Questions From Readers Vol. 4

If feminism is not equality, what would you call equality? what would you classify as equality?

Equality is equality, not any human institution, whatever institution that may be. Equality can’t be claimed to be owned or exclusively represented by any human organization any more than 'love' or 'truth' or 'freedom' can.

In the realm of human relations and politics, it is more of a noble ideal than something that can ever be fully realized 100%, because everyone IS in fact different, and you can’t make two different things the same. Nor should you want to.

But if you’re asking me what I personally would classify as authentic goals towards equality, off the top of my head I would say equal opportunity (but not outcome) to work, life, love, the pursuit of happiness, etcetera etcetera. A level playing field at the starting line - no special provisions or hindrances given to anyone. Equal care, concern and support given to all members of society.

Feminism represents none of this: it has only ever lobbied for increased advantages for women, instead of for all, and not only has it never once attempted to help men in areas in which they are disadvantaged, it has repeatedly opposed any attempts by others to help them. Feminist initiatives perpetually involve things like ‘positive discrimination’ (in other words: ‘discrimination’) in order to reach a ideologically predetermined outcome, in say the numbers of female members of parliament or whatever, if those numbers are not as they like. Not only does feminism not treat men and women equally, it is by far the principal broadcasting tower of male-hating in the western world the past 50 years, to such an extent that no other political or religious movement or anything else even comes close, nothing else is even on the radar.

So, although individual feminists may themselves genuinely hope for a world in which equal care, concern and opportunities are given to everyone, feminism itself - the movement - is certainly not the best way to be trying to bring that about, and in my opinion is working towards ends that are in complete opposition to actual equality for all.

Thunderf00t on the "Ban Bossy" Insanity

Questions From Readers Vol. 3

Do you believe that it's a male dominated world?

Hmmm… That’s a trickier question than it at first appears.

Because of the universal division of labor that we as a species evolved to best survive over millions of years, males that in the stone age would have left the cave to go hunt and do the more dangerous and arduous work to best guarantee the survival and safety of the women and children still now go out into the world to provide and protect for the women and their young at least a little more than the women, for the same immutable biological reasons: endangering the women means you are endangering the children and so the survival of the human race. Men, on the other hand, still work the overwhelming majority of overtime, night shifts, hazardous and arduous work where death is a very probable risk like forestry, construction, oil rigs, fishing trawlers, electricians, anything up a ladder or hanging off the side of a building, etc.

The story of the human race is for the most part not one of male privilege but of male disposability: men’s lives are universally viewed as less valuable and important pretty much everywhere in the world, certainly everywhere in the western world, just as much today as they were ten thousand years ago. But hey, I guess that’s the patriarchy for you.

Over millennia men took responsibility for the day to day running of the mundane infrastructure of society basically because to expect a pregnant or breastfeeding woman (and remember: for the great majority of past, way before 20th century contraception, most healthy and sexually active women were either pregnant or nursing children most of their adult lives), to be hunting game, digging sewers or carrying hods full of bricks up and down three-story ladders all day every day would be inarguably cruel and a horrific misuse of a society’s resources when the other half of the population would not be doing - and could not be doing - what the female half had to.

So men took those burdens upon themselves and continued to do the majority of work outside of the home even as civilization increased in size and complexity and the work became more and more abstract and indirect: instead of going out hunting to bring back food to feed his wife and children, a man went out to work in, say, an office or a bank to bring back money to feed his wife and children.

In the days before identity politics - that is, all human history before the 20th century - we all worked together as first families, then tribes, villages, towns, counties, countries… And everyone benefited from this, but perhaps women most of all: they and their children were safe and provided for, they were not forced to go die in war or work themselves to death in the coal mines or on the railway or all the other new jobs and they had a place of honor and respect for their essential and unique contributions to society.

The rise of industrialization and then feminist lobbying changed much of that, first allowing then forcing women to enter the mills and factories and become wage slaves alongside their men. Now women have to still do the work of bearing all the children AND work as hard at a job ‘just as good as any man’ if they are to be seen as having any worth to society. Thanks, feminism.

The true nature of what feminists call ‘patriarchy’ is overwhelmingly one of male drudgery and sacrifice on behalf of women and their children, but through the filter of Patriarchy Theory this is viewed only as ‘male privilege’ and they choose only to see the glitter and shiny trappings of the very, very few men at the very top - the rest of the men are simply invisible through this set of lenses. For every man who is the head of a big successful business he started or CEO of some multinational corporation there are thousands of other men who risked everything they owned to do the same and failed, went bankrupt and now work night shift jobs to pay off their debts. Men risk more, fail more, but also succeed more than women as a whole, though that last one only by a shrinking margin now.

I guess the shorter answer is that though it still can appear to be a male dominated world, this is at best only a small aspect of how society is truly organized, and at worst a really ugly delusion being propagated by a hate-mongering ideology for political gain.

There’s a video by Alison Tieman that I think says all the above better than I just tried to in probably quite a few less words. I’d recommend everyone reading this to check it out here:

http://youtu.be/YAeSTsDc4qE

Questions From Readers Vol. 2

"I just have a quickie question, so could I remain anonymous? I know you’ve been around the feminist movement and that’s why you disagree with it’s methods and ideologies, but is it possible that there could be a new wave of feminism forming? Oh, and I was also wondering why you don’t believe in rape culture? (Or how you define it) Thanks!"

The notion of ‘rape culture’ is something invented by radical feminists from the 70s onwards with Dworkin et al saying things like All Men Are Rapists and All Heterosexual Sex Is Rape etc.

Because this is clearly insane (defining the natural act necessary for all human life as an inherently violent and despicable crime), it had to be given seeming plausibility through the inflation and manipulation of actual rape statistics, most importantly the (and I apologize if I get this wrong, it’s late I’m tired and I can’t be bothered to go look it up) Koss Report on rape, by Mary Koss in the 1980s. She did things like count women who’d had sex while intoxicated as rape, and ‘have you ever had sex when you weren’t initially in the mood?’ as rape, and something like half of all the women who explicitly said they did not think they’d ever been raped as raped, and so on. And from that came the infamous ‘1 in 4’ statistic still indignantly squawked by fresh-faced and empty-headed campus feminists to this day.

If we actually lived in a ‘Patriarchal Rape Culture’, there would be no laws against it: you’d see it happening on every street corner and nobody batting an eyelid. All depictions of rape in films and TV would have the message that it’s no big deal and that the girl should just suck it up and stop being such a crybaby. That being raped is, in fact, a silly, everyday part of life and as funny as falling off a ladder or stubbing your toe.

But of course, nothing could be further from the truth: in the west, rape is universally considered, after paedophilia and perhaps murder, the very worst crime possible, and depictions in the laws of the land, the education system, the press and other media reflect this without exception.

In fact, the only times rape is ever treated as trivial or a fit subject for humor is when it happens to men. Which, as you probably know,  is where the term ‘Rape Culture’ first originated: a 1974 documentary about the institutionally accepted prevalence of male rape in the U.S prison system. Yep, the feminists stole that too.

If all of the above does not explain why I have as little interest in a 'new wave' of feminism as I have in a new wave of National Socialism, then my reply will have to wait until some other day. But thanks for the ask, anyhoo.

Questions From Readers Vol.1

So today I got an ask from a friendly youngster who wanted to remain anonymous, but I wrote her quite a lengthy reply which might be of interest to others so I’m reproducing it here:

"Okay i went to your blog really angry at first, thinking you were against gender equality but as i read your posts i started realizing, you know? But even still, i am confused. I can understand that feminists are actually completely disregarding men’s rights, but at the same time i do think that the people who do that are misandrists. im not even sure what my question is right now, i mean one side of me is saying that feminism is an equal movement, but the other side is saying that feminism is unjust, so right now im a little at war with myself. im not sure and i hope you dont mind me asking, but what was the original idea of feminism? Did feminism become warped? What were the reasons you decided to not be a feminism? what is feminism in general? Thank You!"

Hey, it sounds to me you’re asking some very healthy questions and I don’t want to try and interfere with that to ‘convert’ you to my way of thinking or anything, but since you’re asking here’s what now seems obvious to me:

'Feminism' as a term began being used a hundred years or so ago, but really just to denote a personal belief that women should have the same opportunities as men, should be able to work and vote etc. There was no enshrined ideology beyond that, nothing was codified into any law or teaching and you didn't have to support any thing beyond that simple basic stance. What political actions there were had clear objectives that - like the female suffrage movement - ceased to exist just as soon as those specific goals were met.

Modern feminism (the so-called ‘second wave’ onwards) is a political ideology that for the most part emerged out of western university campus Marxism in the late 1960s. ‘Revolutionary’ women who couldn’t get on with the men they were supposed to be working alongside to bring down the state kept much of the same theory but just replaced the word ‘class’ with ‘gender’ and ‘patriarchy theory’ was born. In this narrative of history, all men (regardless of circumstance) are more privileged than all women (regardless of circumstance) and all societies are set up to benefit men through the oppression and exploitation of women.

Instead of seeing the universal division of labor (man goes out hunting, does the harder, more dangerous work while the woman most often stays closer to home and cares for her children) as something we evolved over hundred of thousands if not millions of year to best survive, this became framed as a relatively recent conspiracy to keep women down. To make this sound even remotely plausible, further theories had to be dreamt up of ‘matriarchal’ societies that existed before written history, maybe 8 thousand years ago. There is not today, and there never has been, even one scrap of evidence for any ‘matriarchies’ existing anywhere on planet earth. You can see already, I’m sure, how much of a leap this kind of thinking is from simply ‘the belief in equality’ the institution of feminism still publicly claims to be about, in order to retain the widest base of support it can.

To truly identify as an active feminist now, you really have to also believe in Rape Culture, Patriarchy Theory, Institutionalized Sexism, Male Privilege, the Pay Gap, The Glass Ceiling, and that we live in a rigidly enforced climate of nightmarish misogyny, all of which are demonstrably untrue.

It’s because of this that I recommend people who genuinely believe in equality for all to consider using a different term such as ‘egalitarianism’ (which actually means equality - literally - and doesn’t imply action on behalf of only one gender, the way the word ‘feminism’ does).

You don’t have to start loudly decrying feminism the way I presently do, but you might start taking people who claim to be feminist up on it when you hear them saying sexist, derogatory, scapegoating things about ‘men’ and try remind them of what your belief in feminism is, that they should be devoting equal care and concern to both males and females, if their use of the word is to mean anything.

And actually, that’s how all this started for me: I really believed feminism meant equality and that all the feminists I knew felt the same as me. But I just saw more and more things within that movement which didn’t make sense at all, just lots of bigotry and Nazi-level scapegoating of a group of people based only on their genetic code.

So then I started - not on purpose, really, it just started happening on its own - I started reversing the genders of any statement about ‘MEN’ in my head and seeing what I thought about it then, when it was being said about a woman, or ‘women’, instead. If you do this for a little while, you cannot help but immediately see that even non-feminists in our society every day make remarks just as a matter of course that - if said about women - would be considered indefensible hate and would have you punched in the head and thrown out of whatever room you were in and lose you your friends and perhaps even your job (all of this only if you were a man, of course).

Or try this: put the word ‘black’, ‘gay’, or ‘Jewish’ before the word ‘men’ and consider what you think of any feminist statement then.

Without the ideological narrative propping up and creating justification for their vitriolic behaviour, it becomes obvious that the words and actions of even moderate feminists are deeply contemptuous and hateful, and that’s why I say feminism is a hate movement. You know, because it is.

Anyhow, hope that helps a little, and even if you ignore all of it, good luck with your path, it sounds like you have your head screwed on correctly anyway and want to do your best in the world for everyone. And that’s alright with me.

Are Men Obsolete? Karen Straughan Speaks at Ryerson University

Karen Straughan and Paul Elam interviewed by The New Republic

Two fantastic interviews, that between them present the most comprehensive common sense overview of false rape accusations and feminist notions of ‘rape culture’ from a Men’s Rights perspective. Will be very interesting to see how this is written up, whether it will actually become a ‘hit piece’ and how they go about that if so, as the opinions expressed within are so sane, thoughtful, compassionate and pretty damn watertight, as far as I can see.

Highly recommended.

Joe Rogan and Stefan Molyneux on Feminism