White feathers

In a Guardian interview with Jessica Stevenson, the woman from Spaced who’s now in Dr Who,, she compared women today to the women of the suffragette era.

I wondered how women – so enthused, so galvanised, so passionate – could have organised one of the most successful political campaigns in British history. Compare that with now when they are obsessed with scented candles. Not to say that all women are like that but it’s still depressing that politicised, sophisticated women are few and far between. It’s a direct result of rabid consumerism.

One of my main rants against the world is how so many women seem bent on becoming mindless Stepford wives so there’s less than no argument from me there.

Except that I have recently come across a good few blogs, produced by or mentioning women who would improve the world immeasurably if they restricted their interest to scented candles.

For instance, number 10 on Technorati’s top blogs list is one michellemalkin.com (refuse to post link) She is the type of woman who would have handed out white feathers to men unwilling to go to the Somme, in the Edwardian era, rather than have been chaining herself to railings.

Her posts present a rabid pro-war stance. She genuinely seems to believe that the war has brought positive results for the Iraqi people. She reprints links to blogs that support this view in some pretty bizarre terms (E.g. “I thought body counts went out with the Vietnam War” Silly me. I didn’t realise that listing dead soldiers was out of fashion now.)

Threre are some disturbing bits in her post criticising some Democrat for making political capital out of one soldier’s death. Most notable is a quote from an interview with the mother of a dead US soldier that I have to reproduce here:

“Aaron died doing something he believed in. He just wanted to go out and kick butt. I love what he was doing out there,” she said. “I appreciate what those soldiers stand for,” she added.

Now, it is pretty churlish to take words spoken by the grief-stricken as representing anything, but I am going to do it anyway. Her son believed in going out and “kicking butt”? She loved the idea of her son going out and attacking people? Hmm. Now that is a belief system and a half. It’s as if she’s boasting about having raised a human being to be a guided missile. This recalls to me the Devon women who goaded their kids to fight because it would toughen them up. These women barely escaped jail, causing an uproar.

Here’s another one, from the BBC. An English woman who was accused by Italian police of involvement in her husband’s Mafia gang activities has retreated into the “Don’t ask me, I’m just a girl” strategy. She told Panorama that

she was too busy doing housework to fully know what Sicilian Antonio Rinzivillo was involved in.

In my mind, women who spur men on to violence are trying to get all the advantages. In animal terms, they are trying to become top wolf bitch by attaching themselves to, or by raising, alpha dogs. At the same time, they can abstract themselves from having to face any ugly consequences by retreating into female stereotypes.

They want to get all the social rewards but not take any of the responsibilities. This applies as much to the women whose main ambition is to be footballer’s wives but who haven’t even heard of, let alone, understood the offside rule.

1 thought on “White feathers

  1. Is it not wrong to chastise “active” women on the grounds they do not agree with you? 🙂

    Would you rather they meekly submitted to your will 🙂 ?

Comments are closed.