FIVE years ago today, International Women’s Day, The Conservative Woman was launched. Today we will be inundated by an avalanche of feminist triumphalism and self-pity, about the stellar progress women are making against the evil patriarchy, about the rapidly closing gender pay gap, about progress made on all sorts of other shibboleths which the movement obsess about but which all outside the charmed SW1 circle regard as meaningless and inconsequential to their lives. As always, there will be more, much more, needing to be done. Less, much, much less, will be made of the growing horrors inflicted on less privileged women in society, about FGM, or the tens of thousands of young girls who are victims of the rape jihad. On the international stage, the women-led protests in Iran – a genuinely heroic feminist revolt if ever there was one – will go largely ignored, let alone supported.
Feminism is, of course, only one wave in the seemingly unstoppable tide of liberalism that has not so much flowed but engulfed society like a pink tsunami ever since the 1960s, and that TCW was set up to oppose. In its wake has been not just the victory of feminism but a much larger transformation: the wholesale feminisation of society and culture, the rejection of masculine values by a narcissistic, effete elite.
Five years ago, to both friend and foe alike such cultural trends seemed invincible, and to an extent so it proved: macho was out, metrosexuality was in; emotion remorselessly displaced reason; politically correct nannying ‘progressively’ strangled freedom, including freedom of thought; regulation stifled competition, and safety trumped risk. A hyper-neuroticism led to harsh words being treated as seriously as bad actions. Men, especially straight white Christian men, were unceasingly demonised. Meanwhile, inclusivity has become so sacrosanct that it sanctions the unbelievable madness of men being able to compete in women’s sport and serious consideration given to the ‘rights’ of returning ISIL fighters and brides.
And then along came Brexit. Not even a word those five long years ago, it dominates every facet of our politics, and one greatly unappreciated aspect is that it constitutes a masculine revolt against the femininised status quo: it favours confrontation over the consensus, competition over regulation, risk over safety and the masculine virtues of courage, problem-solving and visionary thinking.
Whether or not we achieve our freedom in a few days’ time, the Brexit farrago has had two undeniable and irreversible successes. Firstly, it has been a time of great epiphany regarding the nature of the elites who rule over us, and secondly it has shown that the feminised society those elites have moulded has failed.
As I have written before, a central reason for the utter disaster of Theresa May’s leadership and that of her government is the complete lack of masculine characteristics needed for true leadership. That truth can also be extended to Parliaments past and present: once upon a time it was a monstrous regiment of metrosexual men that defended the status quo: Nick Clegg, David Cameron, George Osborne, Peter Mandelson and, of course, Tony Blair. Now just look at most of the leading lights in the fight for Remain today: Theresa May, Amber Rudd, Sarah Wollaston, Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen, Chuka Umunna, Nick Boles, Yvette Cooper. Yes, there are exceptions, but prominent parliamentary Remainers seem to be bland, centrist technocrats, and disproportionately made up of women and metrosexual men.
Now look at the Brexiteers: the men seem in one way or another more masculine: Boris, Rees-Mogg, David Davis, Steve Baker and other various ERG ‘hardliners’ as the BBC is determined to cast them although there is not the remotest aspect of their behaviour or beliefs that is extreme. On the whole, the women also seem spunkier – for example the combative Kate Hoey, Esther McVey and Liz Truss – following in the great traditions of Eurosceptic female politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Labour’s feisty Barbara Castle. Sadly, such true Brexiteers are in a small minority: if as expected Parliament votes to avoid No Deal, it will have shown itself to be a risk-averse, indecisive failure: a feminised institution far more cautious and incapable of leadership than the British people as a whole.
The overturn of effete, decadent elites by the relatively barbarous peasants, the replacement of the culturally feminine by the culturally masculine, has been a repeated pattern throughout history. We are today on the cusp of another such revolution. Whether or not we leave ‘Europe’ on March 29, our elites have been irreversibly discredited in the process. For the feminisation of our politics and all the insane manifestations it has inflicted on our society, it is surely the beginning of the end.
