Last week I posted a link on feminism and postmodern discourse, which explained why feminists "will typically try, not to answer opponents with better arguments, but to silence them completely as ‘hateful’, ‘intolerant’, ‘bigoted’, ‘misogynistic’, ‘homophobic’, etc". I just came upon an article that further explains the theory justifying this behavior - "intolerant tolerance".

Ever wonder why so many feminists are completely dismissive of men's rights? Why any issue of male disadvantage is met with "dismiss, deny and derail" tactics? It turns out that this strategy was developed by the Marxist "New Left" radicals of the 1960s and was adopted by Second Wave feminists.

In a 1965 article entitled Repressive Tolerance, Herbert Marcuse, one of the leading intellectuals of the New Left proposed that "Liberating tolerance would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left". Following Marxist practice, he defends this Orwellian redefinition of "tolerance" by claiming that tolerance of the "right", i.e. the establishment, serves to perpetuate the power differential that maintains the establishment and reduces all others to servitude.

Freedom is liberation, a specific historical process in theory and practice, and as such it has its right and wrong, its truth and falsehood.

The uncertainty of chance in this distinction does not cancel the historical objectivity, but it necessitates freedom of thought and expression as preconditions of finding the way to freedom--it necessitates tolerance. However, this tolerance cannot be indiscriminate and equal with respect to the contents of expression, neither in word nor in deed; it cannot protect false words and wrong deeds which demonstrate that they contradict and counteract the' possibilities of liberation. Such indiscriminate tolerance is justified in harmless debates, in conversation, in academic discussion; it is indispensable in the scientific enterprise, in private religion. But society cannot be indiscriminate where the pacification of existence, where freedom and happiness themselves are at stake: here, certain things cannot be said, certain ideas cannot be expressed, certain policies cannot be proposed, certain behavior cannot be permitted without making tolerance an instrument for the continuation of servitude.

When this theory is projected onto gender politics, the "left" is identified with women, and the "right" is identified with men. Therefore, any words in defense of men become "things that cannot be said"; any thoughts of male disadvantage become "ideas cannot be expressed", any proposals to address injustices against men become "policies cannot be proposed", and any activism for men's rights becomes "behavior cannot be permitted".

The relationship of the New Left to Second Wave feminism is made clear in a recent article at A Voice For Men:

The women of the New Left who ventured these complaints felt compelled to go further. They had to cement their grievances into an ideological edifice — without which their complaints would carry no weight in the same New Left.

They, especially the new feminists of the USA, came up with the proposition that women were subjugated by men as a function not only of the capitalist state but, even, of imperialism.

...

It was the perfect cat’s cradle of logic. Man — the oppressor — could neither reply to the accusation nor argue against it since it was a sine qua non that his arguments would be self-exculpatory and would tend to reinforce the power of his subjugation.

(This last sentence illustrates "intolerant tolerance" at work.)

...

For want of a better framework of analysis and despite its shaky basis in reason and fact, this pseudo-Marxist approach passed thoroughly into the roots of modern feminism.

So there you have it. The tactic of silencing men's voices, censoring their opinions, and dismissing their disadvantages is central to the formulation of modern feminism - an ideology of opposition that has long since become the establishment in academia, the media, and much of the government.