Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette writes in Time magazine.
Alanis!
It’s lovely to hear from you after all this time.
You don’t think about someone for years and then it’s like bumping into someone you knew from high school.
Ah yes, it’s good to reminisce, loved You Oughta Know, the angry girl anthem of what – twenty-one years ago? And I can almost forgive you ruining the English language by mangling the definition of Ironic.
My, time flies.
But that’s in the past. What are you doing now?
We need a revolution to the feminist revolution. And it needs to be brought to the fore of our awareness in order to heal what ails our times on this planet.
Feminism needs a revolution, you say?
Well yes, I can agree with you there. Today’s third wave-intersectional feminists are like Alexander who wept because there were no more worlds left to conquer.
But not content to weep, wail, invent nonsense words and nonsense grievances, they ignore the plight of the sisterhood who aren’t as fortunate to live in prosperous democratic countries.
So tell me, how do you see this revolution taking shape? What are the objectives?
This patriarchal acting-out is ultimately an indication of our collective spiritual and emotional immaturity. And if we are to heal our way out of this disconnected way of living, we would have to heal by growing our undeveloped aspects of ourselves, and take that healing process very seriously.
Ah, you’ve lost me there with that made-up boogie man, ‘patriarchy’.
I’m surprised that a wealthy successful artist such as yourself need the external validation of a daddy figure to forge your own career, you know:
When I was producing on my own, I was doing it in order to – in a very patriarchal entertainment industry, let alone planet – very much hell-bent on trying to prove to myself, if nothing else, that I could do it as a woman.
Oooh, what’s this? ‘Empowered masculine’?
In fact, if I were to add anything to my personal exuberant sense of being a feminist, it would be that feminism is incomplete without its dualistic brother, its complement, and, ideally, its greatest supporter: the empowered masculine.
I like the sound of that.
Sadly, in the attempt to promote equality, the pendulum has swing too far in the other direction with the feminisation of culture. High male joblessness, suicide rates, low rates of academic attainment and men suffer more after after a relationship breakdown, all mean we are letting down a generation of y…
Wait, what?
In areas of the newly empowered masculine, things like competition, and the divisive mindset that competition requires would quell. The sublimation of emotions and the rewarding for that would wane, and men and women alike would be less resistant to the natural flow of emotions that course through their bodies every day, serving as intuitive indications to be investigated, versus sensations to be obliterated through stoicism or medicating. Aggression would be used when appropriate (during a workout, or while climbing a mountain, or while lifting something heavy while serving the whole), and the propensity to serve and protect would be geared toward those who warrant this provision and protection: the feminine within and without, and the more vulnerable…
Oh Alanis, don’t you know? Men thrive on competition, it has what has made our civilisation prosperous. Competition is in the male DNA – it is part of the questing nature that we real ’empowered women’ love.
To quote the great feminist thinker, Camille Paglia:
If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.
As a romance writer I love all those things in men that you claim to be a problem. Men are born to be heroes, women are born to be heroines of their own life’s adventure. And here’s something, they go further in their quest, do better in life and are more satisfied when they do it together.
I love nothing more than bringing two characters together, a man and a woman who despite their differences and their weaknesses, have the bravery to take a risk that a love and a life together will make them happier, stronger, successful and more fulfilled.
It may have escaped your notice, but men and women are fundamentally different. And vive le difference, I say.
Competition? Bring it on. We human beings love to compete – against one another, against the clock – and, even more importantly against ourselves to end each day striving towards our own personal best.
You see this is the difference between high school and the real world Alanis – men and women actually like one another. The best of us aren’t trying to keep the other down. We work together using our innate differences and strengths to build a happier and prosperous future.
You can’t ’empower males’ to make them exactly like women. They wouldn’t be men if you did.
Empowered men aren’t threatened by women, they welcome them working by their side (as long as they pulling their weight and aren’t demanding privilege).
Empowered men are impressed by women who roll up their sleeves and get on with the job and don’t demand a gold star for it.
Empowered women recognise that the differences between the sexes isn’t a threat. They know something of the male psyche and appreciate that there is no more a loyal life’s companion than a man who knows that his wife (yes, I’m old fashioned like that) has his back.
Well, it’s good to see you again and we’ll probably catch up in another 20 years time. The high school bell finished tolling years ago. I hope you discover the real world before you’re too old to enjoy it.
