The Question of Women in the Public Square

I think that the question of women in the public square is the big question of our time. I was alerted to this a while back when I wrote about German sociologist Georg Simmel.

Simmel recognized that 19th century technologies "made for less labor in the household." This caused unease among middle-class women, who now sought activity outside the home.

Obviously, Simmel wrote, the public sphere, the world outside the home, in the short term would still be defined by men for men, but in the long term women would transform the public square to suit "a more feminine sensibility." 

So ever since, I have wondered about what that means.

See, I believe that the point of the male-created public square is to create a public space where the old male culture of revenge justice (an eye for an eye, a life for a life) is replaced by the culture of law and politics. In this culture revenge is reduced to the "wait until next time" of failure in politics and sports. Men still fight, but not in blood sports. Today, men have a Culture of Insult where men exchange insults in a playful way, rather than in a lethal way.

Now, the previous culture of women was different. They got on in the old village culture with gossip, which is two women talking together about a third woman. And they penalized defaulters -- the woman that all the women agreed was a problem -- by naming and shaming, and in extreme cases, by ostracism.

In today's culture we see this woman's culture at work in notions like microaggressions and safe spaces. These are all about women disliking direct confrontation and calling it a microaggression and wanting to control people indirectly. A safe space is the complete negation of the public square, where you have to stand up and "act like a man." What happens to the public square if you are not allowed to confront other ideas with your ideas and if you run for a safe space if you hear something that makes you feel bad? I don't know.

But I have an example of how it might work, from Spirit and Flesh, a book about a fundamentalist church by liberal sociologist James M. Ault, Jr. In the fundamentalist church the men held all the formal offices, but the women ran the church through their husbands. Notice that this means the women never get into conflict or suffer a microaggression or leave their safe spaces, or venture into the public square. But they still run the place.

An example of women in the public square is the reported problem that educated women have with President Trump. They don't like his insults. Well, I can understand that, because the outer-borough New Yawker Trump lives and acts as a man of his culture, and guys like him interact in a Culture of Insult. Girls don't like direct insults; they understand and practice the insult indirect, as in "I can't believe she said that."

But there is this. I haven't heard a word out of these suburban snowflakes about the insults-direct that Democrats hand out with every new day. I don't hear them complain about the racist Al Sharpton's rhetoric. I don't recall them being outraged when the Democratic line was that Mitt Romney was a cruel capitalist or a cruel teenager or a monster that put the dog on the roof of his car.

No, I don't recall any of my nice liberal neighbors saying of the Dems of the time: "I can't believe they said that about Mitt Romney."

So, I suspect, when a woman complains about the insults delivered by President Trump, they are really signalling to their friends that they are good loyal Democrats. I'll believe their complaints when they start calling out Democrats for their race-card outrages.

And really, what is the Big Problem of the age? It is not President Trump insulting the Four Squaddies. It is the Democrats preventing a frank and honest discussion of The Issues by calling their opponents racist sexist homophobes on every issue under the sun.

Now here is an interesting question, on the day after the latest Democratic debate: Marianne Williamson, the new-age guru and author of books like A Return to Love. Lefty journalist Matt Taibbi is wondering if Williamson is going to be the Trump of the 2020 Democratic race, by completely changing the subject on the usual suspects.

But I wonder. The point about Trump is that he energized a whole sector of Americans, the white working class demographic that had been neglected by both parties for years. Marianne Williamson appeals to educated women suburbanites, who are not a helpless neglected political demographic. I'd say that the chances are good that any Marianne Williamson reader is already a Dem voter and would never vote for a Republican. Because Republicans believe in "hate" rather than love.

Irregardless, the whole question of women in the public square is only going to become more and more important. Unless women decide that they don't really want to live in the bracing air of the public square and would rather rule the world through their husbands, as of old.