Timothy Redwine
2 min readOct 18, 2023

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Predictable.

Someone presents his/her personal triumph over the rules of gender in his/her society, asserts that this anecdotal evidence is proof that everybody should be on board with feminist ideology, and then with the floodgates now open is met with a tsunami of high-fives and fist bumps for "getting it", adding fuel to the liberation machine, setting an example for other men and/or women to find their way to the triumphalist high-five party, etc.

I hope I am never invited to the party.

I can't help but wonder if this is what Plato, Aristotle and other early architects of the Western political tradition had in mind. Finding an ideology that suits you; successfully negotiating your way through the opposition's ideas, values, behaviors, etc.; then after practicing the script of your chosen ideology announcing that you have triumphed and that others who don't yet "get it" should join you; and then having a high-five party with the rest of the cast. Is THAT the good life and the good society that we in the West have been working towards for several millennia?

What about, oh, thinking for yourself? What about visualizing for your own self what kind of relationships you want? What about writing your own script? What about being self-reliant?

Now imagine two people who have separately decided for their own respective selves what kind of relationships they want and how to realize them. Imagine both of them being self-reliant. Now imagine them mutually deciding to form an exclusive relationship and share their lives together. That must sound horrible to feminists, conservatives, and the adherents of any other ideology. But, honestly, objectively, what is wrong with it?

What we have is the millennia-old question of how to balance the interests of the individual with the interests of society, people acting like because they have found a way that works for them they should high-five each other and ridicule others who have yet to discover their way, and those people then saying that they have answered the question for everybody once and for all.

With all due respect, I don't think that you have found the right balance. I think that you have completely traded your individuality for the conformity of following an ideological script. Those high-fives and fist bumps must feel really good, because from my vantage point they look like they come at a significant loss to personal moral character and collective flourishing as a society.

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