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At the Heart of Freedom

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Cornell writes a complex theoretical piece that takes time to digest for any feminist reader but overall her theories are critical for the evolution of feminism in the twenty-first century! I also recommend Between Women and Generations as a follow-up to fully understanding dignity and the imaginary domain.

Passing itself off as progressive feminist writing for a new generation it is just more of the same misandric rants of other 2nd and 3rd wave culture feminists, gender warriors and ideologues playing gender based identity politics. The only thing that sets it apart from the rest of the cr@p is its extensive use of postmodernist abstractions and deconstruction to provide a sheen of intellectual rigor thereby attaining the status of a highly polished turd.

The book heaps praise on the mother-child dyad as being the ideal family unit and views biological fathers, and men in general, as little more than sperm-donors or barely domesticated animals that should only be allowed near their children "to help" when the mother deems fit (and of course mothers are never vindictive, cold-hearted, ruthless drama queens but rather are always nurturing, loving and peaceful with the child's best interest as their life's focus.)

While dismissive of any bond a child and father might form she spends considerable time arguing for legislating legal protections to lesbian partners of biological mothers who have "bonded to the child." It is abundantly clear that the father is disposable and has no feelings worth considering (nor do the child's feeling towards their father have any recognizable worth, but heaven forbid a lesbian girlfriend of the mother develop an attachment to a child and then lose all access to the child when the relationship breaks down.)

The paternalistic (or maternalistic?) attitude towards fathers can be seen in quotes such as:

Chapter 5 "What and How Maketh a father? Equality versus Conscription"

Men in the The fathers' movement view themselves "by nature [as] irresponsible, slovenly, murderously aggressive, rapacious and polygamous, if one can even dignify their need to spew their sperm as widely as possible by identifying it with an institutional structure. Such ribald creatures, if left to themselves, will desert their families, inevitably yielding to their licentious sexuality and socially disruptive impulses..." Therefore, according to the [father's rights] movement... we "must take action, both legal and otherwise, to track down deadbeat dads and bring them back home [forcing them to] pay for their children." Because, the father's rights movements views men this way it is "clearly convinced" that if men are to take on the role of "good family man" the role must be made "so attractive" that it arouses men's enthusiasm and energy and that, again according to father's rights activists, in order to do so fathers must be given "all the authority and power" and hence (according to the the fathers' movement) "rigid gender division in the family is necessary to make the father's role manly and dominant enough for men to want to play it."

Having constructed her straw man of the fathers' movement she proceeds to attack it, starting with a four page section titled "There's No Such Thing As Father, And It's A Good Thing Too" (although mother's needing child support from fathers should have their rights rigorously enforced.)

Building on the above she describes lesbian couples using artificial insemination as hetero fathers greatest fear. This is the sort of scholarship that far too often comes out of Women's Studies and its insular and radical y culture that is hostile to logic, reason, statistics and the scientific method and emphasizes thinking about thinks purely in terms of "our feelings." Sheer nonsense of the first order. Another upper middle class white woman, herself born to privilege (and probably a significant recipient of affirmative action for women) that wants to blame all the ills of the world on the "patriarchy." At one point she does concede that some fathers are diverging from the mainstream "fathers' movement..." Specifically, Black and Hispanic ones (feminist identity politics now steps carefully around other groups with similar, or more valid, claims to special victim status.)