A Three-Way War over Women

We are in the middle of a three-way ideological war. It’s worldwide, patterned on the patriarchal myth of the Christian Trinity and it’s about control over women.

The current three-way ideological war can be seen as an acting out and re-creation of the Christian myth. It is a fight between the gods: god the father (patriarchs, right wing, it’s natural that women are dominated – e.g. Putin, the Pope, Matt Walsh, David Starkey), god the son (fratriarchs, left wing, brotherhoods, socialists, e.g. Trudeau, the European Union, the United Nations, the BBC in UK) and god the holy spirit (transiarchs, genderists, boundary breaking men who say they have become women, e.g. Dylan Mulvaney, Eddie Izzard).

The war is over women, as over land or territory, or resources, or people. It’s a war over who will get us, control us – so it’s a fight between men and the victor will get us. But it’s also a war over minds and souls – they are fighting to win women’s hearts and minds as well as win control over us. To win this war, they also need to win women over, to offer us something to win our consent, our reluctant submission or even our eager enrollment. It’s tricky for the men, because they need to tread a fine line. They need to signal that men who follow them will get their loot, their booty – a woman or some women. But also, they need to convince enough women to buy into the deal. You could see it like churches who have been losing churchgoers, advertising their version of Christianity, aiming to get the flock back onto the pews.

The men are not fighting to overthrow patriarchy. They are arguing about how best to run patriarchy. Sometimes, some of their arguments and actions align with some of ours, but none of them want free women, they want bigger flocks. In this three-way struggle it’s crucial for women to remember that our enemy’s enemy is not our friend. The war is over us, women, females, and they are all our enemies.

To illustrate what’s going on, imagine a stadium. In the middle on a stage are three men in a triangle, facing each other for combat, in an arena. They wear mics and body cameras. A massive crowd looks on, waving flags, cheering for their champion. Large screens show close ups of their faces and speakers amplify their words so everyone can hear. In the centre, there between the three men is a beautiful young woman, looking unsure. She will have to chose one of the men and go to him. He will then be the winner. The crowd will also vote. The first man is oldish, sixtyish, bearded, strong, authoritative, conservative. He is god the father – the patriarch, wearing blue. The second man is younger, in his thirties, wearing a red Che Guevara T shirt. He has a socialist red star tattoo on his muscled bicep. He is god the son. The third man is younger still, a drag queen in his early twenties, long haired, wearing a pink dress, high heels, lipstick and nail varnish. He is god the holy spirit. Each man has earphones and is being fed arguments from teams of supporters. Many of the supporters are women, who give their ideas to the men, glad to have their words spoken, their ideas shared in the arena.

Watch the video here:

The crowd wave their flags to show who they support – blue for the patriarch, red for the fratriarch and pink for the transiarch. But the majority of the crowd is silent, flagless, fence sitting. The scene is set, but wait, between the blue and red crowds, there is a small group with purple, green and white flags, singing, led by a middle-aged woman with short grey hair. You can just make out: “If a person’s got a penis he’s a man.” These are the radical feminists, many in adult human female shirts. But their song is drowned out by the rest of the crowd and our attention is drawn by the official commentator telling us the show is starting. Sometime during the show, one of the pink crowd lunges at a radical feminist and grabs her flag. The stewards notice and kick the women out of the stadium for causing trouble.

The patriarch starts. He offers the young woman in the centre of the arena his hand and says she will have freedom of speech, a secure safe home and dignity. He uses the nature argument. It's natural that women and men are different sexes, and they play different complementary roles. All this new-fangled feminist woke nonsense is awful. He supports women only sports. He blames the transiarchs, for breaking down society and invading women’s spaces. He abhors the support on this gender fluidity that comes from the left, who are totalitarians. He will provide a strong and stable community that offers protection within capitalism. He is a good family man, a churchgoer and distrusts the fratriarch’s motives – why are the promoting drag queen story time to children?

He uses some of the arguments that have been articulated by feminists for years, but does not credit them. In this spirit Matt Walsh’s film “What is a Woman?” did not mention the work done by radical feminist groups WOLF and WDI USA although both groups are significant players in the debate. It seems that the patriarchs have decided the best way to deal with the threat that the young woman might decide they like the radical feminists more than the patriarchs is to never mention that the radical feminists exist. After all, he notices that the women with the Suffragette flags have been ejected from the stadium.

Now it’s the fratriach’s turn. He is a union member and in the leftist party. He works for the government and can get the young woman a job in the capital. She will get good wages and conditions, and this benefit is thanks to the heroic struggle of the brotherhood (and sisters) who fought capitalism to create a caring state. She will have free healthcare, education, the job and equality. There will be free abortion on demand and access to contraception. The real issue, he says, is poverty and that affects women worst – he’s her man to solve the problems.

Anyway, the fratriarch, he explains, has teamed up with the transiarchs who are the championing the most oppressed group of all – the LGBTQ++ - and so joining him will be as good as joining the transiarchs, but there is the glorious history of socialism on his side and all those professions and organisations – all those brotherhoods to be part of. She will be justified and virtuous if she joins his group.

The young transiarch goes next. He throws off his pink coat and reveals a glorious body in a skimpy dress. He doesn’t address the young woman but turns to the crowd, first his pink clad crowd but then the whole crowd. He bursts into song: “Oh come, go on, adore me, you know you want to”. The crowd roar delightedly and showers of rainbow glitter explode from all directions onto the stage. A genderbread man dashes onto the pitch and skips around. He smiles patronizingly at the young woman and says she’s gorgeous and can be part of his gang. He invites her to the opening of his new West End show and gives her a hug. You don’t want to go with those old men, he says to her: “Come with me and let’s make feminism fun again.”

The opening speeches over, now on come the supporting women. The patriarch has a conservative mother up to speak, the fratriarch has a female politician to reiterate the benefits of fraternity and the transiarch is supported by a “transwoman” – a young man with lipstick who sobs when he recounts how he bravely fights bigotry in his university – she should join them. The conservative mother attacks the immoral drag queen story time, the socialist politician attacks the patriarch as anti-abortion and the “transwoman” attacks the patriarchs for banning queers in Hungary. Because this war is over women, our word, our bodies, whether we are a sex-class or sex-caste and because the men want to win us over, they are using women and women’s arguments to help them.

The men take our arguments, twist them and shape them to suit patriarchy and then sell them back to the population as if they were theirs. They shake up the ideas and find how to make money from them, and then peddle this distorted offer of liberation to the desperate population of young women. Because they control the means of communication, they silence us. It’s like big Pharma selling HRT as a cure for menopause, funding websites and articles problematizing menopause, platforming women who had a hard time during the change, and silencing those of us who found that sage tea and a long walk did the trick. Well, worse than that, but similar.

It's essential, if the young woman is to chose one of the men, to never mention the actual radical feminists, which is done by all the men. It’s helpful, if this is to work, to vilify the radical feminists, to warn the young woman that the radical feminists are beyond the pale – devils in relation to this godly Trinity. This work is done very well by the supporting women, who are rewarded with honours and well paid jobs.

But make no mistake, none of these men want women to be free. When this fight is over, they will turn on us with renewed energy. They don’t want free women, they want bigger flocks. The Trinity are the three faces of patriarchal god and that god is one. Men might favour one face, say god the father, but roll out the son or the holy spirit from time to time. Other men might prefer the spirit or the son, but refer to the father when necessary. Behind the conflict is unity – the man-made trio has worked well at controlling women for two millenia and they are using that structure again, in a sublimated form.

This way of looking at the gender wars is sparked by the insight by Mary Daly that man-made myths structure society and shape the future. Our job is to break that pattern and wrench us to a different track.