|
The Emasculation of America |
|
The Case Against Feminism: |
|
EmasculationOfAmerica.com |
![Text Box: A THUMBNAIL HISTORY OF FEMINISM
(Justifications for the following are presented throughout the site.)
Earlier Women’s Movements: History records four distinct “women’s movements”—Charity, Prohibition, Suffrage, Birth Control, and Modern Feminism.1 The last three movements primarily involved well-educated women from more or less privileged backgrounds. Modern Feminists tend look at these movements in a certain way. They often go to great lengths to: [1] portray the last three as a continuous “grassroots rebellion” against male oppression; [2] ignore the successful non-activist efforts of millions of women’s charity work in the 1800’s—and especially during the Civil War; [3] refuse to acknowledge Prohibition as an activist women’s cause; and [4] try to break Modern Feminism down into a half-dozen or so abstruse “waves” or sub-movements. In this context, the prior causes need vigilant reassessment.
Except for women’s Charity work, the above were all special interest causes. Charity and Birth Control were legitimate public service efforts. However, the latter also functioned as a precursor to today’s mother-only-chosen birth control abortions. Birth Control continued on a relatively low-key basis after the 1920’s, until it was replaced by the “women’s right to choose” and “it’s my body” campaign. Otherwise, there is little connection and no actual continuity between the prior movements and Modern Feminism.
Prohibition was not about men’s health or well-being. Its actual mission was for women gain greater control over men’s paychecks from employers. Considerable funds were diverted to “Joe’s Bar” on payday. On the other hand, substance abuse specialists posit at least as many women were addicted to drugs (Coca Cola, cough medicines, opium, etc.) as men to alcohol. While the jury may still out on Modern Feminism, Prohibition may be America’s most destructive activist cause prior to the 1960’s.
Prohibition’s Forgotten Lessons: All activisms seek to impose their will and best interests on other groups and/or the majority. To the extent this imposition is achieved based on actual facts, reason, and persuasion, permanent beneficial change may take place. But when the forces of violence, legislation, or myths and manipulation are employed, any gains will likely be temporary and harmful. Such tactics backfire because they violate a historic principle: the rule that the sovereign’s will makes laws—laws cannot dictate the sovereign’s will. In America, sovereignty lies with the people, thus enduring laws must conform with the majority’s existing beliefs and practices. In other words, Prohibition violated the principle that customs create laws—laws do not create customs. As a result, it took untold resources to enforce, escalated lawlessness, cost countless human lives, and was finally repealed. Modern Feminists have taken a similar path with the Civil Rights Act, Title VI, Title IX, etc.—without bothering with an Amendment.
The Fallacies of Feminism’s Suffrage Positions: Next to the unequal pay between the sexes allegation, Feminists most often seem to assert that “women were denied the right to vote.” This claim is used to validate the propositions that contemporary women are being oppressed by men’s dominance and control (aka a modern “patriarchy”). Even if the assertion that women were pervasively suppressed by men prior to 1920 was an unarguable fact, that truth would not prove modern women are repressed. Actually, implementing women’s universal suffrage strongly suggests any other major restraints that existed in the 1800’s were likely to have been eliminated as well, instead of perpetuated for the next 40 years.
Suffrage may not be the achievement on behalf of all turn-of-the-century women Modern Feminists claim it to be. First, women per se were not denied suffrage; they were caught in a milieu of non-sex-based concerns. Voting was originally limited to property owners of both sexes by most states. The principle here was that public expenditures be controlled by “stakeholders” in such decisions. This restraint had a long history of gradually being relinquished. Second, another underlying concept was to avoid granting the vote to individuals who could be readily controlled by wealthy and powerful people. The key reason for the delay in women’s enfranchisement at that time was the public’s (i.e. men and women’s) fear that doing so would inevitably set a precedent leading to Blacks voting. In other words, it was Northerner’s fear that Black votes might be controlled by prosperous Southerners, and Southerner’s outright bigotry that caused most of the resistance to women’s suffrage—not that they were females. It is also vital to note that one of the original 13 states enfranchised women, many new states in the west initially did so as well, and women have always had access to real power in governing—the right to run federal and most state offices. 2
However, the major—and probably unanswerable—question seems to be: “Did the majority of women in America actually want and seek the vote?” Alternatively, was this basically a demand of an activist minority claiming to represent and speak for all women? Data could not be found addressing such topics from the 1920’s. But analysis of voting patterns offers some useful—though inconclusive—insights. Following attainment of universal suffrage in 1920, women did not vote in large number until the mid-1930’s national elections for FDR. Does this suggest most women were not driven by a previously repressed desire to vote? Even at that date, was their central motivation to vote the Great Depression?
It is important to also consider that voting is not just a right. If it is exercised properly, it is a laborious and highly accountable duty. Circumstantial evidence suggests men in the 1800’s took this duty far more seriously than either sex today. They seem to have devoted considerable time on an on-going basis to becoming well-informed of the key issues and character of the candidates before casting their ballots. Could most women at that time have preferred to invest their time and concerns elsewhere? A review of Feminist’s history—admittedly reading between the lines—also suggests the major obstacle Suffragettes faced was not men’s resistance, but a lack of enthusiasm by mainstream women.
Modern Feminism: The 1960-70’s were the turbulent years of the Counter-Culture. Throughout history young people of every generation become convinced they are better qualified and capable of managing society than their parents, grandparents, nation’s founders, or the majority of its citizens. But this era was unlike most others because its young people decided to take action on these beliefs via activism.
This was a period characterized by sociopolitical activism on behalf of many causes, most of which have carried forward to today. Two causes are of particular interest here. The first and most important of this era’s movements sought to redress the very real issue of culture-wide racial inequality. This was followed by the emergence of “Woman’s Liberation,” in which Feminists accused men of discrimination against women in the workplace, followed by similar charges with respect to society-at-large. The latter stages of this cause are sometimes referred to as “The Sexual Revolution.” This label clearly reveals Feminist’s seldom openly stated goal to overthrow (aka “reengineer” or “deconstruct”) America’s sex and gender based psychosocial and political foundations (e.g. attitudes, customs, and laws).
Most early Feminist leaders began or were simultaneously involved in the racial equality movement. Some were active in the nonviolent cause—exemplified by Martin Luther King. Others were caught up in more radical and revolutionary groups—like the socialist Students for a Democratic Society (found mostly on college campuses) and even the militant Black Panthers. To some extent, the impression Feminism’s early leader’s have of men may have been a product of their exposure to the leaders of such organizations. All activism is inherently aggressive, and the leaders of the later groups were not exactly typical males. These leader’s reported backgrounds do not often reveal being reared in well-balanced family-settings.
Hence Feminist activists pursued acts of civil disobedience—marches, sit-ins, burned their bras in public, occupied business and campuses offices/buildings, and used emotion-driven propaganda to invoke public sympathy for their allegations. The media chose to “loudly broadcast” this activist minority’s “voices” and interests. The employer and majority’s needs and protests were neither equally sought out or often heard—and therefore effectively “silenced” by the media. It was therefore impracticable for decision-makers to attempt to explain the actual complex objective facts about the issues at hand to the public, in hope of gaining widespread understanding and acceptance. What the will of the majority of Americans might have been—had they in fact ever been fully-informed of the opposing-sides-of-the-Feminist-story—is unknown.
The “initial thinker” of the Modern movement was the French author Simone de Beauvoir. Its first “Intellectual Bible” was her book The Second Sex (1953). This document provided much of the movement’s intellectual foundation; many of its basic ways of perceiving reality; and its shrewd and inflammatory literary style later replicated in “activist experts” publications. [See: Feminist Quotes for written examples.]
Modern Feminism often refers to itself as a “grassroots’ movement—i.e. a mainstream and/or middle-class woman’s cause. But in reality, few of its proactive members satisfy such criterion. Nor has the movement done much to advance the interests of the majority of working women. The cause is led and predominantly comprised of a minority of the well-educated women, most of who are relatively advantaged. Its proactive members are typically college graduates, many with advanced degrees, and most often are accomplished in a professional field. A small minority of men also play supporting roles in the cause. However, men are seldom allowed to attain full “sisterhood” or occupy actual leadership positions.
Modern Feminism Feminists and Women’s suffrage are separated by 40-years of inactivity, but the former did copy many of their allegations about men from the Suffragettes. The latter issued a “Declaration of Women’s Rights,” mocking the Declaration of Independence, and invoking a litany of complaints about misconduct of men against women. These accusations may have been taken partly in jest, but also served to induce sympathy in men about women being “denied” the right to vote nationwide. Feminists resurrected these allegations and turned them into pivotal themes in their Modern movement. The Suffragettes promptly abandoned their additional assertions after 1920, and their movement literally died. This strongly suggests all of their claims against men had a tactical, rather than strategic significance. In other words, it is doubtful Suffragettes actually considered men the scoundrels Modern Feminists portray them to be.
Modern Feminism’s initial target was the workplace—proclaiming men’s widespread discrimination against women in employment. Its activists aggressively confronted employers with specious accusations and inflammatory conjecture about a variety of inequalities, none of which had a legitimate basis in fact—and they got away with it. The cause now figuratively “occupies an executive suite in the corporate office.” The key strategies employed in the public domain were derived largely from those experiences and successes. [See: Three-Legs below and Equal Pay = Equal Jobs.]
Feminism then migrated to the higher education—the initial training ground for people in the highest pay/status jobs in the workplace. This extension brought academia’s “activists-experts” into the Feminist fold. Feminists now effectively control much of higher education and the federal agency accountability for America’s overall education system. In other words, Feminists now “occupy the Dean of Arts and Sciences Department, controls the provost’s office, and populate the U.S. Department of Education in America.
As their tactics again proved successful in education, Feminists began shifting their focus on the overall American culture. They proclaimed culture-wide female-discrimination—this time augmented by a small army of highly credentialed intellectuals in academia. This led to the production of an array of pseudo-scientific data from and fictitious social observations by experts accompanied by the authority and trust attributed to science and academia. This new, supposedly academically creditable data complemented and reinforced the information already incorporated in the cause’s social and political platform.
Women then began to be told they were underutilized, undeveloped, and devalued in society-at-large; were relegated to the most irrelevant, boring, and unpaid tasks in the home and family; and were generally powerless, weak, suppressed, abused, and exploited as well. In that context, they were also taught women lacked “self-esteem” and a sense of contribution, meaning, and self-worth; needed to abandon the roles forced on them by males/masculinity; needed to rebel against the “patriarchy” that had dominated them for centuries; and thus become emotionally autonomous, financially self-sufficient, and confiscate men’s excessive powers. [See: Feminist Quotes for examples of these themes.]
The most recent and apparently final campaign is politics. Feminism acquisition of direct control of governing is a work in progress. It is something of a mixed bag of success and shortfalls. Feminists seem to have effective control over many, if not most agencies in the executive branch of government—at least to the extent such agencies have accountability for enforcing the 14th Amendment (i.e. equal treatment). [See: Case Overview and succeeding documentation or DOE 2nd Appeal for a detailed overview.]
Feminists applaud Nancy Pelosi for becoming the Speaker of the House of Representatives. It is hard to tell how dedicated Ms. Pelosi is to the Feminist cause, but she is a long-term a member Congress’s Democratic Women’s Working Group. Ms. Pelosi is one of 50 Democratic women and 162 Democratic men in the House. How attributable her accession is to her actual competence as a leader rather than male-discrimination will be determined through the test of time. One indicator may be Congresses performance rating while Pelosi has been a position to influence its popular image. Ms. Pelosi became the Democratic House leader in 2002, but neither she nor the party gained majority control of the House until 2006. Congress’s “public’s report card” declined from 30%-40% in the first quarter of 2007 to 15%-20% in 2008. By comparison, ratings of Republican President George Bush—“the media’s whipping boy”—for the same periods were in the 35%-40% and 25%-35% respectively. [See: Polling Report.com.]
Hilary Rodham-Clinton, a member of the Democratic Party—as well as a self-admitted and true-believing member of the “Feminist Party”—came close to being its nominee for President. Her bid, however, was unsuccessful. In addition, the cause has been unable to recruit women willing to run for political offices at every level in anything close to their sexes' percentage of voting population. [It is proposed that the above reference to a fictitious “Feminist Party” is legitimate because the cause’s mission is sociopolitical, rather than righteous or egalitarian. Do Democrats server as Feminism’s political arm?]
Most people seem to think Feminism has lost its momentum; that it is no longer a substantial force affecting the American culture. This is probably because most people have heard its messages so long and come to accepted so many of them that they no longer recognize the messages as being Feminist. In other words, most people perceive it to be inactive because the movement has actually achieved most of its mission. On the contrary, however—having gained most American’s compliance, passive support, or commitment—Feminism’s activists and leaders have found a pleasant retreat from which to do their work: a haven that provides them highly respected credentials, revered institution’s credibility, and an army of fresh recruits every year; and a comfortable office, supplies, and lots of free-time to pursue their goals. That well paying quiet refuge is on just about every college and university campus in America. In the absence of major forces from outside the movement, the cause seems destined to satisfy its lust for political power.
What Is Modern Feminism? Feminism lacks a foundation in scientific fact and cultural truth. It is essentially built on idealism, unsubstantiated speculation, and quasi-religious fervor. [See: Sexes Different and Equal and Equal Jobs = Equal Pay or Discrimination Cycle.]
Therefore, Feminism is best understood as a system of beliefs based on ideals about the sexes, gender, and society (an ideology); a tacitly coordinated minority group’s political cause; and a quasi-religion because it is grounded in immateriality, intuition, and emotions. For example, asking Feminist true-believers to factually evaluate their cause is like asking Atheists to dispassionately and impartially evaluate the merits of Christianity’s or Islam’s belief in God, or visa versa. It thus seems appropriate to expand upon the definitions on the Home Page. Will the real Feminism please stand-up?
Feminists are a special interest group that was conceived in the streets and bred in academia. They are an activist cause led by and mostly comprised of a minority of well-educated and advantaged women. They are the self-appointed representatives and spokespersons of America’s political plurality—all women. They thence shrewdly exploit their sex’s majority powers to advance their own self-interests by discriminating against men with false data, wild-speculations, and inflammatory propaganda.
Feminism achieves its ends by exploiting the female majority’s social, economic, and political power [See: Sexes Different & Equal]; by shrewdly applying Machiavellian tactics; skillfully orchestrated propaganda; social pressure to conform; and what might be called media-terrorism that affects decision-makers in education, business, and government [See: Discrimination Cycle]. Finally, if for some reason their assertions a not bigotry under the law, they certainly serve no legitimate academic, much less a socially constructive and/or approved purpose—and hence should not be taught in our schools.
Feminism’s “experts” and leaders do not need to be given the benefit of doubt. They are not naïve altruistic equalitarians seeking to cure our culture’s ills on behalf of the majority of its citizens or even most of its women. They are well-informed and talented professionals who know exactly what they are doing when they cunningly employ intellectual mumbo-jumbo—like that in the textbook cited in the legal case— intentionally designed to mislead college students, the public, and non-expert faculty and other fields into believing, sanctioning, and/or tolerating such self-interest-motivated and sex-bigoted nonsense.
It is important to note that many of Feminism’s leading “thinkers” see their mission being to reengineer or “deconstruct/reconstruct” society and human nature differently than both have evolved over the centuries based solely on experimental and historically unverified Feminist hypotheses. And they have been stealthily doing exactly that for the last 40-years without the public’s fully-informed formal consent—i.e. in the absence of a referendum, Amendment, or clearly elaborated elected political party’s platform).](image2057.gif)
|
Last Updated: 8/17/08 |
|
The Emasculation of America |
|
The Case Against Feminism: |
|
EmasculationOfAmerica.com |
|
Last Updated: 8/17/08 |