Although I am by no means a phallocrat, I do wish people would stop pushing for so-called gender equality. I don’t want half of the coins to have female faces on them, nor for 50% of statues and politicians to be women. I don’t want more female soldiers, engineers & race car drivers. And most of all, I would prefer it if “he” could remain the default pronoun.
Why? Because it takes something from people to be in the position which men have held for so long, and I don’t wish that for women. I think it is better for us to have a mixture of sunshine & shade so we can step into the public sphere when desired, but not be pressured to make it our home. Someone needs to retreat from consensus reality in order to stay in touch with broader and deeper truths, and traditionally that has been the role of women. Others need to be committed to staying in touch with consensus reality to work out its kinks and problems, and traditionally that has been the work of men.
I think men are better suited to ruling consensus reality, since they are slightly more mental and less emotional than women, giving them greater protection from the soul crushing ideas consensus reality inevitably contains.
It seems to me that the shared, public world of humans will always be a harsh one, filled with half-truths and warped values. I think this is just the inevitable outcome of a thousand different desires and perspectives coming together and clashing in the middle. For women to have one foot in and one foot out of this zone of harshness is a privilege that enables us to keep our psychic integrity and by extension preserve the sanity of the human race.
I definitely think women should be allowed in the public sphere just as men should be allowed in the private sphere, because you need these two spheres to have a high degree of overlap and communication to keep the public sphere relatively hygienic and the personal sphere sufficiently energized. But what I don’t like is women being forced more and more into the public sphere as though this is some great accomplishment and honor.
I still think the only true bastion of sexism in our culture is Hollywood & its buddy industries of fashion, music, beauty etc. They are sexist because they only cast women as sex objects or male persons living in female bodies. They don’t understand females as seperate beings in their own right. That is probably because these industries (for whatever reason) are so soulless that they no longer remember that an inner world exists and have mistaken shared beliefs and judgments for absolute truths. They are the enemy of the world within and by extension the enemy of women. If women want to fight sexism they should focus on these industries and not on getting more women into the senate. There is nothing in the political world that can give us what we are seeking.