I have been hostile towards the aggressive neo-Marxist movement called feminism for many years. Its multiple “waves” are a source of societal disruption, rhetorical mendacity, and invasion of family courts.
The feminist platform is based on the idea that women have a superior morality to the male sex, which they believe is the oppressor. Women are kinder, more empathetic, and less violent, they’re better leaders and more politically savvy, plus they are more compassionate and tolerant.
Could this be? To conduct empirical research on a specific focus group, I spent a few days studying the pageant of female wrestling, which, along with women’s softball, soccer, and hockey should provide evidence of a willingness to refrain from gratuitous roughhousing.
The evidence was conclusive. The female wrestlers are no different than their male counterparts. Why would they be? Statista Canada has shown, for instance, that the incidence of intimate partner violence is almost equally distributed between men and women. This is not unlike the carnage, no matter how simulated, we see in professional wrestling, whether it’s male or female. In fact, I’ve seen women spilling blood in the ring, whether it was by accident or on purpose, or as a result of bitter rivalries. I’ve seen women throw each other violently to the floor, moonsault one another like pancakes, aim punches at one another, kick one another in their midsections, faceplant, choke, gouge eyes, tear nostrils, and bite fingers.
In a brief survey, I was able to pick out two examples that stood out.
Stephy Slays, a popular young woman, appears to have one main purpose: to be beaten into insensibility. In the wrestling world, she is referred to as a “glorified loser,” a woman who is almost always losing. Slay, who was facing the WOW champion aka The Beast, was repeatedly slammed against the turnbuckle and strangled by the ropes. She was also stomped, thrown around like a ragdoll, rammed onto the mat face down, and finally supplied to apparent or real semiconsciousness before a pinfall.
In one of the most-watched matches around the world, Charlotte Flair destroyed former WWE champion Ronda Rousey, beating her brutally about the head and body with a stick and garroting an immobile Rousey by inserting her head in the gap between the back and seat of a steel chair and stepping on it. Rousey had been thoroughly Pillmanized and needed to be treated by a team of medical people. Flair, who is known in the business as a “heel” (villain), contrasting with a “face” (heroine), is notorious for her signature finishing move, the figure 8 leglock, which forces visibly painful — or, as it may be, theatrical — submission from a writhing opponent.
These events were preceded by and followed by similar demolitions performed in the past and present by women known as Tormenta, Awesome Kong (the Disciplinarian), Wrecking Ball, Taha Valkyrie Deathmatch Mickie, and Masha Slamovich. A large portion of spectators are women. The female gaze equals the male gaze. Even children get involved. In one particularly degrading episode, an audience member coaxed a young girl to give several blows to a wrestler who was thrown from the ring.
It’s all a lie, or what we call kayfabe. This is a web-like illusion that disguises a plot, with actors presenting a plausible storyline, or staging a fake event. Not everything is scripted. Wrestling lore shows that some things happen by accident and others are utterly personal. The entire kayfabe scene is intentionally orgiastic. The blood may, in fact, be ketchup but the intention is to create a sense of carnal pleasure. Even male referees were not spared. Some were thrown from the ring and others were made to fall prostrate in front of a giantess who had bared her teeth and was glaring at them. This scene is almost mythical. It’s possible that the mayhem is not real, but it still involves a lot of violence.
While female wrestlers cater to male audiences, appealing to their supposedly more primitive instincts, they also share the traits that feminists claim to detest. As noted, many women are in the crowd who are enjoying the chaos they are witnessing. As a boy growing up in small-town Quebec, I remember a typical wrestling match I attended. In a match between two burly, macho men, the victor lifted the hems of the trunks of his opponent to reveal the contents beneath. Women seated in the ring were ecstatic. I cannot repeat their words in good conscience. Johnny Rougeau, the Quebec champion and golden boy, was carried to the ground on a piece of wood bleeding profusely. There’s no kayfabe in this case. A group of women gathered in awe around him. These are moments I will never forget.
It is no secret that women are drawn to blood and voyeurism. Why else would we stop at road accidents and stare at the gore and wreckage? We can be certain that, despite the chaos they cause, the women who wrestle in WWE and WOW are not ladies. The feminists are no better, either, with their rage and voyeuristic enjoyment of the suffering of men. Propriety, which is a virtue amongst the better types of people, is not something they excel at. I am reminded of Euripides’ The Bacchae, where the maenads tore apart King Pentheus with glee.
I am willing to admit that the feminist dogma is more complex than what I have described, especially as it has evolved from the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, through the modern era of Valerie Solanas and Mary Daly and Mona Eltahawy. (Solanas, who shot Andy Warhol in the head, is idolized by feminists.) A short article does not allow for a thorough review. If you want a richer analysis of feminist pathology I recommend my wife Janice Fiamengo’s video productions. (The Fiamengo File or its 2.0 successor, after the original YouTube version was banned.) Both her book Sons of Feminism and the increasingly popular Substack Newsletter will be of equal value. She will teach a course on feminist thought for Jordan Peterson’s planned university called the Peterson Academy. It is well worth taking a look at.
The essence of this issue is perhaps best summarized by a single image. The feminist movement has argued for years that women are capable of performing in every aspect as well as men or better. Judging by the evidence presented by women’s wrestling associations, it is hard to dispute this claim, at least as far as the sport of wrestling is concerned. This is a small sample. Women’s and men’s jobs are fundamentally different, despite the fact that there is a lot of crossover in professions. Women are not found working in mines, cleaning septic tanks, collecting trash, or fishing for salmon and herring in the North Pacific. (Like Janice’s father). The feminist claim is false. Parity and superiority are not at issue. Reciprocity.
It is clear that the matriarchy doesn’t take a backseat to the patriarchy. This is despite the fact such categories are simply forms of weaponized language and polemical terminology. If we accept the feminist argument as true, then we must conclude that the matriarchy has no less “toxicity” than the patriarchy.
