The Royal Scam

I was under the impression that the most controversial thing about the recent royal wedding was Princess Beatrice’s vagina hat (later apparently adopted as the official headgear of the Obama White House*). Not to Petra Gajdosikova, a guest commenter on The Spearhead who has worked herself into a snit over  Kate Middleton’s refusal to pledge to “obey” her Prince. “Now, this may seem a silly little issue to pick on,” she says, at the start of what turns into an 1800 word rant,

but, would it have been too intolerably oppressive for Kate Middleton to have kept to the traditional vows including promising to ‘obey’ her husband? Yes, I know such a thing is not just hopelessly out of fashion but considered almost a crime against their human rights by feminists and millions of brainwashed modern women. But if the Royals won’t preserve the last remnants of tradition, who will? And what’s the point of Monarchy if not tradition?

Petra acknowledges that Lady Di also refused to say the word “obey” when she married Prince Charles, snidely remarking, “[a]nd we know just how well suited she proved to be for her role and responsibilities.” (Yeah, that was the problem with that famously troubled marriage.) She continues:

Undoubtedly the decision to modernize the vows was taken to show the Monarchy being in step with contemporary culture and to present the new Duchess of Cambridge as a thoroughly modern woman and role model for millions of young women throughout Britain. And that’s the biggest tragedy of it all… The country doesn’t need any more progressive ‘role models’ infected with feminist ideology. What we do need, if this society is ever to reverse the present degeneration, are those who stand up for traditional values and mores.

Yeah, because there’s nothing even remotely traditional about celebrating a gigantic, extravagant, broadcast-live-to-billions wedding involving about 8 hours of hymns and AN ACTUAL MOTHERFUCKING PRINCE. I mean, they might as well have had a “commitment ceremony” on a commune, or something.

But apparently making a big deal out of a wedding doesn’t mean that today’s degenerate women actually take marriage itself with any seriousness:

Marriage today is, to many women, just an extravagant social occasion and party, their very own ‘princess’ fantasy. It doesn’t seem to include any consideration on what marriage really means, much less on how to be a good wife. Undoubtedly the mere concept of a ‘good wife’ would be deemed oppressive these days. (Are you saying women should have responsibilities and not just rights?!) After all, millions of women feel entitled to ditch their marriages and perfectly decent husbands for no better reason than feeling bored or ‘unfulfilled’. The princesses deserve to be happy – and if they harm their husbands and children in their insatiable quest for fulfillment, so be it!

Damn those women and their infernal desire to not be miserable!

So why on earth could any decent woman possibly have a problem with pledging to obey her husband? Petra assures us, in all seriousness, that

promising to ‘obey’ one’s husband has nothing to do with being oppressed, a second class citizen with no power or say in a relationship, or a servant to a man. It’s a statement of trust and respect, acknowledging the authority of the man as head of family, responsible for and dedicated to his wife’s and their children’s welfare. Despite us wanting to pretend otherwise, a woman’s natural role is to be loving, nurturing and supportive in a relationship. When women usurp the masculine role (power and leadership) and emasculate men it doesn’t bode well for marriage.

Dudes, if you feel “emasculated” because your wife doesn’t unquestioningly follow your every dictate, you must have an awfully fragile sense of self – and an extreme sense of entitlement. Learning that other people have their own needs and desires, and that the world does not bend to our every whim, is one of the most basic developmental lessons we all learn in our lives. Most of us do it when we are babies.

But to Petra, the insistence of most contemporary western women that their marriages be partnerships of equals means that they’re the narcissists:

Women are deluded in thinking they have been ‘liberated’ from some imaginary shackles, when in fact they’ve only sabotaged themselves and contributed a great deal to the rotten state of our society. The anti-male bias is ever present in the West today; we are ‘empowering’ females at the expense of males and conditioning women to disparage men.

The self-absorption and sense of entitlement of today’s women make it nearly impossible to form healthy, sustainable marriages and relationships.

What follows is a by-the-numbers rant about “sky-high divorce rates,” degenerate single mothers, “welfare dependency … sexual depravity,” human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together.

Sorry, I got carried away; those last bits were from Ghostbusters.(Not the bit about “sexual depravity” – she actually did said that.)

While Petra is perfectly comfortable preaching special treatment for men – having someone literally pledge obedience to you; how much more special does it get than that? – she’s incensed at the notion that “women have long been enjoying – and often abusing – a privileged and protected status (as the ‘oppressed sex’).”

To Petra, the fact that some women choose not to pledge obedience to their husbands means that men are the real oppressed class, facing pervasive “anti-male bias” and the “emasculating” power of women … demanding to be treated the same as men. In other words:

The explicit subordination of women in marriage = not oppression.

Equality in marriage = oppression of men.

I’m sorry, but Petra’s argument here is even sillier than Princess Beatrice’s hat.

And since when do the guys on The Spearhead give a shit about marriage? I was under the impression they all thought it was some sort of evil feminist plot. .

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*Note to literal-minded Obama-haters: I was making a little joke there. That picture is not real. Also, Obama was not born in Kenya.

UPDATE: Fixed the link to that not-real photo of Obama and pals in Princess Beatrice hats. Which I’ll just link to here as well.