More Feminists, More Gender Theory

Posted on | May 22, 2016 | 65 Comments

“When we’re talking about rape culture and idealism, we have to talk about Slut Walk. . . . The fallacy here is not wanting to end rape culture. The fallacy is that marching around with ‘End Rape Culture’ on my back was actually going to end rape culture.”
— Rachel Ivey, 2013

In response to Saturday’s post — “‘Feminist Motherhood’ and the ‘Transgender Kindergartner’” — Professor Donald Douglas of American Power complimented me that my “range of citations is extremely impressive.” Contrary to what some people think, the eruption of transgender madness has very deep roots in feminist theory, as I demonstrated with quotes dating as early as 1970, when Shulamith Firestone declared “the end goal of feminist revolution must be . . . not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself.”

Among the other sources I cited was a 2011 Ms. magazine article about feminist motherhood and a 2015 book about campus sexual assault policy which blamed heterosexuality and masculinity for “sexual violence” as an expression of “patriarchal power.” One reason I keep piling up quotations like that is to demonstrate, from a multiplicity of sources over the course of time, that all feminism is fundamentally alike, in terms of its hostility to human nature. For more than four decades, the feminist movement has been against men, marriage, motherhood, capitalism and Christianity — and ultimately against heterosexuality, per se. When feminists speak of “equality,” they do not mean simple fairness; rather, they intend the destruction of all social distinctions between men and women, to bring about a genderless utopia of androgyny. Feminism Is a Totalitarian Movement to Destroy Civilization as We Know It. I keep providing more evidence to further corroborate this conclusion, and will continue doing so until this truth is universally acknowledged.

 

Saturday, I called attention to a 2013 video, “The End of Gender: Revolution, Not Reform,” by Rachel Ivey of the radical environmental group Deep Green Resistance (DGR). About three-and-a-half minutes into this presentation, Ms. Ivey notes the irony that her organization’s position on gender has provoked more controversy than the fact that DGR is “a group advocating the forcible dismantling of civilization.”

This destructive agenda is where radical environmentalism and radical feminism merge to become coterminous phenomena. What most people fail to understand about feminism is that its ideology is essentially destructive, in the same way that Marxist-Leninist ideology is destructive, and that this is no accident, because modern feminism arose from the crypto-Marxist radical New Left of the 1960s. So-called “Red Diaper babies,” the children of Communist Party members, were prominent and influential among early leaders of the Women’s Liberation movement. A crucial moment in the formation of this movement was when Shulamith Firestone used a mailing list of women in the New Left group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to organize feminists in New York. (See In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution by Susan Brownmiller, pp. 18-20.) The feminist concept of “consciousness-raising” was borrowed directly from Communist organizing tactics: “In the Old Left,” Red Diaper baby Anne Forer told Brownmiller (p. 21), “they used to say that the workers don’t know they’re oppressed so we have to raise their consciousness.”

“Gender is a hierarchical system which maintains the subordination of females as a class to males through force. Gender is a material system of power which uses violence and psychological coercion to exploit female labor, sex, reproduction, emotional support, etc., for the benefit of males. Gender is not natural or voluntary, since a person is not naturally subordinate and no one chooses to be subordinated.”
— Rachel Ivey, 2013

Ms. Ivey here summarizes an idea — that every misfortune, hardship or unhappiness experienced by any woman is the result of a system of oppression — which is the fundamental basis of all feminist theory. This produces an ideology and rhetoric I have described thus:

Feminism justifies anti-male attitudes by promoting an ideological belief that I call feminism’s Patriarchal Thesis:

1. All women are victims of oppression;
2. All men benefit from women’s oppression;
therefore
3. Whatever.

Believing that normal human life is a system of injustice in which all women (collectively) are victimized by all men (collectively), feminists can justify anything they say or do as part of their struggle against historic oppression.

Just as Marxists believe that workers are oppressed by capitalism, feminists believe women are oppressed by patriarchy, and a basic task of feminism is to help women gain consciousness of their oppression.

“Feminist consciousness is consciousness of victimization . . . to come to see oneself as a victim.”
— Sandra Lee Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (1990)

“All women are prisoners and hostages to men’s world. . . . Each man is a threat. We can’t escape men. . . .
“Being around any man constitutes a threat to us, because they are our oppressors. Being wanted by a man and him treating you as if you were his is inherently violent.”
— Radical Wind, 2013

You see that while Professor Bartky and the anonymous feminist blogger are saying different things, they begin with the same premise, namely that oppression (“victimization”) is the universal condition of women. Where the blogger goes further than the professor is in making explicit that heterosexuality is both cause and effect of this oppression. This feminist argument can be traced back to the early 1970s, and was developed into a comprehensive theory by Professor Dee Graham in her 1994 book, Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence and Women’s Lives. It is from Professor Graham’s theory that the blogger Radical Wind derived her claim that women are “hostages” who cannot escape men.

 

To argue that male heterosexuality “is inherently violent” may seem extreme, but this claim has very deep roots in the history of the feminist movement, and continues to influence feminism today. When we see feminists protesting “rape culture,” we must understand that what they mean by this term is quite nearly synonymous with heterosexuality.

“In terms of the oppression of women, heterosexuality is the ideology of male supremacy.”
— Margaret Small, “Lesbians and the Class Position of Women,” in Lesbianism and the Women’s Movement, edited by Nancy Myron and Charlotte Bunch (1975)

“This is the essence of so-called romance, which is rape embellished with meaningful looks. . . .
“The traditional flowers of courtship are the traditional flowers of the grave, delivered to the victim before the kill. . . .
“The annihilation of a woman’s personality, individuality, will, character, is prerequisite to male sexuality . . .”
— Andrea Dworkin, “The Night and Danger,” 1979, in Letters From a War Zone (1988)

“I think that widespread heterosexuality among women is a highly artificial product of the patriarchy. . . . I think that most women have to be coerced into heterosexuality.”
— Marilyn Frye, “A Lesbian’s Perspective on Women’s Studies,” speech to the National Women’s Studies Association conference, 1980

“In contrast to young women, whose empowerment can be seen as a process of resistance to male dominated heterosexuality, young, able-bodied, heterosexual men can access power through the language, structures and identities of hegemonic masculinity.”
— Janet Holland, Caroline Ramazanoglu, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson, The Male in the Head: Young People, Heterosexuality and Power (1998)

“As many feminists have pointed out, heterosexuality is organized in such a way that the power men have in society gets carried into relationships and can encourage women’s subservience, sexually and emotionally.”
— Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, Women’s Voices, Feminist Visions (fifth edition, 2012)

Feminist “rape culture” discourse extends far beyond the crime of sexual assault to condemn practically all male/female relationships as based in the coercive patriarchal system of “male dominated heterosexuality.”

 

The recent protests against “rape culture” on university campuses, demanding the enforcement of policies that effectively criminalize heterosexuality and deny male students due-process protections, must be understood in context of the feminist movement’s history:

The origins of feminism’s “rape culture” discourse can be traced back to the Women’s Liberation movement of the late 1960s and ’70s. Treatises like “Rape: The All-American Crime” (Susan Griffin, 1971) and Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (Susan Brownmiller, 1975) depicted rape as an exercise of male power that was inherent in, and necessary to, the system of male supremacy. Brownmiller described rapists as “front-line masculine shock troops, terrorist guerrillas” who served to keep women captive and subjugated under a regime of pervasive sexual fear. . . . Radical feminists denied that heterosexual behavior was “natural.” There was no biological “urge” or “instinct” involved in the observable patterns of male and female sexual behavior, feminists insisted. Instead, all of this was “socially constructed” by an oppressive male-dominated system that proponents of feminist gender theory now call heteronormative patriarchy. Viewing sexual behavior in this political context of systemic and collective male power, it is impossible for feminists to view any sexual behavior as private or personal. No man or woman is merely an individual in feminist theory, but each is viewed as acting within a system where men (as a collective group) exercise power to unjustly oppress women (as a collective group).

This collective mentality, where all relationships are manifestations of an oppressive system of “male supremacy,” makes it impossible for the feminist to view herself (or any man) as an individual, each responsible for his or her own actions. No matter how wealthy, well-educated or influential the feminist may be, she always considers herself a victim of oppression and every man — no matter how honest or kind he is, no matter how lowly his place in the world — is part of the system that oppresses her. Feminism, like Marxism, is a profoundly irrational worldview, a secular religion that claims for itself the authority of science in order to justify a revolution to destroy civilization as we know it.

 

“Women organize to overthrow male power and thus the entire gender system,” Rachel Ivey said in describing the feminist movement’s ultimate goal. “Because without patriarchy there would be no need for gender.”

You may read the transcript of Ms. Ivey’s 2013 DGR presentation on gender and, if you are a student of history and political science, you will notice she insists on a materialist understanding of patriarchal oppression. “Gender is a material system of power,” Ms. Ivey says. “Rape culture, right along with female poverty, lack of education, the trafficking of our bodies — it’s maintained through material structures. Not through people’s ideas.” This is a feminist adaptation of the Marxist doctrine of historical materialism, and its application to “gender” is likely to produce effects quite like what Lenin, Stalin, Mao and other Marxist tyrants achieved in the 20th century, namely catastrophic failure.

"I hate feminism. It is poison." — Margaret Thatcher @KaptKan1 @LouiseMensch @voxday pic.twitter.com/8GJWG6qTJZ

— FreeStacy (@Not_RSMcCain) May 15, 2016

Ask yourself this: Why did Margaret Thatcher hate feminism? Was she in favor of rape and oppression? And why did feminists hate her? One might think that feminists would celebrate as a heroine of their cause a woman who had fought her way to the pinnacle of political power, as the first woman ever to become Prime Minister of the British empire. Yet feminists knew, as did Lady Thatcher, that their movement was not her movement, for feminism is exactly like Communism, in that it is implacably hostile to individual liberty and human dignity. Lady Thatcher famously said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” She might well have added, the problem with feminism is that eventually you run out of other people’s daughters.

 

How many children does the typical feminist have? Not many. Insofar as they do not eschew heterosexual intercourse altogether, feminists are more likely to have abortions than to have children.

“I don’t particularly like babies. They are loud and smelly and, above all other things, demanding . . . time-sucking monsters with their constant neediness. . . . Nothing will make me want a baby. . . . This is why, if my birth control fails, I am totally having an abortion.”
— Amanda Marcotte, March 2014

Feminism is a totalitarian movement, a systematic ideology of cruelty inspired by hatred — not only hatred of men, but of human life itself.

Feminism is poison. It is not merely wrong, but also evil.

"The hegemony of heteronormative patriarchy … is at the root of gendered harassment." https://t.co/3FQO8pjePX pic.twitter.com/ryvGQm14gL

— FreeStacy (@Not_RSMcCain) May 22, 2016

 

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