Post-Mo'Dernity, Mo' Problems: gender roles & tradition, cont'd

Wednesday, cigarette #1

The Reactionary Epicurean tries to break up a blogfight, but if you've never seen a man try to step between a catfight, it's about what you'd expect:

In the red corner, we have Karras, leading with the "tradition hurts women but that's okay because it does lots of other good stuff"-line. I believe back in the old country we called that "being a collaborator", but nevermind that for now.

Meanwhile, in the blue corner, we have Rittelmeyer sallying forth with her old "tradition isn't cool unless it hurts"-standby. Furthermore, both of them make use of the mildly disturbing "women being oppressed is kinda hot, and don't forget we can be real bitches about it"-meme; which manages to be both creepy and unhelpful at the same time.

Sadly, both of them manage to miss the important point that if traditional gender roles are in danger of destroying "women's ambitions, rights, and very souls," this means that tradition has already failed. The entire point of tradition is that it shapes the ambitions and souls of those who partake in it -- the entire premise of traditional gender roles was that motherhood was a good and virtuous thing for women to do (in fact better and more virtuous than any other possibility). Women didn't need to be crushed or oppressed; they believed in this as much as men did...

First off: for the record, I stand by both of the paraphrases attributed to me, and will defend them against all comers.

Nicola hits back by trying to distinguish between gender roles that alter women's inner lives and those that destroy them (which is, unfortunately, not at all an obvious thing to tell), but she fails to address the most glaring problem with RE's post, which is that it comes about fifty years too late. The idea that tradition is "something I don't think to question" applies to very little except the law gravity. The person reading RE over my shoulder asked, "Is he on drugs or MacIntyre?"

Really, tradition-as-innocence would still be false in a world where telecommunications, women's lib and France had never happened. The way that a person "picks out a catalogue of acceptable gender roles" (a phrase RE takes issue with) is by examining the gender roles she's been given, not just what they are but where they're going. On the one hand this means accepting that your tradition in is motion, which is to say it isn't necessarily the gospel truth. On the other hand, this means reforming gender roles in a way that creates continuity between the weird new thing you're doing and the weird old things other people have done, i.e. female politicians looking at the tradition of female preaching in America, etc.