Notes: Toward a Counter-Feminist Theory of the State

1. The State and the Social Contract—Their Purpose and Their Interdependency

The social contract is a covenant to abide by certain rules, which for convenience we may term "laws", and to relinquish what is called "sovereignty" to an entity known as "the state". The state, in theory, embodies the intention of the social contract, and adjudicates its operation in practice.

Sovereignty (when given to the state) means the power of the state to enforce the social contract, if necessary by violence. In practice, this means the power to issue final commands. Therefore, the state may be understood as the repository of the power to issue final commands in the service of the social contract.

Commands may either originate from the state, or be referred to the state for adjudication if there be any question (under law) of who can rightfully tell who to do what. But either way, the FINAL command issues from the state, as from a court of last resort.

The social contract and the state are formed together. They spring into existence at the same time by a necessity inherent to their case. They are vested in one another, they make a mutual fit with one another, and they cannot be understood apart from one another.

If the social contract is voided, then the state has neither reason nor justification to continue existing. If the state is voided, then the social contract has no objective foundation of authority. This demonstrates the interdependence of the social contract and the state: compromise either one, and you compromise both; invalidate either one, and you invalidate both. The arrow of corruption points in both directions.

If either the social contract or the state are voided then life reverts to what, for convenience, we may call the Hobbesian state of nature.

As matters historically stand, the legitimacy of the state may be called in question. I will discuss this further along.

And if the legitimacy of the state be thus problematized, so likewise the authority of the social contract. For the authority of the social contract must be objectively grounded in the state, and if the state is rotten, then the contract perforce rests upon a rotten foundation and therefore lacks objective basis.

This raises the question of political obligation. In practice, such obligation devolves to whatever social-contractual duty you would feel toward your "neighbor"—to wit, any imagined moral imperative to behave with other than complete rapacity. If the traditional social contract be fatally compromised, what basis can there possibly be for a social-contractual duty other than your own morally autarchic pledge to behave well, to be self-policing, to be a "state" in your own right and therefore sovereign?

In short, absent of a social contract and its accompanying state authority, what basis for political obligation could there be other than a MORAL LAW WITHIN YOURSELF?

That is where matters presently stand. None of this should be construed in the light of recommendation. Read it rather as a description of worldly forces and dilemmas which are growing, and gaining urgency.

2. The Extended Nature of the State

Feminist innovation has imposed upon the world a number of radically altered conditions. We, who work to bring about the neutralization of anti-male politics, are bound by the requirements of our craft to make note of such things.

Prominent among these altered conditions is THE NATURE OF THE STATE, and in consequence, the entire system of laws, customs, protocols, policies, public discourses, governing institutions and power relations which either directly or indirectly take their cue from the state.

In the aftermath of feminist innovation, the state has become feminized, by which I mean: critically infiltrated by the feminist worldview. In consequence, we may characterize the state as anti-male.

And what is the feminist worldview? Briefly: it is the radically-insinuated belief in a primordial male guilt which (according to said belief) coheres with a male-controlled power structure that is integral with the subjugation of women. This worldview is codified in the feminist intellectual construction known as patriarchy theory.

The feminist worldview is a subtext to the political drive toward female supremacy. In its totality, this worldview constitutes an organizing premise and a validating template for female supremacist action in both the microcosm and the macrocosm.

That the feminist worldview poses moral and epistemological difficulties is not lost upon the present writer. I seek, however, not to validate feminist thinking but only to explain how it operates.

The first thing to understand, is that feminism seeks moral sovereignty, meaning that the feminist system of moral evaluation would be given hegemonic privilege in all areas of life. In pursuit of that goal, the feminists have extended their revolution into every possible theatre of power—inserting their influence at the highest possible point in every conceivable chain of command, seeking to move still higher whenever the opportunity arises.

The feminist drive for power has been a twofold, forked affair. On the one side, there has been a slow, deliberate penetration of the culture at the grassroots level of everyday life, in order to capture the hearts and minds of the masses. On the other, there has been a steady infiltration into the political zone, with the design of grafting the feminist worldview onto the official apparatus of state by incremental modifications of law, public policy, and institutional structure.

The feminists have famously promoted the Orwellesque slogan that "the personal is the political". This path-breaking meme has conceptually extended the power of "the state" by making it unclear where the "personal" ends and where the "political" begins.

The "political", though variously understood in its implications, is properly the domain of the state. Specifically, it is the zone in which the state, if it has ANY right to meddle, may rightfully meddle. By contrast, the "personal" is off-limits—or so you might assume. It is the zone in which "the king and his officers care not to enter".

Enter feminism with its innovationary maxim that "the personal is the political". Think about what that means: it means radical annulment of the disjunction between the two zones. Personal life is now on a spectrum of operations indistinguishable from so-called politics, and from this it follows that the entire spectrum of human existence becomes the domain of the state...!

It is a fuzzy border trick. Being thuswise deprived of clarity, the boundary between the personal and the political becomes a nebulous, sponge-like membrane through which the political creeps, by capillary action, into the personal—which is to say that the STATE (and all that concerns it) bleeds into the zone of private existence and mingles with that zone, robbing it of its treasure, its subjectivity, its essential mystery, and most importantly its power to operate autonomously. This lays the foundation for a totalitarian social order.

Feminism is not alone in its drive to personalize the political, and politicize the personal. The political Left at large has also embraced the spirit of this maxim, and together with feminism forms a unified phalanx of intention upon this theme. The Left as a whole is marked by its hostility toward private space of any kind—of thought, of feeling, of action, or what you will.

Feminism has bootstrapped into its current position of political sovereignty in a paradoxical fashion—a kind of reverse-engineered catch-22. This has occurred in a two-stage sequence, firstly: by colonizing the state in order to make the state into a feminist (or "feminized") system, and secondly: by claiming (or implicitly assuming) moral supremacy by reason of the political fait accompli effected in the first stage.

And yet, barring its own repeated self-proclamations, feminism holds NO original patent on moral supremacy, NO officer's commission in the army of truth and virtue, and NO license to command our hearts and minds in ANY way! You wouldn't let some half-whacked preacher on a street corner tell you how to think and feel and how to organize your life, would you? But feminism has accomplished that very thing. It is running on sheer bluff, sheer baloney, brazen audacity, and the moral timidity of far too many people.

Feminism's infiltration of state apparatus on all levels, together with a simultaneous expansion of its cultural influence "on the street" (which powerfully reinforces penetration of formal state mechanisms) has brought about a condition tantamount to the annulment of church-state separation. Granted that feminism is not officially a church or a religion. But that is a mere technicality, for the actual fait accompli is materially equivalent to a theocracy cast in ideological terms—an "ideocracy", if you will.

This beach-head is now established, and the road lies open to penetration inland. And goddess theologies are in the preparation stage, destined for unveiling and wider dissemination when the time is right. Such religious formats may never penetrate the official machinery of government, but that won't be necessary. They'll need only to pervade the broader culture, whilst purely secular versions of feminism place a lockdown on laws and institutions. The two will operate efficiently in tandem, to uphold the illusion of church-state separation.

But the power of the state no longer stops at any clearly understood border. For a number of distinct fusions have occurred along with the church-state fusion lately mentioned: the political with the personal, for a prime example. Also, the feminist with the female, the feminist with the state, the secular with the spiritual, the ideological with the cultural, and others that could be cited. All of these examples interlink in a materially important way when you consider that they all directly involve, or make a potential conduit for, either feminism or state power. And these last two, as we have explained, have been so married to each other that wherever one goes the other is soon to follow.

The twofold colonization by the feminist worldview of such dualities as discussed above, must be understood in context with its colonization of the female collective. Feminism, as said, has introduced radically altered conditions into the world, and this pattern of change may be accounted as both an episteme and a legacy. The average female citizen leans against it, reclines upon it, naively quotes it, and writes checks against its presumptive moral capital in more ways than you can hope to imagine. Such female citizens are passive feminists, fish unaware of the water. The feminist worldview has saturated their existence to such a depth that they eat, drink, think, talk, transpire and excrete feminism with unfeigned innocence and complete oblivion to the source of what they are propagating.

Let us (somewhat) tie together these multifarious threads of the extended feminized state. Remember that according to feminist preaching, "the personal is the political". Consider therefore, that the state is contiguous with the political in nearly every sense, and that this inherent proximity is augmented both by feminist penetration of state apparatus AND by a closely adjoining feminist activism within the political sphere, and that given the overlapping personnel and frequent border crossings, these neighboring zones of kindred energy will quickly bridge what little gap may separate them, and merge into a seamless fabric of transmitted political effect—extending from all quarters to all quarters.

Thereafter, the political infiltrates the personal in accordance with feminist exhortation, and this is followed up closely by the pervasive spreading of the feminized state—which has only to flow in the channel that was dug for it. A feminized omni-locational superstate, or complex of feministical operations, thus colonizes all socio-political levels and reaches into a variety of cultural niches and micro-domains, seeking to extend itself ever more and more.

This feministical operations complex, which we have elsewhere written about, is given a conveniently abbreviated name: the femplex. And the nature of the femplex is totalitarian—a fact that will become more evident, and more difficult to oppose in practice, as time goes on.

This expanded "state", being feminized, is by its nature the ENEMY of all male citizens, and to lend it any moral support is to be a self-betrayer, complicit in your own oppression as a male citizen.

3. What This Means for Men

Reverting now to simpler terms of discussion, the case is this: feminism has wrapped itself in the mantle of the state, and of a variety of state-like institutions whose authority is difficult to contravene, in order to gain investiture in the sovereignty of the state, and by so doing secure its OWN sovereignty—thereby gaining gravitas and mana against those who might tend to disrespect it.

Now, the "sovereign", according to long-established understanding, must ground itself in the "legitimate". Such, traditionally, have been the rules of the road. But in the end, feminism has succeeded only in tainting the state, and de-legitimizing the state, and by that means cutting off the legs of any pretense to sovereignty that it (feminism) may wish to assert.

Thus feminism, in truth, stands only upon its original self-proclamation—which, of itself, can never boost feminism above the primeval mud of contenders. For the state, having been rendered illegitimate by feminism itself, cannot legitimately serve feminism as a booster seat. The state is no longer a thing apart from feminism, but rather a part of it.

Accordingly, any investiture of feminism in the purported sovereignty of the state adds up to a feminist sovereignty by self-investiture—which in the end means that the feminist world-view has no sovereignty whatever. It has no purchase, no traction, no inherent mindshare entitlement, no rightful hegemonic status in the realm of public discourse. And so we are in no way bound (legally, morally or otherwise) to endorse the feminist worldview, or acquiesce in it, any more than we are bound to convert to religion X or religion Y.

And the state, being critically infiltrated by the feminist worldview, now upholds its purported sovereignty solely by virtue of its assumed monopoly on violence—to wit, that persons, styled "officers of the law", are franchised by the state to make free with this monopoly under stated conditions, bidding you step entirely within a barred enclosure. Simply stated, the state, being destitute of legitimate authority, henceforth holds merely a de facto power to compel the perfunctory obedience of those (such as the present writer) who deem discretion the better part of valor. (No, I don't play macho games with cops—although I don't rule out the possibility of some day doing so!)

Given that the state is tainted by the feminist worldview and therefore hostile to men, it no longer has the moral authority (read: legitimacy) to command the respect of any male citizen, and any such citizen is free, at least in his sovereign heart and mind, to go his own way according to the dictates of his prudentiality—to wit, the Philosopher's Golden Highway of Not Getting Caught. I say this not prescriptively, but rather upon the foundation of simple, objective FACT. It is a fait accompli: love it or hate it, but this is now the way things ARE, and it would be fatuous to pretend otherwise.

If the state has no legitimacy, it has no sovereignty. And if it has no sovereignty it has no right to command me, but only the power to coerce me. Hence, the state has no legal or moral authority to make me act either legally or morally toward women—or for that matter, anybody else! Finally, the only sovereignty which governs me is the moral law within me—whatever shape, fair or foul, this may assume. Given the invalidation of the state, such a sovereignty constitutes (by default) the only possible basis for ANY social-contractual bond. I say "bond", for in the nature of the case it cannot properly be termed a duty.

Feminism has done away with the former system of life between the sexes, which was grounded in a social ecology of reciprocal obligation. By grafting itself onto the machinery of state, feminism has effectively voided this former system as a social contract, and replaced it with an advocacy system which seeks to secure the interests of women in a one-sided manner at best oblivious to the welfare of men, and at worst actively hostile to it. The feminist system, over the years, has accumulated certain consequences—a negative energy if you will, which cannot fail to be discharged eventually.

The division of male and female into separate political interest groups is now an historically objective reality. I am not proposing or recommending such a thing, and I am certainly not celebrating it. I am simply directing attention to the established factuality of it. It is here now and it is real, and to bury our heads in the sand and pretend otherwise would be sophomoric, not to say foolhardy.

In so asserting, I merely acknowledge the fait accompli of history. The apparatus of state being tainted by the feminist worldview, it follows that any social contract consistent with this tainted state is tainted in the same measure. And such a social contract, being the excrescence of a feminized state, can do naught other than to enforce female supremacism and anti-male politics. As a man you might submit to such a contract willingly, or you might live in the simpletonian illusion that some earlier contract still applies, but either way you would submit to a regime that treats men as a class of slaves or a class of dogs.

And to be a slave or a dog, means you are less than a citizen, or less than human. In both cases, you are less than a man. So tell me brotherman, do you feel bound to such a social contract? Or do you feel bound to rip it in pieces and toss it to the wind?

Think carefully about this. And know the terrible freedom that beckons you, and beckons us all.