[This is a slightly revised excerpt from the Foreword to my new book, published today by New English Review Press, The Goddess That Failed: Feminism’s Unending War Against Men, Families, and Civilization Itself]
Feminism poses a threat to everything good in western culture, perhaps especially to women’s capacity to love, reason, and exercise self-restraint.
I was an adherent of feminism before I became a critic. I have felt its euphoric exultation and its self-flattering conviction of moral purity. Later, I recognized its hubris and moral hollowness.
I am familiar with feminism’s core texts, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Mary Anne Franks, having studied them and believed in them for years. I understand the psychology and the history of the movement because I lived inside it for many years.
Unlike others who have criticized feminism’s excesses, I contend that although there are some moderate feminists, there was never a moderate feminism inspired by reasonable goals and untainted by anti-male fanaticism. Feminism did not go wrong at some point in history, whether after the Second Wave or before, whether in anti-sex or pro-sex zeal. It was always rooted in resentment and envy, warped by utopian longings and false notions of female moral superiority.
Decades of feminist grievance-mongering and accusation have led inevitably to our present time of ceaseless complaints, anti-western causes, hysterical accusation, rampant divorce, a declining birthrate, millions of abortions, and anti-male cruelty. Feminism has undermined and will continue to undermine the stability and viability of all western societies.
From the first occasions when I began to speak and write about feminism in 2012 and 2013, I encountered the same response from feminists: “What you are describing is not real feminism” or “Those feminists do not speak for all feminists,” and so on.
I am regularly accused of hating myself, of hating other women, and/or of seeking male approval. I am accused, by those who have never studied feminism, of not understanding feminism.
It’s true that not all feminists are as fervid as an Andrea Dworkin or a Sally Miller Gearhart. They do not all fantasize, as Gearhart did (to much congratulation and gushing praise), about how much better life would be if the number of males could be reduced to 10% of the human population. They do not rhapsodize, as Mary Daly did, about a decontamination of the earth through such a reduction. They do not make jokes about killing men as a public service, as Mona Eltahawy did.
But it’s also true that such vicious women, and the many others who have lent their malign energies to the movement, have never been disavowed by other feminist leaders. In fact, feminists’ lack of shame before bloodthirsty feminist pronouncements is remarkably consistent.
True, there are many varieties of feminism, not all of them agreeing on every point: radical feminism, socialist feminism, lesbian feminism, post-colonial feminism, intersectional feminism, eco-feminism, animal rights feminism, abolitionist feminism, trans-inclusive feminism, feminism for sex-based rights, maternal feminism, and even (most bizarrely) conservative or reactionary feminism. Some extend their compassion to victim groups other than women, such as trans women, illegal immigrants, Palestinians, or the environment.
Such distinctions do not concern me because none makes a real difference.
None escapes the victim mentality: the belief that the history of humanity up until the present moment has been a history of (privileged, white) men oppressing women and other innocent victims; and that because of their alleged greater suffering and moral innocence, particular care and attention must be paid to women and to their unique capacity for empathy and social justice.
No version of feminism escapes the binary logic whereby the world is divided up into (sometimes intricate, overlapping) categories of oppressor and oppressed, victim and victimizer, to be treated differently and valued differently according to their identity category.
Because it thinks in terms of groups and divides the world into innocent and guilty, feminism is incapable of devising universal principles or pursuing individual fairness or freedom. It is distorted by its victim thinking, incapable of extending empathy to those feminists see as oppressors, and incapable of demanding accountability from those feminists see as victims.
In my writings, I usually try to distinguish between feminists and women. Not all women hate men or take satisfaction in the thought of their suffering, and many do not identify as feminists. However, it is not always possible to maintain the distinction. Few women are alive today who haven’t been affected by at least some feminist assumptions.
Many women, even non-feminist ones, think of themselves as belonging to an historically oppressed group. Most accept as a matter of course that special legal protections, global recognition, government programs, annual celebrations, and cultural initiatives should promote women’s advancement and well-being. Many women, perhaps most, harbor some resentment against men, especially white men, for their alleged privilege.
One cannot easily live one’s whole life hearing about patriarchal oppression, white supremacy, male entitlement, and toxic masculinity as well as female victimization, heroic suffering, and valiant resistance without accepting that at least some of it must be true. When we apply the victimhood lens to look at the world, we see evidence to support it, ignoring the details that don’t fit.
The notion that men have always had a good time and women always suffered as a result of men’s actions is of long standing. Perhaps it is even embedded in female psychology as part of an ancient survival mechanism. Also baked into our cultural fabric is the tendency of women to sympathize more with other women than with men; and of men to sympathize more with women than with other men.
These natural proclivities on the part of both men and women provided fertile ground in which feminist ideas about blame and innocence could take strong root, stirring up women’s anger and resentment, provoking men to self-doubt and shame.
Beginning in the eighteenth century in the west, women spoke and wrote vehemently about how their men had betrayed them, and men turned against their fellow men in disgust, anxious to show that they were not a party to the betrayal.
In the nineteenth century and even more strongly in the twentieth, men were easily persuaded to support laws and programs to benefit women even when those programs disadvantaged men. The history of affirmative action tells of decades during which white men have accepted overt, unjust discrimination almost without a murmur.
Even today, over a century after women achieved full legal equality with men and half a century after the implementation of affirmative action hiring programs as well as ceaseless female empowerment campaigns, many women are still angry and many men are still trying to make amends.
It must be stopped. We will never reach a point where feminists of their own accord decide to call off the gender war, accepting that men have done enough for them. There will never come a point where the suffering of boys and men matters to feminists more than their own power and authority.
It’s unlikely that non-feminist women alone will be able to defeat their crazy feminist sisters. This will have to be a joint venture between men and women, firm in its resolve, clear-eyed about the stakes, unshaken by public shaming or self-doubt.
We must see feminism for what it is.