I understand the necessity for income, however I find the dignity of motherhood sits outside of notions of work and salary. Particularly as our financial systems crash around our ears and currencies devalue, motherhood retains something vital, hopeful and sacred.
I can understand the eye roll of solo mothers desperately wrangling finances because I’ve been there. The future of motherhood requires a collective re-imagining of the dignity of the human race. A whole brain (thinking McGilchrist here) recognition that we can shift if we choose to place our attention on peace not war, on collective wisdom not psychopath leaders, on positivity not negativity, on healing not criticism, on balancing agency and manoeuvring the world with collective harmony and oversight. Mothering and mothering wisdom is needed more now than ever.
"Conservatives" are constantly in the media crying about the "sexless generation" and the "population decline" and yet they never talk about UBI (Universal Basic Income), or if they do it's in a disparaging way (communism!!!). Forget about valuing and paying people to be mothers. Although if they are really concerned about the "population crisis" it might have to come to that. And by that time, nobody's gonna wanna have kids.
Was simply wondering was meant by "valued" - as in the definition being used. Asking for clarification is called being intellectually responsible. Also take issue with motherhood being thought of as a career like any other. Tends to lead to thinking of it as unpaid labor/slavery and other musings of victimhood.
Wow, you're very presumptuous. You expect people to understand what you mean when you express yourself vaguely. If they request clarification, then you assume they must be lacking enough life experience to impose their views on your empty words. Fair enough 😅
Words carry, by nature, multiple meanings. And sometimes the meaning of a particular collection of words transcends the words used and lives, instead, in context and tone. To ask for clarification, examples, or further definition means only that the speaker failed -- at least at some level -- to effectively communicate the meaning intended.
A reasonable response would be to supply the examples and amplify the meaning.
To fail, again, to do that is to essentially admit that the speaker can't.
Yes, in your world of lack of life experience, where all have the same level of understanding of life (in other words, only in your head), that is undoubtedly true.
Alas, in the real world, in the experienced world, sometimes what the answer to your question is, is "Everything".
And we don't have time to explain Everything to you.
You'll just have to live it yourself, and come to your own version of understanding. As it should be.
I could almost think you're serious, even when it's quite obvious that your extraordinarily dry sense of humor is pushing the reader to believe you're really so completely clueless & incapable of explaining what you were 'attempting' to say.
Very funny!
But obviously, given our far greater life experience, we know exactly what you were REALLY saying. And it was hilarious!
Probably by governments if populations decline enough. Also, in Islam a man is supposed to pay his wife for breast-feeding their babies. It's in the Quran and part of sharia law, though largely ignored.
Should it be a paid occupation? Maybe. But it doesn't matter what I think or anyone else thinks. We are probably going to get to that point sooner than later if the people who keep crying about the "sexless generation" and "population implosion" keep up their shrill antics. There are some countries that have already tried paying people to have kids hoping it would increase birthrates but if I remember correctly, it didn't work. It seems that people "just aren't that into it" anymore. So if this turns into a "crisis" - which some people seem to think it's going to, we might see more governments, or private institutions, offering payment for people to have kids. Will it work though?
Yabbut... it is. If you value Motherhood as much or more than other careers, then it is so valued. The value you assign to it is the only value which counts. Just as your choice, re: motherhood, is the only choice that counts.
If I or anyone values it more or less than you do, so what?
It's still your choice which you make according to how you value the thing being chosen.
And if at some later point, you run across an idiot who sneers at your choice, forget 'em and move on. How they feel about how I choose to live my life is completely and utterly irrelevant.
You confuse economics with true value, my son. They are different things. How you value Motherhood is separate and distinct from how the value of a bag of flour is set.
Perhaps it's the use of the same word to convey different meanings which baffles you.
How I value an afternoon with my friend is different than the price set for a new car.
Probably depends on whether we will be able to defend and define women as a classification at all - partly because of the war on our words defining what the sexes are - but also because of the technological trends toward removing the maternal functions from the female body experience.
If all goes well and women can remain women - I think it’s probably time to think more in terms of effective complementarity between the sexes rather than competition.
On complementarity.....In a certain kind of feminist journalism, I keep coming across warm-hearted acknowledgements that Masculinity and Femininity are complementary polarities in any sane conception of The Good Life.. And that when things go wrong, they are often better understood as resulting from a kind of Faustian tango between the sexes than as a simple case of one sex always doing wrong by the other. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/shall-we-dance
I am as far away from American evangelicalism both ideologically and geographically, as possible. I can see a logical complementarity between the sexes. Where the complementarity starts and stops can be entirely negotiated within couples I would think ?
I know. That's why I'm surprised to see this term "complementarity" used by non-American non-Evangelicals. I suppose I should have used "Christian" instead but even non-Christians are using it? I hope not. Sad if it's seeped into the wider culture. Having to "negogiate" outdated stereoptyical gender roles is a red flag.
"Complementarian" in evangelical Christianity is a theological concept regarding what Scripture says about male and female roles. It has nothing to do with human rights or women's rights, etc. If you do not believe that Scripture (the Bible) is the sovereign and sufficient Word of God then complementarian likely will not mean much.
thats beautiful and I entirely agree. I have created an experimental space called C-Lab( https://theclab.substack.com/) in which I explore the notion of a cycles informed society and what that would mean.
Feminism was conceived to counter the dominant male culture. Now both sexes seem hopelessly lost, so we need a common redemption strategy. We'd want to acknowledge what is unique that male and female bring to the table but allow the social structure to reflect the actual physical and mental overlap. Human-ism rather than Femin-ism.
No kid. Women didn't originally object to men being in charge of most things so much as objecting to what men did with that power, namely denying women equal rights.
--They didn't originally object to men being in charge of banks. they objected to not being able to get their own bank accounts.
--They didn't object to male-dominated professions, but to being denied the opportunity to compete with men on equal footing.
To the extent that men suffer from feminism, they have brought it on themselves.
Except that the women who developed feminism ALREADY had superior rights to most human beings. They wanted to be equal to the highest ranking men in society. They wanted to become the men they married. Except for, you know, being eligible for the draft and stuff like that. All the benefits of the highest ranking men in society, none of the obligations. That's not equal footing.
There were certainly women's rights movements that ALSO believed that legal doctrines such as coverture did more harm to women than good. They sometimes allied with the feminists on common goals. But it came from a completely different motivation and worldview. The alliance ended as soon as that particular law was changed, as such alliances always do.
You're really blaming women for wanting equal respect and consideration. Amazing. 🤦🏼 That's just harmful to women's interests, and society's interests, because our society always does better with the sexes on equal footing power-wise.
You sound exactly like the women who argued against women getting the vote. Over 100 years ago.
You are deeply attached to the idea that feminism is women wanting equal respect and consideration. It's not. It just isn't. That idea isn't found in ANY of the feminist writings from any era. I've looked. Extensively. You have yet to cite a single feminist writer who makes that claim and backs it up with specifics that neither denigrate mothers nor traditional women's work nor poor women.
When 129 women died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the feminists were nowhere to be found. It was an alliance between the labor unions and the women's rights movements that fought for changes that such a thing would never happen again.
Yes, the mothers crying over their dead daughters didn't much care about getting the vote. They cared about survival, and they evaluated (correctly) that their daughters would be just as dead with the franchise as without it.
Yeah if you want to try to redefine feminism, the burden is on you to show it's warranted. I think the suffragettes' feminism meets my definition for the most part, and the parts that don't, like overt claims to "moral superiority", didn't survive the tests of time in mainstream feminist thought.
If replacing "feminism" with "women's rights" floats your boat, go for it, but in that case I'm interested in your full definition of women's rights. Don't worry, it's not to pick nits, I'm pretty sure I'd agree with whatever you came up with, and you might even convince me to shift to using your terminology and conceptualizing.
And if "women's rights" is, as I suspect, partly a rebranding to escape your male misogynist buddies' hatred of the word "feminist", you should admit that.
Sure, I'd be happy to do a side by side comparison of women's rights vs feminism. I'd do them in columns, but that's not supported by this medium.
Feminism: Has a hierarchical view of human worth. Each individual man and woman is competing for a spot on a linear measure of human worth. Worth is largely defined by a combination of achievement, independence, and conquest.
Women's rights: Views human beings as inherently valuable, regardless of sex. Rejects the concept of competing for worth.
Feminism: Views men as a threat to women. Believes that the best way to achieve equality is for women to be an equal threat to men.
Women's rights: Views men as partners to women, and has high standards for what that partnership should look like.
Feminism: Generally suspicious of male-female relationships, considering them inherently dangerous to women. Some advocate female separatism, others advocate for simply making sure men are always kept in their proper place as servants.
Women's rights: Believes that a healthy relationship between men and women is one of mutual support and sacrifice, with each bringing their unique strengths to helping each other. Rejects the idea that anyone should be a submissive servant to their spouse.
Feminism: Vengeance based. Believes that women have been oppressed since time immemorial, and the only way to make that right is oppress and control men for the foreeable future. Fantasizes about the utopia that would result if men could be simply eliminated. Celebrates women abusing men as a form of justice.
Women's rights: Love based. Believes that women and men are inherently partners, and aberrations from that norm need to be addressed as aberrations. Absolutely reject abusive dynamics, regardless of who is the abuser. Recognizes that toxic relationships can develop in which BOTH are the abuser.
Feminism: Believes that pregnancy and childbirth is a terrifying and frequently fatal event that oppresses and frequently kills women. Aspires to free women from the horrors of giving birth.
Women's rights: Reveres the female ability to bring life, and celebrates it. Acknowledges and seeks to reduce the risks associated with childbirth, but also recognizes the power and joy therein. Recognizes that there are health benefits to childbirth as well as risks.
Feminism: Believes that all differences between men and women are social constructs deliberately developed to oppress women. These differences must be destroyed by demanding femininity from men and masculinity from women. Masculinity in men is "toxic", and femininity in women is a betrayal of the sisterhood.
Women's rights: Believes that there are inherent differences between men and women and that's okay. Celebrates the balance of masculinity and femininity in both men and women, recognizing that it's different for each individual. Also recognizes that in the aggregate, healthy men tend to be more masculine and healthy women tend to be more feminine. And that's okay.
Feminism: Sees sexual dimporphism as an inherent threat to women, and a bad thing that must be conquered.
Women's rights: Sees sexual dimorphism as a physical reality, with no particular moral implications. Recognizes that certain aspects of sexual dimorphism create inherent vulnerabilities in women, and works to support social structures that protect women in these vulnerable areas. Recognizes that certain aspects of sexual dimorphism create inherent vulnerabilities in men, and works to support social structures that protect men in these vulnerable areas.
Feminism: Hedonism based. Each individual woman should pursue her own pleasure, disregarding the effect it has on anyone else, including her own children. Seeks to destroy any and all norms that might interfere with this goal, even if it has catastrophic effects on children and more vulnerable women.
Women's rights: Justice based. Seeks the best outcomes for humanity as a whole. Recognizes that prioritizing individual feelings over net functionality tends to produce a nonfunctional and miserable society. Recognizes that protections that are vital for more vulnerable women may be seen as restrictive or oppressive for healthy, single, wealthy upper class women. Accepts this tradeoff as necessary for the greater good. Constantly seeks to reassess the proper balance, recognizing that utopia will never be achieved.
END COMPARISON
I could honestly go on and on. Feminism and women's rights are occasionally allies for specific goals, but they're in outright opposition in other areas. This goes back to the very beginning.
For example, from the Declaration of Sentiments:
"He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes, with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband."
There is a LONG history of an abusive man coercing his female partner into committing crimes with him or for him, then blaming her when the authorities come around. It's a relatively common abuse dynamic that continues to this day. Those laws that the early feminists found so oppressive were a PROTECTION for the lower class women most likely to be targeted by this particular kind of abuse. Those protections were greatly valued by actual women's rights activists, who understood the power dynamics involved. The feminists, surrounded by servants and powerful relatives, neither understood nor cared about how cancelling these laws would harm women. The women being harmed were "lesser" women, and didn't matter.
I support women's rights. I will ally with feminists on specific issues. The radfems in particular have been fantastic about raising the alarm about the transgender scam. I appreciate their work. The Seneca Falls feminists were a bunch of selfish twits, but I agree with women getting the right to vote. I'm perfectly happy to ally with virtually anyone for a particular goal.
That's how alliances work. The US and the Soviet Union allied to take down the Nazis. This didn't mean that the US was best buddies with Stalin. Defeating Nazis didn't magically turn Stalin into a nice guy. It was a temporary alliance for a specific goal.
I support anything that leads to greater flourishing of the species homo sapiens. Powerful women is a huge part of that goal. But feminism? No. It's a destructive ideology. I ally with feminists only on the occasion when they happen to be pursuing a goal that is consistent with my goals. We don't have to agree on the ideology behind it to get shit done together.
Materially, women don't need men anymore. What physical overlap is there? Dominance countered, now we're all lost as you say. Very curious what this brand of humanism looks like.
Not sure what you mean. Of course men and women still need each other. As long as we remain homo sapiens, a sexually dimorphic species, that won't change.
There are certainly people who want to "free" us from bodies through. The techno-gnostics aka transhumanists are creepy.
If you mean in order to reproduce, ok. But that's not really happening anymore so much. Women out earn men until they have children. If they have children. The future is female, haven't you heard? Which just means male without babies.
Briefly skimmed your source. Here's a quote from the debunking: "Imagine not understanding that the Jews created Jesus in order to control the Gentiles."
THAT'S the one with the sensible theory debunking a ridiculous theory? Alrighty then.
Taken out of context. Anyway, her point is that Lindsay and Logan are wrong. Lindsay from his "atheist" perspective and Logan from her Christian. They are wrong about what Gnostacism is, its role in "the culture wars", wrong about The Law of Attraction, Transgenderism and lots of other things. Boryasenko goes undercover in Socialist Zooms and Queer and Education Zooms. You can hear straight from their mouths what they want and what they do. It has nothing to do with a Gnostic cult in anyway. That theory is clownish.
I never had to go undercover. I was a believer. It's definitely a Gnostic cult. If you go in deep enough it gets outright explicit. I was taught for years that the Gnostics were a spiritually enlightened group of Christians who were persecuted for many things, including their reverence for women. Laughable in hindsight.
Women don't need men to sit around with other women in grass huts. But if they want roads, plumbing, buildings, bridges, big factories pumping out things like tampons and hair dryers, they might want men around.
What does "materially" mean in this context? If all men were to disappear from the earth today, the women would likely be dead in less than a year, whereas most men would live out their natural lives if the situation were reversed. There aren't enough women qualified to maintain the electrical and sewer infrastructure, nor enough women truck drivers to ensure the groceries keep coming.
Women certainly do need men to supply the energy (including food), remove their trash and to maintain the structures and technologies that they rely on. They just think they don't because they don't see the places where this work is being done or the people (men) who are doing it.
The feminism imagined by Mary Wollstonecraft I hope. Where men and women are both chaste and put each other and their domestic spheres first, not career and worldly gains. Men and women can only cultivate virtue in tandem.
Like all grievance/victim movements (forgive the pejorative connotations), it was needed, had its moment, and is now doing more harm than good. There may be a phenomenon here where these perspectives just keep twisting in on themselves, almost getting inbred in the process. Warped. Sharper and meaner. Cutting back against themselves, the culture they arose out of, and the culture that, initially, they sought to enter into and commingle with.
All these bright things seem to turn dark. Off the top of the head, I can't think of one that's successfully escaped this trap. Perhaps there's some baseline tendency toward entropy and dissolution. Hard to say, it's all so complicated.
I like this comment so much. It calls to my mind the inevitable corruption of whatever utopia we seek to create on earth under the idolatry of lofty ideals like freedom and equality. However shiny, when taken to extremes eventually they fall under their own weight.
This is the way with every social activism group. A movement's first order of business is to establish its own relevance by playing up the urgency and severity of whatever ills it is supposedly countering. Ironically as more real progress is made against the original aims, the more strident and extreme their positions need to become in order to keep the flame alive. The thing starts to bend into a caricature of itself.
Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies and DEI departments won't just voluntarily disband. There are real people there with a financial and social stake in maintaining the status quo. They won't go down without a fight.
100%. "...caricature of itself" is exactly right. And also the point about how these orgs become conduits for money and livelihoods. They *can't* disband. All the incentives are wrong.
Sounds great. Let's start with women valuing the strengths/values of the feminine instead of being told they're shameful and/or weak for doing so. In my life, these messages have come exclusively from other women.
Boy does this ever resonate with me. I keep telling my stay at home wife that she has the most important job that anyone could have. It's when she talks with her career-driven (women) friends that she feels nagging doubts about "wasting her degree".
It’s really hard to be a smart, ambitious woman at home. These women are my primary audience as a writer (and I am one and I’m friends with many too.)… the cultural messaging is strong that strong, capable women do not do the work of caretaking or homemaking.
You were personally told "valuing the strengths of the feminine" was shameful and weak? Or were you told they were not economically valuable under Capitalism?
Sure they do. They just have to be commodified. Childbirth is paid work as long as it's a gestational carrier to manufacture a baby to order for a wealthy person. Caring for children is paid work as long as it's someone else's children. Medical work for both humans and animals disproportionately female. All the caring professions are vastly disproportionately female. Most of education is disproportionately female. Food preparation. Cleaning.
Most of the the traditional feminine arts that build on feminine strengths can absolutely be commodified. But it creates a major loss of efficiency and lower quality outcomes.
I already covered these commodified "traditional feminine arts" in another comment;
Someone else:
" The feminine work of caring is not even seen as work (if you don't work an outside job you're "not working"), and being an at-home mother, even if for a short time while your children are young, is considered very low-status and is countercultural thing to do for an educated woman.
Masculine values/qualities are things like outward achievement/action, efficiency, productivity, control, structure, logic."
Me:
--- This is due to economics. If "feminine work" was valued then we'd see some economic compensation but even "care jobs" which are paid, are paid low. The only "feminine work" that seems to get adequate pay is in the sex industry like stripping, porn, OnlyFans, escorting, prositution, etc. And even there, it is only a certain type of woman becoming very wealthy in the industry. What does that tell you?
I have never quite understood the world view that values career success above domestic success. To my mind, the role that women play as gatekeepers of reproduction and family life is THE center of power. All of this career BS only has value insofar as it provides the resources to enable that.
That isn't to belittle wage-earners. A family needs resources to thrive, just like a car needs gas to move. But the gas is meaningless without the car. The car is the gas station's entire reason for being.
Are we not already seeing that, though, through an emphasis ( an over-emphasis) on openness, fluidity and feelings over boundaries, discipline and reason/rational argument?
Hopefully you're referring to a 1950's standard of regard for masculine values, because if you're referring to their regard in 2024, I'd say you're aiming way too low 💀
We've already had this convo. It's probably coming down the pike that if "society" or "government" or "private industry" or "nations" or "culture" want babies to keep being produced, they are going to have to pay people to do it.
Hi all - so the first comment on this thread is "A world in which motherhood is valued as much as other worthwhile careers." It has a lot of likes and there's no wonder why! The comment illustrates a central reality where the masculine is being culturally valued over the feminine: women thinking working outside the home is the only valid feminist choice. The feminine work of caring is not even seen as work (if you don't work an outside job you're "not working"), and being an at-home mother, even if for a short time while your children are young, is considered very low-status and is countercultural thing to do for an educated woman.
Masculine values/qualities are things like outward achievement/action, efficiency, productivity, control, structure, logic. Feminine values/qualities are being-ness, creativity, chaos, inner work, intuition, etc. (We all have both of these energies within us, by the way, to different degrees - not trying to be reductive here.) In our society there is a strong bias toward the masculine and a devaluing of the feminine. There is so much strength and power in feminine energy and qualities if we'd only acknowledge them; instead we're focused on ways of living that center the way men tend to exist in the world, not women.
I know I didn't clarify counterpoints specifically, but I'm caretaking and don't have much time. @dragonmama - this is very true. Mainstream liberal feminism, very ironically, upholds a masculine way of being as what women should aspire to, and it has been so influential on women's psyches that, in their minds, to be "womanly" in any way is to be weak and not "empowered."
" The feminine work of caring is not even seen as work (if you don't work an outside job you're "not working"), and being an at-home mother, even if for a short time while your children are young, is considered very low-status and is countercultural thing to do for an educated woman.
Masculine values/qualities are things like outward achievement/action, efficiency, productivity, control, structure, logic."
--- This is due to economics. If "feminine work" was valued then we'd see some economic compensation but even "care jobs" which are paid, are paid low. The only "feminine work" that seems to get adequate pay is in the sex industry like stripping, porn, OnlyFans, escorting, prositution, etc. And even there, it is only a certain type of woman becoming very wealthy in the industry. What does that tell you?
Because the number of broken families is pretty well climbing in numbers to the becoming the majority, our society has inadvertently babied the fatherless families to help them feel included.
We give the fatherless children and injured women all the rights of those with a MAN in the equation .
I can’t even bring myself to write NORMAL FAMILY for fear of being cancelled.
I am a very caring person, but I am VERY AWARE of the large group of friends without a man in their ‘family’ configuration.
Let’s help our daughters enjoy, respect, admire , appreciate men and their obvious strengths. As well, let’s teach our daughters to learn how to pay the price of admission to a challenging partnership with men…..and teach them how to compromise!
This is a favourite subject. My mom was the original liberated woman. With a husband (my dad) and four kids.
We need to treat all fatherless kids with care. The result is that we bend over backwards to make it seem something a woman she work towards. Whereas I believe every child REQUIRES a full set of parents, and hopefully grandparents….”it takes a village…”
I don’t know how to encourage the fatherless ones to try and build their own family in their future…the lack of male influence doesn’t help them develop the ‘right’ skills.
I don’t have an answer.
I see girls and boys are often estranged now.
The PRICE of Admission is not my quote but I like it. We need to develop tolerance and compromise. Otherwise the marriage can’t last.
Men aren’t perfect. Women aren’t perfect. The fairy tale Walt Disney and others have make us think we NEED to fall in love at first sight.
There seems to be so much wrong with marriage, parenting and confidence to accomplish a ‘simple act of nature’ ; successful partnering until death do us part.
Sorry, I am a poor writer. And wanted to keep it short when first answering the question: SO WHAT DO YOU THINK ID THE FUTURE OF FEMINISM?
I am 73, mother of 2, have one grandchild, have a husband of 50 years and am a retired nurse after 43 year’s of professional work.
Everyone I know is divorced once…twice…occasionally 3 times. Kids are in blended families.
Etc etc. Marriage is one of my favourite subjects, but not because it is easy. It is extremely hard, in my opinion and parenting is right up there in levels of difficulty.
"let’s teach our daughters to learn how to pay the price of admission to a challenging partnership with men"
--- What woman in the world wants a "challenging" partnership? The home and one's partner are supposed to bring peace and joy and help one face challenges, not create them.
"Marriage is one of my favourite subjects, but not because it is easy. It is extremely hard, in my opinion "
--- I'm going to assume you had one of those "challenging partnerships" that you had to "pay for". Otherwise why would your opinion be that marriage is "extremely hard"?
Sounds dismal and not something I'd want to sign my kids up for.
Idk, my two cents is if you want anything resembling a future for feminism you need a new term for it. Feminism is a wholly meaningless word to me other than being vaguely related to activism and sometimes pointed towards "vagina havers". I don't think I am alone in this, but I could be wrong. Maybe take a similar, yet failed attempt by Harris RE: atheism. Eschew the term all together as he said about labeling oneself "It is as if your opponents drew a chalk outline, and you walked over and laid down in it." or something similar if I recall. But I guess that's just me thinking about being effective in your goals, not the future of feminism... so maybe just ignore all of that :D Have fun in NY! Sorry for the bouncers at the door of the country. Should have came through mexico!
But “ism” is like a verbal spike protein by which ideologies enter and infect our brain cells. As a lifelong overthinker, I think (!) we think too much and then reify our ideas—mistake them for realities, overlay them on and obscure or distort given reality.
That ain't half bad! Esp. since it would keep dudes out of it. :D No guy is going to stand up as a "Male Womanizer" in a room full of ladies I reckon. :)
It would be "womanist" not womanizer. But even then, unlike Feminism, I don't think Womanism was conceived to include men, or non-black women, women not "of color". It was created in reaction to the dominant white feminist narrative.
Women need to continue to fight for our human rights as women. Don’t give up, don’t allow men to dominate the movement, (not that they will because most men don’t care) but to just keep telling the truth. That women, (as in biological females) need their own protected spaces, away from biological men. That includes men who identify as men and men who identify as women. Because trans women are men.
There's dissention on that point. When feminists and transhumanists say pregnancy and childbirth is "dehumanizing", they're clearly working on a different definition than I have for "human."
Specify. You may be surprised who disagrees with you. I certainly have been!
All of the limits, including having a form at all. It's a bizarre melding of modern technology and ancient gnostic religious teachings. I use the term techno-gnostics interchangeably. It's also a deeply creepy master race theology in which they claim the term "human" for themselves and demote the rest of us to mere animals. (That is standards with gnosticism too.) Read Martine Rothblatt's manifesto on "freedom of form" for details.
Transhumanists also tend to be deeply delusional about what technologies are "just five years away", and fail to understand the limitations of real achievements.
Artificial wombs are a good example. Artificial wombs are a form of ICU for super-preemies. They are likely to improve outcomes for babies born at 20-30 weeks. They might even let us save babies born at 15-20 weeks.
But they're not a magic box where you can drop in an embryo and a baby pops out in 9 months. Artificial wombs only have potential to help fully formed fetuses who need to finish maturation.
A world wherein couples put the needs of children before the wants of themselves. Respect for mothering and compensation from the government and/or spouse's employer. A return to the respect for and healing between men and women. Greater respect for women at home and men providing (ouch! that one was hard to write!). An economy that allows one-imcome families to live well.
Moder.3rd wave/whatever you want toc all it, feminism is destroying society by
A) Lying to women about what will make them happy, convincing them to act/be like men if they want a happy life and that is the entirely worn advice to give them. We have record number of women on RX for mental issues.
B) It's convinced every woman she's a 9/10 no matter what she looks like or is like and that she deserves no less in a man. This has unbalanced the dating world. This is turn is destroying the family which a society is built upon
C) Worst of all it has produced a voting segment that despite all that had taken place, liberal feminist women are the only voting segment still leaning into the Democrat Left.
Feminism today is harmful, not helpful. That doesn't mean all women who consider them feminist's are like this but that those with power/influence who are feminist women are spreading hate and harm. Few like you see there are issues that need addressing. There's no legal access that men have that women don't. If anything you could argue that in society today women have access where men do not. It takes 2 to make a baby and both are stuck with the outcome whatever it may be but only the woman gets to make the call. It's a well known fact that teh family courts give the women preferential treatment.
The Modern Feminist/MeToo movement has produced a society where it's liberal women wanting more illegals coming inn, illegals who then attack the women and local men have been that that if you try to help you will either be arrested by the cops or the person you are trying to save you may accuse you of sexual harassment so they abstain.
Liberal women have created the society they are now miserable with/in and men are opting out choosing to seek brides over seas. It is NOT looking like the right future feminism promised will come to pass for many women. My 2 daughters were home schooled and free of feminist or woke indoctrination so they will have an EASY time finding a good husband and happiness in family.
Feminism is the idea that women deserve equal consideration and respect. Period.
You're confusing a whole lotta other things with feminism there, bud.
Just like the lefties blame all the bad things that are done with guns on the guns themselves, you're blaming all the bad things that are done by people who call themselves feminists, on feminism.
You say "But if they weren't infected with feminism they wouldn't do those stupid things".
1) That's only partly true, and
2) The anti-gun people say the same thing "If they didn't have those guns they wouldn't have done those horrible things".
Feminism has brought some excellent improvements to the lives of women & society, just like gun rights have for legal gun owners & society.
We need feminism to help protect women from those who do not mean them well, just like we need gun rights to help protect us from those who don't mean us well.
We meet again, Hazel-Rah! How much of the early feminist writers have you actually read? Their writings don't have much to say about consideration or respect. Or they have very odd definitions of those words. Many of them are openly scornful of any woman who disagrees with them. Very few of them have equal consideration or respect for dissenting opinions.
Most feminists still in denial continue to proclaim its about equality and yet never give any real examples; always "I feel" or the like. They know it's about equity, the forced equal outcome regardless of effort/input. These pro-collectivist types use human envy, an easy to manipulate emotion, into supporting collectivist governance like communism & socialism b/c they foolishly believe it can work. Men frankly made society to comfortable, Feminism can only exist in a society without any real threats' or struggles.
"Feminism can only exist in a society without any real threats' or struggles."
Feminism came about because of threats to and struggles of women so of course where you find (post) Feminism, there is going to be less of those threats and struggles.
Mostly it's about some seriously inaccurate ideas regarding history and physical reality! Sometimes there's the equity piece., but often it's equity to a fantasy construct.
Congrats on still ignoring the reasons why feminism exists to begin with - sexism and misogyny deprivations of rights and the many, many men and women who have and do promote(d) them, and the role that misogyny has played in the development of feminist thought and activism.
And still you are trying to use cherry-picked words of individual feminists to represent the idea that women deserve equal consideration and respect.
Be a brave person now - if you think women don't deserve equal consideration and respect, say so, instead of trying to discredit the idea indirectly through discrediting the actions and words of people who promote it.
You're saying 2A enthusiasts aren't scornful of those who tell them they're overreacting?
Imagine how they'd be if they were as deprived of their gun rights as women were of their rights in the times of the early feminists...
I think both of them get a bad rap. People pick out the worst of the separatist man-haters and hold them up as examples of all feminists just like liberals think all those who value 2A are Wayne LaPierre.
Admit it, you are a secret feminist by my definition 😁
Just like my few remaining lib friends would disown me for refusing to pretend 2A doesn't mean what it says. 🙄
Your definition is uselessly vague. Equal to WHAT, precisely? What is "consideration"? What is "respect"?
There are plenty of men and women that I have very little respect for, and feel no obligation to be particularly considerate towards. To be perfectly blunt, some people are assholes and will take advantage of any respect or consideration offered them. So, I don't. It's called "boundaries."
I believe that every human being has inherent worth that comes with being of the species homo sapiens. It is not earned and cannot be lost. It's also not on a hierarchy. It's a binary yes-no thing.
I believe that specific individuals can be more or less accomplished in particular areas, and they have earned my respect.
There are people who are genuinely impaired (temporarily or permanently) and I am duly considerate towards them. I am considerate of the vulnerabilities of the very young, the very old, and the limitations of specific disabilities. Beyond that, consideration is earned through a mutual relationship of trust.
The definition is broad because it's intended to apply broadly. Consideration and respect apply to every context in which the sexes interact or influence each other. Which is nearly everything.
You're talking about individual qualities. I don't disagree with that, but the idea of equal respect is that we don't treat someone as less than just because of their sex, completely aside from their individual qualities.
How about you go check in with any homeless man on the street and ask him how much consideration and respect he gets daily. Men do NOT get consideration and respect unless they have massive amounts of money and power. If you instantly turned male tomorrow, the general consideration and respect you would receive would likely go DOWN.
There are exceptions in certain fields. In tech, men are granted a baseline assumption of competence that is higher than women. But the reverse is true in other fields. Men in any caring profession are treated as incompetent and possibly predatory until they demonstrate otherwise.
No confusion on or conflation needed here. Feminism today is NOT about equality as there is no equality left to obtain and as proof in your owl rebuttal yo could not provide a single example. Their is however still equity, forcing equal outcomes desoutes individual performances.
By biologicals reality a society lead by mostly women will lead us straight down path of totalitarianisms b/c women on average place protection/secuirty above freedom/liberty and males in average are the reverse.
There are no successful matriarchies in history. I'd say none period but because we can't really know all of the worlds history only that which has been documented it could be in accurate to so no matriarchies but clearly no successful ones because we have documentation even form 1k+ years before the year zero so if they were successful they were REALLY good with hiding it. Thus no matriarchies in history of historical significance.
I'd never argue boys or girls or even young adults on avg are good leaders because they lack the wisdom in years for what a good leader needs. Females on average are poor/bad leaders because they will choose safety/security over freedom/liberty thus eventually leading a society to totalitarianism assuming it's not conquered by a neighbor who doesn't do such foolish things like have so many leaders who are women.
Male/Female are 2 halves a whole that is greater then the sum of it's individual parts That can't work when the 2 are more teh same then not. Women's preference of safety/security makes them the better choice for child rearing. Not b/c a man wouldn't protect the child but that a man would likely unknowingly do something placing the child at risk. Likewise males are better leaders because without the willingness to take risks and place liberty/freedom so highly a society can't advance and we have historical examples, nations/societies that effectively didn't advance until external interference like with the Brits conquering SOuth Africa.
Leadership also requires high degrees if disagreeableness, something men on avg are high in but women on avg are low in. Both sexes are susceptible to the desire to be accepted by the larger group b/c humans are social creatures but between the 2 sexes a woman will more quickly lie if it means acceptance by the group than a man would; on avg. There are always exceptions to anything but we don't make decisions/choices based on the outliers.
There have been some great female leaders I would have voted for like Margaret Thatcher but she is too few and far between to just blindly say there must be 50/50 representation of men/women within governance.
Hmmm. I suspect that we are using different definitions of matriarchies. Probably different definitions of patriarchies too. Almost definitely different definitions of leadership.
I see you didn't cite even 1 example, not just 1. Is it b/c of some text limit in Substack replies or is it possibly something else like "There is no example to gove"?
Part of that comes from feminism teaching young women that men and women and the same when their not. Both seek similar/common interests like kids and faith but feminism has said no it's everything and now with the trans gendern movement it's caused that lie of feminism to blow up in the feminist face yet they press on like as if proclaiming men and women as being the same didn't help create this problem, with men in women's sports . It also convinced then that b/c they as women can get sex so easily if they wanted that it means men must be the same so women wrongly believe that most men are as engaged in sex as the women even more often b/c women are still more reserved then men. The feminist don't realize that it's a small percent of men that all the women are chasing and having sex with. Value comes that which is not easy to come by and for women that's a man that meets all their requirements and they believe for men it's women that do the same and the 2 have very different values. A woman having sex with many male partners is devaluing because sex is easy for women. If a man can have sex with many women its because he's got that something most women want so it make's him movaluable. The same thing goes 2 entirely different ways depending on the sex. The online dating apps have only worsened the problem but the bulk of it is with feminism teaching women unhealthy ideas/beliefs about male/female relationships. Dark days are coming too b/c no matter how much the feminist have been able to force so far they will never be able to force a man to marry them so either the feminists before they get to old will realize this valuable lesson and change before it's too late or they will be with millions of other bitter/angry/alone 40+ something women who either waited to long to admit biological reality or is forever in denial.
"It's convinced every woman she's a 9/10 no matter what she looks like or is like and that she deserves no less in a man."
--- Which country are you in !?! Here in the States everywhere you turn are average to below average looking couples. You're too old to swallow this internet Manosphere 1-10 garbage wherein they envision 4 women with 9 men. Get offline and into the real world.
"This has unbalanced the dating world."
--- There is no "imbalance" in the dating world.
" This in turn is destroying the family which a society is built upon"
--- Absolutely not. If people aren't having kids now it's because they don't want to or can't afford it. Not because there's some "looks imbalance" or rather what you're wasting your aging years reading, "sexual marketplace value imbalance" in the dating world.
"It takes 2 to make a baby and both are stuck with the outcome "
--- Only ONE of them has to risk her healthy, life and possibly livelihood to carry to term.
"only the woman gets to make the call."
--- Naturally, because of the above facts. Women in good relationships take the father's view into account.
" It's a well known fact that teh family courts give the women preferential treatment."
--- In the USA men for the most DO NOT WANT full custody of their children. Generally they do not even want 50/50. They prefer to be the "fun weekend parent" who gets the kids every other weekend and one night for dinner per week.
1) Feminisms has convinced every women (who follows it and so my bad for not being clearer about that) . But yeah if we ignore stats from dating aps, a dominant form of how young people meet today, and the numerous videos of far at best avg looking women claiming they're a 10 then yeah you could say this is not true. Is that how you do it?
2) If you think there is no imbalance in ethd ating world then you are in denial or buried your head in the sand. I can easily find feminist who disagree with everything I say but will agree with that so #TryAgain on that one
3) The majority of abortions are elective based that means no grape and no risk to injury to anyone so yet another #TryAgain. . FYI - Men are the only sex that takes risks during war even though society benefit from a win (or at least from not loosing) but yeah let's pretend that's also not real.
4) This BS about men not wanting to have access to the child is feminist lies. There are more than a few documented examples of the courts giving care to a mother who no jury of peers would ifn fit but they do it anyway. Why? Because in a divorce with a man who has a job and a woman who is a former/current drug addict or has some other issues but most importantly no job, won't be able to pay the child support and by Federal Law, specifically Title IV-D, the state gets a percentage of every $ it collects from child support thus it has a monetary incentive to prioritize custody to the parent least best qualified to keep the kids.
#TryAgain
At least you didn't try to label me as some looser incel and often used tactic. You must have read or known that I have a 20+ marriage (no divorces) and kids with a stay at home wife/mother so kind of hard to call that man a loser incel ey>?
"My 2 daughters were home schooled and free of feminist or woke indoctrination so they will have an EASY time finding a good husband and happiness in family."
--- How old are they? Are they dating? If so, what is their experience so far in finding good husbands? What demographic is their dating pool from with regards to ethnicity, religion, education and profession?
"We have record number of women on RX for mental issues."
--- And men and children. You are attributing all this only to Feminism? These people also have Capitalism in common.
Long term Western Civ will reach an end point, the contradictions and conflicts have no real answers. Similar to other civilizations the west will be overun by an enemy and we will assume their predominant culture. If this happens then terms like feminism or any -ism become less relevant. I imagine something closer to Blade Runner than parliaments and legislatures. Even so religion will survive. In the near future, however, Mary Harrington will write our way forward, I hope.
It’s already happening. The enemy is within. Mary Harrington won’t help. Avoid digital ID and CBDCs at all costs. Be wary of the coming economic and financial collapse manufactured to introduce these totalitarian measures. Be very sceptical of the next societal shutdown proposed by the corrupt people who organise society.
I think uk 2nd wavers had it pretty right. We should have equal opportunity for jobs education etc but let's acknowledge that those pesky hormones in the foetal brain and afterwards DO affect personality its not all socialisation. I like liberation feminism where the things women tend to be good at are valued AND rewarded as much as the things men tend to be good at.........
And a lot of the human endowment is arbitrarily divided up between “masculine” and “feminine.” The real differences cluster around reproduction and aggression. But then you get bullshit like “reason is masculine (even in a woman), emotion is feminine (even in a man).” Or “the spirit is masculine, the soul is feminine.” “Achievement is masculine, nurture is feminine.” (I blame Carl Jung for a lot of this.) To me, the real suffering inflicted by gender stereotypes comes from this. We are still one species, and we are also 8 billion unique individuals. The real differences between men and women are a portion of this, but the hard retros want to stuff ALL human experience back inside that stylized binary.
To the extent that is has ever been true, it included the understanding that masculine and feminine mix in each individual. That's the Tao symbol, the yin yang.
The future of feminism is the same as its origins: fringe deranged ranting by seriously ill women, often with schizophrenia.
The future of the women's rights movement is dependent on how much women's rights can be separated from feminism. If the women's rights movement can do that, it has a bright future as one aspect of the larger pro-human movement.
Feminism is inextricably bound to transhumanism. It despises human sexual dimorphism, always has.
You left out "ugly lesbians" 😂 Come on, your stereotyping is slipping.
Dang you've drank the manly koolaid.
So many women fell for trans gaslighting because of liberal sexism, not feminism. The women who kept their feminist viewpoint saw right through it, and have been fighting it longer than anyone. Check out some of their websites:
I agree that strong women make for a strong society. So do strong men. Strong men and strong women have always sought each other out as life partners.
There are a large number of people who confuse "strong" with "abusive", however. Abusive women seek out weak men. Abusive men seek out weak women. Always have.
Teaching people to be genuinely, truly strong tends to reduce abuse. But first people have to learn how to tell the difference.
There's are worldviews in which all human beings have inherent worth, simply by virtue of being human. It's not earned and cannot be lost. In Christian religious circles, this is sometimes called Imago Dei: all humans are made in the image of God.
There are worldviews in which human worth is on a hierarchy, with some humans having more worth than others. These worldviews vary on how that worth is calculated, but all of them believe that human worth is inherently hierarchical.
I suspect that you and I both hold "universal human worth" worldviews.
Here's the hard thing about worldviews: it's really hard to imagine that anyone else could hold a fundamentally different worldview. We tend to assume that we all start from the same basic grasp on reality and morality. There's a vague sense that it's just a natural part of normal human development, just like all babies instinctively learn to smile. But...that's not true. Worldviews are drastically different.
The women's rights movement has generally drawn from the "universal human worth" set of worldviews. In those worldviews, strength is not a zero sum game, it's an improvement for everyone.
Feminism, libertarianism, and all of the postmodernist worldviews are based on hierarchical worldviews. Most of them include some variation on the theme that encouraging people to compete for human worth will help "the best" rise to the top.
The reason why the women's rights movement campaigned against women chained to coal carts is that to treat a human being like a donkey is a violation of human dignity.
The reason why feminism never gave a crap about that is because they didn't see those women as having any human worth to begin with. It was a movement of mostly upper class, mostly white women who believed themselves ito be superior. It started when a bunch of white women were OUTRAGED that men from "inferior" races might be permitted the vote.
That's why "universal surrogacy" is a demand of feminism today. According to feminist teachings, birth is degrading. It's fine to degrade already worthless women, but the idea that high-class women do something so...animalistic...as giving birth is just icky. It's why feminism today rarely concerns itself with women dying in third world countries, instead focusing on getting women preferential treatment for high income jobs in the US. It's why "women's health care" means abortion, not prenatal care.
The goal of feminism is making sure that in the game of conquest, at least half of the conquerors are female. It doesn't care about the conquered. Never has.
That's feminism. Ironically, the infamous Joe Tate and similar racing misogynists have the exact same worldview: the relationships between all humans is inherently one of conquest. They're just bickering over who gets to do the conquering.
Brilliantly put, except for the part where you're still talking about "feminism" as if it were the One-Eyed One-Horned Flying Purple People Eater.
Someday you'll be able to separate the idea from the actions of its other adherents that you dislike.
In the meantime, Dylan Roof, Timothy McVeigh and every other nutcase like them will continue to be the fault of Christianity, and all the racist idiots blaming every negative action by white people on Whiteness will be 100% correct, by your own silly rules.
Nope. But it is one thread of a worldview that leads to very bad places. Perhaps the most forgivable of those threads, but it still bears serious responsibility for the situation we are in today, which is fairly disastrous for women.
I'm not going to separate the beliefs of the founders and leadership from a particular ideology. They define it. The fact that plenty of very nice people (Including myself, incidentally) have been peripheral followers doesn't change the problens in the core ideology. That would be roughly equivalent to claiming that the teachings of Jesus are irrelevant to Christianity. Or the teachings of Charles Galton is irrelevant to eugenics. Founders and core voices matter.
Whiteness is not an ideology. That's a red herring.
I note that Aiden/Audrey Hale isn't on your list of Very Scary People. Why not?
The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, written by Shulamith Firestone. Still revered in many feminist circles.
Firestone's condition was officially diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia, following which she was repeatedly hospitalized at Beth Israel Medical Center. Dr. Margaret Fraser, her psychiatrist, stated that she suffered from a particularly severe form of Capgras delusion, which caused her to believe that the people in her life "were hiding behind masks of faces."[3]---source is Wikipedia page on Shulamith Firestone
Here's a bit of her book, from the chapter titled Down with Childhood:
"In the Middle Ages, there was no such thing as childhood. The medieval view of children was profoundly different from ours. It was not only that it was not "childcentered," it literally was not conscious of children as distinct from adults...Children different socially from adults only in their economic dependence. They were used as another transient servant class, with the difference that because all adults began in this class, it was not seen as degrading (an equivalent would be the indentured servant of American history). All children were literally servants...
In sum, if members of the working class an minority groups "act like children", it is because children of every class are lower class, just as women have always been. The rise of the modern nuclear family, with its adjunct "childhood," tightened the noose around the already economically dependent group by extending and reinforcing what had been only a brief dependence, by the usual means: the development of a special ideology, of a special indigenous life style, language, dress, mannerisms, etc. And with the increase and exaggeration of children's dependence, women's bondage to motherhood was also extended to its limits. Women and children were now in the same lousy boat. their oppressions began to reinforce one another....By now people have forgotten what history has proven: that "raising" a child is tanamount to retarding his development. The best way to raise a child is to LAY OFF."
End quotation
Sure. Right. According to Firestone, children should be abandoned at age 7 or so, "liberated" to a life of full time work and full sexual autonomy. That's her beautiful utopian endstate.
To which I say, NO THANKS!
These are the ravings of a highly intelligent and very literate woman who is becoming increasingly unmoored from reality. When this happens, it's fairly common for the ill individual to latch onto religious or political ideas in a dramatic way. The stereotypical version is the man screaming that Jesus is telling him that the dogs are actually aliens, but it takes more subtle forms too.
I've seen this in real life a few times. Mental illness doesn't make people stupid. I've witnessed personally a woman who gave a very convincing and credible argument that police had broken into her home, interrupted her in housecleaning, and dragged her off to the mental hospital because they were offended by her BLM posters. And she believed it. But it wasn't true. Her family called the police because she was spinning around the house hysterically cleaning everything at 2am. This included starting things in the oven and forgetting about them, and lighting candles to cleanse the space and forgetting about them. She had already started one fire, and there had been a few other near misses. The children in the house were frightened. She was ill and needed to be in the hospital. But it sure didn't sound that way if your only source of information was her description of the event!
Incidentally, Firestone was neither lesbian nor particularly unattractive as far as I can tell.
The "feminists" didn't fight for the women in mines who were literally chained to coal carts. That was the women's rights movement. They're not equivalent, though the "feminist" movement likes to use the women's rights movement as a disguise.
This is feminism. The real thing. Go back to the source, the big names studied with breathless reverence in women's studies (now gender studies). Feminism, like all gnostic parasitical ideologies, likes to disguise itself as something else. Something good and noble. That's what I was taught and what I believed, for years.
Read the actual writings and... it's horrible. All of it. It has nothing to do with women's rights or equality or respect.
Yeah, you are understandably driven to the opposite extreme right now.
When you regain your equilibrium, and are able to apply your critical analysis to everything, I hope (and believe) that you'll see that your current position is as silly as your previous one.
The wiser we get, the more centrist we get in times of extreme views.
Valuing human beings is not a particularly extremist position. Wanting the survival of my own species isn't particularly extremist either. You're strawmanning.
My claim is simply that feminism is NOT what you think it is. There are some fine movements that actually value women, female human beings, in all our glory. Feminism isn't one of them.
Isn't speaking about "human rights" transhumanist? I completely agree with you on the future of feminism. But what rights are there left for women to achieve? Unless you're you mean this in a neoconservative way, like going to places like Afghanistan - again - to liberate women. Why would the future of women's rights be anything other than spreading the word?
1) Enlightenment Feminism continues to destroy the true feminine by making all things feMANine while making the truly masculine a liability: socially, economically, legally.
OR
2) Men stand up and restore what is feminine. This will require a religious reawakening that returns to feminine images and conduct by females and towards female by men.
The old feminism made women masculine. Future feminism needs to reclaim for women their feminine nature and help society understand how it is not the same, yet equal in power and value, as the masculine.
You're confusing actual feminism with the way it was characterized by the sexist backlash.
Having the right to your own bank account without a man's permission isn't "masculine". It's equal respect. You probably didn't even know that was an issue that didn't get corrected until 1974, did you.
I think we are all clever enough to know that if feminism has only and ever been about “equal rights” we wouldn’t be having this conversation and Mary Harrington would have had no need to write a book.
Do you really think that if women had as much power and influence as men that things like porn and surrogacy would still be legal.
That doctors and medical societies would still be acting like cowboys.
You are confusing liberalism with feminism. And you've been listening too much to angry reactionary men most of whom are just fine with porn and surrogacy but rarely miss an opportunity to sh*t on women.
High-tech is very male, very liberal, and very, very sexist and misogynist.
Why are you carrying on about who I’m watching or listening to? Is it your condescending suggestion that a woman whose viewpoint differs from your own must not be capable of thinking for herself but could only be listening to the “wrong opinions” - and that those wrong opinions must come from angry men who hate women? That’s quite a misogynistic viewpoint on your part. What utter nonsense. Men this and men that, because pAtRIaRchY. If only women were in charge, everything would be right in the world. It’s precisely this brand of screed that gives feminism a bad name.
Did you have an actual argument in there amidst all that hand-waving?
Can you actually refute anything I've said without grossly mis-stating it first?
Face it, trying to blame transhumanism on feminism is ridiculous.
You are smarter than the idiot resentful men who are pushing that BS.
Transhumanism is so obviously just the latest male high-tech "hold my beer" notion. If you know men, and I'm sure you do, you know this.
So bluster and hand-wave all you want, you know it's true.
We are natural allies, believe it or not. Because we both know male BS when we see it. The people who know and love men know their weaknesses, and dumb reckless ideas are one of them.
Like I said, things go better when the sexes work together and both contribute their respective wisdom, and listen to each other.
Full on explicit transhumanism is overwhelmingly being pushed by men. True.
The ideology that made it acceptable was pushed by a broad swath of theorists, including feminists. The fundamental assertion of feminism is that BEING FEMALE is inherently dehumanizing. That's...screwed up.
Porn and surrogacy are not thriving industries because men are just so powerful. They are the result of what we are left with when we try to subvert or “flatten” the persistent reality of sexual dimorphism, long the utopian goal of liberal feminism. Mary Harrington describes the result of the sexual revolution as a ‘collapse of human intimacy into the “marketplace”’. I highly recommend her book Feminism Against Progress for a brilliant analysis of where we are, how we got here; the role of feminism past, present, and future.
Although perhaps you intended this reply for someone else, as it seems to have no bearing whatsoever to anything I said.
As to the “sexual revolution” (feel free to call it something else if that makes you happier, dear) resulting in men feeling more free than ever to pressure women into sex (and women feeling themselves deprived of the natural framework of refusal that had served for thousands of years), yes that is certainly true.
What makes you think that an equal balance of power can exist? Men have the monopoly on force. It will eventually always come down to that basic natural fact. Every right that women enjoy is protected and enforced by men.
^^This is what social media and the pandemic have wrought, folks: alienated, hostile, involuntarily celibate men with power fantasies and a lack of empathy for women.
Feminism is glorified three-card monty. Feminism is just "Women should be equal", "women are better" and "women need special protection", depending on the reasons.
If men are outperforming women we need to gerrymander things so women are equal
If women outperform men, it's because women are better
Women need special protections because reasons.
Feminism is predicated on male lust. When men learn how to control their lust again, feminism is done for.
Feminism has exhausted all of the theoretical benefits it could have brought to society. It works in lockstep with the elites to give the elites what they want. Monetise women and pacify men.
The trans thing will bubble along because feminists support all the things that led to trans. The "TERF victory" has been way overblown.
There will always be feminist grifters like Charlotte Proudman and others.
Feminism will also continue to be whatever a woman decides she likes at any one time.
About once every ten years, they will talk about men for a bit.
Your ideas are the first iteration of feminism that I have found interesting or useful in quite a while, so if there is any future for feminism in my life it will be in the development of idea you discuss in “Feminism Against Progress” and also Louise Perry’s “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution” But no pressure LOL.
As a trauma therapist I am very conscious of MGM, haven’t heard that term, but circumcision trauma has a massive impact on male female relationships- the critical thing being that the baby boys are strongly bonded with their mothers at the time the procedure happens- resulting in the perception ( in regression therapy) that the mother is doing it with the father standing by and condoning. To those who’ve gone down that rabbit hole Universally felt as a massive on-slaught of pure evil.
so I am definitely in the camp that says the best way to support society and women is for us men to do the deep work on ourselves as fast as possible- and I don’t mean talking I mean grasping the emotional nettle in the rabbit hole.
I would add cord cutting too early to high impact trauma affecting boy- mother /women relationships - the cord must not have a pulse- takes about an hour.
The underlying assumption I read here is that our technological big corporation, big government, bureaucratic, globalist, high energy use society will continue to persist and spread with ever increasing tech and transhumanism creep. I am with the author John Michael Greer that over the next century this model of how things are done will begin to collapse and wither due to hitting resource and biosphere limits with climate change as another factor. His books to consider - The Long Descent, The Retro Future, The Eco Technic Future.
The biggest force facing feminism is the future dominance of Islam in Europe and North America. This is a matter of current known birthrates. How will the fluid principles of feminism stand up to the rigid structures is Islam and its standards of haram versus halal roles and behavior for women? How can men serve as allies in addressing this, particularly in the light of recent challenges in Europe? Is the default "political correctness" the weak link in our culture that will undermine feminist successes?
Gloria Steinem nailed it for me, in a number of writings; the single sentence that sticks, and which I will misremember and mangle, is: "anything which restricts women because of their sex also imprisons men". As an energizing principle, is anything else needed?
As a woman who walked away from feminism some thirty years ago, I have found that most women place restrictions on themselves. They also tend to discourage other women who do not share those restrictions. In a very real sense, men don't keep women down. Women do that all by themselves.
What I have seen are two generations of younger women who still play dumb and incompetent, and when it is suggested that they learn to do something such as fix a car, run a chainsaw or butcher their meat, they respond with, "I could never do that." I also know women from Iran, Iraq, Egypt, South Africa, Niger, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Puerto Rico (including a sister-in-law), China (including an aunt-by-marriage), Japan, and several European countries. As a rule, they all place restrictions on themselves too. Yes, there are exceptions but the exceptions prove the rule.
What I would give to attend Dissident Dialogues! It's just too expensive.
I'm hoping that the population collapse causes women to rethink just how vital motherhood truly is, rather than denigrating it according to current feminist fashion.
In other words, I hope that the future of feminism is that it actually celebrates women's contributions instead of moaning about what women haven't done (which isn't much).
Perhaps the foundational groundwork should be built upon what is good and positive about being a woman. What are her strengths? What is the Essence of Her. Truly. I think that, in and of itself is what is being grappled with. Not the ugly extreme protest - the unprocessed rage.
Then the reality of who we are and the compromise we have in our biological reality I.e. bearing children. Raising those children - together.
I personally love men. There's alot l admire about them and can be envious of. My personal issue is the uncontrolled sexual desire. Particularly of the vulnerable, niave. Yes that exists too. Think younger girls. Until we understand the differences between desires and how some are predatory, we feel that guys, we will never get anywhere. Let's unite ( the men ) and call out predatory behaviour of individuals. There is nothing until we understand some men are sexual predators. Sexual narcissism - entitlement and rage.....young girls and boys.
Feminism needs to concentrate on the areas where the most harm or injustice is being done to women (ie female people) - e.g. domestic abuse and sexual violence (and on a global scale, not myopically only about our back yard, eg FGM) and sex specific needs such as for pregnancy, and avoid being bogged down in minor stuff. The future of women's sports and opportunities matter too, where these were set up as an attempt to redress historic under-funding or lack of opportunity and are now threatened. But we need to recognise that there are areas where sexism serves men badly too, and that it's no good having a punitive attitude towards men, or ignoring where their needs are neglected or their problems slighted. The 'battle of the sexes' has been going on a long time, but surely most people can resolve it on an individual relationship and family level, so generosity and reasonableness could become part of society expectations, instead of us all being pitted against each other?
I agree (and have liked) a lot of previous comments. But I will just add to Izzy -yes, it would be wonderful if motherhood was valued for itself. But it would be good to see the importance of fathers and fatherhood get out there as a message to boys and young men too.
I'm of the opinion that feminism, like all sensible social prescriptions, can only work in below-Dunbar sized localist enclaves. Society, and even larger 'communities' just foster too much aggression when drawing from 'big camp' settings. Matriarchy is infinitely preferable to patriarchy but truly balanced sexual politics is probably only possible in something resembling anarchy (going by a kind of Bellamy Fitzpatrick definition)
Female liberation from male violence? Who do you think protects and enforces women's rights - with violence and force? The male monopoly on force is the only reason feminism exists.
I'm aware that the enforcement is contingent on whether men feel like protecting women or raping and murdering them. I would like to be free from this exact type of veiled threat.
Wait, I'm sorry. Did you mean that you took my comment to be a veiled threat? I'm sorry that was absolutely not my intention. Was just pointing out a very real truth - that you see as well apparently.
Of course I did. How else would you expect a woman to react to a man reminding her that the only reason VAW isn't more common than it already is is because not all men choose to perpetuate it? We do not need to be reminded of that. In response to your second question, yes, it's a wish, one that I don't think will be granted in my lifetime considering we now have to pretend we don't know what men or women are.
I have no idea. I don't expect it to ever happen unless men collectively decide that brutalizing women is no longer acceptable and actually punish men who do it, not just legally but also socially. It should NOT be normal to watch violent porn, for example, but it is. Women's attempts to make this change keep not working. I view gender ideology as the latest in a long series of feminist backlashes and this one is really powerful. All a man has to do to silence a woman now is say "Actually, I'm a woman, and in fact I'm more vulnerable than you." It is no wonder feminist minded women are turning to separatism in South Korea and it seems like those ideas are coming to America not as 4B but "boysober."
Because a contributors essay the other week/month talked about luxury beliefs…which was wonderful to read as a reminder that we are discussing feminism’s future here in the UK/USA while directly benefitting from early feminisms’ successes.
So…feminism in the USA/UK? I hope the future is a feminism that is focussed on interdependence, one that looks at women and doesn’t see the fact that we’re not men as being a problem to solve, but a resource to lean into.
It seems that a profound mistrust has set in between younger men and women. This no longer just operates at the ideological level in newspapers and books, but in everyday conversation between ordinary people. There is a "disenchantment" of the whole dynamic of heterosexual relationships. From a male perspective, I think young men hear women saying; "we're independent, we don't need you, and maybe we don't even like and respect you very much, and we prioritise our friends, but we do want sex, but only with the hot guys." I think the response of many young men to this is mixed but includes adopting a similar set of attitudes, hedonism, social disorientation and disengagement. Feminism has become a kind of sectarianism. The relation between the sexes has deteriorated into a sort of shouting war with women controlling mainstream media narrative and men sulking on the sidelines mainly on You Tube.
Within all this, there will continue to be people of both sexes with true insight and who are motivated by love, not by power. That is the future for both sexes.
Feminism has reached a point where it will never return to a monolithic concept. Therefore I see it moving in a few different directions:
1. In the academy, feminism is on its way out, replaced by gender studies and queer studies. In this environment, “feminism” is a historical movement with many internal problems (ie racism, homophobia’s etc) that doomed it.
2. Globally I am hopeful that feminism will continue to be a way to consolidate advocacy for women’s and girls safety, education and rights.
3. In the US and the UK, it seems like feminism is being appropriated now by many more conservative/faith based communities to return to a focus on women rather than “gender” (aka non binary, trans, etc) I am part of this tend, you could say, since I recently completed my doctorate on Hasidic Feminism- a model of messianic womanhood emerging from the Chabad Hasidic sect.
4. I really hope the culture wars will die down and we can return to the fundamental notion that human beings deserve to be physically and emotionally safe from abuse and given a clear moral framework upon which to base a life. This includes the value, as others have mentioned, of a solid nuclear family and clarity on biological sex differences and their repercussions.
I don't think feminism has a future. Whatever its virtuous origins (equal pay for equal work etc) it has turned into an ideological black hole: antagonistic towards men, contemptuous of women with traditional aspirations, repudiating the past, indifferent towards religion, embracing Left-leaning politics, demanding rights, rejecting duties...Such a negative and dispiriting creed cannot survive.
What IS it, or what SHOULD IT BE? I think the future of feminism is irrelevance. But it SHOULD BE... a rebirth into a theoretical perspective, as opposed to an ideological set of concepts or beliefs, that takes into account and actively engages all fields of human knowledge that can shed light on the questions that matter to feminism: what part of our behavior is socially constructed? Which social norms are most effective at transforming behaviors that are rooted in biology but that have deleterious social effects in contemporary societies, especially (but not exclusively) for women and girls? Which economic, political and social systems best serve women and girls, given that women and girls are DIFFERENT from men? How can we reconcile the rights of women and the rights of children, since children are central to most women across the world, given that most women are or have been mothers? How can we make relations between men and women better? This last question seems to be regarded as irrelevant or silly by many feminists today, but I have always thought that it was practically the whole point of feminism. Why reject "the patriarchy"? Because it generates unfair, unequal relations between men/masculinity, and women/femininity, and encourages and reproduces violence against women. So the core issue is relations between men and women, and the secondary core issue is relations between men and men and women and women (since they are all related and interrelated and affect our lives).
The future of feminism is probably more of the same: crash-bang reaction.
I would hope that, in the future, mutual hostility would die out and both sides would be able to consider their behaviors rationally and work toward a mutually beneficial agreement
I struggle to be optimistic. The next generations of women are, as revealed by Jonathan Haidt, hypnotized into a narcissistic and solipsistic perception of their place in the world. Tragically, they are being conditioned to be less likely to find fulfillment in the miracle of creating and nuturing a new life. At the same time, young men are being lured into a reality of immature self indulgence which may produce self loathing or hostility. A social upheaval may restore a domain of common sense but the price will be horrific. The elite class that actually make the choices that shape the future have so far not demonstrated a confidence inspiring competence.
The feminist movement is reviving and changing for the better. There are now 2 generations of women since the 2nd wave of the 60-70s who grew up in societies significantly changed by it. Older women need to be listened to as we have the living memory of what our mothers/grandmothers societal conditions were like (& it wasn't all totally bleak!) plus we were the first of the modern generation to have free access to birth control, education and were expected to work outside the home. When younger I thought of myself as free and liberated and did many things I have come to regret through reflection and a wider understanding of the battle of the sexes. I'm exhilarated that toward the end of my life I see a renewed and energised version of the feminist movement arising, facilitated by social media communications in a much more democratic way than in the past when too many elite and upper class women were able to dominate the movement to progress their particular values.
As an older second wave, 3rd generation steel-working woman who watched the degradation of the word “feminism” (Rush Limbaugh was a major player in vicious slings and slurs) when I first saw facebook
I created a page “feminism“ and was totally trolled. So I just left it sitting there and eventually, a few years later, facebook told me to use it or lose it. I had a lot of questions about how to define feminism I haven’t done much work there but I started to repost things that I thought were interesting
It took me a while, years, to define feminism for myself. it changed over the years as the nuances of words change. I think it is the radical notion that women are human beings. That we are “people”as in “We the People.” In the US, as in the rest of the world women are not treated as if we are human beings.
Or persons. At some point I decided that I needed to define a goal, the end result of feminist activities. And My goal is that when I’m a grandmother, I will know, every day, that each of my grandchildren goes to bed in a warm, safe house, with a clean glass of water, a full tummy, a book to read, and a hug. And I want it for every other grandmother on the face of the Earth.
So what would you say to the point that Harrington has in her book that "human beings" or "persons" are abstractions that ignore and rob women of what makes them women i.e the ability to become mothers - something not every human or person can do? Not every person or human can be a grandmother - only 51% of the population.
I fear the future is one where technology (eg parthenogenesis, artificial eombs) will 'liberate' women from men entirely and we will end up mostly different species.
That or an underground movement hiding from victorious Islam.
The future of feminism, if it continues its present course will be to continue to be vehemently anti-man, anti-masculinity and anti society. As it does so, it will also be more marginalized. Fewer and fewer women will believe that the movement speaks to them. Most women will look around at how few viable male mates that are in there midst and start asking questions about whether women are really so downtrodden as compared to men. In a world where women have every right that men do, more and more women will be wondering why feminism exists
In order to allow ourselves to fully acknowledge that need, we need to be able to trust each other. Which brings us back to feminism....😀
One of my favorite takes on the alienation of the sexes from each other was Lois Bujold's sci-fi novel Ethan of Athos, about a planet of separatist gay men who send a brave young representative out into the universe to buy eggs to replace their senescing supply, and his experience dealing with a woman he hires to help (no, they don't f*ck).
In Australia two women are proposing to job share the role of a member of parliament. In some ways this is a refreshing public statement that motherhood is important, but the expectation that the role of MP ought to be restructured to fit around it doesn't sit right with me. I think professional, liberal feminists will just be looking for more entitled ways to 'have it all'.
Maybe to wake-up? To realize that the long struggle to win equal rights for females is done. Finished. Complete. Women, at least in the West, are full to overflowing with Equal Rights; nor is anything categorically denied them,
There are no laws which bar women from entry, keep them from participation, or prevent their involvement in anything. There are no social institutions or corporate organizations which have, written into their Policies & Procedures: 'No, Women Can't Do This'. Women vote; women serve; they open bank accounts; they go to college. They participate in sports at all levels of involvement. They are free to marry, or not, as per their particular preference. They have full legal standing in every conceivable arena. What is left to win?
There is, of course, the asininity of DIE ...in which we measure equal rights by equal outcome...and find the world lacking. But that is indeed, and always has been, a fool's errand. Outcomes will always be imbalanced and demographically warped by, first & foremost, the indisputable fact of human inequality. None of us is equal, each to the other. We carry our own unequal genetic luggage. We are raised by our unequal parents, in their unequal home. We live in unequal neighborhoods; we go to unequal schools; we have unequal friends, and we learn unequal things. Is anyone surprised to find inequality is constant when parsed by demographics?
Throw in unequal interests, unequal abilities, and opportunities inevitably unequal if only as measured by chance, time & space....and we arrive here in the Real World, where unequal actors, produce unequal actions which generate unequal outcomes. That's life.
So what about Feminism and fight for Equality?
Blow the whistle. Stop the Clock. Game Over. Women won....as well they should have.
The problem Feminism faces is the same problem Buggy Whip Manufacturers once faced: the market on which they depend has vanished. Now, yes, certainly -- as with the Buggy Whip people -- they can scurry about and try to find new markets for buggy whips (helpful when chased by angry dogs....potentially useful when overseeing naughty kids) ... new markets for all of those who've made their careers being Feminist Activists struggling to do what now is done. But ultimately the only real solution to a vanished market is to understand and accept that 'Yes, Virginia....it's gone. Say hello to PostFeminism.
Of course, I suppose, those same panicked people could realign and march their regiments in their TERF uniforms to the Trans Battles...but that is not a 'feminist' problem, per se. So called TransWomen are not women and never will be women, and so therefore cannot access those few things (opportunities, sports, locker rooms, rest rooms, changing rooms, et al) which are still sex-centric. Is this, then, a feminist issue? Nah; it's a human issue; it's a reason issue; it's a reality issue. Former Feminists can certainly be a part of that fight, but it's definitely no theirs alone.
The future of Feminism lies of course in its eternal battle against The Patriarchy. In the year 2240, 12th wave feminism will finally achieve its goal of genetically engineering males out of the species, leaving females to reproduce via cloning. One would think this is a final victory, but alas: It will only mark the beginning. The Patriarchy will continue forever as internalized misogyny in those who remain. The glorious battle will forever rage on.
A recognition that ALL discussions of the differences between men and women are in reality a statement that women are inferior to men. Every person who thinks that there is a difference in nature between men and women really does believe that women are in all ways inferior to men.
I've seen a few mentions of the 4B movement out of South Korea. Reminds me a little of the Shakers, except the Shakers were men and women living in "equality". Common point : both ways lead to extinction.
I think it is necessary for any movement protecting women's sex based rights, NOT to include men (however they identify). Without this very basic definition of feminism, the whole attempt at respecting what women do, and how men and women interact... without this, everything becomes meaningless.
A world in which motherhood is valued as much as other worthwhile careers?
What other worthwhile careers?
Alleluia.
I understand the necessity for income, however I find the dignity of motherhood sits outside of notions of work and salary. Particularly as our financial systems crash around our ears and currencies devalue, motherhood retains something vital, hopeful and sacred.
I can understand the eye roll of solo mothers desperately wrangling finances because I’ve been there. The future of motherhood requires a collective re-imagining of the dignity of the human race. A whole brain (thinking McGilchrist here) recognition that we can shift if we choose to place our attention on peace not war, on collective wisdom not psychopath leaders, on positivity not negativity, on healing not criticism, on balancing agency and manoeuvring the world with collective harmony and oversight. Mothering and mothering wisdom is needed more now than ever.
"Particularly as our financial systems crash around our ears and currencies devalue,"
The Iraqi dinar is going to revalue at an astronomically high rate and those who have invested in it are going to be multi-millionaires.
Grift Theory
The perfect answer.
"Conservatives" are constantly in the media crying about the "sexless generation" and the "population decline" and yet they never talk about UBI (Universal Basic Income), or if they do it's in a disparaging way (communism!!!). Forget about valuing and paying people to be mothers. Although if they are really concerned about the "population crisis" it might have to come to that. And by that time, nobody's gonna wanna have kids.
Countries with similar policies that you describe have not seen significantly raised birth rates
Yes I know. I mentioned that in another comment. People "just aren't that into" having kids anymore.
In what sense? Paid? By who?
^When you don't understand the meaning without examples, it's a sign that you're in need of more life experience.
Was simply wondering was meant by "valued" - as in the definition being used. Asking for clarification is called being intellectually responsible. Also take issue with motherhood being thought of as a career like any other. Tends to lead to thinking of it as unpaid labor/slavery and other musings of victimhood.
Yes, you're an intellectually responsible person lacking life experience.
When you've experienced and gained appreciation for a lot more of the ways that being valued (and not valued) is expressed, you'll understand.
Wow, you're very presumptuous. You expect people to understand what you mean when you express yourself vaguely. If they request clarification, then you assume they must be lacking enough life experience to impose their views on your empty words. Fair enough 😅
Words carry, by nature, multiple meanings. And sometimes the meaning of a particular collection of words transcends the words used and lives, instead, in context and tone. To ask for clarification, examples, or further definition means only that the speaker failed -- at least at some level -- to effectively communicate the meaning intended.
A reasonable response would be to supply the examples and amplify the meaning.
To fail, again, to do that is to essentially admit that the speaker can't.
Yes, in your world of lack of life experience, where all have the same level of understanding of life (in other words, only in your head), that is undoubtedly true.
Alas, in the real world, in the experienced world, sometimes what the answer to your question is, is "Everything".
And we don't have time to explain Everything to you.
You'll just have to live it yourself, and come to your own version of understanding. As it should be.
That is funny.
I could almost think you're serious, even when it's quite obvious that your extraordinarily dry sense of humor is pushing the reader to believe you're really so completely clueless & incapable of explaining what you were 'attempting' to say.
Very funny!
But obviously, given our far greater life experience, we know exactly what you were REALLY saying. And it was hilarious!
👍🏼👍🏼
Probably by governments if populations decline enough. Also, in Islam a man is supposed to pay his wife for breast-feeding their babies. It's in the Quran and part of sharia law, though largely ignored.
Do you think that pregnancy should be a paid occupation and if it is not is it tantamount to slavery?
Should it be a paid occupation? Maybe. But it doesn't matter what I think or anyone else thinks. We are probably going to get to that point sooner than later if the people who keep crying about the "sexless generation" and "population implosion" keep up their shrill antics. There are some countries that have already tried paying people to have kids hoping it would increase birthrates but if I remember correctly, it didn't work. It seems that people "just aren't that into it" anymore. So if this turns into a "crisis" - which some people seem to think it's going to, we might see more governments, or private institutions, offering payment for people to have kids. Will it work though?
Yabbut... it is. If you value Motherhood as much or more than other careers, then it is so valued. The value you assign to it is the only value which counts. Just as your choice, re: motherhood, is the only choice that counts.
If I or anyone values it more or less than you do, so what?
It's still your choice which you make according to how you value the thing being chosen.
And if at some later point, you run across an idiot who sneers at your choice, forget 'em and move on. How they feel about how I choose to live my life is completely and utterly irrelevant.
Kid, in a society, each of us is greatly impacted by how everyone else values things.
if you don't understand how that is, you will.
You confuse economics with true value, my son. They are different things. How you value Motherhood is separate and distinct from how the value of a bag of flour is set.
Perhaps it's the use of the same word to convey different meanings which baffles you.
How I value an afternoon with my friend is different than the price set for a new car.
Give that some thought....and try again.
Probably depends on whether we will be able to defend and define women as a classification at all - partly because of the war on our words defining what the sexes are - but also because of the technological trends toward removing the maternal functions from the female body experience.
If all goes well and women can remain women - I think it’s probably time to think more in terms of effective complementarity between the sexes rather than competition.
On complementarity.....In a certain kind of feminist journalism, I keep coming across warm-hearted acknowledgements that Masculinity and Femininity are complementary polarities in any sane conception of The Good Life.. And that when things go wrong, they are often better understood as resulting from a kind of Faustian tango between the sexes than as a simple case of one sex always doing wrong by the other. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/shall-we-dance
Complementarity is a movement inside American Evangelical Christianity which boxes people into stereotypical gender roles.
I am as far away from American evangelicalism both ideologically and geographically, as possible. I can see a logical complementarity between the sexes. Where the complementarity starts and stops can be entirely negotiated within couples I would think ?
I know. That's why I'm surprised to see this term "complementarity" used by non-American non-Evangelicals. I suppose I should have used "Christian" instead but even non-Christians are using it? I hope not. Sad if it's seeped into the wider culture. Having to "negogiate" outdated stereoptyical gender roles is a red flag.
"Complementarian" in evangelical Christianity is a theological concept regarding what Scripture says about male and female roles. It has nothing to do with human rights or women's rights, etc. If you do not believe that Scripture (the Bible) is the sovereign and sufficient Word of God then complementarian likely will not mean much.
That's why I'm surprised to see it used outside of that context.
thats beautiful and I entirely agree. I have created an experimental space called C-Lab( https://theclab.substack.com/) in which I explore the notion of a cycles informed society and what that would mean.
I think there’s a phrase for that. Feminism reactionary? Reactionary feminism?
Complementarity is a movement inside American Evangelical Christianity which boxes people into stereotypical gender roles.
Well said, Mary Jane. Thank you.
Feminism was conceived to counter the dominant male culture. Now both sexes seem hopelessly lost, so we need a common redemption strategy. We'd want to acknowledge what is unique that male and female bring to the table but allow the social structure to reflect the actual physical and mental overlap. Human-ism rather than Femin-ism.
More a return to being human. In fact, the battle may be to remain human, either male or female.
Sorry, George. That’s exactly what you said. I missed your last sentence. So I agree with you.
No kid. Women didn't originally object to men being in charge of most things so much as objecting to what men did with that power, namely denying women equal rights.
--They didn't originally object to men being in charge of banks. they objected to not being able to get their own bank accounts.
--They didn't object to male-dominated professions, but to being denied the opportunity to compete with men on equal footing.
To the extent that men suffer from feminism, they have brought it on themselves.
Except that the women who developed feminism ALREADY had superior rights to most human beings. They wanted to be equal to the highest ranking men in society. They wanted to become the men they married. Except for, you know, being eligible for the draft and stuff like that. All the benefits of the highest ranking men in society, none of the obligations. That's not equal footing.
There were certainly women's rights movements that ALSO believed that legal doctrines such as coverture did more harm to women than good. They sometimes allied with the feminists on common goals. But it came from a completely different motivation and worldview. The alliance ended as soon as that particular law was changed, as such alliances always do.
You're really blaming women for wanting equal respect and consideration. Amazing. 🤦🏼 That's just harmful to women's interests, and society's interests, because our society always does better with the sexes on equal footing power-wise.
You sound exactly like the women who argued against women getting the vote. Over 100 years ago.
You are deeply attached to the idea that feminism is women wanting equal respect and consideration. It's not. It just isn't. That idea isn't found in ANY of the feminist writings from any era. I've looked. Extensively. You have yet to cite a single feminist writer who makes that claim and backs it up with specifics that neither denigrate mothers nor traditional women's work nor poor women.
When 129 women died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the feminists were nowhere to be found. It was an alliance between the labor unions and the women's rights movements that fought for changes that such a thing would never happen again.
Yes, the mothers crying over their dead daughters didn't much care about getting the vote. They cared about survival, and they evaluated (correctly) that their daughters would be just as dead with the franchise as without it.
Feminism is NOT what you think it is.
Yeah if you want to try to redefine feminism, the burden is on you to show it's warranted. I think the suffragettes' feminism meets my definition for the most part, and the parts that don't, like overt claims to "moral superiority", didn't survive the tests of time in mainstream feminist thought.
If replacing "feminism" with "women's rights" floats your boat, go for it, but in that case I'm interested in your full definition of women's rights. Don't worry, it's not to pick nits, I'm pretty sure I'd agree with whatever you came up with, and you might even convince me to shift to using your terminology and conceptualizing.
And if "women's rights" is, as I suspect, partly a rebranding to escape your male misogynist buddies' hatred of the word "feminist", you should admit that.
Sure, I'd be happy to do a side by side comparison of women's rights vs feminism. I'd do them in columns, but that's not supported by this medium.
Feminism: Has a hierarchical view of human worth. Each individual man and woman is competing for a spot on a linear measure of human worth. Worth is largely defined by a combination of achievement, independence, and conquest.
Women's rights: Views human beings as inherently valuable, regardless of sex. Rejects the concept of competing for worth.
Feminism: Views men as a threat to women. Believes that the best way to achieve equality is for women to be an equal threat to men.
Women's rights: Views men as partners to women, and has high standards for what that partnership should look like.
Feminism: Generally suspicious of male-female relationships, considering them inherently dangerous to women. Some advocate female separatism, others advocate for simply making sure men are always kept in their proper place as servants.
Women's rights: Believes that a healthy relationship between men and women is one of mutual support and sacrifice, with each bringing their unique strengths to helping each other. Rejects the idea that anyone should be a submissive servant to their spouse.
Feminism: Vengeance based. Believes that women have been oppressed since time immemorial, and the only way to make that right is oppress and control men for the foreeable future. Fantasizes about the utopia that would result if men could be simply eliminated. Celebrates women abusing men as a form of justice.
Women's rights: Love based. Believes that women and men are inherently partners, and aberrations from that norm need to be addressed as aberrations. Absolutely reject abusive dynamics, regardless of who is the abuser. Recognizes that toxic relationships can develop in which BOTH are the abuser.
Feminism: Believes that pregnancy and childbirth is a terrifying and frequently fatal event that oppresses and frequently kills women. Aspires to free women from the horrors of giving birth.
Women's rights: Reveres the female ability to bring life, and celebrates it. Acknowledges and seeks to reduce the risks associated with childbirth, but also recognizes the power and joy therein. Recognizes that there are health benefits to childbirth as well as risks.
Feminism: Believes that all differences between men and women are social constructs deliberately developed to oppress women. These differences must be destroyed by demanding femininity from men and masculinity from women. Masculinity in men is "toxic", and femininity in women is a betrayal of the sisterhood.
Women's rights: Believes that there are inherent differences between men and women and that's okay. Celebrates the balance of masculinity and femininity in both men and women, recognizing that it's different for each individual. Also recognizes that in the aggregate, healthy men tend to be more masculine and healthy women tend to be more feminine. And that's okay.
Feminism: Sees sexual dimporphism as an inherent threat to women, and a bad thing that must be conquered.
Women's rights: Sees sexual dimorphism as a physical reality, with no particular moral implications. Recognizes that certain aspects of sexual dimorphism create inherent vulnerabilities in women, and works to support social structures that protect women in these vulnerable areas. Recognizes that certain aspects of sexual dimorphism create inherent vulnerabilities in men, and works to support social structures that protect men in these vulnerable areas.
Feminism: Hedonism based. Each individual woman should pursue her own pleasure, disregarding the effect it has on anyone else, including her own children. Seeks to destroy any and all norms that might interfere with this goal, even if it has catastrophic effects on children and more vulnerable women.
Women's rights: Justice based. Seeks the best outcomes for humanity as a whole. Recognizes that prioritizing individual feelings over net functionality tends to produce a nonfunctional and miserable society. Recognizes that protections that are vital for more vulnerable women may be seen as restrictive or oppressive for healthy, single, wealthy upper class women. Accepts this tradeoff as necessary for the greater good. Constantly seeks to reassess the proper balance, recognizing that utopia will never be achieved.
END COMPARISON
I could honestly go on and on. Feminism and women's rights are occasionally allies for specific goals, but they're in outright opposition in other areas. This goes back to the very beginning.
For example, from the Declaration of Sentiments:
"He has made her, morally, an irresponsible being, as she can commit many crimes, with impunity, provided they be done in the presence of her husband."
There is a LONG history of an abusive man coercing his female partner into committing crimes with him or for him, then blaming her when the authorities come around. It's a relatively common abuse dynamic that continues to this day. Those laws that the early feminists found so oppressive were a PROTECTION for the lower class women most likely to be targeted by this particular kind of abuse. Those protections were greatly valued by actual women's rights activists, who understood the power dynamics involved. The feminists, surrounded by servants and powerful relatives, neither understood nor cared about how cancelling these laws would harm women. The women being harmed were "lesser" women, and didn't matter.
I support women's rights. I will ally with feminists on specific issues. The radfems in particular have been fantastic about raising the alarm about the transgender scam. I appreciate their work. The Seneca Falls feminists were a bunch of selfish twits, but I agree with women getting the right to vote. I'm perfectly happy to ally with virtually anyone for a particular goal.
That's how alliances work. The US and the Soviet Union allied to take down the Nazis. This didn't mean that the US was best buddies with Stalin. Defeating Nazis didn't magically turn Stalin into a nice guy. It was a temporary alliance for a specific goal.
I support anything that leads to greater flourishing of the species homo sapiens. Powerful women is a huge part of that goal. But feminism? No. It's a destructive ideology. I ally with feminists only on the occasion when they happen to be pursuing a goal that is consistent with my goals. We don't have to agree on the ideology behind it to get shit done together.
Materially, women don't need men anymore. What physical overlap is there? Dominance countered, now we're all lost as you say. Very curious what this brand of humanism looks like.
Not sure what you mean. Of course men and women still need each other. As long as we remain homo sapiens, a sexually dimorphic species, that won't change.
There are certainly people who want to "free" us from bodies through. The techno-gnostics aka transhumanists are creepy.
If you mean in order to reproduce, ok. But that's not really happening anymore so much. Women out earn men until they have children. If they have children. The future is female, haven't you heard? Which just means male without babies.
The future is non-existent if reproduction ceases. At least, there's no human future.
That precisely what I'm saying. If the future is female, the future is non-existent. We agree.
Well, we might spontaneously commence parthenogenesis before we completely go extinct, but I'd say the odds are somewhat, but not hugely against it.
Techno-gnostics? James Lindsay? Borysenko already debunked his ridiculous theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7QMt__JA2A
Briefly skimmed your source. Here's a quote from the debunking: "Imagine not understanding that the Jews created Jesus in order to control the Gentiles."
THAT'S the one with the sensible theory debunking a ridiculous theory? Alrighty then.
Taken out of context. Anyway, her point is that Lindsay and Logan are wrong. Lindsay from his "atheist" perspective and Logan from her Christian. They are wrong about what Gnostacism is, its role in "the culture wars", wrong about The Law of Attraction, Transgenderism and lots of other things. Boryasenko goes undercover in Socialist Zooms and Queer and Education Zooms. You can hear straight from their mouths what they want and what they do. It has nothing to do with a Gnostic cult in anyway. That theory is clownish.
I never had to go undercover. I was a believer. It's definitely a Gnostic cult. If you go in deep enough it gets outright explicit. I was taught for years that the Gnostics were a spiritually enlightened group of Christians who were persecuted for many things, including their reverence for women. Laughable in hindsight.
Women don't need men to sit around with other women in grass huts. But if they want roads, plumbing, buildings, bridges, big factories pumping out things like tampons and hair dryers, they might want men around.
What does "materially" mean in this context? If all men were to disappear from the earth today, the women would likely be dead in less than a year, whereas most men would live out their natural lives if the situation were reversed. There aren't enough women qualified to maintain the electrical and sewer infrastructure, nor enough women truck drivers to ensure the groceries keep coming.
I 100% percent agree! I just meant the status quo in terms of overwhelmingly being a part of the labor pool or dependent on the state.
Their natural lives would be rather short. Men get pretty self-destructive when women aren't around. That's why married men live longer.
Women certainly do need men to supply the energy (including food), remove their trash and to maintain the structures and technologies that they rely on. They just think they don't because they don't see the places where this work is being done or the people (men) who are doing it.
'Redemption' is the right word.
The feminism imagined by Mary Wollstonecraft I hope. Where men and women are both chaste and put each other and their domestic spheres first, not career and worldly gains. Men and women can only cultivate virtue in tandem.
Yes🙌🏼🙌🏼
Like all grievance/victim movements (forgive the pejorative connotations), it was needed, had its moment, and is now doing more harm than good. There may be a phenomenon here where these perspectives just keep twisting in on themselves, almost getting inbred in the process. Warped. Sharper and meaner. Cutting back against themselves, the culture they arose out of, and the culture that, initially, they sought to enter into and commingle with.
All these bright things seem to turn dark. Off the top of the head, I can't think of one that's successfully escaped this trap. Perhaps there's some baseline tendency toward entropy and dissolution. Hard to say, it's all so complicated.
I like this comment so much. It calls to my mind the inevitable corruption of whatever utopia we seek to create on earth under the idolatry of lofty ideals like freedom and equality. However shiny, when taken to extremes eventually they fall under their own weight.
Hear, hear.
This is the way with every social activism group. A movement's first order of business is to establish its own relevance by playing up the urgency and severity of whatever ills it is supposedly countering. Ironically as more real progress is made against the original aims, the more strident and extreme their positions need to become in order to keep the flame alive. The thing starts to bend into a caricature of itself.
Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies and DEI departments won't just voluntarily disband. There are real people there with a financial and social stake in maintaining the status quo. They won't go down without a fight.
100%. "...caricature of itself" is exactly right. And also the point about how these orgs become conduits for money and livelihoods. They *can't* disband. All the incentives are wrong.
Every dystopia is the direct result of someone trying to build a utopia.
Idealistic but I’d love to see a world where the strengths/values of the feminine are valued as much as those of the masculine
Sounds great. Let's start with women valuing the strengths/values of the feminine instead of being told they're shameful and/or weak for doing so. In my life, these messages have come exclusively from other women.
Boy does this ever resonate with me. I keep telling my stay at home wife that she has the most important job that anyone could have. It's when she talks with her career-driven (women) friends that she feels nagging doubts about "wasting her degree".
It’s really hard to be a smart, ambitious woman at home. These women are my primary audience as a writer (and I am one and I’m friends with many too.)… the cultural messaging is strong that strong, capable women do not do the work of caretaking or homemaking.
Shannon Hayes book "Radical Homemakers" was incredibly helpful for me. Link below to her website
http://theradicalhomemaker.net/
You were personally told "valuing the strengths of the feminine" was shameful and weak? Or were you told they were not economically valuable under Capitalism?
Both. Feminists despise femininity from an ideological perspective. Uber-capitalists don't like anything they can't commodify and sell.
So we're back to these so called "feminine strengths" not doing anything to pay a womens' bills. Great.
Sure they do. They just have to be commodified. Childbirth is paid work as long as it's a gestational carrier to manufacture a baby to order for a wealthy person. Caring for children is paid work as long as it's someone else's children. Medical work for both humans and animals disproportionately female. All the caring professions are vastly disproportionately female. Most of education is disproportionately female. Food preparation. Cleaning.
Most of the the traditional feminine arts that build on feminine strengths can absolutely be commodified. But it creates a major loss of efficiency and lower quality outcomes.
I already covered these commodified "traditional feminine arts" in another comment;
Someone else:
" The feminine work of caring is not even seen as work (if you don't work an outside job you're "not working"), and being an at-home mother, even if for a short time while your children are young, is considered very low-status and is countercultural thing to do for an educated woman.
Masculine values/qualities are things like outward achievement/action, efficiency, productivity, control, structure, logic."
Me:
--- This is due to economics. If "feminine work" was valued then we'd see some economic compensation but even "care jobs" which are paid, are paid low. The only "feminine work" that seems to get adequate pay is in the sex industry like stripping, porn, OnlyFans, escorting, prositution, etc. And even there, it is only a certain type of woman becoming very wealthy in the industry. What does that tell you?
I have never quite understood the world view that values career success above domestic success. To my mind, the role that women play as gatekeepers of reproduction and family life is THE center of power. All of this career BS only has value insofar as it provides the resources to enable that.
That isn't to belittle wage-earners. A family needs resources to thrive, just like a car needs gas to move. But the gas is meaningless without the car. The car is the gas station's entire reason for being.
🙌🏼🙌🏼
We are now living in that world. How one feels is now more important than whether or not one can think.
But can people get paid for their feelings? Value is about economics.
Are we not already seeing that, though, through an emphasis ( an over-emphasis) on openness, fluidity and feelings over boundaries, discipline and reason/rational argument?
Hopefully you're referring to a 1950's standard of regard for masculine values, because if you're referring to their regard in 2024, I'd say you're aiming way too low 💀
Who would you like them to be valued by?
Capitalism.
Can you say more?
We've already had this convo. It's probably coming down the pike that if "society" or "government" or "private industry" or "nations" or "culture" want babies to keep being produced, they are going to have to pay people to do it.
I don't think that will work.
I think some people might take the bait but by then it will be too late and most people won't want kids, paycheck or not.
I see. True.
Hi all - so the first comment on this thread is "A world in which motherhood is valued as much as other worthwhile careers." It has a lot of likes and there's no wonder why! The comment illustrates a central reality where the masculine is being culturally valued over the feminine: women thinking working outside the home is the only valid feminist choice. The feminine work of caring is not even seen as work (if you don't work an outside job you're "not working"), and being an at-home mother, even if for a short time while your children are young, is considered very low-status and is countercultural thing to do for an educated woman.
Masculine values/qualities are things like outward achievement/action, efficiency, productivity, control, structure, logic. Feminine values/qualities are being-ness, creativity, chaos, inner work, intuition, etc. (We all have both of these energies within us, by the way, to different degrees - not trying to be reductive here.) In our society there is a strong bias toward the masculine and a devaluing of the feminine. There is so much strength and power in feminine energy and qualities if we'd only acknowledge them; instead we're focused on ways of living that center the way men tend to exist in the world, not women.
I know I didn't clarify counterpoints specifically, but I'm caretaking and don't have much time. @dragonmama - this is very true. Mainstream liberal feminism, very ironically, upholds a masculine way of being as what women should aspire to, and it has been so influential on women's psyches that, in their minds, to be "womanly" in any way is to be weak and not "empowered."
" The feminine work of caring is not even seen as work (if you don't work an outside job you're "not working"), and being an at-home mother, even if for a short time while your children are young, is considered very low-status and is countercultural thing to do for an educated woman.
Masculine values/qualities are things like outward achievement/action, efficiency, productivity, control, structure, logic."
--- This is due to economics. If "feminine work" was valued then we'd see some economic compensation but even "care jobs" which are paid, are paid low. The only "feminine work" that seems to get adequate pay is in the sex industry like stripping, porn, OnlyFans, escorting, prositution, etc. And even there, it is only a certain type of woman becoming very wealthy in the industry. What does that tell you?
That we're all being rendered down for parts. This doesn't end well.
Because the number of broken families is pretty well climbing in numbers to the becoming the majority, our society has inadvertently babied the fatherless families to help them feel included.
We give the fatherless children and injured women all the rights of those with a MAN in the equation .
I can’t even bring myself to write NORMAL FAMILY for fear of being cancelled.
I am a very caring person, but I am VERY AWARE of the large group of friends without a man in their ‘family’ configuration.
Let’s help our daughters enjoy, respect, admire , appreciate men and their obvious strengths. As well, let’s teach our daughters to learn how to pay the price of admission to a challenging partnership with men…..and teach them how to compromise!
Let’s make families great again!!!!!!
"let’s teach our daughters to learn how to pay the price of admission to a challenging partnership with men"
-- Price of admission to a challenging partnership with men? What they heck does that mean?
"We give the fatherless children and injured women all the rights of those with a MAN in the equation ."
--- You want these children and women to have LESS rights?! What do you mean by "injured" women?
This is a favourite subject. My mom was the original liberated woman. With a husband (my dad) and four kids.
We need to treat all fatherless kids with care. The result is that we bend over backwards to make it seem something a woman she work towards. Whereas I believe every child REQUIRES a full set of parents, and hopefully grandparents….”it takes a village…”
I don’t know how to encourage the fatherless ones to try and build their own family in their future…the lack of male influence doesn’t help them develop the ‘right’ skills.
I don’t have an answer.
I see girls and boys are often estranged now.
The PRICE of Admission is not my quote but I like it. We need to develop tolerance and compromise. Otherwise the marriage can’t last.
Men aren’t perfect. Women aren’t perfect. The fairy tale Walt Disney and others have make us think we NEED to fall in love at first sight.
There seems to be so much wrong with marriage, parenting and confidence to accomplish a ‘simple act of nature’ ; successful partnering until death do us part.
Sorry, I am a poor writer. And wanted to keep it short when first answering the question: SO WHAT DO YOU THINK ID THE FUTURE OF FEMINISM?
I am 73, mother of 2, have one grandchild, have a husband of 50 years and am a retired nurse after 43 year’s of professional work.
Everyone I know is divorced once…twice…occasionally 3 times. Kids are in blended families.
Etc etc. Marriage is one of my favourite subjects, but not because it is easy. It is extremely hard, in my opinion and parenting is right up there in levels of difficulty.
All in my personal opinion of course!!!
"let’s teach our daughters to learn how to pay the price of admission to a challenging partnership with men"
--- What woman in the world wants a "challenging" partnership? The home and one's partner are supposed to bring peace and joy and help one face challenges, not create them.
"Marriage is one of my favourite subjects, but not because it is easy. It is extremely hard, in my opinion "
--- I'm going to assume you had one of those "challenging partnerships" that you had to "pay for". Otherwise why would your opinion be that marriage is "extremely hard"?
Sounds dismal and not something I'd want to sign my kids up for.
Idk, my two cents is if you want anything resembling a future for feminism you need a new term for it. Feminism is a wholly meaningless word to me other than being vaguely related to activism and sometimes pointed towards "vagina havers". I don't think I am alone in this, but I could be wrong. Maybe take a similar, yet failed attempt by Harris RE: atheism. Eschew the term all together as he said about labeling oneself "It is as if your opponents drew a chalk outline, and you walked over and laid down in it." or something similar if I recall. But I guess that's just me thinking about being effective in your goals, not the future of feminism... so maybe just ignore all of that :D Have fun in NY! Sorry for the bouncers at the door of the country. Should have came through mexico!
“Womanism” was a term used for a while, I think mostly by Black women. I kind of liked it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womanism#:~:text=A%20womanist%20is%20committed%20to,oppression%20without%20directly%20attacking%20men. It now seems to be used mostly in the context of theology.
But “ism” is like a verbal spike protein by which ideologies enter and infect our brain cells. As a lifelong overthinker, I think (!) we think too much and then reify our ideas—mistake them for realities, overlay them on and obscure or distort given reality.
That ain't half bad! Esp. since it would keep dudes out of it. :D No guy is going to stand up as a "Male Womanizer" in a room full of ladies I reckon. :)
It would be "womanist" not womanizer. But even then, unlike Feminism, I don't think Womanism was conceived to include men, or non-black women, women not "of color". It was created in reaction to the dominant white feminist narrative.
Women need to continue to fight for our human rights as women. Don’t give up, don’t allow men to dominate the movement, (not that they will because most men don’t care) but to just keep telling the truth. That women, (as in biological females) need their own protected spaces, away from biological men. That includes men who identify as men and men who identify as women. Because trans women are men.
'Human rights as women'....Western feminists could do with re-focussing more on the plight of women in places like Iran and Afghanistan. Women outside the protections of Western liberalism. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/life-in-the-shadows-of-metoo A lot more.
You can't be serious. The only reason you even know about the plight of women in places like Iran and Afghanistan is BECAUSE OF western feminists.
You're going to have to define what a human right is. For that matter, what a human is.
No, I already know those definitions, and hopefully you do too.
There's dissention on that point. When feminists and transhumanists say pregnancy and childbirth is "dehumanizing", they're clearly working on a different definition than I have for "human."
Specify. You may be surprised who disagrees with you. I certainly have been!
Why don't you start with a definition of transhumanism? What limits of being human do transhumanists seek to transcend?
All of the limits, including having a form at all. It's a bizarre melding of modern technology and ancient gnostic religious teachings. I use the term techno-gnostics interchangeably. It's also a deeply creepy master race theology in which they claim the term "human" for themselves and demote the rest of us to mere animals. (That is standards with gnosticism too.) Read Martine Rothblatt's manifesto on "freedom of form" for details.
Transhumanists also tend to be deeply delusional about what technologies are "just five years away", and fail to understand the limitations of real achievements.
Artificial wombs are a good example. Artificial wombs are a form of ICU for super-preemies. They are likely to improve outcomes for babies born at 20-30 weeks. They might even let us save babies born at 15-20 weeks.
But they're not a magic box where you can drop in an embryo and a baby pops out in 9 months. Artificial wombs only have potential to help fully formed fetuses who need to finish maturation.
A world wherein couples put the needs of children before the wants of themselves. Respect for mothering and compensation from the government and/or spouse's employer. A return to the respect for and healing between men and women. Greater respect for women at home and men providing (ouch! that one was hard to write!). An economy that allows one-imcome families to live well.
"Respect for mothering and compensation from the government and/or spouse's employer. "
Not in Capitalist America.
Moder.3rd wave/whatever you want toc all it, feminism is destroying society by
A) Lying to women about what will make them happy, convincing them to act/be like men if they want a happy life and that is the entirely worn advice to give them. We have record number of women on RX for mental issues.
B) It's convinced every woman she's a 9/10 no matter what she looks like or is like and that she deserves no less in a man. This has unbalanced the dating world. This is turn is destroying the family which a society is built upon
C) Worst of all it has produced a voting segment that despite all that had taken place, liberal feminist women are the only voting segment still leaning into the Democrat Left.
Feminism today is harmful, not helpful. That doesn't mean all women who consider them feminist's are like this but that those with power/influence who are feminist women are spreading hate and harm. Few like you see there are issues that need addressing. There's no legal access that men have that women don't. If anything you could argue that in society today women have access where men do not. It takes 2 to make a baby and both are stuck with the outcome whatever it may be but only the woman gets to make the call. It's a well known fact that teh family courts give the women preferential treatment.
The Modern Feminist/MeToo movement has produced a society where it's liberal women wanting more illegals coming inn, illegals who then attack the women and local men have been that that if you try to help you will either be arrested by the cops or the person you are trying to save you may accuse you of sexual harassment so they abstain.
Liberal women have created the society they are now miserable with/in and men are opting out choosing to seek brides over seas. It is NOT looking like the right future feminism promised will come to pass for many women. My 2 daughters were home schooled and free of feminist or woke indoctrination so they will have an EASY time finding a good husband and happiness in family.
Feminism is the idea that women deserve equal consideration and respect. Period.
You're confusing a whole lotta other things with feminism there, bud.
Just like the lefties blame all the bad things that are done with guns on the guns themselves, you're blaming all the bad things that are done by people who call themselves feminists, on feminism.
You say "But if they weren't infected with feminism they wouldn't do those stupid things".
1) That's only partly true, and
2) The anti-gun people say the same thing "If they didn't have those guns they wouldn't have done those horrible things".
Feminism has brought some excellent improvements to the lives of women & society, just like gun rights have for legal gun owners & society.
We need feminism to help protect women from those who do not mean them well, just like we need gun rights to help protect us from those who don't mean us well.
We meet again, Hazel-Rah! How much of the early feminist writers have you actually read? Their writings don't have much to say about consideration or respect. Or they have very odd definitions of those words. Many of them are openly scornful of any woman who disagrees with them. Very few of them have equal consideration or respect for dissenting opinions.
Most feminists still in denial continue to proclaim its about equality and yet never give any real examples; always "I feel" or the like. They know it's about equity, the forced equal outcome regardless of effort/input. These pro-collectivist types use human envy, an easy to manipulate emotion, into supporting collectivist governance like communism & socialism b/c they foolishly believe it can work. Men frankly made society to comfortable, Feminism can only exist in a society without any real threats' or struggles.
"Feminism can only exist in a society without any real threats' or struggles."
Feminism came about because of threats to and struggles of women so of course where you find (post) Feminism, there is going to be less of those threats and struggles.
Mostly it's about some seriously inaccurate ideas regarding history and physical reality! Sometimes there's the equity piece., but often it's equity to a fantasy construct.
Kid, you don't know what an actual feminist is.
The dupes and cherry-picked fools that your fave male influencers exploit are not it.
And again you're lumping feminism together with all the other things you've been taught to rant about. That's just dumb regardless of your sex.
You still haven't given me a single name of a feminist writer/theorist you admire. I double-dog dare you to find one!
Congrats on still ignoring the reasons why feminism exists to begin with - sexism and misogyny deprivations of rights and the many, many men and women who have and do promote(d) them, and the role that misogyny has played in the development of feminist thought and activism.
And still you are trying to use cherry-picked words of individual feminists to represent the idea that women deserve equal consideration and respect.
Be a brave person now - if you think women don't deserve equal consideration and respect, say so, instead of trying to discredit the idea indirectly through discrediting the actions and words of people who promote it.
...and?
You're saying 2A enthusiasts aren't scornful of those who tell them they're overreacting?
Imagine how they'd be if they were as deprived of their gun rights as women were of their rights in the times of the early feminists...
I think both of them get a bad rap. People pick out the worst of the separatist man-haters and hold them up as examples of all feminists just like liberals think all those who value 2A are Wayne LaPierre.
Admit it, you are a secret feminist by my definition 😁
Just like my few remaining lib friends would disown me for refusing to pretend 2A doesn't mean what it says. 🙄
Hazel-rah, please explain
"Just like my few remaining lib friends would disown me for refusing to pretend 2A doesn't mean what it says. "
Your definition is uselessly vague. Equal to WHAT, precisely? What is "consideration"? What is "respect"?
There are plenty of men and women that I have very little respect for, and feel no obligation to be particularly considerate towards. To be perfectly blunt, some people are assholes and will take advantage of any respect or consideration offered them. So, I don't. It's called "boundaries."
I believe that every human being has inherent worth that comes with being of the species homo sapiens. It is not earned and cannot be lost. It's also not on a hierarchy. It's a binary yes-no thing.
I believe that specific individuals can be more or less accomplished in particular areas, and they have earned my respect.
There are people who are genuinely impaired (temporarily or permanently) and I am duly considerate towards them. I am considerate of the vulnerabilities of the very young, the very old, and the limitations of specific disabilities. Beyond that, consideration is earned through a mutual relationship of trust.
Equal to men, of course.
The definition is broad because it's intended to apply broadly. Consideration and respect apply to every context in which the sexes interact or influence each other. Which is nearly everything.
You're talking about individual qualities. I don't disagree with that, but the idea of equal respect is that we don't treat someone as less than just because of their sex, completely aside from their individual qualities.
How about you go check in with any homeless man on the street and ask him how much consideration and respect he gets daily. Men do NOT get consideration and respect unless they have massive amounts of money and power. If you instantly turned male tomorrow, the general consideration and respect you would receive would likely go DOWN.
There are exceptions in certain fields. In tech, men are granted a baseline assumption of competence that is higher than women. But the reverse is true in other fields. Men in any caring profession are treated as incompetent and possibly predatory until they demonstrate otherwise.
No confusion on or conflation needed here. Feminism today is NOT about equality as there is no equality left to obtain and as proof in your owl rebuttal yo could not provide a single example. Their is however still equity, forcing equal outcomes desoutes individual performances.
By biologicals reality a society lead by mostly women will lead us straight down path of totalitarianisms b/c women on average place protection/secuirty above freedom/liberty and males in average are the reverse.
The phases of a woman's life are maiden, matron, crone. Matriarchies are rule by matrons and crones. They work fine.
Men make fine leaders too.
Boys, however, tend to be poor leaders. Same with females eternally stuck in the "maiden" stage of development.
There are no successful matriarchies in history. I'd say none period but because we can't really know all of the worlds history only that which has been documented it could be in accurate to so no matriarchies but clearly no successful ones because we have documentation even form 1k+ years before the year zero so if they were successful they were REALLY good with hiding it. Thus no matriarchies in history of historical significance.
I'd never argue boys or girls or even young adults on avg are good leaders because they lack the wisdom in years for what a good leader needs. Females on average are poor/bad leaders because they will choose safety/security over freedom/liberty thus eventually leading a society to totalitarianism assuming it's not conquered by a neighbor who doesn't do such foolish things like have so many leaders who are women.
Male/Female are 2 halves a whole that is greater then the sum of it's individual parts That can't work when the 2 are more teh same then not. Women's preference of safety/security makes them the better choice for child rearing. Not b/c a man wouldn't protect the child but that a man would likely unknowingly do something placing the child at risk. Likewise males are better leaders because without the willingness to take risks and place liberty/freedom so highly a society can't advance and we have historical examples, nations/societies that effectively didn't advance until external interference like with the Brits conquering SOuth Africa.
Leadership also requires high degrees if disagreeableness, something men on avg are high in but women on avg are low in. Both sexes are susceptible to the desire to be accepted by the larger group b/c humans are social creatures but between the 2 sexes a woman will more quickly lie if it means acceptance by the group than a man would; on avg. There are always exceptions to anything but we don't make decisions/choices based on the outliers.
There have been some great female leaders I would have voted for like Margaret Thatcher but she is too few and far between to just blindly say there must be 50/50 representation of men/women within governance.
Hmmm. I suspect that we are using different definitions of matriarchies. Probably different definitions of patriarchies too. Almost definitely different definitions of leadership.
Care to offer me your definitions?
"No equality left to obtain" 😂
You really DO live in your parents' basement don't you. 🤡
I see you didn't cite even 1 example, not just 1. Is it b/c of some text limit in Substack replies or is it possibly something else like "There is no example to gove"?
I would add D) It's convinced women that men are only interested in sex and that all they need to bring into a relationship is between their legs.
Part of that comes from feminism teaching young women that men and women and the same when their not. Both seek similar/common interests like kids and faith but feminism has said no it's everything and now with the trans gendern movement it's caused that lie of feminism to blow up in the feminist face yet they press on like as if proclaiming men and women as being the same didn't help create this problem, with men in women's sports . It also convinced then that b/c they as women can get sex so easily if they wanted that it means men must be the same so women wrongly believe that most men are as engaged in sex as the women even more often b/c women are still more reserved then men. The feminist don't realize that it's a small percent of men that all the women are chasing and having sex with. Value comes that which is not easy to come by and for women that's a man that meets all their requirements and they believe for men it's women that do the same and the 2 have very different values. A woman having sex with many male partners is devaluing because sex is easy for women. If a man can have sex with many women its because he's got that something most women want so it make's him movaluable. The same thing goes 2 entirely different ways depending on the sex. The online dating apps have only worsened the problem but the bulk of it is with feminism teaching women unhealthy ideas/beliefs about male/female relationships. Dark days are coming too b/c no matter how much the feminist have been able to force so far they will never be able to force a man to marry them so either the feminists before they get to old will realize this valuable lesson and change before it's too late or they will be with millions of other bitter/angry/alone 40+ something women who either waited to long to admit biological reality or is forever in denial.
Thank you, another key one i missed.
"It's convinced every woman she's a 9/10 no matter what she looks like or is like and that she deserves no less in a man."
--- Which country are you in !?! Here in the States everywhere you turn are average to below average looking couples. You're too old to swallow this internet Manosphere 1-10 garbage wherein they envision 4 women with 9 men. Get offline and into the real world.
"This has unbalanced the dating world."
--- There is no "imbalance" in the dating world.
" This in turn is destroying the family which a society is built upon"
--- Absolutely not. If people aren't having kids now it's because they don't want to or can't afford it. Not because there's some "looks imbalance" or rather what you're wasting your aging years reading, "sexual marketplace value imbalance" in the dating world.
"It takes 2 to make a baby and both are stuck with the outcome "
--- Only ONE of them has to risk her healthy, life and possibly livelihood to carry to term.
"only the woman gets to make the call."
--- Naturally, because of the above facts. Women in good relationships take the father's view into account.
" It's a well known fact that teh family courts give the women preferential treatment."
--- In the USA men for the most DO NOT WANT full custody of their children. Generally they do not even want 50/50. They prefer to be the "fun weekend parent" who gets the kids every other weekend and one night for dinner per week.
Wow, some indoctrination simply can't be undone.
1) Feminisms has convinced every women (who follows it and so my bad for not being clearer about that) . But yeah if we ignore stats from dating aps, a dominant form of how young people meet today, and the numerous videos of far at best avg looking women claiming they're a 10 then yeah you could say this is not true. Is that how you do it?
2) If you think there is no imbalance in ethd ating world then you are in denial or buried your head in the sand. I can easily find feminist who disagree with everything I say but will agree with that so #TryAgain on that one
3) The majority of abortions are elective based that means no grape and no risk to injury to anyone so yet another #TryAgain. . FYI - Men are the only sex that takes risks during war even though society benefit from a win (or at least from not loosing) but yeah let's pretend that's also not real.
4) This BS about men not wanting to have access to the child is feminist lies. There are more than a few documented examples of the courts giving care to a mother who no jury of peers would ifn fit but they do it anyway. Why? Because in a divorce with a man who has a job and a woman who is a former/current drug addict or has some other issues but most importantly no job, won't be able to pay the child support and by Federal Law, specifically Title IV-D, the state gets a percentage of every $ it collects from child support thus it has a monetary incentive to prioritize custody to the parent least best qualified to keep the kids.
#TryAgain
At least you didn't try to label me as some looser incel and often used tactic. You must have read or known that I have a 20+ marriage (no divorces) and kids with a stay at home wife/mother so kind of hard to call that man a loser incel ey>?
"My 2 daughters were home schooled and free of feminist or woke indoctrination so they will have an EASY time finding a good husband and happiness in family."
--- How old are they? Are they dating? If so, what is their experience so far in finding good husbands? What demographic is their dating pool from with regards to ethnicity, religion, education and profession?
"We have record number of women on RX for mental issues."
--- And men and children. You are attributing all this only to Feminism? These people also have Capitalism in common.
Long term Western Civ will reach an end point, the contradictions and conflicts have no real answers. Similar to other civilizations the west will be overun by an enemy and we will assume their predominant culture. If this happens then terms like feminism or any -ism become less relevant. I imagine something closer to Blade Runner than parliaments and legislatures. Even so religion will survive. In the near future, however, Mary Harrington will write our way forward, I hope.
It’s already happening. The enemy is within. Mary Harrington won’t help. Avoid digital ID and CBDCs at all costs. Be wary of the coming economic and financial collapse manufactured to introduce these totalitarian measures. Be very sceptical of the next societal shutdown proposed by the corrupt people who organise society.
I think uk 2nd wavers had it pretty right. We should have equal opportunity for jobs education etc but let's acknowledge that those pesky hormones in the foetal brain and afterwards DO affect personality its not all socialisation. I like liberation feminism where the things women tend to be good at are valued AND rewarded as much as the things men tend to be good at.........
And a lot of the human endowment is arbitrarily divided up between “masculine” and “feminine.” The real differences cluster around reproduction and aggression. But then you get bullshit like “reason is masculine (even in a woman), emotion is feminine (even in a man).” Or “the spirit is masculine, the soul is feminine.” “Achievement is masculine, nurture is feminine.” (I blame Carl Jung for a lot of this.) To me, the real suffering inflicted by gender stereotypes comes from this. We are still one species, and we are also 8 billion unique individuals. The real differences between men and women are a portion of this, but the hard retros want to stuff ALL human experience back inside that stylized binary.
To the extent that is has ever been true, it included the understanding that masculine and feminine mix in each individual. That's the Tao symbol, the yin yang.
100%
I hope the future of feminism is joy in female embodiment.
The future of feminism is the same as its origins: fringe deranged ranting by seriously ill women, often with schizophrenia.
The future of the women's rights movement is dependent on how much women's rights can be separated from feminism. If the women's rights movement can do that, it has a bright future as one aspect of the larger pro-human movement.
Feminism is inextricably bound to transhumanism. It despises human sexual dimorphism, always has.
You left out "ugly lesbians" 😂 Come on, your stereotyping is slipping.
Dang you've drank the manly koolaid.
So many women fell for trans gaslighting because of liberal sexism, not feminism. The women who kept their feminist viewpoint saw right through it, and have been fighting it longer than anyone. Check out some of their websites:
https://reduxx.info
https://womensliberationfront.org
https://www.womenarehuman.com
https://www.shewon.org
https://unherd.com
https://www.womensdeclaration.com
https://lgbausa.org
https://usa.kpssinfo.org
https://4thwavenow.com
https://terfisaslur.com
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights
The liberal women weakened by the post-feminist misogynist backlash are the ones who got sucked in by narcissist men.
The stronger women are, the better off everyone is.
You're proving her claim that feminism is the "fringe deranged ranting by seriously ill women, often with schizophrenia." Maybe tone it down a bit?
You're failing to change the subject away from facts you dislike. Whomp.
D-mam is a serious women-hater. She is decidedly on the fringe in that regard.
Go ahead, check out some of the links. You'll be surprised to find that you agree with most of what they're saying.
Not trying to change the subject, sugar britches. Just offering a little advice.
Sure hun. What do you think of those gender-critical feminists? Pretty smart and sensible huh?
I agree that strong women make for a strong society. So do strong men. Strong men and strong women have always sought each other out as life partners.
There are a large number of people who confuse "strong" with "abusive", however. Abusive women seek out weak men. Abusive men seek out weak women. Always have.
Teaching people to be genuinely, truly strong tends to reduce abuse. But first people have to learn how to tell the difference.
Yes, and liberals are currently intent on teaching people to be weak 🙄
As usual, your claimed anti-feminist views screen a deeply feminist recognition of the importance of mutual respect between the sexes.
I do agree that feminists are taking the aggressive-victimhood shtick too far, that they too often substitute passive complaints for empowered action.
There's are worldviews in which all human beings have inherent worth, simply by virtue of being human. It's not earned and cannot be lost. In Christian religious circles, this is sometimes called Imago Dei: all humans are made in the image of God.
There are worldviews in which human worth is on a hierarchy, with some humans having more worth than others. These worldviews vary on how that worth is calculated, but all of them believe that human worth is inherently hierarchical.
I suspect that you and I both hold "universal human worth" worldviews.
Here's the hard thing about worldviews: it's really hard to imagine that anyone else could hold a fundamentally different worldview. We tend to assume that we all start from the same basic grasp on reality and morality. There's a vague sense that it's just a natural part of normal human development, just like all babies instinctively learn to smile. But...that's not true. Worldviews are drastically different.
The women's rights movement has generally drawn from the "universal human worth" set of worldviews. In those worldviews, strength is not a zero sum game, it's an improvement for everyone.
Feminism, libertarianism, and all of the postmodernist worldviews are based on hierarchical worldviews. Most of them include some variation on the theme that encouraging people to compete for human worth will help "the best" rise to the top.
The reason why the women's rights movement campaigned against women chained to coal carts is that to treat a human being like a donkey is a violation of human dignity.
The reason why feminism never gave a crap about that is because they didn't see those women as having any human worth to begin with. It was a movement of mostly upper class, mostly white women who believed themselves ito be superior. It started when a bunch of white women were OUTRAGED that men from "inferior" races might be permitted the vote.
That's why "universal surrogacy" is a demand of feminism today. According to feminist teachings, birth is degrading. It's fine to degrade already worthless women, but the idea that high-class women do something so...animalistic...as giving birth is just icky. It's why feminism today rarely concerns itself with women dying in third world countries, instead focusing on getting women preferential treatment for high income jobs in the US. It's why "women's health care" means abortion, not prenatal care.
The goal of feminism is making sure that in the game of conquest, at least half of the conquerors are female. It doesn't care about the conquered. Never has.
That's feminism. Ironically, the infamous Joe Tate and similar racing misogynists have the exact same worldview: the relationships between all humans is inherently one of conquest. They're just bickering over who gets to do the conquering.
Brilliantly put, except for the part where you're still talking about "feminism" as if it were the One-Eyed One-Horned Flying Purple People Eater.
Someday you'll be able to separate the idea from the actions of its other adherents that you dislike.
In the meantime, Dylan Roof, Timothy McVeigh and every other nutcase like them will continue to be the fault of Christianity, and all the racist idiots blaming every negative action by white people on Whiteness will be 100% correct, by your own silly rules.
Nope. But it is one thread of a worldview that leads to very bad places. Perhaps the most forgivable of those threads, but it still bears serious responsibility for the situation we are in today, which is fairly disastrous for women.
I'm not going to separate the beliefs of the founders and leadership from a particular ideology. They define it. The fact that plenty of very nice people (Including myself, incidentally) have been peripheral followers doesn't change the problens in the core ideology. That would be roughly equivalent to claiming that the teachings of Jesus are irrelevant to Christianity. Or the teachings of Charles Galton is irrelevant to eugenics. Founders and core voices matter.
Whiteness is not an ideology. That's a red herring.
I note that Aiden/Audrey Hale isn't on your list of Very Scary People. Why not?
The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, written by Shulamith Firestone. Still revered in many feminist circles.
Firestone's condition was officially diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia, following which she was repeatedly hospitalized at Beth Israel Medical Center. Dr. Margaret Fraser, her psychiatrist, stated that she suffered from a particularly severe form of Capgras delusion, which caused her to believe that the people in her life "were hiding behind masks of faces."[3]---source is Wikipedia page on Shulamith Firestone
Here's a bit of her book, from the chapter titled Down with Childhood:
"In the Middle Ages, there was no such thing as childhood. The medieval view of children was profoundly different from ours. It was not only that it was not "childcentered," it literally was not conscious of children as distinct from adults...Children different socially from adults only in their economic dependence. They were used as another transient servant class, with the difference that because all adults began in this class, it was not seen as degrading (an equivalent would be the indentured servant of American history). All children were literally servants...
In sum, if members of the working class an minority groups "act like children", it is because children of every class are lower class, just as women have always been. The rise of the modern nuclear family, with its adjunct "childhood," tightened the noose around the already economically dependent group by extending and reinforcing what had been only a brief dependence, by the usual means: the development of a special ideology, of a special indigenous life style, language, dress, mannerisms, etc. And with the increase and exaggeration of children's dependence, women's bondage to motherhood was also extended to its limits. Women and children were now in the same lousy boat. their oppressions began to reinforce one another....By now people have forgotten what history has proven: that "raising" a child is tanamount to retarding his development. The best way to raise a child is to LAY OFF."
End quotation
Sure. Right. According to Firestone, children should be abandoned at age 7 or so, "liberated" to a life of full time work and full sexual autonomy. That's her beautiful utopian endstate.
To which I say, NO THANKS!
These are the ravings of a highly intelligent and very literate woman who is becoming increasingly unmoored from reality. When this happens, it's fairly common for the ill individual to latch onto religious or political ideas in a dramatic way. The stereotypical version is the man screaming that Jesus is telling him that the dogs are actually aliens, but it takes more subtle forms too.
I've seen this in real life a few times. Mental illness doesn't make people stupid. I've witnessed personally a woman who gave a very convincing and credible argument that police had broken into her home, interrupted her in housecleaning, and dragged her off to the mental hospital because they were offended by her BLM posters. And she believed it. But it wasn't true. Her family called the police because she was spinning around the house hysterically cleaning everything at 2am. This included starting things in the oven and forgetting about them, and lighting candles to cleanse the space and forgetting about them. She had already started one fire, and there had been a few other near misses. The children in the house were frightened. She was ill and needed to be in the hospital. But it sure didn't sound that way if your only source of information was her description of the event!
Incidentally, Firestone was neither lesbian nor particularly unattractive as far as I can tell.
So what's your point?
The "feminists" didn't fight for the women in mines who were literally chained to coal carts. That was the women's rights movement. They're not equivalent, though the "feminist" movement likes to use the women's rights movement as a disguise.
You're really trying to wave one cherry-picked crazy person around as a stand-in for all of Feminism and Feminists.
Shall we do the same for Christian or White writers?
I don't think you'd like that.
Give it a rest.
This is feminism. The real thing. Go back to the source, the big names studied with breathless reverence in women's studies (now gender studies). Feminism, like all gnostic parasitical ideologies, likes to disguise itself as something else. Something good and noble. That's what I was taught and what I believed, for years.
Read the actual writings and... it's horrible. All of it. It has nothing to do with women's rights or equality or respect.
Yeah, you are understandably driven to the opposite extreme right now.
When you regain your equilibrium, and are able to apply your critical analysis to everything, I hope (and believe) that you'll see that your current position is as silly as your previous one.
The wiser we get, the more centrist we get in times of extreme views.
Valuing human beings is not a particularly extremist position. Wanting the survival of my own species isn't particularly extremist either. You're strawmanning.
My claim is simply that feminism is NOT what you think it is. There are some fine movements that actually value women, female human beings, in all our glory. Feminism isn't one of them.
Isn't speaking about "human rights" transhumanist? I completely agree with you on the future of feminism. But what rights are there left for women to achieve? Unless you're you mean this in a neoconservative way, like going to places like Afghanistan - again - to liberate women. Why would the future of women's rights be anything other than spreading the word?
Yes, the transhumanists have hijacked the term "human rights". Which is why I didn't use the term.
The biggest right for women is not a right to be achieved, but rather to be restored: motherhood. It shouldn't be a privilege only for wealthy women.
How matriarchal of you 😀
1) Enlightenment Feminism continues to destroy the true feminine by making all things feMANine while making the truly masculine a liability: socially, economically, legally.
OR
2) Men stand up and restore what is feminine. This will require a religious reawakening that returns to feminine images and conduct by females and towards female by men.
You've never been with a woman have you.
Wowser, you really have incredible insight. I will tell my wife of 20 years and three daughters of your skill.
I bet you don't tell them you use the word "feMANine" 😂 Or tell them that it's men that are going to "restore femininity" 🤡
The old feminism made women masculine. Future feminism needs to reclaim for women their feminine nature and help society understand how it is not the same, yet equal in power and value, as the masculine.
You're confusing actual feminism with the way it was characterized by the sexist backlash.
Having the right to your own bank account without a man's permission isn't "masculine". It's equal respect. You probably didn't even know that was an issue that didn't get corrected until 1974, did you.
Read some women's history, you'll be amazed.
I think we are all clever enough to know that if feminism has only and ever been about “equal rights” we wouldn’t be having this conversation and Mary Harrington would have had no need to write a book.
Do you really think that if women had as much power and influence as men that things like porn and surrogacy would still be legal.
That doctors and medical societies would still be acting like cowboys.
You are confusing liberalism with feminism. And you've been listening too much to angry reactionary men most of whom are just fine with porn and surrogacy but rarely miss an opportunity to sh*t on women.
High-tech is very male, very liberal, and very, very sexist and misogynist.
Transhumanism is being driven by men.
Why are you carrying on about who I’m watching or listening to? Is it your condescending suggestion that a woman whose viewpoint differs from your own must not be capable of thinking for herself but could only be listening to the “wrong opinions” - and that those wrong opinions must come from angry men who hate women? That’s quite a misogynistic viewpoint on your part. What utter nonsense. Men this and men that, because pAtRIaRchY. If only women were in charge, everything would be right in the world. It’s precisely this brand of screed that gives feminism a bad name.
Did you have an actual argument in there amidst all that hand-waving?
Can you actually refute anything I've said without grossly mis-stating it first?
Face it, trying to blame transhumanism on feminism is ridiculous.
You are smarter than the idiot resentful men who are pushing that BS.
Transhumanism is so obviously just the latest male high-tech "hold my beer" notion. If you know men, and I'm sure you do, you know this.
So bluster and hand-wave all you want, you know it's true.
We are natural allies, believe it or not. Because we both know male BS when we see it. The people who know and love men know their weaknesses, and dumb reckless ideas are one of them.
Like I said, things go better when the sexes work together and both contribute their respective wisdom, and listen to each other.
Full on explicit transhumanism is overwhelmingly being pushed by men. True.
The ideology that made it acceptable was pushed by a broad swath of theorists, including feminists. The fundamental assertion of feminism is that BEING FEMALE is inherently dehumanizing. That's...screwed up.
Surrogacy was a DEMAND of some feminists. Still is.
"Some feminists" 🙄
Somewhere, over the rainbow 🎶
Way up high🎶
There's a land where I'm not-constantly-reminding-Dragonmama-not-to lump-her-least-favorite-feminists-in-with-feminism, and we can let it lie🎶
How about you list a single feminist theory writer who you like/admire, and have actually read?
Core feminist theorists still taught as Truth in most women's studies courses. If they won't renounce them from feminism, I won't either.
Porn and surrogacy are not thriving industries because men are just so powerful. They are the result of what we are left with when we try to subvert or “flatten” the persistent reality of sexual dimorphism, long the utopian goal of liberal feminism. Mary Harrington describes the result of the sexual revolution as a ‘collapse of human intimacy into the “marketplace”’. I highly recommend her book Feminism Against Progress for a brilliant analysis of where we are, how we got here; the role of feminism past, present, and future.
^^Yawn, more idiots conflating feminism with everything women who happen to describe themselves as feminists say and do that you don't like.
The sexual revolution was a media narrative covering a bunch of different trends, some feminist, and some not. Like the Free Press debaters said.
More than anything it was about men feeling free to pressure women into sex more strongly than ever without feeling guilty about it.
If you are tired, take a nap. If you think Harrington is an idiot, why are you here?
Nvm, I don’t really care. Cheers
Although perhaps you intended this reply for someone else, as it seems to have no bearing whatsoever to anything I said.
As to the “sexual revolution” (feel free to call it something else if that makes you happier, dear) resulting in men feeling more free than ever to pressure women into sex (and women feeling themselves deprived of the natural framework of refusal that had served for thousands of years), yes that is certainly true.
What makes you think that an equal balance of power can exist? Men have the monopoly on force. It will eventually always come down to that basic natural fact. Every right that women enjoy is protected and enforced by men.
^^This is what social media and the pandemic have wrought, folks: alienated, hostile, involuntarily celibate men with power fantasies and a lack of empathy for women.
How is the ability to protect women any of what you just described? That's not an argument.
Feminism is glorified three-card monty. Feminism is just "Women should be equal", "women are better" and "women need special protection", depending on the reasons.
If men are outperforming women we need to gerrymander things so women are equal
If women outperform men, it's because women are better
Women need special protections because reasons.
Feminism is predicated on male lust. When men learn how to control their lust again, feminism is done for.
Feminism has exhausted all of the theoretical benefits it could have brought to society. It works in lockstep with the elites to give the elites what they want. Monetise women and pacify men.
The trans thing will bubble along because feminists support all the things that led to trans. The "TERF victory" has been way overblown.
There will always be feminist grifters like Charlotte Proudman and others.
Feminism will also continue to be whatever a woman decides she likes at any one time.
About once every ten years, they will talk about men for a bit.
Your ideas are the first iteration of feminism that I have found interesting or useful in quite a while, so if there is any future for feminism in my life it will be in the development of idea you discuss in “Feminism Against Progress” and also Louise Perry’s “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution” But no pressure LOL.
As a trauma therapist I am very conscious of MGM, haven’t heard that term, but circumcision trauma has a massive impact on male female relationships- the critical thing being that the baby boys are strongly bonded with their mothers at the time the procedure happens- resulting in the perception ( in regression therapy) that the mother is doing it with the father standing by and condoning. To those who’ve gone down that rabbit hole Universally felt as a massive on-slaught of pure evil.
so I am definitely in the camp that says the best way to support society and women is for us men to do the deep work on ourselves as fast as possible- and I don’t mean talking I mean grasping the emotional nettle in the rabbit hole.
I would add cord cutting too early to high impact trauma affecting boy- mother /women relationships - the cord must not have a pulse- takes about an hour.
Continued conflation of feminism with the individual personalities and actions of feminists, no doubt.
The underlying assumption I read here is that our technological big corporation, big government, bureaucratic, globalist, high energy use society will continue to persist and spread with ever increasing tech and transhumanism creep. I am with the author John Michael Greer that over the next century this model of how things are done will begin to collapse and wither due to hitting resource and biosphere limits with climate change as another factor. His books to consider - The Long Descent, The Retro Future, The Eco Technic Future.
Love topic. Just wrote about it other day. https://open.substack.com/pub/johannaneuman/p/feminists-abandon-womens-rights-why?r=2ruik&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
The biggest force facing feminism is the future dominance of Islam in Europe and North America. This is a matter of current known birthrates. How will the fluid principles of feminism stand up to the rigid structures is Islam and its standards of haram versus halal roles and behavior for women? How can men serve as allies in addressing this, particularly in the light of recent challenges in Europe? Is the default "political correctness" the weak link in our culture that will undermine feminist successes?
Gloria Steinem nailed it for me, in a number of writings; the single sentence that sticks, and which I will misremember and mangle, is: "anything which restricts women because of their sex also imprisons men". As an energizing principle, is anything else needed?
What about standards that are lowered for women because of their sex? What does that do to men?
As a woman who walked away from feminism some thirty years ago, I have found that most women place restrictions on themselves. They also tend to discourage other women who do not share those restrictions. In a very real sense, men don't keep women down. Women do that all by themselves.
Depends on the country and culture. And often the religion.
Perhaps, but that hasn't been my experience.
How many countries, cultures and religions have you experienced? Also, what are the alternative economies you speak of?
What I have seen are two generations of younger women who still play dumb and incompetent, and when it is suggested that they learn to do something such as fix a car, run a chainsaw or butcher their meat, they respond with, "I could never do that." I also know women from Iran, Iraq, Egypt, South Africa, Niger, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Puerto Rico (including a sister-in-law), China (including an aunt-by-marriage), Japan, and several European countries. As a rule, they all place restrictions on themselves too. Yes, there are exceptions but the exceptions prove the rule.
A lot of the countries you mention are religious. I see a lot of Catholic and Islamic patriarchy in them.
Only problem being, that naturally leads to awkward conclusions regarding reproduction....
What I would give to attend Dissident Dialogues! It's just too expensive.
I'm hoping that the population collapse causes women to rethink just how vital motherhood truly is, rather than denigrating it according to current feminist fashion.
In other words, I hope that the future of feminism is that it actually celebrates women's contributions instead of moaning about what women haven't done (which isn't much).
Perhaps the foundational groundwork should be built upon what is good and positive about being a woman. What are her strengths? What is the Essence of Her. Truly. I think that, in and of itself is what is being grappled with. Not the ugly extreme protest - the unprocessed rage.
Then the reality of who we are and the compromise we have in our biological reality I.e. bearing children. Raising those children - together.
I personally love men. There's alot l admire about them and can be envious of. My personal issue is the uncontrolled sexual desire. Particularly of the vulnerable, niave. Yes that exists too. Think younger girls. Until we understand the differences between desires and how some are predatory, we feel that guys, we will never get anywhere. Let's unite ( the men ) and call out predatory behaviour of individuals. There is nothing until we understand some men are sexual predators. Sexual narcissism - entitlement and rage.....young girls and boys.
When sex and violence cohere it carries forth.
Seems to me that some women are also sexual predators. They just use different methods.
You are right too. Particularly right know. It's best if we all define and not broad-sweep.
Stop trying to live up to Professor Higgins’ Why can’t a woman be more like a man?
Caring more about women in places like Iran and Afghanistan.
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/life-in-the-shadows-of-metoo
A lot more.
Feminism needs to concentrate on the areas where the most harm or injustice is being done to women (ie female people) - e.g. domestic abuse and sexual violence (and on a global scale, not myopically only about our back yard, eg FGM) and sex specific needs such as for pregnancy, and avoid being bogged down in minor stuff. The future of women's sports and opportunities matter too, where these were set up as an attempt to redress historic under-funding or lack of opportunity and are now threatened. But we need to recognise that there are areas where sexism serves men badly too, and that it's no good having a punitive attitude towards men, or ignoring where their needs are neglected or their problems slighted. The 'battle of the sexes' has been going on a long time, but surely most people can resolve it on an individual relationship and family level, so generosity and reasonableness could become part of society expectations, instead of us all being pitted against each other?
I agree (and have liked) a lot of previous comments. But I will just add to Izzy -yes, it would be wonderful if motherhood was valued for itself. But it would be good to see the importance of fathers and fatherhood get out there as a message to boys and young men too.
I'm of the opinion that feminism, like all sensible social prescriptions, can only work in below-Dunbar sized localist enclaves. Society, and even larger 'communities' just foster too much aggression when drawing from 'big camp' settings. Matriarchy is infinitely preferable to patriarchy but truly balanced sexual politics is probably only possible in something resembling anarchy (going by a kind of Bellamy Fitzpatrick definition)
If you mean female liberation from male violence (which is how I think of "feminism") I don't think we have one :/
Female liberation from male violence? Who do you think protects and enforces women's rights - with violence and force? The male monopoly on force is the only reason feminism exists.
I'm aware that the enforcement is contingent on whether men feel like protecting women or raping and murdering them. I would like to be free from this exact type of veiled threat.
Wait, I'm sorry. Did you mean that you took my comment to be a veiled threat? I'm sorry that was absolutely not my intention. Was just pointing out a very real truth - that you see as well apparently.
Of course I did. How else would you expect a woman to react to a man reminding her that the only reason VAW isn't more common than it already is is because not all men choose to perpetuate it? We do not need to be reminded of that. In response to your second question, yes, it's a wish, one that I don't think will be granted in my lifetime considering we now have to pretend we don't know what men or women are.
I see. How might it be granted in the future do you think?
I have no idea. I don't expect it to ever happen unless men collectively decide that brutalizing women is no longer acceptable and actually punish men who do it, not just legally but also socially. It should NOT be normal to watch violent porn, for example, but it is. Women's attempts to make this change keep not working. I view gender ideology as the latest in a long series of feminist backlashes and this one is really powerful. All a man has to do to silence a woman now is say "Actually, I'm a woman, and in fact I'm more vulnerable than you." It is no wonder feminist minded women are turning to separatism in South Korea and it seems like those ideas are coming to America not as 4B but "boysober."
But how? Or is this just a wish?
Which feminism and where? 😅
Because a contributors essay the other week/month talked about luxury beliefs…which was wonderful to read as a reminder that we are discussing feminism’s future here in the UK/USA while directly benefitting from early feminisms’ successes.
So…feminism in the USA/UK? I hope the future is a feminism that is focussed on interdependence, one that looks at women and doesn’t see the fact that we’re not men as being a problem to solve, but a resource to lean into.
Yes. That's just it. That strikes me as a sort of healthy, reality-based perspective.
Well said
The resource as a more easily manipulatable voting block/employees has been well known since Eddy Bernays.
Yes
It seems that a profound mistrust has set in between younger men and women. This no longer just operates at the ideological level in newspapers and books, but in everyday conversation between ordinary people. There is a "disenchantment" of the whole dynamic of heterosexual relationships. From a male perspective, I think young men hear women saying; "we're independent, we don't need you, and maybe we don't even like and respect you very much, and we prioritise our friends, but we do want sex, but only with the hot guys." I think the response of many young men to this is mixed but includes adopting a similar set of attitudes, hedonism, social disorientation and disengagement. Feminism has become a kind of sectarianism. The relation between the sexes has deteriorated into a sort of shouting war with women controlling mainstream media narrative and men sulking on the sidelines mainly on You Tube.
Within all this, there will continue to be people of both sexes with true insight and who are motivated by love, not by power. That is the future for both sexes.
Feminism has reached a point where it will never return to a monolithic concept. Therefore I see it moving in a few different directions:
1. In the academy, feminism is on its way out, replaced by gender studies and queer studies. In this environment, “feminism” is a historical movement with many internal problems (ie racism, homophobia’s etc) that doomed it.
2. Globally I am hopeful that feminism will continue to be a way to consolidate advocacy for women’s and girls safety, education and rights.
3. In the US and the UK, it seems like feminism is being appropriated now by many more conservative/faith based communities to return to a focus on women rather than “gender” (aka non binary, trans, etc) I am part of this tend, you could say, since I recently completed my doctorate on Hasidic Feminism- a model of messianic womanhood emerging from the Chabad Hasidic sect.
4. I really hope the culture wars will die down and we can return to the fundamental notion that human beings deserve to be physically and emotionally safe from abuse and given a clear moral framework upon which to base a life. This includes the value, as others have mentioned, of a solid nuclear family and clarity on biological sex differences and their repercussions.
I don't think feminism has a future. Whatever its virtuous origins (equal pay for equal work etc) it has turned into an ideological black hole: antagonistic towards men, contemptuous of women with traditional aspirations, repudiating the past, indifferent towards religion, embracing Left-leaning politics, demanding rights, rejecting duties...Such a negative and dispiriting creed cannot survive.
What IS it, or what SHOULD IT BE? I think the future of feminism is irrelevance. But it SHOULD BE... a rebirth into a theoretical perspective, as opposed to an ideological set of concepts or beliefs, that takes into account and actively engages all fields of human knowledge that can shed light on the questions that matter to feminism: what part of our behavior is socially constructed? Which social norms are most effective at transforming behaviors that are rooted in biology but that have deleterious social effects in contemporary societies, especially (but not exclusively) for women and girls? Which economic, political and social systems best serve women and girls, given that women and girls are DIFFERENT from men? How can we reconcile the rights of women and the rights of children, since children are central to most women across the world, given that most women are or have been mothers? How can we make relations between men and women better? This last question seems to be regarded as irrelevant or silly by many feminists today, but I have always thought that it was practically the whole point of feminism. Why reject "the patriarchy"? Because it generates unfair, unequal relations between men/masculinity, and women/femininity, and encourages and reproduces violence against women. So the core issue is relations between men and women, and the secondary core issue is relations between men and men and women and women (since they are all related and interrelated and affect our lives).
Is or Should Be?
The future of feminism is probably more of the same: crash-bang reaction.
I would hope that, in the future, mutual hostility would die out and both sides would be able to consider their behaviors rationally and work toward a mutually beneficial agreement
I struggle to be optimistic. The next generations of women are, as revealed by Jonathan Haidt, hypnotized into a narcissistic and solipsistic perception of their place in the world. Tragically, they are being conditioned to be less likely to find fulfillment in the miracle of creating and nuturing a new life. At the same time, young men are being lured into a reality of immature self indulgence which may produce self loathing or hostility. A social upheaval may restore a domain of common sense but the price will be horrific. The elite class that actually make the choices that shape the future have so far not demonstrated a confidence inspiring competence.
The feminist movement is reviving and changing for the better. There are now 2 generations of women since the 2nd wave of the 60-70s who grew up in societies significantly changed by it. Older women need to be listened to as we have the living memory of what our mothers/grandmothers societal conditions were like (& it wasn't all totally bleak!) plus we were the first of the modern generation to have free access to birth control, education and were expected to work outside the home. When younger I thought of myself as free and liberated and did many things I have come to regret through reflection and a wider understanding of the battle of the sexes. I'm exhilarated that toward the end of my life I see a renewed and energised version of the feminist movement arising, facilitated by social media communications in a much more democratic way than in the past when too many elite and upper class women were able to dominate the movement to progress their particular values.
As an older second wave, 3rd generation steel-working woman who watched the degradation of the word “feminism” (Rush Limbaugh was a major player in vicious slings and slurs) when I first saw facebook
I created a page “feminism“ and was totally trolled. So I just left it sitting there and eventually, a few years later, facebook told me to use it or lose it. I had a lot of questions about how to define feminism I haven’t done much work there but I started to repost things that I thought were interesting
It took me a while, years, to define feminism for myself. it changed over the years as the nuances of words change. I think it is the radical notion that women are human beings. That we are “people”as in “We the People.” In the US, as in the rest of the world women are not treated as if we are human beings.
Or persons. At some point I decided that I needed to define a goal, the end result of feminist activities. And My goal is that when I’m a grandmother, I will know, every day, that each of my grandchildren goes to bed in a warm, safe house, with a clean glass of water, a full tummy, a book to read, and a hug. And I want it for every other grandmother on the face of the Earth.
So what would you say to the point that Harrington has in her book that "human beings" or "persons" are abstractions that ignore and rob women of what makes them women i.e the ability to become mothers - something not every human or person can do? Not every person or human can be a grandmother - only 51% of the population.
I fear the future is one where technology (eg parthenogenesis, artificial eombs) will 'liberate' women from men entirely and we will end up mostly different species.
That or an underground movement hiding from victorious Islam.
The future of feminism, if it continues its present course will be to continue to be vehemently anti-man, anti-masculinity and anti society. As it does so, it will also be more marginalized. Fewer and fewer women will believe that the movement speaks to them. Most women will look around at how few viable male mates that are in there midst and start asking questions about whether women are really so downtrodden as compared to men. In a world where women have every right that men do, more and more women will be wondering why feminism exists
Feminism is not all its cracked up to be, is it a crime now to say that I want a man around?
Not wanting a man around =/= feminism.
Not necessarily needing one, but having the right to choose to have one or not, THAT's feminism.
Glad we could clarify that.
Humans need other humans. Men and women need each other.
I agree that feminism includes the illusion of the rugged individual. Much like Russeau's natural state of man, which was utter nonsense.
Yes.
In order to allow ourselves to fully acknowledge that need, we need to be able to trust each other. Which brings us back to feminism....😀
One of my favorite takes on the alienation of the sexes from each other was Lois Bujold's sci-fi novel Ethan of Athos, about a planet of separatist gay men who send a brave young representative out into the universe to buy eggs to replace their senescing supply, and his experience dealing with a woman he hires to help (no, they don't f*ck).
Can you give me a citation of ANY feminist writer who encourages trust between the sexes?
That's like asking for an example of a 2A enthusiast advocating trust of the gun-control lobby.
Feminism exists because of thousands of years of men tending to treat women like sh*t because they are women.
The relationship between the sexes is still healing, I would say. And I DO think it's healing, as more men get accustomed to women's rights.
Bluestocking Tradwife. See Anne Locke as a pre Elizabethan example
In Australia two women are proposing to job share the role of a member of parliament. In some ways this is a refreshing public statement that motherhood is important, but the expectation that the role of MP ought to be restructured to fit around it doesn't sit right with me. I think professional, liberal feminists will just be looking for more entitled ways to 'have it all'.
The future of feminism?
Maybe to wake-up? To realize that the long struggle to win equal rights for females is done. Finished. Complete. Women, at least in the West, are full to overflowing with Equal Rights; nor is anything categorically denied them,
There are no laws which bar women from entry, keep them from participation, or prevent their involvement in anything. There are no social institutions or corporate organizations which have, written into their Policies & Procedures: 'No, Women Can't Do This'. Women vote; women serve; they open bank accounts; they go to college. They participate in sports at all levels of involvement. They are free to marry, or not, as per their particular preference. They have full legal standing in every conceivable arena. What is left to win?
There is, of course, the asininity of DIE ...in which we measure equal rights by equal outcome...and find the world lacking. But that is indeed, and always has been, a fool's errand. Outcomes will always be imbalanced and demographically warped by, first & foremost, the indisputable fact of human inequality. None of us is equal, each to the other. We carry our own unequal genetic luggage. We are raised by our unequal parents, in their unequal home. We live in unequal neighborhoods; we go to unequal schools; we have unequal friends, and we learn unequal things. Is anyone surprised to find inequality is constant when parsed by demographics?
Throw in unequal interests, unequal abilities, and opportunities inevitably unequal if only as measured by chance, time & space....and we arrive here in the Real World, where unequal actors, produce unequal actions which generate unequal outcomes. That's life.
So what about Feminism and fight for Equality?
Blow the whistle. Stop the Clock. Game Over. Women won....as well they should have.
The problem Feminism faces is the same problem Buggy Whip Manufacturers once faced: the market on which they depend has vanished. Now, yes, certainly -- as with the Buggy Whip people -- they can scurry about and try to find new markets for buggy whips (helpful when chased by angry dogs....potentially useful when overseeing naughty kids) ... new markets for all of those who've made their careers being Feminist Activists struggling to do what now is done. But ultimately the only real solution to a vanished market is to understand and accept that 'Yes, Virginia....it's gone. Say hello to PostFeminism.
Of course, I suppose, those same panicked people could realign and march their regiments in their TERF uniforms to the Trans Battles...but that is not a 'feminist' problem, per se. So called TransWomen are not women and never will be women, and so therefore cannot access those few things (opportunities, sports, locker rooms, rest rooms, changing rooms, et al) which are still sex-centric. Is this, then, a feminist issue? Nah; it's a human issue; it's a reason issue; it's a reality issue. Former Feminists can certainly be a part of that fight, but it's definitely no theirs alone.
The future of Feminism lies of course in its eternal battle against The Patriarchy. In the year 2240, 12th wave feminism will finally achieve its goal of genetically engineering males out of the species, leaving females to reproduce via cloning. One would think this is a final victory, but alas: It will only mark the beginning. The Patriarchy will continue forever as internalized misogyny in those who remain. The glorious battle will forever rage on.
A recognition that ALL discussions of the differences between men and women are in reality a statement that women are inferior to men. Every person who thinks that there is a difference in nature between men and women really does believe that women are in all ways inferior to men.
I've seen a few mentions of the 4B movement out of South Korea. Reminds me a little of the Shakers, except the Shakers were men and women living in "equality". Common point : both ways lead to extinction.
I think it is necessary for any movement protecting women's sex based rights, NOT to include men (however they identify). Without this very basic definition of feminism, the whole attempt at respecting what women do, and how men and women interact... without this, everything becomes meaningless.