20th Century Notions Of Gender

Reading the latest, as always, superbly concise & thought-provoking post by The Damned Olde Man I was struck by how good an overview of the 20th century's conceptions of gender it is, how the pendulum swinging back & forth through the 1950's & 60's - the rabid anticommunism of the McCarthy era leading to rebellious youths embracing of Marxist theory a generation later - ended up with the widespread normalization of first Marxist then Feminist thought. By the mid-1980's feminism's bizarre conspiracy theory of history became that of society at large.

But the other thought that strikes me about this is that the pendulum has kept swinging & that seems to now have changed: The kind of discussion we are now having about these matters in the manosphere & increasingly in mainstream media simply couldn't have been had anywhere 25 years ago. I hadn't really noted it as that before - the turn of the century being the actual cut-off point of the hold of that ideology - but it seems to me right now that that is the case. Feminism is so 20th century.

That feels quite revelatory to me. I hope TDOM doesn't mind me reproducing so much of his piece here, out of context - I was going to just use a paragraph or two but it works much better as a whole. The full article can be found here.

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I’ve often viewed feminism as neither left nor right by nature. Instead it is, as many feminists freely admit, a gender issue and there are members of both genders on either side of the political spectrum. 

I think early feminists adopted the leftist view as a matter of strategy and for recruitment purposes. The Marxist approach to economics was easily adaptable to cultural practices. All it took to draw in membership was to convince people that women are disadvantaged. With societal structures predominantly populated with men, this was easy enough to do. The term “patriarchy” was redefined and used for this purpose. first wave feminists laid the groundwork and second wave feminists became the foot soldiers.

Aligning themselves with cultural Marxist idealism served another purpose as well. The communist witch hunts of the McCarthy era resulted in a popularization of Marxism during which time, it became chic to be openly Marxist and difficult, if not destructive, for opponents of Marxism to speak out against them; the fear of being identified as a “hatemonger” keeping opponents in line.

At first, feminism was only a part of the liberal movement of the 60s but by the mid-80s it had eclipsed the movement itself and liberalism had become more or less synonymous with feminism to the point that one could not be leftist and not be feminist.

On the right, the movement was more subtle. Women were already being pedestalized by white knight chivalry as standard practice. The leftist acceptance of the women as victim model was simply transferred to the right. One did not have to adopt the value system to accept the model. In fact, on the right women were already seen as helpless. All that was needed was to turn “helpless” into “victim.” The second wave feminist could fight the battles and the conservative feminist would move out of the way and then reap the rewards.

The chivalrist ideal was prevalent on the left as well. For more liberal chivalrists it was easy to accept feminists because of their Marxist position. They simply incorporated feminism into their own leftist idealism and became collaborationists (manginas as they are sometimes called). The right wing chivalrist (the white knight) picked up on the woman as victim mantra and rushed to her rescue.

Feminism transcends left and right. It is neither and it is both. It favors wealth and cultural redistribution from male to female while seeking to establish a totalitarian police state to control the “oppressor class.” To that end it has abandoned the liberal ideal of personal freedom and liberty for all, in favor of personal freedom and liberty for the new feminist oppressor class while restricting liberty and freedom for the new oppressed class (male). It seeks to replace what it calls patriarchy with matriarchy (which can now be equated with female supremacism). Thus while claiming to hold the liberal ideal of “equality” feminism has in reality adopted the conservative ideal of a ruling class superior to that of the working class and with more rights and privilege and the full force of the state to enforce that privilege.