Notes for a talk at ICMI with the following title: Feminism: Not “progressive”. Not “egalitarian”. Not “liberal”. Not “left-wing”.
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Feminism is not “progressive”: It’s regressive; it is based on misandry, sexist discrimination, hate & bias; it suppresses science (esp. on domestic violence, on female violence and on criminology in general); it is conspiracist; it asserts the existence of a non-existent entity “Patriarchy”; it is ultra-conservative, in its treating women as helpless infants. Infantilism about women is conservative, not progressive.
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Feminism is not “egalitarian”: It demands, and achieves, preferential treatment for a privileged group (women). By definition, this is anti-egalitarian.
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Feminism is not “liberal”: To the contrary, it is socially conservative—women are infants, without agency; it is illiberal & authoritarian; it demands increasing state power; it uses the police and institutional power as a tool of social control; it is moralistic & Puritan. More or less by definition, these are central principle of state-enforced illiberalism, social illiberalism and social conservatism.
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Feminism is not “left-wing”: It has no interest in economic fairness (esp. those at the bottom of society); it is openly anti-working-class. Marxism and socialism are, by definition, left-wing because their primary concern is with economic exploitation, wage slavery, alienation of the worker, co-erced theft of their labour, and so on. Feminism is, in no way, “left-wing”. Feminism is a form of Identity Politics. This, in general, is an anti-left-wing position. Furthermore, it is a form of Identity Politics closely aligned with the State, policing, punishment and incarceration (so-called carceral feminism). Again, these are not “left-wing”. They have been traditionally right-wing positions for centuries.
The ICMI20 talk is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQf1JDa28Y&list=PLOXfnai0-o0I8BtOpmjbn_3FGYBHiV64S
The concept of patriarchy refers to a social system in which men hold primary power and women are marginalized. While the degree and manifestation of patriarchy may vary across cultures and societies, if you examine a list of presidents, CEOs, top academics, and billionaires it’s difficult to conclude women are given equal treatment-unless you genuinely believe women are inferior, and so have achieved less.
Ugh, new forum, same old story. And I just don’t have the patience of go through yet another rabbit whole with yet another pseudo-academic online feminist.
I’ve done it enough that I’ve given up hope on breaking through all that brainwashing. I reply to you, but not for you. This reply is for anyone else reading this who still has the capability of independent thought.
“men hold primary power”: There’s multiple interpretation of that phrase, and feminists leverage this to both claim that patriarchy is everywhere and imply that it creates inequality in favor of men. Once you disambiguate the phrase, you quickly find out that both are rarely true at the same time.
Specifically:
A) “men hold primary power” means that men as a class wield the power of how society function. They, as a class, make the rules. And they do so only understanding their own needs and desires and as a result, they rule to the benefit of men at the expense of women.
The opposite interpretation is:
B) The positions of authority are held by men, but they do not wield this authority on their own behalf, they wield it on behalf of stakeholders where one the most important of which is women. As a result the authorities create a society that primarily oppresses men to the benefit of women.
So feminists like GravyMan like to go around claiming that we live in a patriarchy by mentioning male billionaires, top politicians etc… And then usually they imply that this means that there is inequality that favors men and oppresses women. They usually only imply it because this gives them wiggle room to wiggle out of the claim. Here he didn’t straight out claim a direct link of inequality he just said “it’s difficult to conclude [the opposite]”, but that’s a difficult one to wiggle out of.
So yes, obviously, the prevalence of men in positions of power implies that we live in some kind of patriarchy for some definition of patriarchy. But the question is: which definition is the one that applies to our society?
And if you look at the rates of completed suicide, the rates of homelessness, the rates of homicide victims and more recently post secondary education. Then contrast this with social efforts to help victims of violence, suicide risks, education opportunities that are gendered for the benefit of women. It becomes quite clear that we’re far closer to definition B) than we are to definition A).
Furthermore, people like me, who are concerned with the general trend of callousness towards men and accompanying misleading ideology that takes away empathy and aid resources from those men, we don’t like the term “Patriarchy”. We see how it is misused to imply things that are not true about the way society function. And we see how it’s definition is so malleable and routinely exploited to the detriment of men. So we try to condemn its use wherever we see it.
While I agree with OPs three other points. I don’t generally like to spend much time on them. I think ideas are more important than labels.
And at the end of the day there is just one core concept that can unravel all of the misandry found within feminism. And I can summarize it in a simple question:
What happened to your empathy and compassion for men?
Ugh, new forum, same old story.
Whenever you have new people in the audience, you have people unfamiliar with the foundations, the history, and the progress. That’s just life. If you want to attract people to your way of thinking and grow the movement, you are going to have to find a way to welcome newcomers and bring them up to speed, not turn them away.
Unless you are content to just beaver away on your research, revelling in all the progress you are making and making pronouncements from on high, you will have to test your theories in the real world. That means engaging with critics, those with other theories, especially incompatible theories, and being open to learning new things, even things that might force you to change your mind.
Most importantly, you have to acknowledge that not every person who disagrees with you or questions your thesis is a bad actor. There are plenty of people who just want to learn and grow and addressing what they see as weak arguments both guides them on their journey and strengthens any arguments that withstand the test.
You are correct.
Especially in this case I probably judged GravyMan prematurely. He’s using detailed definitions and explanations which I usually attribute to “Academic types” who have years of in depth experience in the topic and can’t possibly be completely blind to the double standards present within feminism. But looking back, his statements are more like feministm 101 type statements, so it’s actually believable that he just doesn’t have any in depth understanding of what he’s talking about.
So I definitely should have taken a far more charitable approach.
I’m not sure what to say beyond that I feel this kind of response to criticism deserves more than a mere upvote. My expectation was to be ignored or to see pushback, because that seems to be one of the more common forms of “discussion” these days.
Thanks for showing me that my own preconceptions could stand a few adjustments. :)
