Ani Bezzerides or Kathy Hale?

“Why are we only applauding masculinity in women and villainizing it in men? And why are we only applauding femininity in men and debasing it in women?” Evangeline Lily, 'Ant-Man' actress (Instagram, May 2023).

Evangeline Lily's recent Instagram post triggered me to think about the trend in contemporary movies to "masculinize" women. I'm getting a bit tired of watching present day movies where the female protagonist physically kicks the crap out of a male character. We know not only from common sense observation but from science that human males are physically stronger and more aggressive than human females. Yet, a modern action Hollywood action film that does not show a female acting out male-like physically aggressive roles is rare indeed. When was the last time you saw a movie extolling the virtues of, say, a mom using innate female genetic advantages of multitasking and caring into successfully raising her children, arguably the most important of civilization's functions? Why are Hollywood action films pushing female characters with aggressive and physical traits which will never enable women to reach their genetically programmed human apex performance? Hollywood's fetish of emphasizing women with male physical qualities has the effect of diminishing manhood on the one hand and legitimizing a norm of female, physically, mini men on the other.

A case in point is Ani Bezzerides, played by Rachael McAdams in HBO's True Detective, Season Two. Last week I completed watching this series for the second time. Supposed half-brothers Matthew Mcconaghy and Woody Harrelson are executive producers. Bezzerides is a Ventura County Sheriff CID who is often at odds with the system she serves. Ani's character is suffused with masculine physical and aggression attributes. Though she is shown to be effective at police work, she is also tormented, anti-male (huh?), and suspicious of everyone around her. She is a rough drinker who stays late at clubs, picks fights with bouncers and gambles a lot. At home she trains for knife fights with a male looking wooden dummy. A bizarre murder brings Bezzerides together with two other law-enforcement officers (Taylor Kitch and Colin Farrell), and a club operator (Vince Vaughn) and his wily wife (Kelly Reilly), all of whom must navigate a web of conspiracy and betrayal in the LA wrong side of town. It's actually a great show if you can willingly suspend disbelief to allow for an unlikely five-foot four inch tall, one hundred twenty-pound female badass. Great, cast! Complex, well drawn-out characters. Great acting! But I digress.

Fifty years ago, Hollywood movies portrayed females, not as ersatz men, like Bezzerides, but more consistently with reality AND science! In movies of yore, females were universally portrayed as, physically, the weaker sex - i.e., congruent with reality. But physicality is not the only way for humans to exert power and influence. The sexes were designed with radically different attributes (even more than heretofore thought as genetic science makes new discoveries) to complement one another, where the whole of a male/female relationship is greater than the sum of the parts. Hollywood tropes a half century ago showed women deploying feminine qualities and stratagems, not masculine aggression, to gain power parity with males. Last night I watched Three Days of the Condor (1975) starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway. The Redford character, Joe Turner, a CIA analyst, is forced to kidnap, at random, the Dunaway character, Kathy Hale, to seek escape at Kathy's flat from a CIA rump group plot to have him killed. Initially, Kathy tries to resist the strong-arm tactics of Turner. Being female, she is (obviously) overpowered by Turner's physical superiority. Kathy then begins to work her womanly wiles on Turner's tormented psyche. She makes efforts to understand his plight... shows empathy... seduces him, and eventually assumes an informal leadership role for the twosome.

Hollywood's current fetish of endowing females with male physical and aggression attributes is, of course, a false narrative which, if allowed to take root as a legitimate aspiration for women in the real world over time, will inhibit civilizational progress. Women who set their sights on acquiring masculine physical and aggression qualities is not a good thing as it neuters the innate feminine qualities necessary to maximize innate female human potential. It's also bad for the culture. Notorious "Amazon Feminist" Camille Paglia, in her 1990 book, "Sexual Personae," wrote, "if civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts." A civilization requires the healthy interaction of monomaniacal, aggressive males offset by wily, sensitive, multitasking, females to prosper. I hope Evangeline Lily's Instagram followers are listening to her warning.

PS. Evangeline Lily is Canadian. I am regularly shocked by the emergence of Canadians talking good sense on social issues despite being citizens of ordinarily boring, woke, socially flaccid, autocratic, and snobbish Canada. Other Canadians talking anti-woke good sense: Mark Steyn, Conrad Black, Meghan Murphy and Jordan Peterson. She's not Canadian, but British author J.K. Rowling has also been stalwart on the anti-woke front.