America's Assault on the Modern Woman

There are two strands of modern American feminism, all other categories seem to be variations of the following two:

1. Conservative Feminism--in which the national mainstream culture's vision of sex is rejected and made conservative, hence any visual public disclosure of the female body, especially for money, is wrong, and in all cases, an example of male or otherwise, exploitation of women.

2. Liberal Feminism--where the national vision of sex for women is embraced (i.e. free love) and taken in to be a natural function and expression of femininity, even for money, in which the female is viewed as being in control of her life and sexuality, all examples of female public disclosure of her body is viewed as natural and as if she is in control.

Both these visions of the modern female are incorrect and have led to devastating results for American girls and women alike.

Why? Because both are hasty, inaccurate generalizations based on emotional evaluation instead of abstract-rational thought, and both implicitly subordinate the female mind to an outer authority. This 'authority' is viewed to be the granter of power to the female and her psyche alike, and in both cases is an authority over the self rather than from the self.

A hasty generalization is one where special cases and exceptions to the general rule of a concept are overlooked and yet too large to be exceptions, and/or where a set of complex facts within a concept are rounded up or down to the nearest AND lowest common denominator, omitting logically necessary facts to the idea itself.

In other words, its the inability to split hairs where they need to be split, or a failure to successfully categorize special cases and yet, still keep the same idea together without making a new one, or simply pretending that certain things don't exist.

My dad once said, "How many exceptions before the exception becomes a (new) rule?"

That is, an idea is only true when a vast majority of common elements come together with only a slim minority of exceptional cases.

Conservative feminism precludes that publilc bodily exposure is wrong by nature, and implicitly accepts that women are not in control, and hence, all public display of her own body is wrong and against her own inner (metaphysical) will.

Liberal feminism precludes that the female is not taken out of control by means of sex and/or its publicity, but put IN power by it. Hence, sex and all its public forms are taken to be 'natural,' and 'human.'

In order to further show what the two views are based on, and what elements in reality they either over-generalized, confounded or forgot, I have listed the premises of these arguments that ARE true, that is, the extent of their view that I think DOES rest on fact, and my rebuttle to each, which conversely, includes what is missing in their 'analysis' of reality:

For Conservatism: What I think the conservative view is observing and reacting to, is that it is true that most women are not generally in control of themselves, lack self-esteem and are generally in mental and often physical slavery to male sexual and social dominance. It is also true that sex is a dominant and all-pervasive force in our society. As a result of this social observation, it reacts by making public sexual acts themselves the culprit, since without such displays it is true that women tend to be less distracted by sex, and can often lead to building a self-esteem unhampered by the cultural emphasis. In appearance, to a conservative feminist, the cause of the low-esteem is the publicizing of sex itself.

Rebuttle: Though it is true that women generally lack self-esteem, it does not mean the solution is to reject sex and by no means in reality do women have to, by logical necessity feel subordinated by exposing and using their bodies publicly in a sexual way. In other words, there is no reason in concrete reality to feel subordinated merely by the visual exposure of one's body, this feeling of subordination is cultural, not metaphysical.

For Liberalism: It is true that sex and its self-publication in any form can enhance self-empowerment if one has a good self image, and it is true that sex in any form non-violent and rationally and willfully consensual, is a natural phenomena of pleasure that is rationally a right of all human beings to both experience and express.

Rebuttle: Liberal feminism isn't wrong to embrace sex as a form of empowerment, it is wrong to embrace the current American view of sex.This is the hair it forgot to split, and ended up confounding the two by over-generalizing the first. The American vision of sex is far from natural and even farther from being healthy, especially for the female since it is based on a materialistic and humans-as-commodity driven metaphysics, emphasizing the 'importance' of power over people rather than pleasuring the self and bodily sexual display as a natural aesthetic of beauty. (Interestingly enough, it may also be beneficial to note that this is a cultural bias toward power-over, not power-to.)

But even beyond the materialism and power, in its more basic form, in itself, this view precludes that control is granted by means of embracing sex in itself, especially public displays of sex, when power is really granted by rational, thoughtful consideration ruled by the conformity of one's mind to concrete reality rather than made up social edict.

Public display's of sexual freedom do not create self-esteem, in fact, they can often work to do quite the opposite and even more often, bloats and encourages sexual overcompensation to gloss over what will remain insecurity in place of a truly healthy sexual self-esteem. There is no logical necessity to feel empowered by publicized sex alone. There is no metaphysical correlation between sex and empowerment, there IS only a metaphysical correlation of human ability to be successful with something that creates empowerment, it just so happens that sex is also a skill bent on satisfying others and/or self that can be honed to create pleasure.

To review, both forms of feminisim are degrading because both equate empowerment by means of something other than rational thought or skill conforming to concrete reality.

Notice however that both are examples of materialistic philosophy because both views think that (arbitrary) physical phenomena grant power.

For example, it is arbitrary and incidental that sex may make someone FEEL empowered, when in fact, there is no self-power gained. It is conversly incidental to FEEL that control over one's physical exposure (publicity) grants power.

Women and girls the world over, and especially in America must reject the subjective notion that power rests in the body.

It does not, save the sense that it exists to implement what you think.

The only granter of power above that of other animals, is man's mind.

The only granter of self-esteem is mastery of skill through rationally derived concepts.

This still leaves us with the question, what is the solution in having rejected both these views?

In my opinion, sex should be something non-threatening and that goes for its publicity as well. I think that true modern (rational) feminism is a contradiction in terms because women should feel like individuals, not 'women.' In a world where sex was considered a truly natural, and rational part of life, I think that women would be able to walk around in whatever they wanted without having to feel like objects, no matter how revealing the outfit.

Our own freedom to be sexual in society is protected only by people who came before us and had to fight for that freedom, every step of the way: It began by being able to wear makeup and put on earrings, it went on to things like the ability to wear a skirt that doesn't touch the floor when a girl is down on her knees, and its ended up with the fact that we can express our sexuality freely in public society with everything from skimpy outfits and thongs to any manner of sexual beauty no matter how 'liberal' or 'conservative.'

Compare this ability, this freedom, with that of Saudia Arabia and the fact that women there are made to expose nothing, men conversely cannot enjoy sex in any degree publicly, and women also wear bags over their heads.

This is what makes the law of indecent exposure so irrational: the fact that anyone can claim the 'right' not to see something they don't want to see, in any degree, which is subjective to begin with. By what standard can someone claim personal preference as a 'right?'

"Emotional distress," "trauma," "eminent danger," are all words that have been given to back up the 'right' not to see sexuality displayed in public. How is this different, save a matter of degree, from the 'rights' of the people of Saudia Arabia not to see a woman's face or shoulders?

In reality, the worst that's going to happen if you see someone naked in the street, is really nothing more than a brief lesson in human anatomy. The only line that a rational society could draw on this issue and still remain intact as such, is the case where relative harm can come to the mental or physical state of an individual, and the only example of this is with children.

Sexuality is the core of the dynamic behind the confusion over feminist 'ideals,' and its resolution to a rational ideology is necessary if the debasement of women is ever to end.