What's wrong with feminism #1

As I was following a discussion on abortion that morphed into a debate about feminism, I could not resist chiming in with my standard mantra about the evils of cultural Marxism. Naturally, I was asked: What's wrong with feminism? It started with this statement:

“In our society, we have accepted the role of women in the workplace. That role/lifestyle/set of opportunities in life is/are made more possible by the woman having the same sexual freedom as men. Sexual mistakes happen. In order to "level the life playing field", our society has provided ways for a woman to do just that. This does not mean she must/will never have children - just on her terms and in concert with a life partner of mutual choice. That's an equal relationship. That is a cornerstone of our modern society.”

That was a challenge that needed an answer. My short answer was pointing out that there was never to be a level playing field, that we will never be on equal footing. Women were sold on the stupid Marxist idea of equal outcomes which is killing the family, destroying reproduction rates and in the end will bring down Western civilization itself. Here is my full answer, part one. As I said, the conversation started with abortion, so it is no wonder that feminism got into it via the issues of “reproductive rights”. The comments in the discussion represented perfectly the generic view of feminism: A call to men to be nicer to women. That we should wash the dishes and change the diapers more often, let them try to be like us when it comes to promiscuity and if a “sexual mistake happens”, let them just kill that baby. If they want to keep it, men will collectively finance it. If they want ‘equality’, let’s give it to them. It’s only fair. Men’s attitude towards feminism is a mix of chivalry, complacency and a ton of virtue signaling. We should be nice, we can afford it and it makes us look good on the top of it. It is just like the tacit support for the welfare state. Sing along: ||: we should be nice, we can afford it…..:|| So here we are. What’s wrong with feminism? In one word: Marxism. And I am not the only one saying this. The essence of Marxism is the quote on his grave:

The essence of feminism is best formulated by Catherine MacKinnon:

The essence of ANY cause the leftists embrace is a drive toward the same goal. Environmentalism? Naomi Klein wrote a book explaining why and how communism is the only answer to its problems. But I digress. Let’s focus on Marxism. The point of the Marx quote above is the idea that the world is not what it is, but what we want it to be. The belief that reality is irrelevant, truth and history are irrelevant because we can subject anything to our will. The only thing that matters is what we want and the political power required to get it. Another central thesis of Marxism is that everything in this world is a zero-sum game. That in every human interaction there must be a winner and a loser. An oppressor and an oppressed. An exploiter and an exploited. Since these relationships are predicated on coercion, the only way they can be changed is through political violence. The aim of Marxism anywhere it is practiced is the creation of a world of its vision through the destruction of everything that does not conform to it. The vision may be fuzzy, but the destruction is very real. Marxists are unbeatable when it comes to destroying things, not so much when it comes to creating them. Marxism is all about politics and power and so are all the movements it inspires. First wave feminism was mostly about civil rights, but second and third wave or post feminism are all about gaining political power for its own sake, where actual women, just like the ‘proletariat’ for the communists, are seldom more than brainwashed pawns of a power-hungry ideological elite. But let’s be a little more specific. The insanity of feminist claims and demands are discussed widely, so I will not spend too much time on them. I will, however, spend a little more time on the aspects I do not see discussed much: the reasons for the Marxist misrepresentation of history and the statist encouragement of feminism.

The denial of reality

Feminism starts with the denial of reality, science, biology, psychology, logic, and even the concept of evolution. Let me be blunt: men and women are different. They have different biological functions and their bodies, their brains, their personalities adapted to the requirements of those different biological functions. Men and women have different abilities, attitudes, desires, and proclivities. They have fundamentally different reproductive strategies: men want to spread their seed far and wide, while women want to find the best possible male to share genes with. These differences did not appear out of nowhere, they are the results of millions of years of evolution. Gestating and nursing females are more vulnerable than the males who are supposed to protect and to provide for them. Dismissing our evolutionary history is wrong. Pretending that the differences have no consequences is wrong. The things feminists are fighting against are not oppression and the patriarchy, but the competitive disadvantages of their feminine nature. Just like all other communists, feminists are fighting reality itself. It is a battle they cannot win, but they can easily destroy the societies that are willing to accommodate their demands.

The distortion of history

Marx and his followers believe that human interactions are zero sum games. One person’s gain always has to come at the expense of another. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” There is no such thing as peaceful cooperation or mutually beneficial exchanges. While Marx did not have much to say about feminism as such, his ideas were adapted by the cultural Marxists. What was left out of the age-old struggle against the oppressive patriarchy? Just the facts of life.

Existence in primitive and agricultural societies has always been a cooperation between the sexes. Women spent most of their adult lives being pregnant, nursing and taking care of toddlers. Human societies evolved to institutionally protect the more vulnerable half of society. Pregnant women were not only weaker and slower than men, they were also the custodians of the survival of the tribe. If anything, men were worse off than women. For most of history, women were seen as an essential resource to society, while men were disposable. This sociobiological fact also explains a number of differences between men and women. All the differences on all the bell-curves. IQ is just one of them. Mostly men claim the prizes and mostly men pay the cost of failure. Nature can afford to gamble with men, because (let me repeat it): men are disposable. The burden imposed by nature on women has not been lightened up until the later stages of industrialization. The material wealth created improved living conditions and introduced a slew of technologies that drastically reduced child mortality and the overall burden that reality placed upon women in “all hitherto existing society”. Strangely, women did not even realize that they were oppressed until the cultural Marxists explained it to them. All throughout history, different cultures found different arrangements to maintain themselves and to grow. Gender relations were an important part of any of these arrangements, which weren’t any better or worse than other social arrangements within those societies. Kings fought wars for the protection, queens were producing heirs for the continuity of the kingdom. And so did the common men and women. It could be argued, and in fact it is in Is There Anything Good About Men, that men are the exploited sex. It could also be argued, that as a consequence, controlling the natural reproductive strategies of women is absolutely necessary for the existence of civilization. Feminist societies self-destruct. Challenge anybody to point you to one that does not, or has, not.

The state trap

Let’s go back to the quote that I was reacting to. “Sexual mistakes happen. In order to "level the life playing field", our society has provided ways for a woman to do just that. […] That is a cornerstone of our modern society.” We created a world where women are freed from the consequences of their “sexual mistakes”. Is that a good thing? Freeing people from the consequences of their mistakes? How about subsidizing and compounding their mistakes? I am not talking about taxpayer funded abortion, but about glorified and taxpayer supported single motherhood. There are countless studies to show that it is bad for children. But it was not ‘society’ that did that. It was the state. As the inventions of men liberated women from many a chore of housework, as life expectancy and overall health improved, women suddenly found themselves with some free time on their hand. As people moved away from the farms, women were able to enter the industrial labor market. With the right to vote they gained the power to influence politics. The state trap has two aspects: the growth of the state requires more taxpayers and the state needs more voters who will vote for a bigger state. This can be achieved by creating ever increasing dependence. The state has an ever-increasing dependence on the votes of the dependent classes: women, ethnic minorities and government bureaucrats. If only unmarried women voted in the 2016 US elections, Hillary Clinton would have won the electoral votes 514 to 18. See some more interesting numbers in my post about it. Socialist redistributive states invariably end up in an inescapable death spiral. For the most recent examples, see Zimbabwe or Venezuela. At this point, one of the strongest drivers pushing most developed countries into that spiral is the female vote. I do not blame women for this, they are just acting on their nature mixed with self-destructive, perverse incentives of the state and toxic feminist ideology. I will talk about some particular issues in my next post.