In the West, the advent of science and technology, and the industrial revolution, coupled with the economic model of Capitalism created wealth such that for the first time in human history it was possible for women in a widespread manner to be freed from their role as family homemaker. Thus, in the 19th century they began to enter the labor market formerly exclusively the realm of men.
New and complex changes began to take place in the relationship between men and women, and women began to band together in a movement to make their place in this new world; that movement is labeled Feminism. There continues to be tension involved with the male/female relationship in the West to this current day, due in part to built-in differences between men and women.
There have been three waves of Feminism over the past 180 years:
- First wave: 1830’s – 1950’s
- Basic rights: voting, property, legal barriers removed
- Second wave: 1960’s -1980’s
- Adding of Cultural Marxism, sexual freedom (the pill/abortion), smash monogamy, smash the patriarchy, Postmodernism and Identity Politics, gender as social construct, man-hating, male privilege
- Third wave: 1990’s – present
- Victimhood to extensive granularity (intersectionality), rape culture, slut walks, non-indictment of Muslim oppression of women
Creation Myth
Feminism has at its roots a mythological feminist paradise; a noble savage mode of living where everything was egalitarian, female dominated – a matriarchal culture. That was then supposedly thrown over by patriarchal institutions about the time of the beginning of Judaism (i.e., Abraham). Ever since then we’ve been living in an oppressive patriarchal system. Note that there’s no evidence that this matriarchal system ever existed. It’s the telling of a psychological myth as if it was history. Bottom line, in the minds of Feminists, Western Civilization has been a brutal patriarchy, and whatever good that was accomplished was done so by oppression and theft, and that the appropriate thing to do is to restructure it from the bottom up. In other words, revolution.
The second and third waves of Feminism have constituted a direct assault on Judeo-Christian values related to sexual mores and the traditional family, and most of that assault has Marxist ideology at its root; see sample quotes from Cultural Marxism founders, for example. An important revolutionary change was the freeing of women from Judeo-Christian concepts of sexual restraint. Clearly the most important factor leading to that change was the “pill”; for the first time in human history, women had control over reproduction, independent of men.
Another important change affecting women in the West was the introduction of technology relative to living conditions: electricity, pure water, automobiles, refrigerators, automatic washers and driers, microwaves, etc.; all reducing the time and effort required in the home. All of this accelerated after World War II, such that for the first time it was feasible for women to enter the workplace in large numbers. Perhaps the starting point was the necessity for women to take over jobs previously held by men during World War II.
So in addition to the introduction of Marxist ideology into the culture, the new phenomena of widespread employment of women outside the home created the need for a realignment of male/female relationships. In the early stages of this process, there was clearly resistance to this revolution on the part of men, dealing for example with a new form of male/female competition; men were no longer the sole providers, nor women no longer exclusively in the home.
As Postmodernism entered the scene in the late 1970s — and with it, Identity Politics in a Marxist oppressor/oppressed model — the “oppressor” category for women morphed into men-as-oppressors. By the time that third wave Feminism was fully in place in the early 1990s, the “evil Patriarchy” was a major driving force in Feminism.
The tragedy of 2nd and 3rd wave Feminism is that the vastly oversimplified Marxist paradigm of privileged men oppressing victimized women ignored or demonized other important factors, such as scientific realities related to significant differences between the sexes, substituting those realities with social constructionism; also downplaying the importance of responsibility, competence, and conscientiousness in one’s ability to deal with the obstacles that life brings.
A good example societal problems created by contemporary Feminism can be seen in higher education.
Feminism on Campus
The anti-male focus of contemporary Feminism can be seen today with special clarity in North American colleges and universities. Consider the following quote from Canadian anti-Feminist, English Professor Janice Fiamengo of the University of Ottawa:
“If Feminism was ever about equality, it surely is not now. It’s about special privileges and advantages for women, and special exemptions from responsibility. A double standard: one for women (supposedly because they are victims), and one harshly punitive for men, supposedly because they are privileged. The dishonesty and hypocrisy of the Feminists needs to be exposed and denounced every day.”
Fiamengo goes on to detail how “irrationality” (remember, Postmodernism does away with logic) has overtaken radical Feminism. She says:
“It promotes the idea that women’s feelings are more important than objective reality or the search for truth, claiming victimhood trumps fact, argument and debate. According to Feminist worldview, women must never be made to feel “unsafe” — not just physically, but emotionally and psychologically. They must never be triggered, reminded of trauma, or made to think about things that challenge their view of themselves as permanently innocent victims.”
And she continues:
“In the Feminist world, women are always to be believed, always deferred to, always spoken of in hushed tones and deep sympathy….[Feminism] has become a potent weapon to intimidate anyone who doesn’t toe the party line on a wide range of subjects, including abortion, gender difference, boy’s education, the criminal justice system, family law, etc.”
Fiamengo then shifts her focus to the effect of current Feminism on male students (and to a degree, on men in general):
“Men at university are told that they are uniquely guilty, prone to violence, and responsible for war, inequality, rape, domestic violence, pedophilia, sexual harassment, hetero-patriarchal capitalistic domination, and all that is wrong in society.”
And that’s just the beginning. She goes on to cite the many advantages available only to female students, and then contrasts that with the adversarial setting encountered by male students:
“A young man on the other hand has a very different experience. He will likely attend a mandatory gender sensitivity and anti-violence workshop at the beginning of his first year, where he will be lectured about his propensity for sexual predation.”
And the young man will need to watch his speech:
“If a man challenges a Feminist party line, he will often be told that his maleness prevents him from fully understanding certain issues, or from even having the right to speak about them. Women are never told that their femaleness prevents them from understanding or voicing an opinion on issues. A young man will learn that if he is allowed to speak without harsh criticism, he will need to preface many of his comments with an apologetic admission of his male privilege.”
After outlining the comprehensive discrimination against male students, Fiamengo deals with an additional serious issue of injustice against them:
“As a result of the oversensitivity to women’s feelings, and the knee-jerk hostility or at least indifference to men, a host of unjust policies and practices have been put in place on university campuses, many of which not only sideline men and restrict their right to self-expression, but actually threaten their well-being and livelihoods in profound ways. Most shockingly perhaps, a zero-tolerance policy for what is called sexual misconduct, even very trivial kinds like a crude Facebook post, or sexual joke; and a manic expansion of the understanding of what constitutes rape.”
Professor Fiamengo has a Youtube series of videos called The Fiamengo Files, or TFF. This body of her work constitutes a comprehensive expose of Feminism. In her years as a student, she joined in with the Feminism-of-the-day until at some point she realized that she loved her husband, and adored her father. That epiphany opened her eyes, and she became transformed into an articulate anti-Feminist.
Victim Mentality Disorder
Janice Fiamengo identifies a Victim Mentality Disorder associated with Feminism, whereby vulnerable females are led to believe that they have been harmed in a manner entirely undeserved and for which they bear no responsibility:
- Blaming others (i.e. men) for situations that they have contributed to
- Being unwilling to take responsibility for their own actions
- Ascribing non-existent negative intentions to other people — especially men
- Believing that other people — particularly men — are generally luckier and happier
- Gaining pleasure from feeling sorry for themselves and eliciting pity from others, and therefore telling exaggerated stories about their victimization and in some cases even harming themselves to support the story.
These women tend to be self-absorbed, and often react with strident accusations of abuse if someone doubts their story, characterizing that doubt as further unjust victimization.
However, while Feminism is especially attractive to troubled females, average white girls also get pulled in by the pervasive hold that Feminism has throughout the culture, certainly over the past 40 years. Considers Fiamengo’s description of this context of a typical white girl:
The young woman is typically the beneficiary of school programs to help girls succeed all the way from primary school to post-secondary level, and she is taught almost entirely by pro-Feminist teachers, many of them women, who praise her for her insights, her social interactions, and her verbal skills. She’s told from an early age that she should assert herself, that girls and women’s’ contributions to society are worthy of special praise, and that boys and men have no right to make her feel uncomfortable in any way.
Fiamengo concludes that years-long immersion in mainstream Feminist thought has a two-fold effect:
First, it channels any feelings of dissatisfaction anxiety or resentment or self-dislike that most young people feel at one time of another into anger at male-dominated society which is seen as actively and eternally biased against women.
And second, it creates a powerful, heady and exhilarating rush of euphoria, deeply pleasurable, at perceiving oneself an innocent victim of social forces beyond one’s control.
Note that the combination of these two effects contributes to the development of the Feminist VMD even among “normal” young women; especially the belief that any difficulty in a women’s life is caused by a single malevolent source beyond her control (i.e., men), and that she is owed public sympathy and compensation.
Intersectionality
However, in the early 1990s, a big problem arose whereby women of color and some in the LGBTQ community began to accuse White females of their “privilege” because they were White. Over a period of time, with conferences, lecture tours, journal articles, and books, the concept of Intersectionality was defined, which accommodated all women, albeit in a priority order of increasing victimhood, sometimes defined by seriously convoluted calculations as to who was least privileged.
The pitiful reality is that the entire Identity Politics, Marxist oppressor/oppressed model is a vast oversimplification, as already described above. The truth is the every individual – not group – has their own set of privileges and victimizations, and no ideology on earth can fix take all the injustices in a fair and equitable manner. Better for each individual to shoulder their own load responsibly, and when possible, be of help to others.
Non-indictment of Oppression of Muslim Women
Some of the most blatant examples are found in the intersectionality involving Muslim women. One day, white Feminists are fully participating in a “slut” parade, and the next event, they’re wearing Hijabs in solidarity with their Muslim sister-victims. Note that there is no pressure put on the Muslim Feminists by the white Feminists to participate in slut parades, nor are there any rallies or demonstrations against Female genital mutilation or other physical and psychological abuse foisted on Muslim women by their Muslim male counterparts.
And in Europe, when there are repeated incidents of sexual abuse of Western women (and children) by migrant Muslim men, there is either essentially silence on the part of Feminism, or perhaps an occasional attempt to invite some of the Muslim migrant men to attend sensitivity training. Perhaps one of the most egregious and publically known scandal is the disdain of Feminism for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a true victim of Muslim violence against women, and a champion for rights of women around the world.
Critique: There is much wrong with contemporary Feminism. It is no longer about “equality” (as in the First Wave), but about special privileges for women, and exemptions from responsibility. It elevates “feelings” over facts and objective reality. It posits gender arising from culture, and not biology (see Gender and Social Constructionism). It also denigrates men (and all things biologically male), and abhors the “patriarchy”. And in academia, it trains students to be Social Justice Warriors, who then become activists to censor speech that does not conform to Feminist ideology. And the Marxist revolution that they want has precursors in the 20th century that entailed unimaginable suffering. Who believes that the Feminist revolution will finally get Marxism “right”?
An excellent analysis of the damage to Western Civilization by 2nd and 3rd wave Feminism is found in the 2001 essay by Kenneth Minogue, entitled “How Civilizations Fall”.