What Feminism Is

Posted on | July 16, 2015 | 29 Comments

“Feminism lies about domestic violence. It lies about rape. It lies about families. It lies about fathers. It lies about little boys. It lies about girls. It lies about women. It lies about history.
“Feminism bullies. It bullies women who won’t toe the line. It bullies men who won’t toe the line. It bullies children who question its precepts.
“Every time a feminist repeats racist hateful lies about ‘patriarchy’ or ‘rape culture’ and you don’t identify both those ideas as toxic pseudoscience based on hateful, bigoted preconceptions, you enable that toxic, bullying, pseudo-scientific hate movement.”
— Dean Esmay, A Voice for Men

There comes a point at which you get tired of having the same argument over and over, and you just stop talking to people who seem to enjoy arguing for the sake of argument. I reached that point in March 2011 when my friend Joy McCann (the blogger Little Miss Attila) insisted on arguing that Sarah Palin is a “feminist.” Joy had an attachment to the word “feminism” and evidently hoped to rescue that word from its rightful owners, i.e., the radical women who are the feminist movement.

It quickly became obvious that Joy knew less about the history of feminism than I did; my mistake was in thinking that mere facts counted for anything in such a discussion. Words mean things, and definitions cannot be infinitely elastic. The history of feminism, and the words of actual feminists, must be taken seriously if we are ever to understand the phenomenon defined by the word “feminism.” And I address this issue directly on the very first page of my book Sex Trouble:

What do we mean by the word “feminism”? This question has become increasingly crucial to the way that we talk about men, women and sex in the 21st century. Almost everyone claims to accept feminism if they can be permitted to define it in the most commonly accepted understanding of “equality” as basic fairness. Especially in terms of educational and employment opportunity, no one argues in favor of discrimination against women. Yet this widely accepted idea of feminism, as a concern for equality in the sense of fairness and opportunity, is not the goal of the feminist movement today, nor was this the goal of the movement when it began in the late 1960s. The leaders of the Women’s Liberation movement were radicals — many of them were avowed Marxists — who advocated a social revolution to destroy the basic institutions of Western civilization, which they denounced as an oppressive system of male supremacy, often labeled “patriarchy.” Women are oppressed and men are their oppressors, feminists declared, calling for the destruction of this systematic oppression: “Smash patriarchy!”

This movement and this ideology define “feminism” in the 21st century, and this has been the case for more than 40 years. Any attempt to define feminism as something other than what the organized feminist movement believes is futile. We must abandon the delusion that feminism can be reformed. The poisonous tree always yields a poisonous fruit. Every day we see further confirmation that feminism is what it has always been, a radical movement waging a War Against Human Nature.

“Marriage means rape and lifelong slavery. . . . We reject marriage both in theory and in practice. . . . Love has to be destroyed. It’s an illusion . . . It may be that sex is a neurotic manifestation of oppression. It’s like a mass psychosis.”
— Ti-Grace Atkinson, 1969

“We identify the agents of our oppression as men. . . . All men have oppressed women.”
— Redstockings, 1969

“In terms of the oppression of women, heterosexuality is the ideology of male supremacy.”
— Margaret Small, “Lesbians and the Class Position of Women,” in Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, edited by Bunch and Nancy Myron (1975)

“I think heterosexuality cannot come naturally to many women: I think that widespread heterosexuality among women is a highly artificial product of the patriarchy. . . . I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.”
— Marilyn Frye, “A Lesbian’s Perspective on Women’s Studies,” speech to the National Women’s Studies Association conference, 1980

“The radical feminist argument is that men have forced women into heterosexuality in order to exploit them . . .”
— Celia Kitzinger, The Social Construction of Lesbianism (1987)

“Institutions construct systems of inequality in a variety of ways. . . . Such institutions engage in practices that discriminate against women, exclude or devalue women’s perspectives, and perpetuate the idea that differences between women and men and the dominance of men are natural. . . .
“For example, a complex social system throughout much of the world — what feminist poet and scholar Adrienne Rich called ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ — exerts strong pressures on women to enter into heterosexual marriages.”
— Verta Taylor, Leila Rupp and Nancy Whittier, Feminist Frontiers (ninth edition, 2011)

“There are politics in sexual relationships because they occur in the context of a society that assigns power based on gender and other systems of inequality and privilege. . . . [T]he interconnections of systems are reflected in the concept of heteropatriarchy, the dominance associated with a gender binary system that presumes heterosexuality as a social norm. . . .
“As many feminists have pointed out, heterosexuality is organized in such a way that the power men have in society gets carried into relationships and can encourage women’s subservience, sexually and emotionally.”
— Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (fifth edition, 2012)

This remarkable consistency of feminist rhetoric and ideology over the course of several decades — a radical hostility toward men, marriage and motherhood, carried forward from the earliest days of the Women’s Liberation movement into the most widely assigned textbooks in Women’s Studies programs today — simply cannot be ignored. Attempts to deny, limit or mitigate the actual meaning of feminism can never change that meaning. Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It, and anyone who refuses to recognize this reality is living in a world of illusion. Unless and until we are willing see feminism as a “pseudo-scientific hate movement,” to use Dean Esmay’s description, this poisoned tree will continue yielding its poisoned fruit in the form of young women who have been indoctrinated to view all men as agents of their oppression. Radical feminism now exercises hegemonic control within America’s colleges and universities, where the movement’s power is protected by federal law (Title IX) that effectively prohibits criticism or opposition, and where Women’s Studies programs function as the Feminist-Industrial Complex that trains activists as advocates and enforcers of the movement’s dogmatic beliefs. Examples of how this system operates are not difficult to find.

Sandra M. McEvoy has a Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Clark University in Massachusetts. She is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Political Science and Global Studies program at Boston’s Wheelock College (annual tuition $32,830). Professor McEvoy “is active in several professional associations, including the International Studies Association, where she is former Chair of the Women’s Caucus and founding Chair of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Allies Caucus.”

What sort of education do you suppose Professor McEvoy provides her students? We need not speculate, for we have testimony from her student Emily Hart, who is “double majoring in American Studies and Political Science and Global Studies”:

Walking into Sandra McEvoy’s Introduction to Feminist Theories the first day of class, I was confident in my knowledge of the feminist movement. I was well versed in the different type of feminists and knew exactly where I fit in on the spectrum of feminism. I believed that much of women’s oppression could be owed to capitalism, and the huge profits inextricably tied to keeping women in their place. I knew the origins of the patriarchy, and had my ideas on how I thought it could be dismantled. But even with all of my prior understanding, I was hardly even breaking the surface of feminism. This class has flipped all of my notions of feminism upside down. . . .
Feminist Theories has completely transformed my understanding of the world around me, has made me rethink such important institutions as motherhood and marriage.

Another testimonial from Wheelock student Jessica Kuhn:

I am currently in the course Feminist Theories (HDS 322) with Dr. Sandra McEvoy. The course is challenging because topics that are unique to academics such as sexualities, education, and motherhood are discussed throughout feminist theory. . . . Modern society inherently imposes a threatening nature on woman resulting in oppression. . . .
Dr. Sandra McEvoy exposes students to topics that trigger emotions such as sexual violence and rape. . . . Feminist theory can serve to uncover what defines women’s subordination in culture and create global prevention and awareness of women’s oppression in a patriarchal society. A major take-away from this course is to challenge society’s social norm in order to combat women’s oppression.

What these young women are taught — what their parents are paying more than $30,000 a year for them to learn — is to view men with contempt, hatred and suspicion, to regard male sexuality as inherently dangerous to women, and especially to despise marriage and motherhood as oppressive “institutions” of male supremacy. Although neither Ms. Hart nor Ms. Kuhn identify themselves as anything other than heterosexual, we must wonder how any woman could ever experience happiness in a relationship with a man once she has internalized the lessons taught by radical feminists like Professor McEvoy.

“Fear and Loathing of the Penis — a paranoid resentment of men, characterized by irrational suspicion — is the underlying mental condition that feminism turns into a political ideology. What disturbs me, after months of studying this phenomenon, is that this madness is both contagious and incurable. Feminism is a sort of cultural virus that, once it takes hold in a woman’s mind, makes it impossible for her to relate to men in a normal manner and, because misery loves company, she feels compelled to share her hateful anti-male attitudes with other women.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Sex Trouble: Radical Feminism and the War Against Human Nature (page 108)

Wishful thinking cannot change what feminism actually is. Those who ask us to imagine a “feminism” that is something else are inviting us on a snipe hunt, and nothing can be gained by joining them in their pursuit of an impossible fiction. It is a frightening thing to realize how few Americans know anything about the toxic ideas being poured into the minds of our nation’s young people. There are more than 700 Women’s Studies programs at U.S. colleges and universities, employing thousands of instructors to teach this hateful ideology to tens of thousands of students every year. We can see the result — a weird mixture of anxiety, anger and confusion — emerging daily from the fetid emotional swamp that is Feminist Tumblr. (Hello, Wheelock College Tumblr!) Yet in researching this phenomenon, I find myself quite nearly alone.

Almost no one else is paying attention to how academia serves as the headquarters of the feminist movement, with Women’s Studies faculty functioning as the General Staff in taxpayer-funded boot camps for the training of young feminist soldiers. Think about this: Where else have you seen any in-depth examination of the faculty and curricula of Women’s Studies courses? Who else has actually taken the trouble to purchase these textbooks and quote what they say? Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions is edited by two Oregon State University professors and published by McGraw-Hill, which calls it a “leading introductory women’s studies reader.” Feminist Frontiers is edited by three lesbian professors, two at the University of California-Santa Barbara and another at Smith College, and is also published by McGraw-Hill, which describes it as the “most widely used anthology of feminist writings.”

Meanwhile, here I am, a mere blogger who was double-dog-dared by his readers to write a book about this. Seven months after I published the first “draft chapter” (“Radical Feminism and the Long Shadow of the ‘Lavender Menace’”), I produced the 120-page first edition, and next month I will publish a revised and expanded second edition. That is, I plan to publish a second edition, unless I am overwhelmed by existential dread caused by staring too long into feminism’s vast abyss of despair and insanity. Your prayers are most earnestly solicited.

Why You Should Hit My Tip Jar: Who else is crazy enough to spend hours researching "feminist theory" on Tumblr? https://t.co/rUoIM5TJbI

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) July 16, 2015

Loyal readers have been funding my research, thanks to the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Like I keep saying: People need to wake the hell up!

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

29 Responses to “What Feminism Is”

What Feminism Is | Living in Anglo-America
July 16th, 2015 @ 11:56 am

[…] http://theothermccain.com/2015/07/16/what-feminism-is/ […]
Fail Burton
July 16th, 2015 @ 11:58 am

Esmay is correct. Lesbian intersectionality is a racist, supremacist cult. The most startling thing about it is how successfully it has mainstreamed hate speech as nobility and justice.
physicsnut
July 16th, 2015 @ 12:11 pm

have you seen this nutty stuff:

If you ask SIRI about Bruce Jenner – it CORRECTS YOU .

how long before SIRI is “correcting” students about American History
I wonder what it will say about ‘hands up, dont shoot’
and was Zimmerman a white hispanic ?
imagine that – a freakin POLITICALLY CORRECT ROBOT !
Even Douglas Adams didn’t see that one coming.

And George Orwell was an optimist !

http://www.mediaite.com/online/iphones-siri-will-correct-you-if-you-call-caitlyn-jenner-bruce/
http://www.people.com/article/siri-correcting-people-caitlyn-jenner-bruce
kilo6
July 16th, 2015 @ 12:25 pm

Like I keep saying: People need to wake the hell up!

Indeed, we do.

Ezekiel 33:2-6 (KJV)

2 Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman:

3 If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;

4 Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.

5 He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.

6 But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand.
Art Deco
July 16th, 2015 @ 12:29 pm

Sarah Palin might be called a ‘feminist’ in an archaic sense in that she is not a subscriber to the conception of human relations which prevailed in prior to about 1855 in this country and (in some realms) prior to 1920. Neither were any of my grandparents, who lived between 1894 and 1987. She might conceivably be a ‘feminist’ in the less archaic sense that she thinks it illegitimate for employment decisions to be made on criteria other than performance or that she does not categorically oppose competition between men and women. Since all of these ‘feminist’ understandings implicitly incorporate notions of personal agency on the part of women, Gov. Palin would be at odds with contemporary feminism.
Planned Parenthood: $100 a Liver? Cheap If You Can Get It. | Regular Right Guy
July 16th, 2015 @ 12:40 pm

[…] What Feminism Is […]
Dana
July 16th, 2015 @ 12:53 pm

We must congratulate Dr McEvoy (who has kept a surname indicating “son of Evoy): she managed to major in Women’s and Gender Studies and doesn’t have to ask, “Would you like fries with that?”

But, in the end, a feminism which denigrates motherhood is inherently suicidal: they are asking to be the last generation of feminists.
Dana
July 16th, 2015 @ 12:55 pm

Sarah Palin might be called a feminist in that she was willing to compete equally with men, and won doing so. She didn’t ask for equality of opportunity, but simply took it.
Dean Esmay
July 16th, 2015 @ 1:00 pm

One of the things I have seen from some “conservatives” is that MRAs are “just like the feminists” because, amongst other things, we think marriage is an unsafe environment for men.

However, the feminists came to this conclusion by advocating reform of laws that MADE marriage a dangerous environment for men and their children. Accidentally marry the wrong girl and your life may well be completely over.

I look forward to the return of friendly, mutually loving, and mutually supportive relationships between men and women. First step: getting rid of toxic racist (yes racist) sexist feminist lies. Second step,to get men to stop pretending that their own worth (in the eyes of God, or if they don’t believe in God, then in their own self-esteeem) is defined by women’s approval rather than standing on his own two feet standing up for himself and his rights.

One of the other things I find odd about modern conservatives, by the way, is that they seem to think there’s something wrong with men talking about where their rights are violated and why they want them respected. Didn’t we, like, fight a Revoltuionary War over those things? Since when did conservatives start crapping on men who are talking about defending their own rights? No “special rights” here, we see routine violation of due process, free speech, and more, guys.

I know I’m rambling but anyway, thanks Stacey. Also I always liked Joy and still do but the emotional attachment conservative women have to “feminism” as a word is ridiculous. Why? Women were always powerful and still are.
Art Deco
July 16th, 2015 @ 1:08 pm

A dimension in a man’s understanding of himself will be in his performance as a provider and his performance as a lover. Both of these are assessed and reflected back to him by his wife.

I find odd about modern conservatives, by the way, is that they seem to
think there’s something wrong with men talking about where their rights
are violated and why they want them respected.

There is a certain character type (which has a male and female variant) which has this reaction to men’s problems in living. It may be correlated with politics but is not identified with one’s politics. The thing is, taking a punch is as often as not a virtue. Like any virtue, it can curdle.
Art Deco
July 16th, 2015 @ 1:12 pm

she managed to major in Women’s and Gender Studies and doesn’t have to ask, “Would you like fries with that?”

The thing is, her career is a manifestation of a principal-agent problem in academe, just like Bill Clinton’s speaking fees. At the institution I know best, about 0.3% of all diplomas issued by the arts-and-sciences faculty were in women’s studies. There is virtually no demand among students for this sort of thing. It’s all political patronage.
robertstacymccain
July 16th, 2015 @ 1:14 pm

What strikes me is that PARENTS must realize how this ideology threatens their own children. It’s like Communism during the Soviet era. If you were not warned against it, if you did not recognize its telltale rhetoric and did not understand how it operates, you might find yourself signing up for a Communist Party front group — and, indeed, Ronald Reagan joined two such front groups during the 1930s. Likewise, unless you explain to your children what feminism is and why it is evil, they may very well be seduced by the movement’s dishonest rhetoric about “equality.”
Gunga
July 16th, 2015 @ 1:20 pm

This keeps taking me back to the liner notes from George Carlin’s Class Clown: In
ancient times, there was a country whose harvest came in and it was
poisonous. Those who ate of it became insane. “There is but one thing to
do.” said the King. “We must eat the grain to survive, but there must
be those among us who will remember that we are insane.” -anon.

Seems that there are fewer and fewer who remember…
Dana
July 16th, 2015 @ 1:23 pm

“Jazz” is a “transgender” teenager, a male-to-female transition, who is unhappy that boys won’t flirt with ~~her~~ him. Gee, I wonder why?

But that begs the question: would the lesbian feminists hit on ~~her~~ him, or would that be too heterosexual?

https://youtu.be/RUn6nqgbsEU
Jeanette Victoria
July 16th, 2015 @ 2:22 pm

Sara is a supporter of title 9 and she is NOT a supporter of tradional stay at home moms
Art Deco
July 16th, 2015 @ 2:25 pm

When did Sarah Palin ever offer a critique of ordinary housewives? If I’m not mistaken, there was a considerable run of years where she worked part-time.
JosephBleau
July 16th, 2015 @ 3:45 pm

I wonder what would happen if sombody with the means and expertise were to put together a ballot initiative in California to prohibit state funded universities from sponsoring womens/gender studies programs, and eliminating all professorships associated with them. Obviously, it would have to be very carefully crafted to be effective. Perhaps throw in the prohibition of use of texts that disparage either sex and any sort of sexual orientation – that could throw them for a loop.

The sponsors could unleash a torrent of advertising that simply quotes all the professors and the textbooks.
Fail Burton
July 16th, 2015 @ 5:38 pm

If you feel you are up against an ideology rather than women then it would help to not presume women are against you and recruit more into your movement.
honzik
July 16th, 2015 @ 5:46 pm

I’ve found it useful to compare and contrast the symptoms of Cluster B personality disorders with the behavior patterns of radical feminists. Often, it’s a pretty good match.
Daniel Freeman
July 16th, 2015 @ 7:20 pm

Women are welcome in the MRM, at least at AVfM. Since they’re able to use their female privilege to speak their minds freely in public, they’re called honey badgers.

http://youtu.be/4r7wHMg5Yjg
ATDavidD
July 16th, 2015 @ 9:35 pm

Where do all the heterosexual-hating feminists think babies come from, anyway?

Surely even they secretly want someone to keep at least making girl babies, don’t they?
crydiego
July 16th, 2015 @ 9:48 pm

Some of the most respected members of the MHRM are women. A voice for men
JW%
July 16th, 2015 @ 10:30 pm

It’s an amusing joke, started with Karen Straughen(if I’m not mistaken) mentioned she didn’t care if feminists were against her and would do their best to ruin her(as a non-conservative woman and part of the LGBT community she’s not exactly going to get any help from the other side either), so long as she knew in her heart she was doing the right thing.

It’s since expanded into any woman who wants to claim their MRA it seems. Being bitten by the metaphorical cobra isn’t necessary. But still happens. Frequently.
Daniel Freeman
July 16th, 2015 @ 11:02 pm

as a non-conservative woman and part of the LGBT community she’s not exactly going to get any help from the other side either

Oh, she’s been featured here before. Truth is truth.

ETA: Girl Writes What was my gateway to the red pill, so I will always be grateful to her for that.
Mr. E
July 16th, 2015 @ 11:17 pm

Feminism is vile and evil.
Daniel Freeman
July 16th, 2015 @ 11:17 pm

There will always be guys willing to spank the monkey for sperm clinics. That’s why I’m torn on future equalizing technologies like Vasalgel and artificial wombs: they would level the playing field, but also deepen the divide. And I say that as a Vasalgel crowdfunder.
Fail Burton
July 17th, 2015 @ 2:12 am

Twitter has been crucial is allowing these sociopaths to filter out anyone remotely normal. In science fiction for example, no more than a couple hundred people across Australia, the U.S. and U. K. have networked across Twitter to signal boost other sociopaths and shame others into exile. Years ago such a thing never would’ve been possible. Twitter has probably done more to advance the cause of hate speech and racial incitement in America than any time in the modern era. You’ll notice how the enemy of these “feminists” is never less than 100 million people at a go, prime territory for people with anti-social mental health issues but high-functioning enough to pathetically exploit “justice” for their own sick ends. The notorious blue whale Milo’s going after right now is nothing more than a aging punkster trying to earn a living by insulting men on the internet. Normally a person like that would be reduced to destroying their life in a trailer park. No more. Now these mini-kingdoms of demagogues use their social capital to shame corporations into compliance until a sports network watched by millions of kids gives a “courage” award to a hapless mental case. This is the closest we’ve ever come to a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Maggie's Farm
July 18th, 2015 @ 4:49 am

Saturday morning links

Microbiologists Hold the Secrets to Making Perfect Cheese Gopnik reviews Harper Lee’s book New Pill Will Let People With Celiac Disease Eat Gluten-Filled Meals Of Their Dreams Pentaquarks Have Physicists Psyched—And Baffled 3 Reasons To Stop Tha
News of the Week (July 19th, 2015) | The Political Hat
July 19th, 2015 @ 4:29 pm

[…] What Feminism Is There comes a point at which you get tired of having the same argument over and over, and you just stop talking to people who seem to enjoy arguing for the sake of argument. I reached that point in March 2011 when my friend Joy McCann (the blogger Little Miss Attila) insisted on arguing that Sarah Palin is a “feminist.” Joy had an attachment to the word “feminism” and evidently hoped to rescue that word from its rightful owners, i.e., the radical women who are the feminist movement. […]