Bankrupting the "Patriarchy"

Contrary to feminist rhetoric , the "master's tools" seem to be doing a pretty good job of dismantling the "masters house".

In 2016, one day after Trump was elected US president,  Jonathan (Elijah) Aladin, a student at Oberlin college was apprehended in a local family-owned store for attempting to buy one bottle of wine with a fake ID whilst concealing two more bottles of wine on his person. Aladin (battling the urge to make a “diamond in the rough” gag here) then assaulted the son and owner of the store, David Gibson, in an attempt to escape. Because Aladin was black,  two young women, also students at Oberlin who were well versed in social justice, got involved and made reactionary accusations of racial profiling. 

Gibson’s food mart was established in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1886 and has thrived for five generations of the Gibson family. By 2016, half of Oberlin’s population was made up of students from the college. Oberlin college was founded in 1833 and was one of the first to admit African-American students. The college’s liberal ethics were clearly well established before the first Gibson began selling wares on a handcart down main street. 

Local court records show that many Oberlin businesses were reporting that they were losing tens of thousands of dollars due to shoplifting by the students. In response to the complaints, a college publication defended the practice, saying shoplifting was a “rite of passage”.  Regardless of such sentiments, the store successfully prosecuted the three students; Aladin pleaded guilty to theft and all three retracted their accusations.  Storm in a teacup, you might think, except the Oberlin administration helped escalate it to a category five political shitstorm which this week, ended with Oberlin College being ordered to pay £36 million in libel damages. 

It’s been a tough time for the Gibson family who, for six years have fought against the social justice leviathan, in which the college enabled - some might say encouraged - the infants under its care to weaponize social justice in order to mob, harass and defame the family as racists and attempt to bankrupt the 136-year-old business.

Initially, in 2019 Oberlin was found in contempt of that justice by a jury of their peers and ordered to pay a total of $33 million in punitive and compensatory damages. The college appealed, extending the process another three years, during which time the patriarch, David Gibson, died of pancreatic cancer. That he and his family had to spend his last years battling these idiots is a tragedy for the family, and will no doubt make this week's ruling bittersweet. 

But what about Oberlin?

“Who cares?”, you might say, “They deserve it!” But Oberlin isn’t a person who can feel shame or remorse and learn from their mistakes, it’s a near 200-year-old liberal institution, one of many today being sabotaged by its own administration. What the hell is going on?

Well, what if the progressive administrative bureaucrats of these institutions are doing exactly what they should be doing, according to social justice, intersectional and critical race theory doctrines?  And what if all the other million-dollar counterclaims brought against policies like Title IX sexual harassment cases are actually meant to succeed? What if the wholesale reputational, administrative, structural and fiscal destruction of this institution  - and others - is actually the primary aim and the Gibson family are little more than collateral damage in a far bigger game with far bigger stakes? What if “go woke go broke” is the business plan?

In 1984 (ironically) the Black Lesbian Feminist, Audrey Lorde penned an essay named, “The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House”. This is ironic because right now, the master's tools seem to be doing a pretty good job of doing just that!

I’ve written before about the tentacles of the feminist intersectional matrix including social justice, identity politics and critical race theory. To the Yin of Lorde’s master’s house let's add the Yang of Sovietologist Robert Conquest’s second law: “The behaviour of an organization can best be predicted by assuming it to be controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.”

I don’t suggest that in 1984, Lorde did not believe her own declaration and was anything but proud of its rhetorical flourish. Writers often stumble upon good rhetoric that has little substance and wouldn’t stand up to a moment's logical prodding. I mean, a “master” and a “slave” would both use a hammer for the same thing. And, as we know from another bit of feminist rhetoric, feminists love hammers!

Nor am I suggesting that radical feminists hit upon such a strategy as bankrupting the ‘patriarchy’ consciously. Looking at the current trans debacle, I find it hard to believe that they have much foresight for anything, never mind that they could have imagined way back in the 70s that embracing black, standpoint and intersectional feminism would eventually pave the way for the proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act and men demanding access to women’s sex based rights on the basis of their gender identity. But when you think about it, what better way to dismantle the capitalist-hetero part of patriarchy than dismantling sex, heterosexuality and the family?! Honestly, there are simply too many examples of such myopic feminist fuck ups to mention and keep the word count down.  Intersectional feminism, however, which emerged from Harvard Law School via Derrick Bell, most certainly is conscious of this strategy and they are working it HARD.

Outside of Harvard, the feminist love of empty but pithy rhetoric is exactly what happens when the foundations of your ‘theory’, principles and doctrines are built on reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. You can say what the heck you want!  A new “wave” washes it away, and nobody cares as long as it sounds good. This is especially true in these #hashtag feminist days. None of the ideas have to be tested in the real world. 

There’s never going to be useful or original social or technological innovation originating from feminist theory. There will never be a feminist space race, Tesla, Google or Twitter. If you build it, they will come…but only to dismantle it. 

There are female pioneers in science - women are capable of doing good science.  But feminist science is to actual human progress as the death watch beetle is to the oak beams straddling the roof of Westminster Hall as Queen Elizabeth II lies in state beneath it. (There, I got a bit about the Queen in!)

As I’ve said ad nauseam for over a decade now, the primary goal of feminism - all creeds of feminism - is to dismantle “patriarchy”. It has nothing at all to do with the reasonable-sounding but nebulous (hence easily equivocated) goal of equality. I’ve also written about the insufficiency of the feminist conception of patriarchy in academia and the popular press many times. The term itself - and all the hours, days, and months that add up to female lifetimes utterly wasted writing about it - has no substance. It is a panchreston, something which claims to explain so much while actually explaining nothing. It’s clear to me, that for feminists, “patriarchy” is a synonym for western civilisation, and it’s that which they mean to dismantle. As usual for feminists in love with the sound of their own empty rhetoric, they have little idea of the real-world unintended consequences of such folly.

What is a little scary, however, is that they are closer to actually achieving this dubious goal now than ever before, as our scientific institutions are ravaged by illogic, our educational institutions litigated into extinction and biological sex is “dismantled” by gender. And the “masters” are wilfully doing this to themselves. To paraphrase Orwell, if you want a vision of the near future - perhaps the present - imagine a woke master smashing himself in the face with a hammer, forever - or until he’s back in a mud hut, half dead by carbon monoxide poisoning and eating bugs like delicacies. Liberals, please…stop hitting yourself!!

You may believe something so simple as the adoption of pronouns in our institutions is a benign, reasonable adjustment. I suggest they are the first step on an inexorable, ideological and malign slippery slope to chaos.

As for radical feminists fighting for women’s rights - they are actually taking arms against gender (read, intersectional) feminism in order to protect their identity as lesbians and believe me, that’s where the fight stops for them. The primary goal of radical feminism is the same as all feminisms; to dismantle western civilisation aka ‘patriarchy’, as we know it. Their fight isn’t for women, science, truth or equality.  It’s certainly not about women’s rights either. It’s about feminist power and influence. The tyranny of a feminist minority. It’s less a TERF war than a feminist turf war and were it not for the intersectional attack on lesbian identity, they would be 100% on board with this strategy of bankrupting the patriarchy one institution at a time.

The rest of us can go to hell in a handcart, just like the one David Gibson's great-great-great-great grandfather pushed down old Oberlin’s high street in 1886.

#OberlinCollege #TitleIX #SocialJustice #Feminism #Intersectionality #RadicalFeminism #Tesla #Google #ElonMusk #CriticalRaceTheory #AudreLorde #TERF #Patriarchy #WesternCivilization #QueenElizabeth