Problems With Feminism
It has been hailed as the measure of equality, the search for true equalism, and the final frontier in gender equalization, but does feminism deserve these attributes?
For many women, they simply won’t identify with feminism out of fear of being labeled as what it is they actually think feminism represents and that is man-hating. Just as many if not more are deathly afraid to criticize feminism because so many active feminists will seek to destroy you, ban your blog, cancel your presence, and even get you fired. Ever wonder why so many blogs critical of feminists are anonymous?
It’s not cowardice to protect your family from people who would love nothing more than to see you harmed because you disagree with them.
Now, these assumptions may come through the perceived world around them, the actions of feminists they personally know, or the effects they believe feminism has had on society and the attitudes of the modern feminist.
Defining Feminism
For many people, they hear a frequent citation of the definition of feminism: A movement established to lobby for equality for women. But is this definition representative of the actions of the majority of feminists?
My answer would be yes, I think most people who identify as feminists are not active participants in almost any feminist organizations. I would posit that most are just everyday women and some men who hear a news story on women’s issues and hope to achieve equality in areas in which they perceive there to be inequality.
Now going back to what I said, most people who self identify are not active feminists, not gender studies students, and not feminists bloggers, nope they’re just normal people who see a perception of inequality and have barely a peripheral thought on the subject, but if asked would identify as a feminist.
If asked about the patriarchal theory they would draw a blank. I call these lay feminists.
The Lynch Mob
There is a much smaller, but much less objective culture of feminists that I simply define as active feminists. These are bloggers, gender studies and revisionist history students, and the radicals.
The views these more subjective groups hold are not as readily accepted by Jane the lay feminist.
They have theories on patriarchal dominance, rape culture, and slut shaming.
These gender studies theories are well and truly open for debate and at times shaky at best and at worst they appear to be steeped in dogmatic subjectivity and emotionally biased rhetoric. Attempts to combat these theories with debate and intellectual rigor are met with accusations of misogyny and oppressive behavior.
When you surround yourself with a hateful ideology that blames the opposite sex without nuance then not only can you become bigoted but you can become self-centered. Look at the way far too many feminists approach men’s issues even worse should men dare to speak about their issues when the ideologues are.
Men who dare to talk about their issues or even drop some as non-controversial as “men don’t have it that easy” will be destroyed by a flood of “we have it worse” comments that devolve in to a mockery of men’s issues.
Hysteria & Misdirection
My First Problem With Feminism
1) Rape Culture
Talk to a lay feminist about rape culture and try to convince them that we live amidst the grip of a wave of societal rape acceptance and perpetuation. They’ll most likely say that they don’t at all see that as being the case.
Talk to an active feminist about rape culture and they’ll tell you that existing patriarchal dominance and a latent disrespect of equality seated in inherent misogyny leaves us in a rape propensity culture.
There is a reason that this is hard to sell to those who are not yet indoctrinated with anger and victimization. The reason is, that there is no rape culture.
Rape is a foul, heinous crime stripping a person away of their volition and hideously forcing them to experience helplessness almost incomparable to anything.
A crime so shocking that talks at the water cooler about news relating to offenders turns fast to conversations and the acceptance of medieval punishments of torture, castration, and death for said offenders. How quickly old school justice finds viability when rape is mentioned.
The ease with which they blame testosterone and men is frightening as if testosterone is some poison that dictates bad behavior. They get away with it because of the tired old defense of calling anyone who disagrees a misogynist.
What Men Think
Talk to men about the prospects of their mothers, daughters, sisters, or sons being raped and you’ll hear volition for the harshest punishments imaginable and the utmost disgust for a crime viewed by a society that neither tolerates it or accepts it as an inevitability, least no more than other vicious crimes.
But talk to an active feminist and they’ll attempt to paint you a picture of a world bursting at the seems with rapists, rape jokes, and acceptance of rape.
It’s really pretty easy to argue that rape is not an all-pervasive culture embodied in our day-to-day societal dealings.
Of course, like murder and child abuse, one is too many, but the world we live in has people who are bad and do bad things thinking little about the consequences for themselves or the victim of crimes.
Rape Jokes Everywhere
I had never until recently heard a rape joke and I thought it in poor taste. Like most people who open their mouths without concern for those who might have suffered from the topic, the person who told me it is not the brightest, nicest, or most successful person and at a guess is destined to stay that way.
Rape jokes are NOT, however, as active feminists will maintain, an everpresent disease surrounding our wills and destroying formative minds.
In fact, I decided to go straight to youtube and spend hours watching stand-up comedy, because according to active feminism it should be nothing but one rape joke after another.
Suffice to say that after a solid week of lunchtime and late evening viewing, my lungs are sore from laughing my ass off (thank you Chris Rock & Louis CK) and I found two “almost” rape jokes from obscure channels. This is after hundreds if not thousands of other jokes.
So I can’t help but seriously wonder that if we as a society abhor rape if men as individuals would destroy those who would hurt their families if offenders are viewed as the lowest denominator on the planet, then can we really attribute our society to being one of rape culture?
Proven penetrative rape occurs in less than 0.01% of the population which is low enough for us to at least acknowledge that rape is not all-pervasive and omnipresent.
That is in no way undermining the experience of victims (which is an accusation that is frequently leveled).
Sorry Feminism, but I don’t buy rape culture as a real phenomenon, there is no empirical evidence to support the theory and anecdotal evidence is low.
Patriarchy
Problem with feminism
Confirmation Bias
Most people are blissfully unaware of their biases. Men and women live life, learn through experience and develop prejudices and leanings based on their personal authority and their said lived experience.
When someone becomes involved in a group, network, or congregation of people repeating the same points in agreeance, confirmation bias can occur. Confirmation bias is the process whereby one finds the data, opinions, and references to support one’s argument and beliefs, but ignores the considerable amount of information that may in fact counter your viewpoint convincingly.
Most people are guilty of this at some stage.
Where feminism excels at this is in the way its most frequent forms of discussion are dominated by the negative things men do. So if on a given news day, three men die fighting a fire saving 5 children and 2 elderly, a brave male police officer dies saving a woman from a gunman and a brave young man risks his life to save a woman drowning, feminists and their websites will focus squarely and solely on the armed gunman who kidnapped a woman.
See the problem?
Viewing the world through a narrow lens can’t help but warp the way in which you view it and feminists contribute heavily to each other hearing the same old negatives about men, but ALWAYS in the absence of the bigger picture, the one where men are also the ones risking their lives and saving women.
This matters.
It matters because prejudice forms when you remove a crucial piece of the objective puzzle and remain fixated on the remaining factors. It’s almost humorous the standard feminist defense is “feminists don’t hate men”, usually followed in reality by their next blog entry about the things men do that they hate. No point fishing up semantics here.
When you buy into the standard men are perpetrators, women are victims narrative, but you leave out the men are heroes part, you plot a slippery slope towards prejudice.
I have a real problem with that.
Patriarchy Nonsense
Power
What is power? Talking to feminists, I am led to believe it is what men have.
If you talk about aliens, you get accused of wearing a tinfoil hat. If you speak of fluoride in the water being a cumulative poison, you’re told to trust the science and remove that tinfoil hat (again)
If you speak of the patriarchy…no problems.
The notion of patriarchal power can be dismissed fairly easily by applying a critical look at the tenets of said notion and then casting an eye at power and what exactly it means to have it, who has it, and examining deeper the way in which different people possess differing levels of societal control.
Patriarchy :
The charge – Men have all the power.
The first example feminists will give is government. They will insist that having a majority of men in representative roles creates an imbalance of power.
This notion in itself is extremely sexist as it implies men in power will not cover women’s issues and will self serve men at a greater level. The notion that men in power serve men better is patently untrue.
There are no laws that stipulate men have any rights that women do not. NONE.
In the western world, there are no governments that extend men’s legal rights by way of being men. Any claim of this is wilfully deceitful or ignorant.
71% of all tax expenditure is on women. Men do not receive extra welfare, more services, or increased funding by virtue of being male. Any claim of this is wilfully deceitful or ignorant.
74% of taxes paid are by men. Men do not receive any extended tax benefits for being men.
Women are the majority of voters.
The government can be voted in by the majority of voters, which are not men.
Let’s look at the power women have intra-goverment.
Women are more likely to have senior management roles in government departments and offices across the board. 72% of those in managerial roles are women.
Women have power in the engine room, keeping the cogs ticking.
Women account for 78% of all teachers. Those people molding young minds, developing children, controlling the way in which future generations think – They are women. Is this not power? When all you have is double standards you have no standards at all.
Women are the primary caregiver in 89% of cases. The majority of moral conduct and reflection a child will learn is from women. Is this not power?
Another claim feminists make is that companies are controlled by men and this is sexist. Aside from the possibility that women simply do not choose to secure company board leadership roles, or that the pressure on men to earn and support a family is much higher, leading to more competitive outcomes, there is also the small matter of hypergamy in which a male is much more likely to secure a partner if he earns more and must consider this in motivation, whereas females are much less likely to be under pressure to consider this factor as it rarely if ever applies.
But women have plenty of control over companies. Far more than men wield.
79% of all expenditure is by women. This means in order to secure the patronage of women consumers, companies must pander directly to the vanity, the will, and most importantly the power of the female customer.
If you do not satisfy the wants of the female gender your company will fail. That’s how much power women have over companies.
Last I checked there were no commercials telling men they deserve to buy something because they are worth it. Because frankly from a company’s bottom line standpoint, men are not!
The Patriarchy Myth Busted.
So women receive the majority of all government expenditure, pay the minority of taxes, have all the same legal rights as men, and are the majority of voters.
Except they are not required in most countries to sign up for selective services to gain their right to vote. They control the spending of almost every nation and have huge power over the entire economy. They are almost completely the authority for young, malleable minds and exert huge influence over most children.
Could someone, seriously argue, with a straight face, that any of this would be possible in a patriarchy?
Well, feminists do and I have a problem with their affront to logic and axiomatically obvious facts.
Who exerts the most control over the corporate world, the economy, and the government only to reap huge one-sided benefits not accorded to the other gender?
Clue: Not men.
It all seems pretty clear that feminists discourse not only has a dominant hand in culture but wields its power with deceit, aggression, and hypocrisy.
Testosterone Hacks 