I had occasion to write a worked-up rant about feminism in a WorldNews thread. Figured some people here might find it meaningful and that it might arouse further discussion.


[Replying to other post.]

I agree. I'm skeptical though of counter-movements like mens rights - I agree in principle with the men's rights movement, but many of its members are, if not provocateurs, doing a damn good impression.

There will always be some measure of cyclopic myopia in any movement with an attachment to some particular group's privileges/etc. - even if it claims those privileges in equality. This is true to a much lesser extent with actual rights, but really kicks in when it comes to non-rights based economic and political intervention petitioned from the state. Contrast the civil rights movement with the affirmative action movement. That said, affirmative action is a piss poor substitute for real reparations and enfranchisement.

To continue preaching to the choir (I hope) because it's enjoyable to speak the truth...

The "real" problem with feminism - aside from its self-interest in ignorance of - where not at expense of - the 'other' - is that it wants the status it imagines men enjoy. This is, obviously, a trap.

The other problem is, of course, power without responsibility - and often without knowledge. Take, for example, the disastrous results of the women-driven temperance movement. Women get the vote - and rightly so, and bam, next thing you know a police state rises up on the bestial back of a black market.

Not because women are stupid, or unworthy of political representation, but because women had been miseducated - or uneducated - for so damn long they were politically naive and didn't understand how the world, which they had been cloistered from, actually works. Not that most people do. But still this naivete afflicts women more than it does men for historical reasons.

That said I like some strains of feminism and feminism was indeed a historical necessity, or at least suffragism adjunct a gender-inclusive humanism. But it's being taken far too far, for the wrong reasons, and really, cui bono? Well, shit. It would be better for the more rational strains of feminism to junk the feminist label, and return to humanism - and to join hands with the more sane elements in the men's rights movement.

I think we all need to recognize:

  • Sexes have and do wage social war against each other, each on behalf of its own sexual interest group. This along with all of the other difference-demarcated interest groups, including the usual suspects of race, religion, economic status, etc., but not limited thereto.
  • Humanism's progress lies in dismantling this sex war, not in taking a side - however much that side claims it's for equality. I believe that many feminists actually believe the party line about feminism = equality that gets trotted out in the bullshit women's studies programs (read: victimization indoctrination) infesting the higher education system these days - that's the least of the nonsense.
  • Women coveting the place of men is absolutely retarded. It's grass is greener thinking. Men, by and large, have it shitty. And have for a long time. Only a few people actually get to be "patriarchs," just like in capitalism - despite widespread adherence to capitalism and rather ludicrously common identification as 'capitalists' - only a few people actually get to be real capitalists in the sense of possessing capital which works on their behalf.* Likewise, what is called patriarchy shouldn't be. Dominarchy comes to mind as a more accurate term: rule of the dominators. Because domination has as its first pillar physical force, a small subset of men - rather than women - naturally end up on top. It is futile and counterproductive to indict male conditioning - it is no more fundamental to sexual inequality than female conditioning - both brought about by the regime of the dominators. Kratocracy comes close but I think doesn't connote non-physical domination which has progressively become, itself, more dominant as civilization has 'progressed.'

*[That said, I lean anarcho-capitalist or some minarchist approximation - so long as more people get to be capitalists. Rational - and preferably enlightened - self interest - which does not conflict with altruistic economics - and with minimal information asymmetries would go a long ways towards checking exorbitant power and grey eminence. But so long as there is an economically interventionist state which is militarily capable of preying on weaker states, I see no possibility of "free markets" and "free trade" being anything other than the appropriation of resources and labor via monopolies and cartels, regardless of anti-trust arrogation. Free markets and free trade are, in the interim, only facile political expedients, not true principles - as said Disraeli echoing the splendor of broader minds than his.

Although the rule of law - common law - and property rights in specific - gave birth in England to its enormous economic advantages which underwrote its empire, it did so precisely through that imperialism - the essence of which is denying property rights to other people to take their shit and enslave them. Take Locke - he wrote the constitution for the slave state of South Carolina while speaking out of the other side of his neck about property rights.]