The Feminist Angle
Is the “new normal” a culmination of raw male power, based on a crude mechanistic view of the world? Does it signify a new and radical negation of feminist values?
I just read a truly brilliant essay by Dr. Caroline Kaye, The Sideways Thinker where she presents us with an interesting analogy between the new world of the Covid scare and Polanski’s famous film, Rosemary’s Baby.
This essay has such depth and wealth of angles I wouldn’t attempt to summarize it here; I strongly recommend reading it in full. But I want to highlight something I think is central to Kaye’s analysis, the feminist angle, an angle which strangely has been largely ignored in discussion of the pandemic reactions.
Bodily autonomy is a core to all feminist thinking. The woman’s body belongs to her, not to the husband or the father. In Kaye’s words: “The concept of individual self-determination and bodily autonomy are major themes in Rosemary’s Baby. We moderns have long taken these ideas for granted. The extent of the assaults upon bodily autonomy that have recently been in evidence in western countries needs restating.”
Kaye continues: “It is as if the devil has his proxies in the form of Fauci, Schwab, Soros and, of course Gates, who literally wishes to penetrate every human being on the planet and by force if necessary. It is a form of rape, and in an insatiable Epstein-esque style, it is the attempted rape of humanity. Gates’s forced penetrations promise a neo-transubstantiation with the “essence” of the covidian deity taken unto oneself.”
In feminist thinking, the act of rape is central to male domination, and in fact some radical feminists consider the act of penetration always to be rape. Rosemary is raped; like Epstein’s victims she is raped by a central figure of authority; the penetration is forced, just as the penetration of the lives, of the veins of the victims now is forced, and performed by figures of authority.
Rosemary is impregnated. And this is no ordinary baby; she carries the devil in her womb: “The horror is not the monster. Rather, it is the arrogance of a scientist who believes he can create life …”. Kaye likens Rosemary’s baby with the mRNA injections, the creators of which “can have no peace or equilibrium whilst [their] creation lives.”
The mad scientist is a creation of the mechanistic view of the world, the view that nature and humanity are machines which can be adjusted and developed for optimal results, results which, as Mattias Desmet has explained, culminate in the perfectly safe life of an unconscious body on IV.
But the mechanistic view is in its essence also a deeply anti-feminist view, as it is rooted in a worldview where the autonomy of women was considered a threat to male-dominated society and values. The witch hunts and the Renaissance did go hand in hand, something we often ignore.
In film and literature, tampering with nature often brings disasters. In Rosemary’s baby, the references to Frankenstein are clear; the male, mad scientist, evil and dominating, has forced the monster inside the woman’s womb, the sanctuary of life; isolated and gaslighted she has no option but to accept and justify what has been done to her: “As she realises the full horror of the situation, she is determined not to cooperate with the coven. Nevertheless, she soon finds herself rocking the baby and appearing to accept his strangeness.”
Is the “new normal” a culmination of raw male power, based on a crude mechanistic view of the world? Does it, along with the abolition of even the word “woman” signify a new and radical negation of feminist values?
Thank you for this engagement with my essay, it's really interesting to see the topic in this light. I can see exactly the point you make and it's a good one. The wider point of how the "covidian cult" has manifested itself as a male dominated "systems oriented" one is neglected in the discourse. On reflection, I was aware that some good feminist analyses has been done on this story (plus, interesting to know that Ira Levin also wrote The Stepford Wives) I think I wanted to present Rosemary as an "everyone" so that the impending threats of forced penetration are comprehended as universal threats to the human. However, your analysis enlarges my observations in a most effective way. Thanks again!