by Raw Egg Nationalist
This may be the great paradox of feminism: that as society becomes more equal, women become less not more contented.
Events of the past month have been a startling reminder of the
vacuity but also the brooding malevolence of feminism at its very worst.
I’m talking, of course, about the Lindsay Clancy case, which I wrote about last week for American Greatness.
Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of American women are gobbling
up and regurgitating insane theories about a case in which the
defendant has already admitted the crime of which she is accused—killing
her three young children—and all that remains to be decided is whether
she actually is a murderer or lacked the responsibility, on account of
mental illness and overmedication, as the defense alleges.
On display in the feminine response, on TikTok, Instagram, and X, is not just a terrifying sense of entitlement—There’s no way a woman could do what Lindsay Clancy has admitted to doing!—and
an emotionality and absence of logic that would make even the most
ardent male chauvinist eat his slippers. There’s also an overwhelming,
annihilating hatred of men. It’s a hatred that bears no relation
whatsoever, as far as I can see, to the objective position of women in
American society today.
This may be the great paradox of feminism: that as society becomes
more equal, women become less, not more, contented. Rather than leaving
women with a growing sense of satisfaction as all barriers to equality,
real and imagined, are smashed into pieces and driven into the earth by
stiletto heels, emancipation only makes women more angry and more
discontented. That anger and discontent take on an increasingly diffuse
character. It becomes an attitude, and not a very nice one.
Most “liberated” women don’t know what they’re so upset about, but
they do know who and what is responsible. Men. The Patriarchy. And in
the case of Lindsay Clancy, the Patriarchy and all that diffuse hatred
are congealed in the sad form of her husband, Patrick, the man who
returned home from getting takeout food and medication to discover his
wife lying paralyzed in the snow, her wrists cut, and his three
beautiful children strangled to death in the basement.
He’s actually the one who killed the children, pushed his wife out of
the window, and convinced her she did it—because who else would? Isn’t
it obvious?
The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, recognized this paradox as perhaps a
general feature of leftist psychology. The “oversocialized” leftist—the
leftist who has absorbed society’s cherished values just a little too
much—revolts even though society is firmly devoted to the causes he
champions. Maybe Ted was right. But it’s women on both sides of the
aisle who are batting for Lindsay.
“Vacuous” and “malevolent”—those were two words that entered my mind again today as I read a new opinion piece in Britain’s Daily Telegraph. “Ukraine’s fight against Putin shows what women are really capable of,” was the headline. The piece was by a woman called Zoe Strimpel, the author of the book Good Slut: How Money, Sex and Power Set Women Free. I’ll spare you the blurb.
Full disclosure: I actually knew Zoe Strimpel at Cambridge, way back
in 2012, when she was reading for an MPhil in gender studies. I’ve not
kept up with her career since, but let’s just say I wasn’t surprised to
rediscover her, 14 years older, still defending the indefensible.
The war, Strimpel says, is bringing much-needed change to Ukraine.
It’s altering “the perception of what women are capable of” and making
Ukraine a more equal society, at long last.
“Critics have, predictably, lambasted me for my ‘Pollyanna-ish’
belief in female strength and progress, but the rapid evolution of
women’s status in the war effort of President Zelensky’s forces is
proving me right,” Strimpel says.
“Ukraine, still a macho society, is nonetheless becoming the most
extraordinary example of women bucking all the stereotypes about being
too cuddly and weak for war. Not that it matters, but these aren’t big
butch broads; many are beautiful, slender women who could easily coast
on their looks without bothering to do combat training and learn to
operate drones.”
Women are occupying combat and other frontline roles in growing
numbers—21 percent of officers are now women, up from 4 percent in
2023—and they’re also leading the fight to develop new tech and weapons
to beat the Russians.
Strimpel reserves her most fulsome praise for a woman by the name of
Iryna Terekh, who runs the weapons startup Fire Point, which has already
developed Ukraine’s first homegrown cruise missile, the pink Flamingo.
Terekh is an archetypal “good slut.” She’s a “stunning brunette with
high cheekbones, luscious glossy lips, and chic, understated garb,” but
she’s also lethal. Literally. You get the feeling that’s how Strimpel
would like to see herself: a sexy bitch, blowing dudes up from very far
away while wearing a nice little cocktail dress. There’s less mud and
blood like that.
But it’s not all Progress. The rest of the article focuses on the
ongoing discrimination and “entrenched sexism” women face in Ukraine’s
armed forces. One woman, Alya, a former dancer, was told she was just “a
beautiful doll” and “she can’t be smart enough” to be a battlefield
surgeon. Or what about Katya, who joined an army brigade, “but instead
of fighting Russia, she was forced into her own little war with rank
misogyny”?
There’s an air of unreality about the whole article. Is this actually
real? Are we actually being told the great benefit of the Ukraine war
is that it’s creating a new nation of feminist “good sluts” like Zoe
Strimpel?
Yes, we are. The “feminist transformation of Ukraine,” forged in the
crucible of war, is a good thing. But Strimpel goes even further. We
must follow Ukraine’s example—or else. “Now the rest of the world has to
catch up,” she boldly proclaims, “before the enemy is at our gates
too.”
It’s tempting to dismiss the article as naked propaganda, especially after that final line. The British media, including The Daily Telegraph,
has been among the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the war,
presenting Putin’s ambitions as an existential threat to the whole of
Europe—an egregious falsehood. Indeed, the British government has been
singled out by the Russians for its unwavering support of Ukraine, which
includes providing long-range missiles and drones that are now being
used to strike targets deep inside Russia itself. Just a few days ago,
the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, visited Kyiv and pledged his
continuing support for the war. In response, a Kremlin spokesman accused
Britain of “methodically and regularly [adding] fuel to the fire and
methodically and regularly [hatching] schemes to prevent the slightest
progress in the peaceful settlement process.”
In recent weeks, there’s been talk of “radical” mobilization changes
in Ukraine as the country faces manpower shortages in key roles. Could
women end up being drafted? It’s possible, although it would be
controversial. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has already announced his plans
to recruit an additional 300,000 soldiers after the State Duma
elections next month. Many soldiers fighting on the Russian side are now
coming from abroad: volunteers from Africa and tens of thousands of
North Koreans.
The opinion piece may just be a cynical attempt to grease the skids
for bringing larger numbers of Ukrainian women into the war to make it
palatable for a wider European audience. That’s exactly what Katya, whom
I mentioned earlier, wants to happen. She “finds Israel’s conscription
of both sexes inspiring.”
“I would like to see the same in Ukraine,” she says, “because
everyone needs to be protected. I think there should be mobilization of
women, like there is with men. Everyone needs the same kind of training,
women included.”
Propaganda or no, this is feminism all the same. Myopic,
monomaniacal. Red in tooth and claw. An ideology that’s alive to the
minute struggles and suffering of women but completely dead to the brute
struggles and suffering of anyone else, whether they be three murdered
children, one of whom was a little girl, or hundreds of thousands of
Ukrainian men.
Nobody should deny the female contribution to the Ukrainian war
effort, which is valiant and valuable. There are now around 75,000 women
serving in the Ukrainian armed forces; 55,000 are active servicewomen.
That’s double the number in February 2022, when the war began. But that
contribution pales in significance compared with the male one, which
Strimpel doesn’t even mention, except by implication. When she tells us 8
percent of the Ukrainian armed forces are now women, it’s left to the
numerate among her readers to infer that 92 percent are still men.
“Entrenched sexism” is a rather unfortunate metaphor, since the
entrenched sexism faced by Ukraine’s men is a very literal one, to be
placed in a real living trench and blown to pieces by artillery and
drones, or stabbed in the guts by a Yakut soldier from deepest Siberia.
It’s hard to know exactly how many battlefield casualties Ukraine has
suffered over the last four years, but estimates suggest about half a
million to 600,000, with maybe 100,000 deaths. Almost all men.
The demographic changes wrought by the war—the displacement of
refugees, the collapse in birth rates, the wholesale slaughter of young
men—will change Ukraine forever, even if the war stops tomorrow.
Prominent businessmen and members of the government reckon Ukraine will
need as many as 10 million migrants to compensate for the labor
shortages created by the war. Last year, Vasily Voskoboinik, president
of the All-Ukrainian Association of Companies for International
Employment, said Ukraine should welcome over eight million workers from
Bangladesh, Nepal, India, North Africa, and Central Asia.
“We have a demographic catastrophe,” he said.
“Either we encourage our women to have more children, which would
take 18–20 years to reflect in the labor market, or we must
realistically seek labor migration from other countries.”
Then again, maybe that’s a good thing if Ukraine’s men still have
trouble recognizing the brave contributions and the “mettle” of their
female comrades-in-arms. I’m sure the guest workers of Dhaka and
Ouagadougou won’t share that problem. But what if there aren’t any
Ukrainian women left, either?
This, in the end, is what feminism is.
Emancipation—at any bloody cost.
Raw Egg Nationalist (Charles Cornish-Dale), an Oxford- and
Cambridge-educated historian and anthropologist, rose to prominence as
“Raw Egg Nationalist.” He has a large social media following, is a
bestselling author, has appeared on national television, and has
influenced debates on health, fitness, politics, and culture. His latest
book is 'The Last Men: Liberalism and the Death of Masculinity.'
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/08/26/entrenched-sexism-the-war-in-ukraine-is-not-some-great-feminist-victory/
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