Thank you so much, Hannah and Janice, for such a stimulating and honest conversation. You covered areas rarely discussed, with considerable insight.
I agree that men mainly desire respect, but I suspect that they also miss not being loved, most often without really realizing it. I suspect that the reason that some men on the deathbeds speak of and want their mothers is that the last time they were actually loved was when they were a child. Most women see their husbands transactionally, appreciate them for what they provide (if they appreciate them at all). Perhaps it was always thus - men always lacked love, and women always lacked respect. (Further evidence for this view comes from the reports of soldiers about the uniqueness of their relationship with their comrades - I suspect that what makes it unique is that they actually love each other - there is nothing that says love so strongly as risking your life for the sake of the other.)
Well said, David. I suppose that many men don't use words to express their desire and their need for love. That's partly because most people have come to assume not only that love is an emotion but also that emotion itself is "female" (which explains the feminized vocabulary of pop psychology and clinical psychology, let alone some forms of Christianity.) But love is not reducible to sentiment. It's highest expression is not an emotion at all, in fact, but a freely chosen act of self-sacrifice by a man or a woman. I agree with you, therefore, that love (like respect) is a universal human need, not a "gendered" one.
I'm dissatisfied by the vague word "empathy," by the way, because it's ultimately meaningless. No one can actually experience more than partially what others experience (although trying to imagine how others experience the world is certainly a desirable goal). Once again, moreover, this word usually amounts to nothing more substantial than benevolent but shallow and transient feelings of the particular kind that many people consider innately female. But if women were so reliably guided by empathy, how could we explain the fact that women's movements are demonstrably devoid of empathy for boys and men, including their own sons?
The idea that men don't want love, to be blunt, is patently fucking absurd.
Love looks different for men of course. Instead of being care based, it's more encouragement based. Instead of cute affection, it's more of a "brothers in battle" attitude.
I mean the idea that men don't want love honestly floored me. It really is fucking stupid to be completely honest, and it's not just fiamengo saying this, a lot of men say this too for some reason, so its not a her thing.
I mean look at football games and tell me those men don't lover each other. Those men are doing all sorts of encouraging in the huddles.
It's amazing to me that people see men as borderline not human. Obviously men's love has hoo-rah attitude, but its still love.
Seems to be operating from a female frame of reference, because a lot or women seem to think that if you don't stroke each others hair and sob with each other you don't really love each other.
Men do not want to be just of use. They want their presence to be valued and enjoyed fundamentally. They also want to be desired sexually.
Oh that's OK, rereading the comment, I did come off rather strong, and yes many men do say this dumb shit, so its not surprising that genuine women would come away with a wrong impression.
I'm a man but can only speak for myself. I do want to be loved, but only by the things that I love unconditionally--My wife, my grandchildren, and my dog. You'll notice I didn't mention my children. I've been married to the same woman for 40 years and we have 11 children together. The feeling of love in the initial stages of fatherhood are just as strong for a man as a woman. But that fades over time for a man and the need for respect becomes dominant. I have 9 boys and it's my duty to prepare them to face an often harsh world. Without respect they will not follow, and you cannot safely lead if you have not well learned to follow. Could say more and would love to discuss with you but I have to go for now. Really enjoyed this piece and I'm going to read more of your stack. Take care.
HS comments that "everything in English studies—and in most other university disciplines in North America—is taught from an unquestioned feminist point of view" and she notes that this affects male students. I had similar thoughts in my last years in the English Department. I started teaching courses on masculinity and violence, centered on war fiction. I taught this as a general education (non-major) course and enjoyed seeing men and women majoring in other subjects digging into this great literature. The novels involved male relationships (such as those David S. mentions above) or family relationships rather than romantic relationships. There was plenty about war written by women, Vera Brittain, Susan Hill, others. None of it, no matter who wrote it, fit with what students expected to hear or had heard in other classes. They pretty much thought that novels were about bad men and good women and about sexual power struggles (that is, novels were about feminism). Reading war fiction, they saw something else. They learned that war creates as well as destroys. They could see that what men bring back from war, the good and the bad, is something only men understand (a form of combat Gnosticism). We think that men returning from war don't talk about it because it was so terrible--often true. But sometimes they don't talk about it because it was wonderful, too good, perhaps, to be put into words, to be given to others who would normalize it, reduce it to banalities. I see just now Paul's comment below, to which I would add: men sometimes don't use words because words can't capture the pain or the glory that men prize.
As a child I idolised the soldiers and vision of troops disembarking, some on stretchers, others using crutches or bandages covering their heads. The black and white film's voice-over says they left as boys and returned as men. In many cases broken men. but nobody mentions that.
As a little sideline to your comment about men returning from war, I remember my Dad talking about having a hard time readjusting to normal life after WWII.
He said that life became incredibly boring after all the action and activities and the camaraderie amongst the men came to an end, apart from being a part of the returned serviceman's groups like the RSA's (NZ) and RSL's (Aust) where they just got together on occasions and relived their glory days without all the death and stress. Everyday life had become incredibly mundane in comparison. Nobody missed all the death and maiming, just the action in life.
I never thought of it as being an adrenaline trip for many until then. Some became addicted I guess. I still remember working with the highly stressed individuals from the war who were like powder kegs with a 1mm fuse on them. Those who shook constantly, startled at every sudden noise, those who developed OCD behaviours and those who became quite odd personalities when I was an apprentice, just before their retirements.
We used to laugh a bit at some of them, however in our defence, we were quite ignorant of what they had been through. It is only as I have become older and learned some more things that I feel more more empathy for them and their struggles and feel a sense of shame for my past feelings towards them.
Thank you for this, a very touching comment. I had two uncles who were in WWII in the Pacific. Neither ever said a word about it, but, as an adult, I was able to visit one of them the year before he died and interview him. In his old age he was very philosophical about his experience. His favorite story was about coming home. He took an overnight train from Kansas City to the small town near his parent's farm. His brother lived in the town and he woke him up. It was Easter Sunday morning, and the two of them drove to the farm, the first his mom and dad had seen the soldier in 2 years. They had no idea he was even in the US. Luckily somebody got out a camera and we have a picture of their reunion. That became his war story, and our story about his war. Nobody, in truth, wanted to know what he had seen "over there." To me, as a kid, he was like a man who had stepped out of a movie.
The title of the course alone is deeply misandric. This is just terrible to be perfectly honest.
It could have just been titled war fiction. "Masculinity and violence" is feminine slanderous abusive behavior. What about femininity and violence? Abortion and post birth infanticide throughout history? The murder of husbands by poisoning, which was common in the 19th century?
War books written by women will always be inferior in quality, because women don't experience war. The close they ever come to it is being nurses. This is just more feminist aggrandizement of women. It honestly reads the way Hillary Clinton read "the primary victims of war have always been women". Its horribly inappropriate and feminist.
Even if you somehow disagree with the intrinsic inferiority of female war books, it still is a fact that the fact that they say "so many women wrote war books!" As if we somehow have reason to believe that people really didn't want them too. As if men tried to stop them. It just reeks of female self aggrandizement.
People say that female ww1 poets were discriminated against because of "combat gnosticism". Which they should have been, seeing as how experiencing war is objectively a different form of existence, but you seem to think their books were equally valid. Maybe as supplemental to men's, but its pretty obvious why female war poetry is not taken as srsly.
This whole comment is just Goofy.
Female leadership truly is degenerate and childish, and we see the fruits of it every day.
Thank you, Janice, for posting that honest, enlightening conversation between you and Hannah. It always strikes me that once women knew what men missed out on, by devoting so much time and energy to their careers - remember all the jokes about men on their death beds lamenting their priorities? It seems so bizarre that feminists encouraged women to go down the same route. And now everyone is miserable!
I know. For over a hundred years the dream of nearly every man has been to retire early and play golf or fish. And none of this was ever seen as a warning that work wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Work can be fulfilling, and we should have a crack at using our talents - but it is oversold.
Indeed for the majority work is work and a job is a job. If you enjoy it great but generally the opportunity to retire is welcome. Far too much of the debate about "work" and "career" is built on the assumption that everyone has a job that combines light work with high pay and status. Whereas of course most paid work is simply not like that, hence the majority's enthusiasm for the idea of retirement! The idea is "oversold".
wow! What a fascinating and stimulating conversation. So much covered and all of it important. Thank you both for this.
I was moved by the section where HS talked about asking her husband to be the sole breadwinner. As a man, I know that respect is essential along with admiration. Asking him to do this was a great sign of respect and admiration shown to him. He took that and ran with it! It gave his life meaning because you trusted him and had faith in him. This is fuel for men! (the fuel that is sadly missing for many men) God bless you and God bless your husband! I hope zillions of people can benefit from hearing that story.
It never ceases to amaze me the disregard for being at home as a parent with small children. My wife and I both went part time when our kids were little and that was surely the best part of my life! My kids are now in their 30's and we all have very fond memories of the loving space that we all had.
So great to hear a psychiatrist speaking in this way. As a therapist my trust in the mental health profession is, well, not so high. Great to see some wisdom! Thank you for speaking your truth.
Hi Hannah. This part really resonated with me too. I've been married to my highschool sweetheart for 40 years and we have 11 children together.
I had a pretty cushy government job, 5 weeks paid vacation, 13 paid holidays and 13 paid sick days per year, upper middle class income, yada yada. I was there for 10 years but it wasn't fulfilling and mainly it interfered with our family life since I was working third shift. My wife was pregnant with our 5th child when I told her I wanted to start my own business. Think of all the certainty I was throwing away and the uncertainty I was asking her to embrace with me. But she did! And I've been in business for 30 years now and several of our sons work in the business. None of this would have been possible had she not been right at my side. "Behind every good man there's a woman" irritates some women because of the word "behind", but in reality there's no behind about it.
Gotta go but will check out your stack, no double entendre intended. 😂
I have always known this; as a psychotherapist I hear women constantly stressed, resentful, angry, bitter men-hating individuals because they have been brainwashed into thinking they can “have it all”! If you want it all fine just stop whining about it and blaming men or make changes that benefit your own and your family’s mental health. Self-awareness and self-responsibility is key to women and mens well-being; talk to each other decide what suits your relationship and stop listening to the drivel being espoused about “equality “
Took me leaving therapy with an ideological feminist who insisted that patriarchy exists despite my not really seeing it. Only then did I actually solve my depression; it was wild. Ten years and tens of thousands of dollars wasted.
Exactly , communicate , come half way etc .if you find one party not prepared to meet in the middle and nothing works then get out but first try to put the shoe on the other foot for the sake of your children's future. Intelligent people look at both sides to come to an agreement that makes both happy .
It is astounding that this tale hasn't been marked as hate speech by Feminists yet as it is so diametrically opposed to the core mechanisms of feminism: gratefulness, modesty, mutual respect, appreciation and decency.
There are, I think, feminist versions of many folktales; so perhaps there's a feminist version of this one and that that satisfies the feministasi for the time being.
Self awareness, that horse left the barn. my wife resentment has created a life/marriage of bad memories which overrides good ones for some reason, all while trying to achieve happiness. Pfft
This was such a great conversation. I too have left my (midwifery) career to be a stay at home Mum and have been met with similar remarks about lack of ambition, needing to get back into the workforce to 'contribute' and 'do something for myself' (mainly from family members). I love being home and caring for my family, the lack of logistical juggling between my husband and I, and the clearly defined roles we now have has completely done away with most of the things we previously argued about. There is no resentment. I am so grateful to my husband for providing and he in turn is grateful to me for caring and managing our day to day family life. Thanks for publishing this discussion, I hope for the future generations more women will see the light and move away from the lies we have been indoctrinated by.
This was a wonderful conversation between two thoughtful women who are concerned with living meaningful lives, and making real contributions to the common social good.
I think that we undervalue women’s household work because of all the “labor-saving” devices, and products,that have made many of the routine tasks traditionally done by women easier, and simpler. I had the fortune (whether good or bad you decide) to have grown up in an environment that was more nineteenth than twentieth century. We had a wood burning stove for which we (mostly me) had to find dead trees to chop down. That stove was a lot of work to operate and maintain, but my mother did most of the work on it. Feeding a family of five is no easy task.
And yet she also milked cows, made butter, sewed shirts, and other articles of clothing, and even wove wool. That was the world of a farmer’s wife, and we wouldn’t have survived without it. Since the male members of the family herded animals, planted and reaped the crops by hand , chopped wood, built and maintained the fences, and slaughtered animals, we wouldn’t have eaten if we hadn’t produced anything.
I say this because we have apparently abandoned the concept of complementarity that such a life requires. Everyone in the household had to contribute their work to support the family, and everyone’s work was valued. The world is in many ways a better place today than it was in my youth half a century and more ago, but we have lost the family as a productive entity in which each played a part in keeping things going, and the result of our shared work was a secure household, and a humane way of life.
Feminism, by devaluing the family, has effectively ruined the lives of uncountable men, women, and children who ought to be engaged in a cooperative relationship spanning generations. I am immensely grateful to both of you for shining a light on a matter of crucial importance for all.
Exactly right, and I would add, removed additional tasks from mothers by collectively raising children in what I find uncomfortably similar to orphanages. This belief was strengthened after I did a Norwegian show criticizing feminisms push for daycares. I received countless emails from norwegian women describing their anguish about being trapped in a system that forced them to give up their children to the Monday-Friday 9-5 daycare regime. Their letters were all laced with regret over going against their intuition and not speaking up.
It is no accident that feminism is strongest in the most developed nations and in the most affluent classes of those nations. For most of human history and still most of the billions today life is a might too hard to indulge in such "luxury beliefs".
Wow! First the main discussion blew me away… then the comments. How I would love to join a discussion like this in real life.
As a stay at home mom who raised three born in less than three years, with extensive involvement raising three grandchildren, my life has been child centered; I was simply wired this way and carried on, impervious to feminist shaming.
Everything of genuine importance I know, I’ve learned from my experiences raising the six of them. Your discussion is an acknowledgment of the value of my choices, an accolade I seldom receive. Rather I sometimes think people wonder why I didn’t “achieve more” with my time and talent. Achieve more? What’s more valuable than the maturing of my character and the evolution of my soul?
My own fulfilling pursuits have filled in the cracks and led me to become an ordained minister. I counsel many many women and your analysis of their unhappiness is insightful. Your critique of therapy is also perfect—therapists have replaced priests and do a lot of spiritual indoctrination I need to help women undo.
It was so rewarding to read two admirably introspective women exchanging their life stories. And what wonderful insights emerged - professional, humble and kind.
Long, long ago, after becoming irretrievably "Red Pilled" as a divorced lone father of three little ones (I love them so), I wrote somewhere that if Feminism were a person, it would be diagnosed with NPD - Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
"Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition where a person believes they are better than everyone else. Narcissistic personality disorder affects around 1 to 6 people out of 100. Symptoms include always wanting attention, expressing entitlement and struggling with criticism."
To those psychiatric symptoms I would add a pathognomonic 'disdain for maleness'.
Janice and Hannah are as far away from that affliction as it is possible to be. Thank you ladies.
Hello Richard. I came to a similar insight in my high-conflict divorce about a decade and a half ago. Recommend you search for psychoanalyst Schoenewolf’s essay/chapter “Gender narcissism and it’s manifestations” regarding narcissism regarding biological gender as the basis for feminism and the potential impact of offspring sexuality and behaviour.(Can be found in his “Psychoanalystic Centrism” collected essays book).
Inquiry into covert narcissism will provide useful reference, as will papers delving into unconscious shame being part of narcissistic etiology. These women are unconsciously ashamed (or even hate) their gender. Any natural and harmonious social ordering that arises from differences in gender constitutes a major narcissistic injury to feminists, and they are hell bent to destroy such social and personal harmony as a result.
Due to narcissistic defenses, they are impervious to reason.
Thanks Stephen for the tips. I ought not engage in personal "anecdotary" but I cannot resist temptation so I shall yield to it. Unlike you, we divorced amicably in 1978. It made no difference. I discovered that personal circumstance, like being a committed male sole parent, was subordinate to gender specific marital separation laws as demanded by what was then the "Women's Movement". Pretty quickly I lost financial security, a high intensity surgical career and masculine naivety, and long before the Red Pill became a thing.
Next, I discovered what was much later described (but not DSM classified) as covert narcissism during a short tempestuous second marriage in 80s. Like many awakening men these days, I am not Incel, rather a justifiably fearful "Vcel" - should be easy to figure out what it means. I am alone, reflective and content. My children and theirs gave and give me purpose.
Hi again Stephen. A bit more from me. I am sceptical of "unconscious anything" as aetiological prerequisites for psychological maladaptation and a resultant noisy, often highly gendered, political activism. I am relying mostly on personal experience here. Nonetheless I would challenge the hypothesis that what is readily observed by untrained individuals and even stated by the subject is not what is going on so deeply inside someone's head that no-one other than a learned clinician can find it.
Narcissistic women's "disdain for maleness" (and I choose the words carefully) surely does not masquerade as shame or hatred for women including oneself. As the saying goes, "It is what it is" and not its gendered inverse. It may be safer for me to overtly defer to better minds than my limited experience, but I shall nonetheless covertly stick to my testosterone fuelled scepticism. Cheers. :-)
"I wrote somewhere that if Feminism were a person, it would be diagnosed with NPD - Narcissistic Personality Disorder."
I understand the analogy, but the fact is that the majority of Western women, and a sizeable proportion of Western men, identify with feminism. So there's no correlation with NPD or any other mental disorder. If we wish to combat feminism as a political movement, we need to understand its appeal in terms of normal human psychology, not abnormal psychology. For example, Janice's account of her own indoctrination:
"The feminist mantra of heroic female victimhood had been the air I breathed as a university student, and it offered a near-irresistible fantasy of moral purity. I was a woman and therefore good. Men had to prove themselves good by allying with women against other men. I came to like the heady rush of sisterhood and the exhilarating fury of feeling oneself part of a wronged group. I particularly enjoyed the vision of myself as a bold heroine speaking against oppression (and being applauded and rewarded for it)."
It's not like the traditional regime utterly banned all women from pursuing various intellectual and/or artistic endeavors. Within the predominant order of women at home nurturing the family while men ventured out in various endeavors of life (political, intellectual, artistic, business, etc.), there was room for the exceptions, and they were more or less not only permitted, but often admired & celebrated as such. As usual, this isn't enough for Leftists, who demand sociopolitical transformation involving eradication of the old order, not accommodation.
Quite. In one of those ironies feminist historians are forever pointing out famous women etc. Proving in fact the "patriarchy" was in fact rubbish at oppressing women. The real point is that these women, like the men, were generally aristocratic and so lived lives entirely unlike the vast majority of men and women who were subsistence farmers. The point being that "society" was an entirely different thing prior to the industrial revolution, certainly here in England. At the dawning of that revolution only 6% of men had the vote (it was based on property ownership) and the sort of people in the Austin novels made little more than 7% of the population (gentry and aristocrats). The rest scraped a living, got bossed about and were luck to live to 50.
Thanks for mentioning Austen, Nigel. Whatever their literary value, all of her novels are essentially the same: social satire on the upper and lower gentry of her time. Feminists have renewed her popularity but only by interpreting it through a gynocentric lens--that is, by replacing Austen's interest in class with their own interest in "gender." They comment only, therefore, on the plight of women from "poor" families who needed desperately to marry titled men. Their alternatives were to live with relatives, become governesses or rely on some unusual talent (which is what Austen herself did as a writer). The reality, for both women and men, was somewhat more complicated than feminist theory (which accounts for only those of the aristocracy and gentry of early nineteenth-century England).
It's true that some men chose careers in the government, the army or the church (whether they had any interest, let alone competence in any of those careers). Other choices were discouraged. Only men of the uncouth nouveau-riche class built industries or worked in "trade." Only parents of the dreaded middle classes encouraged their (presumably eccentric) sons to become physicians or lawyers. So most upper-class men--the most prestigious ones--did not earn money at all. They lived on the rents of tenant farmers at their ancestral estates . As Austen observes, they had to either gamble for money it at the faro tables or marry it (which was in itself a form of gambling). This meant that those "marriageable" men, like women, seldom married for love in any modern sense of that word. These were marriages of convenience for both sexes, usually arranged by the parents (although they were not necessarily unhappier than modern marriages).
And I forgot one thing. Thanks to the law of primogeniture, only eldest sons could inherit those country estates and the accompanying titles. Other men of the upper classes were on their own.
And as you say they couldn't be "Gentlemen" and actually have a job. Way back at school when we had to read the "classics" for exams. A penny sort of dropped when reading Dickens and Austin, how very different things were. Lots of characters had no work as such, relying on "income" and even more strange to me there appeared no stigma at all to not working; whereas even in the 1970s rich and/or titled people (including the Royal family) were keen to suggest they "worked" rather than being ladies or gentlemen of leisure. Even then it struck me how different that society was in the past. A couple of years later at University I took an interest in some feminist lectures and writings (in those days we were encouraged to "broaden" our education by attending lectures from other Courses/Faculties.) And it struck me that much of the "evidence" was derived from old novels, as if these were reliable sources of sociological or even historical conditions. The more so coming from a working class background in the NW of England meant that were no examples in my family then or the previous generations where both sexes didn't work, in terms of paid work even if it was taking work into the home (sewing, washing, batch cooking "doing Avon"). The only people I knew where the mother didn't work were the Doctors and wives of Teachers and the wife of a "head Engineer" at GEC. I suspect this pattern wasn't universal (maybe women didn't work in mining towns as opposed to the Mill Towns) But I recall the economist Catherine Hakim pointing out that the proportion of women economically active in 2000 was the same as in 1900 (often in "service" or other industries now defunct (such as textiles and garments). Which reminds me Hakim's "Preference Theory" is as good an explanation as any of the increasing "gender segregation"in occupations observed in all developed nations as they increase in wealth. The basic being that as there is more and more choice of occupations open. Women, for rational reasons, choose a relatively narrow band of occupations to crowd into. Precisely the phenomena the Swedes got so concerned about a decade ago.
It just struck me, feminists say a lot about what men supposedly think about women, but I have never seen a survey result or a study or, well, anything. Can anyone else recall seeing anything like that?
Most if not all of feminist "philosophy" seems to be assumptions of what men think without asking them.
Women tend to be more neurotic and the culture encourages it. It leads us to weaponize emotion towards men and throw tantrums to which we expect everyone to bend. It took a lot of effort for me to stop doing it and now I see it everywhere.
This is one area where 'systemic oppression of women' might actually be a valid complaint.
All society's are gynocentric because that is how we ensure the survival of the species (women and children get priority access to resources and protection - and at men's expense). But after the industrial/ technological revolutions women's basic protection and access to resources has been taken care of (supermarkets, shopping malls, paved streets, electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating etc). But the gynocentric hard wiring is still present in both men and women, and so we've just continued to add more things to the list of things to give to women...... beyond food and shelter we now supply lifestyles, career pathways, (unnecessary) education, identities and accommodations that define women as children (and perhaps even disabled children at that).
The more we cater to women's feelings, aspirations and fantasies ... the more we strip women of any sense of identity, value and purpose as women. We even tell women it is OK to hand over your baby to strangers every day so you can pursue a more fulfilling lifestyle. The idea that women have any social responsibility at all (any unique and vital role in society) has been dropped in order to free women of that burden - the burden of being a necessary part of society.
The equivalent for men would be telling men they can walk away from power stations and road maintenance and construction, and let the infrastructure and global supply chain fall apart, in order to pursue more satisfying careers and lifestyles. Not only would this be catastrophic for society (as catastrophic as daycare and state schooling has been) but it would also leave men with an identity crisis.
Women are oppressed in the west .... BY feminism. An ideology which tells women they have no role, no value, no unique contribution as women - and that self actualisation can only come from parodying masculinity, competing with men - while simultaneously playing the victim, acting like a spoilt child and making endless demands of men because men are the only people in society who are allowed to identify as being grown ups.
I don't think it's enough to refute feminism (although we can do that too), we have to point out that feminism IS the oppression of women. Nothing oppresses women more.
We’ve indeed made it undesirable to be a woman in the world differently from men and I think many of us have bought the lie that no difference exists between our roles abilities and modes of being. Gender ideology is responsible for a lot of this and comes out of this bad idea. It’s led women to be miserable working jobs they’d rather not in the name of elusive independence (from what? I don’t see work as freedom anymore). A woman once legit got mad at me for suggesting that women should be allowed to opt out of children but that we do still need to reproduce to keep the species going. She made the baffling argument that women aren’t required nor should they even be seen as the source of continuing the species even though we’re the only ones who can be pregnant. There’s a tension between individual choices and the effect on the collective. If enough women opt out, the economic consequences will be disastrous on all levels but no one seems to care. Part of this is that society has zero safety net for mothers and we have allowed the cost of childcare to balloon beyond reason, and feminism should be fighting for things like that instead of elusive individual liberation. Wanting to be like a man in a relationship was only a source of misery. And you are right that we both require men to coddle us while wanting to be like them; it can’t be both. The emotional terrorism I see everywhere is honestly baffling. We do expect to be treated like children and exercise empowerment from a place of disempowerment.
Here in the UK there is a well charted year on year increase in the reported poor mental health of girls and women, mainly anxiety and depressive disorders. Interestingly this is not the case in boys and men. Curiously no one seems interested in looking at the male population to seek out the protective factors that might be learned that contribute to the far lower levels of anxiety and depression in males generally. Given the continual rise for females we can be certain that what ever we are doing is at the very least completely ineffective, and possibly counter productive.
Jonathan Haidt has shown that liberal girls and women tend to be more depressed, and because men and women are diverging politically, it makes sense that because men tend to be more conservative, their likelihood of being mentally ill is lower, at least that’s how I interpret it. Leftism literally causes and exacerbates depression (speaking from experience)
The Anglosphere has among the highest rates of anxiety and depression in girls. It also believes itself to be bullet proof against foreign psychological warfare. It believes this despite the fact that the algorithms on TikTok are all passed by China's State Security and academia has been penetrated by the left for decades.
It all comes down to geopolitics in the end. What is sad is that we underestimate our enemies so badly. China in particular is now an exceptionally sophisticated National Socialist State yet our government and media expect them to behave like the lefties in student politics.
The Active Measures used against the West were actually very simple. First get rid of the religion that underpinned the social order, next support any groups that oppose the previous social mores and use these to polarise society. Being racists the Chinese and Russians laid great store by destroying the dominant race in the West - what they call the "Anglo-Saxons". What is fascinating was that the poststructuralist technique worked so well, the Western media in particular feeds off polarisation and the change snowballed at the end of the last century.
I do not think that there will be a WWIII, China can wait for one or two decades for the West to self destruct.
It's almost always projecting. They say that men hate women and want to do terrible things to them, not because it's true, but because that is what they do: they hate men and want to do terrible things to them.
This is part of the mystical hocus-pocus of feminism. In a world devoid of mind-reading, telepathy, esp, whatever... how did they come to know what they claim to know?
More than a few feminists call it "women's ways of knowing" (extended now to include "indigenous ways of knowing" and any "non-Western ways of knowing"). They describe the goal of objectivity, negatively, as "the male model."
Yes indeed. I actually read "feminist" research because its useful to know your enemy, and often its the only research on a topic. It is indeed remarkably rare that any of it bothers to actually include males. When it does it frequently produces "surprising" results (what are in fact contradictions to the feminist hypothesis). In a recent flurry of such stuff has been the finding that young men are becoming skeptical of feminism. And this brings on lots of panic and claims of misandry, yet actually what it shows is even in young cohorts the majority are for equality and the older cohorts remain broadly positive to female equality. In other words men are overall not remotely "misogynist" as feminists claim. As shown by their own data!
I really do think the absence of asking males in any concerted way is because when they do the results are "surprising" and consistently refute the feminist narrative.
They can’t handle any evidence contrary to their beliefs and that’s because women tend to be more supportive of authoritarian ideas like restricting offensive speech. Feminism drives all of wokeness.
"The origin of the family, private property and the state" By Friedrich Engels pretty much sets out the crucial link between Feminism and Marxism, the latter purports to be a theory of everything. In Europe and the UK the feminism of De Beauvoir and Greer etc. is explicitly derived from these Marxist roots and so fuels the way feminism has an answer for everything and a goal "the eternal classless (communist) society. To be fair most "popular feminists" (as opposed to those in academe) parrot De Beauvoir lines without really understanding the theory but more as adding "gravitas" to what are usually just whining about their lives and jealousy of males. Everything (apart from actual changing sex) that is in the feminist agenda is right there in Engels' book. Now over 100 years old re reading it recently I was struck how contemporary its contents are in terms of modern feminism.
"Feminism drives all of wokeness." Correct. And feminism is the top down creation of a HR department for the new world order i.e. feminism/women as a first class citizen/agent of every sphere of social/family life for the bureaucratic hellscape forming today. This is why stopping it will be so difficult, unseen hands are at play here.
The academic underpinnings of wokeness are in feminism, though. That’s where critical theory first took hold and then made its way through other departments like area studies, ethnic studies, history, etc.
That taking hold of critical theory - as the feminists' baby, so to speak - is what I meant by the nurturing and nourishing. I made the allusion to typical feminine traits as a way of suggesting that feminism is a misdirection, perhaps even derangement, of those traits.
But the cosmic sperm of critical theory didn't come from feminism.
Critical theory copulated with feminism, but I think feminism is still the cosmic sperm of intersectionality (which is in a throuple with critical theory and feminism).
No real surprises here. Any person male or female forced into a one size fits all stereotype risks personal discontentment and ill effects on their lives. The core issue many men have with feminism is it’s lack of comprehension of men’s experience growing up as a man. Boys learn in early childhood that they must earn every scrap of value and respect of others. Failing to do so relegates them to the category of disposable cannon fodder. Feminists exacerbate the problem by framing men as privileged beings and then blame them for all the world’s ills. There is a serious misperception by feminists that men bear no responsibility in maintaining house and home while working a job or career. The difference between men and feminist women is that men don’t bitch about the dual responsibilities.
Yes I have been interested in the Ukraine war in this context. The recent debates in their parliament about reducing the age for conscription are truly illuminating in terms of the issues and tussles as their Government wants to get more cannon fodder to relieve its exhausted troops. The first point is of course that right from the travel ban for working age males at the start of the war no one considers imposing the same restrictions responsibilities and punishments on females and although a few young women do volunteer for the services and many others do valuable roles supporting their troops, the debates about reservists, conscription etc. never consider the same or similar provisions for females. Because the country has some very real challenges to face the debates have been unencumbered by virtue signalling etc. but are revealing about the expectations placed on males when the "chips are down".
This is a tremendously encouraging conversation which hits many key issues which have exercised me over the years. It demands a longer form response than is appropriate in a comment stream. I’ll mention just one here. Despite having written so extensively on male disadvantages under the aegis of the empathy gap, I passionately agree that men would gladly suck-up being subject to them (with the exception of fatherhood issues) in return for respect and recognition of their role and, indeed, their willing acceptance to be judged by harsher standards. The vilification of masculinity is more corrosive than the practical disadvantages if the latter were accomplished in an atmosphere of respect and appreciation.
I do agree. In essence much of the problem with feminism is that for men it has simply made the competition they have always faced harder (but not as hard as when we had to literally fight for resources). I suspect the recent findings about young mens growing skepticism about feminism is not some dramatic sea change, but the fact that young men actually experience direct discrimination and unfairness while being indoctrinated in "equality". My generation were brought up with chivalry and protecting the fairer sex, it's then no surprise to learn they, the fairer sex, suffer from: the menopause, period brain fog, fear of hurty words, have anxiety and fear, need constant support and reassurance and so on. Because those clearly mean we chivalrous oldies were right, women are the weaker sex according to their self declared representatives the feminists!
It's only if you believe women aren't fragile that you'd think it unfair they get so many privileges :-)
Such a beautiful discourse. I’m sending it to a young lady who hopes to pursue a Masters Degree in Clinical Pyschology—irrespective of whether or not it speaks to her life, it certainly will to many of her future clients.
An especially timely conversation--thoughtful and thought-provoking, as always--given the radical left's hysterical reaction to Harrison Butker's commencement speech praising traditional family roles.
This is not meant in the idiotic prancing-in-the-street sense, but rather in the sense of facing hard issues and facing hard issues alone (or against heavy opposition) and sustaining their 'push' even when events became dark, and finally, emerging victorious, benevolent, wise and powerful at the end. The Hero's Journey, literally.
And Praise! whatever Spirit you like, here they are in the World, doing good and doing well and sharing their stories.
These kind of things give me genuine hope for the world.
Thank you Hannah and Janice. So refreshing to see your viewpoints and I hope that you will be able to inspire Western society and its men and women to return to some semblance of biological sanity.
Thank you so much, Hannah and Janice, for such a stimulating and honest conversation. You covered areas rarely discussed, with considerable insight.
I agree that men mainly desire respect, but I suspect that they also miss not being loved, most often without really realizing it. I suspect that the reason that some men on the deathbeds speak of and want their mothers is that the last time they were actually loved was when they were a child. Most women see their husbands transactionally, appreciate them for what they provide (if they appreciate them at all). Perhaps it was always thus - men always lacked love, and women always lacked respect. (Further evidence for this view comes from the reports of soldiers about the uniqueness of their relationship with their comrades - I suspect that what makes it unique is that they actually love each other - there is nothing that says love so strongly as risking your life for the sake of the other.)
Well said, David. I suppose that many men don't use words to express their desire and their need for love. That's partly because most people have come to assume not only that love is an emotion but also that emotion itself is "female" (which explains the feminized vocabulary of pop psychology and clinical psychology, let alone some forms of Christianity.) But love is not reducible to sentiment. It's highest expression is not an emotion at all, in fact, but a freely chosen act of self-sacrifice by a man or a woman. I agree with you, therefore, that love (like respect) is a universal human need, not a "gendered" one.
I'm dissatisfied by the vague word "empathy," by the way, because it's ultimately meaningless. No one can actually experience more than partially what others experience (although trying to imagine how others experience the world is certainly a desirable goal). Once again, moreover, this word usually amounts to nothing more substantial than benevolent but shallow and transient feelings of the particular kind that many people consider innately female. But if women were so reliably guided by empathy, how could we explain the fact that women's movements are demonstrably devoid of empathy for boys and men, including their own sons?
Agreed.
The idea that men don't want love, to be blunt, is patently fucking absurd.
Love looks different for men of course. Instead of being care based, it's more encouragement based. Instead of cute affection, it's more of a "brothers in battle" attitude.
I mean the idea that men don't want love honestly floored me. It really is fucking stupid to be completely honest, and it's not just fiamengo saying this, a lot of men say this too for some reason, so its not a her thing.
I mean look at football games and tell me those men don't lover each other. Those men are doing all sorts of encouraging in the huddles.
It's amazing to me that people see men as borderline not human. Obviously men's love has hoo-rah attitude, but its still love.
Seems to be operating from a female frame of reference, because a lot or women seem to think that if you don't stroke each others hair and sob with each other you don't really love each other.
Men do not want to be just of use. They want their presence to be valued and enjoyed fundamentally. They also want to be desired sexually.
I accept the criticism. In my defense, I was reporting what a good friend said to me, with quite a bit of conviction.
Oh that's OK, rereading the comment, I did come off rather strong, and yes many men do say this dumb shit, so its not surprising that genuine women would come away with a wrong impression.
I'm a man but can only speak for myself. I do want to be loved, but only by the things that I love unconditionally--My wife, my grandchildren, and my dog. You'll notice I didn't mention my children. I've been married to the same woman for 40 years and we have 11 children together. The feeling of love in the initial stages of fatherhood are just as strong for a man as a woman. But that fades over time for a man and the need for respect becomes dominant. I have 9 boys and it's my duty to prepare them to face an often harsh world. Without respect they will not follow, and you cannot safely lead if you have not well learned to follow. Could say more and would love to discuss with you but I have to go for now. Really enjoyed this piece and I'm going to read more of your stack. Take care.
HS comments that "everything in English studies—and in most other university disciplines in North America—is taught from an unquestioned feminist point of view" and she notes that this affects male students. I had similar thoughts in my last years in the English Department. I started teaching courses on masculinity and violence, centered on war fiction. I taught this as a general education (non-major) course and enjoyed seeing men and women majoring in other subjects digging into this great literature. The novels involved male relationships (such as those David S. mentions above) or family relationships rather than romantic relationships. There was plenty about war written by women, Vera Brittain, Susan Hill, others. None of it, no matter who wrote it, fit with what students expected to hear or had heard in other classes. They pretty much thought that novels were about bad men and good women and about sexual power struggles (that is, novels were about feminism). Reading war fiction, they saw something else. They learned that war creates as well as destroys. They could see that what men bring back from war, the good and the bad, is something only men understand (a form of combat Gnosticism). We think that men returning from war don't talk about it because it was so terrible--often true. But sometimes they don't talk about it because it was wonderful, too good, perhaps, to be put into words, to be given to others who would normalize it, reduce it to banalities. I see just now Paul's comment below, to which I would add: men sometimes don't use words because words can't capture the pain or the glory that men prize.
As a child I idolised the soldiers and vision of troops disembarking, some on stretchers, others using crutches or bandages covering their heads. The black and white film's voice-over says they left as boys and returned as men. In many cases broken men. but nobody mentions that.
Wow--well said, Allen.
As a little sideline to your comment about men returning from war, I remember my Dad talking about having a hard time readjusting to normal life after WWII.
He said that life became incredibly boring after all the action and activities and the camaraderie amongst the men came to an end, apart from being a part of the returned serviceman's groups like the RSA's (NZ) and RSL's (Aust) where they just got together on occasions and relived their glory days without all the death and stress. Everyday life had become incredibly mundane in comparison. Nobody missed all the death and maiming, just the action in life.
I never thought of it as being an adrenaline trip for many until then. Some became addicted I guess. I still remember working with the highly stressed individuals from the war who were like powder kegs with a 1mm fuse on them. Those who shook constantly, startled at every sudden noise, those who developed OCD behaviours and those who became quite odd personalities when I was an apprentice, just before their retirements.
We used to laugh a bit at some of them, however in our defence, we were quite ignorant of what they had been through. It is only as I have become older and learned some more things that I feel more more empathy for them and their struggles and feel a sense of shame for my past feelings towards them.
Thank you for this, a very touching comment. I had two uncles who were in WWII in the Pacific. Neither ever said a word about it, but, as an adult, I was able to visit one of them the year before he died and interview him. In his old age he was very philosophical about his experience. His favorite story was about coming home. He took an overnight train from Kansas City to the small town near his parent's farm. His brother lived in the town and he woke him up. It was Easter Sunday morning, and the two of them drove to the farm, the first his mom and dad had seen the soldier in 2 years. They had no idea he was even in the US. Luckily somebody got out a camera and we have a picture of their reunion. That became his war story, and our story about his war. Nobody, in truth, wanted to know what he had seen "over there." To me, as a kid, he was like a man who had stepped out of a movie.
It's amazing that when talking about war, even then we have to include women, as if they experience any similar amount of it.
Female leadership truly is degenerate and infantile.
And I find this comment to be rather Goofy.
"Masculinity and violence".
The title of the course alone is deeply misandric. This is just terrible to be perfectly honest.
It could have just been titled war fiction. "Masculinity and violence" is feminine slanderous abusive behavior. What about femininity and violence? Abortion and post birth infanticide throughout history? The murder of husbands by poisoning, which was common in the 19th century?
War books written by women will always be inferior in quality, because women don't experience war. The close they ever come to it is being nurses. This is just more feminist aggrandizement of women. It honestly reads the way Hillary Clinton read "the primary victims of war have always been women". Its horribly inappropriate and feminist.
Even if you somehow disagree with the intrinsic inferiority of female war books, it still is a fact that the fact that they say "so many women wrote war books!" As if we somehow have reason to believe that people really didn't want them too. As if men tried to stop them. It just reeks of female self aggrandizement.
People say that female ww1 poets were discriminated against because of "combat gnosticism". Which they should have been, seeing as how experiencing war is objectively a different form of existence, but you seem to think their books were equally valid. Maybe as supplemental to men's, but its pretty obvious why female war poetry is not taken as srsly.
This whole comment is just Goofy.
Female leadership truly is degenerate and childish, and we see the fruits of it every day.
Thanks for sharing this astute observation!
Thank you, Janice, for posting that honest, enlightening conversation between you and Hannah. It always strikes me that once women knew what men missed out on, by devoting so much time and energy to their careers - remember all the jokes about men on their death beds lamenting their priorities? It seems so bizarre that feminists encouraged women to go down the same route. And now everyone is miserable!
I know. For over a hundred years the dream of nearly every man has been to retire early and play golf or fish. And none of this was ever seen as a warning that work wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Work can be fulfilling, and we should have a crack at using our talents - but it is oversold.
Indeed for the majority work is work and a job is a job. If you enjoy it great but generally the opportunity to retire is welcome. Far too much of the debate about "work" and "career" is built on the assumption that everyone has a job that combines light work with high pay and status. Whereas of course most paid work is simply not like that, hence the majority's enthusiasm for the idea of retirement! The idea is "oversold".
wow! What a fascinating and stimulating conversation. So much covered and all of it important. Thank you both for this.
I was moved by the section where HS talked about asking her husband to be the sole breadwinner. As a man, I know that respect is essential along with admiration. Asking him to do this was a great sign of respect and admiration shown to him. He took that and ran with it! It gave his life meaning because you trusted him and had faith in him. This is fuel for men! (the fuel that is sadly missing for many men) God bless you and God bless your husband! I hope zillions of people can benefit from hearing that story.
It never ceases to amaze me the disregard for being at home as a parent with small children. My wife and I both went part time when our kids were little and that was surely the best part of my life! My kids are now in their 30's and we all have very fond memories of the loving space that we all had.
So great to hear a psychiatrist speaking in this way. As a therapist my trust in the mental health profession is, well, not so high. Great to see some wisdom! Thank you for speaking your truth.
Thank you Tom, I really appreciate that!
Hi Hannah. This part really resonated with me too. I've been married to my highschool sweetheart for 40 years and we have 11 children together.
I had a pretty cushy government job, 5 weeks paid vacation, 13 paid holidays and 13 paid sick days per year, upper middle class income, yada yada. I was there for 10 years but it wasn't fulfilling and mainly it interfered with our family life since I was working third shift. My wife was pregnant with our 5th child when I told her I wanted to start my own business. Think of all the certainty I was throwing away and the uncertainty I was asking her to embrace with me. But she did! And I've been in business for 30 years now and several of our sons work in the business. None of this would have been possible had she not been right at my side. "Behind every good man there's a woman" irritates some women because of the word "behind", but in reality there's no behind about it.
Gotta go but will check out your stack, no double entendre intended. 😂
I have always known this; as a psychotherapist I hear women constantly stressed, resentful, angry, bitter men-hating individuals because they have been brainwashed into thinking they can “have it all”! If you want it all fine just stop whining about it and blaming men or make changes that benefit your own and your family’s mental health. Self-awareness and self-responsibility is key to women and mens well-being; talk to each other decide what suits your relationship and stop listening to the drivel being espoused about “equality “
Took me leaving therapy with an ideological feminist who insisted that patriarchy exists despite my not really seeing it. Only then did I actually solve my depression; it was wild. Ten years and tens of thousands of dollars wasted.
Exactly , communicate , come half way etc .if you find one party not prepared to meet in the middle and nothing works then get out but first try to put the shoe on the other foot for the sake of your children's future. Intelligent people look at both sides to come to an agreement that makes both happy .
You know the "husband store" joke?
There's also the Grimm's tale "The Fisherman and his Wife".
It is astounding that this tale hasn't been marked as hate speech by Feminists yet as it is so diametrically opposed to the core mechanisms of feminism: gratefulness, modesty, mutual respect, appreciation and decency.
There are, I think, feminist versions of many folktales; so perhaps there's a feminist version of this one and that that satisfies the feministasi for the time being.
Self awareness, that horse left the barn. my wife resentment has created a life/marriage of bad memories which overrides good ones for some reason, all while trying to achieve happiness. Pfft
This was such a great conversation. I too have left my (midwifery) career to be a stay at home Mum and have been met with similar remarks about lack of ambition, needing to get back into the workforce to 'contribute' and 'do something for myself' (mainly from family members). I love being home and caring for my family, the lack of logistical juggling between my husband and I, and the clearly defined roles we now have has completely done away with most of the things we previously argued about. There is no resentment. I am so grateful to my husband for providing and he in turn is grateful to me for caring and managing our day to day family life. Thanks for publishing this discussion, I hope for the future generations more women will see the light and move away from the lies we have been indoctrinated by.
This was a wonderful conversation between two thoughtful women who are concerned with living meaningful lives, and making real contributions to the common social good.
I think that we undervalue women’s household work because of all the “labor-saving” devices, and products,that have made many of the routine tasks traditionally done by women easier, and simpler. I had the fortune (whether good or bad you decide) to have grown up in an environment that was more nineteenth than twentieth century. We had a wood burning stove for which we (mostly me) had to find dead trees to chop down. That stove was a lot of work to operate and maintain, but my mother did most of the work on it. Feeding a family of five is no easy task.
And yet she also milked cows, made butter, sewed shirts, and other articles of clothing, and even wove wool. That was the world of a farmer’s wife, and we wouldn’t have survived without it. Since the male members of the family herded animals, planted and reaped the crops by hand , chopped wood, built and maintained the fences, and slaughtered animals, we wouldn’t have eaten if we hadn’t produced anything.
I say this because we have apparently abandoned the concept of complementarity that such a life requires. Everyone in the household had to contribute their work to support the family, and everyone’s work was valued. The world is in many ways a better place today than it was in my youth half a century and more ago, but we have lost the family as a productive entity in which each played a part in keeping things going, and the result of our shared work was a secure household, and a humane way of life.
Feminism, by devaluing the family, has effectively ruined the lives of uncountable men, women, and children who ought to be engaged in a cooperative relationship spanning generations. I am immensely grateful to both of you for shining a light on a matter of crucial importance for all.
Exactly right, and I would add, removed additional tasks from mothers by collectively raising children in what I find uncomfortably similar to orphanages. This belief was strengthened after I did a Norwegian show criticizing feminisms push for daycares. I received countless emails from norwegian women describing their anguish about being trapped in a system that forced them to give up their children to the Monday-Friday 9-5 daycare regime. Their letters were all laced with regret over going against their intuition and not speaking up.
It is no accident that feminism is strongest in the most developed nations and in the most affluent classes of those nations. For most of human history and still most of the billions today life is a might too hard to indulge in such "luxury beliefs".
Wow! First the main discussion blew me away… then the comments. How I would love to join a discussion like this in real life.
As a stay at home mom who raised three born in less than three years, with extensive involvement raising three grandchildren, my life has been child centered; I was simply wired this way and carried on, impervious to feminist shaming.
Everything of genuine importance I know, I’ve learned from my experiences raising the six of them. Your discussion is an acknowledgment of the value of my choices, an accolade I seldom receive. Rather I sometimes think people wonder why I didn’t “achieve more” with my time and talent. Achieve more? What’s more valuable than the maturing of my character and the evolution of my soul?
My own fulfilling pursuits have filled in the cracks and led me to become an ordained minister. I counsel many many women and your analysis of their unhappiness is insightful. Your critique of therapy is also perfect—therapists have replaced priests and do a lot of spiritual indoctrination I need to help women undo.
Thank you both so very much!
It was so rewarding to read two admirably introspective women exchanging their life stories. And what wonderful insights emerged - professional, humble and kind.
Long, long ago, after becoming irretrievably "Red Pilled" as a divorced lone father of three little ones (I love them so), I wrote somewhere that if Feminism were a person, it would be diagnosed with NPD - Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Here is a quote from Google's top entry
https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/narcissistic-personality-disorder-npd#:~:text=Narcissistic%20personality%20disorder%20is%20a,entitlement%20and%20struggling%20with%20criticism.
"Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition where a person believes they are better than everyone else. Narcissistic personality disorder affects around 1 to 6 people out of 100. Symptoms include always wanting attention, expressing entitlement and struggling with criticism."
To those psychiatric symptoms I would add a pathognomonic 'disdain for maleness'.
Janice and Hannah are as far away from that affliction as it is possible to be. Thank you ladies.
Hello Richard. I came to a similar insight in my high-conflict divorce about a decade and a half ago. Recommend you search for psychoanalyst Schoenewolf’s essay/chapter “Gender narcissism and it’s manifestations” regarding narcissism regarding biological gender as the basis for feminism and the potential impact of offspring sexuality and behaviour.(Can be found in his “Psychoanalystic Centrism” collected essays book).
Inquiry into covert narcissism will provide useful reference, as will papers delving into unconscious shame being part of narcissistic etiology. These women are unconsciously ashamed (or even hate) their gender. Any natural and harmonious social ordering that arises from differences in gender constitutes a major narcissistic injury to feminists, and they are hell bent to destroy such social and personal harmony as a result.
Due to narcissistic defenses, they are impervious to reason.
Thanks Stephen for the tips. I ought not engage in personal "anecdotary" but I cannot resist temptation so I shall yield to it. Unlike you, we divorced amicably in 1978. It made no difference. I discovered that personal circumstance, like being a committed male sole parent, was subordinate to gender specific marital separation laws as demanded by what was then the "Women's Movement". Pretty quickly I lost financial security, a high intensity surgical career and masculine naivety, and long before the Red Pill became a thing.
Next, I discovered what was much later described (but not DSM classified) as covert narcissism during a short tempestuous second marriage in 80s. Like many awakening men these days, I am not Incel, rather a justifiably fearful "Vcel" - should be easy to figure out what it means. I am alone, reflective and content. My children and theirs gave and give me purpose.
Erin Pizzey in her paper "Working with Violent Women" writes about what she labels as the "family terrorist".
Recommend reading Nathalie Martinek’s Substack on narcissism; she explores feminine narcissism at length.
Hi again Stephen. A bit more from me. I am sceptical of "unconscious anything" as aetiological prerequisites for psychological maladaptation and a resultant noisy, often highly gendered, political activism. I am relying mostly on personal experience here. Nonetheless I would challenge the hypothesis that what is readily observed by untrained individuals and even stated by the subject is not what is going on so deeply inside someone's head that no-one other than a learned clinician can find it.
Narcissistic women's "disdain for maleness" (and I choose the words carefully) surely does not masquerade as shame or hatred for women including oneself. As the saying goes, "It is what it is" and not its gendered inverse. It may be safer for me to overtly defer to better minds than my limited experience, but I shall nonetheless covertly stick to my testosterone fuelled scepticism. Cheers. :-)
Thanks for your kind replies, Richard. All the best to you. :-)
"I wrote somewhere that if Feminism were a person, it would be diagnosed with NPD - Narcissistic Personality Disorder."
I understand the analogy, but the fact is that the majority of Western women, and a sizeable proportion of Western men, identify with feminism. So there's no correlation with NPD or any other mental disorder. If we wish to combat feminism as a political movement, we need to understand its appeal in terms of normal human psychology, not abnormal psychology. For example, Janice's account of her own indoctrination:
"The feminist mantra of heroic female victimhood had been the air I breathed as a university student, and it offered a near-irresistible fantasy of moral purity. I was a woman and therefore good. Men had to prove themselves good by allying with women against other men. I came to like the heady rush of sisterhood and the exhilarating fury of feeling oneself part of a wronged group. I particularly enjoyed the vision of myself as a bold heroine speaking against oppression (and being applauded and rewarded for it)."
It's not like the traditional regime utterly banned all women from pursuing various intellectual and/or artistic endeavors. Within the predominant order of women at home nurturing the family while men ventured out in various endeavors of life (political, intellectual, artistic, business, etc.), there was room for the exceptions, and they were more or less not only permitted, but often admired & celebrated as such. As usual, this isn't enough for Leftists, who demand sociopolitical transformation involving eradication of the old order, not accommodation.
Quite. In one of those ironies feminist historians are forever pointing out famous women etc. Proving in fact the "patriarchy" was in fact rubbish at oppressing women. The real point is that these women, like the men, were generally aristocratic and so lived lives entirely unlike the vast majority of men and women who were subsistence farmers. The point being that "society" was an entirely different thing prior to the industrial revolution, certainly here in England. At the dawning of that revolution only 6% of men had the vote (it was based on property ownership) and the sort of people in the Austin novels made little more than 7% of the population (gentry and aristocrats). The rest scraped a living, got bossed about and were luck to live to 50.
Thanks for mentioning Austen, Nigel. Whatever their literary value, all of her novels are essentially the same: social satire on the upper and lower gentry of her time. Feminists have renewed her popularity but only by interpreting it through a gynocentric lens--that is, by replacing Austen's interest in class with their own interest in "gender." They comment only, therefore, on the plight of women from "poor" families who needed desperately to marry titled men. Their alternatives were to live with relatives, become governesses or rely on some unusual talent (which is what Austen herself did as a writer). The reality, for both women and men, was somewhat more complicated than feminist theory (which accounts for only those of the aristocracy and gentry of early nineteenth-century England).
It's true that some men chose careers in the government, the army or the church (whether they had any interest, let alone competence in any of those careers). Other choices were discouraged. Only men of the uncouth nouveau-riche class built industries or worked in "trade." Only parents of the dreaded middle classes encouraged their (presumably eccentric) sons to become physicians or lawyers. So most upper-class men--the most prestigious ones--did not earn money at all. They lived on the rents of tenant farmers at their ancestral estates . As Austen observes, they had to either gamble for money it at the faro tables or marry it (which was in itself a form of gambling). This meant that those "marriageable" men, like women, seldom married for love in any modern sense of that word. These were marriages of convenience for both sexes, usually arranged by the parents (although they were not necessarily unhappier than modern marriages).
And I forgot one thing. Thanks to the law of primogeniture, only eldest sons could inherit those country estates and the accompanying titles. Other men of the upper classes were on their own.
And as you say they couldn't be "Gentlemen" and actually have a job. Way back at school when we had to read the "classics" for exams. A penny sort of dropped when reading Dickens and Austin, how very different things were. Lots of characters had no work as such, relying on "income" and even more strange to me there appeared no stigma at all to not working; whereas even in the 1970s rich and/or titled people (including the Royal family) were keen to suggest they "worked" rather than being ladies or gentlemen of leisure. Even then it struck me how different that society was in the past. A couple of years later at University I took an interest in some feminist lectures and writings (in those days we were encouraged to "broaden" our education by attending lectures from other Courses/Faculties.) And it struck me that much of the "evidence" was derived from old novels, as if these were reliable sources of sociological or even historical conditions. The more so coming from a working class background in the NW of England meant that were no examples in my family then or the previous generations where both sexes didn't work, in terms of paid work even if it was taking work into the home (sewing, washing, batch cooking "doing Avon"). The only people I knew where the mother didn't work were the Doctors and wives of Teachers and the wife of a "head Engineer" at GEC. I suspect this pattern wasn't universal (maybe women didn't work in mining towns as opposed to the Mill Towns) But I recall the economist Catherine Hakim pointing out that the proportion of women economically active in 2000 was the same as in 1900 (often in "service" or other industries now defunct (such as textiles and garments). Which reminds me Hakim's "Preference Theory" is as good an explanation as any of the increasing "gender segregation"in occupations observed in all developed nations as they increase in wealth. The basic being that as there is more and more choice of occupations open. Women, for rational reasons, choose a relatively narrow band of occupations to crowd into. Precisely the phenomena the Swedes got so concerned about a decade ago.
It just struck me, feminists say a lot about what men supposedly think about women, but I have never seen a survey result or a study or, well, anything. Can anyone else recall seeing anything like that?
Most if not all of feminist "philosophy" seems to be assumptions of what men think without asking them.
Eeva Sodhi, showed how research about men is conducted and rather than actually asking men, the researchers ask the women.
In the article "I don't Research Men!" https://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=21836 it can be seen that there is much room for improvement in researching men.
I think its machievllian in nature.
It's so they have pretense to engage in misandry.
That, or it's just women being hopelessly neurotic about everything and assuming the worst of everyone because of it.
Women tend to be more neurotic and the culture encourages it. It leads us to weaponize emotion towards men and throw tantrums to which we expect everyone to bend. It took a lot of effort for me to stop doing it and now I see it everywhere.
This is one area where 'systemic oppression of women' might actually be a valid complaint.
All society's are gynocentric because that is how we ensure the survival of the species (women and children get priority access to resources and protection - and at men's expense). But after the industrial/ technological revolutions women's basic protection and access to resources has been taken care of (supermarkets, shopping malls, paved streets, electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating etc). But the gynocentric hard wiring is still present in both men and women, and so we've just continued to add more things to the list of things to give to women...... beyond food and shelter we now supply lifestyles, career pathways, (unnecessary) education, identities and accommodations that define women as children (and perhaps even disabled children at that).
The more we cater to women's feelings, aspirations and fantasies ... the more we strip women of any sense of identity, value and purpose as women. We even tell women it is OK to hand over your baby to strangers every day so you can pursue a more fulfilling lifestyle. The idea that women have any social responsibility at all (any unique and vital role in society) has been dropped in order to free women of that burden - the burden of being a necessary part of society.
The equivalent for men would be telling men they can walk away from power stations and road maintenance and construction, and let the infrastructure and global supply chain fall apart, in order to pursue more satisfying careers and lifestyles. Not only would this be catastrophic for society (as catastrophic as daycare and state schooling has been) but it would also leave men with an identity crisis.
Women are oppressed in the west .... BY feminism. An ideology which tells women they have no role, no value, no unique contribution as women - and that self actualisation can only come from parodying masculinity, competing with men - while simultaneously playing the victim, acting like a spoilt child and making endless demands of men because men are the only people in society who are allowed to identify as being grown ups.
I don't think it's enough to refute feminism (although we can do that too), we have to point out that feminism IS the oppression of women. Nothing oppresses women more.
We’ve indeed made it undesirable to be a woman in the world differently from men and I think many of us have bought the lie that no difference exists between our roles abilities and modes of being. Gender ideology is responsible for a lot of this and comes out of this bad idea. It’s led women to be miserable working jobs they’d rather not in the name of elusive independence (from what? I don’t see work as freedom anymore). A woman once legit got mad at me for suggesting that women should be allowed to opt out of children but that we do still need to reproduce to keep the species going. She made the baffling argument that women aren’t required nor should they even be seen as the source of continuing the species even though we’re the only ones who can be pregnant. There’s a tension between individual choices and the effect on the collective. If enough women opt out, the economic consequences will be disastrous on all levels but no one seems to care. Part of this is that society has zero safety net for mothers and we have allowed the cost of childcare to balloon beyond reason, and feminism should be fighting for things like that instead of elusive individual liberation. Wanting to be like a man in a relationship was only a source of misery. And you are right that we both require men to coddle us while wanting to be like them; it can’t be both. The emotional terrorism I see everywhere is honestly baffling. We do expect to be treated like children and exercise empowerment from a place of disempowerment.
Here in the UK there is a well charted year on year increase in the reported poor mental health of girls and women, mainly anxiety and depressive disorders. Interestingly this is not the case in boys and men. Curiously no one seems interested in looking at the male population to seek out the protective factors that might be learned that contribute to the far lower levels of anxiety and depression in males generally. Given the continual rise for females we can be certain that what ever we are doing is at the very least completely ineffective, and possibly counter productive.
Jonathan Haidt has shown that liberal girls and women tend to be more depressed, and because men and women are diverging politically, it makes sense that because men tend to be more conservative, their likelihood of being mentally ill is lower, at least that’s how I interpret it. Leftism literally causes and exacerbates depression (speaking from experience)
The Anglosphere has among the highest rates of anxiety and depression in girls. It also believes itself to be bullet proof against foreign psychological warfare. It believes this despite the fact that the algorithms on TikTok are all passed by China's State Security and academia has been penetrated by the left for decades.
It all comes down to geopolitics in the end. What is sad is that we underestimate our enemies so badly. China in particular is now an exceptionally sophisticated National Socialist State yet our government and media expect them to behave like the lefties in student politics.
The Active Measures used against the West were actually very simple. First get rid of the religion that underpinned the social order, next support any groups that oppose the previous social mores and use these to polarise society. Being racists the Chinese and Russians laid great store by destroying the dominant race in the West - what they call the "Anglo-Saxons". What is fascinating was that the poststructuralist technique worked so well, the Western media in particular feeds off polarisation and the change snowballed at the end of the last century.
I do not think that there will be a WWIII, China can wait for one or two decades for the West to self destruct.
See https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/forget-gender-polarisation-is-the
It's almost always projecting. They say that men hate women and want to do terrible things to them, not because it's true, but because that is what they do: they hate men and want to do terrible things to them.
This is part of the mystical hocus-pocus of feminism. In a world devoid of mind-reading, telepathy, esp, whatever... how did they come to know what they claim to know?
More than a few feminists call it "women's ways of knowing" (extended now to include "indigenous ways of knowing" and any "non-Western ways of knowing"). They describe the goal of objectivity, negatively, as "the male model."
How dare you question the queens of hearts. Off with your head!
Yes indeed. I actually read "feminist" research because its useful to know your enemy, and often its the only research on a topic. It is indeed remarkably rare that any of it bothers to actually include males. When it does it frequently produces "surprising" results (what are in fact contradictions to the feminist hypothesis). In a recent flurry of such stuff has been the finding that young men are becoming skeptical of feminism. And this brings on lots of panic and claims of misandry, yet actually what it shows is even in young cohorts the majority are for equality and the older cohorts remain broadly positive to female equality. In other words men are overall not remotely "misogynist" as feminists claim. As shown by their own data!
I really do think the absence of asking males in any concerted way is because when they do the results are "surprising" and consistently refute the feminist narrative.
They can’t handle any evidence contrary to their beliefs and that’s because women tend to be more supportive of authoritarian ideas like restricting offensive speech. Feminism drives all of wokeness.
"The origin of the family, private property and the state" By Friedrich Engels pretty much sets out the crucial link between Feminism and Marxism, the latter purports to be a theory of everything. In Europe and the UK the feminism of De Beauvoir and Greer etc. is explicitly derived from these Marxist roots and so fuels the way feminism has an answer for everything and a goal "the eternal classless (communist) society. To be fair most "popular feminists" (as opposed to those in academe) parrot De Beauvoir lines without really understanding the theory but more as adding "gravitas" to what are usually just whining about their lives and jealousy of males. Everything (apart from actual changing sex) that is in the feminist agenda is right there in Engels' book. Now over 100 years old re reading it recently I was struck how contemporary its contents are in terms of modern feminism.
"Feminism drives all of wokeness." Correct. And feminism is the top down creation of a HR department for the new world order i.e. feminism/women as a first class citizen/agent of every sphere of social/family life for the bureaucratic hellscape forming today. This is why stopping it will be so difficult, unseen hands are at play here.
Feminism as the nurturer and nourisher of wokeness may be a more apt description.
The academic underpinnings of wokeness are in feminism, though. That’s where critical theory first took hold and then made its way through other departments like area studies, ethnic studies, history, etc.
That taking hold of critical theory - as the feminists' baby, so to speak - is what I meant by the nurturing and nourishing. I made the allusion to typical feminine traits as a way of suggesting that feminism is a misdirection, perhaps even derangement, of those traits.
But the cosmic sperm of critical theory didn't come from feminism.
Critical theory copulated with feminism, but I think feminism is still the cosmic sperm of intersectionality (which is in a throuple with critical theory and feminism).
If feminism was forced to be an empirical science, the repercussions would be thunderous.
It is a species of literary criticism.
No real surprises here. Any person male or female forced into a one size fits all stereotype risks personal discontentment and ill effects on their lives. The core issue many men have with feminism is it’s lack of comprehension of men’s experience growing up as a man. Boys learn in early childhood that they must earn every scrap of value and respect of others. Failing to do so relegates them to the category of disposable cannon fodder. Feminists exacerbate the problem by framing men as privileged beings and then blame them for all the world’s ills. There is a serious misperception by feminists that men bear no responsibility in maintaining house and home while working a job or career. The difference between men and feminist women is that men don’t bitch about the dual responsibilities.
I would add only, Padraig, that even men who do earn respect are STILL considered disposable cannon fodder.
Yes I have been interested in the Ukraine war in this context. The recent debates in their parliament about reducing the age for conscription are truly illuminating in terms of the issues and tussles as their Government wants to get more cannon fodder to relieve its exhausted troops. The first point is of course that right from the travel ban for working age males at the start of the war no one considers imposing the same restrictions responsibilities and punishments on females and although a few young women do volunteer for the services and many others do valuable roles supporting their troops, the debates about reservists, conscription etc. never consider the same or similar provisions for females. Because the country has some very real challenges to face the debates have been unencumbered by virtue signalling etc. but are revealing about the expectations placed on males when the "chips are down".
Agreed! They just get killed as platoon Lieutenants instead Privates.
Exactly so.
This is a tremendously encouraging conversation which hits many key issues which have exercised me over the years. It demands a longer form response than is appropriate in a comment stream. I’ll mention just one here. Despite having written so extensively on male disadvantages under the aegis of the empathy gap, I passionately agree that men would gladly suck-up being subject to them (with the exception of fatherhood issues) in return for respect and recognition of their role and, indeed, their willing acceptance to be judged by harsher standards. The vilification of masculinity is more corrosive than the practical disadvantages if the latter were accomplished in an atmosphere of respect and appreciation.
I do agree. In essence much of the problem with feminism is that for men it has simply made the competition they have always faced harder (but not as hard as when we had to literally fight for resources). I suspect the recent findings about young mens growing skepticism about feminism is not some dramatic sea change, but the fact that young men actually experience direct discrimination and unfairness while being indoctrinated in "equality". My generation were brought up with chivalry and protecting the fairer sex, it's then no surprise to learn they, the fairer sex, suffer from: the menopause, period brain fog, fear of hurty words, have anxiety and fear, need constant support and reassurance and so on. Because those clearly mean we chivalrous oldies were right, women are the weaker sex according to their self declared representatives the feminists!
It's only if you believe women aren't fragile that you'd think it unfair they get so many privileges :-)
Indeed!
Such a beautiful discourse. I’m sending it to a young lady who hopes to pursue a Masters Degree in Clinical Pyschology—irrespective of whether or not it speaks to her life, it certainly will to many of her future clients.
An especially timely conversation--thoughtful and thought-provoking, as always--given the radical left's hysterical reaction to Harrison Butker's commencement speech praising traditional family roles.
So much here.
Both these women are heroes.
This is not meant in the idiotic prancing-in-the-street sense, but rather in the sense of facing hard issues and facing hard issues alone (or against heavy opposition) and sustaining their 'push' even when events became dark, and finally, emerging victorious, benevolent, wise and powerful at the end. The Hero's Journey, literally.
And Praise! whatever Spirit you like, here they are in the World, doing good and doing well and sharing their stories.
These kind of things give me genuine hope for the world.
Thank you Hannah and Janice. So refreshing to see your viewpoints and I hope that you will be able to inspire Western society and its men and women to return to some semblance of biological sanity.