I believe John Stoltenberg was gay and Dworkin bisexual (she herself being for the most part celibate) and that their marriage was more in the way of friendship -- though I could be wrong. Her hatred of men stemmed from at one time being raped and also having been a prostitute. I read her books years ago -- all of them actually.
She is a good writer but her misandry is out of control. "Our Blood" is her most militant tome. Dworkin was among those who gave us the false idea of "rape culture" -- which is now widely promoted in the education system. She was a revolutionary who wanted the destruction of Western civilization -- and to a remarkable degree, her wish is being fulfilled.
Dworkin is right that the enforcers within the feminist movement are frightening. And that is true of all Leftists because Leftism relies on a mob mentality and the dynamic of scapegoating. This is not incidental; it's at the heart of Leftism, based on a collective sense of identity and groupthink. Thought crimes, and ideological heresy, are the worst sin of the Leftists.
Personal morality and egregious breaches of it don't matter; what matters most to Leftists is adherence to ideology, and affirming one's identity as part of the collective. It's cult-like. The fear comes from having that identity stripped from you, of becoming worthless not only in the eyes of your comrades but in your own eyes. If your entire identity is tied to this belief system, it can be used to control you. And that is exactly what happens. This fear is a way for the authoritarians in the movement to wield power over others.
Those scapegoated by the collective will typically contemplate suicide. They experience existential dread. Conversely, the sense of belonging in the collective brings with it a feeling akin to religious ecstasy, of euphoria at having meaning and purpose in life (as prescribed by the goals of the movement). All Leftists experience the lure of this sense of self and the fear of losing it and becoming reviled.
Apostates and heretics from the movement are regarded as evil and worthy of the worst punishment, of public shaming, doxxing, and violence. I have witnessed and experienced the wrath of the feminist collective many times and it's like watching a lynch mob hang a man. But it's less obvious to conservatives that this same dynamic is what keeps the Leftists themselves in check and easy to control.
A totalitarian society is simply one in which the entire society experiences this social dynamic. Feminism has moved from a marginal movement of a few thousand angry women more than a century ago to a movement that has overtaken the entire Western world. It has done more damage to women and children than any other force in history, in my view, relegating them to profoundly sad and lonely lives. It has been bad not only for men but also for women because it was never about womens' rights as much as it was about hatred of men.
Feminism also teaches young people to blindly obey authority, even when it's wrong, and it presents a simplistic and erroneous view of history and the human condition, brainwashing girls and women into the false belief that they are victims. It is taught from an early age in schools and now in the movies. It does all this, like other forms of cultural Marxism, through fear of censure, as described in this article, and through a relentless stream of propaganda.
Your description of the pleasures and terrors of utopian belonging/excommunication is very well said. Yes, Dworkin identified as a lesbian and Stoltenberg as gay, but they did marry eventually and reported that they had a sexual relationship (not that it matters--except in relation to Dworkin's confession of feeling pressured to renounce her heterosexuality). Dworkin reported being raped repeatedly throughout her life; it's hard to know what to believe. Perhaps it was all true; perhaps it was a part of her victim identity. I agree that she's a good writer, and so is Chesler; same for Robin Morgan and even, at times, Mary Daly, all of whom I've been reading this week!
Feminists are not in the least, and have never been, interested in equality. Men are to continue to support women, defend them, provide for them, risk their lives for them. They are to open their spaces to women, hire women, promote women, change workplace policies to accommodate women. They are to change their own behavior in conformity with women's demands. When a window shatters in the night, it is still the man who is expected to investigate; if a man is bothering a woman at a nightclub, her boyfriend/husband/male friend is expected to risk bodily harm defending her if necessary. What do women owe men? Nothing at all.
Aug 11, 2023·edited Aug 11, 2023Liked by Janice Fiamengo
In addition to this, the hot, heavy, dirty, and dangerous work selectively ignored by feminists, who atop their man made air conditioned office towers, expect men to traditionally do.
I have been meaning to write about his case but have been such a coward as to be unable to read the transcripts of exactly what was said to him. I can't bear it; I get too angry.
I find when I get triggered by what is written, I need to walk away for a while, sometimes that while is many years. The book "Venus The Dark Side" I avoided buying for many years and even after buying it, it took many months before I actually read it.
Generally the more the person tries to bend over backwards to prove they're not a racist/sexist/misogynist, the more vulnerable they are to these accusations.
Rape Culture was a 1974 movie/documentary about the rape of males in institutions. Feminists later co-opted the language and concepts and distorted them to exclude those it was meant to help.
Thanks for this! I had no idea--will look into it. In *Against Our Will,* Susan Brownmiller wrote about the rape of men in prison but did not allow the fact of male rape victims (or the fact that women rape boys in institutions) to interfere with her contention throughout her book that rape is fundamentally patriarchal, the manner in which male predators control and terrorize women.
Andrea Dworkin, Germaine Greer, and Gloria Allred all claimed they were raped. Since Dworkin has said something like "all sex is rape" Since Germaine Greer has suggested that a wife giving sex to her husband when not in the mood is rape, and since Allred is a Bolshevic who sues MALE celebrities for rape....I would take their suspicious rape 'claims' with a grain of salt
I wanted to also amplify this compulsion of some/many/all feminists to ever claim and expand the definition of rape so that all heterosexual women can become honorary victims. I believe it's Julie Bindel, notably, who is pushing to expand the definition of rape to include 'retroactive regret' which would trump any form of consent prior to and during intercourse.
As for Dworkin, amazingly, she spent her entire life getting raped. Men simply could not control their base sexual urges in her presence. Before her death, she even recounted and published a particularly harrowing event in a Paris hotelroom here:
For all the times that Dworkin was raped, she preferred to compose essays about her trauma and need for recovery than to actually do anything to bring her rapists to stand trial. It's what gives cred amongst her followers and publishers. Rape is a powerfully moving literary theme. I am reminded that so many early Women's Studies departments were staffed with more English majors than sociologists, historians, or legal experts. As a result, literary analysis has always been a filter through which academic feminists have viewed and projected their ideas onto the physical world. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that Andrea Dworkin's last rape would not lead to anything so mundane as a criminal investigation in order to forestall any additional violence against women; her violation better serves a source material, instead, for a stageplay.
Absoulutely BRILLIANT! All brilliant points. Your essay is much better than Dworkin and Stoltenberg's theater, and serves a much bigger reality than a stage play.
The definitions of rape and sexual assault, first in feminist ideology and now in law, are so loose as to be almost meaningless. Add to that that rape is used synonymously with sexual assault (the 'Stanford Rapist' was neither charged with nor convicted of rape) in the media and even feminist 'scholarship' and you have the perfect formula for demonizing male sexuality.
I know that many (probably not here, so much) will see this as jaw dropping misogyny, but I am EXTREMELY dubious that a woman as grotesquely unattractive as Andrea Dworkin was raped at all, much less many times. Still, if all it takes is a lingering gaze (as one might be unable to look away from a train wreck) to constitute sexual violation . . .
#BINGO! Well said. That's exactly my interpretation through my lens as well. I've been observing this $MeToo phenomena since I was 15 years old back in the mid 1970's.. It may sound cruel, but truth is most rape accussers have bad self images and are of low self esteem.
Most are retro interpreting things from the past they consented to at the time.
"HELL HATH NO FURRY LIKE A wo-MAN SCORNED" #MENOPAUSE plays a role
Attention/money/victim politics/ all play a role. George Will wrote an article about rape victim status being a coveted status. Notice it's invariably wo-MEN who are beyond their prime making these claims like they want to be reborn virgins? I think it's MENOPAUSE driving this phenomena
Is it narcissism or just stupidity that makes those who populate certain movements claim that those who disagree simply don't know their own interests? If a woman disagrees with feminism, she's "internalized the patriarchy." If a black person disagrees with critical race theory, then they've "internalized whiteness." If a blue-collar worker doesn't buy into communism, they just don't understand their true interests, i.e., those of the working class (all of whom have identical interests as workers). And the people who do know the true interests of women, blacks or blue-collar workers are never the individuals themselves, but feminists, extremist blacks and communists. The rest of us of course understand that those ideologies have no concept of individual differences or that people aren't just categories, because doing so would necessitate the dismantling of the ideology as the all-purpose analyzer of all things human. Which brings me back to my original question.
This is an excellent observation. I suspect that power-hungry types find it convenient to make the accusation of internalized flaws toward anyone who resists being recruited into their identity group. It's much easier to do that than to form a coherent argument in favor of joining an insular, identity-focused group of mean-spirited ideologues and tyrant wannabes.
I suspect that most of us share Dworkin's greater fear of shaming. I know that it has been the much greater fear in my past. I endured physical bullying from other boys in school, but that was not as distressing as the loss of moral legitimacy that I felt from being shamed, usually by girls. I seemed to have no psychic defenses against that for many years as a younger man. It was only with the slow development of a sense of personal moral legitimacy that came from exhaustive analysis of my own character and actions, that I gained an immunity to the shaming that one regularly receives from feminists as an equality advocate.
Good point, David, about shaming. Women are the masters at it generally, so it is no surprise that it has been a central tactic in feminist politics and activism, turned against both women and men.
It took me way too long to figure out that shaming was simply a tactic some people use to get what they want. I take great pleasure, now, in smiling and walking away. There is no greater insult to these people than to let them know that they simply don't matter to you..
Aug 11, 2023·edited Aug 11, 2023Liked by Janice Fiamengo
If this had been any one other than Janice writing about Dworkin, I’d have not believed a word of it. I know a bit about Chesler, including her stint as a Muslim bride in Kabul (look it up, she wrote a book on it) and understand (although I might not agree with with her on everything) how she got to here from there.
And like Janice, this Dworkin seems to me a tad more approachable than the toad, I’d forced myself to read about.
But like every feminist, or woman brought up at their feminist mothers knee, she can’t help but include a shot at men even when its not about men… “Nothing offers more proof—sad, irrefutable proof—that we are more like men than either they or we care to believe” (p. 115).
Ha! The Hormone that differentiates men from woman, testosterone, is also a social bonding hormone that allows and allowed men to build teams and groups to not only hunt aurock’s but to also build Cathedrals, businesses, win wars and yes effect great social change without descending into the type of psychotic behaviour Dworkin, Chesler and Morgan describe. When I was in High School the year book committee generally was a coed endeavour. One of the high schools in our conference had an all female committee that needed to resort to the teachers and admin office support to get it printed and distributed on time because the members weren’t talking to one another, the meetings turned into screaming matches, some members left in tears…Nice. Sound familiar!
Very interesting--I didn't know that about testosterone!
I've read Chesler's memoir about her time in Kabul. She also wrote a bizarre introduction to a collection of letters by the serial killer Aileen Wuornos to her lover or friend Dawn. Chesler's intro is quite something--a gushing, sentimental tribute to a woman who killed seven men "in self defense." Chesler is a good writer and a very strange person.
Aug 11, 2023·edited Aug 11, 2023Liked by Janice Fiamengo
Ask the man or women on the street what the effect of Testosterone is on men and they’ll tell you it makes us violent!
It does if violence is the way to get the job done. Testosterone, aside from turning boys into men, is the hormone that lets groups of men decide and get behind leadership and try and build a Highway to the Heavens… sorry for the hyperbole but I’m on a roll.😊
Go to a powerlifting gym, and I bet those guys are some of the friendliest you'll probably ever meet.
T makes men social. Women apparently, not so much. I've heard women don't deal well with elevated testosterone, it reputedly has deleterious psychological/emotional effects.
I'm no expert, but I've read that assuming roles of leadership actually stimulates an increase in testosterone. It could be, at least in some cases, that increased testosterone is the effect of certain roles and behaviors rather than the cause..
I suppose my reaction to this is, if you remove all the grievances and the mental illness from feminism, what do you have left? What part of feminism forms a body of consistent thought which people can actually believe or act on to make society better?
When I was younger I tried reading some works, mostly newspaper articles, by feminists like Germaine Greer. What I felt was that they seemed to shift around their positions to maximise the aspect of grievance, complaining that things just aren't fair for women, even though things aren't actually that fair for men, we can't just pull out our "patriarchy card" and receive rich rewards as a result. I couldn't identify any actually-useful outcome of feminism either for men or for women.
When I was a child I had wonderful, caring fully invested teachers who were all females because at that time teaching and nursing were the height of the average Woman’s capacity to succeed. Lucky me and everybody else in my cohort (I’m 75).
Feminism has now allowed woman to succeed to the height of their ability. Hooray for them and hooray for us. And hooray for the gov’t that found a second source of taxation.
But have you seen what has happened to the teaching ‘profession’? All those caring, nurturing wonderful women who would have become teachers are now Doctors, Lawyers, Professors and Business-Women. And what has gone into teaching can be seen in the twitter and YouTube vids that scare any normal thinking parent into consider home schooling.
I never bought into the feminist claims of society keeping women down. An elderly woman in my neighborhood as known as "Docky" because she was an MD (graduated before 1900). Most of the women in my neighborhood were married mothers, but we did have a sprinkling of independent career women. The amazing thing is that nobody treated them badly or made fun of them or tried to repress or oppress them. They were just part of the neighborhood, as much as anyone.
It really saddens me when I hear young anti-feminists who will claim that there was a time when feminism was needed, for getting the vote and the right to have a credit card in one's own name - completely uneducated about the fact that most women in the early 20th century weren't in favor of female suffrage, or that it was married women who couldn't get credit card in their own names - because husbands were liable for wives debts.
You might find a You Tube video by History Debunked quite interesting, it's about how women doctors have made medical care much more difficult to access:
If I gave you the impression that no woman ever succeeded beyond the teaching/nursing paradigm I’m sorry. Of course they did but it was very few and far between. My mother worked for Bell Telephone during the War and was the only one at her level allowed not only in the room but to switch the calls when a certain level of Military or Political communication went on. And there were several levels yet above her…all women.
I’m reminded of 21 year old female shift foremen at bomber plants in California.
But those were extraordinary times calling for extraordinary people. Women of every economic level have worked and succeeded over men in NA for years before my time. But it wasn’t common. I see the flaws in Feminism believe me but I see the benefits too I think.
The problem is when the ideology is driven by maniacs described by the other maniacs named in Janices article, no?
Hi Chuck, I'm so sorry that you would even think I thought you thought that way. I had in mind the way feminists depict the past as being blanketed with such attitudes, and those young women of today, even the ones who identify as anti-feminist, seem to have been infected with some false ideas about the past that were originated by the ideological maniacs that are the subject of Janice's essay.
My mom was actually a telephone operator when I was in kindergarten (she never was party to any high level conversations I was aware of).
One thing I admire about the women who took all those hard roles during WWII is that they didn't put ideology and/or money above their true natures or lose sight of their own femininity - they were the mothers of the baby boom.
Just watched the vid and Thank You…the guys language, style and cadence belies the truth he depicts of major professions in crisis nobody talks about because they don’t want to be viewed as sexist knuckle draggers.
Increasingly, the professions are being subsumed by women and eventually the crisis he described will have a light shined on it. I’d put $ on the idea that it will be somehow mens fault for not entering the profession spotlighted but going into the trades instead. Hard to do when acceptance standards only point one way.
When I graduated there were 18 women in a class of 125, 14.5%. Last year, 70% of the same class of 155 were women.
I'm 65 and I'm low income. I've been trying to get medicare part B paid for by the state (Medical savings program) I was told by TWO seperate agents that I qualify and it's going on a year that I'm being denied. I stopped paying and I was dropped. Then I was told if I pay the outstanding premium $1,160.70 in person I would be reinstated. Well after bringing the check in person to the entirely black/Hispanic/ wo-MEN run SS building in New Haven, months went by and I still wasn't reinstated. Well months more of persistent calls to the SS finally resulted in me being reinstated except I now owe $800.00 and am still being denied ( medical savings program for part B) even though I'm out of work and was low income before that. Am I the wrong demographic? Am I reading too much into this? THANKS for the video link
Chuck, teachers are still 78% wo-MEN. I think what's changed is lack of MALE leadership, such as MALE principals overseeing the curriculum. Also MALE teachers for BOYS
I've never been able to extract anything from feminist writings that could qualify as a coherent ideology. Even as a young girl, all I could see in feminism was a movement bent on jumping on the latest bandwagon, framing current issues as exemplars of how women are mistreated by society (weirdly, they don't seem to notice that half of the society they are so sure is damaging to women is made up of women).
Feminism doesn't seem to be a consistent ideology at all, just an ever-growing laundry list of increasingly petty grievances. The comments section is already getting long so I'll leave the discussion there for now.
Exactly! The list morphs at a moment's notice to take advantage of current developments. Like how feminism claimed for decades that women are capable of doing any job men do, including fire fighting, but only when trans athletes make headlines, do feminists notice men have physical capabilities women can't compete with (I happen to be a bit of a political orphan, as a never-feminist who also finds trans ideology equally incoherent and opportunistic, and see it based in sexual obsessions and a desire not to join the women but to socially replace women. Trans is not a deep rooted "identity.").
(I was thinking of editing the above comment but instead I'll add a comment to my own comment.)
Like the other commenter, Josh Slocum, my original quibble with feminism originated not from a divorce or marital breakdown/alimony/custody disagreement, but having a mother who espoused feminism and also seemed to be wildly unhinged, attacking us with knives, randomly screaming her head off during mealtimes, or breaking down in tears and refusing to repair broken windscreen wipers on the car, driving home in the dark and pouring rain with no wipers, because the garage surroundings reminded her of the 1950s.
I was accused of various forms of sexism by my mother well before I had any clear idea of the differences between men and women, as well as being accused of various incestuous lusts by my equally-demented father before I had any noticeable sexual feelings. To make matters even worse, my mother decided that she hadn't yet behaved in truly-insane-enough fashion, and decided to start disgusting sexual harassment towards me during my teenage years. So I grew up associating feminism as well as sexuality with my parents' mental illnesses. As a young adult I tried to see what feminists actually believed and whether there was something to the movement other than the insane rantings of my mother, Phoebe. But there never has seemed to be anything other than just endless ill-considered grievance mongering. I don't see any consistent goals of this movement.
The idea that male supremacy is responsible for the cattiness of women is far beyond absurd. Over and over we see women competing with each other to be top cat. It’s inherent in female nature.
Women distrust and suspect each other almost automatically. Gathering women, in particular highly ambitious women, into a single movement of their own is going to bring out their worst qualities.
Fascinating insights into a feminist avatar's moment of clarity in the eye of her own storm. The vaunted 'sisterhood' can only ever end in the way you describe, because it generates its own traumas, antagonisms and resentments by virtue of itself being generated by these very traits. There can only ever be problem and reaction in an endless and vicious circle because there can never be a solution; destruction of 'the patriarchy' - an imaginary, projected construct anyway - would not resolve anything and MUST NOT occur, because the victimhood would have nothing to feed on. It's quite sad, though my sympathy is more than somewhat limited when I survey the societal wreckage wrought by the likes of Dworkin and her hissing haters.
- and how these very same descriptors tend to be used in the field of psychiatry when describing certain personality disorders along the psychopathy spectrum such as narcissism.
Makes me think that - rather than 'feminism causing mental illness' - maybe it's the other way around and people with these alleged 'disorders' are naturally drawn to that way of thinking.
Yes indeed, I agree. I believe feminism both attracts people who are already inclined to narcissism and the victim mindset, and exacerbates the already-existent tendencies. A vicious circle that is sad for the individuals and disastrous for society.
It's possible that "narcissism" is fictional, and the term so loosely scattered about each day conveys nothing. It's possible that selfish misbehaviour is just selfish misbehaviour.
Applying the term "narcissist" to an individual does nothing to make that individual's behaviour better. Indeed, it risks characterising an unfortunate event or interlude as a lifelong affliction, actively making the problem worse. One of the greatest advantages of human- ness is our capacity to change. We aren't helped by linguistic straight- jackets.
In the absence of any benefit whatever in the use of such psycho babble terms, I can't help feeling that these should be avoided.
The feminist grievance industry is a social and political problem of gigantic proportions. I prefer that we deal with it as such, and avoid going down the Fraudean rabbit hole.
I do find the idea of the 'tendency to interpersonal victimhood' as a personality type quite useful, though. It IS essentially selfish misbehaviour, but of a particular kind that ruminates on past injuries, relishes identity as a victim, demands victimhood be recognized, and uses injury as an excuse not to care about injuries to others. Raising awareness of such thinking/behavior might well lead to change.
I would question that narcissism is a mental illness in that it is a coping strategy that doesn't necessarily cause narcissists any discomfort or interfere with their ability to function, at least in their own self interests, in life. This is why narcissists usually have no interest in changing, because it's working for them.
Having said that, I also recognize that it develops, usually, in response to some form of neglect or abuse. In terms of pathology, I would hypothesize that narcissists could be seen as pathological to OTHERS more than to themselves.
Interestingly, H.G. Tudor, who has a You Tube Channel and a website (narcsite.com) claims to have been diagnosed as a narcissist. He says it's not a mental illness, it's a personality disorder. The former can be treated, the latter cannot. In fact, narcissists, like psychopaths, when given psychotherapy only learn new tricks that make their manipulations of others more successful.
In my personal experience, the people behind and in these victimhood movements are deeply unhappy. And this unhappiness manifests in outward hostility, and often, bad behavior. I have never met a radical ever that I judged had it all together. Some of these radicals have the potential to heal, under the right circumstances.
Yes they are unhappy. The feminist grievance industry requires them to be unhappy, in order to sell them stuff. The more miserable everyone is, the better for feminism.
This accounts for feminism's constant self re- invention. ("waves")
Yesterday's outrages dwindle in the memory. New outrages must perpetually be invented.
Yes all true. And this stoking of resentment in (some) women is having a negative effect on society om general. I don't know what to do about it, other than build systems to help people overcome a victim mindset and embrace gratitude.
If an autopsy is ever performed in the wake of the death of western civilization, under the “cause of death” section, the seemingly incessant desire to herd individuals into groups based upon immutable, inconsequential characteristics (“sister lesbian”) and to attribute some level of value/virtue to possessing these characteristics (Women’s March, Pride Month, etc.) will likely be listed at or near the top.
I almost feel bad for these women. Partly because we know how damaging this behavior is and partly because they came so close to realizing the truth! Another thing: Bell Hooks actually admitted that there were anti-male sentiments in feminism but considered it a small minority. She also described violence perpetuated by women as "patriarchal."
This all comes from Feminism is for Everybody. I recommend reading it for its odd blend of frank confessions, shameless bigotry, and fact-free assertions.
Thank you very much for the recommendation. I am writing about 'intersectional' feminism right now and was just contemplating what work by hooks I should read. I did read her thirty years ago, but didn't remember anything particularly striking--so this is perfect timing!
Women are eternally victimized, they cannot lie, steal, cheat, fight, kill or rape, they always are victims of these crimes. Anyone presuming the contrary is a misogynist scoundrel.
No wonder feminists are so anti-Christianity -- the story of the apple shows the woman being capable of making her own bad decisions, then dragging her mate into joining her in her mistake.
Aug 11, 2023·edited Aug 11, 2023Liked by Janice Fiamengo
Excellent essay. This captures the narcissistic aspects of feminism perfectly. All of the narcissistic tactics are inherent in the ideology. Women are blameless victims, while beneath the surface they're controlling men and society. By feigning victim hood, they control men. They are never at fault for anything. To think that the narcissistic belief system of feminist leaders has become a full-fledged ideology, incapable of redemption, is tragic, to say the least. Even worse, feminism has all the bugs of a cult. At this juncture, it IS a cult. Whenever broaching the subject in class, it's just impossible to get students to stop parroting its idiotic mantras. I explicitly tell them they can steel man and critique and they seem incapable of doing the latter -- to their detriment. I like watching old made-for-TV movies from the 70s and early 80s with feminist themes. In those films, there is still so much love between men and women. Now it's just flat out misandry. I'd love to get Janice's take on BARBIE.
Exactly. Having been involved in a cult or two in my younger years, I see all the hallmarks of mind control cult behaviour. Steve Hassan's book, "Combatting Cult Mind Control" goes into this in depth. Steve was a former Moonie who quit and went on to become a psychiatrist specialising in cult recovery therapy and techniques. Most of what he wrote, I recognised.
One thing with a typical cult follower is the extreme capacity for cognitive dissonance and their vicious behaviour towards those who waver in the cult.
If the cult's goals or predictions either come to fruition or comes to nothing, they simply move the goalposts so the cult never become irrelevant. There can never be an end goal that gets achieved. Power has to be held at all costs.
Feminists are not unique in these behaviours, it is typical of cults. No one wins and in the end, everybody loses.
The problem I have with characterizing feminism as a cult is that there has never been a widely recognized single leader. It's definitely cult like, however, so I'm not sure how much weight to give that divergence.
A cult is not always a personality one. There are quite a few others that run themselves with a loose form of leadership that often resembles a revolving door style. Like business cults (Amway, Herbalife....), politic cults (Greenies would be one example). Then there are the malignant ones like neo Nazis, the KKK, BLM and so on that are cults in their ideology and actions, not of the leader. Radical feminism falls into the latter scenario.
Most cults are started on certain grains of truth which is why it attracts those who question, initially. Where they go from there determines whether the cult becomes a benevolent (in general, like the Salvation Army) or down the path of malignancy like feminism has become.
Thank you Janice. As a feminist cult non-member (although I know what cults are like, having been in a New Age one), this explains the bristling contempt exuded by a certain type of strident feminist. Perhaps it is a loathing that extends from all men, to most women, to a millstone around their own necks. Moribund ideology will do that. And I am sure intersectional feminism only makes the whole thing worse.
I won't concede these characters were mentally ill. That's too close to giving them an excuse. I attribute their misbehaviour to conscious ill- intent. They were vandals. Uncivilised brutes at war with love, peace and happiness. Certainly sane enough to make good livings out of their performative misery.
I see your point, and I'd give you a piece of evidence to support your idea that mental illness diagnosis is an excuse. In the late 1800s, when department stores came into being, it was a huge change in how Americans purchased many items. Before these shopping emporiums, one would go to a general store, request an item that would be brought from the store room or order an item for later pick up. The opening of department stores was followed by a baffling phenomenon - massive shoplifting done by women and girls of middle and upper classes. The psychiatry industry came up with a diagnosis: kleptomania.
The characters Janice is discussing were twisted, unpleasant and malicious. Your observation that they made a good living out of performative misery is well said. It's also the key reason why we, as a society, must reverse the many-decades trend of replacing diagnosis with ethics.
Winona Ryder, as a wealthy, beautiful, young actress, was famously caught shoplifting items she could easily have bought. I suppose she was doing it for excitement, although apparently Winona claimed to have some sort of mental problems.
My father ran a kitchenware shop, and we used to visit him on Sundays when the shop used to be closed, and my sister would steal small things while we were waiting for him in the empty shop. My father used to complain about shoplifters, but even though I'm sure he saw my sister stealing things, he didn't say anything to her about it.
My sister was stealing things like cake decorations, so she was taking parts of packets of marzipan animals. I suppose these just got sold on to the customer with bits missing. This was in the 1970s before all the sealed packaging we have today. I'm sure my father noticed her stealing, but didn't do or say anything about it.
It's quite hard to track back to the discussion in substack, so I can't find the original discussion.
Hi Ben, Sorry for the long delay in this reply. I needed to do some repairs on my computer, and the wait for parts was interminable. Thankfully, I have rejoined the 21st Century.
I agree it's difficult to track back on Substack. There's a few comments I've wished I could reply to, but never managed to find them within the thread. I can't complain too much, though, as it's a sign of a lot of engagement with articles on important topics (Don't feel you have to try to find this one to reply. I'm sure we'll cross pathes again soon).
I've been challenging myself to come up with reasons to suppose there would be any such thing as feminism in the absence of psychology. It's proving difficult. The more I think about it, the more it seems the former depends, relies, and arises from the latter.
I think feminism has never been rooted in the actual needs or desires of women. It's always been the plaything of wealthy bitter women who couldn't find something productive to do with themselves. It's incoherent, constantly shifts goalposts, and never admits a "win."
There is "inappropriate behaviour" throughout Shakespeare. But it was never necessary for the bard to employ these types of terms. He wrote 200 years before psychology was invented. The audience of the day understood what they were seeing well enough. Human nature hasn't changed, despite the ever - growing and increasingly insulting lexicon of human shortcomings from which psycho- babble makes a living.
I remember, more or less, when the word 'inappropriate' became psychobabble in popular culture. My sister would use it reflexively any time she didn't disapproved of something. She would wag her finger and say "that's in-a-pro-pri-ate" like she was talking to a child.
Near as I could figure it meant something like "I don't like that so you shouldn't either."
I believe John Stoltenberg was gay and Dworkin bisexual (she herself being for the most part celibate) and that their marriage was more in the way of friendship -- though I could be wrong. Her hatred of men stemmed from at one time being raped and also having been a prostitute. I read her books years ago -- all of them actually.
She is a good writer but her misandry is out of control. "Our Blood" is her most militant tome. Dworkin was among those who gave us the false idea of "rape culture" -- which is now widely promoted in the education system. She was a revolutionary who wanted the destruction of Western civilization -- and to a remarkable degree, her wish is being fulfilled.
Dworkin is right that the enforcers within the feminist movement are frightening. And that is true of all Leftists because Leftism relies on a mob mentality and the dynamic of scapegoating. This is not incidental; it's at the heart of Leftism, based on a collective sense of identity and groupthink. Thought crimes, and ideological heresy, are the worst sin of the Leftists.
Personal morality and egregious breaches of it don't matter; what matters most to Leftists is adherence to ideology, and affirming one's identity as part of the collective. It's cult-like. The fear comes from having that identity stripped from you, of becoming worthless not only in the eyes of your comrades but in your own eyes. If your entire identity is tied to this belief system, it can be used to control you. And that is exactly what happens. This fear is a way for the authoritarians in the movement to wield power over others.
Those scapegoated by the collective will typically contemplate suicide. They experience existential dread. Conversely, the sense of belonging in the collective brings with it a feeling akin to religious ecstasy, of euphoria at having meaning and purpose in life (as prescribed by the goals of the movement). All Leftists experience the lure of this sense of self and the fear of losing it and becoming reviled.
Apostates and heretics from the movement are regarded as evil and worthy of the worst punishment, of public shaming, doxxing, and violence. I have witnessed and experienced the wrath of the feminist collective many times and it's like watching a lynch mob hang a man. But it's less obvious to conservatives that this same dynamic is what keeps the Leftists themselves in check and easy to control.
A totalitarian society is simply one in which the entire society experiences this social dynamic. Feminism has moved from a marginal movement of a few thousand angry women more than a century ago to a movement that has overtaken the entire Western world. It has done more damage to women and children than any other force in history, in my view, relegating them to profoundly sad and lonely lives. It has been bad not only for men but also for women because it was never about womens' rights as much as it was about hatred of men.
Feminism also teaches young people to blindly obey authority, even when it's wrong, and it presents a simplistic and erroneous view of history and the human condition, brainwashing girls and women into the false belief that they are victims. It is taught from an early age in schools and now in the movies. It does all this, like other forms of cultural Marxism, through fear of censure, as described in this article, and through a relentless stream of propaganda.
Your description of the pleasures and terrors of utopian belonging/excommunication is very well said. Yes, Dworkin identified as a lesbian and Stoltenberg as gay, but they did marry eventually and reported that they had a sexual relationship (not that it matters--except in relation to Dworkin's confession of feeling pressured to renounce her heterosexuality). Dworkin reported being raped repeatedly throughout her life; it's hard to know what to believe. Perhaps it was all true; perhaps it was a part of her victim identity. I agree that she's a good writer, and so is Chesler; same for Robin Morgan and even, at times, Mary Daly, all of whom I've been reading this week!
Feminists are not in the least, and have never been, interested in equality. Men are to continue to support women, defend them, provide for them, risk their lives for them. They are to open their spaces to women, hire women, promote women, change workplace policies to accommodate women. They are to change their own behavior in conformity with women's demands. When a window shatters in the night, it is still the man who is expected to investigate; if a man is bothering a woman at a nightclub, her boyfriend/husband/male friend is expected to risk bodily harm defending her if necessary. What do women owe men? Nothing at all.
In addition to this, the hot, heavy, dirty, and dangerous work selectively ignored by feminists, who atop their man made air conditioned office towers, expect men to traditionally do.
100% AGREED! Important to point out, it's not just fEMINISTS, in fact it's also
trad con wo-MEN even anti fEMINIST wo-MEN who are just as chauvinisitc & gynocentric/
Two words: Richard Bilkszto
I have been meaning to write about his case but have been such a coward as to be unable to read the transcripts of exactly what was said to him. I can't bear it; I get too angry.
I find when I get triggered by what is written, I need to walk away for a while, sometimes that while is many years. The book "Venus The Dark Side" I avoided buying for many years and even after buying it, it took many months before I actually read it.
Generally the more the person tries to bend over backwards to prove they're not a racist/sexist/misogynist, the more vulnerable they are to these accusations.
Didn't know about this case, thanks for pointing to it. how horrible.
Wow, very well said!
Rape Culture was a 1974 movie/documentary about the rape of males in institutions. Feminists later co-opted the language and concepts and distorted them to exclude those it was meant to help.
Thanks for this! I had no idea--will look into it. In *Against Our Will,* Susan Brownmiller wrote about the rape of men in prison but did not allow the fact of male rape victims (or the fact that women rape boys in institutions) to interfere with her contention throughout her book that rape is fundamentally patriarchal, the manner in which male predators control and terrorize women.
Mary Daly is credited.
Andrea Dworkin, Germaine Greer, and Gloria Allred all claimed they were raped. Since Dworkin has said something like "all sex is rape" Since Germaine Greer has suggested that a wife giving sex to her husband when not in the mood is rape, and since Allred is a Bolshevic who sues MALE celebrities for rape....I would take their suspicious rape 'claims' with a grain of salt
I wanted to also amplify this compulsion of some/many/all feminists to ever claim and expand the definition of rape so that all heterosexual women can become honorary victims. I believe it's Julie Bindel, notably, who is pushing to expand the definition of rape to include 'retroactive regret' which would trump any form of consent prior to and during intercourse.
As for Dworkin, amazingly, she spent her entire life getting raped. Men simply could not control their base sexual urges in her presence. Before her death, she even recounted and published a particularly harrowing event in a Paris hotelroom here:
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2013/03/day-i-was-drugged-and-raped
and the rebuttal: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/doubting-dworkin-the-radical-writers-dubious-account-of-being-drugged-and-assaulted-does-no-good-for-rape-awareness/article768435/
For all the times that Dworkin was raped, she preferred to compose essays about her trauma and need for recovery than to actually do anything to bring her rapists to stand trial. It's what gives cred amongst her followers and publishers. Rape is a powerfully moving literary theme. I am reminded that so many early Women's Studies departments were staffed with more English majors than sociologists, historians, or legal experts. As a result, literary analysis has always been a filter through which academic feminists have viewed and projected their ideas onto the physical world. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that Andrea Dworkin's last rape would not lead to anything so mundane as a criminal investigation in order to forestall any additional violence against women; her violation better serves a source material, instead, for a stageplay.
https://johnstoltenberg.medium.com/andrea-dworkins-last-rape-5b8efd61fec2
Absoulutely BRILLIANT! All brilliant points. Your essay is much better than Dworkin and Stoltenberg's theater, and serves a much bigger reality than a stage play.
The definitions of rape and sexual assault, first in feminist ideology and now in law, are so loose as to be almost meaningless. Add to that that rape is used synonymously with sexual assault (the 'Stanford Rapist' was neither charged with nor convicted of rape) in the media and even feminist 'scholarship' and you have the perfect formula for demonizing male sexuality.
I know that many (probably not here, so much) will see this as jaw dropping misogyny, but I am EXTREMELY dubious that a woman as grotesquely unattractive as Andrea Dworkin was raped at all, much less many times. Still, if all it takes is a lingering gaze (as one might be unable to look away from a train wreck) to constitute sexual violation . . .
#BINGO! Well said. That's exactly my interpretation through my lens as well. I've been observing this $MeToo phenomena since I was 15 years old back in the mid 1970's.. It may sound cruel, but truth is most rape accussers have bad self images and are of low self esteem.
Most are retro interpreting things from the past they consented to at the time.
"HELL HATH NO FURRY LIKE A wo-MAN SCORNED" #MENOPAUSE plays a role
Attention/money/victim politics/ all play a role. George Will wrote an article about rape victim status being a coveted status. Notice it's invariably wo-MEN who are beyond their prime making these claims like they want to be reborn virgins? I think it's MENOPAUSE driving this phenomena
Is it narcissism or just stupidity that makes those who populate certain movements claim that those who disagree simply don't know their own interests? If a woman disagrees with feminism, she's "internalized the patriarchy." If a black person disagrees with critical race theory, then they've "internalized whiteness." If a blue-collar worker doesn't buy into communism, they just don't understand their true interests, i.e., those of the working class (all of whom have identical interests as workers). And the people who do know the true interests of women, blacks or blue-collar workers are never the individuals themselves, but feminists, extremist blacks and communists. The rest of us of course understand that those ideologies have no concept of individual differences or that people aren't just categories, because doing so would necessitate the dismantling of the ideology as the all-purpose analyzer of all things human. Which brings me back to my original question.
This is an excellent observation. I suspect that power-hungry types find it convenient to make the accusation of internalized flaws toward anyone who resists being recruited into their identity group. It's much easier to do that than to form a coherent argument in favor of joining an insular, identity-focused group of mean-spirited ideologues and tyrant wannabes.
Indeed.
This is a good one, too.
https://patriotdepot.com/products/make-1984-fiction-again-unisex-t-shirt
I suspect that most of us share Dworkin's greater fear of shaming. I know that it has been the much greater fear in my past. I endured physical bullying from other boys in school, but that was not as distressing as the loss of moral legitimacy that I felt from being shamed, usually by girls. I seemed to have no psychic defenses against that for many years as a younger man. It was only with the slow development of a sense of personal moral legitimacy that came from exhaustive analysis of my own character and actions, that I gained an immunity to the shaming that one regularly receives from feminists as an equality advocate.
Good point, David, about shaming. Women are the masters at it generally, so it is no surprise that it has been a central tactic in feminist politics and activism, turned against both women and men.
It took me way too long to figure out that shaming was simply a tactic some people use to get what they want. I take great pleasure, now, in smiling and walking away. There is no greater insult to these people than to let them know that they simply don't matter to you..
If this had been any one other than Janice writing about Dworkin, I’d have not believed a word of it. I know a bit about Chesler, including her stint as a Muslim bride in Kabul (look it up, she wrote a book on it) and understand (although I might not agree with with her on everything) how she got to here from there.
And like Janice, this Dworkin seems to me a tad more approachable than the toad, I’d forced myself to read about.
But like every feminist, or woman brought up at their feminist mothers knee, she can’t help but include a shot at men even when its not about men… “Nothing offers more proof—sad, irrefutable proof—that we are more like men than either they or we care to believe” (p. 115).
Ha! The Hormone that differentiates men from woman, testosterone, is also a social bonding hormone that allows and allowed men to build teams and groups to not only hunt aurock’s but to also build Cathedrals, businesses, win wars and yes effect great social change without descending into the type of psychotic behaviour Dworkin, Chesler and Morgan describe. When I was in High School the year book committee generally was a coed endeavour. One of the high schools in our conference had an all female committee that needed to resort to the teachers and admin office support to get it printed and distributed on time because the members weren’t talking to one another, the meetings turned into screaming matches, some members left in tears…Nice. Sound familiar!
Very interesting--I didn't know that about testosterone!
I've read Chesler's memoir about her time in Kabul. She also wrote a bizarre introduction to a collection of letters by the serial killer Aileen Wuornos to her lover or friend Dawn. Chesler's intro is quite something--a gushing, sentimental tribute to a woman who killed seven men "in self defense." Chesler is a good writer and a very strange person.
Ask the man or women on the street what the effect of Testosterone is on men and they’ll tell you it makes us violent!
It does if violence is the way to get the job done. Testosterone, aside from turning boys into men, is the hormone that lets groups of men decide and get behind leadership and try and build a Highway to the Heavens… sorry for the hyperbole but I’m on a roll.😊
And with respect to Chesler… oh boy is she ever!
Go to a powerlifting gym, and I bet those guys are some of the friendliest you'll probably ever meet.
T makes men social. Women apparently, not so much. I've heard women don't deal well with elevated testosterone, it reputedly has deleterious psychological/emotional effects.
I'm no expert, but I've read that assuming roles of leadership actually stimulates an increase in testosterone. It could be, at least in some cases, that increased testosterone is the effect of certain roles and behaviors rather than the cause..
Testosterone facilitates dominance and submission in hierarchies, without which hierarchies are kinda pointless.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-05603-7
Having attended an all-girls high school, I don't find this surprising at all.
I suppose my reaction to this is, if you remove all the grievances and the mental illness from feminism, what do you have left? What part of feminism forms a body of consistent thought which people can actually believe or act on to make society better?
When I was younger I tried reading some works, mostly newspaper articles, by feminists like Germaine Greer. What I felt was that they seemed to shift around their positions to maximise the aspect of grievance, complaining that things just aren't fair for women, even though things aren't actually that fair for men, we can't just pull out our "patriarchy card" and receive rich rewards as a result. I couldn't identify any actually-useful outcome of feminism either for men or for women.
When I was a child I had wonderful, caring fully invested teachers who were all females because at that time teaching and nursing were the height of the average Woman’s capacity to succeed. Lucky me and everybody else in my cohort (I’m 75).
Feminism has now allowed woman to succeed to the height of their ability. Hooray for them and hooray for us. And hooray for the gov’t that found a second source of taxation.
But have you seen what has happened to the teaching ‘profession’? All those caring, nurturing wonderful women who would have become teachers are now Doctors, Lawyers, Professors and Business-Women. And what has gone into teaching can be seen in the twitter and YouTube vids that scare any normal thinking parent into consider home schooling.
I never bought into the feminist claims of society keeping women down. An elderly woman in my neighborhood as known as "Docky" because she was an MD (graduated before 1900). Most of the women in my neighborhood were married mothers, but we did have a sprinkling of independent career women. The amazing thing is that nobody treated them badly or made fun of them or tried to repress or oppress them. They were just part of the neighborhood, as much as anyone.
It really saddens me when I hear young anti-feminists who will claim that there was a time when feminism was needed, for getting the vote and the right to have a credit card in one's own name - completely uneducated about the fact that most women in the early 20th century weren't in favor of female suffrage, or that it was married women who couldn't get credit card in their own names - because husbands were liable for wives debts.
You might find a You Tube video by History Debunked quite interesting, it's about how women doctors have made medical care much more difficult to access:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_E4XSX6ay0
Hi Trish…
If I gave you the impression that no woman ever succeeded beyond the teaching/nursing paradigm I’m sorry. Of course they did but it was very few and far between. My mother worked for Bell Telephone during the War and was the only one at her level allowed not only in the room but to switch the calls when a certain level of Military or Political communication went on. And there were several levels yet above her…all women.
I’m reminded of 21 year old female shift foremen at bomber plants in California.
But those were extraordinary times calling for extraordinary people. Women of every economic level have worked and succeeded over men in NA for years before my time. But it wasn’t common. I see the flaws in Feminism believe me but I see the benefits too I think.
The problem is when the ideology is driven by maniacs described by the other maniacs named in Janices article, no?
Hi Chuck, I'm so sorry that you would even think I thought you thought that way. I had in mind the way feminists depict the past as being blanketed with such attitudes, and those young women of today, even the ones who identify as anti-feminist, seem to have been infected with some false ideas about the past that were originated by the ideological maniacs that are the subject of Janice's essay.
My mom was actually a telephone operator when I was in kindergarten (she never was party to any high level conversations I was aware of).
One thing I admire about the women who took all those hard roles during WWII is that they didn't put ideology and/or money above their true natures or lose sight of their own femininity - they were the mothers of the baby boom.
I would have no problem with feminism if it was openly a special interest advocacy group, but that would be kryptonite for their movement.
It would also be redundant, as there's already a well established female advocacy institution. It's called the Patriarchy.
That's who they ALWAYS were Chuck
Just watched the vid and Thank You…the guys language, style and cadence belies the truth he depicts of major professions in crisis nobody talks about because they don’t want to be viewed as sexist knuckle draggers.
Increasingly, the professions are being subsumed by women and eventually the crisis he described will have a light shined on it. I’d put $ on the idea that it will be somehow mens fault for not entering the profession spotlighted but going into the trades instead. Hard to do when acceptance standards only point one way.
When I graduated there were 18 women in a class of 125, 14.5%. Last year, 70% of the same class of 155 were women.
I'm 65 and I'm low income. I've been trying to get medicare part B paid for by the state (Medical savings program) I was told by TWO seperate agents that I qualify and it's going on a year that I'm being denied. I stopped paying and I was dropped. Then I was told if I pay the outstanding premium $1,160.70 in person I would be reinstated. Well after bringing the check in person to the entirely black/Hispanic/ wo-MEN run SS building in New Haven, months went by and I still wasn't reinstated. Well months more of persistent calls to the SS finally resulted in me being reinstated except I now owe $800.00 and am still being denied ( medical savings program for part B) even though I'm out of work and was low income before that. Am I the wrong demographic? Am I reading too much into this? THANKS for the video link
Chuck, teachers are still 78% wo-MEN. I think what's changed is lack of MALE leadership, such as MALE principals overseeing the curriculum. Also MALE teachers for BOYS
I've never been able to extract anything from feminist writings that could qualify as a coherent ideology. Even as a young girl, all I could see in feminism was a movement bent on jumping on the latest bandwagon, framing current issues as exemplars of how women are mistreated by society (weirdly, they don't seem to notice that half of the society they are so sure is damaging to women is made up of women).
Feminism doesn't seem to be a consistent ideology at all, just an ever-growing laundry list of increasingly petty grievances. The comments section is already getting long so I'll leave the discussion there for now.
Exactly! The list morphs at a moment's notice to take advantage of current developments. Like how feminism claimed for decades that women are capable of doing any job men do, including fire fighting, but only when trans athletes make headlines, do feminists notice men have physical capabilities women can't compete with (I happen to be a bit of a political orphan, as a never-feminist who also finds trans ideology equally incoherent and opportunistic, and see it based in sexual obsessions and a desire not to join the women but to socially replace women. Trans is not a deep rooted "identity.").
(I was thinking of editing the above comment but instead I'll add a comment to my own comment.)
Like the other commenter, Josh Slocum, my original quibble with feminism originated not from a divorce or marital breakdown/alimony/custody disagreement, but having a mother who espoused feminism and also seemed to be wildly unhinged, attacking us with knives, randomly screaming her head off during mealtimes, or breaking down in tears and refusing to repair broken windscreen wipers on the car, driving home in the dark and pouring rain with no wipers, because the garage surroundings reminded her of the 1950s.
I was accused of various forms of sexism by my mother well before I had any clear idea of the differences between men and women, as well as being accused of various incestuous lusts by my equally-demented father before I had any noticeable sexual feelings. To make matters even worse, my mother decided that she hadn't yet behaved in truly-insane-enough fashion, and decided to start disgusting sexual harassment towards me during my teenage years. So I grew up associating feminism as well as sexuality with my parents' mental illnesses. As a young adult I tried to see what feminists actually believed and whether there was something to the movement other than the insane rantings of my mother, Phoebe. But there never has seemed to be anything other than just endless ill-considered grievance mongering. I don't see any consistent goals of this movement.
The idea that male supremacy is responsible for the cattiness of women is far beyond absurd. Over and over we see women competing with each other to be top cat. It’s inherent in female nature.
Women distrust and suspect each other almost automatically. Gathering women, in particular highly ambitious women, into a single movement of their own is going to bring out their worst qualities.
Fascinating insights into a feminist avatar's moment of clarity in the eye of her own storm. The vaunted 'sisterhood' can only ever end in the way you describe, because it generates its own traumas, antagonisms and resentments by virtue of itself being generated by these very traits. There can only ever be problem and reaction in an endless and vicious circle because there can never be a solution; destruction of 'the patriarchy' - an imaginary, projected construct anyway - would not resolve anything and MUST NOT occur, because the victimhood would have nothing to feed on. It's quite sad, though my sympathy is more than somewhat limited when I survey the societal wreckage wrought by the likes of Dworkin and her hissing haters.
Couldn't help but notice many of the words and phrases in this article used by the various protagonists to describe feminists or feminism:
- charismatic / mental illness / psychiatric afflictions / personality disorders / bullying / lack of empathy / intimidation and interrogation / pathological lying / victim mentality / imagined moral purity
- and how these very same descriptors tend to be used in the field of psychiatry when describing certain personality disorders along the psychopathy spectrum such as narcissism.
Makes me think that - rather than 'feminism causing mental illness' - maybe it's the other way around and people with these alleged 'disorders' are naturally drawn to that way of thinking.
Yes indeed, I agree. I believe feminism both attracts people who are already inclined to narcissism and the victim mindset, and exacerbates the already-existent tendencies. A vicious circle that is sad for the individuals and disastrous for society.
It's possible that "narcissism" is fictional, and the term so loosely scattered about each day conveys nothing. It's possible that selfish misbehaviour is just selfish misbehaviour.
Applying the term "narcissist" to an individual does nothing to make that individual's behaviour better. Indeed, it risks characterising an unfortunate event or interlude as a lifelong affliction, actively making the problem worse. One of the greatest advantages of human- ness is our capacity to change. We aren't helped by linguistic straight- jackets.
In the absence of any benefit whatever in the use of such psycho babble terms, I can't help feeling that these should be avoided.
The feminist grievance industry is a social and political problem of gigantic proportions. I prefer that we deal with it as such, and avoid going down the Fraudean rabbit hole.
Point taken!
I do find the idea of the 'tendency to interpersonal victimhood' as a personality type quite useful, though. It IS essentially selfish misbehaviour, but of a particular kind that ruminates on past injuries, relishes identity as a victim, demands victimhood be recognized, and uses injury as an excuse not to care about injuries to others. Raising awareness of such thinking/behavior might well lead to change.
I would question that narcissism is a mental illness in that it is a coping strategy that doesn't necessarily cause narcissists any discomfort or interfere with their ability to function, at least in their own self interests, in life. This is why narcissists usually have no interest in changing, because it's working for them.
Having said that, I also recognize that it develops, usually, in response to some form of neglect or abuse. In terms of pathology, I would hypothesize that narcissists could be seen as pathological to OTHERS more than to themselves.
Interestingly, H.G. Tudor, who has a You Tube Channel and a website (narcsite.com) claims to have been diagnosed as a narcissist. He says it's not a mental illness, it's a personality disorder. The former can be treated, the latter cannot. In fact, narcissists, like psychopaths, when given psychotherapy only learn new tricks that make their manipulations of others more successful.
No matter how many different terms are invented, to describe misbehaviour, all are worthless in the absence of corresponding remedies.
I like to put it this way: A problem without a solution can't truly be considered a problem.
In my personal experience, the people behind and in these victimhood movements are deeply unhappy. And this unhappiness manifests in outward hostility, and often, bad behavior. I have never met a radical ever that I judged had it all together. Some of these radicals have the potential to heal, under the right circumstances.
Yes they are unhappy. The feminist grievance industry requires them to be unhappy, in order to sell them stuff. The more miserable everyone is, the better for feminism.
This accounts for feminism's constant self re- invention. ("waves")
Yesterday's outrages dwindle in the memory. New outrages must perpetually be invented.
Yes all true. And this stoking of resentment in (some) women is having a negative effect on society om general. I don't know what to do about it, other than build systems to help people overcome a victim mindset and embrace gratitude.
Some of us grew up with mothers of this type . It is unimaginably awful.
Mentally-ill feminist mother, what a winning combination.
If an autopsy is ever performed in the wake of the death of western civilization, under the “cause of death” section, the seemingly incessant desire to herd individuals into groups based upon immutable, inconsequential characteristics (“sister lesbian”) and to attribute some level of value/virtue to possessing these characteristics (Women’s March, Pride Month, etc.) will likely be listed at or near the top.
I almost feel bad for these women. Partly because we know how damaging this behavior is and partly because they came so close to realizing the truth! Another thing: Bell Hooks actually admitted that there were anti-male sentiments in feminism but considered it a small minority. She also described violence perpetuated by women as "patriarchal."
This all comes from Feminism is for Everybody. I recommend reading it for its odd blend of frank confessions, shameless bigotry, and fact-free assertions.
https://excoradfeminisms.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/bell_hooks-feminism_is_for_everybody.pdf
Thank you very much for the recommendation. I am writing about 'intersectional' feminism right now and was just contemplating what work by hooks I should read. I did read her thirty years ago, but didn't remember anything particularly striking--so this is perfect timing!
I'm so glad I could help, Janice. And thank you very much for taking the time to read our comments! Hope the link helps.
Women are eternally victimized, they cannot lie, steal, cheat, fight, kill or rape, they always are victims of these crimes. Anyone presuming the contrary is a misogynist scoundrel.
No wonder feminists are so anti-Christianity -- the story of the apple shows the woman being capable of making her own bad decisions, then dragging her mate into joining her in her mistake.
Excellent essay. This captures the narcissistic aspects of feminism perfectly. All of the narcissistic tactics are inherent in the ideology. Women are blameless victims, while beneath the surface they're controlling men and society. By feigning victim hood, they control men. They are never at fault for anything. To think that the narcissistic belief system of feminist leaders has become a full-fledged ideology, incapable of redemption, is tragic, to say the least. Even worse, feminism has all the bugs of a cult. At this juncture, it IS a cult. Whenever broaching the subject in class, it's just impossible to get students to stop parroting its idiotic mantras. I explicitly tell them they can steel man and critique and they seem incapable of doing the latter -- to their detriment. I like watching old made-for-TV movies from the 70s and early 80s with feminist themes. In those films, there is still so much love between men and women. Now it's just flat out misandry. I'd love to get Janice's take on BARBIE.
Exactly. Having been involved in a cult or two in my younger years, I see all the hallmarks of mind control cult behaviour. Steve Hassan's book, "Combatting Cult Mind Control" goes into this in depth. Steve was a former Moonie who quit and went on to become a psychiatrist specialising in cult recovery therapy and techniques. Most of what he wrote, I recognised.
One thing with a typical cult follower is the extreme capacity for cognitive dissonance and their vicious behaviour towards those who waver in the cult.
If the cult's goals or predictions either come to fruition or comes to nothing, they simply move the goalposts so the cult never become irrelevant. There can never be an end goal that gets achieved. Power has to be held at all costs.
Feminists are not unique in these behaviours, it is typical of cults. No one wins and in the end, everybody loses.
The problem I have with characterizing feminism as a cult is that there has never been a widely recognized single leader. It's definitely cult like, however, so I'm not sure how much weight to give that divergence.
A cult is not always a personality one. There are quite a few others that run themselves with a loose form of leadership that often resembles a revolving door style. Like business cults (Amway, Herbalife....), politic cults (Greenies would be one example). Then there are the malignant ones like neo Nazis, the KKK, BLM and so on that are cults in their ideology and actions, not of the leader. Radical feminism falls into the latter scenario.
Most cults are started on certain grains of truth which is why it attracts those who question, initially. Where they go from there determines whether the cult becomes a benevolent (in general, like the Salvation Army) or down the path of malignancy like feminism has become.
Thank you Janice. As a feminist cult non-member (although I know what cults are like, having been in a New Age one), this explains the bristling contempt exuded by a certain type of strident feminist. Perhaps it is a loathing that extends from all men, to most women, to a millstone around their own necks. Moribund ideology will do that. And I am sure intersectional feminism only makes the whole thing worse.
I won't concede these characters were mentally ill. That's too close to giving them an excuse. I attribute their misbehaviour to conscious ill- intent. They were vandals. Uncivilised brutes at war with love, peace and happiness. Certainly sane enough to make good livings out of their performative misery.
I see your point, and I'd give you a piece of evidence to support your idea that mental illness diagnosis is an excuse. In the late 1800s, when department stores came into being, it was a huge change in how Americans purchased many items. Before these shopping emporiums, one would go to a general store, request an item that would be brought from the store room or order an item for later pick up. The opening of department stores was followed by a baffling phenomenon - massive shoplifting done by women and girls of middle and upper classes. The psychiatry industry came up with a diagnosis: kleptomania.
The characters Janice is discussing were twisted, unpleasant and malicious. Your observation that they made a good living out of performative misery is well said. It's also the key reason why we, as a society, must reverse the many-decades trend of replacing diagnosis with ethics.
Winona Ryder, as a wealthy, beautiful, young actress, was famously caught shoplifting items she could easily have bought. I suppose she was doing it for excitement, although apparently Winona claimed to have some sort of mental problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winona_Ryder#2001_arrest
My father ran a kitchenware shop, and we used to visit him on Sundays when the shop used to be closed, and my sister would steal small things while we were waiting for him in the empty shop. My father used to complain about shoplifters, but even though I'm sure he saw my sister stealing things, he didn't say anything to her about it.
I knew about Wynona. She's the poster child for shoplifting as antisocial female behavior.
I wonder if your dad made up for her thefts out of his own pocket. o you think he would have ignored the truth about a son doing that?
Hi again Trish.
My sister was stealing things like cake decorations, so she was taking parts of packets of marzipan animals. I suppose these just got sold on to the customer with bits missing. This was in the 1970s before all the sealed packaging we have today. I'm sure my father noticed her stealing, but didn't do or say anything about it.
It's quite hard to track back to the discussion in substack, so I can't find the original discussion.
Hi Ben, Sorry for the long delay in this reply. I needed to do some repairs on my computer, and the wait for parts was interminable. Thankfully, I have rejoined the 21st Century.
I agree it's difficult to track back on Substack. There's a few comments I've wished I could reply to, but never managed to find them within the thread. I can't complain too much, though, as it's a sign of a lot of engagement with articles on important topics (Don't feel you have to try to find this one to reply. I'm sure we'll cross pathes again soon).
Many thanks.
I've been challenging myself to come up with reasons to suppose there would be any such thing as feminism in the absence of psychology. It's proving difficult. The more I think about it, the more it seems the former depends, relies, and arises from the latter.
I think feminism has never been rooted in the actual needs or desires of women. It's always been the plaything of wealthy bitter women who couldn't find something productive to do with themselves. It's incoherent, constantly shifts goalposts, and never admits a "win."
My argument here is that sane and balanced people do not behave in inappropriate ways.
Mental illness comes in many different flavours.
Some sufferers are high functioning and others all the way down to catatonic levels.
Whilst not necessarily an excuse, ignoring that point isn't helpful for those caught in the grip of dysfunctions either.
I do understand your position though.
There is "inappropriate behaviour" throughout Shakespeare. But it was never necessary for the bard to employ these types of terms. He wrote 200 years before psychology was invented. The audience of the day understood what they were seeing well enough. Human nature hasn't changed, despite the ever - growing and increasingly insulting lexicon of human shortcomings from which psycho- babble makes a living.
I remember, more or less, when the word 'inappropriate' became psychobabble in popular culture. My sister would use it reflexively any time she didn't disapproved of something. She would wag her finger and say "that's in-a-pro-pri-ate" like she was talking to a child.
Near as I could figure it meant something like "I don't like that so you shouldn't either."