The Emasculation of America

The Case Against Feminism:

EmasculationOfAmerica.com
Text Box: THE THREE-LEGS-OF-FEMINISM Feminism is multifaceted. It can be envisioned as having many “appendages” that make it difficult to fully grasp. Those too young to have observed its evolution may have a hard time understanding its true essence. The same applies to people of all ages convinced of its rectitude. The Three-Legs-of-Feminism is a trio of fundamental concepts that support the movement’s massive “tabletop” of doctrines and beliefs. The image of a three-legged-table may help overcome the cause’s complexities and confusing self-presentation. The analogy also suggests that, should any of the cause’s Legs be sufficiently weakened, the entire fixture will topple. This website seeks to be helpful in achieving that task. The First-Leg-of-Feminism—Women are Underpaid: This Leg might be described as: Women are discriminated against in terms of pay and job opportunities; or men are unjustifiably employed in higher pay and status jobs than women. Feminist allegations of discrimination in pay/jobs in the workplace were first widely presented in the 1960’s. The primary concrete evidence Feminists offer to support their various positions was the argument: “Women are paid 70%-75% of what men earn!” This statistic serves as both Feminism’s primary lead and fallback argument. Other commonly used statistics since the 1960’s include: “1-5% of top executives are women!”; “Women occupy 5–20% of all management and/or professional jobs!”; and “Congress is 10-16% women!”. But there is a huge problem with all of these statistics. They do not prove discrimination against women in the workplace or government. [For more on the workplace see: Equal Pay=Equal Jobs, and on politics see: Feminism’s Effects—p1.] Speculation about inequality in jobs/pay actually has many distinct dimensions. For example the claimed includes the assertion that [a] women are paid less for doing the same jobs as men; [b] men are given priority and paid more than women in hiring; [c] men are developed, given preferential consideration, and paid more than women in promotions; and [d] the jobs women historically occupied are unjustifiably lower valued and thus lower paid less than traditional “men’s jobs.” Feminism’s claims of unequal pay/jobs were eventually extended far beyond the workplace to education, government, and even family life. In its modern, full-blown contemporary form, the First-Leg now includes pay/status such inequality assertions as: [1] “Women are underpaid and “underrepresented” in: [a] managerial/technical; [b] legislatures/government; [c] colleges and universities; and/or [d] the professions (i.e. accounting, law, medicine, engineering, and science); [2] Women are excluded from the highest pay/status jobs by “glass ceilings”; and even [3] wives and mothers serving as homemakers and childcare providers are analogous to slave-labor. In essence, all such assertions refer to the same underlying phenomenon—females being discriminated against in terms of income, social status, power, and self-esteem because they are women. Activists have never provided concrete evidence of discrimination in any of these elements. Beyond the absence of proof, the “killer” problem with “d” is that it is people’s collective choices of jobs categories and career fields in the labor market that dictate pay levels—employers have very little say in the matter. The Second-Leg-of-Feminism—Patriarchy: Feminism postulates that women are unfairly paid less than men, unjustly excluded from jobs, and later unrecognized, unappreciated, and underemployed in their traditional roles as homemakers and mothers. It is taken for granted that these allegations are: [1] the result from men’s direct decisions and/or indirect social influences (aka “men and masculinity”); and [2] caused by vague abstract cultural forces beyond women’s control. If women do not cause these nebulous forces, what other logical source could there be, if it is not men? This line of reasoning also indicates that, due to their subordination and powerlessness, women were [3] entitled to extra protection of their right to treatment under the law. In other words, the seed for another Feminist key strategy—to cast men as dominant and powerful and women as a victimized minority—was planted in its attack on pay/jobs. Feminists routinely allude to a male-dominated culture that forces young women into the low-paying educational and career paths, as well as diminutive social roles and lifestyles. Though age 12 or so, research conclusively shows men have as much to do with their daughter’s development into full fledged womanhood as mothers. The same applies mother’s impact on their son’s growth into manhood. The author observes that the predominant developmental and decision-making influences on young people thereafter increasingly come from members of the same sex, rather than the opposite sex. The author refers to these two relatively distinct influence groups as each sex’s subculture. This proposition means that young women primarily make their educational, career, and lifestyle choices based on influences from the female-subculture—i.e. their mothers, female-peers, grandmothers, and other women-at-large. Is this proposal consistent with your firsthand experiences and observations? If so, it is erroneous for Feminists to allege young women make such decisions under the primary influence of the male-subculture—i.e. their fathers, male-peers, grandfathers, and men-at-large. In the 1960-70’s, it was not the men’s-subculture, but the women’s that failed to encourage and often proactively discouraged young women from pursuing careers in business, law, medicine, the physical sciences, and government. The same can be said for influencing girls to play traditional male sports. Does the female-subculture have greater influence on such decision-making today? Is there any evidence whatsoever that the situation was any different past? Is the only difference today that young women increasing make such choices under the controlling influence of Feminism, instead of the women-subculture’s historic traditional criteria? Men’s Conspiracy Against Women: Feminism’s pay/jobs posture presumed that, because men occupy most of the management and executive jobs that control business and government, that they had to be making decisions and taking the actions that directly and indirectly discriminated against women. They also assumed men must be doing so in a some sort of a tacitly orchestrated conspiracy designed to advance or protect the males and repress or exploit females. These assumptions were seldom openly stated or challenged. If it existed, collusion among so many men nationwide would have to be communicated in some manner and inevitably discovered. Feminism is a prime example of what it takes to carry-out loosely coordinated discriminatory collaboration nationwide. It takes a massive campaign of written and verbal communications—ample reading materials, widely distributed professional literature, and lots of media messages and communications of all sorts. It certainly is not hard to produce proof of Feminist’s current conspiracy against men. But Feminism have produced proof that men have ever shared a similar ideology and mission to discriminate against women—only their own than wild-conjecture. The males-have-all-the-powered-in-the-workplace and use-it-to-discriminate-against-women strategy proved so successful that Feminists began adding similar accusations about the overall culture. They eventually expanded these ideas into the broader proposition that men dominate, control, and make the most important decisions in America, and do so in ways that pervasively discriminate against the comparatively weaker and powerless women. The Second Leg of Feminism is also expressed with the phrases: “America is a patriarchy,” and/or “Women are powerless, suppressed, and exploited”. The primary evidence Feminists offer to support these assertions is to declare America was a historically paternalistic society, as well as was a patriarchy—implying that it is still one today. When pressed, these assertions were enhanced with vague speculations supposedly proving male dominance and control—e.g. men fill the top jobs in business, have the important positions in government, dominate the professions, etc.—that actually provides no proof of collusion at all. The public does not have personal experience or any other practical way to determine the validity of Feminist claims about a culture the existed 100 or 200 years ago. Proving something exists is far easier than proving it does not exist. Generalizations like this are far too complex to discredit easily as well. Thus Feminists use the “patriarchy” declaration as an effectively unarguable summary statement for all of the ways men supposedly repress, control, and exploit women. The key problem with the Second Leg is that gender-neutral observations of 20th century realities do not support the presumption that a patriarchy exists. Women have greater numerical and political power, as well as possess at least equal social and economic power to men. The central difficulty with the Third-Leg is that the preponderance of objective scientific research finds males and females to be one another’s psychosocial equals in every fundamental respect, and find the sex’s acquired expressive and innate physiological differences balance one another out as well. [See: Sexes Different & Equal.] The Third-Leg-of-Feminism—Women Are Abused and Assaulted: Another assertion about the workplace was of vital significance because it laid the foundation for a much broader claim about men. This is the allegation that only men are guilty of sexual harassment in the workplace. This refers to men being sexually aggressive with women; men using sexual words and gestures; men demanding sexual favors in exchange for higher pay, easier work, or advancement; and the inscrutable principle that women seldom, if ever exhibited such behaviors in similar situations to men’s. Sexual proactivity often involves speech, and is in itself form of expression not all that far removed from free-speech. Activists have managed to get the “unwelcomeness” and “undesirable, offensive, objectionable, or upsetting” incorporated into OCR’s Sexual Harassment Guides. These principles give free-reign to interpret sexual aggression as almost anything that serves Feminism’s purposes. By comparison, the law does not allow non-injurious speech (i.e. that is not libel or slander) in almost any context that is incredibly offensive to most Americans to be suppressed. A similar concept applies to many forms of behavior as well. If an action does not do harm to or interfere with other people’s rights, it’s typically OK. Sexual harassment was so successful in the workplace that Feminists gradually expanded it into the proposition that men are innately violent aggressors with intimates, both sexually and physically (i.e. wife-beaters, child abusers, rapists, dead-beat-dads, etc.), while women are inherently non-abusive, child nurturer/protectors, and subservient. This Leg might be summarized as: “Men are physically and sexually abusive and aggressive, and women are their passive victims.” [See: Sexes Different & Equal.] Female-only sexual harassment the workplace is an extremely dubious proposition in its own right. Research overwhelmingly finds the sexes equal in every fundamental respect, including sexuality. Feminists also produce no objective evidence indicating that women are any less violent or sex-driven than men. Gender-balanced observations of the sexes’ overt behaviors reveals men and women have very different ways of expressing sexuality, but an equaling out of such behaviors between women and men is obvious once the male-prejudiced and female-biased blinders instilled by our culture are removed. For example, the sexual atmosphere with female-dominated factories and office-settings is no less characterized by sexual aggression than those that are male-dominated. When women are in the majority, they hoot and howl at men, make very crude and suggestive remarks, and even touch and try to fondle men’s bodies at least as often as men do with women. In offices and in management, women are just a sexually assertive as men, especially when they are placed in the same situational context. Women’s techniques are typically far more subtle and indirect, but that does not alter the intensity or severity of the aggression. Women like sex for sex’s sake just as much as men, therefore higher pay and advancement are not the primary reason women have workplace-related sex. In sum, inequality in sexuality between men and women is neither logical nor proven any more convincingly than the other basic attributes that define what it means to be a human. The sexes are fundamentally on another’s equal—period. What the DOE and apparently other government agencies call sexual harassment is a list of men’s behaviors, most of which are their sex’s normal ways of expressing sexual aggression. As indicated above, women in similar situations to men exhibit the same or comparable behaviors. But women often express sexual aggression in different ways than men, and those behaviors are not listed. What sexual harassment in these agencies does is “criminalize” many of the ways males normally sexually aggress with females, and virtually none of the means females typically employ to achieve their sexual objectives. [See: SH Guidance 1997 and SH Guidance 2001]. For example, a man whistling at, touching, or making suggestive remarks to a women can become sexual harassment. But a women wearing tight clothing, a top revealing most of her breasts, or a short skirt that hints at revealing her vagina cannot be so interpreted. In other words, just like sexual assaults and rapes [See: Sexes Different & Equal], if evaluated in a neutral and balanced way, sexual harassment is inflicted on men by women just as often and severely as the reverse. One major difference between the sexes, in addition to women using more subtle and covert means, is males tend to socialize one another with overt razing that often has sexual inferences. Such ridicule serves to instill certain typically male qualities in domains like long-term goal-seeking, teamwork, emotional control, competitiveness, etc. Feminists managed to get such actions misinterpret as sexual harassment when use with women. This wrongly penalizes men, as well as denies women of the same developmental opportunities as men. The female sub-culture has its version of heckling—the equally venomous and disparaging use of personal slights and emotional bullying that serve to instill comparable traditional female traits in other women. These behaviors are different versions of the same underlying human attributes—different sides of the same coins—and only the male’s version can become illegal. The StLCC/DOE male-discrimination sex-stereotyping case was intended to help eradicate the Third-Leg, perhaps help weaken the other two Legs as well, and thus contribute to toppling the huge and complex “table” of Feminism’s psychosocial ideologies, pseudo-science, and political aspirations. Finally, in sum, every argument Feminists raise in support of their thesis that women are discriminated against can probably be traced to one or more of the Three-Legs-of-Feminism. FEMINISM’S CHANGES TO WHAT? Feminism offers nothing to replace the psychosocial domains it is intentionally altering. Redesigning society and reengineering human nature is another way to describe Feminism’s strategies and tactics. Its higher-level literature describes the process they employ as psychosocially “deconstructing and reconstructing” the nation’s culture. For example, Feminists obviously seek to eliminate what they imagine to be a modern “patriarchy,” but they offer no clear plan of what is to replace it. Their actions also obviously advance, elevate, and empower well-educated women, while fostering widespread discrimination against males. Do Feminists thus seek matriarchy? In education, Feminists are busy trying to eliminate differing male and female sex-identities from the human psyche. If this goal is accomplished, wouldn’t it naturally lead to a genderless society? In such a culture, the sexes would no longer practice specialization; no longer learn and master the qualities needed to fulfill distinct social roles. Hence everyone would theoretically become a generalist and concurrently try to perform all social tasks. If a business cannot operate on such a basis, how can an entire civilization do so? Won’t this all lead to duplication, inefficiency, anarchy, and impoverishment? The sexes certainly have the potential to learn and effectively perform either genders’ traditional “job descriptions” in society. But for a genderless society to work as effectively as gendered, individuals would need to be assigned and acculturated to become competent in social specializations on some basis other than sex. Feminist have made no attempt at social specialization based on any criteria. Feminism has convinced many women to abandon some of their traditional ways of thinking and behaving and adopt portions of those historically used by men; persuaded women to try to be generalist who are able “do it all;” induced women to try to fulfill both sexes’ traditional roles equally well. Women trying to do everything both sexes used to do not only seems counter-productive, but physically impossible and psychologically harmful to women, if not men as well. In addition, similar efforts have not been made to comparably equip men as well. In the absence of seeing to it that males also acquire female’s most utilitarian qualities and traits, what else can the new Feminist society in actuality be if not a matriarchy? It is important to note history records only the brief existence of a few tribal and small matriarchies and no genderless societies. But the more pertinent questions about changing the American culture from a hypothetical patriarchy to a matriarchy or genderless society seems to be: “Why make such dramatic civilization altering changes to one of the most successful societies in history?”; “How does creating a genderless or matriarchic society increase people’s overall well-being or their culture’s survival?”; “Is Feminism’s unprecedented experimentation with the human psyche causing mental health dysfunctions?”; and “Have the majority of citizens been fully-informed and freely chosen to make such sweeping changes?” If so, where is the public’s referendum, the Amendment, or an elected party’s platform so indicating? The author’s suggests that the worst thing that could happen next would be for a sizeable minority of men to be forced to form a “Masculinists” movement comparable to Feminism because they can find no other way for their sex to attain equal treatment and justice to women. Doing so would likely turn the 1960-80s “Battle of the Sexes” into the 2000’s “War of Sexes,” and reap further injury upon children, both sexes, the family, and society’s institutions. The central consideration here is not men or women at all—it is the continuity and prosperity of America’s culture as “we-the-people” have known it for over two centuries.

Last Updated: 7/19/08