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Empowering
Men:
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Sex, Lies &
Feminism by Peter Zohrab
Chapter 14: The Frontman Fallacy
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1999 Version
"The Frontman Fallacy" is a term I invented
myself. What happened was that someone on the Usenet newsgroup
(i.e. discussion group) alt.mens-rights asked for help
in devising a term. The term was to encapsulate the wrongheadedness
of a common Feminist assumption. This was the assumption that the fact
that men held most of the positions of power in the world meant that
men ruled the world principally for their own benefit -- i.e. they "oppressed"
women.
My suggestion, which was accepted by the person who had asked for
the help, was "The Frontman Fallacy". So the Frontman Fallacy is the
mistaken belief that people (men, specifically) who are in positions
of authority in democratic systems use their power mainly to benefit
the categories of people (the category of "men", in particular) that
they belong to themselves.
Kate Millett is a very important name in the intellectual history
of modern Feminism. I'd like here to examine Millett's basic assumptions
a bit more closely than she herself does.
"If one takes patriarchal government to be the institution whereby
that half of the populace which is female is controlled by that half
which is male, the principles of patriarchy appear to be twofold:
male shall dominate female, elder male shall dominate younger"
(Millett, Kate 1972: "Sexual Politics". London: Abacus. Page 25).
That is Kate Millett's definition of patriarchy. The crucial point,
as I see it, is the notion of "control". What Millett means by this
term is made clear as follows:
"...our society ... is a patriarchy. The fact is evident at
once if one recalls that the military, industry, technology, universities,
science, political office, and finance -- in short, every avenue of
power within the society, including the coercive force of the police,
is entirely in male hands" (ibid, page 25).
It is a good rule of thumb that, if you want to look for the weaknesses
in someone's argument, you look for sentences starting with words such
as "evident", "evidently", "obvious", or "obviously". These are precisely
the weak assumptions that the writer/speaker needs to prop up with confident-sounding
language.
In this case, the weakness is that the fact of a large number of
males in these professions does not logically imply that they are "controlling"
women any more than they are controlling other men. Men make up the
majority in many very low-status occupations, as well as in the high-status
ones. More importantly, if the "coercive force of the police"
is directed mainly at women, why is it men who constitute the overwhelming
majority of those who are arrested by the police ?
The general point is that Feminists assume that men always promote
their own interests over those of women. This is not, in fact, true.
But, on the other hand, it does seem to be true that, when Feminazis
score some political victory, they almost always use their newly-won
power to benefit females exclusively. This is because of their persecution-complex.
You could even argue that democratic countries are actually matriarchies,
and that male politicians are the paid servants of the Feminists. The
litmus test would then be whether the (mainly male) politicians enacted
legislation that favoured men's interests more than women's interests.
And the history of the last two hundred years in the West is peppered
with examples of mainly male governments enacting legislation that benefited
women more than men.
It is true that most decision-makers in society's political institutions
have tended to be men. But they have not usually acted solely in men's
interests, or solely to the detriment of women's interests. To the contrary
-- they have tended to act severely against men's interests, and in
favour of women's interests.
For this there are two reasons:
-
The male decision-makers are subject to pressure from individual
women (friends, family members, etc.), as well as from female pressure-groups.
Feminism has created the slogan "The Personal is Political", and this
has turned many a bedroom into a battleground, facing many male decision-makers
with a choice between their marriage and their principles. Does the
name of Hillary Clinton ring any bells in this regard? As far as pressure-groups
are concerned, it must be remembered that Men's Rights pressure-groups
are few and far between, so pressure groups in the gender area have
essentially been just women's pressure-groups. So male decision-makers
receive an overwhelmingly one-sided tide of pressure in this area.
-
Feminism has tacked itself onto the back of the Left in general,
and Marxism, in particular. This is the part of the political spectrum
which loves to use the word "oppression". It is certainly correct
that various ethnic and social groups "oppress" other ethnic and social
groups all over the world -- to various degrees, and in different
ways. But the relationship between men and women is a much more cooperative
one than the relationship between ethnic groups -- because men and
women (still) need each other to produce and raise families. Ethnic
groups are not usually so indispensible to each other.
So applying the "oppression" model to male-female relationships has
only been feasible academically by bullying intelligent men into acquiescence
-- by making them fear for their careers or their marriages if they
disagreed publicly. So the field of Women's Studies has been isolated
from the need to become really academic, rather than purely polemical.
In fact, there is an actual contradiction between the Marxist and
Feminist approaches to the notion of political power. Marxism defines
a "Capitalist" as someone who makes money *from* money -- i.e. by directly
or indirectly making money from other people's work, rather than from
his/her own productive work.
Capitalists use their money to influence the political system --
including the decision-makers, who are usually not Capitalists themselves.
Marxists do not point to the class that a decision-maker comes from
as evidence that they make decisions in favour of that particular class.
Marxists would regard that approach as rather naive and simplistic.
Feminism, by contrast, relies heavily on the Frontman Fallacy. Feminists
point to the numbers of male decision-makers as evidence that the political
system works in favour of men. This approach is extremely superficial,
and it has only been popularised because of the lack of intellect, of
objectivity and of male input in the Gender Studies area.
One similarity between religions and ideologies such as Feminism
or Marxism is that they are compatible with more or less any state of
affairs in the real world. All theologians and ideologues worth their
salt can explain virtually any natural event as being irrelevant to
their beliefs, and therefore compatible with them. However, religions
have an other-wordliness that gives them greater staying-power than
ideologies. Political, economic and military failures tend to be blamed
on governments and on their ideologies more often than on religions.
Ideologies, therefore, come and go. Marxism is no longer the state
ideology that it used to be in many countries. Other countries remain
Marxist in name only. Feminism has come, and has been around for a couple
of centuries (longer than Marxism). It is bound to be weakened by the
virtual demise of Marxism, because of the de facto alliance
the two ideologies have built up.
Another reason Feminism is being undermined is that the mentality
which looks for victims of oppression (typically: White male Capitalist
oppression) is common to Feminism and Marxism. This mentality is becoming
gradually less mainstream, because of the demise of Marxism. Marxism
has been at the forefront of what could be termed the "search for oppressed
minorities". Marxist strategy has been to identify such groups, and
to unite them into a "Rainbow Coalition" or "Broad Left". Feminism was
quick to proclaim women to be an oppressed minority (despite the fact
that women are usually a majority in any given society). So this made
Feminism and Marxism into natural political allies.
A third reason that Feminism is being undermined is that Whites are
gradually becoming less dominant on the world scene, so that they are
becoming gradually less of a bogeyman. White overseas Colonialism has
almost vanished, and some other countries (especially in Asia) are being
seen as present or future world leaders. The focus of world liberal
attention will gradually turn towards non-overseas Colonialism -- ie.
the Colonialism practised upon their erstwhile neighbours throughout
world history by every political grouping -- from tribes up to Superpowers.
This process will gradually tend to weaken the united attack on White
Capitalist males.
Men are an oppressed minority in western society today. They are
a genuine minority, of course -- unlike women, who are "dressed up"
by Feminists as an oppressed minority. The comparison of women with
oppressed minorities has generally been done in a completely unbalanced
way. There has been a biased hunt for similarities between women and
genuine minority groups. The obvious differences between women and genuinely
oppressed minorities, on the other hand, have been determinedly overlooked.
There do exist objective reasons for the recent changes in male-female
relationships: the contraceptive pill, home labour-saving devices, and
the mechanization of the workplace came along. These changes made it
very probable that women would enter the workplace in much greater numbers,
and many changes have occurred as a result of this fact.
Feminist propaganda has facilitated this process. By dressing women
up as an oppressed minority, Feminists have been able to obtain a lot
of privileges for women -- in addition to the ones they already enjoyed
as a result of male chivalry.
Feminists believe their own lies. They never seek equality with men
in areas where men are at a disadvantage in society, compared to women.
Many Feminists are ruthless in using their positions of power to advance
the Feminist cause. Until all that changes, it is not necessarily a
good thing for even more women to be allowed into positions of even
greater power.
As the "False Prophet" says:
"There's no use in exalting the humble and the meek.
They don't remain humble and meek once they're exalted".
Shulamith Firestone uses Marxism as a starting-point, but she soon
goes beyond it. Thus her ideas may survive relatively unscathed the
recent geopolitical events which have discredited Stalinist Communism
as actually practised in the former "Soviet Bloc". She cites 19th Century
German Communist theorist Engels with approval, though she thinks he
did not go far enough:
"Engels did observe that the original division of labor was
between man and woman for the purposes of child-breeding; that within
the family the husband was the owner, the wife the means of production,
the children the labor; and that reproduction of the human species
was an important economic system distinct from the means of production"
(Firestone, "The Dialectic of Sex" 1971, New York: Bantam, pp. 4-5).
Even if you take a narrow, purely physical view of reproduction,
Firestone's analysis is very distorted. The male is (as well as the
female) a part of the means of sexual production. And many acts (not
just one) of sexual intercourse are usually necessary before any one
fertilisation occurs, and in these acts of coitus the male usually expends
much more energy than does the female. If there is foreplay, the man
is typically much more energetic in this phase of intercourse as well
as in the actual coitus.
In addition, it varies greatly from culture to culture, and from
time to time who the ultimate "owner" of the children is. The ultimate
test, I would say, is who gets custody of the children in cases of separation
or divorce. In the Western world, this is now, and increasingly, the
mother. Thus, in the contemporary Western world, at least, it is the
mother who is the real "owner" of the "product" -- because it is clear
that in most cases the mother gets sole custody of the children after
a divorce or separation.
In addition, reproduction properly includes all the years devoted
to rearing (feeding, housing, educating, etc.) the children. Typically,
the father is the main breadwinner, and he expends a substantial proportion
of his income for that purpose. If, as argued above, it is the mother
who is the real "owner" of the children (in that she will probably get
custody in case of separation or divorce), then it is really the mother
who is exploiting the father in this particular economic system.
Feminism is now so much part of the Establishment in the Western
World that it is hard for people -- particularly those who have undergone
a conventional university indoctucation -- to conceive of any alternative
world-view. One of the few contexts in which such alternative world
views can be glimpsed is the following description of the debate that
preceded the setting up of an "Introduction to Feminist Theory" course
at an American University in about 1980:
"About eight years ago, when I decided to develop at Williams
College a course entitled 'Introduction to Feminist Theory', several
of my colleagues had two predominant and for the most part inconsistent
reactions. One colleague branded the course 'a political polemic.'
It turned out that he saw feminist theory as a monolithic ideology
into which unsuspecting students would be indoctrinated. Another colleague
criticised the course for almost the opposite reasons: He saw nothing
theoretical about feminist theory at all. Echoing many early critics
of feminist thought, he described it as a random mixture of complaints
pointing out, but scarcely analyzing, the subjugation of women."
(Tong: "Feminist Thought: a Comprehensive Introduction," Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press, 1989, p. 1 )
Rosemarie Tong won the argument, and students at Williams College
(as elsewhere) would have heard little more about any possible arguments
against Feminism -- instead, many semi-unsuspecting students would indeed
be indoctrinated into an ideology, which, although not by any means
monolithic, was based on the axiom that women were oppressed, and was
dedicated to the liberation of women from this supposed oppression.
There is some validity, also, to the criticism that Feminism is not
so much a theory (or group of related theories) as much as an unsystematic
collection of complaints (or "organised nagging", as I like to call
it).
"... the feminists' attack on males is also one of the strongest
indictments of science and the scientific method that it is possible
to make. On generous scientific grounds, it seems clear to me that
the evidence which feminists such as Kate Millet and Ti-Grace Atkinson
use to support their case is, on balance, irresponsible in its selection
and ... narrowly and unfairly interpreted..." (Tiger: "Male Dominance
? Yes, Alas. A sexist Plot ? No," reprinted in Ruth (1980), p. 205).
The intellectual calibre of the arguments put forward by Feminists
is not usually very high, because they are not forced to defend themselves
against organised, systematic criticisms from opposing schools of thought,
as happens with most academic disciplines. The people who read what
Feminists write are generally "believers", and any academics who disagree
are usually intimidated by fear of what Feminists could do to them or
their careers if they voiced their disagreement. So the closest analogy
to a Department of Women's Studies is a Theological College.
Another reason for the poverty of the theoretical content of Feminist
thought is that Feminism is first and foremost a political movement,
and only second an academic discipline. Like Marxists, Feminists are
more interested in changing the world than in analysing it. So, in most
cases, they don't just sit back and take a balanced and rational look
at society. Rather, they do about as much rational analysis as they
think they need to do to back up their political demands, or to formulate
new ones.
A third reason for the theoretical poverty of Feminism is that Feminism
is about society, which means that Feminist theory can only be as developed
as Sociology is as a whole. And I think many people would agree with
my opinion that Sociology is far from achieving the scientific status
of a subject like Chemistry, for example.
2002 Version
CHAPTER 14
THE FRONTMAN FALLACY
What is Men's Rights About ?
Men's Rights is the ideology according to which men have intrinsic rights
that are often denied them in contemporary Western culture -- indeed,
according to this view, society does not usually recognize that men,
as men, even have rights. Feminists in western countries have, over
about 200 years (since Wollstonecraft), established as a given the thesis
that society is male-dominated and oppresses women. This is the meta-issue
that Men's Rights activists raise, as a logical (but not necessarily
practical) precondition to the raising of various specific issues.
Men's Rights proponents consider that Feminists have argued for "equality"
in respect of self-selected issues only, -- using ad hoc (and seldom
explicit) definitions of "equality" that they developed themselves,
rather than (for example) calling a conference of all interested parties
for the purpose of clarifying the issues. It is argued that Feminists
have not sought gender equality on issues such as child custody, the
decision to abort one's unborn child, compulsory military service, unsegregated
professional sports, law enforcement relating to domestic violence,
funding for men's and women's groups, Men's Studies vs Women's Studies,
ministries of Men's Affairs to complement ministries of Women's Affairs,
and health research funding, etc..
Many Men's Rights activists also criticise Feminism for relying on
a restricted view of political power, whereby a count of the relative
numbers of men and women in important decision-making positions suffices
to determine whether men or women are the more powerful. Men's Rights
proponents point out that there are many other sorts of political power
- e.g. control over the information and stereotypes that decision-makers
rely on as the basis of their decisions. This information and these
stereotypes, in the West, are largely under the control of Hollywood,
the mass media, the education sector, and the bureaucracies - which
are all strongly influenced by Feminist ideology, if not actually female-dominated.
The term "Masculism" (aka "Masculinism" or "Virism")
may be used interchangeably with "Men's Rights", but conservatives
in the Men's Rights scene often reserve the term "Masculism"
for the liberal branch of the Men's Rights movement (as epitomised by
ex-Feminist author Warren Farrell). Liberal Masculists (such as Farrell
or Rod van Mechelen) take the position that Feminist aspirations to
gender equality should be taken at face value, and men made equal to
women in those areas where women are over-privileged. Conservatives
(such as Richard Doyle, and religious individuals and organisations
such as the Promise Keepers) would prefer to return to a traditional
division of labour between the sexes.
The response of Feminists to the Men's Rights movement has not generally
been to respond to Men's Rights at the ideological level. Rather, they
have either ignored this movement, publicised new issues (e.g. eating
disorders) where women might plausibly be shown to be disadvantaged,
and/or tried to deny Men's Rights activists access to the media and
publishers and influence in education systems and bureaucracies.
The Frontman Fallacy is the mistaken belief that people (men, specifically)
in positions of authority in democratic systems use their power mainly
to benefit the categories of people (the category of men, in particular)
that they belong to. In western countries, male leaders are accessible
only to a very small portion of their constituency (women's groups,
among them) and they tend ignore appeals from men's groups.
In fact, we don't have to look any further than President Bill Clinton
for a perfect example of a Frontman. He was so pro-Feminist that the
main thing which prevented him from being impeached for perjury about
his extra-marital affair with Monica Lewinsky was the organised support
of the Feminist movement. The Feminists were grateful for his support
on abortion, bringing homosexuals into the armed forces – in fact,
his across-the-board support of all their causes. But, once Hillary
Clinton had got her Senate seat and Bill Clinton had left the White
House, the Feminists told their contacts in the media to stop supporting
him, and the media then started to denigrate him, as they should have
done long before.
For all its power, however, Feminism is basically a brain-dead ideology
that achieved its remarkable victories through a combination of bullying,
blatant lies, simple-minded distortions and emotional blackmail, rather
than on the intellectual merits of its arguments. Kate Millett, for
example, is a very important name in the intellectual history of modern
Feminism, yet her reasoning is rife with errors:
“If one takes patriarchal government to be the institution whereby
that half of the populace which is female is controlled by that half
which is male, the principles of patriarchy appear to be twofold: male
shall dominate female, elder male shall dominate younger.” (Kate
Millett, 1972: Sexual Politics. London: Abacus. Page 25).
That is Millett's definition of patriarchy. Her crucial point is the
notion of "control." What Millett means by this term is made
clear as follows:
“(O)ur society ... is a patriarchy. The fact is evident at once
if one recalls that the military, industry, technology, universities,
science, political office, and finance – in short, every avenue
of power within the society, including the coercive force of the police,
is entirely in male hands.” (ibid, page 25).
It is a good rule of thumb that, if you want to look for the weaknesses
in someone's argument, find sentences starting with words such as "evident,"
"evidently," "obvious," or "obviously."
These flag the weak assumptions the writer/speaker needs to prop up
with confident-sounding language. In this case, the weakness is the
fact that there is a large number of males in these professions does
not logically imply they are "controlling" women any more
than they are controlling other men. Men may occupy many high-status
positions, but they comprise the majority in very many low-status occupations,
as well. More importantly, if the "coercive force of the police"
is directed mainly at women, why do men constitute the overwhelming
majority arrested by the police?
Feminists assume that male officials usually promote the interests
of men over those of women, which is seldom the case. True, male officials
may at times have been unaware of a female perspective on certain issues,
but this was counterbalanced by paternalistic chivalry, which has led
male officials to treat women more leniently than men. Nowadays, in
Western societies, Feminist propaganda is the ruling ideology, and few
male officials are unaware of Feminist positions on everything under
the sun - whereas pro-male viewpoints are either derided or ignored.
At the same time, male chivalry has hardly decreased, and Male Feminists
are anti-male, so that women now have it both ways.
Female feminist officials, on the other hand, use their power almost
exclusively to benefit females. For example, New Zealand Minister of
Women's Affairs, Christine Fletcher, used her power to establish the
position of Women's Health Officer in her Ministry. She did this without
the slightest attempt to prove women have greater health needs than
men, who certainly don't have any "Men's Health Officer."
This sexist woman just felt "passionate" about the issue,
and that was that!
Fact is, we can make a case that democratic countries are actually
matriarchies, and male politicians are the paid servants of Feminists.
The litmus test is whether the (mainly male) politicians enact legislation
favouring men's interests more than women's interests. What we find
is that during the last two hundred years western history is peppered
with examples of mainly male governments enacting legislation benefiting
women more than men. Since the late 18th Century, mainly male governments
have enacted legislation giving women the vote, according women equal
pay with men, liberalising abortion laws to permit mass-murder of infants,
increasing penalties for rape, and so forth, all without protecting
men's interests in family, mating rituals, work-place behaviours or
educational institutions.
Vaginal politics
Most decision-makers in society's political institutions may be men,
but they have done and do little for men and much for women. Why?
Male decision-makers are subject to pressure from individual women
(friends, family members, etc.), as well as female pressure-groups.
Feminism created the slogan, "the personal is political,"
thereby turning many a bedroom into a battleground, forcing men to choose
between their marriage and their principles, between love and integrity,
between wealth and poverty. Feminist policies also contributed much
to the increase in two-income families. While employers' need for workers
grew at about the same gradual pace it had always grown at, the supply
of workers almost doubled over the span of a few years. Wages stagnated
while profits grew and the male executives who prospered as a result
have a vested interest in perpetuating the Feminist system and catering
to Feminist sexism.
Here is an example of Male Feminist behaviour: at a regional meeting
I attended of teacher union representatives, the chairman, who was the
male partner of a high-profile Feminist teacher, started the meeting
by telling us on which floors the toilets were, and saying, dead-pan,
there were combination-locks on the women's toilets, but not the men's,
because men were too stupid to operate combination locks! No one protested
this blatantly sexist remark, but as he gazed across the room he received
a glance of affirmation for his Uncle Tom-like behaviour from the women.
Imagine the enraged reaction had he said women were too stupid to operate
combination-locks.
How can they get away with such behavior? Where are the groups speaking
on behalf of men? Women's pressure groups far outnumber men's. For example,
as of December, 1999, a search at Alta Vista for "men's rights"
produced 2,256 pages/results while searching for "women's rights"
produced 39,527 pages/results – 17½ times as many. Evidence
of just how much Feminists dominate gender-issues: men's voices in this
area are virtually silenced by the overwhelming pressure Feminists bring
to bear on male decision-makers. On this basis, one could almost suggest
women have about 17½ times as much power as men in western societies.
There are various forms of power in Society:
1. the power of decision-makers, such as politicians, judges and juries;
2. the potential military and police power to apply armed force;
3. the power of the media to cover and package (or ignore) issues as
they see fit;
4. the power of the educationalists to inculcate values they believe
in;
5. the power of pressure-groups to influence the media, politicians
and the bureaucracy;
6. the power of bureaucrats to interpret legislation and regulations,
and discriminate against certain clients.
This last sort of power is also now largely in the hands of women:
the December 1998 New Zealand Household Labour Force Survey, for example,
shows men concentrated in employment categories involving working with
objects, whereas women are concentrated in occupations dealing with
members of the public. This pattern is likely to be the same all over
the western world.
Men outnumber women in:
1. Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing by 107,300 to 49,900;
2. Manufacturing by 195,700 to 86,300;
3. Construction by 104,300 to 12,500, and
4. Transport, Storage, and Communication by 70,300 to 34,000.
On the other hand, women outnumber men in:
1. Education by 89,600 to 41,000, and
2. Health and Community Services by 98,400 to 23,100.
In Other categories ("Wholesale and Retail Trade, etc.",
"Business and Financial Services," "Other Services",
and "Not Specified"), men and women were present in roughly
equal numbers. This gives women disproportionate power in administering
and interpreting – on a daily basis – the rules and regulations
affecting the lives of men, women and children. Whenever a man or boy
comes into contact with a social worker, court psychologist, teacher,
etc., that person will probably be a woman, or – even if not actually
a woman – a member of a female-dominated profession with a hefty
bias against men.
Misandry in the mainstream
Nowadays, Feminism is so mainstream that Mussolini's granddaughter,
the leader of a Neo-Fascist party, described herself as a Feminist.
However, 20th Century Feminism originally tacked itself onto the back
of the Left in general, and Marxism in particular. This is the part
of the political spectrum which loves to use the word "oppression."
Feminists rely heavily on the Frontman Fallacy. They point to the
number of male decision-makers as evidence the political system favours
men. This argument is extremely superficial and has flourished only
because of the lack of intellect, objectivity and male input into Gender
Studies. Hence, Women's Studies is really an ideology rather than an
academic discipline.
Ideologies are akin to religion. Like religions, an ideology such
as Feminism or Marxism is compatible with more or less any state of
affairs in the real world. All theologians and ideologues worth their
salt can explain virtually any apparent counterexample, if necessary,
as being irrelevant to their beliefs, and therefore compatible with
them. However, religions have an other-worldliness that gives them greater
durability than ideologies. Political, economic and military failures
tend to be blamed on governments and their ideologies more often than
on religions. So ideologies come and go.
Marxism is no longer the force it used to be. Feminism has been around
longer than Marxism, and is bound to be weakened by the virtual demise
of Marxism because of the de facto alliance between the two (e.g., The
Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, Shulamith Firestone,
1971). Feminism started off as an underdog ideology, but has long since
become firmly entrenched in the establishment. This is helping remove
the blinders from all the men conned by their claims of oppression.
In fact, I am quite pleased that New Zealand (at time of this writing)
has a female Governor-General, a female Prime Minister, a female leader
of the main opposition party, a female Chief Justice, and a female head
of Telecom, the country's largest company, because it makes it harder
for the Feminists to portray all women as victims of the "Patriarchy".
As the Feminists consolidate their power, people will see them as the
establishment. With that kind of status comes the glaring scrutiny they
have avoided so far, and this cannot help but contribute to their eventual
demise.
The comparison of women with oppressed minorities has generally been
done in a completely unbalanced way. Their hunt for similarities between
women and genuine minority groups has been more than a little biased.
The obvious differences between women and genuinely oppressed minorities,
on the other hand, have been determinedly overlooked. For example:
1.women are a numerical majority in most electorates;
2.they have a greater life-expectancy than men;
3.much more research is done into their diseases than male diseases;
4.Gynecology is a medical field in its own right, but specifically male
diseases are hidden away in Urology; in most universities;
5.women have the vote but do not have to do military or alternative
service in countries where men have to do this – e.g. Germany
and the United States – nor are they drafted into the front line
(even in Israel);
6.women are much more likely to get custody of children on separation
and divorce;
7.many more men than women are in jail, even when women live unscathed
on the proceeds of their male partners' crimes.
Feminists believe their own lies. So they almost never seek equality
with men in areas where men are at a disadvantage compared to women
– how many demonstrations have you heard of demanding that women
be subject to the draft on the same basis as men? Certainly, many Feminists
are ruthless in using their positions of power to advance their cause.
Until this changes, is it really a good thing to promote even more women
into positions of even greater power? As the "False Prophet"
says:
There's no use in exalting the humble and the meek. They don't remain
humble and meek once they're exalted.
(Martin Burke, the "False Prophet,"—formerly at: www.tribal.com/newtrib/inter3.htm)
Feminism is now so much part of the establishment in the West that
it is hard for people – particularly those who have undergone
a conventional university indoctucation – to imagine any alternative
world-view. One of the few contexts in which such alternative world
views can be glimpsed is the following description of the debate that
preceded the setting up of an "Introduction to Feminist Theory"
course at an American University in the early 1980s:
“About eight years ago, when I decided to develop at Williams
College a course entitled "Introduction to Feminist Theory,"
several of my colleagues had two predominant and for the most part inconsistent
reactions. One colleague branded the course "a political polemic."
It turned out that he saw feminist theory as a monolithic ideology into
which unsuspecting students would be indoctrinated. Another colleague
criticised the course for almost the opposite reasons: He saw nothing
theoretical about feminist theory at all. Echoing many early critics
of feminist thought, he described it as a random mixture of complaints
pointing out, but scarcely analyzing, the subjugation of women.”
(Tong: Feminist Thought: a Comprehensive Introduction, Boulder, Colorado:
Westview Press, 1989, p. 1)
Rosemarie Tong won the argument, and students at Williams College
(as elsewhere) would hear little more of arguments against Feminism;
instead, many semi-unsuspecting students were indeed indoctrinated into
an ideology which, though not at all monolithic, was based on the axiom
that women are oppressed, and was dedicated to the liberation of women
from this supposed oppression.
There is some validity, also, to the criticism that Feminism is not
so much a theory (or group of related theories) as an unsystematic collection
of complaints (or "organised nagging").
“(T)he feminists' attack on males is also one of the strongest
indictments of science and the scientific method that it is possible
to make. On generous scientific grounds, it seems clear to me that the
evidence which feminists such as Kate Millet and Ti-Grace Atkinson use
to support their case is, on balance, irresponsible in its selection
and ... narrowly and unfairly interpreted...” (Tiger: Male Dominance?
Yes, Alas. A sexist Plot ? No, reprinted in Ruth (1980), p. 205).
The intellectual calibre of the arguments put forward by Feminists
is usually very low, because they are not forced to defend themselves
against organised, systematic criticisms from opposing schools of thought,
as happens with most academic disciplines. The people who read what
Feminists write are generally true believers already, and any academics
who disagree are usually intimidated by fear of what Feminists can do
to them or their careers if they voice their disagreement. So the closest
analogy to a Department of Women's Studies is a Theological College.
Another reason for the poverty of the theoretical content of Feminist
thought is that Feminism is, first and foremost, a political movement.
Like Marxism, Feminism is more interested in changing the world than
analysing it. So, in most cases, they don't just sit back and take a
balanced and rational look at society. Rather, they do about as much
rational analysis as they think they need to back up their political
demands, or to formulate new ones.
A third reason for the theoretical poverty of Feminism is that it
is about society, which means that Feminist theory can only be as developed
as Sociology is as a whole. Many people will agree that Sociology is
far from achieving the scientific status of a subject like Chemistry,
for example.
Conclusion
Feminism is an intellectually substandard body of theory, and it will
not survive any sustained academic attack once the Frontman Fallacy
is recognised for what it is. What is most lacking now among male academics
is the courage to criticize Feminism head-on. Until that changes, denunciations
of Feminism will have to come principally from female academics and
male non-academics.
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Latest Update |
15 August 2015 |
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