With Chivalry Gone, Women of the Leisured Class Turn Hostile to Men

It was noted that how far the mental differences between men and women are natural and how far they are artificial cannot be known. A warning followed that the social-constructivist approach could cause the balance between nature and artifice to be lost.

It was argued that individuals should develop artifice while remaining faithful to nature, and that if this balance breaks, an individual's life and mind can be ruined.

Christine de Pizan criticized the Romance of the Rose for portraying women as sexually immoral and obscene, treating them as 'femme fatales.' This criticism sparked a debate for and against among intellectuals and royal figures of the time.

The dispute grew beyond mere literary criticism into a social issue framed as a confrontation between the sexes, and became an important starting point for early feminist discourse.

The Querelle des femmes expanded through the intervention of Jean Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris. Gerson lent authority to the debate by expressing support for Joan of Arc.

The debate began to degenerate among intellectual circles into a form of intellectual play among the leisured classes. This became the backdrop for its commercial spread.

The development of printing led to the formation of a publishing market centered in Venice. Venetian publishers sought books that would stimulate the vanity and intellectual pretension of the nobility.

For these commercial purposes the women's question rose as a hot issue, and publishers, calculating which books would sell to the nobility, promoted the Querelle.

Its influence grew further as political and cultural authority intervened in the controversy.

The Courtier was printed more than 100 times across Europe, greatly contributing to spreading the Querelle into an international intellectual network.

The 'Querelle des femmes', which began in 16th-century Venice, spread across Europe through the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 19th century it changed its name to 'feminism', but its substance remained the same.

This formed the background for the spread of a culture, peculiar to Western society, that fosters conflict between the sexes.

In 1600, Moderata Fonte argued that 'women's freedom cannot exist as long as men exist.' This claim is an extreme logic under which women's freedom can exist only if one of the two sexes disappears.

This claim takes a form linguistically similar to Valerie Solanas's extreme misandrist assertions. It shows that a misandrist delusional structure has been repeated unchanged for 400 years.

In 1601, Lucrezia Marinelli published 'The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men.' The title itself revealed an intent to divide men and women into opposing camps.

Marinelli arbitrarily reinterpreted Aristotle's natural philosophy to argue for women's superiority. This reflects a logic among women writers grounded in emotional venting rather than rational argument.

The analysis notes that the arguments of modern feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon, Gloria Steinem, and Judith Butler reach the same conclusions as Marinelli's commentary.

Italian feminist Camille Paglia defined feminism as a delusion. She pointed out that although these delusional claims, carried through 400 years, may be meaningful as literature, problems arose when they were made real through state feminism.

This underscores that arguments which were mere empty rhetoric of the leisured classes led to state policy and had a practical impact on society.

In a 1645 work, Lucrezia Marinelli repudiated the women's-superiority thesis she had written in 1601. She changed her argument, asserting that women's status and circumstances were not devised or made by men but arose from natural and divine providence.

Marinelli stressed cooperation between the sexes and the importance of the household, turning away from her earlier radical views. This shows that even a central figure of the early Querelle reconsidered her own claims.

Women demanded entry into male domains such as the military, shared restrooms, and combat sports, insisting they not be excluded. But these demands produced side effects in reality.

Through these examples, the speaker stressed that there is a difference between the claim 'do not exclude us' and the concept of 'protection'.

Margari Stern, a former feminist born in 1990, disclosed in an open letter that her views had changed. She argued that LGBT and feminist elements destroy the body, devalue life, divide the sexes, and destroy human flourishing and culture.

Stern sincerely apologized, saying she had once committed unjust acts and promoted false perceptions by following the prevailing mood. This shows an internal critique and conversion case within the feminist movement.

The speaker argued that feminists acted immaturely because they lacked social experience. He explained that a person grows up when they endure life's continuous hardships and experience society.

This suggests that the isolated claims of women of the leisured classes, in a turbulent social period, were detached from reality, and it presented a outlook calling for a return to a normal social order.