They sought, and received, the automatic right of mothers to custody of children after divorce, but did nothing to change the financial obligation of fathers to provide all material necessities to said children.
They sought, and received, the right within marriage to hold and keep their own property and income untouchable by their husbands, but did nothing to change the legal obligation of husbands to financially support their wives, to pay their wives taxes, or to repay their wives debts.
They sought, and received, the right to vote, but did nothing to change the civic obligations of men toward the state, including military conscription, which had informed the primary justifications for universal male suffrage, nor did they campaign to impose any such obligations on women.
While men were dying in their thousands to win the right to form a union and earn enough to support their wives and children, early feminists were campaigning for a woman’s right to take a man’s children away from him through separation or divorce, and still enjoy the same access to his wallet she’d become accustomed to in marriage.
While men were dying in their millions to protect societies in which most men didn’t have the vote, early feminists were terrorizing and injuring innocent civilians, demanding votes for women.
I believe nothing to be above criticism, and there are few cows more sacred in protestant Christendom these days than feminism of any wave. But I can't help but feel that Ms. Straughan might be being just a wee bit harsh here. One can't blame feminists for agitating for women's right to vote, own property or have custody of children over whom they are the primary caregivers, after all.
Feminists knew what their interests were and were prepared to fight for them. They haven't changed. Claire Berlinski, in a recent opinion piece in the American Interest, writes of the recent wave of sexual harassment allegations:
Women, I’m begging you: Think this through. We are fostering a climate in which men legitimately fear us, where their entire professional and personal lives can be casually destroyed by “secret lists” compiled by accusers they cannot confront, by rumors on the internet, by thrilled, breathless reporting denouncing one after another of them as a pig, often based only on the allegation that they did something all-too-human and none-too-criminal like making a lewd joke. Why would we even want men to be subject to such strenuous, arduous taboos against the display of their sexuality? These taboos, note carefully, resemble in non-trivial ways those that have long oppressed women. In a world with such arduous taboos about male purity and chastity, surely, it is rational for men to have as little to do with women as possible. What’s in this for us?
Claire's article is a good read, and kudos to her for speaking out against the moral panic. The problem she has, though, is that women have thought this through. This is exactly what they want. Some variation of "now men understand the fear that women live with all the time" is the stock response of women online to the capricious nature of some of the allegations, among those that are targeting genuinely degenerate behavior and egregious abuses of power.
Neither gender can claim real innocence here. We were warned. I recall reading feminist author Daphne Patai's Heterophobia all the way back in 1998, wherein the ideology behind the radical feminist take on sexual harassment and cavalier disregard for due process was laid out very explicitly, and the dangers of what we're now beginning to see made absolutely clear. Patai was not alone. The now famous Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia said many of the same things in books also written back in the 1990s.
None of this was accidental. Feminism wanted to make rape and sexual harassment allegations into a club that they could hold above the heads of all men, as just desserts for how they believed and rationalized that all men held rape and sexual harassment themselves as clubs above women's heads. I would agree with Straughn and Berlinski's criticisms of the ethics, or lack thereof, in abusing the concepts of rape and sexual harassment in this way. But I also can't help but think that I don't really blame the feminists either. As I said, feminists know what their interests were and were prepared to fight for them.
Nonfeminist men and women need to complain about that less and learn from that more.
The burdens that men of the lower classes bore as described by Karen Straughan and Warren Farrell in his seminal work The Myth of Male Power were and are certainly unjust. But as I've argued elsewhere, is it honest or accurate to blame the feminists for those burdens? They should not be let off the hook for their actions, of course. But neither should they bear the brunt of the blame for what their critics and opponents have done and failed to do.
To read antifeminist material these days, you'd think that feminism was this semi divine force, a power of nature beyond the reach of us mere mortals that has recently turned hostile towards the male of the species and afflicts him with woes of all kinds. To the extent that this is true, antifeminist propaganda would lead you to think that human agency and choices made by flesh and blood people has never had anything to do with it all. Reminiscent of neoliberal propaganda in the 1990s surrounding globalization, a political construct is recast as something akin to a law of nature, irresistible as it guarantees its own fidelity at all times. Best not to argue or try to resist, but rather to simply accept and adjust to the new reality as best you can.
Nonsense. We have to start talking about male (and non feminist female) complicity in the excesses of feminism. Failing to speak out against something you think to be wrong helps to enable it, especially when it becomes a culturally ingrained habit among the general populace. Feminists own no trademark on the concepts of organizing, activism and lobbying for the changes they desire.
By male (and non feminist female) complicity, I don't mean simply the odd male feminist sympathizer.
I mean a very systemic hand-in-glove ongoing support for and enabling of
feminist activism on part of powerful social and political institutions that
were predominantly, sometimes exclusively, male in the composition of their
executive and governance bodies, at least at the time the reforms in question were
enacted.
Predominantly
male legislative bodies passed laws that gave mothers primary custody and
levied onerous alimony requirements on divorced men. Male governments and heads
of state made decisions about how and when to go to war and who to conscript
for said wars. Laws that allow men to face civil or even legal repercussions
for polite civil greetings towards women in the workplace, or consensual sex
that was subsequently regretted the next day were similarly passed by
predominantly male governing bodies. Male bashing in media - corporations whose
shareholders and upper management were, probably still are at least majority
male. Women's studies courses and academic speech codes enacted by male deans
and boards of governors in academia. I could go on, but I think you get the
point.
In
the face of ongoing feminist absurdity, a reasonable yet no-nonsense pushback
from the male population and female sympathizers remains almost nonexistent. This is puzzling because, as Ms. Straughan's article points out, organizing a workplace and going
on strike was a potentially fatal endeavor for working men up to the passage of the Wagner act in the New Deal era. Yet this did not stop many more strikes from occurring than we're seeing today. Defeat of the male working class manifests across multiple vectors. Civil rights workers were similarly taking their lives into their hands well
into the postwar era, trying to register poor minorities to vote.
To my knowledge, nobody has ever been killed for being an
MRA. Doxxing and dismissal from employment is about as bad as they've gotten it to the best of my knowledge. As far as systems of power go, western feminism, though contemptible in
endless numbers of ways, is relatively mild. I won't end up in a gulag or being
machete'd or stoned to death for criticizing feminism, like I would have been
for criticizing the regime in a communist, military junta or Islamist
dictatorship. Yet there's an ongoing paralyzing unwillingness on part of men to stand
up for themselves vis-a-vis radical women. Why?
There are many explanations. That women control access to sex and that men capitulate for fear of being denied sex. As laughable and stupid as the most absurd plank of gender feminism. The entire purpose of what's been called feminism for the last century and a half has been to reduce male sex with women to a vanishing point, though they'll never admit this. To fail to resist for fear of losing precisely what you will lose if you don't resist is the definition of cowardly foolishness. Other explanations are that we evolved to instinctually place a greater premium on female life, as the bearers of future generations, or that being raised by mothers primarily leads to a subconscious association of women with moral authority. Perhaps it is being raised with chivalrous attitudes, internalization of feminist narratives of male guilt and so on.
Any or all of these may be true. But ultimately they're no excuse. With awareness comes responsibility. Instinct and upbringing are hard (at first) to go against. That's what collective support and consciousness raising are for.
In the case of feminism, the benefits of men showing collective backbone go beyond simply curbing misandrist nonsense in the public square. That women are naturally more attracted to men with spine enough to at least stand up to them is not exactly a well kept secret. This simple insight is pretty much the basis of a lot of redpill and PUA game theory. I'll not be the first to hypothesize that the juvenile, stupid and standoffish elements of feminism are largely a collective "shit test" aimed at forcing men to actually stand up and speak out against it. A man who cannot stand up to his woman cannot stand up for his woman, and not surprisingly few women actually find that attractive. More than one woman has actually explained that to me in exactly those terms.
I
do not let feminists and their numerous excesses off the hook. This isn't about victim blaming. But there needs
to be more acknowledgement in MRM and antifeminist circles of male complicity
in even the worst excesses of feminism. Andrea Dworkin was married in life, as is Clementine Ford married with children today, last time I checked. So what does that tell you? It does not reflect well on us men, that is for certain.
Radical feminist
ideologues of that nature were a tiny minority of the population in the 60s and
70s when their influence peaked, and have never been anything approaching a
majority of the population since. They won and they continue to win because
they consistently face little or no opposition that's organized and
strategizes. I find it utterly astounding that so neurotic and screwed up a
segment of the population has managed to dictate gender and sexual mores to
whole populations.
There
simply has to be a taking of ownership on part of men, individually and
collectively, for their role in enabling or at least failing to speak out
against the excesses of feminism. In the age of social media, it should be
easier now than ever for men and sympathetic women to organize and begin
exerting pressure in
a more reasonable direction as far as gender politics goes. I can't believe
that it can't be done when I look back on historical revolutions, the formation
of the industrial unions, civil rights and the end of segregation and
apartheid, the fall of communism and see numerous instances of very corrupt,
unjust and autocratic systems of power gradually yielding to sustained populist
pressures.
It's almost as if the bulk of the population is asking permission of
feminists to dissent and criticize, or are simply content to navel gaze and
wait for the radfems to come to their senses on their own. We'll be waiting a damn long time the way things are going.
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