The Faustain Bargain That Wasn't, Or, Shutting Down The Agora Did NOT Benefit The Hestia (Combined And Updated Re-Post)

One perennial theme that seems to run through some circles of the Goddess Movement and Matriarchy Movement is the idea that Women made a sort of Faustian bargain during the Second Wave of Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.  That deal, as the narrative goes, consisted of essentially "assimilating" into patriarchy by becoming more like men (i.e. less feminine and more masculine) or at least aspiring to the privileges once reserved for men.  And that is supposedly a very, very Bad Thing, as it supposedly represents the ultimate triumph of men over Women, and thus the ultimate triumph of the patriarchy.   The term "Female Erasure" is sometimes used to describe it as well, though the connotation varies.

Gender essentialism aside, this narrative indeed has all of the makings of a good story, except that it isn't really true.  What is sometimes called the "Eclipse" of the 1960s (or 1970s or 1980s, depending on one's perspective) does superficially seem to fit this narrative.  Instead of the patriarchy chewing Women up and spitting them out as in the pre-1960s world, this time Women appear to have been swallowed whole.  But what better way to finally destroy the patriarchy than from within?  In the belly of the beast, Women have been gaining almost unprecedented power, and soon they will be able to burst through and finally lay waste to that evil system once and for all, and replace it with their own, Goddess willing.

After all, sometimes darkness can show you the Light.  And besides, the apparently increasing aggression of Women actually began with suffragette and First Wave Feminist icon Emmeline Pankhurst, half a century before the 1960s even began.  Even Nikola Tesla remarked upon it in a 1924 interview, also predicting (quite accurately, it now seems) that Women would eventually take over the world.

So it appears that this so-called Faustian bargain was really not one at all.  And those purists and "retreatists", as I like to call them, who claim it is and want to somehow reverse it can easily find themselves to be inadvertent strange bedfellows with the reactionary Phyllis Schlaflys and other anti-feminist counterrevolutionaries of the world.  Unless, of course, that was really their intention all along.

Furthermore, the theory can be empirically tested in real time simply by taking a good and honest look at the consequences of the initial acute (and later chronic and rolling) Covid lockdowns and shutdowns of 2020-2021 in most of the world.  I mean, what better way to test if there was a net benefit shutting down or retreating from the supposedly hopelessly corrupt and irredeemable Agora (i.e. marketplace, or public sphere), in favor of the Hestia (i.e. home and hearth, or private sphere).  Had the theory been true, we would all be having a massive renaissance by now.  And, well, we all know the answer now:  it was in practice an unmitigated disaster in so many ways for everyone but the oligarchs, and especially so for Women as a class, setting them back decades in a matter of months, and still not fully recovered four years later.  I mean, after the "plague" should come the Renaissance once again, if history is any guide, but alas, that did not happen.  Neoliberalism is now worse than ever.

In other words, as I like to say, retreatism is defeatism.

And rest assured, try as treacherous men may, the true Divine Feminine can never, ever be truly erased or extinguished, as to do so would literally impossible.  And once Women reclaim their rightful place as the new leaders of the free world, then we will really know that for certain, Goddess willing.

Oh, and by the way, anyone who thinks that AI or robots will somehow successfully replace Women will be in for a very rude awakening.  After all, it is the SPIRIT that quickens (gives life), NOT the flesh, and AI literally has NEITHER spirit nor flesh.