Identity Crisis

How the deconstruction of femininity has left women and girls unmoored and vulnerable

I have recently noticed, through engagement with women both online and in person, that a climate of wary unease - a sort of social anxiety - has descended upon women, particularly in politically progressive societies such as my West Coast hometown. Several women have confided in me that they are afraid to voice their political opinions which, given their lifestyles, I don’t imagine are very radical. The only women I have met without this anxiety are immigrants from non-Anglo countries.

In attempting to understand this phenomenon, I thought about what else might be affecting women, because apparent comorbidities can turn out to be symptoms of the same underlying condition, and the problems afflicting adolescent girls over the last decade came to mind. I think adolescent girls’ despair and adult women’s social anxiety are symptoms of the same disease.

I follow Jonathan Haidt, checking up from time to time on his efforts to warn us about toxic, harmful trends affecting our children. Haidt has been sounding the alarm about social media and what it is doing to children, and girls in particular. Since about 2010, rates of self-harm and depression have soared among adolescent girls. Because this coincides with the adoption of smartphones, it looks very much as though social media is the culprit.

However, there’s a problem with that conclusion: despite the global adoption of the smartphone and social media, it is only the Anglo countries that show this trend. In other words, in this case the medium may not be the message. So what’s going on?

These devices and platforms are not entirely harmless, but instead of being the root of the problem, they have merely been its vector of transmission; a means of disseminating and dispersing harm rather than its source. What this technology did was take a destructive, harmful ideology that had been germinating - primarily in academia - for over 40 years and distribute it to the masses.

That ideology is called “social constructionism,” and was popularized by none other than the notorious Michel Foucault, the French academic who found his spiritual home in sadomasochistic sex clubs in San Francisco’s bathhouse scene. Foucault’s influence on American academia over the last half century has been immense; he is cited 70% more often across all fields than his closest competitor. If there is a “Godfather” of American higher education, it is he who claims the title.

Although Foucault may not have invented social constructionism, his brilliant arguments and skill with language provided the intellectual force that has sustained its momentum through the decades up to the present day. And, in another cause for “gratitude” to the C.I.A., that intelligence agency supported Foucault’s thought as a counter to the Marxism that had entrenched itself in our institutes of higher learning.

Social constructionism holds that things we take for granted - the female sex, for example - are merely categories we made up for “reasons” — chief among them being the consolidation of power. Early feminists seized upon this idea, seeing the very concept of feminity as nothing more than an invention of “the Patriarchy” designed to subjugate women. Throughout the 80s and 90s this was the dominant feminist narrative, culminating in feminist Judith Butler’s radical constructivist performativity theory, which posits that gender is not only a social, but a material fabrication as well.

Butler’s ideas were subsequently appropriated by people - mostly men - who are under the delusion that they are the opposite sex from that which was “assigned [to them] at birth.” To her intellectual (but not moral) credit, Butler fully embraces this consistent application of her ideology, and thus we see how trans gender ideology is a direct outgrowth of radical feminism, which itself emerged from Foucault’s promotion of social constructionism.

So how does this ideology cause dismay among adolescent girls and fear among adult women? In the former, consider that adolescence is a process of metamorphosis in which the child is in a state of becoming a man or a woman. Traditionally, we tell boys that they will become men, and girls that they will become women. We have rites of passage, we reassure them and we explain what’s going on. It is a time of great emotional upheaval, physical transformation and growth. It is never easy, but a major source of consolation is the inevitability of the process; the idea that it is “natural” and not in one’s hands, and one emerges at the end with a sexual identity determined by nature, or God. This allows the adolescent to maintain some sense of detachment, and helpfully sets boundaries on his or her agency regarding this process.

If, on the other hand, we deprive children of the rites of passage, support and reaassurance, then tell them that this physical process is a choice and in their hands, this introduces enormous psychological burdens just at the time they are least helpful, and impacts girls most because the changes they experience are faster and more drastic, and more likely to leave girls feeling ambivalent about them. Puberty may not be easy for boys, but just about the only physical drawback is body odor; boys generally welcome getting bigger and stronger and growing whiskers. For girls, obviously, it’s a lot more complicated, and without a sense of inevitability the process can induce something akin to panic.

For adult women, the problem is not about their physical, but rather social identity. If gender is merely a social construct, then their status as women is not assured, nor are the social conventions that mediate their interactions with others. An obvious example of this is transsexuals in women’s bathrooms and other sex-exclusive spaces. In a society that accepts social constructionism, a large, intact man can intrude on women’s spaces without worrying about legal or social consequences so long as he claims to be a woman because, after all, gender is merely a “construct,” and therefore a free choice.

For women this introduces uncertainty and fear. While a woman is freshening up in the ladies room, a 6’2”, 240 lb. man in a dress might suddenly enter with unknown intentions, and there’s nothing she can do about it. Furthermore, these men calling themselves women have internalized a sense of victimhood, and feel no need to abide by the sense of decorum and restraint that traditionally regulates men’s behavior around women. On the playing field as well as in the political arena they have shown a willingness to physically confront women in ways that would be considered completely unacceptable in traditional society.

And finally, it is this lack of restraint that enables some women to use them as allies against female rivals — attack dogs if you will. This is where the “mean girls” angle comes in: women in socially elite positions have little need to fear these hulking fake women; they know that they have plenty of personal and institutional protection to insulate themselves from any inconveniences they might cause other women. Hence one finds that the higher a woman’s social status and the less likely she is to have an unpleasant encounter with such men, the more likely she is to support them and declare them her allies. This gives elite women a sort of special forces team at their disposal, willing to aggressively target lower-status women who step out of line.

This adds to the power imbalance among women. Before, although women might have had at it with each other, men would tend to (very gladly) stay out of it. Where a high-status woman comes into conflict with another, less exalted woman, a traditional man’s strong aversion to taking sides might lower the stakes, but now there is a class of entitled, aggressive and aggrieved fake “women” who are more than willing to throw down with women, and have an incentive to align with elites. In progressive societies this has a broadly oppressive effect on ordinary women, raising the costs of engaging in any activity or expressing any opinion that might raise the ire of a powerful rival.

Ultimately, restoring adolescent girls’ peace of mind and grown women’s sense of liberty and security will require the rejection of social constructionism and all that has grown out of that evil seed planted by an evil man. But in order to do that we must first know what it is, and strengthen ourselves with the conviction required to tear it up by its roots.