Is Feminism a Hate Movement?
To remove man-hating from feminism would be to extract the DNA nucleus from a living cell, the fuel rod from a reactor, the teeth from a rottweiler. I would assert that man-hating is feminism's moral center of gravity, and that without man-hating or at least some degree of disaffection toward males, feminism could not logically continue to exist—it would flounder without purpose, and disintegrate.
If you give the matter a little thought (and I have given it a LOT), you will see that no other theory so elegantly accounts for the observable facts of the case.
Let's start with some basics. Would anybody dispute that feminism is a socio-political movement on behalf of women? Would anybody dispute that feminism proffers a particular analysis of man-woman relations? Would anybody dispute that feminist analysis holds women to be globally disadvantaged, by some objective and quantifiable standard of measurement, in comparison with men? Finally, would anybody dispute that feminist analysis concludes an element of male authorship in the comparative disadvantagement of women?
Yes, feminism is a women's advocacy movement which identifies men as the wellspring of certain difficulties said to afflict women. This would both summarize and make reply to the verbose paragraph above.
And given that men are said to be the wellspring of women's difficulties, are we to believe that no opinion about men as men ever infiltrates feminist thinking on any level? Does any self-admitted feminist, having once identified "men" as the source of women's troubles, go serenely about her business harboring no strictly personal opinion about "men"? I'd call it a considerable stretch, to believe any such thing.
Admittedly, I fashion my argument upon probabilities. But they are compelling probabilities. I seriously doubt that any better can be offered.
I'll have no truck with the "I blame patriarchy" cop-out. This is simply a way of postponing the issue by obfuscating it, since the phrase is so fuzzy it is useless for normal purposes - although useful indeed for underhanded purposes! But patriarchy is plainly understood as a uniquely male institution; men created it and men keep it rolling, or so the story goes. So it is mighty difficult to understand how a person could "blame" patriarchy without "blaming" men in the very same swoop. In my opinion, it savors far too much of that notorious mind pretzel called "loving the sinner but hating the sin."
Let us enquire further into probabilities. Feminism identifies "men" as the source of women's difficulties. So ask yourself, what class of women might be drawn to such a social movement in disproportionate numbers? Would such a movement attract women who get along well with men and enjoy their company? All right, possibly a few. Just possibly. But would such women compose the bulk of the membership? Where do you suppose the probability lies in such a case? Would such a movement attract women who do not personally see "men" as a source of difficulty in their lives? Is this probable? Is this plausible? Is this credible? Does this FIT?
Hate is a very strong word, and it signifies a very strong thing. It is hard to imagine just how powerful hate can be. Do you think you can imagine it? Well, the chances are that you are nowhere near, and have no idea. It can get even worse, far worse, than you can imagine!
Yes, it is all on a spectrum. It is all on a continuum. "Hate" can be bad, and it can always get badder! Even to the point where the hater implodes into a black hole, and pops clean out of the moral universe, and sucks as much as possible along for the ride.
All right, maybe the word hate is not the wine for all occasions. I like the word disaffection. It is more inclusive than hate because it embraces all shades of disliking without privileging the extreme. Now, a social movement such as feminism needn't hope to exclude the element of disaffection. I have explained the reason for this already, but now we must proceed to the next stage of examination.
If the disaffection spectrum begins with mild disenchantment and progresses by shades clear up to unmitigated loathing, and if feminism incorporates at least SOME of this spectrum, then we should pause to wonder exactly how much of the spectrum is thus incorporated, and precisely how far it reaches in the direction of uncompounded malevolence. How high on the hate scale does feminism's emotional aura actually extend? Where does it stop?
Again, consider the likelihoods. If the feminist disaffection spectrum reached no higher than a mild and possibly sporadic disenchantment—an occasional mood, as it were—then feminism would very plainly lack the sustaining force to be a viable women's advocacy movement. There is simply no way it could gather the necessary motivation and momentum. There would be neither snow for a snowball, nor any appreciable hill to roll it down for the accretion of mass and accumulation of velocity. In a word, feminism would be a non-starter.
A thing like feminism requires a mighty fund of passion both to launch itself and to keep itself running. Tepid feeling will not suffice—it needs to be robust and vehement, and it needs to gain validation through a political analysis that will both justify the original feeling, and contribute to the growth of that feeling by the use of a self-fulfilling feedback loop.
The world has always contained a certain number of people—sociopathic or what-have-you—who for various reasons don't like the opposite sex. When a thing like feminism appears, proffering a political analysis of sexual relations casting men in the role of miscreants, it is easy to foretell the response man-hating women will make to this. Clearly there will be some exceptions, but I feel confident most such women will be on it like bees on a honeycomb. Or flies on shit, if you prefer. There's nothing quite like finding an analysis to uphold your attitude. And the documentary record indeed bears out that early second-wave feminists in the radical 1960s were a vehement, passionate lot. They were not wishy-washy. They were not tepid. They were not mildly disenchanted with men.
They were by no stretch of the imagination living on the low end of the disaffection spectrum. More significantly, they were not merely attracted to something which somebody else had created. No, they were present at the very inception; they themselves were the creators and early architects of the movement. Without them, or people like them, the "movement" would never have started moving in the first place!
Nor would the movement be moving still today, if people like them were not down in the engine room stoking the boiler, or up in the pilot house turning the wheel and watching the binnacle. They are the dynamo, and if we should replace them with a crew that was just a shade less disaffected, the new dynamo would be a shade less dynamic, as would the entire movement. It would be just a shade less inclined to bulldoze over obstacles, a shade more inclined to call it a day earlier in the day, and a shade more inclined to lower the bar of compromise overall.
Dial this down shade by shade and watch the movement grow more and more anemic. Eventually, "feminism" would be wavering in its convictions, sleeping late, and frittering away its dwindling energy on matters increasingly peripheral and unfocussed. In other words, feminism would become a non-entity and a non-movement.
So, we have shown that feminism offers an ideological interpretation of female disadvantages in life. We have alluded to the feminist belief that female disadvantage originates from a male-driven power conspiracy, and asserted that such a belief is not feasible to uphold absent a pejorative evaluation of men both individually and as a group. From this we have concluded that some varying degree of personal disaffection toward men cannot be absent from the minds of most feminists, and therefore cannot be absent from the movement as a whole. Finally, we have made the case that feminism's viability as an advocacy movement is directly indexed to the degree of disaffection toward men found among the movement's membership, with greater viability correlated to greater disaffection.
Or as stated early in this article: man-hating is feminism's moral center of gravity; without man-hating or at least some degree of disaffection with males, feminism could not logically continue to exist.
Milder forms of feminism do indeed exist. And so do milder feminists. But they are not the vanguard. They are not the cutting edge. They are not the powerhouse. However, they work diligently to secure advantages for women like scavengers in the aftermath of the main assault, once the enemy has been routed. They are the petty clerks, the bureaucrats, the carpetbaggers, who move into the occupied territory and secure the administration of it. It is part of their job to seem unthreatening, which is easy when somebody else does the dirty work. Their distinguishing feature is that of taking for granted what has been ideologically instilled into the general culture, and taking their ease against the moral support cushion this affords them. Left entirely to themselves, they would have neither the ambition to initiate a political movement, nor the drive to keep it operating in a political capacity. Yet they have a moral investiture in feminism's world-view, which proposes male guilt as an explanatory model, and by this investiture they plant themselves within feminism's web of misandric operations.
It is easy to see that if man-hating disappeared from the world, feminism would neither serve any purpose nor have any means to continue operating. But feminism is still operating, and if you are male you are not amiss to suspect that feminism means to harm you. So under the circumstances, you don't owe feminism any favors. Nor do you owe women any favors under the moral banner of feminism!
Yes, I call feminism a hate movement. Whosoever desires, may undertake to convince me that feminism is a love movement.
If you give the matter a little thought (and I have given it a LOT), you will see that no other theory so elegantly accounts for the observable facts of the case.
Let's start with some basics. Would anybody dispute that feminism is a socio-political movement on behalf of women? Would anybody dispute that feminism proffers a particular analysis of man-woman relations? Would anybody dispute that feminist analysis holds women to be globally disadvantaged, by some objective and quantifiable standard of measurement, in comparison with men? Finally, would anybody dispute that feminist analysis concludes an element of male authorship in the comparative disadvantagement of women?
Yes, feminism is a women's advocacy movement which identifies men as the wellspring of certain difficulties said to afflict women. This would both summarize and make reply to the verbose paragraph above.
And given that men are said to be the wellspring of women's difficulties, are we to believe that no opinion about men as men ever infiltrates feminist thinking on any level? Does any self-admitted feminist, having once identified "men" as the source of women's troubles, go serenely about her business harboring no strictly personal opinion about "men"? I'd call it a considerable stretch, to believe any such thing.
Admittedly, I fashion my argument upon probabilities. But they are compelling probabilities. I seriously doubt that any better can be offered.
I'll have no truck with the "I blame patriarchy" cop-out. This is simply a way of postponing the issue by obfuscating it, since the phrase is so fuzzy it is useless for normal purposes - although useful indeed for underhanded purposes! But patriarchy is plainly understood as a uniquely male institution; men created it and men keep it rolling, or so the story goes. So it is mighty difficult to understand how a person could "blame" patriarchy without "blaming" men in the very same swoop. In my opinion, it savors far too much of that notorious mind pretzel called "loving the sinner but hating the sin."
Let us enquire further into probabilities. Feminism identifies "men" as the source of women's difficulties. So ask yourself, what class of women might be drawn to such a social movement in disproportionate numbers? Would such a movement attract women who get along well with men and enjoy their company? All right, possibly a few. Just possibly. But would such women compose the bulk of the membership? Where do you suppose the probability lies in such a case? Would such a movement attract women who do not personally see "men" as a source of difficulty in their lives? Is this probable? Is this plausible? Is this credible? Does this FIT?
Hate is a very strong word, and it signifies a very strong thing. It is hard to imagine just how powerful hate can be. Do you think you can imagine it? Well, the chances are that you are nowhere near, and have no idea. It can get even worse, far worse, than you can imagine!
Yes, it is all on a spectrum. It is all on a continuum. "Hate" can be bad, and it can always get badder! Even to the point where the hater implodes into a black hole, and pops clean out of the moral universe, and sucks as much as possible along for the ride.
All right, maybe the word hate is not the wine for all occasions. I like the word disaffection. It is more inclusive than hate because it embraces all shades of disliking without privileging the extreme. Now, a social movement such as feminism needn't hope to exclude the element of disaffection. I have explained the reason for this already, but now we must proceed to the next stage of examination.
If the disaffection spectrum begins with mild disenchantment and progresses by shades clear up to unmitigated loathing, and if feminism incorporates at least SOME of this spectrum, then we should pause to wonder exactly how much of the spectrum is thus incorporated, and precisely how far it reaches in the direction of uncompounded malevolence. How high on the hate scale does feminism's emotional aura actually extend? Where does it stop?
Again, consider the likelihoods. If the feminist disaffection spectrum reached no higher than a mild and possibly sporadic disenchantment—an occasional mood, as it were—then feminism would very plainly lack the sustaining force to be a viable women's advocacy movement. There is simply no way it could gather the necessary motivation and momentum. There would be neither snow for a snowball, nor any appreciable hill to roll it down for the accretion of mass and accumulation of velocity. In a word, feminism would be a non-starter.
A thing like feminism requires a mighty fund of passion both to launch itself and to keep itself running. Tepid feeling will not suffice—it needs to be robust and vehement, and it needs to gain validation through a political analysis that will both justify the original feeling, and contribute to the growth of that feeling by the use of a self-fulfilling feedback loop.
The world has always contained a certain number of people—sociopathic or what-have-you—who for various reasons don't like the opposite sex. When a thing like feminism appears, proffering a political analysis of sexual relations casting men in the role of miscreants, it is easy to foretell the response man-hating women will make to this. Clearly there will be some exceptions, but I feel confident most such women will be on it like bees on a honeycomb. Or flies on shit, if you prefer. There's nothing quite like finding an analysis to uphold your attitude. And the documentary record indeed bears out that early second-wave feminists in the radical 1960s were a vehement, passionate lot. They were not wishy-washy. They were not tepid. They were not mildly disenchanted with men.
They were by no stretch of the imagination living on the low end of the disaffection spectrum. More significantly, they were not merely attracted to something which somebody else had created. No, they were present at the very inception; they themselves were the creators and early architects of the movement. Without them, or people like them, the "movement" would never have started moving in the first place!
Nor would the movement be moving still today, if people like them were not down in the engine room stoking the boiler, or up in the pilot house turning the wheel and watching the binnacle. They are the dynamo, and if we should replace them with a crew that was just a shade less disaffected, the new dynamo would be a shade less dynamic, as would the entire movement. It would be just a shade less inclined to bulldoze over obstacles, a shade more inclined to call it a day earlier in the day, and a shade more inclined to lower the bar of compromise overall.
Dial this down shade by shade and watch the movement grow more and more anemic. Eventually, "feminism" would be wavering in its convictions, sleeping late, and frittering away its dwindling energy on matters increasingly peripheral and unfocussed. In other words, feminism would become a non-entity and a non-movement.
So, we have shown that feminism offers an ideological interpretation of female disadvantages in life. We have alluded to the feminist belief that female disadvantage originates from a male-driven power conspiracy, and asserted that such a belief is not feasible to uphold absent a pejorative evaluation of men both individually and as a group. From this we have concluded that some varying degree of personal disaffection toward men cannot be absent from the minds of most feminists, and therefore cannot be absent from the movement as a whole. Finally, we have made the case that feminism's viability as an advocacy movement is directly indexed to the degree of disaffection toward men found among the movement's membership, with greater viability correlated to greater disaffection.
Or as stated early in this article: man-hating is feminism's moral center of gravity; without man-hating or at least some degree of disaffection with males, feminism could not logically continue to exist.
Milder forms of feminism do indeed exist. And so do milder feminists. But they are not the vanguard. They are not the cutting edge. They are not the powerhouse. However, they work diligently to secure advantages for women like scavengers in the aftermath of the main assault, once the enemy has been routed. They are the petty clerks, the bureaucrats, the carpetbaggers, who move into the occupied territory and secure the administration of it. It is part of their job to seem unthreatening, which is easy when somebody else does the dirty work. Their distinguishing feature is that of taking for granted what has been ideologically instilled into the general culture, and taking their ease against the moral support cushion this affords them. Left entirely to themselves, they would have neither the ambition to initiate a political movement, nor the drive to keep it operating in a political capacity. Yet they have a moral investiture in feminism's world-view, which proposes male guilt as an explanatory model, and by this investiture they plant themselves within feminism's web of misandric operations.
It is easy to see that if man-hating disappeared from the world, feminism would neither serve any purpose nor have any means to continue operating. But feminism is still operating, and if you are male you are not amiss to suspect that feminism means to harm you. So under the circumstances, you don't owe feminism any favors. Nor do you owe women any favors under the moral banner of feminism!
Yes, I call feminism a hate movement. Whosoever desires, may undertake to convince me that feminism is a love movement.
posted by Fidelbogen at 7:24 PM
10 Comments:
Hi Fidelbogen,
You articulate your ideas extremely well. Perhaps you're familiar with David Byron. His thoughts on feminism as a hate movement are also helpful.
You can link to his article on the subject at: http://members.tripod.com/feministhate/index.htm
His other essays are also of considerable value, particularly those on the 19th century equalitarian feminists.
I would like to exchange links with you.
Yes, Davout, I am familiar with David Byron -- although it has been a while. Thanks for refreshing my memory with the link!
Anyway, yes by all means, go ahead and link to me, and I'll install your URL here too, probably tomorrow. (It's late now...)
Cheers! :)
Late to the party, but I must say, you are much more eloquent than most of us in expressing disenchantment with what organized feminism has become. So much for the ideology of the late 1960's!
A challenge I have issued to others: go to the NOW (National Organization of Women), look at their own self-stated core guiding principles or whatever they call them, and deconstruct them, considering not the rhetoric and ideology, but their implementation in reality. Show me one of them that qualifies as a pro-social force worthy of a social movement that seems to claim so much self-righteous high ground.
Very good work here. If Betty Freidan felt disenchantment with her cooped-up life as a homemaker, yes, there were sexual, personal, and social barriers to her going out and finding meaningful employment. Her strides in that regard are noble, and came very, very quickly. But at what larger cost, when considering the movement as a whole?
Slogans are essential to this movement. You realize quite lucidly how "blaming the patriarchy" is a scapegoat propaganda technique. I've seen the "patriarchy" blamed for just about everything. And while this is happening, take a look at how the feminist movement has hi-jacked critical areas such as family courts, domestic violence legislation, and suppressed meaningful discussion of the social consequences of divorce-on-demand and abortion-on-demand culture "advancements."
Feminism is a tool created by Foundation heads (Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie) who worked the "movement" via useful dupes like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. Too much effort is placed on Analyzing this "movement"; it's inconsistencies, it's stated goals etc. There is nothing to analyze. It's purpose is to breakdown the existing social order so the "state" (or in this case the owners of the world's central banks) can replace men and women in all areas (sex roles). The state will replace men as the protector and provider to women, the state will replace women as mother and raise the kids, and so forth.
This of course is accomplished not by consensus but by force- lawsuits, indoctrination in schools, ethics departments in companies and backed up by a tidal wave of propaganda- tv, radio, movies, comic books etc..
There is a ruling Patriarchy in the world, and they are the ones who created feminism for the common man and woman- Divide and conquer and order out of chaos.
@Anon, immediately prior:
Yup! I've stated rather the same in the following post:
http://tinyurl.com/6kt42y
. . . and elsewhere on the blog.
Yes, I agree that so much of what has gone through history has been orchestrated by those eternally waiting in the wings for an opportunity to profit from mistrust. Of late my thoughts have evolved to more meta analyzing of modern feminism and I now agree that endless analyses, no matter, how insightful, are more or less useless. When there is money to be swindled or power to be usurped, someone will always be there to start a 'movement' to get it. And, let's not fool ourselves, this is a woman's game as much as it a man's. Does anyone think that Oprah Winfrey, Benezir Bhutto, or Indira Gandhi (no actual relation to the real Gandhi) were/are anything more than power mad people? There quite simply are the Christs, Mohammeds, Ghandhis, and Mother Teresas, and then there are the rest of us. The only way to control radical feminism or radical anything is to have a balance of power--a balance of terror, if you will. When you work in the adult world for long enough you notice an interesting thing about power and victimization: When there is a rule preventing an abuse of power those in power simply wait for another opportunity. And for this I give feminists and the race movement great credit, even if they ended up taking it too far. They helped shape rules and laws to protect people that had many spinoff benefits for others--even men. So, in the small picture men must stand up for themselves in courtrooms and leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of self-actualization through education of themselves and their children. The other counter-force to the Nazi-like advance of feminism is that our children will sooner or later see what a miserable existence feminist culture has not only created for them, but also solipsistically and arrogantly expected them to unquestioningly follow. Young females attack and harshly criticize men in order to prove that women don't really need men to live up to their potential. I agree that families and men mostly tend to hold women back, but then women have to face up to the fact that they are making choices that they themselves have to be responsible for. In a more general sense, no one deals with the fact that if we had chosen to have a fair culture, we'd have it. Part of this choosing not to choose is that women refuse to face their deep insecurity about having power. Women feel so guilty about possibly making mistakes, and then mistakenly (or conveniently) blame men for this insecurity. Is this me just being afraid of 'strong' women. No, it is not. That fact is that if women really believed in such radical politics there would be no need to have everyone 'agree'. I personally can't imagine a more boring existence than to be married to a woman who isn't her own person, but being her own person need not come at the sacrifice of my dignity or our children's happy childhoods. We have now had more than 20 years of the 'utopia' of women increasingly in power. As a result of radical feminists' rapacious quest for power and their indoctrination of other sectors of society to follow suit, our culture has morally and socially collapsed. Yes, they were helped by the increasingly docile US male population and used by super powerful magnates who look at the world as one economy which they manipulate at will. Radical feminism will die out because, at some point, feminists will have no one to blame but themselves and try as they might, the problems that they have created will simply be too big to rationalize, or sweep under the rug. The superpower thugs will sink back into the darkness and wait for the next opportunity, which will no doubt appear shortly.
@anonymous:
Comments left on ancient posts deep in the archives tend to gather dust and not be seen. So, I will post this comment topside for the enjoyment of CF readers. . .
Eliminate the mindless hatred for men, for children, for society, for life itself, and you eliminate feminism. Eliminate the lies and infantile emotionalism and you eliminate feminism.
Without hatred and lies there is no feminism.
For All you feminist UK sextoy needs click here.
Thank you SO much for this great analysis ! I know I'm a few years late but I'm currently enrolled in a Women's Studies course that seems to be a Feminism 101 in disguise and I was double checking my thought process which is basically exactly what you boiled down.
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