Mothers are keen on 'patriarchy'

Mary Kenny
It is an article of today's • cultural ideology that women are gradually overtaking men in most spheres of endeavour.
New Superwoman is set to rule the world because women are doing better at university than men, better at winning prizes than men, better at every level of education, including science, than males.
Everywhere, it is pointed out, men are seen to be more delinquent than women: overwhelmingly more criminal, and more likely to be aggressive — or suicidal.
Actually, this is less a tribute to equality than a signal of the eternal differences between male and female.
Men have always been more aggressive, risk-taking, criminal and delinquent than women. And generations of schoolteachers could attest to the tradition than girls are generally more diligent at their lessons than boys.
The constant denigration of men that is so much part of today's public discourse is, however, deeply offensive to one sector of the populace.
The mothers of men. It is the mothers of men who object most vehemently to the notion that men are a useless sex, and ready for the scrapheap of evolution.
Why, do you imagine, that rape cases so seldom emerge as simple issues of nasty male violator versus innocent female victim? Because the mothers of men serve on juries, and the mothers of men do not automatically accept the notion that men are inevitably bad and women inevitably good. Human relations are much more complex.
Who is in two minds about the ordination of women in the Christian churches? Or even, about the celibacy of the male priesthood?
You would find more stem upholders of the tradition of the male, celibate priest among the mothers of men. I suggest, than among any other group.
"Patriarchy" itself is often admired by the mothers of men. They know that positive male authority can be a good thing: that it can be protective to a family and affirmative in leadership in the working sphere.
Extreme feminists will never succeed in overturning the natural order because they will always be opposed by the mothers of men. A group whose number is increased every time a woman gives birth to a son.
Most predictable regular newspaper headline: "Sharp rise in pregnancy rates for girls under 16". It appeared again last week.
In a society which so often boasts that its ideas are "evidence-based", when will the evidence on this finally be taken seriously?
The evidence, that is, that supplying very young persons with contraceptives and explicit sex education, all the while encouraging them to deceive their parents. does not reduce under-age teenage pregnancy?
How many decades must pass, with that same headline repeated year on year, before the evidence that Victoria Gillick was right in her 1985 application to the House of Lords — to have the age of consent upheld — is admitted?
Many, many decades, it seems. Being a liberal seems to mean never having to say you're sorry, and or to utter the words "we were wrong".
Oscar Wilde said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Another, if more perverse, form of flattery is mockery or parody.
To be "taken off" or imitated in any way is an indirect tribute, even if the mood is simplymocking.
Inis Mor in Co Galway has just witnessed the first "Father Ted" festival.
At this event, various parties, dressed up as nuns, priests, bishops — and even popes — cavorted around the place knocking back pints of porter and bottles of wine and generally being outrageous.
It is, apparently, the first of many, and another Father Ted festival is already planned for next year.
Some clergy are offended by the Father Ted jape — including priests who are usually goodhumoured about a bit of an irreverent tease.
And the late Dermot Morgan, who personified the eponymous protagonist cleric of Craggy Island, was himself quite bitterly anti-religious.
Yet, there is something intriguing in the fact that people want to dress up as priests and nuns — and, be it noted, priests and nuns in old habits, not in modern semicivvy dress.
If they didn't think the institution of the clergy was in some way significant. they wouldn't want to ape it. even if only to transgress.
You don't mock or jibe at something unimportant. A mock or a jibe can only raise a laugh if the target is a strong brand.
It'll be interesting, too. to see the way the festival develops over the years. Cultural values automatically seep into cultural activities in a way that can turn out to be quite surprising.
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