Weekend question
Catholic writer Deal Hudson posted this intriguing quote on Facebook:
There are two things that have no limit, femininity and the power of taking advantage
of it.
Thoughts?
Feb.14, 2009 6:15 am |
Weekend question |
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Ew.
In other words: Creepy as hell.
I think he’s driving home the point found in the Book of Revelation 17-18.
Of course that ties back to Gen 2 and 3.
What are the limits of masculinity? Can masculinity be taken advantage of and, if so, to what limit?
I’m not trying to be all egalitarian about things but the first thought I had, when I tried to imagine infinite and limitless femininity, is how does that differ from masculinity? It seems to me like it views masculine as the ‘default’ and feminine as, thus, not-masculine. Kind of like how cold is the absence of heat — the base from which infinite temperature heights can be reached.
Alexandra – think procreation.
Alexandra – think the Bible. This may not apply to you. Don’t sweat it.
“There are two things that have no limit, femininity and the power of taking advantage of it.”
—————————————————–
This clever jibe is directed primarily at ‘feminists’, but seems to apply broadly to women in general.
I will never forget the time my wife told my five year old daughter to, “Go ask your dad.”
So she came over to where I was sitting and started rubbing my forearm and looking at me with those pleading brown eyes, saying, “Daddy, can I……”
My wife never approached me that way. If she wanted something she just asked. She did not attempt to manipulate me. We had no television. Where did my daughter learn this behavior?
I have heard it said that women can get out of traffic tickets by crying when the officer asks for their license, registration and proof of insurance, but it is even more effective if it is a man who is crying.
“I think of a man and I take away reason and accountability.”
Jack Nicholson from ‘As Good As It Gets’.
(close eyes and picture stereotypically bleached blonde bobble head with big boobs and beedy eyes)
——————————————————–
Posted by: Alexandra at February 14, 2009 8:23 AM
‘What are the limits of masculinity? Can masculinity be taken advantage of and, if so, to what limit?’
Yes, but only to the extent that women allow them to do so.
I am the head of MY house and I have my wife’s permission to say so.
yor bro ken
Thanks for that, Chris, but I still don’t really see how it’s different — in terms of limitlessness — than masculinity.
Could you please explain to me, from a procreational standpoint, what are the limits of masculinity that femininity is exempt from? Obviously masculinity and femininity differ in function, but how do they differ in limitation?
Posted by: Chris Arsenault at February 14, 2009 8:03 AM
I think he’s driving home the point found in the
Book of Revelation 17-18.
——————————————————
Chris,
I have been working at a ‘church building’ expansion. They are installing an indoor play land, like you see at McDonalds and Chic Fil A, in one building and in a new 12,000 sq. ft. satellite youth building with 66 tons of a/c they will have their own Starbucks coffe bar.
I know Jesus will show up there occasionally. HE said as much. (The 2 or 3 gathered thing.) HE showed up at the temple in Jerusalem, gave some instruction, did some house cleaning, took out the trash, and declared it’s eventual destruction.
When I read Rev 17 and 18 I think of organized religion in general and Wall Street christianity in particular. (Think about it.)
‘Babylon’ is about manipulation, an affiction of the human race, common to both male and female persons. It is practiced most commonly on Sunday mornings in the USA. But manipulation is not peculiar to religion. People of all religions or no religous persuasion practice it. Maybe manipulation is the ‘one world religion’.
If there is a literal incarnation of the the anti-Christ spirit, then he/she may be a woman masquerading as a man or man masquerading as a woman kind of like the imagined likenesses of Jesus you see displayed in religious places.
Jesus is a masculine male. God could have chosen a feminine female for the Messiah, HE is GOD after all, but for heaven only knows what reason, HE chose a masculine male. HE knew the end from the beginning. It was HIS story to write. oy vey Maria!
A few years ago on a five hour flight from DFW to SeaTac I took the opportunity to read straight through Revelation without a break.
I came away with this revelation: You cannot understand Revelation (or for that matter the ‘book’) without revelation.
Ask. Seek. Knock.
yor bro ken
I don’t think there is anything untoward in the quote. It’s just a fact. Look at Anne Boleyn, Abigail Adams, Cleopatra, etc. History is full of VERY feminine women who made the most of it. I don’t think anyone looks at them as anything but the powerful women they were.
Kristen,
Of course, Anne Boleyn got her head chopped off by order of her own husband. So much for the power of femininity.
Posted by: Prochoicer at February 14, 2009 10:22 AM
Of course, Anne Boleyn got her head chopped off by order of her own husband. So much for the power of femininity.
———————————————————
A good example of ‘equality of outcome’ as guaranteed by the state.
yor bro ken
Poor Anne Boelyn did in fact use her wiles to snare old Henry. He was bonkers over her, especially when she refused his advances prior to their marriage. Looking at him you can see why.
Some thought she even “bewitched” him as they couldn’t understand how such an ordinary looking, flat chested woman could entice any man.
Anne was the mother of Elizabeth I who would go on to quite a career as queen. Talk about some feminine power.
BTW, Cleopatra has often been betrayed as a vamp and bedhopper. Portraying powerful women as such apparently is as old as history.
In fact she was highly educated, spoke several languages, and was a very effective queen.
Its speculated from old coins, etc. that she was in fact a very plain if not homely woman and while she had children by her Roman lovers, was not a promiscuous woman who had sex with anything that moved.
kbhvac 10:28am
…or a better example of how one should be very careful what they wish for…..
Well, to try to respond more directly to Jill’s quote from Deal Hudson, I would remark that the more inherent power of beauty something has, the more it can be deformed and used in a negative way.
What do I mean, “power of beauty?” Well, I would firmly make the old-fashioned (but very true) claim that women possess, by their very nature, much more beauty than men. I don’t mean this in a patronizing way. I mean “beauty” here as a wonderful, positive, awesome thing. And I see this as essential and integral to “femininity” as I think Deal means it. Something that has inherent beauty, has, by this very fact, an inherent power over those who are attracted to beauty.
Now, men, as only the blind and hopelessly PC would object, are attracted to the beauty in women in an especially powerful way. This gives women a certain kind of power over men that men simply do not possess in reverse. And please note, I am not speaking here of physical power or political power–it is a different sort of power that beauty wields over the hearts of others.
This power of the beautiful can be used in wonderful and good, uplifting ways. But, it can also be twisted to manipulate and take advantage of others in unjust ways.
It would be strange to our human nature if there were a Greek myth about a man’s beauty starting a great war when he was kidnapped because of his beauty. It is not strange to imagine such a possibility in regard to Helen and the war of Troy.
Posted by: Prochoicer at February 14, 2009 10:22 AM
Of course, Anne Boleyn got her head chopped off by order of her own husband. So much for the power of femininity.
————————————————–
The ‘unlimited’ power of her femininity may have been enough to get her there, but when her fertility failed, it could not keep her there.
The bloom would have fallen off the rose eventually, but the thorns remain.
yor bro
Hmmm, somehow I don’t think Elizabeth I’s direct power over the treasury and military of her kingdom is quite what Mr. Hudson meant by “feminine power.”
Elizabeth I was totally kick-ass though!
I don’t follow the comment about equality of outcome at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-Tiad_JQCw
Damn those feminists, empowering women!
Posted by: Scott Johnston at February 14, 2009 10:39 AM
It would be strange to our human nature if there were a Greek myth about a man’s beauty starting a great war when he was kidnapped because of his beauty. It is not strange to imagine such a possibility in regard to Helen and the war of Troy.
————————————————–
Wow, Scott you have just birthed the idea for a ‘gay’ blockbuster film or at least a made for TV mini-series.
The farce so ugly that it would make a freight train take a dirt road,
yor bro ken
Scott Johnston, 10:39am
Years ago I read an article called “sex power, women have it”.
You’d think this was about jumping in the sack but was anything but.
The writer stated that every woman has the ability to attract men. She also says physical beauty has nothing to do with it. In fact she says physical beauty may initially attract a man, but it won’t hold him.
She said every woman has some kind of feature, it may be her hair, voice, figure, eyes, whatever, that she can use to her advantage.
She also stressed the importance of femininity. She said how sad it was that women, (the article was written 30 years ago), considered being called female an insult and feminine even worse.
She said when women try so hard to be like men they lose their most powerful weapon, their remininity.
I think that he is referring to femininity in the context of what it should be ideally. Wisdom, gentleness, the innate desire to nurture, self-sacrificing love. What good man could resist this and not want to lay down his life for her. I think that may be what he is implying. This is the opposite of what feminists embrace.
Mary — excellent as usual.
Posted by: Prochoicer at February 14, 2009 10:41 AM
‘I don’t follow the comment about equality of outcome at all.’
—————————————————–
My bad. Poor communication.
If one demands the ‘entitlement’ to compete with the big dogs, then one must be willing to suffer the same fate as all the other losers without whining about ‘inequities of power’.
No preferencial treatment allowed. It is just another form of discrimination.
Feminism + liberal + state = guaranteed equality of outcome
regardless of race, creed, color, sexual preference, gender, hair color, taste in clothes, intelligence, athletic ability, weight to height ratio, etc, etc, etc.
Entitlement versus demonstrated proven ability.
It is difficult, if not impossible to separate feminism from liberalism. A conservative feminist is a almost an oxymoron, at least in the eyes of liberal feminists.
yor bro ken
kbhvac,
I understand the criticism that feminists only want “equality of outcome.”
What I don’t follow is why Anne Boleyn is an example of that. I don’t think Tudor England was a bastion of modern liberal feminism. I don’t think anyone then was clamoring for gender-neutral hiring or executions. It seems that Anne Boleyn tried to do it the old-fashioned way — gain influence by attracting a man sexually — and she got hoisted by her own petard.
Eileen #2
Thank you. I think the writer of the article was referring to what you mention as well. She did emphasize she was not referring to physical beauty. In fact, she said many physically beautiful women do not have any sex power.
Her point was, and this is 30 years ago, that women trying so hard to be like men lose their feminine qualities, some of which you mention as well. She said the real irony is they are losing their most powerful weapon.
In the article she also mentioned women who men were so attracted to that she an other women saw as nothing exceptional. She was so perplexed she even asked a man about what attracted men to these women. Some said “its just something about her”. “She’s such a brilliant conversationlist”,i.e. she sits there and listens to the guy talk about himself!
kbhvac 10:49am
…or the face that launched a thousand ships…in the other direction.
Disclaimer:
kbhvac often tries to be humorously sarcastic and sometimes the attempt at humor takes predence over the sarcasm and as a result the truth of the matter may suffer some violence.
Anne Boleyn’s female neck offerred no more resistance to the executioners ax than any males who went before her or after her. The outcome was equal regardless of what was below the neck or above it.
yor bro ken
Being the face that launched 1000 ships doesn’t seem like a great example to me (even assuming there is any historical basis to believe that her face was truly the motivation for the Trojan, which seems extremely unlikely) of POWER.
In the Iliad, Helen’s precise role and feelings are a bit ambiguous. I am not sure we even know whether she ran off with Paris willingly (in which case it would follow that she wouldn’t have WANTED the 1000 ships). I don’t think there is any evidence to believe she had any say-so or influence over the conduct of the war whatsoever, or that the men controlling the 1000 ships would have cared one way or the other about HER actual wishes. Her role was more along the lines of booty to be fought over.
See here is another example of my sloppy quotes.
Was it the ‘face’ or the ‘love’ that launched a thousand ships.
Maybe it was her likeness on the coin of the realm that was the motivation for the launch. Maybe they were just after the other guys money.
Power, greed, lust.
I prefer love, generosity, kindness.
yor bro ken
Just read like the first 5 comments and I think it’s funny how feminists are threatened by femininity.
That said, I agree with his quote.
Posted by: Prochoicer at February 14, 2009 10:22 AM
Yes, cause Henry – well you know. He was just crazy. He was paranoid and that has been well documented. He beheaded WAY more people than just Anne and Katherine. You can hardly say she was beheaded because of anything more than an unstable husband.
Mary,
I think Cleopatra was one of the great women in history. And those that really do the research know how different she was from the “hollywood” version. I swear I think people have morphed Elizabeth Taylor and Cleopatra into one person.
Mary, 10:50 AM
Yes, I agree! And it reminds me that in my comment above I did not mean to equate physical beauty only with the power of femininity, which you obviously realize. There is a hidden, spiritual beauty (“that special something”) that is unique to women and that is a special part of femininity. But, as you recognize, it can be squelched.
Prochoicer, 11:36 AM
I pretty much agree with you here. Indeed, Helen herself was not especially clear on where her heart was. But, this doesn’t change the fact that only Helen could have prompted to Greeks to attack Troy to get her back. It couldn’t have been just any woman–Helen in particular was regarded as the most beautiful, and thus, capable of prompting a war when she was kidnapped. (And the reason the Trojans themselves wanted to take Helen was again because she was regarded as the most beautiful).
It is true also your point that Helen was treated more like booty here–a prize possession–rather than as a complete and unique person in her own right.
But none of this is relevant to my original point in mentioning Helen. I simply wanted to draw a contrast between how we would react to an imaginary situation where a man replaced Helen, and the original myth, noticing how silly the former would seem to most of us. This reaction–that it is at least conceivable that a woman’s beauty could “launch a thousand ships” (even if the motives were prideful and mixed)–illustrates the notion that there is something special about the beauty of women that men do not have.
Here is another facet.
Do men, and even women, take advantage of the ‘weakness’ of femininity to manipulate women to acquire what they covet or desire?
‘Weakness’ meaning unempowered women.
It goes without saying that no men are weak, because in this patriarchal reality no men are unempowered.
Please pardon my ‘conflatulating’ or my ‘conflatulence’.
(‘Conflate’ seems to be a term that is popular with the new wave of ‘feminists’. It means ‘to bring together’.
In the context of the contemporary feminist lexicon it is predominantly negative and commonly used when the new feminists discovers she has subconscioulsy combinined concepts of the old patriarchal paradigm with modern matriarchal mind sets.
They ‘conflate’ a lot when they blog on feministing.com
They conflatulate as much as a bunch of old cowboys after a supper of chili and beans.)
yor bro ken
I’m not saying that femininity isn’t powerful, and so forth. I’m wondering why masculinity isn’t considered equally powerful. Surely, if you accept the premise that there are traits that are inherently feminine and traits that are inherently masculine, then you feel that those traits are equally valuable and complementary.
There may be no tale of a man’s face launching a thousand ships, but I certainly can say for myself that there is something about men that can inspire women to great devotion, great lengths, great sacrifices — something whose power can be a force of destruction or of great beauty, depending on your actions.
Posted by: Alexandra at February 14, 2009 9:17 AM
‘Could you please explain to me, from a procreational standpoint, what are the limits of masculinity that femininity is exempt from? Obviously masculinity and femininity differ in function, but how do they differ in limitation?’
—————————————————-
Here are procreational limitations of masculinity and femininity.
Men can not get pregant. Women can get pregnant.
Women can get pregnant. Men can not get pregnant.
Men cannot breast feed. Women can breast feed.
————————————————–
It was said of Margaret Thatcher that she was the strongest man in the British Empire.
Ross Perot said that the reason female journalists are so agressive is they are constantly attempting to prove their manhood.
What self respecting male would ever want to put a sweater on a commode/toilet?
yor bro ken
Question: What is the one thing a man has that a woman does not want? (
Well maybe except for Rosie O’donnell)
Answer: His beard?
yor bro ken
I certainly can say for myself that there is something about men that can inspire women to great devotion, great lengths, great sacrifices — something whose power can be a force of destruction or of great beauty, depending on your actions.
Alexandra, thank you for this. It is good to be reminded that this is also true. Perhaps one of the problems in our contemporary culture is that men are less aware of this positive potential of masculinity, and so do not take care to make use of it in a good and healthy way. (similar to how femininity is misunderstood and misused)
Interesting discussion.
In response to Kristen, yep, I am a feminist and will cheerfully own up to feeling threatened! Not by “feminine” qualities per se, whatever those may be, but rather by the notion that women should be content with some sort of ill-defined, quasi-mystical, indirect “power” that comes with “femininity” — which is often defined as a sort of exaggerated helplessness or exlusion from actual power. Those notions creep me out because it just seems so insulting to women’s intelligence, and damaging to women’s ability to have any kind of autonomy or control oover their own lives.
Scott, hmmm, I think male beauty is pretty amazing and powerful. Yum! But then I am a straight woman so it stands to reason that I would be more susceptible to the attractions of a man with a beautiful male physical appearance and/or a male beautiful character than you would. A lot of this “ooh women’s beauty is so powerful” comes from a male perspective. Of course, we can’t imagine women launching a thousand ships for Steve of Troy because women have never had the power to do so — though delinquent girls have at times gotten into knife fights over an attractive male.
But to go back to my main point, these discussions over how feminists are such suckers to have sacrificed women’s “real” power always strike me as inane and insulting. What is this “real” power and what does it accomplish for the condition of women exactly? Just look at the total subjugation of women in places like Saudi Arabia; those women’s feminine power hasn’t done much for them.
Even Abigail Adams (who was named upthread as a woman with old-fashioned feminine power and whom I also admire) got a patronizing chuckle from hubby when she told him that the founders should enact provisions to ensure that women weren’t subjected to the naturally tyrannical male sex (her words, not mine). Her “power” got her exactly nothin’, not even an attempt by hubby, in this regard.
Interesting discussion.
In response to Kristen, yep, I am a feminist and will cheerfully own up to feeling threatened! Not by “feminine” qualities per se, whatever those may be, but rather by the notion that women should be content with some sort of ill-defined, quasi-mystical, indirect “power” that comes with “femininity” — which is often defined as a sort of exaggerated helplessness or exlusion from actual power. Those notions creep me out because it just seems so insulting to women’s intelligence, and damaging to women’s ability to have any kind of autonomy or control oover their own lives.
Scott, hmmm, I think male beauty is pretty amazing and powerful. Yum! But then I am a straight woman so it stands to reason that I would be more susceptible to the attractions of a man with a beautiful physical appearance and/or a beautiful character than you would. A lot of this “ooh women’s beauty is so powerful” comes from a male perspective. Of course, we can’t imagine women launching a thousand ships for Steve of Troy because women have never had the power to do so — though delinquent girls have at times gotten into knife fights over an attractive male.
But to go back to my main point, these discussions over how feminists are such suckers to have sacrificed women’s “real” power always strike me as inane and insulting. What is this “real” power and what does it accomplish for the condition of women exactly? Just look at the total subjugation of women in places like Saudi Arabia; those women’s feminine power hasn’t done much for them.
Even Abigail Adams (who was named upthread as a woman with old-fashioned feminine power and whom I also admire) got a patronizing chuckle from hubby when she told him that the founders should enact provisions to ensure that women weren’t subjected to the naturally tyrannical male sex (her words, not mine). Her “power” got her exactly nothin’, not even an attempt by hubby, in this regard.
Scott and Alexandra,
How true. I have encountered men that just seem to have an animal magnetism, they almost knock you off your feet.
What it is I don’t know. “Just something about them”!
A good friend of mine has had women flash him, chase him, slip him their hotel room numbers, etc. Women have been insanely jealous of my friendship with him. Thankfully his wife isn’t!
He’s an attractive man, a devoted father and husband, who seems perplexed by this female admiration. But there is something about him and I defnitely see why women are attracted.
Guess it goes both ways.
PC 1:10PM
What I mean by real power is the woman’s femininity. If women use their real weapon, which is feminine power, what’s wrong with that?
Men use their masculinity, why shouldn’t we use our femininity.
I’m not talking about enticing men to bed, I’m talking about being persausive, in control,etc. This doesn’t mean women will get everything at the snap of a finger.
I’ve seen men who are subjugated to women.
Masculine or feminine power do not have to be about subjugating anyone.