Monday, July 29, 2013
Femi-absurdism over banknotes and Jane Austen
So Jane Austen on a banknote is some sort of victory?! Come again? Aside from (1) the fact that the Bank of England had long decided this, (2) that there is an image of a female, and in the most prominent position possible, on fully 100% of banknotes, and (3) no confirmed image of Jane Austen survives: if Jane Austen is the biggest female achiever then the whole idea of women achievers is in very serious trouble.
Fay Weldon describes Austen as literary Mills & Boon: female erotica couched in polite upper-middle-class 18th century discourse. Great literature it is not. The total myopia of contemporary feminism is revealed in that anyone could even begin to consider Austen as any sort of proto-feminist, with her stories that are nothing but nubile upper-middle or upper-class beauties and high-status absurdly rich males seeking each other for marriage – this set in moral concrete with the not-quite-absurdly-rich-enough male suitor turning out to be a bounder in comparison to the very richest catch of all (as best exemplified in the Darcy/Wickham story within Pride & Prejudice).
The real issue re illustrating individual great achievers concerns neglected males. In the wake of Charles Darwin's image – removed in favour of Austen's – what we really need is an image of the co-author of the theory of natural selection (the greatest idea in all history): Alfred Russel Wallace. He beats hands-down a pulp-fiction author of the equivalent of lads-mags or pornography.
As for the usual sort of extreme nastiness on Twitter (which feminists themselves are particularly adept at persistently dishing out): why would anyone interested in any remotely erudite conversation have anything to do with a medium that sets such a risibly low character limit that little but the most ignorant, ill-considered trolling ever appears on it? Of course a silly extreme-feminist head-banger gets fool Twitter posts that purport to threaten rape, because that's what everyone knows is the best way possible to seriously wind her up; fitting as it does with feminist totalitarian malicious ideology of 'rape-crisis'. It doesn't signify misogyny [sic] even in those individuals actually making the spurious threats: they were not attacking womanhood; they were attacking femascist craziness. The real problem, perennially, is not 'misogyny' [sic], which is mere feminist invention, but misandry – the systematic, prejudiced contempt and hatred for males, which is deep in our biology and ineradicable from any culture; in contrast to the consideration always afforded to thereby over-privileged females.
So where in the media has there been any balance at all to present an alternative view as here? Not one contra voice anywhere allowed near a microphone. Certainly not on the BBC, when Naga Munchetty, the co-presenter of Breakfast, yesterday ended an interview lacking anyone to provide any balance with the words "I agree". R.I.P. BBC news journalism – if it ever was of any standard.
# posted by Steve Moxon @ 12:39 pm 
