It's modern western orthodox thinking that feminism is women's gateway to their freedom - freedom of expression, freedom to pursue any career they like, freedom of choice over what they do with the foetus in their body if they get pregnant. It's assumed that these freedoms cause women to be happier than if they didn't have these freedoms.
OK, but what if you find a culture that is "pre-feminist" - none of the women have undergone the indoctrination of feminism, nor have the men been told if they want some pussy, they had better talk in a neutered style, appeasing feminism and political correctness while toning down their masculinity lest they be seen as threatening.
So you have this "prototype" culture (in terms of modern western orthodox thinking) that is unrefined, unengineered. You would assume that this must be a problem, because obviously without feminsm, the women are prey to oppressive forces, and are lacking the opportunity of their western female counterparts, and thus are less likely to be happy.
The problem with theories is that reality often sticks two fingers up at theory.
After spending some time in this culture, you notice that people are displaying signs of happiness, cohesiveness - certainly more than you saw in the west. What is happening? Are they all pretending? What if they're not pretending? Why would they be happy when there's so much equality to achieve! But then you see other strange things: women are working in professional jobs, earning good money, talking into their 3G phones, driving new expensive cars. How can this be so? Surely feminism is the only way women can achieve such economic freedom! What if it was technology that brought women these freedoms? What if there are countries untouched by feminism, yet women have been able to advance in the workplaces through technological advances? And yet, these women perform such dutiful societal norms like doing the man's washing, pouring his drink, even using different words because her culture tells her women speak in a particular way different from men. How can this duality exist!! Surely they need a dose of feminism to straighten out these cultural anachronisms! Yet, there's no call for change from these women - because.......they......are happy.
If happiness is the common goal of every human being, and if it's true that happiness can be achieved from a myriad of different ways of life, why does modern western orthodox thinking assume only one ideology of life offers women the chance of happiness? Did all women lead unfulfilled lives before feminism, and do the majority of women in the world continue to live unfulfilled lives because they have not been touched by feminism?
p.s. - the most messed up, unhappy women I have ever met were all connected by one ideology. Can you guess the name of it?
