"A big part of the problem is that we don’t recognize envy in women because it seems so normal. If a man had set out to upstage Lindbergh by hiring someone to chauffeur him across the Atlantic (or anything else short of real achievement), he would be a laughingstock. But when we observe this same kind of pettiness from women we reflexively overlook it; pointing out pettiness in women feels petty.Feminism is designed not to elevate women in their levels of accomplishment, but to denigrate the accomplishments of men, to bring them down to the point of equality. Look at any feminist and try to determine what her actual accomplishments are. Invariably she is a career whiner and no more. And there are college degrees in this, which produce "journalists" and other non-achievers who nonetheless get the media and academic credentialing regardless of their existences as functional non-entities.
Again, this was not about women setting out to create their own achievements, it was about extinguishing manly pride. The desire wasn’t to inspire little girls so that one day, if they worked hard enough, they too could have a man fly them in an airplane. This wasn’t about inspiring little girls, it was about not inspiring little boys. Feminists understand this in their guts, which is why feminists today still love Earhart’s absurd book about the time a man flew her across the ocean. Earhart’s ride was triumphant not because she accomplished anything, but because she helped change the subject away from Lindbergh.
This raises the question; what is the cost of extinguishing manly pride? What is the cost of downplaying the importance of manly virtues? At the individual incident level, the costs seem too small to be measurable; manly pride has turned out to be nearly as indefatigable as feminist envy has proven unquenchable. Indeed, our society is ordered on the assumption that men’s graciousness towards women is as inexhaustible as women’s envy of men. So far at least, this has been a winning bet.
But this isn’t just about one incident. Clearly the boys growing up in the 1930s were still inspired to work hard and take incredible risks despite the feminist parasite siphoning off as much recognition as possible; there was no shortage of men who were willing to storm the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima. As successful as feminists were at changing the subject, they weren’t able to stop young boys and men from seeing Lindbergh honored for his achievements. And even if feminists had managed to entirely prevent the recognition of Lindbergh, there were still other role models to inspire young men. This is about a beast that wasn’t satiated with with muting the celebration of Lindbergh’s success, a beast which grew more ravenous with each meal. This is about a relentless and ever more effective movement to stamp out all celebration of manly virtues over the last eight decades. Looking the other way when feminists were petty about Lindbergh’s achievement lead to looking the other way when feminists marked our armed forces as a feminine space and snuffed out or neutered the heroes quest.
We live in a bizarre age. We complain that young men lack manly virtues, while claiming that there is no cost to feminists’ envy driven need to denigrate manhood. If manly virtues are important to our society, then we must once again unashamedly celebrate men who display these virtues. We must call out this pettiness so that we can recognize courage, even though we find it uncomfortable."
[Emphasis added]
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Amelia Earhart: Feminist Stooge
Like Vox Day, where I found this link, I was unaware that Earhart did not fly the plane at all while crossing the Atlantic. She was a rider, a passenger, being chauffeured, like baggage. But it garnered feminist glory parasitically from Lindbergh, which was the point. It didn't matter that she did nothing to warrant it, but ride along.
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9 comments:
Huh? For all they complain about the victim-hood narratives of minorities, anti feminists are quick to adopt similar attitudes.
Stan, are you, Vox and Dalrock claiming that Amelia Earhart NEVER crossed the Atlantic solo, as a pilot or received credit only when she was a passenger in 1928? According to Earhart's entry at wikipedia, her 1928 flight was as a passenger, as Earhart wasn't trained for flight by instrument, but instead maintained flight logs. Earhart didn't pay the two males to chauffeur her, she was invited to replace Amy Phipps Guest, daughter of Henry Phipps, a business partner in Carnegie Steel. Guest wanted to set the record herself, but feared the journey would be too dangerous and so financed the flight instead. In 1932, Earhart did fly across the Atlantic solo, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross from the US Congress, the first awarded to a civilian and first awarded to a woman. Earhart completed 4 more record setting solo flights and set altitude and speed records for women. A quick note of Earhart's support and contribution to the Ninety-nines, an organization for female pilots, and the NAA establishing separate female records should lead one to question Dalrock's claim she was wholly uninterested in helping or inspiring women and did what she did solely to "undermine male achievements".
What evidence does Dalrock have that Earhart (or any female pilot) pursued flight records specifically to "mute Lindbergh's success" rather than say, capitalize on the nation's fascination with flight to make a name for herself and earn some money? Might she have been interested in challenging herself? Seen Lindbergh as a pioneer worth emulating? Earhart had been a pilot since the early 1920s and set her first record in 1922 (altitude), it seems unlikely an act of feminist precognition and conspiracy would set her down that path to try and usurp Lindbergh's success a decade later.
How precisely did Earhart try to prevent Lindbergh from being recognized? Should she have refused the offer to fly in 1928 in order to protect Lindbergh’s "manly pride"? Why? The record (First woman to fly the Atlantic) would have gone to a woman at some point, how long should she have waited to cross so Lindbergh's manhood didn't shrink to microscopic proportions? A decade? Long enough to avoid to the feminist movement?
Dalrock makes a universal claim about the motives of feminists, but doesn't provide evidence for it in the article, only asserts envy must be the major motive in play. Let's say it was, so what? Is there really no room for those who are motivated by envy, but actually accomplish their goals by their own skill and effort when possible? Perhaps setting records is not as exclusive a manner of distinguishing oneself as some men might prefer and they should look elsewhere to find a sense of self-worth?
I think what Dalrock is saying is that riding is not the same as flying. Why should that garner adulation akin to that of Linbergh? Purely a feminist thrust, just as is Hillary's boast as first vagina candidate. It is a form of Affirmative Action, where consequences are based not on accomplishment, but on identity and class. Identity and class are what put Hillary where she is: She has been designated the Victimhood Class member and champion by the party of Class War. Her obvious crimes are cancelled by her class membership and identity.
The "setting of records" as the source of identity has been drawing to a close, as almost all accomplishments of strenuous nature have been done, by both sexes, and most races and other Leftist designated classes. So now the focus is on equal pay for a job description, not for equal work input or equal accomplishments output. Pure class war in action. It's always the same with the Left. Class always conquers personal responsibility and personal accomplishment.
Dalrock suggests Earhart is only famous because she a woman, I call BS on that and I think you should too, Stan. I won't dispute that riding and flying are different and I'm sure the difference was apparent to the public in 1928, but perhaps America didn't care as much as Dalrock does today, they were too caught up with excitement. Lindbergh's flight changed the way the public viewed aviation, and America's rather sudden change in attitude did not go unnoticed by established pilots:
The winner of the 1930 Best Woman Aviator of the Year Award, Elinor Smith Sullivan, said that before Lindbergh's flight, "people seemed to think we [aviators] were from outer space or something. But after Charles Lindbergh's flight, we could do no wrong. It's hard to describe the impact Lindbergh had on people. Even the first walk on the moon doesn't come close. The twenties was such an innocent time, and people were still so religious—I think they felt like this man was sent by God to do this. And it changed aviation forever because all of a sudden the Wall Streeters were banging on doors looking for airplanes to invest in. We'd been standing on our heads trying to get them to notice us but after Lindbergh, suddenly everyone wanted to fly, and there weren't enough planes to carry them." - Wikipedia
After Lindbergh, America had developed a unquenchable enthusiasm for aviation, they gobbled up anything and everything plane and pilot, pilots could do no wrong. Earhart was an established pilot in her own right by 1928, and as far as I know she never hid this fact from the public. So again I ask, why assume Earhart's fame was a product of gender favoritism, rather than the excitement created by a nation's sudden infatuation with flight? In this sort of atmosphere, how much attention is too much attention when a capable female aviator accepts an offer to be the first to fly across the Atlantic?
Dalrock never mentions Earhart's previous experience as a pilot, or her subsequent accomplishments, it's almost as though he wants us to think Earhart is celebrated by feminists today "just" for tagging along as a piece of baggage. I'm not aware of feminist literature presenting such a myopic view of Earhart's 1928 flight, her contribution to aviation or of the culture of the day, but I do know an anti-feminist blogger happy to do just that. Absent evidence more substantial, Dalrock's commentary isn't an honest evaluation of Earhart wrt feminism, but seems more a character assassination by a man frustrated a long dead woman might have gotten the sort of admiration he feels he deserves, not because he's an accomplished pilot unfairly overlooked, but because he shares his biological sex with Lindbergh. Dalrock attributes envy to feminists but I think he's very envious that the modern women idolizes women of the past rather than men like himself, and thus are less inclined to offer him sex and attention in tribute.
Is it honest or fair to Earhart to forget everything she accomplished on her own as an aviator in the 20s and 30s, and smear her as a stooge because feminists like the wretched Godz-Hilla play the "identity class victim card" in the here and now? Fuck Hillary (not literally, please!), she's a self-absorbed, power hungry witch who probably won't be satisfied with anything short of "Empress of Earth", but she's not Earhart, so it does you no good to invoke her name when it's Earhart's reputation in dispute. If we're going to target Earhart for criticism, let's limit it to things she actually did or failed to do, rather than blaming her or the 1920s media for the disasters that will befall us should Hil-dabeast get elected.
I hear your complaint, and it has a certain validity. However, I must admit that my entire adult life has been besieged with "first woman to use a jack-hammer" type of faux news. This is much different from "first person to ever..." type news, because the "first woman" news is purely gender-related. The gender issue is what is made to be important, as opposed to the difficulty or originality of the task.
And because of that gender focus, it becomes a feminist issue, whether I like it or not.
I'm sure that Earhart was and will be a continuing source of inspiration. But that first trans-Atlantic flight was a poor example: a woman pilot dependent upon men to fly her to her glory.
Perhaps, given the times, that was necessary, but I doubt it. My grandmother did a LOT on her own, and didn't require male support (and got zero glory). So I'm still skeptical about Earhart's first glorious conquest.
I'll add this: I do think there is a comparison to be made, if only in the sense of this one issue: Earhart and Hillary (however much different in personality, morality and accomplishment) both got their glory via dependency on men.
I won't push the analogy, because I agree that there is no beast like the Hildabeast, and it is nasty to compare her to any actual human. Sorry, I had to do it, and I'll deny that I did it to my grandchildren.
Slightly off-topic. My grandfather sat behind Lindbergh for a semester at university, and, as an aviator himself, used to say Lindbergh beat him across the Atlantic by a month. An exaggeration, certainly, but a reflection of the national obsession of the age. The Orteig Prize was a reflection of that obsession. In the mid-twenties every amateur aviator or wanna-be dreamed of being the first to solo across the Atlantic. Lindbergh's achievement was the moon-landing of his day.
Stan, I'm not sure judging the fanfare about Earhart in the post-Lindbergh era through a jaded, post-feminist lens is objective. As I keep pointing out, and you never address, Earhart's popularity can be explained by things unrelated to favoritism to women. People in America were "plane crazy", pilots might as well walk on water, people were interested in flight, setting flight records, hearing about people setting flight records, making treacherous flights etc.
Neither you nor Dalrock have proven Earhart's enduring fame was due entirely to men, neither in the 20s/30s nor in the eyes of modern feminists. Let's take these claims apart:
1. 1a. Earhart's 1928 flight across the Atlantic was as a passenger. 1b. Thus it was trivial in comparison to Lindbergh's solo achievement, maybe unworthy of mention. 1c. Earhart was only popular post-Lindbergh because she was a woman who was flown, nothing more. Her own contributions as an aviator were either unknown to the public, were equally trivial or were forgotten.
2. Earhart is loved by modern feminists only because of the fanfare generated by her 1928 flight as a passenger by men.
Claim 1a. is true, according to the records available and is uncontested.
Claim 1b. is a product of a subjective scale, relative largely to the novelty of flight, clearly people of late 20s believed flying across the Atlantic was noteworthy, even as a passenger. Women of the era were keen to prove they could do the sorts of things men could do and take similar risks, something they were usually encouraged to avoid. Separate records were kept in order to assure the feats of women like Earhart didn't get overlooked. A flight across the Atlantic in 1928 was not as it is today, pilots and passengers did not have use of our advanced navigation systems, weather monitoring services, safety equipment, black-boxes, or auto-pilot, nor did the resources exist to provide comprehensive search/rescue should the plane crash into the ocean or a mountainside. Absent nearly 90 years of safety enhancements and engineering improvements that we enjoy today, flight of any sort was often perilous, flying such a distance across the ocean even more so. Earhart was still taking non-negligible risks with the trip, even as a passenger. Is that worth celebrating? Earhart's bravery isn't something Lindbergh can take credit for.
Claim 1c is debatable. Earhart was a pilot, post-Lindbergh pilots (male and female) were given celebrity status (unearned short of a solo Atlantic flight, apparently) and were marketable. Earhart had attained local celebrity status as pilot in Boston, Mass before the 1928 flight, when offered the chance to cross she took it, probably in part because it was an opportunity to promote herself as a pilot on the national level. If everyone in the US had forgotten the 1928 flight, Earhart would still have a "first person" autogyro record in 1932 and her own Atlantic solo flight, both significant enough to earn her recognition today as a PILOT, not a passenger.
Pilots, male and female, capitalized on the interest generated by Lindbergh's flight and in a sense ALL owe him a debt for popularizing it, but Lindbergh cannot rob them of credit for their solo flights nor shrewd marketing decisions. Sure, you and Dalrock might bitch about it today, but no one said capitalism and self-promotion was only for men.
Claim 2. Dalrock hasn't given us reason to believe any feminist would promote or defend the idea ‘Earhart should be honored by feminists for nothing more than “acting as a piece of baggage” in the 1928 flight’. Dalrock mischaracterizes the nature of the flight, omitting the risks entirely (luggage can’t exhibit bravery!) and speculates about the intentions of feminists. He thinks he’s quite clever by using Earhart’s own words, but they should be read in the context of her experience as a pilot, not as an understanding of how people of the day generally viewed flying.
continued...
Using Earhart as an example of modern feminism is silly, she wasn't a whiny, do-nothing princess who demanded safe spaces with puppies and kittens, or weaseled her way into a pilot's chair exploiting affirmative action, she captured the imagination of the country and earned the respect of fellow aviators because she was a skilled pilot, not because she threatened men or the media with shouts of oppressor! and sexism! Is Amelia Earhart gaining broader popularity by taking a dangerous plane flight more ridiculous than Bear Grylls, the "Man Vs. Wild" TV survivalist becoming a household name for drinking his own piss?
Well, I admit that I am totally unaware of the person called Bear Grylls, so his fame is not universal. And I have always been aware of Earhart, it seems, just like Lindbergh and Wiley Post. The discovery of a piece of Earhart's aircraft made the headlines just a few year's back.
I didn't live in the era which produced Lindbergh, Earhart and Post. I have not done any significant research into their actual accomplishments with regard to the relevance to the times vs the degrees of difficulty vs the propensity of media to create celebrity. So I will defer to your opinion at this point purely due to your insistence and my lack of actual interest beyond what has already been said.
Since you disagree with Dalrock, perhaps you should take this up with him.
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