Feminism is the One Ring?

[Burris]

The analogy is so obvious, yet it just occurred to me now. Feminism is the Ring from “The Lord of the Ringsâ€. Think about it– the legend for the Ring goes…

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

First of all, the One Ring granted unique powers to the individual - that is, it could only be worn by one person at a time - who possessed and used it. Concentrating that level of power in one individual is pretty much the antithesis of working for the recognition of equality - and not merely among men and women.

The author's failure in this unique, creative, but ultimately fallacious argument owes, I think, to her fundamental misunderstanding of mainstream feminism – a misunderstanding that comes, by degree, from a well-organized and self-consciously dishonest campaign. Reconstructionists aim to convince women they’re naturally servants of men to such an extent that women’s rights are merely an obstacle to social stability and family unity. (The ultimate agenda, I think, is that most ‘beta’ men would suffer the same fate as women, except the palliative and compensation for giving everything else up is more attractive than it is for women – i.e., the token recognition of low-status men as kings when in their own castles.)

For many people who follow the Reconstructionist ideology, everything is about power, control, authority, and obedience – the very same issues as those who encountered the cursed One Ring inevitably faced when they found themselves using it – except among the fundies we discuss, the enslavement of lower status people by higher-status people is accomplished by using such tools as enforced ignorance and the option-limiting deprivation of basic social services to those who refuse to toe the party line.

It’s no accident, and no mere disagreement with the public school curriculum, that drives the fundamentalist leaders’ agenda to have their adherents homeschool children too numerous to feed properly. It opens vast opportunities for leaders to use followers for personal gain and oppress the incompatible.

Moreover, even the most rational, eloquent, and well-backed argument on the merits of feminism would not change the author’s mind: She subscribes to what she finds within the narrow sliver of ideas she is allowed to sample – just enough for her to articulate the weakest possible rebuttal against feminism and not nearly enough for her to formulate a powerful argument of her own either for or against any topic whatsoever.

A lot of people who attack feminism with arguments like these are merely regurgitating, however more imaginatively, the commentary of some other person - usually a religious authority - whom they admire. By their leaders’ design, they lack...

...exposure to opposing media

...the vocabulary to form their own argument based on personal experience.

...anything beyond a rudimentary ability to parrot back talking points – occasionally in a more imaginative package - with the gist being that feminism isn’t merely plainly (and boringly) bad, but rather that it’s evil and treacherous even as those corrupted by the ring became thus.

Observe:

The Ring of feminism corrupts any woman who wears it.

I doubt, first of all, that the original author could even identify feminism without relying on the only language she has been allowed to learn about the subject. She’d likely rely on common memes such as that feminism corrupts women – as if feminism were a separate, living force that corrupts rather than an ideal for people to explore, hold, and mould for themselves.

She might trot out the same old nonsense about how women are fighting to be ‘the same as’ men and to ‘deny any biological difference’ between the sexes. If indoctrinated well enough, a religios anti-feminist would then go on to claim that women inured of feminism will be more likely to abandon their God-given roles, thus stepping onto a wide path that leads to unhappiness and eventually to the destruction of not just one family but every family exposed to the dangerous idea – thereby leading to the concept that feminism is also a selfish ideology.

Again, this is the nature of feminism. It presents itself by offering hope to women, hope in that they will obtain the power to fight the evil patriarchy and can be free to bestow upon the world their peaceful feminine charms.

You’ll note the author hasn’t the slightest clue what mainstream strains of feminism are, or what they hope to accomplish. Instead she has this nonsensical caricature of feminism - that is exists as an antidote not to inequality but rather to the patriarchy’s lack of ‘charm’ and softness.

Feminism can actually be summed up really well in a simple phrase: It is the recognition that women are human beings and are, in that sense, the same as men (who are also human beings).

This then leads to the idea that women deserve to be treated as the legal equals of men, especially given that women are subject to the same laws and (ideally) the same penlties as men for breaking those laws. Feminism says adult women are autonomous moral agents, responsible for themselves – for their own successes and failures. From this comes the idea that two people – one a man and the other a woman – who do the same work with the same degree of accuracy should be paid the same wage for their labor.

In short, feminism has exactly nothing to do with replacing patriarchy with “peaceful feminine charms†or anything else so childish.

Yet in the process of doing so, of using the Ring to defeat what they see as one evil, they create another evil–themselves. Their heart becomes hardened, bitter, cruel, hateful, and vindictive.

How so? Because they believe, for example, that female human beings are entitled to the same rights – especially given how often they’re already expected to take on the same adult responsibilities, and pay for crimes in the same way, as males of the same age.

The idea that feminists become bitter, family-hating harridans by virtue of their belief that people of both genders should be treated equally is simply not true. It’s a piece of fiction spun, ironically, by some of the most vindictive, mean-spirited, and hateful women I’ve ever come across as a class – women who crave power just as much as their ambitious masters do, and who will stop at nothing to exercise it, often through abject cruelty, over the only individuals they’re allowed not only to teach but to correct: Other women, and children.

Not all religious fundamentalist women are like this, but so many of them are that it’s easy to argue their bitter acrimony is actually a result of their self-imposed captivity.

And being as they’re so openly and often insulted in their own church communities, publicly, sometimes by their own husbands – both individually and as a class - it’s no wonder these women are so dour.

Their appearance also changes. What was once a beautiful, innocent little girl becomes worn and ragged. They may not think so, but those free of the Ring’s influence can spot its handiwork a mile away. As always, the path is paved with good intentions. Think suffragettes.

Well, first of all, women can’t stay innocent little girls or perky-breasted teenagers forever. The fact girls grow into women and that young women grow into older women and that some women suffer physical scars from life whereas others are careworn and greying for what they’ve done or for what they've been called to sacrifice – that is not in any way a comment on their characters.

Actions are a comment on character. Looks are not.

Frankly, I find the author’s belief that evil can be told from its look both offensive and dangerous – but especially dangerous because the author, in her naïve and insulting belief about others, could easily be lured to her doom.

In the process, women become so dark that men no longer want to marry.

What exactly does this mean?

Women have instead sold their soul for another sort of Ring. Wintery Knight writes:

“Maybe women can get men to be more interested in marriage if they think about why men would want to get married, and then make marriage more like what men want. That might involve rolling back feminism and socialism, and it might involve women changing who they are."

Aw , but rolling back feminism would require relinquishing the Ring and at the end of the day is this a choice women really want to make?

Relinquishing my rights even despite the fact I’m still legally responsible for my own actions and must pay the consequences? Responsibilities without rights; trials without a jury of one’s peers; taxation without representation (a reality that would exist at the expense of women without the existence of universal suffrage) – I’m supposed to embrace life as something less than a person, especially in my most intimate relationship with another human being, just because some misogynist jackass somewhere might not like me if I’m anything other than a perky-titted, giggly idiot? Oddly enough, I don’t care.

I'll keep my rights.

[CynicMom]

I can play this game!

Saruman of Many Colors = Gay Activism!

Eye of Sauron = Third-eye symbolic of pagan spiritualism! (Trying to gain knowledge to be like God)

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins = Uber Feminist! (She has a career of trying to take Bilbo's property rights through legal means)

Shelob = powerful women get filled with poison

Eowyn = uppity woman who causes her male headship no end of grief with her refusal to submit

Clearly the Lord of the Rings is trying to teach us good morals and there's no other way to see it! :roll:

[Vex]

What the hell? There are hardly any female characters in the series! And to think I rolled my eyes at the theory of LOTR being a commentary about world war or europe.

[Claddagh]

Eowyn = uppity woman who causes her male headship no end of grief with her refusal to submit

Eowyn slaying the Witch King=women slaying the patriarchy.

[Arete]

Eowyn slaying the Witch King=women slaying the patriarchy.

Don't forget that Arwyn disobeyed her father and stayed on Middle Earth for Aragorn. Willful and disobedient, that one was.

Feminism- First women start choosing their own husbands, and after that it is a straight slide to Armagedeon.

[CynicMom]

Feminism- First women start choosing their own husbands, and after that it is a straight slide to Armagedeon.

That movie sucked.

[August]

You think that sucked, try Absolute Zero. (Available on netflix)

[alba]

Eowyn slaying the Witch King=women slaying the patriarchy.

I am no man!

Interesting point of accidental feminism in the whole Éowyn-slaying-Witch-King scene. The Witch King thinks no man can kill him because of a prophecy saying that no man would kill him. Because the Witch King doesn't stop to think about hobbits and women (who are "obviously" weaker than human men), he takes this to mean that he is invincible. It is his arrogance born of male (and human) privilege that is his downfall, because the only potential threat he sees is male humans, and if they can't kill him he thinks no one can.

[jenny_islander]

What the hell? There are hardly any female characters in the series! And to think I rolled my eyes at the theory of LOTR being a commentary about world war or europe.

I have some problems with Peter Jackson's movies, but I do like how Jackson, Walsh, & Boyens worked to make them less of a sausage fest. They didn't even have to make stuff up. Arwen mentally traveling to where Aragorn is to keep an eye on him, Galadriel "talking" long distance with Elrond about the impending war, and (predicting from what I saw in the first Hobbit movie) Galadriel going to war against the Necromancer while Thorin and Company are trying to get into Smaug's lair: Jackson didn't actually write those, Tolkien did. He just didn't put them in the published books.

Now, Gandalf flirting with Galadriel in front of her son-in-law . . . yeah, that's all J, W & B. Gives a new implication for Celeborn's line in LOTR: "Where is Gandalf the Grey? For I much desire to speak with him." :evil-eye: