing is to reject all that is inconsistent with your choice. Kieerkegaard's definition of a knight, in fact, is someone who focuses the whole of their being on a single desire and gives up everything else for the One Thing of ultimate value, which would certainly seem to include a woman who gives up the world for her family.
All of the most traditional women I know are very into the reading of old books, too difficult for most in our society now, and many enjoy shooting or athleticism. So I guess we have just encountered very different strains of this movement. Certainly 'mommy bloggers' of any stripe can be obnoxious though, but some would say that of other types of bloggers too.<<
That is so interesting what you say about Kieerkegaard! I admit I was exposed to my ideas through the reading of Don Quixote and The Idiot primarily. I loved both these stories.
The type of traditional woman you speak about seems like the intelligent and virtuous type who SHOULD be the face of such a movement. However, the mainstream version of traditionalism that a young woman encounters in her rejection of the leftist feminist narrative, is just as superficial and vapid as her leftist adversaries. I am glad you have not encountered them.
I loved the first two Don Quixotes part three got I guess over elaborate for me. Never read the Idiot.
I guess the face of any movement is never the best of it, especially on Social Media. I was actually thinking about a girl I knew nearly twenty years ago. Her father and I were planting a church together, she was 18 or 19, a talented violinist, very bright, a lot of experience working with Evangelical charities. She was telling us one night over dinner about her grandmother giving her a hard time because she didn't intend to go to college, she wanted to focus on preparing to be a wife and mother, I should point out that she had a lot of support from her immediate family in this, big community group. But the grandmother was saying, 'well if this happens you won't be prepared and if blah blah blah what will you do then?' And I said, 'yeah Rachel what if you get attacked by ninjas'
We can only prepare for a few limited scenarios. Which is my problem with 'preppers', how do you pick which apocalypses to prepare for, when the preparations are mutually exclusive?
I suppose we should remember that almost everyone on social media is what we used to call a poser. It is a place for neophytes and those who are very changeable. And want to make a show, frustrating, and shallow but it has its uses. Anyway, enjoying discovering your writing.
Love is the key element in any successful relationship. The World has confused Love with just material pleasure. We need to rediscover the beauty, the depth and the importance of true sacrificial Love.
Leviathan: Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness . . . Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness, and to Whom it Accrueth . . .
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/leviathan-part-iv-of-the-kingdom
We are so lost and nothing is more symtpomatic of this than our understanding of and treatment of women. However, I think this duality of ignorance you point out might be be understood on a spectrum. While the "trad" undertanding is superficial and can be clownish, the leftist understanding is subversive and demonic.
I'd love for you to write more about the profane versus the sacred and their relation to the market economy. As I've aged, I've come to think that my job as a mother and a woman is to manage mine and my children's exposure to the market. I see so many "trad" moms with instagram accounts that expose their children to scrutiny under the guise of mommy blogging. They seem to embrace their "femininity" while selling private family moments for likes.
I think they are embracing their femininity, but femininity like masculinity has both a dark and a light side. All women are prone to voyeurism to some degree. This is why they overshare, especially online. It is the prerogative of the female nature to be seen. Mommy blogging appears to me to be a version of this dark side in fulminant form. It can be innocuous if the child's privacy is protected, but more often than not it is for the woman's ego.
I think you have highlighted something really key to the discomfort I feel about the "trad" meme that's been gaining popularity. I think there should be narratives and memes that make the so called "trad" life choices of marriage and children the most common choice, but the collectivist treatment of "women" goes against the individualist philosophy that I think should undergird what we do. How to blend the need for community with the requirement of individual responsibility is the great tension that I don't think any real philosophy can solve, given my beliefs about the fallen nature of humanity and nature. But we can at least try to avoid jumping off the cliffs on either sides.
This is such an interesting question that I had not considered. The clash between the woman's duty to her society vs her duty to herself as a sovereign individual is a non trivial question. (One that man face also). I think this is why Jane Austen's novels are so compelling even hundreds of years later: they examine these very questions.
Jane Austen's novels are indeed so compelling because of the tension between community (which I think is a more conservative and important concept than "society") and individual truth. She is the best!
“...life will put her in a position where the caricature can no longer hold her and the illusion cracks.” I like the dimension you opened up to at the end.
Thank you Rhett! Answering that question would be another essay entirely I believe.
Or a... fairytale? 🤔
[26] The fairies are not to be seized on, and brought to answer for the hurt they do. So also the ecclesiastics vanish away from the tribunals of civil justice.
[27] The ecclesiastics take from young men the use of reason, by certain charms compounded of metaphysics, and miracles, and traditions, and abused Scripture, whereby they are good for nothing else but to execute what they command them. The fairies likewise are said to take young children out of their cradles, and to change them into natural fools, which common people do therefore call elves, and are apt to mischief.
[28] In what shop or operatory the fairies make their enchantment, the old wives have not determined. But the operatories of the clergy are well enough known to be the universities, that received their discipline from authority pontifical.
[29] When the fairies are displeased with anybody, they are said to send their elves to pinch them. The ecclesiastics, when they are displeased with any civil state, make also their elves, that is, superstitious, enchanted subjects, to pinch their princes, by preaching sedition; or one prince, enchanted with promises, to pinch another.
[30] The fairies marry not; but there be amongst them incubi that have copulation with flesh and blood. The priests also marry not.
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/leviathan-part-iv-of-the-kingdom
Ever read Eugene Onegin? It could perhaps be read as an example of early 19th century feminism. Russian culture often presents parallels to the west.
The Frankfurt School adapted Marx’s theories on revolution to include Freud’s theory of the subconscious. The Cultural Marxists’ main focus was to reshape the subconscious of Western men and women and thus create new type of person: one who would react passively to provocations of all kinds.
https://nordicresistancemovement.org/what-is-cultural-marxism/
"The right wing trad movement’s discouragement of women from pursuing education of any hobbies that are “masculine” stems from their belief that these activities will “masculinize” her."
But this is, in fact, true. We become what we do. If you spend a lot of time on athletic pursuits, you become an athlete. If you do drugs and get high all the time, you become a druggie. That we become what we do is taught in the Bible, by C.S. Lewis, psychology (see Jordan Peterson on the subject) and understood as traditional wisdom. If you want a feminine, nurturing wife, marry an elementary school teacher; if you want a more masculine wife, marry a lawyer.
This does not mean the traditional occupations and pursuits of one sex should be forbidden for the other sex. It's simply a matter of degree. No man is 100% masculine, and no woman is 100% feminine. We each have degrees of the opposite sex, but the more we cultivate the actions of the opposite sex, the more we become like the opposite sex. Again, such should not be forbidden, but at the same time the fact of this dynamic should be recognized and not denied.
Juden Peterstein . . .
How the 'Grift Right' Gimps for the Left . . . https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the
Well said! The root of our perverted views on women, and most other things for that matter, is an excessively materialistic view of the world.
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol No. 23 – Instilling Obedience
❝That the peoples may become accustomed to obedience it is necessary to inculcate lessons of humility and therefore to reduce the production of articles of luxury. By this we shall improve morals which have been debased by emulation in the sphere of luxury.❞
https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/protocol-no-23-instilling-obedience
Excellent article. I've read enough of your posts that I've now felt obliged to pay for the privilege.
Welcome :)
Thank you for this!
I don't know if I would agree that traditionalism reduces women to a baby factory with legs and arms to clean and cook. I don't find Chivalry represented here which, I would think, is an important part of traditional view of women.
Still thinking about this article. Lol.
I think Megha that if we take the Trad woman presented as attempting, or purporting, to describe a complete femininity then your criticism is totally justified. That is, if a woman says, 'My femininity has content and meaning because of my beautiful milk jugs that delight my husband and satisfy my baby', then without a doubt that lady has missed something. But, if we take the Trad woman as a polemic, an invective and contrast to the Trans woman, then I am inclined to be more generous to her. If the woman says, 'My femininity has content and meaning, as compared to your Trans femininity which is empty and meaningless, because your breasts are fake and useless whereas mine are the vessels of divinely ordained wifehood and motherhood. I am to my family an echo of Eden, you are a presentiment of Dystopia'. It may be that the comparison is unstated and implied, but perhaps context is meant to evoke the comparison?
Miss Lilly, you totally mischaracterize the traditional view of women, then blast it with the same bazooka you use against feminists. Rather than using the feminist view of traditionalism, perhaps you could discover real traditionalism's view of the world...not just women? Feminism is a historical "flash", here today, gone by noon. Traditionalism has withstood the test of time. Learn it, embrace it, love it.
Where do they find these people? This is liberal gibberish written by a woman who apparently doesn't have a life. It appears she has precious few real world experiences. If she did, she'd cite them in this article. I choose to participate in reality, not quote someone else's.
I am married, have travelled the world, have multiple degrees and have lived in multiple cultures. It's wild that you need appeals to authority to make judgements about ideas, what today we call "citations". Clearly something has ruffled your feathers and that's the only reason you are resorting to ad hominems, and those too baselessly. It's very embarrassing for you really.