It will come as no
news to FrontPage Mag readers that feminism, like every facet of Progressivism,
has gone completely off the rails since the triggering ascension of Donald
Trump to the White House, but it’s worth an occasional reminder to grasp fully
just how desperate and detached from reality feminism is. The latest case in
point: a self-described lesbian feminist columnist has declared that pop singer
Miley Cyrus, “suicided” sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and the mass shooters in
Dayton and El Paso are examples of how heterosexuality “is just not working.”
In an opinion piece for NBC News,
Marcie Bianco curiously claims that recent trending news stories — Epstein’s downfall;
the “toxic masculinity” of male mass shooters; the bisexual Cyrus’s marital
breakup; and entertainer Julianne Hough’s public announcement that she’s “not
straight” — present “a snapshot of 2019 America” which depicts “an American
patriarchy on the edge of a nervous breakdown.”
Bianco – a columnist
at the Women’s Media Center, a nonprofit created by Jane Fonda,
Gloria
Steinem, and radical activist Robin Morgan to “raise the visibility,
viability and decision-making power of women and girls in media” – observes that Cyrus’
separation from actor Liam Hemsworth and her subsequent dalliance with at least
one other woman is more significant than just another failed celebrity
relationship. It’s “a blow to the patriarchy.” I am skeptical that it was even
a blow to Hemsworth, much less to the entire so-called patriarchy, but the
collapse of any marriage, no matter how “consciously
uncoupled,” is nothing to celebrate.
Bianco approvingly quotes Cyrus’ redefinition
of “what a relationship in this generation looks like. Sexuality and gender
identity are completely separate from partnership.” Considering that Hemsworth’s
and Cyrus’s “partnership” dissolved, perhaps the lesson here is that indulging a trendy
sexuality that is at odds with your partner’s isn’t the best way to redefine a
relationship – and doesn’t bode well for this generation. Bianco also praises
Julianne Hough’s self-empowering revelation to her husband that she’s not straight.
Although Hough’s initially-surprised husband seems supportive of her thus far, anyone
who thinks a marriage can survive in which the sexuality of one partner is
“completely separate” from the other is living in an ideological fantasy
utterly divorced (pun intended) from the reality of human nature – which of
course, feminism is.
As evidence, she points to a recent Gallup poll which shows that “a
record 4.5 percent of American adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or
transgender.” Bianco would have us believe that this figure indicates that
females are fleeing heterosexuality en masse, when in fact it merely demonstrates
the degree to which the cultural Marxists in education, entertainment, and the
news media have intentionally and successfully inculcated an anti-family gender
confusion in many young people.
For those cultural Marxists, everything must
fit the paradigm of oppressor-versus-oppressed. Hence, as Bianco argues, “[m]en
need heterosexuality to maintain their societal dominance over women. Women, on
the other hand, are increasingly realizing not only that they don’t need
heterosexuality, but that it also is often the bedrock of their global
oppression.”
She continues: “Historically, women have been
conditioned to believe that heterosexuality is natural or innate, just as they
have been conditioned to believe that their main purpose is to make babies – and
if they fail to do so, they are condemned as not ‘real,’ or as bad, women.” This
is pure misandrist, feminist poppycock. Bianco is declaring that heterosexuality
is unnatural, and that men everywhere, throughout history, have conspired
somehow to brainwash women into being attracted to the opposite sex in order to
oppress them. This is what poet and lesbian feminist Adrienne Rich – whom
Bianco cites – referred to in her influential 1980 essay as “compulsory heterosexuality.”
Bianco goes on to
state that lesbians or bisexuals like Cyrus and Hough define their freedom
differently from how the word is understood by conservatives, who conflate it “with
domination. In this context, freedom is actually possessed by a select few, as
it is dependent upon the oppression — rather than the liberation — of
disempowered people, particularly women and minorities.” Her sole evidence for
this claim is President Trump’s private boast that women will let you do
anything if you’re famous. From that she extrapolates that conservatives (whom
she equates with white males, of course) believe freedom means their right to
oppress minorities. Conservatives (who come in all colors and both sexes, by
the way) believe no such thing; indeed, in direct contradiction to Bianco, it
is the right that emphasizes the personal responsibilities that come with freedom,
while the left promotes narcissistic behaviors literally designed to deconstruct the
natural order that has prevailed since the beginning of mankind.
Bianco doesn’t elaborate on how Epstein and
mass shooters are emblematic of this failing heterosexuality, except to point
out that “[m]en continue to coerce, harass, rape and kill girls and women — and
go to extreme lengths to avoid responsibility for their actions” – a grotesque
generalization that would draw howls of Progressive outrage if she were
referring to any other demographic except for white males. (Imagine if she had
made such a sweeping denigration of Muslims or blacks or transgenders. Men, on
the other hand, are fair game for the open contempt and bigoted smears of
hateful feminists, and have been for decades.)
Epstein was nothing more nor less than a sick
pimp for the powerful. He no more represents men in general than Cyrus
represents all young American ladies. Neither does he represent
heterosexuality, but a perversion of it. As for the mass shooters, there is no
indication that their motives involved propping up the patriarchy or punishing
lesbianism.
Bianco closes by quoting Adrienne Rich, who
wrote that a “feminist critique of compulsory heterosexual orientation for
women is long overdue.” Bianco triumphantly declares that “It looks like this
critique has finally arrived in the mainstream.”
In fact, her cherry-picked instances of
celebrity deviance are not anywhere near the American mainstream. Despite the
desperate efforts of feminists to eradicate it, heterosexuality is alive and
well, as it has been for all of history. Hollywood is not America. Miley Cyrus
is not representative of any demographic in the United States other than,
perhaps, damaged Disney child stars. If she is an exemplar of anything, it is
the degrading libertinism that the misogynist Left encourages in all young
women in the name of their “liberation” from the “oppression” of husbands and
children. Contrary to Bianco’s claim that the tongue-wagging Cyrus has seized control
of her bodily autonomy and sexuality, the former “Hannah Montana” is not and
never has been in control of her own life. A young victim of the succubus of
fame, Cyrus is simply adrift without a moral center, surrounded by sycophants, a
standard bearer for nothing but her own unbounded appetites, propped up by the destructive
lies of NBC News opinion pieces.
From FrontPage Mag, 9/4/19
