The pink-washed 'energy' propaganda stealing women's power

Feminine and masculine energies are not real, but misogynist propaganda designed to get women to consent to their own oppression absolutely is.

Is it really true that you need to get into your feminine submissive if you’re ever going to attract a provider man?

Well, maybe, if what you’re looking to attract the sort of man who calls himself a “provider” but really just means that he has a job and therefore shouldn’t have to do anything else.

Because that sort of man absolutely wants you to be as submissive, unquestioning, and easy to control as possible. It’s the only way he can hook you, the only way he can keep you, and the most effective way he can extract free labor from you.

It’s not a coincidence that you’re seeing advice about “feminine energy,” “feminine submission” and “getting into your feminine” everywhere all of a sudden.

It’s not a coincidence that just as women begin to thrive on their own, to decenter men, to stop buying lies about the fulfillment men offer, patriarchy seeks to reel them back in with repackaged bullshit.

Systems of power work best when they are invisible. This has always been the case, but it is especially so now, in a political landscape where we pretend that the dreams of the Enlightenment have been fully realized, where all humans can attain their full potential, where individual variation is due to choice or genetics, and where all forms of abuse and discrimination are illegal, and fairly litigated in a just legal system.

In this incarnation of patriarchy, patriarchy seeks to pretend it is something else entirely. It works through socialization to get us to normalize harmful gender roles and beliefs, such that by the time we are adults, they’re completely invisible to us. It’s a clever trick that makes an abusive system of power seem like a series of individual choices.

Romantic relationships remain among patriarchy’s greatest sources of power. Get a woman into a relationship, get her to have kids, and suddenly leaving ranges from difficult to dangerous, particularly if the man is an incompetent parent who will attempt to get access to the kids, and even more so if the man has convinced her to become a stay-at-home mother so she can be entirely financially dependent on him.

Men need women to choose submission, to willingly give up power. This is the only way they can retain control in a world where, on virtually every imaginable measure, from college graduation rates to leadership skills, women out-perform men.

Convincing women to make themselves subordinate to their romantic partners gives patriarchy significantly more control. It also lowers women’s standards and convinces them not to ask too many questions, so that they’ll accept worse treatment from men, fail to screen the men they date, and ultimately end up trapped with low-value losers who exploit them.

This is where the ideology of “feminine” and “masculine” energy does its best work.

“Feminine” women don’t seek power at work or their own money. They seek “masculine” providers. So they become financially dependent on their partners, making leaving nearly impossible, and permanently hindering their earning capacity.

“Feminine” women protect men’s peace and don’t nag them or upset them. So naturally they don’t demand too much, don’t ask questions early in the relationship, and therefore expect very little.

“Feminine” women are virgins, or at the very least have had very few sexual partners. So they don’t know what good sex is like, don’t know how to talk about consent, and will accept whatever form of sexual coercion their sexual stinkbomb of a one-minute man partner gives them.

“Feminine” women are submissive, which really just means that they agree to shitty sex with shitty men, but also that they do whatever the man wants when he wants. So the man gets a woman appliance and the woman gets…to be feminine, I guess?

“Feminine” women don’t speak negatively about their partners to other people or gossip, thereby cutting them off from community support, and preventing them from noticing harmful patterns in their relationships.

“Feminine” women don’t demand, because of course we can’t have women making demands of men.

And perhaps most importantly, feminine women are constantly performing, constantly assessing whether their “energy” is sufficiently feminine enough, constantly consuming twin flame relationship content that brainwashes them, and never permitted to question whether just having a man is sufficient prize to warrant all this work.

This isn’t alternative spirituality or a harmless but silly trend. It’s a deliberate attempt to get women to choose their own oppression for just long enough that they become trapped.

This energy nonsense repackages incredibly regressive gender roles as something soft, gentle, and progressive. It relabels male violence as “female submission,” and pretends that men who aspire to be alphas hope to do something other than rape and brutalize women.

Don’t fall for this bullshit.