What is Femininity

For many years, I've had a particular source of annoyance from every possible variety of person and their different opinions on how women should be. From the radical feminist to the average modern woman, from the typical Christian to the hyper-reactionary right wing, everyone has their own idea on what a woman should look like, physically and existentially.

Close, but no cigar

While I don't believe anyone is barred from being allowed to muse on how they think women should behave, think, act, or actualize themselves, there is a particular revulsion I can't help but feel from particularly "alt-right" opinions, predominately from men, that I've often happened upon due to their close proximity to (but in true function, complete separation from) traditional Christian values on femininity. Unless this is the very first thing from me you've ever read, it would come as no surprise that I personally hold a traditional view on the role of the woman and wife in both family and society as a whole. Why, then, would I find such "close but no cigar" views as more annoying than the modern, individualistic western feminist views purported by mainstream culture? Surely closer is better than missing the mark completely?

Whether it is more correct or more righteous to be "pretty close but still wrong" than to be "so off the mark we're on different planets", it's my personal gut reaction that makes me feel these slightly recognizable but markedly unbiblical outlooks are much more egregious than shaved head feminists demanding publicly funded infanticide. One is unmistakably demonic and wrong, so clearly and unbelievably removed from reality that it needs no justification to explain why it's in no uncertain terms destructive except to mildly gesture at it with a furrowed brow, while the other feels more insidious. It's as if, yes, surely we see what is clearly wrong, but what then is right? We get several different possible right answers, and as wrong as progressive third wave feminism is, yet another wrong answer is still the wrong answer.

While I of course take much issue with modern feminist values on womanhood, it need not be explained. It would be an exercise in little more than a self-indulgent rant to attack such a flimsy and useless position as is held by radical progressive women today. So, what then is the focus, here, in regards to the reactionary alt-right position? A little more explanation may help before we get into the muck and grime of things.

Wrong is still wrong

There are plenty of thinkpieces on the alt-right and what they are and who qualifies as such, but to summarize quickly if you are entirely unfamiliar, the alt-right is more or less what happens when more conservative-than-average people are radicalized in a certain way by identity politics. The innerworkings of the alt-right are not quite so cut and dry, and certainly nowhere near as many personalities fit into it as the left-leaning media attempts to demand. The differences of opinion among the alt-right itself is as vast as any other fringe ideology, but they are recognizable mostly by a focus on identity politics, almost a backward mirror of the left's identity politics.

This is such a central opinion in the alt-right that they will disavow anyone who is not against, for example, race mixing, while those much more engrossed in the ideology support a full ban on even legal immigration. Some have much more "palatable" opinions on their best suggestions for racially homogenized ethnostates, while others openly advocate for forcible deportation of legal citizens of the wrong color. This practical perfect mirror of progressives' opinions on race are copied near exactly for their opinions on women, resulting in a mostly cohesive opinion among them that, for example, women shouldn't work outside the home, and if they "must" they should do everything in their power to change it, for no other reason than that to work outside the home as a woman is heresy. The hot takes go on forever, as I find in many of my regrettable journeys down twitter rabbit holes. From the unironic belief that women should not drive to the desire for, literally, a "stupid girlfriend" (as women should not think too much, you see), the poison in this sphere of influence becomes just as obvious as radical feminism's the deeper you go.

The problem lies in the slightly more palatable opinions of more popular alt-right, or sometimes even "new right", bloggers that wind up being "close enough" to avoid immediate dismissal. The ever more insidious are the ones who claim to be Christians, abusing scripture to fit their opinions in difficult to dissect ways. These are false teachers like any other and while your typical modern feminism-blinded Christian is as in little danger of believing in it as I am in modern feminism, it's people like me who are in danger of being misled by these alt-right false teachers - people seeking a "return to tradition" could easily accidentally land in the sphere of influence of an alt-right false teacher, gaslighting them into thinking that keeping your wife and children more or less locked in your house while you're at work makes sense (it doesn't).

But who does the dishes?

I have luckily never read these warped opinions without recognizing an inherent wrongness about them, but until I read a particular article today, I had trouble putting all my objections together in a coherent way. Today I have read a particularly enlightening article that gave me the missing piece to this ideological puzzle. It's long in itself, but it's vital to understanding the rest of my post. While reading it to completion would be recommended, I will summarize and then reference parts of it as they become relevant. Please note the following summary is highly abridged and reading the post in full cannot be recommended enough.

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The beginning of the post begins by explaining that the question "but who does the dishes?" came up very often in conversations about traditional marriage roles - seemingly strangely, at first. As they (the post has two authors) gained more experience, they came to recognize that there was, in fact, a vital importance to the question. It was not the question or the dishes itself, but what those dishes represented. The post goes on to explain that, to the modern feminist, the dishes represent "trappedness" in the home. Having the husband help with the dishes, in the opinion of some wives, helped alleviate some of this trappedness by having the husband share in the sacrificial burden of housekeeping. But the problem is much deeper than that, and while I typically disapprove of something that appears to be as overly-analyzed as this, I actually think it is quite accurate.

The post goes on to speak about how the dynamics of the traditional household pre-industrial revolution were actually completely different and it is not, believe it or not!, the fault of modern feminism that causes women to believe they would be more fulfilled with a career than in the home, but the industrial revolution itself. How so? The home used to be a creative space where families worked together to build up their home. The women of the household worked, in a real and true sense, by contributing productive creation work - making clothes, preparing and preserving food, repairing household tools, and actively educating their children. The home itself was an industrial space where work and creation took place, where productive activities built the family up together, where children and mothers and fathers contributed to a tangible creation of a home.

Now, that industrial work is done elsewhere; it has been forcibly evicted from the home. No longer cost or time effective, fulfilling these needs is done nearly exclusively through the purchase of goods produced in factories instead of having them produced in the home itself. The home now is exclusively a place for existential, emotional existence, and housework is been left behind as the "mess" leftover from such activities as "spending time together" and "relaxation". There is, then, an innate drudgery in housework that is due to its actual meaninglessness - it is the leftover mess from things that are supposed to be relaxing and enriching, and tend to be - for everyone except the woman, who is left behind after the bonding activities to clean up the mess. When even someone else teaches her children, she is in fact left behind to do naught but clean up the mess of nothing more than day to day life. She is not producing or creating anything with her work, it is exclusively to clean up and return to the starting point of "clean" so that it can be messed up once again, so that the emotional fulfillment of everyone else can continue day to day. It is definitionally nothing but sacrificial work - it is done because it must be and nothing is gained from it, except to not live in filth and continue the day to day rituals.

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Housework is objectively meaningless

No matter the opinion of a traditional wife who accepts the sacrificial work of cleaning the house, this is a truth. It is well and good to see value in such work, as it assuredly is valuable, but as certainly as it is vital and necessary, it is meaningless as well - not meaningless in a tangible sense, but in an existential one. Man and woman both are creative, as we were created in the image of a creative God, but it is a tragic irony that women have been so explicitly left behind in this meaningless work, because creativity is feminine. Women crave to create, we were built to create - we house the very creations of our God in our own bodies, raise and care for and nurture those souls. Our pre-industrial work was creative work. Men come from the earth and so work the earth, but women come from men, and so work for men - but it's not so "sexist" as this. Women come from people to work for people, the process of using resources and materials to create for the benefit of people. When we lack the ability to create, we feel an emptiness, as we were created to create for the benefit of our partners.

The modern woman sees this problem - either subconsciously or not - and concludes that she could gain self-actualization from an industrial, creative action such as having a career. The conclusion is wrong, but the cause of the problem is the same for every woman. It is almost understandable, then, that the modern woman believes she would be fulfilled with a career, as it appears to be the only way to create and build, as productive creation has been evacuated from the home. Why would she work to create in the home when all that creation work is done in factories and farms? Surely it would not be fulfilling to create her own things when those things could so easily be purchased? And thus she comes to the faulty conclusion that the creation work would best be done by seeking a career outside the home.

The posted article and I begin to disagree slightly at the end. I say slightly, because if I were to articulate the following response to the following paragraph, I don't necessarily believe they would fully disagree outright. One of several concluding paragraphs reads:

We are not advocating by any means for a return to preindustrialism. Even in cases where households can become productive through traditional occupations like farming or smithing, technology is here to stay; you cannot compete without it, and neither should any sane person want to. Rather, we are advocating for a return to production in the household rather than mere consumption; a return to self-consciously treating the house as a place of mission rather than a place of recreation; as an organ of dominion rather than an abstract institution of emotionalism. 

Surely, a full "return to preindustrialization" seems like a bit much. However, I actually see many "traditional" people do just that - move to the mountains in some foreign country and start a sheep farm. There is a fulfillment to creation work that is unparalleled, as I can attest with my own experiences. The idea that we should absolutely not try to live simpler lives is to outright discard what is honestly a possibility. Indeed, there are whole countries of people living right now without much of the benefits of industrialization, so it's not impossible. It's surely hard and choosing to do this would require intense consideration, but to discard it as an option entirely is slightly shortsighted. Truly if one is of a biblical worldview, what is really lost by living a more modest, more natural life? There is no loss to the soul or the spiritual life - I would contest it is likely enhanced by such a life. I am not sure I would undertake such a drastic change unprompted, but I cannot say I absolutely would not if such an opportunity presented itself. The drudgery of modern life and its distractions and conveniences often disgusts me, frankly.

But barring a full on move to the mountains to become a sheep farmer, the simple act of creating things that could otherwise be purchased is powerful. Growing your own food in your backyard will likely not feed your family by itself, but putting lettuce and tomatoes you grew yourself onto your frozen fishstick tacos brings an enhancement to them that is quite fulfilling. Making hash browns from potatoes I grew in my backyard is infinitely more satisfying than using ones from the store. These simple acts of creation are powerful and I believe it is silly to dismiss them as "not being enough" to escape the drudgery of endless housework. Building up the home can be as simple as planting fruit trees, adding both an important task (tending the tree) and a productive, valuable asset to your actual, physical "home" - thus, it is an act of building it up. Creating productive spaces in your home is an act of building it up and making it a center of more than existential emotional support. It is the very thing that was taken from the industrial revolution, why wouldn't adding it back help? I personally believe it does, and much moreso than the authors of this article would supposedly purport.

Where the alt-right makes the most mistakes

The extremist opinions of many people who self-identify as alt-right, as well as plenty of other reactionaries, vary wildly, some of them understandable while others seem to come from a desire to be edgy on the internet. When I speak of many of these ideas I have read, they were not always from any particular popular cultural icon of the ideology, but could be from any random person on the internet, so while some claims may seem outlandish, I attest none of the ideas I put forward here are made up, though they may easily be held by a statistically insignificant number of people.

There are innumerable mistakes in the ideology for "proper women" by the alt-right, but the mistake that contributes to the most flawed opinions lies in the belief that women are, unironically, inferior to men. Whether they have consciously voiced this opinion (many have) or not, it is the backdrop to the majority of their ideology. A biblical understanding accurately sees women and men as equally valuable but fulfilling different roles, but the application of alt-right ideology sees a clear and unmistakable devaluation of women as people. This can be done intentionally or accidentally - most alt-right people who claim to be Christian could possibly be argued to be doing it accidentally by an incorrect application of biblical principles, but it is not hard to find an alt-right figurehead in all sincerity express their belief that women simply are not as important or valuable. 

While it is quite often close to impossible to tell the difference between irony poisoning and true sincerity in these spheres of influence, I guarantee that a non-zero number of people have, for any variety of reasons, come to the conclusion that women are objectively of less value than men. The unfortunate reality is that they proceed to convince some women of the same - either through showcasing of the lowest common denominator of women or through strong emotional appeals. Surely no woman would genuinely accept the belief that they are worth less than other humans by mere coincidence of being born a certain way? Unfortunately I have seen women make statements that would insist this to be the case, and it is as cringeworthy as white people kowtowing to progressive racism by "admitting" that they are horrible and deserve eradication for merely existing while white. In many ways the alt-right truly is a mirror-world version of progressive ideology.

This belief in innate female inferiority, being unbiblical, cannot be correct. As I've explained before in previous posts, the biblical worldview is the truth, and thus any ideology that would contradict a biblical lens must be wrong. Unfortunately, taking the bible out of context to try and convince people to believe lies is not unique to any particular group, and so it is done here as well. From citing being created from part of Adam as unarguable proof that women are "incomplete persons", or somehow less "God made", to an inaccurate reading of 1 Timothy 2:11-14 to say women should not be allowed to even make blog posts (such as these) that discuss biblical truths because a man may read it, the bible is rampantly abused to make a similar-enough-sounding case for the inferiority of women as the reason for the commandment "wives, submit to your husbands". Thus, the conclusion here is that women are submitting to their husbands not because it is part of their God-given role to be sanctified by their husbands who would sacrifice their lives for them, but because she is stupid and incapable of doing anything by herself, such as driving a car.

What is women's work

The true biblical understanding of what makes a woman a woman has nothing to do with her being "an incomplete man", but her creation from Adam is what creates the dynamics present in the differences between the roles of men and women. The conclusion that Eve was any less created by God or any less beloved of a creation for being made the way she was is unsupported by the creation story. There are theologians who believe woman is actually God's favored creation, an opinion gleamed from the very same scripture used by others to claim innate inferiority. It seems unlikely, given the rest of the bible, that God favors woman over man (though it does seem likely He favors children over both), but the point here is that the inferiority theory is based on arbitrary interpretation like any other false teaching.

The piece I was missing from this thought process was solved for me by the quoted post above, where it's made clear that "the home" was a vastly different place when the books of the bible were penned. The bible does not show women "trapped in the home", truly even the Proverbs 31 woman is seen traveling and selling goods - things she has created with her hands. Entrepreneurial work appears well within the range of the feminine woman, who was created by God to create. Travel, commerce, and industrial work is cited as an activity for women - there is no biblical basis for assertions that housework and birthing children are the only acceptable activities for wives. These activities build the home through the woman's creative, industrial work, and thus there is nothing biblical about barring a woman from working or driving a car.

The only differences between the type of work women do and the type of work men do has to do with the purpose of the work. If the work builds up the home, it's women's work. If the work works the earth, it's men's work. Men may build cities, but cities are worthless without homes. Surely not every task falls so clearly and neatly into these classifications, but the concept remains stable even with outliers. The dynamic relationship between men and women and their roles are interconnected on the deepest levels and uncompromisingly require one another to succeed. It doesn't matter if it the work makes you sweat or requires strength to perform. The differences in our roles do not lie within whether the work can be performed with fake nails or not, but the purpose and focus of the work.

Other views accidentally get influenced by inferiority theory

There are many traditional women pushing femininity that also make grievous mistakes in their interpretations of how women should be. I have followed some of these accounts for a couple good takes only to be blind-sided by some claims that neatly dress up the inferiority theory behind some incorrect conclusions on feminine energy. These by and large have a superficial view on what "femininity" is. The most striking this ever was for me was when I read an article written by one of these women that started out wise enough sounding, stating that feminine energy was cooperative, that women feel rejuvenated when they behave as God intended, within their femininity, and drained when they tried to behave masculinely, as if they were men.

This was the introduction on "how to channel your feminine energy" - expecting some wise words on mindset and character building, I was nothing short of accosted by nine different ways to either dress up or perform basic hygiene. Channeling my feminine energy is apparently as easy as "taking a shower", or "putting on lipstick". The list, however, was ten items long - and curiously, the very last one was "create something". The truth remains, even as lies and meaningless ritual attempts to obscure it - creation is feminine.

Far too many women have attempted to corner the market on "traditional femininity" appeal with nothing more than makeup tutorials and fashion advice. This sounds very feminine, surely, but I can see little biblical basis for such trivial nonsense. Feminine energy is not channeled by being clean and pretty - it is wisdom, it is building up, and it is creative. Wisdom is explicitly personified as feminine in the bible itself - indeed, the alt-right idea that "women should be kinda dumb" is nothing more than poisoned pagan nonsense. The most feminine women among us are wise, discerning, careful and modest. Feminists would agree, though perhaps not with that last point - though the reason behind this has far too much to do with God to be palatable to them.

Indeed, a worldview of women where "femininity" is nothing more than being pretty is rather inferior. Luckily, this is not the truth, and so there is much more depth to women than simply being hygienic and wearing makeup. There is nothing innately immoral about dressing up to appear pretty, but there are a large number of people arguing that it is actually necessary for a woman to be feminine. I have actually written about this before - and my post back then could be quite easily summarized as such: if it is necessary to be thin and pretty to channel your feminine energy, then fat ugly women are effectively barred from utilization of feminine energy. This cannot possibly be true, and thus the argument falls flat.

Where did these ideas come from?

I cannot answer definitively where this "return to tradition" mindset went from respecting women's roles as defined by God as being equally valuable but markedly different from men's, to sincere devaluation of women as people. I, however, can note a few things that likely contributed to it - most glaringly obvious, of course, is the way the "modern day woman" behaves. Since we see no failure in alt-right ideology to condemn all non-white humans as inferior due to perceived behavior, it should be no surprise that they would similarly condemn women for the same reasons. The same condemnation, of course, skips past their own identity as white males - nothing short of an emotional reaction to the constant bombardment by progressives that white males are irredeemably evil for merely being white males. 

The problem, of course, is that white males do not deserve condemnation for being white and male, but if they were to uphold their own standards they use for condemning outgroups to their own ingroup, they would find no one left worthy of defending. It's very easy to push back against the idea that white men are inherently guilty for the circumstances of their birth and come out on the other side believing that they are actually nothing short of benevolent martyrs for putting up with such nonsense - but that is quite clearly and obviously not the case. All men, all humans, are vile creatures. We are all disgusting, dismal failures, and we can barely hope to hold our own individual selves accountable for our own secrets and obsessions - to hope to hold the entirety of our ingroup accountable for the image we put out is impossible. This lack of ability for self-reflection is visceral and emotional in nature and is nothing less than a symptom of the collective alt-right's outrage against society in general, which I do not blame them for.

The faulty ideas of progressivism and the faulty ideas from backward mirror ideologies stem from the same problem, a theme that seems to hold true for most things. Men and women both of all races are failing to adhere to God's will for us, His creation, and this causes most of the problems we see around us. The attitudes toward women, ironically enough, actually are misinformed - just not in the ways that progressive theory would insist. However, the attitudes toward men are also misinformed. Everyone is being led astray in different ways, men and women suffer from corrupted values in regards to their place in our world in different ways. We were designed to coexist - in a real and true sense of the word, not merely tolerating each other's company but operating in tandem in a real way. The push to ignore the differences between men and women is hurting us both - but I would argue it's actually hurting women a lot more.