I have heard it said again and again - by women no less - that verbal
and mental violence hurts more than physical abuse. Which says to me
that the current belief systems about the issue are wrong. While
physical violence is illegal, emotional violence is not, which only
empowers those who are skilled in psychological abuse - people like Bob
and David on alt.angst - and gives them green light to destroy the
personalities and spirit of others with no check upon the damage that
they do.

That is not to say that anything someone may say in response to
cruelty or viciousness by another is abuse. People like Layo equate
anything that bothers them as abuse, without recognizing that there is
indeed such a thing as legitimate anger, which someone like her,
through her actions and words, richly merits. When someone acts in a
malicious, destructive, heartless, cruel, dishonest, duplicitous,
back-stabbing manner, they deserve an angry response. That has nothing
to do with abuse and everything to do with justice. And while I in no
way condone (and am very willing to fight) the kind of horrible
brutality that we see in places like India, Afghanistan and North
Carolina or Southeast DC, I would be understanding of low-level
violence against anyone, woman or man, who gratuitously day in and day
out insults another person.

I am a romantic idealist. What this means is that I see beauty, both
external and internal, where it is, and also realize that the same
person who is defensive and negative with one person - with, for
example, a swine who has no appreciation for the beauty in another
person and attacks her personality for being dischordant with cruel
ignorant controlling anal-retentive social mindset that he espouses -
will be magnificent with a person who does give her the validation and
appreciation for her romantic and artistic beauty. I also know from
experience that such a woman will be more than willing to impart the
magnificence she holds inside to someone who will appreciate it without
judgment. To such women I say: Stop casting pearls before swine. Go
with a French man, a Russian man, a Renaissance man, a man who has
appreciation for beauty in all its forms rather than swinishly seeing
it as arrogance or mental illness or anything else such people come up
with to justify their basic meanness and pettiness.

Being a romantic idealist, however, does not prevent me from seeing
hideousness that women are capable of doing. The same gender that
contains a Jennifer or a Julia or a Lisbeth or a Christine also
contains Pisa Cake, Rochelle Moore, Sharon B and Bobbi Sanchez. The
same gender that contains Queen Elizabeth I and Aung San Suu Kyi also
contains the dean of Vassar College and Naomi Wolf. As people with
choice, women are just as responsible for their actions as are men.

Want equality? Fine. Then I'll treat you the way I treat another man
according to your actions. You want to falsely convict a man of rape?
Knowing what such men go through, I'll treat you the way I would treat
a murderer or a brutal rapist. You want to nag and be verbally abusive
to your man day in and day out? Knowing what many women have said about
the perniciousness of mental abuse, I'll treat you the way I would
treat a man who beats his wife every day. You want to write misandrist
garbage and spread hatred? I'll treat you the way I would treat a
neo-Nazi. You want to poison the social climate and spread paranoia
that leads people to cruelty, viciousness and hysteria and
demonization? I'll treat you the way I would treat a Joseph McCarthy or
a Trent Lott or KKK or an Osama bin Laden.

Want equality with men? Know what that requires of you. And know that
the many, many women who by choice prefer the traditional roles - women
who find it more close to their hearts to take care of their man than
compete with him - whatever the party line of women's self-appointed
spokespeople, have absolute right to their choices (if, that is, the
women's self-appointed spokespeople believe what they claim to espose -
women's right of choice). Thus, those who willingly seek traditional
roles - and I've seen this in India, Russia and America, among some of
the most impressive women I've met, first to my shock but then to my
understanding - deserve as much if not more respect for their choices
than those whose choice to compete with men the women's self-appointed
spokespeople want to shove down the throats of all women, without
regard for their choices, while claiming to fight to give women free
choice.

I have seen another evil under the sun: People claiming that men who
act in socially proscribed manner are evil, while women who act in
socially proscribed manner have mental problems. Now what kind of
patronizing - what kind of utter smarminess and dishonesty - would
ascribe psychological causes to one set of people who do something
other than the party line of America's self-appointed guardians of
public opinion, and moral turpitude to another? If people are capable
of choice, then actions in manner you do not like are their choice; and
if people are not capable of choice, then actions in manner you do not
like is their nature. That is true of both men and women, and to make
this absurd distinction is to deny women the faculty of choice and
ultimately the freedom that having such faculty embodies. And we
haven't yet started with the real question - whether acting in manner
the self-appointed guardians of public opinion do not like, is in fact
a bad way to act.

If women truly want equality with men, then they need to know what that
requires: Namely the same kind of accountability to which men subject
other men, as well as the same kind of nastiness and competitiveness.
And the women who do not seek such a thing have complete right to the
choices they make - choices that, in my opinion, are more natural and
ultimately freeing to many women. A true feminist would recognize the
right of women who want so to have traditional roles as much as she
would recognize the right of women who want so to be independent.

The worst problem with feminism as it has been practiced in America in
this generation is that it was completely lacking in heart or wisdom or
compassion or understanding. And an agenda that is designed for helping
the underdog - an agenda that calls on people's compassion and caring
and interest in making the world a better place for the downtrodden -
simply cannot afford to be practiced in a cruel, hideous, dishonorable,
heartless manner. Like Communists who appealed to the noble in the
human being to create a hideous, murderous, vicious regime, the
feminists of the last decade preyed on the best in people and turned it
into a tool of wrong - monstrous wrong. And good does not belong in
service of evil. Good belongs standing on the top and directing the
works.

I repeat. It is wrong to use compassion in service of that which has
no compassion. It is wrong to use good in service of that which has no
good. It is wrong to use love in service of that which has no love
whatsoever. And for this, in itself, American feminism is abominable
and morally wrong.

Ilya Shambat



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