The current analysis of feminism by the MRM is overly simplistic. Feminism is typically portrayed as a "left wing" development rooted in Marxism, or as an entirely organic affair rooted in gynocentrism. Yet gender studies programs were given major financial support by the great capitalists -- most notably the Ford and Rockefeller foundations. If Marxism and capitalism are at odds, what are we to make of this?

I fall on the left side of the political spectrum when it comes to economics, but the right when it comes to social issues and civil liberties (there are dozens of us!). I would have been completely at home in the anarchist movement a hundred years ago. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, an American labor leader in the anarcho-syndicalist IWW, stated that "society moves in grooves of class, not sex." I agree. Around the same time, the socialist Earnest Belford Bax wrote the first major critique of feminism, aptly titled "The Fraud of Feminism." So it's not as though feminism is intrinsic to leftist thought. I would argue however that it is intrinsic to certain strains of Marxist thought, since Marx's wealthy benefactor Friedrich Engels was obsessed with the topic.

From the Communist Manifesto:

"On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. . . . The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital."

If you want to gain a proper understanding of Marxist feminism I highly recommend the book "Caliban and the Witch" by Sylvia Federici. You can see clearly what feminists desire in her description of American Indians. She left out the Inuit, naturally, since they are highly patriarchal. Dean Esmay has argued, plausibly I think, that the more a hunter-gatherer society relies on meat and the more dangerous it is the more likely it is to be patriarchal. The Inuit live in a highly dangerous environment and rely entirely on meat (or used to).

Federici also left out the fact that men have higher social status in virtually all hunter-gatherer societies. That's according to anthropologist Christopher Boehm ("Hierarchy in the Forest"). The men risk their lives to provide meat, hence they are given increased status. It would be a grave error to assume that women are simply slaves in these societies, however. They have at least as much power as the men. In some ways, the higher social status of men is a cunning bargain by the women: they live longer, they are kept safe, and they exercise power by proxy, thereby avoiding accountability. This is discussed in the paper "Female Forms of Power and the Myth of Male Dominance".

I think what happened in the 60's and 70's, when people started to question literally everything, was that a small group of women decided that the "patriarchal family" was "oppressive." And it was -- for some women. And some men -- but they left that part out. It's not a coincidence that "female liberation" coincided with the invention of birth control and abortion. For most of history, female power was constrained by biology. The problem is that these feminists were engaging in utopian thinking. It's all fine and well to imagine that the "tribe" rather than the family will raise the children, but we no longer live in tribes. They assumed that men were only necessary for provision. As it turns out the masculine element is essential in child rearing. Single mothers try their best but children really do need men.

Now here's where it gets interesting. Up until the 60's and 70's I think it would be fair to say that feminism was mostly organic. In contrast to what patriarchy theory claims, men want to help women, provide for them, love them. But there is a problem. Women don't feel the same way about men. There is a huge empathy gap -- you can see it clearly in that clip of Sharon Osborne mocking the guy who was castrated by his wife. Women appear to be biologically programmed to be selfish on matters of gender. They have in-group bias. They are also more prone to "herd"-like behavior; I think this was an evolutionary adaptation -- women had to adapt if a group of men conquered THEIR men. Hence why Stockholm syndrome is a mostly feminine disorder.

So anyway, the rise of the "new left" in the second half of the 20th century presented a problem for the billionaire class. How to deal with these unruly upstarts? The FBI initiated a massive program known as COINTELPRO (Counter-Intelligence Program), in which they essentially applied the tactics of the CIA to the domestic population. This is not a "conspiracy theory" but a matter of historical record. The primary tool was "divide and conquer." So for example they would spread rumors that such and such individual was an informant ("snitch jacketing"); or that such and such individual wasn't radical enough; or that such and such individual was fucking some other important activist's girlfriend; and so on.

One of the most intriguing documents comes from the file of the Black Panther Larry Pinkney. He was described as particularly "dangerous" because he had the "ability to unify black and white". In other words racial harmony was seen as a threat. What about gender?

During Occupy Wall Street, the British feminist Laurie Penny had a temper tantrum when a panel consisted of all straight white males. You can watch the video here. Then something interesting happened: one of the panelists, Mark Crispin Miller, stated that identity politics -- including radical feminism -- was created to undermine the left. He said:

It's interesting to note that Ford and Rockefeller and the other foundations with strong CIA connections started giving grants in the early 70s to study race and gender. It was a sudden move towards identity politics by these organisations and the theory is that the reason they did this was to balkanise the left and to prevent it from pursuing any kind of a class or economic analysis. Without denying the justice of what you're saying, this is not an irrelevant theory. I don't think, anyway.

Miller is absolutely right about the historical relationship between the CIA and the great capitalist foundations. Again, this is not a "conspiracy theory" but a fact: they frequently worked together and presumably still do so.

Laurie Penny wrote an article in response -- "So, it turns out the feminism is a CIA plot to undermine the left". That's literally the title of the article, published in the New Statesman no less. Penny doesn't actually refute Miller's claim. Her entire argument consists of snarky comments more befitting of a teenager than a journalist (snark -- the lowest form of wit -- seems to be the language of choice for feminists, including our friends at Against Mens Rights). To her credit, however, she actually quotes a COINTELPRO document that essentially proves Miller's point:

"The Women's Liberation Movement may be considered as subversive to the New Left and revolutionary movements as they have proven to be a divisive and factionalizing factor.... It could be well recommended as a counterintelligence movement to weaken the revolutionary movement." This was from an August, 1969 report by the head of the San Francisco FBI office.[4] Within several years, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations were pumping millions into women's studies programs on campus.

The CIA itself actually funded Gloria Steinem and Ms. Magazine. Steinem herself admitted this, claiming that there were actually a lot of "progressive" people in the CIA. That's odd, considering that the CIA was founded by a bunch of Wall Street lawyers and has consistently overthrown governments around the world that evince the slightest hint of (actual) leftist policy.

I think the far more logical explanation is that feminism was seized upon by elites as a means of dividing the working class. No more pesky talk about class and imperialism; instead we'll focus our attention on the evil of "straight white males".

So feminists are essentially useful idiots. That's the conclusion I've come to. Ironically, while holding the banner of "leftism", they destroy the left.

For those who think this argument is overly "conspiratorial", I would say two things (1) there is a difference between a "conspiracy theory" and a conspiracy fact -- we have documents proving what I have suggested and (2) the "accidental elite blundering" theory of history is absurd. Of course rich and powerful people look out for their interests. Of course they plot and scheme; the entire declassified history of the CIA demonstrates as much.

It's not even a secret anymore. We can see every Western government supporting feminism, and feminist campaigns are funded by the likes of JP Morgan Co. and Goldman Sachs.

Women -- and I'm sorry but it's true -- are more herd-like than men and therefore more malleable. Every school teacher knows that girls are docile compared to boys. The family is actually subversive in the context of state power. By destroying the family, feminists simply created a more atomized and therefore controllable society. It doesn't matter whether you're a leftist or a conservative -- it is clear that the destruction of the family has been devastating to the working class.

Feminism developed organically; it was then seized upon by elites as a divide and conquer strategy. However, elites played with fire and we are seeing the results; since females have in-group bias, and since male leaders love to be chivalrous, the majority of men are now subject to increasingly severe discrimination. This will ultimately develop into a revolutionary situation, unless the MRM succeeds. There is nothing more dangerous than angry young men.