36 Comments

The ease with which these women established feminist programs on campus is simply yet another indicator of female privilege that is so prevalent in society generally. And of course the feminists writing in the book to which Janice refers have no clue about their own privileged status. Their ideology doesn't/can't permit such awareness of self or society. Almost from the dawn of feminism, male power structures have been rolling over, like puppies seeking affection, for feminist demands. Without that special treatment, feminism would have accomplished nothing, but feminists can only see their own "courage," "intelligence," etc. C'est la guerre.

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So true. In the UK the legislative changes of the '60s and '70s were of course made when the political institutions were "male dominated". And even now the majority are men. We had our first female political party leader in the 1970s and first female Prime Minister in 1980, while still supposedly "Male dominated". According to feminists their own success should have been impossible were something like "the patriarchy" to actually exist.

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As a former academic who spent a dozen years trying to reform gender studies programs, I am woefully familiar with the situation Dr. Fiamengo presents here. I contended that building gender studies programs to be used as a platform for advancing a particular political agenda--an especially toxic one in this case--was fundamentally contrary to the purposes and ideals of the academy; of course, these contentions were resoundingly met with contempt and accusations of misogyny. I eventually realized after a long, fatiguing battle that the corruption of the academy ran too deep for me to achieve even the slightest steps toward reform. Recently, I saw an editorial arguing--quite rightly, in my view--that the humanities have lost credibility, largely because they assert politically or ideologically motivated claims and then backfill the "facts" to support their position. Feminism, with its traditions of idea laundering and suppressing any academic debate that might introduce scholarly rigor into its discussions, is almost wholly responsible for this degradation of university humanities disciplines; yet it's ironic that feminism has continued to consolidate power and maintain political clout as the academy crumbles. Now that it has succeeded in producing a student population that is roughly 70% female and in alienating boys from university study, feminism's toxic agenda will also have an economic dimension as fewer and fewer boys throw their tuition dollars into the pot that feeds the feminist machine; but I'm sure feminist leaders won't miss the opportunity to cite this, too, as evidence of female victimhood.

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Well said. Thanks for responding so fully and powerfully.

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The really scariest thing is how the idea that Academic experts should govern government policy .

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So true, Philip

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Aren't men still dominant in most if not all academic fields that really matter like the hard sciences, engineering, architecture and so on? The best option to the current situation is to build up technical institutions from DeVry to MIT and let the women live in the humanities echo chambers. Similarly, the women-dominated primary and secondary educational system is beyond redemption, and best option there is also to starve it to death. But sadly, only children whose parents possess the means and determination to send them to private or charter schools stand a chance.

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I have a hypothesis that the total amount of bigotry in society is more or less constant, what changes are the demographics that it's acceptable to be bigoted towards.

Modern feminism illustrates this wonderfully by ignoring sexism against men by arbitrarily and self-indulgently defining it as not possible.

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I've thought about this very thing. It is a depressing and impossible to verify but naggingly persuasive view. However, I have a hard time believing that women were ever hated as thoroughly and smugly and unashamedly as men now are. I certainly have read tracts against women, but they were always balanced by hagiographic and praising views in the culture (which we find nowhere about men today, certainly not in mainstream discourse). Also, it seems that certain types of bigotry or expressions of animus--as against foreigners, for example, or against people with serious mental illness--though regrettable and rightly opposed, at least made a kind of sense: foreigners could be dangerous, as could those with mental illness. But hating men, the producers, the protectors, the providers, the bedrock of every functional society? Its idiocy is only equalled by its manifest self-destructiveness.

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The self destructive nature is rather neatly by the current waves of strikes and protests in the French Republic. Long the leader in western Europe in terms of strikes, though challenged more recently by Italy. Following the progress of these one notices that the ones that "paralyse the nation" are those by Male workforces. Remember years ago a blogger "Judgy Bitch" wrote an article pointing out that if men ever acted in unison and struck en masse the US would quickly seize up. Of course much the same would happen in the UK. Of course women are saved from such a disaster by the fact that most people are not "feminists" and are remarkably untouched by the "educated" classes who affect such notions while generally actually living conventional lives. In my experience men are quite genuinely surprised, if they are unfortunate to fall into the grasp of the family courts or other public bodies, that "equality" is not what they experience but direct discrimination against them. Feminists in the UK have cleverly not bothered much with being a mass movement in favour of focussing on the key institutions of governance and the educational establishments that feed these (which in this country actually are surprisingly few).

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So true Jebediah. And we know from the research that it is men who are the ones facing prejudice and bigotry. The dissertation of Aman Siddiqi for his Psyc PhD is a great piece of writing that not only documents this prejudice but looks at the creation of and many other aspects of prejudice. It also warns psychologists that if they don't understand the prejudice men face they will be likely to fail to develop a therapeutic relationship with male clients. I hope janice doesn't mind me putting this link in. "A clinical guide to discussing prejudice against men" https://www.proquest.com/openview/18ff860071ff793d5240c7040a00d4d9/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

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I think this is self evident. But then I am a christian who believes in Original Sin.

Yes, the hatred remains more or less constant. It is just who is hated - witches, jews, heretics, christians, atheists, muslims, the rich, communists, the poor etc etc which changes according to fashion and locale

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The trouble is those who should be required to read this book are exactly the ones who will flatly refuse.

one of my dearest friends is a feminist woman, highly intelligent with a post grad degree, and yet she resorts to genetic fallacies - ie repudiating an argument because of its source of which ad hominem is one among many - every time.

She has the brains to reason better but , given her belief structure, not the integrity.

this is a geat pity

but there it is.

I won't be telling her about this book. There is no point

and again, this is a great pity

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Neil Lyndon author of "No More Sex War" says exactly the same thing in that he has a feminist friend who will never read his book.

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I don't understand how every major university at the time could have just let the feminists set up women studies departments. I have no idea how universities operate but it must be a major undertaking for a university to set up a new department for an entirely new academic discipline. I would imagine it would require many rounds of approve from senior faculty members from different fields including science and engineering.

For example at the University of Ottawa, how did the University go from having no women's studies department to having one? Was there a vote in the university senate? There must have been minutes kept from the U of O university senate when they discussed and voted on starting a women's studies department. Who voted for it? How close was the vote? Who was the rector of the U of O at the time and why did he let them do it?

I can't image any physics or engineering professor worth his Ph.D not laughing something a ludicrously non-sensical as a women's studies department off of the debate floor or approving something so clearly poisonous and orthogonal to the university's purpose.

Can anyone just walk in off the street to Tabaret hall and say "Hi, I'd like to start the Froopy Land department to study the Red Grim Grumble". And the president of the U of O will say "That's fantastic! We currently don't have department of Froopy Land and no one at the U of O is currently studying the Red Grim Grumble. Here's a six figure salary, tenure, and a big NCERT grant to get you started. We'll give you some space over at Macdonald hall, those physicists aren't doing anything important, and because you are a new department and a new field of study we want to give you as much credibility as possible so I'm cross appointing you to the department of Economics and the Department of Chemistry."

As far as I can tell this is exactly what the women's studies department did.

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Perhaps endowments from wealthy funders/NGOs kick started the process. There is probably a money trail somewhere.

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If you read some of Erin Pizzeys writing she mention something about trust fund bunnies and how they took over the women's refuges forcing Erin out.

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It's vital to realize that it's not just hardened feminists who whole-heartedly support all this. Plenty of otherwise seemingly normal women (maybe a majority) and also plenty of men with daughters don't see any problem here. The root problem, in my view, is the deep-rooted belief linked to the idea of chivalry that women can't possibly have evil intentions no matter how outrageously their behavior, and even if they kill their own children, must be forgiven and given understanding because they are the weaker sex and not really capable human beings.

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Another point I meant to have made earlier is that the question of bad behaviour by feminists is resolved by the nature of feminist THEORY.

Feminist apologists may invoke "abusus non tollit usum" - abuse does not detract from [valid] use - even without being aware of it is a principle of logic whch they themselves are abusing.

But when a movement is a hate movement such hate is not abuse of good principles which still stand as valid despite abuse, but is the essence of the movement itself

All too often these days people will look selectively at the behaviour of the adherents of any movement or religion and claim, for example, that the decency of some makes it a religion of peace, or that some biblical passages renderd by further context to be no longer binding on anyone make christianity a hate movement.

but of course this is all selective according to which movment it is PC to regard as "protected". For the "protected" any excuse is valid. and any other , deemed to be patiarchal or colonial is to be damned on the slightest pretext

as always it is the theory of the movment that solves the issue

and you Ms Fiamengo, have reminded us that it is feminist THEORY, therefore feminism of its essence, which is a hate movement

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I often mention this but don't think I have here... I can't find the thing now but I have an ancient book, literally more than 100 years old, about the errors and logical fallacies of the new-then woman's movement.

The author, in a manner still all too familiar today, starts off by pointing out how any mention or discussion of the total lack of logic and facts was met with the accusation of 'hating women'.

Just STOP and think about that? Any society in which the accusation of hating women has any power or impact, is a society that, by it's very own definition, cannot be a society that hates and dismisses women.

Indeed the fact that for 100 years they have clung to this powerful weapon of shame proves, beyond any logical doubt, that ours is a gynocentric society that highly values women.

If there is any hatred towards women today, these bitches are creating it.

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Was that by Belfort E Bax?

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That kind of rings a bell, so could well be it, but I haven't seen the book for a long time. I'm not sure where to even look :) I suspect it was lost when I moved house about 10 years ago.

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Was it the Fraud of Feminism or The legal subjection of Men?

Janice introduced me to him,

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"There is a trick with which votaries of Feminism seek to prejudice the public mind against its critics, and that is the “fake” that any man who ventures to criticise the pretensions of Feminism, is actuated by motives of personal rancour against the female sex, owing to real or imaginary wrongs suffered by him at the hands of some member or members of the sex."

Or as they say on reddit/imgur/twitter etc "Who hurt you?"

Was indeed "Fraud of Feminism", found the text online, ironically on a Marxist website, but hey I'll take it:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1913/fraud/intro.htm

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The first time someone pulled ‘who hurt you’ on me, I thought I’d said something that might have prompted genuine concern. I’ve since learned that yes, it’s a ‘trick’ and more broadly, it’s a very common move on the left to argue from motive, to say a position or criticism is held ‘only’ because of some underlying, often psychologically based, reason. Thus they can dismiss any argument out of hand without having to contend with it. It’s an egregiously dishonest type of ad hominem.

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Thanks for this--very interesting. I've had that used on me as well, but I didn't understand it so thoroughly as you have done.

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Thanks for the insight. I never realised until now.

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Feminism is just anotger orthodox religion that is unaccepting of those who don't believe as they do, believe that their beliefs in theory confers the right on them to inflict their beliefs on others and disguise their goal misandristic matriarchal supremacy as their fight against the mythical "patriachy"

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OK, you've sold me. I just bought a cheap second hand copy of the book on Amazon. To be filed under Know Your Enemy.

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Thanks for summarizing this Janice. It is simply hard to believe that a large group has been allowed to be so hateful and venomous for so long.I think a part of the reason for this is the huge monetary support they got from groups like the Rockefeller Foundation and many others. They just plunked it down to them in millions of dollars. And then there is fatherlessness....

Loved your "but also in the ideology’s alarming and unselfconscious intransigence, self-deception, and imperviousness to evidence." That pretty much says it!

I am guessing that women's in-group bias is playing a part here too. The heavy push to "be the same" and to not be an outlier which is more common in women than in men may be at play. Any ideas contradictory to the rad fems hatred would have shown them as being traitors to the cause.

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While I was still in university in which feminist ideology has penetrated every department to varying degrees, it struck me that there were so many boomer feminists who were refighting the battles that had been won by women. At the time, late 1980s, it seemed as though there was a lag but I now see that this insistence on fighting the same conquered demons is part of the ideology. It won't ever change the minds of feminists regardless of how many amendments to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 that despite its illegality somehow women are and will always be paid less than men for doing the same work. In the same manner, feminists in academia will rail against how discriminatory the university merit system is against women even as at present, women outnumber men on campuses 3:2. And even though the rates of violent crimes against women have been falling for 50+ years, somehow there is always going to be a rape culture pervading every university institution where women earn more degrees than men. The ultimate goal of feminism is, simply stated, to exploit the deeply embedded psychological feature in Homo sapiens of gynocentrism while denying that any such phenomenon (or word) even exists

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Exactly.

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Some evolutionary psychologist I've interviewed said one of the reason the feminist women came into existence is the changes in the genetics due to the weakening of the Darwinian selection pressures through the development of civilisation that has removed us from this environment. Feminist are more masculinized in their thinking and may resent men and women who are their traditional role, which they want to undo and inflict damage on civilisation such as low birth rates, feminized society, low trust between the sexes, etc...

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Have you read Occult Feminism by Rachel Wilson for some of the extremely odd roots of many early feminists? Very interesting.....

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Doesn't surprise me. It's not without reason why so many women are attracted to Harry Potter. Women have always historically been obsessed with witchcraft and occult, all sorts of ersatz religion to undermine the dominate religion: Christianity. Look at Nina Jankowicz and just happen so she's attracted to Harry Potter, had a Moaning Myrtle musical.

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Thanks for that book. I always keep thinking how the idea of so-called equality advocates strongly relate to George Orwells "Animal Farm".

The other is tilting lances at windmills, the Donna Quixote (female version of Don) of Academia and the media.

In her book "Spin Sisters; How Women of the Media sell unhappiness" Myrna Blyth, writes about how these women cannot comprehend the idea that other women do not believe or support the same things that they do.

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