War Against Human Nature: Radical Feminism’s Anti-Maternal Rage

Posted on | August 23, 2015 | 61 Comments

(This afternoon, my wife and I will be attending a baby shower for my daughter-in-law, who is eight months pregnant with our second grandson. Because this places constraints on my time, the following discussion will consist of observations and assertions that are not fully supported by quotes or citations. It may therefore seem to some readers that this discussion is just me being an opinionated know-it-all engaged in “mansplaining.” Or it may seem that I am over-generalizing from anecdotal examples, as if I am offering a universal single-factor explanation of feminism, which could be thus refuted by citing counter-examples that point to other factors. However, this is not my intention. I have never contended that feminism is a one-size-fits-all phenomenon, and that is not what I’m trying to argue here. Instead, I am pointing to a certain distinct phenomenon, that has attracted too little attention in the study of feminism. Anyway, there won’t be a lot of links and quotes here, and I wanted to explain that this is simply because I’m in a hurry to get to that baby shower. Thanks. — RSM)

Guys often react to the rants of angry young feminists with a two-word explanation: “Daddy issues.” Having spent more than a year researching radical feminism, however, I always point out that many feminists have even worse “Mommy issues.”

You discern this, for example, in Andrea Dworkin’s account of her own youth. She didn’t much seem to mind her father, who worked very hard to support their family, but expressed contempt for her mother. It is easy to find similar expressions of anti-maternal resentments in the autobiographical writings of other feminists. Either the mother is presented as a pathetic figure — weak, ineffective, dominated or brutalized by the father — or else the mother is domineering and manipulative, trying to force her rebellious daughter to comply with a socially approved gender role that the young feminist rejects. From the daughter’s perspective, the mother’s life is unworthy. She rejects her mother as role model, and this refusal to emulate her mother becomes the emotional fuel of the daughter’s feminist politics.

How else can we explain Amanda Marcotte’s rage against babies as “loud and smell and . . . . demanding . . . time-sucking monsters”? If children are such a burden that she cannot be expected to tolerate them, what does this say of her mother? Was it stupid of Mrs. Marcotte to put up with loud, smelly, demanding Baby Amanda? Such a vehement rejection of motherhood — a profound and implacable hatred of children — strikes most people as so strange that we presume it must have very deep psychological origins. We need not disparage childless women, per se, in order to perceive something weird about the woman who angrily denounces the entire idea of motherhood as repugnant. Yet feminists quite routinely express this in extreme terms:

when people shame women who don’t want children it makes me so f–king mad
I have been told since I was a child, A CHILD, that I was going to be a mother because it is just expected of me because I am a female. And I’ve never in my life wanted children. I got so tired of hearing “your mind will change when you’re older and more mature and woman-like ” as if it’s a right of passage to womanhood to have a child and you are otherwise not a woman. Young girls are taught more of woman=mother than boys are ever taught that man=father. Even in play girls are taught to play with baby dolls and play house and to play nice and gentle and be nurturing while boys roughhouse and learn sports. They are raising young girls with the idea that children are always a part of the female experience.
Being someone who does not want children myself I have been called a child hater and told that I am less caring and loving than other women, almost as if I am heartless for not wanting to reproduce. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I was 14 when my mom started pressuring me to start thinking about kids in my future. Only 14! And that very next year I found out I was infertile and had no chance of reproduction anyways. I was supposed to be distraught and sad but I was honestly RELIEVED to finally have a way out of the social pressure put on me because it was that bad. . . .

That anti-motherhood rant got hundreds of notes on Feminist Tumblr, including this one:

Personally. I’ve never wanted children. I don’t want children. My parents are disgusted that I am in a relationship with a Man who can’t have children due to a vasectomy. . . .
I found out about a year ago that my body doesent work normally in a reproductive sense. And should I wish to have kids I will have to undergo expensive IVF hormone treatments to “Force” my body to ovulate.
Yet I still maintain. I don’t want kids.
I’m not the least bit maternal. I have no broody feelings towards babies.

Grant that there are mothers who are also feminists. Yet the more closely you pay attention to the feminist movement, the more you notice how this anti-maternal sentiment provides so much of the energy of activists. The fanatical devotion to abortion — or, I’m sorry, choice — is merely the tip of this psychological iceberg of rage. It is as if these women are in rebellion against the simple realities of reproductive biology, a rejection of their own womanhood that could actually reflect hormonal abnormality. Notice that both of the women quoted above declared a lack of emotional capacity for motherhood even before they discovered their lack of a biological capacity for motherhood.

Well, I could make a lot of other observations about this phenomenon, but that’s probably enough to stir the pot for now, and I don’t have time to write a lot more now. Gotta get ready for that baby shower.

UPDATE: Back from the baby shower. It’s really kind of weird to go from confronting feminism — constant anger and craziness — to just hanging around with normal young people. (OK, more or less normal young people, considering that we’re talking about my son and his friends.) There were seven women in their early 20s at this party, none of whom mentioned being oppressed by the patriarchy. Maybe they are oppressed and just don’t realize it? “False consciousness”?

Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

61 Responses to “War Against Human Nature: Radical Feminism’s Anti-Maternal Rage”

Art Deco
August 23rd, 2015 @ 2:37 pm

Having spent more than a year researching radical feminism, however, I
always point out that many feminists have even worse “Mommy issues.”

Sylvia Plath loathed her mother and arranged her suicide in such a way that her children would find the body.

“Mommy issues” need not arise from a mother’s actual shortcomings. As for Marcotte, were I to place a bet and spin the roulette wheel, I’d wager that all of her verbal pyrotechnics is an effort to avoid acknowledging her own ordinariness, and effort which grows more taxing as she grows older with nothing to show for it. Her mother, her siblings, and the people of Alpine, Tx. would be a problem because they knew her when (and were not impressed).
TheOtherAndrewB
August 23rd, 2015 @ 2:43 pm

The only good news out of the feminist coven is their hatred of motherhood. I hope that this entire brood of hate-filled, shrewish viragos never so much as produce a single ovum. Better for them, not to have to love and sacrifice and cherish another living being. Better that their bitter, shriveled hearts never have to encompass anything other than their own limitless anger and an occasional stray cat. May their uteri be as barren and dry as their rhetoric.
kerrari1898
August 23rd, 2015 @ 2:47 pm

Such lengthy anti maternal rants always struck me as a case of the lady doth protest too much. I doubt it’s coincidental that childless feminists who are prone to writing such screeds inevitably have cats which they publicly dote on.
robertstacymccain
August 23rd, 2015 @ 2:47 pm

Of course, this is why they are always trying to tell the rest of us how to raise our children.
robertstacymccain
August 23rd, 2015 @ 2:48 pm

They seem to prefer cats to humans.
Charles G. Hill
August 23rd, 2015 @ 3:22 pm

As always, there is an upside: if none of these creatures reproduce, then no child will have to endure their ranting and/or raving.
Jason Lee
August 23rd, 2015 @ 3:32 pm

“Either the mother is presented as a pathetic figure — weak, ineffective, dominated or brutalized by the father — or else the mother is domineering and manipulative, trying to force her rebellious daughter to comply with a socially approved gender role that the young feminist rejects.”

I wonder if these examples can be considered as reflections of daddy issues, with the former obviously reflecting paternal abuse and the latter often reflecting a weak or absentee father. The feminist may focus her blame on her mother… but perhaps the father is still a root cause of the unhappiness?
Jason Lee
August 23rd, 2015 @ 3:35 pm

Unfortunately, they seem to be doing a pretty good job of selling their baby-phobic attitudes to women who aren’t defective, inspiring women to wait too long to have children.
Finrod Felagund
August 23rd, 2015 @ 3:46 pm

Appropriately, Sylvia Plath’s typewriter was one of the darkest of the dark artifacts that were locked inside a special vault at Warehouse 13.
Renaissance
August 23rd, 2015 @ 4:19 pm

Some people like cats without being feminists…. 😀 😀
Renaissance
August 23rd, 2015 @ 4:21 pm

The mother’s reaction to the father is a model for the daughter’s own behavior. She can either accept it or reject it and go in another direction. If mom was trapped in an abusive marriage because of children, the daughter may decide never to have them so as to avoid being trapped in a cycle of violence. The idea that a man might not be abusive just doesn’t occur to her as a possibility.
OrangeEnt
August 23rd, 2015 @ 4:33 pm

They’re just sayin’ they prefer pussy….
RKae
August 23rd, 2015 @ 4:58 pm

Except that the left has handed the entire public school system over to this nonsensical “philosophy.”

And even if your kids aren’t in schools, these lunatics are out there in the culture, lurking, waiting for the day when you have a fight and your kids go looking for “radical thoughts.”
RKae
August 23rd, 2015 @ 5:00 pm

If I want a lazy, stuck-up creature in my house that looks down its nose at me…

…I’ll just invite a Frenchman to live with me.

At least I could get him to pay rent.
RKae
August 23rd, 2015 @ 5:02 pm

“Mommy issues” need not arise from a mother’s actual shortcomings.

Exactly! Mommy issues can arise from your kids reading BS books, having idiot friends and communist teachers.

You can raise your kids using all the wisdom on Earth, and they can still get pulled in by the siren song of stupid philosophies.
RKae
August 23rd, 2015 @ 5:05 pm

when people shame women who don’t want children it makes me so f–king mad

And yet they have a whole list of “proper behaviors” that they’re trying to force on an unwilling society.

Go figure.
Renaissance
August 23rd, 2015 @ 5:09 pm

But you can’t lock him in the bathroom if he tears apart your new roll of paper towels.
News of the Week (August 23rd, 2015) | The Political Hat
August 23rd, 2015 @ 5:09 pm

[…] War Against Human Nature: Radical Feminism’s Anti-Maternal Rage Guys often react to the rants of angry young feminists with a two-word explanation: “Daddy issues.” Having spent more than a year researching radical feminism, however, I always point out that many feminists have even worse “Mommy issues.” […]
concern00
August 23rd, 2015 @ 5:29 pm

In observing that girls are stereotyped towards motherhood and nurturing through being taught to play with dolls and play house, she somehow overlooks that the roughhousing and sports games of boys are also preparing them for fatherhood. Maybe there’s a pattern, a natural inclination towards these things…almost as if someone had designed it as such.
Bob Belvedere
August 23rd, 2015 @ 6:04 pm

I like cats because they’re independent – willing to say ‘Nope, don’t feel the love right about now’ sometimes when you call them. And, of course, they possess more intelligence than dogs.
Bob Belvedere
August 23rd, 2015 @ 6:05 pm

By Georgina, I think he’s got it!
Finrod Felagund
August 23rd, 2015 @ 6:21 pm

Agreed. As long as you give them access to food, water, and a litterbox, cats generally are good. They don’t generally regularly make demands on your time like dogs do.
‘Mommy Hates You Better!’ – Feminists And Their Mothers | The Camp Of The Saints
August 23rd, 2015 @ 6:25 pm

[…] Please do take the time to click here and read Stacy’s full post. […]
Evi L. Bloggerlady
August 23rd, 2015 @ 6:41 pm

They are giving Republicans a hard time about the term “anchor babies” but you would think having a baby to Amanda Marcotte was tying an anchor to her and throwing her overboard.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
August 23rd, 2015 @ 6:42 pm

And possibly cook…
Art Deco
August 23rd, 2015 @ 7:04 pm

Gloria Steinem’s father was not ‘abusive’, just a lousy provider (a common problem during the Depression). Her mother was a head case strung out on Mickey Finns. See her essay, “Ruth’s Song (Because She Could not Sing It)”.
Bob Belvedere
August 23rd, 2015 @ 7:15 pm

Exactly, but, if you’re sick or feeling low, they come around.
Daniel Freeman
August 23rd, 2015 @ 8:14 pm

Excellent. This tells me that “anchor baby” is an effective term, else they would ignore it. I will now use it at every opportunity.
Daniel Freeman
August 23rd, 2015 @ 8:26 pm

I strongly disagree with blaming a man for failing to keep an abusive woman under control. Maybe it made sense once upon a time, since society has always been more reluctant to punish women; but now, instead of being shamed for failing, he could be jailed just for attempting to stop her.
Quartermaster
August 23rd, 2015 @ 8:48 pm

You know the old saw about “those who can’t, teach?”
DeadMessenger
August 23rd, 2015 @ 9:10 pm

I know, right? Almost like there’s someone super Intelligent, who can almost be called a Designer; someone with godly powers. But where would we find such a person???
Mike G.
August 23rd, 2015 @ 10:32 pm

Exactly…do stupid shit and stupid shit happens.
Mike G.
August 23rd, 2015 @ 10:38 pm

Dude! Really! Oh well, I’m a dog person. Never met a cat I ever liked. At least a dog is happy to see you at the end of the day… a cat…meh.
Daniel Freeman
August 24th, 2015 @ 2:31 am

It’s really kind of weird to go from confronting feminism — constant anger and craziness — to just hanging around with normal young people.

Sounds like that’s exactly what you need, then.
Jim R
August 24th, 2015 @ 6:31 am

I used to dislike children and not want any either.

WTF was I thinking???
Ilion
August 24th, 2015 @ 6:59 am

“Guys often react to the rants of angry young feminists with a two-word explanation: “Daddy issues.” Having spent more than a year researching radical feminism, however, I always point out that many feminists have even worse “Mommy issues.””

I’d say it goes even deeper … into the feminist’s mother’s “husband issues”.
Ilion
August 24th, 2015 @ 7:14 am

“Unfortunately, they seem to be doing a pretty good job of selling their baby-phobic attitudes to women who aren’t defective, inspiring women to wait too long to have children.”

More generally, and more importantly, it is frequently the young women’s mothers and especially fathers who are behind that.

1) The mothers frequently have “husband issues” — they *will not* submit to the headship of their husbands, and so they spend a great deal of their lives sabotaging his (admittedly feeble) attempts to raise his daughters not to allow themselves to be used as sluts. For instance, a high percentage of American women *encourage* their young daughters to spend their teens and twenties “having fun”, which we all know means engaging in casual sex with any number of so-called men (so long as they are “hot”).

2) At the same time, the fathers have totally bought into feminism and have spend the young women’s entire childhood brainwashing them that they *have* to go to college and “have a career”, and that marriage and children “can wait”.
Ilion
August 24th, 2015 @ 7:23 am

Leftism, of which feminism is but a subset, has never worried all that much about intellectual consistency … nor intellectual honesty.
BSR
August 24th, 2015 @ 11:06 am

I knew plenty of women in high school and college who claimed that they didn’t want kids. But they got older, married and changed their minds. I don’t think they regret the decisions they made later in life.

Given that these particular women later discovered they had fertility problems though, it is easy to imagine that part of their ideology is fed by a justification of their stance on having babies. They claim not to be resentful about being infertile, but maybe they are and have found other ways to express it.

It is all the more reason that young girls should not be fed that sort of nonsense. No matter what some angry feminist says, women desiring children and being able to raise them is one of the core means by which humanity continues on this planet. If a few loons want to remove themselves from the gene pool, let them. They just don’t need to drag others down with them.

It is hard enough to have children and raise them effectively. It takes a toll on your privacy, your independence, your wallet and your sanity. Insane feminists putting other barriers in the way is completely unnecessary and unwanted.
M. Thompson
August 24th, 2015 @ 5:17 pm

How far from the Ark?
The original Mr. X
August 24th, 2015 @ 5:52 pm

Come on now, if it weren’t for their double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all.
Finrod Felagund
August 24th, 2015 @ 6:04 pm

I don’t recall seeing the Ark in the Warehouse, but at one point they did pull out stones from the Tower of Babel– you can only understand someone holding one if you’re holding another stone. Joshua’s trumpet also made an appearance.
Ilion
August 25th, 2015 @ 8:00 am

The cat or the Frog?
Ilion
August 26th, 2015 @ 9:06 am

She’s a witch! Burn her! Burn her!
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