What Feminists Believe: ‘Gender Is a Social Construct That Oppresses Everyone’

Posted on | April 4, 2015 | 22 Comments

Having explained “What Feminists Mean by ‘Equality,'” let me now introduce you to this typical expression of feminist belief:

I am a radfem. I want women’s liberation and the destruction of patriarchy. . . . I think men who do not support feminists are misogynists. I am a gender abolitionist because gender is a social construct that oppresses everyone.

Notice: “I think men who do not support feminists are misogynists.”

Words have meanings. “Misogyny” means hatred of women. Therefore, feminists believe that if you do not embrace their ideology, endorse their agenda and support their movement, this proves you hate women.

This accusatory tactic — “Agree with me or I will destroy your reputation by character assassination” — is seldom recognized as what it is, i.e., a totalitarian propaganda technique. It was developed to a high art by Communists in the 20th century, who became proficient at discrediting their opponents and critics by labeling them “bourgeois,” “fascist,” “imperialist” and so forth. Someone who criticized the violent thuggery of a Communist-controlled labor union was branded “anti-worker,” a lackey of “Big Business,” while someone who advocated a strong defense against Soviet-backed aggression was denounced as a “warmonger.” Modern feminism owes its origins to the radical New Left of the 1960s and “red diaper babies” (the children of Communist Party members) played a leading role in organizing the Women’s Liberation movement. Lest any feminist accuse me of making this up — “McCarthyism”! — I will refer them to the authoritative sources:

Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left, by Sara Evans, 1979
Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975, by Alice Echols, 1989
In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution, by Susan Brownmiller, 1999
Betty Friedan and the Making of ‘The Feminine Mystique’: The American Left, the Cold War and Modern Feminism, by Daniel Horowitz, 2000
Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation, by Kate Weigand, 2001

Once you understand how the feminist movement arose in this Cold War context of pro-Communist/anti-American left-wing activism, many other things about feminism become much easier to understand.

It is hardly surprising, for example, to see feminists employing Communist propaganda tactics. Feminism is simply a variant of what has been called Cultural Marxism, and their routine use of the “Alinsky Method” is predictable. Because these tactics have been used habitually by “progressive” activists for many decades, they often don’t even recognize them as tactics. Like others on the Left, feminists usually refuse to acknowledge that they are engaged in propaganda. They often repeat slogans (e.g., “gender is a social construct”) they don’t fully understand and cannot coherently explain. When feminists accuse you of being a “misogynist” merely because you disagree with them, you therefore should recognize this as a tactic. They are insulting you, presuming to be your moral superior, qualified to judge you and impugn your character by describing you with a demeaning epithet.

THIS IS A SUBSTITUTE FOR ARGUMENT.

The feminist proves nothing by calling you names. What they are attempting to do is to discredit you — to demonize you — so as to avoid having to defend their own claims and assertions. One of the mistakes people commonly make when confronted with this tactic of accusation is to become defensive: “I’m not a sexist. I believe in equality.” The problem is that this legitimizes the authority of the accuser, ceding their fitness to make such judgments. Nine times out of 10 in online discourse, however, the accuser knows nothing about you. They are simply reacting to your opposition by making the assumption that you are morally and intellectually inferior, so that they can slap a negative label on you — “racist,” “homophobe,” etc. — and thereby dismiss you.

In any such case, the question arises: “Who are you to accuse me?”

Who is this person? What are their qualifications to make this judgment? Where is the evidence of their moral superiority?

Let us now return to the blogger who says “men who do not support feminists are misogynists.” Who is this person? We don’t know.

There is no personal information on their Tumblr page, the title of which is an accusation: “Men’s Rights Activists are scared of women!” The page carries this declaration:

Hate stems from fear. Deep down men fear women. . . . Because of men’s cowardly betrayal of women — women are justified in rejecting men and for calling them to account via feminism. “Men’s Rights Activists” (the weakest of men) hate feminists because feminists stand up to men.

Personally, I have never called myself a “Men’s Rights Activist” (MRA), although many of those who have followed my series on radical feminism are associated with that movement. However, the feminist blogger uses the term “MRA” as a label, an epithet so general as to encompass everyone who disagrees with feminism.

So the accusation is meant to apply to me: I “fear women,” I have engaged in “cowardly betrayal of women,” I am “the weakest of men” and I “hate feminists because feminists stand up to men.”

This is a deliberate insult with no basis in fact, and I am therefore under any obligation to defend myself against it. Period.

Who dares insult me in this manner? Hint: The blogger’s avatar is a cartoon, and the lack of biographical information is a clue.

We don’t even know that this “radfem” is a woman, you see. With this in mind, let us now quote one of the blogger’s arguments:

Men and Violence — “but they can’t help it”
We are taught that physical violence is about expressing anger (usually in an ‘uncontrollable’ way) but this is a lie — violence is not about anger — it is actually about dominance and control and it is very deliberate.
We have been fed the lie for thousands of years that violence is about ‘uncontrolled outbursts of anger’. We have been told this to justify the violence — so men can get away with using it to dominate and intimidate (yes, within a misogynist and patriarchal society – and to enforce a misogynist and patriarchal society) and so there is no accountability or requirement for male violence to stop . . . but if you look at violence itself it always has a deliberate purpose (i.e. intimidation) and a consequence/result (i.e. dominance/control).
Yet we are continually told that violence is ‘senseless’. Senseless violence is never senseless to the person committing the violence — they always have their reasons.
We are lead to believe/brainwashed that grown men ‘cannot help’ their rages and so we — as women and as a society generally — must be patient with men. We are even asked to accept the idea that violent men are suffering themselves when they commit these acts of violence, hatred and destruction against us. We are asked to ‘understand’, feel pity and even blame ourselves. We are asked not to ‘provoke’ men. We are taught these ‘poor men’ cannot deal with their emotions in ‘more appropriate’ ways (such as to cry/verbalize their anger/express affection/etc.), so they must ‘act it out’ on our bodies and on our children. We are told it is not their fault. ‘Poor men.’
This lie means men are never expected to check their own thinking or belief systems, they are never asked to be accountable or to change. And women are required to become complicit in the lie — to accept being men’s punching bags and never expose these men’s private frailties (if we do we are ‘betraying’ them), because “they can’t help it”. ‘Poor men.’
Women are taught we must be understanding of male violence the way parents must be understanding of a toddler’s tantrum — because a child is in the process of learning to regulate their emotions and behaviors and cannot help it. But men are not children.
Violent men do have choice and control — demonstrated by the fact that they are only violent in somesituations — usually at home in private and towards their families — but these same men manage to stay in control in other situations such as at work, church, in front of police, etc — and this is the factor that proves the lie.
But all that is really happening is that men (both individually and collectively) are indulging in the quickest and most effective form of control/domination — i.e. violent intimidation. Even those men who are “not all men” benefit from their brothers violence. The threat of violence alone affords all men dominance over all women.
The prevalence of male violence is not accidental, not random, and not individual — and it is definitely notabout expressing anger. They can help it. It is time we all understood this — and it is time for all men (even the “not all men” men) to stop lying.
1 in 3 girls and women experience male violence
All girls and women fear it

I have quoted this 571-word rant verbatim, including the boldface and italic emphases in the original, so that it cannot be claimed that I am quoting anything “out of context.”

Is any of that true? As I say, we don’t even know that the person writing this is actually female, so that even the use of first-person plural pronouns (“we,” “our,” etc.) may be deceptive. For all we know, this was written by a deranged meth-addicted transvestite prostitute.

My point is that we are confronted with this long string of accusatory assertions about male behavior, offered without any citation of evidence or sources, so that the only reason to accept any of these statements is the writer’s own authority, which is . . .?

Nothing. Precisely nothing.

There is no reason to believe that this blogger is qualified to make any of these judgments. Is it true, for example that women are “required . . . to accept being men’s punching bags”? Is this true of the women you know? Are all women helpless victims of “these acts of violence, hatred and destruction”? The feminist blogger’s argument seems to deny the possibility that men and women could have loving relationships based on mutual kindness, trust and respect: “The threat of violence alone affords all men dominance over all women.”

Exactly who are these men who crave “dominance” over women so badly that they use the “threat of violence” to obtain it?

We cannot deny that such men exist. Obviously, there are violent bullies in the world, and the rest of us do our best either to avoid them or to protect ourselves against them. It is certainly true that men are generally more prone to violence than women, which helps explain why 93% of U.S. prison inmates are male.

Yet, despite the fact that more than 1.4 million American men are in prison, that leaves a much larger number of males — more than 150 million — who aren’t locked up, and surely not all of these men are using the “threat of violence” to exercise “dominance” over women. Are all men, as the feminist blogger claims, engaged in this “domination and control” of all women through “intimidation” and “violence”?

To ask the question is to answer it. These claims are self-evidently false, as is the claim that “gender is a social construct that oppresses everyone.” Gender is not a “social construct” and, even if it were, not everyone is oppressed by it. Free people are capable of making free choices — unless they are insane.

Insane people make insane choices. One of the insane choices that insane people make is to become feminist bloggers.

But you knew that already, right?

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Category: Sex Trouble

Comments

22 Responses to “What Feminists Believe: ‘Gender Is a Social Construct That Oppresses Everyone’”

smitty
April 4th, 2015 @ 7:42 pm

Stacy,
I finally got around to ordering a copy of the book. Maybe we can get together for lunch toward the end of the month, and an autograph.
Cheers,
Chris
robertstacymccain
April 4th, 2015 @ 7:43 pm

RIGHT ONLINE, MAY 1-2, IN D.C.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
April 4th, 2015 @ 8:50 pm

It takes work to modify gender!
http://static.thefrisky.com/uploads/2014/01/17/RuPauls-Drag-Race-Promo-Poster-Is-A-Big-Tuck-You-To-Duck-Dynasty-600×450.jpg
ericjg623
April 4th, 2015 @ 8:52 pm

“I am a radfem.”

Translation: I am a lunatic, and the only value I provide the human race is to give useful work to those whose job it is to study abnormal psychology.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
April 4th, 2015 @ 8:58 pm

Once pandas had no problem reproducing, but then a wave of panda feminism swept the panda world and they dance on the edge of extinction. If you are going to be a panda, at least be a Lulu: http://evilbloggerlady.blogspot.com/2015/04/nature-after-hours-lulu-panda-is-sex.html
ericjg623
April 4th, 2015 @ 8:59 pm

” I think men who do not support feminists are misogynists. ”

And I think men who support this rubbish are quislings to their own gender.

Fact is, no one likes a sellout to their own side. The feminazis might praise such a “Man” to his face, but privately they will hold him in contempt for the gutless weakling that he is.
ericjg623
April 4th, 2015 @ 9:14 pm

“One of the mistakes people commonly make when confronted with this tactic of accusation is to become defensive: “I’m not a sexist. I believe in equality.” The problem is that this legitimizes the authority of the accuser”

This is a VERY good point, and one that took me a while to realize. And it applies to all left wingers, not just feminists. No matter how slimy the left winger or how morally rotten the issue it is defending (partial birth abortion, for example), these creatures almost always adopt a tone of moral superiority. And like you said, conservatives too often fall for it!
Evi L. Bloggerlady
April 4th, 2015 @ 9:40 pm

radfems are misogynists. They certainly hate humanity and themselves.
robertstacymccain
April 5th, 2015 @ 5:14 am

“No matter how slimy the left winger or how morally rotten the issue it is defending (partial birth abortion, for example), these creatures almost always adopt a tone of moral superiority.”

The belief that liberal (or “progressive”) beliefs are proof of one’s moral virtue is so common, and has been promoted in our culture for so long, that many conservatives seem to feel guilty about being conservative. If you want to rid yourself of this feeling, I strongly recommend Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.

There is simply no reason why a law-abiding American citizen should permit themselves to be constantly guilt-tripped by liberals who insist that if you don’t support their policy you are an unenlightened, bigoted oppressor.
Prime Director
April 5th, 2015 @ 6:00 am

Gender, as a reified grammatical element, IS a social construct. But so what?

Language itself is a social construct, too. Does that mean language is bad?
Daniel Freeman
April 5th, 2015 @ 6:47 am

In a way, yes. It means that when you are told by your self-appointed “betters” that something is true, you must pretend that you believe it, no matter how blatant the evidence to the contrary. It is a common technique of totalitarianism; Orwell did not invent it.

“Gender” means biology denial, as a tool for training people into a habit of pretending to believe things that just aren’t so. The habit then becomes a handle that can be used to steer them wherever the one at the tiller wants them to go.
From Around the Blogroll | The First Street Journal.
April 5th, 2015 @ 6:54 am

[…] Robert Stacey Stacy McCain on The Other McCain: What Feminists Believe: ‘Gender Is a Social Construct That Oppresses Everyone’ […]
The original Mr. X
April 5th, 2015 @ 7:31 am

So how does the fact that the victims of most violent crime are disproportionately male fit into this woman’s rambling conspiracy theory?
marcus tullius cicero
April 5th, 2015 @ 8:50 am

…let’s end this, Feminist are ugly and crazy…they are always angry because they don’t know how to make sandwiches!
<:-)
Daniel O'Brien
April 5th, 2015 @ 9:23 am

But I want him to sign my Kindle copy of his book!!! 🙂
What Feminists Believe: ‘Gender Is a Social Construct That Oppresses Everyone’ | Living in Anglo-America
April 5th, 2015 @ 9:37 am

[…] http://theothermccain.com/2015/04/04/what-feminists-believe-gender-is-a-social-construct-that-oppres… […]
DeadMessenger
April 5th, 2015 @ 3:03 pm

Very astute…
Prime Director
April 5th, 2015 @ 5:19 pm

Gender is a social construct, but that does not make it or any other social construct useless; or worse, harmful.

Can we just dispense with social constructs altogether and experience the world unfiltered? That is doubtful. Extension, figure, motion, rest, solidity, impenetrability, number: all social constructs, all phenomena of the mind. The experience of pain is real, but the identity and nature of the cause is socially constructed using language and ideas.

Religion is a social construct, but this fact does not make it harmful and it does not mean that it’s referrent, GOD, is not real.
Daniel Freeman
April 5th, 2015 @ 7:17 pm

Sadly, I know this one. She would likely say that the Patriarchy hurts men too, and they aren’t really victim victims; it’s just the consequence of inter-oppressor competition.

Ptooie! Now I have a bad taste in my mouth. Tastes like… the collectivization of guilt and selective sociopathy toward men. In other words, feminism.
wbkrebs
April 6th, 2015 @ 4:47 am

I agree that the internet gives little or no biography.

However, when somebody writes, “Hate stems from fear. Deep down men fear women,” am I wrong to draw inferences about the roots of feminism for this writer?

Similarly, I think the statement “‘Men’s Rights Activists’ (the
weakest of men) hate feminists because feminists stand up to men,” explains a lot about feminists attitudes towards MRAs.
Daniel Freeman
April 6th, 2015 @ 5:11 am

You’re thinking projection? That’s always a safe bet with that crowd.

If true, then she’s telling us that she hates men because deep down she fears them, and she hates MRAs because they stand up to feminists like her.
Feminists Against Heterosexuality : The Other McCain
April 6th, 2015 @ 4:03 pm

[…] “The threat of violence alone affords all men dominance over all women.” […]