Which post disappeared?

Lysistrata can be interpreted either way, I guess. I don't read it in a positive light, so the character's 'unity of purpose', while moot, is still a fiction compared to George Eliot's opposition to the suffrage movement, which was very real, though it may have contributed to theoretical feminism in a way Aristophanes couldn't even conceive.

Your points about Potter and Nightingale are excellent ones, because they expose how narrow these parameters can sometimes be. And Potter by the way later recanted her anti-feminism when she became Mrs. Webb. Activists [who were also writers] who were closer to achieving the unity of purpose Lysistrata could only dream of were Elizabeth Robins and Olive Schreiner. The former was an advisor to the Pankhursts. Your 4th paragraph encapsulates why many writers of this period withheld their support from the suffrage movement, because they felt it was too militant and as such was being hijacked for an entirely different purpose/agenda.

I love Daumal but think his analogy is very limited. Elias Canetti's Crowds and Power is a much better analysis I find of group-think and the group mentality, and the best part is he makes his case without resorting to Freud or Marx. There's a lot of truth to what you say about Mao's androgynous citizen army, but I'd say Virginia Woolf intended something very different by the word. My sense is that she thought of androgyny in purely cognitive, intellectual, and philosophical terms, that writers combine the qualities of both masculine and feminine stereotypes in their writing: the creative imagination is the leveller that should precede and establish the norms for equality, not simply dressing down to erase distinction. This is why Orlando is variously male and female, I think. Erich Fromm is much closer to Daumal's model, and from the Marxist and Freudian perspective, in criticizing the group mentality, and he too starts with the individual. All told, I hadn't even considered the case of China. Good point.

I think I'm understanding your point about Greer, though I don't believe for one second it reduces my question to a mere intellectual conceit that employs Freudian stereotypes. Is this what you're suggesting? Even the case of Mao's China, and his androgynous citizen army, could corroborate my sense of social engineering the way I have posited it. And, BTW, Showalter's book was published in 1978, so it's hardly the new kid on the block. It's my reading and my questions that are dilatory here. I've read her book and am simply trying to incorporate her ideas into my understanding of how war structures social norms, values and ultimately serves its masters. I agree that there are many factors contributing to inequality in society, but US society seems particularly addicted to war, and this surely has a profound effect on the way the -isms play out.

Maybe you're right, maybe my top-post was too simplistic. Maybe the questions were best unasked. Maybe this is all there is to say on the matter:

"Sometimes the simplistic achieves mammoth proportions when surrounded by chapter and verse of extraneous illustrations of rather heady material."