The Radical Left Is Creating the Patriarchy It Seeks to Destroy
Patriarchy – noun: Social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line.
Broadly: Control by men of a disproportionately large share of power.
Misogyny – noun: Hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against women.
I have never bought into the idea that Canada (and the United States) are patriarchies. First, it always seemed quite silly to me to suggest that women couldn’t get ahead economically, even if we worked hard, because men are somehow, unknowingly and unwittingly (or knowingly and wittingly), keeping us down. Women can be found working in all commercial and industrial sectors, earning pay checks, getting promoted, starting their own companies, getting married, having babies, you name it. We’re even allowed to buy property and drive cars!
(That last line was meant to be funny, which I have to point out, since humour seems to be lost in the discourse these days.)
Secondly, if it could be argued that we used to lived in a patriarchy (a claim that itself requires further scrutiny), then, I thought, this certainly hasn’t been the case in North America since at least the 1970’s. After all, my generation (I was born in 1988) was raised with the all-encompassing messaging that girls could be anything they wanted to be! Girls could do whatever boys could do! Women can have it all! (We can’t, but that’s a post for another day.)
Finally, I always objected to referring to any western nation as a patriarchy because there are actually countries in the world that are patriarchies, such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran, to name just a few. Calling Canada or the US a patriarchy is simply diluting the meaning of the term.
Well, it turns out that I was wrong. Unfortunately, we do live in a patriarchy.
It’s just not the kind of patriarchy that those on the far left of the political spectrum think it is.
To illustrate my point, we need only look at one example, that of Nicholas Cepeda, a 50-year-old man who is a member of the Orangeville Otters Swim Club in Ontario. According to the Toronto Sun, last December Cepeda competed against 13- and 14-year-old girls in a swimming tournament in Barrie. Not only that, but he was changing in the girl’s locker room where girls as young as eight years old were also changing. Apparently, Cepeda has been attending such tournaments since at least 2019, and recently attended another swimming tournament in Toronto.
According to the Sun:
Parents confirmed that the person in question changed in and out of a swimsuit in the women’s locker room at the East Bayfield Community Centre during the Dec. 1 Trojan Cup.
“The girls were terrified,” said one parent of a child involved.
And mortified.
From the changing area, where parents put up makeshift towel-tenting apparatus so no one could see their daughters and they could not see the person with male anatomy changing with them, they got into the pool to race against this 50-year-old who was competing in several categories.
There’s so much wrong here I don’t even know where to begin.
It’s worth it to ask ourselves, what exactly are we looking at here? What is going on when a 50-year-old man is given permission by regulatory bodies and sports facilities alike to enter a change room where girls as young as eight years old are changing into and out of swimsuits, and where he too will be changing into and out of his swimsuit? What are we looking at in this situation?
The first obvious thing we’re looking at is the cowardice of parents who would rather finangle a tent of towels to shield their daughters than band together to remove this man from the change room, or block him from entering the change room in the first place (!) Both of which can obviously be done non-violently.
But aside from that (since I could easily spend a thousand plus words ranting about that alone), we are looking at a structural system that prioritizes the delusions of a man over the dignity and safety of young girls.
Let me repeat that, because it bears repeating.
It is the height of misogyny to prioritize the delusions of a man over the dignity and safety of young girls.
And if you disagree with me on this point, you are very much part of the problem.
There is no context, no information that I’m potentially missing, no facts that would change the fact that Swimming Canada, Swim Ontario, the Richmond Hill Aquatic Club, the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre, and the Toronto Police are all misogynistic organizations that do not care one whit about female swimmers. There’s no just following orders here, or not caring “because it’s not my problem” as one facility manager told David Menzies of Rebel News.
It’s misogyny, plain and simple. Occam’s razor in full force.
If you truly believe that a 50-year-old man should have the right to swim against teenage girls and change in the same changing room as them, you simply do not care about the privacy, dignity, and safety of girls. The man is more important to you in that situation than the girls.
There’s simply nothing else to call it.
So back to that patriarchy that the Left is all about smashing. Proponents will argue that there need to be more women CEOs and board members. Movies like Barbie will stumble their way through a confused script arguing that men are in charge of everything, despite the fact that of the 11 board members of Mattel, five are women. And women everywhere are encouraged to plop their babies into daycare lest they miss any more time in the glorious workforce than absolutely necessary. (Yet another rant for another day.)
But this patriarchy, like so much else asserted by the radical Left, simply does not exist. Women are CEOs. They are board members. They are #girlbosses. They get promotions. Men today are terrified of holding a door open for a woman or “mansplaining” to her lest she call HR.
What does exist is a newfound patriarchy, created by the same people who purport to smash it, that has used compassion as a Trojan horse to enact policies that, as I said above, prioritize the feelings of men over the rights of women and girls. It’s not a patriarchy that keeps women out of the workplace, or out of positions of power, because that would imply actually caring about what women do or do not do. It’s actually much worse than that.
It’s a patriarchy that doesn’t care about women at all.
Update: Tuesday, October 8, 2024
