Eulogy for Femininity

It just dawned on me that I don’t know what true femininity is. I think that I thought I knew what it was at some point in the past. But I either forgot at some point along the way, or else never knew, or else had a mistaken notion.

I believe part of the reason is my own Asperger’s/Austism — I just don’t understand human beings, period. And for most of my life I didn’t understand that I didn’t understand.

But ignorance/confusion/distortion of what true masculinity and femininity are, or should be, is widespread. This mass societal confusion goes back at least to when the mass media signed on to the sexual revolution. Masculinity/femininity is tied into marriage/fatherhood/motherhood.

Marriage, fatherhood, and motherhood have been openly and widely attacked, mocked, and denigrated in the West, going on about 58 years now. And it has only gotten worse.

No wonder so few understand what masculinity is and what femininity is.

It is so bad, Western Civ is fully in the process of losing all meaning of “man” and of “woman”, which meaning undergirds manly/womanly/masculine/feminine/masculinity/femininity.

If man/woman means whatever an individual wants it to mean, if genetics “don’t count”, then masculinity/femininity lose all meaning. It goes beyond mere confusion to denial of reality. We are being led to believe that reality isn’t real.

I’m also trying to define true femininity. My patriarchal blessing has a lot to say about becoming an example of what a woman ought to be. Unfortunately, there is very little in modern culture to help me, so I’m looking further back. The problem there is that women were not much written about by men (or women) of previous centuries, except as objects of desire or, in apostate Christianity, the source of all evil. So now I’m turning to philosophy, as well as the words of prophets ancient and modern. There are hints, but they’re few and far between.

What angers me lately is how femininity has become twisted by our culture. It cannot possibly be all external traits of appearance, as the trans movement would like to suggest. Nor do I think it’s ‘girl power’ or the Victorian model of aristocratic women too weak to challenge life. Surely there is a spectrum of ways femininity manifests, since there are all kinds of women. But just as surely, every one of the traits and virtues that makes a good woman has been twisted by an adversary into its complementary vice, which is then lauded by society at large.

All this being said, trust is surely a good place to start. It takes a brave person to trust. Non-naive trust would perhaps manifest as abiding commitment and patient nurturing, both traits that I see in the best women around me.

This is going to need to be a revelation for each of us. We can’t learn it from the World. Perhaps we can learn much from the Words of the Prophets.