What's wrong with this?
From all ostensible indications, feminism is wonderful thing. An ideology whose very presence indicates the advancement of the human species and equality for all.
I'm all for this 'feminism'.
My mother is a top class pharmacist and most of my aunts are Managers and Directors in the Banking Industry. None of them would be where they are, using their brains to support themselves and their families without the ground breaking work of Mary Woolstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and the ever radical Susan Brownell Anthony, etc. Add to that distinguished list the Marquis de Condorcet, Mr Mott (Lucretia Mott's husband), John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant and so on. These men were feminists too.
I grew up in an environment in the advent of feminism. It was a fact that I got the most competition in academics from a girl, and the women in my family are all assertive and intelligent women. All these women and all the confident and strong women out there in the world are feminists, so defined because they do not fear going out to face the world and carving a place for themselves in it.
But amazingly only a few American women in the 1990s classify themselves as feminists.
Has the movement fallen into disrepute?
No, because almost a 100% of people, male and female, think that women 'must' and should have rights equal to that of men.
Then why is the term 'feminist' so repulsive?
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It is said that at the heart of every movement there is always a vanguard party or philosophy that by it's prominence, is representative of its views, and it is that vanguard party that society looks to, to see what the movement represents and stands for.
The vanguard party thus has to be the loudest, most attention grabbing section of the movement. It does not by default mean the most popular or largest section of the movement.
The vanguard party is thus not selected by the movement, it selects itself. The vanguard party, in the public eye, then becomes the movement, its ideals become the movement's ideals, it therefore represents the movement in whatever it does.The movement's image changes only when the vanguard party changes or when there is a change of vanguard parties within the movement.
What is feminism's 'vanguard party'?
In my studies of this, it seems that there are three major ideologies within feminism:
Liberal Feminism, which simply means equal rights and responsibilities for all persons, irregardless of sex/gender as supported by Stanton, Mott and Anthony. Most American women, while most say they are not feminists, strongly advocate this.
Socialist Feminism was popular in the sixties but it has declined since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is basically the same as Liberal Feminism except it is closely tied politically and culturally with Marxism. Lastly comes
Radical Feminism, which as of now is the vanguard party of Feminism. It has the least support and the most opposition among all of them, but it is the loudest and most active. It and its ideologies, varied though they may be, stand virtually unchallenged by the other two (for shame) and thus it is assumed to represent the feminist movement's attitudes, to define the movement and all it stands for.
My interpretation of Radical Feminists has led me to believe that Radical Feminism is a psychological disorder where the female of the human species believes the species evolved incorrectly and that the inherent weakness of her gender is a fluke of nature.
I see merit in Donna Laframboise's self-description of "dissident feminists", which makes it clear which movement currently has the political, economic and social power. However, even this is unsatisfactory in defining RadFem philosophy and dogma, since feminism has built into its name the notion that it is concerned with women's issues. The RadFem is truly less interested in women's issues than she is in vilifying males.
The RadFem blames her GENDERS shortcomings and unhappiness on this deviant evolution and tries to manipulate the natural order of things to suit her - to the direct detriment of all others. RadFems are so narcissistic that they cannot see anything but their immediate actions.
The destructive consequences of their actions are not even remotely contemplated or anticipated - even when it effects them directly. The recent execution by lethal injection of Karla Faye Tucker in the state of Texas is such an example, the RadFems have made such a stink about gender equality that the governor of the state of Texas was left with no alternative but to break a 150 year old tradition.
Another recent example is that of Mary Kay LeTourneau, a former grade-school teacher who was convicted of having sex with a 13-year-old male former student. She was recently arrested for violating the orders of the court by again seeing the child and was subsequently ordered to serve out the remainder of her sentence of 8 years for rape.
The RadFems did not see this, but in this case alone, they FORCED the courts to deal with the issue of RAPE BY A WOMAN. While it is now true that these sorts of cases are few and far between, the fact is that the RadFem agenda has opened the door for other women to be sentenced and treated in the traditional MALE punishment model.
Even scarier, these Radical feminists are winning their propaganda war. Like all propaganda wars, the core of their appeal is based on a thinly veiled pack of lies and semantical manipulations. That and lies, damned lies, and statistics too.
Now to make a clear distinction between these 'vanguard feminists' and true feminists, I would refer to them as RadFems. Because of their powerful position in the movement, any and all feminists are taken to be RadFems.
The RadFems define Modern feminism as "that social movement which has as its goal rights without responsibilities for women, and responsibilities without rights for men, all under the guise of gender equality."
They run the Domestic Violence Programs, make up a large percentage of national women's organizations and run the Women's Studies departments in Universities. Thus the public perception of a feminist is really the public perception of a RadFem.
A feminist is assumed to be:
"a woman who hates men, the patriarchy, and all things male
(and/or)
who prefers her career to her children or for that matter ANY children (abortion by any other name is the destruction of children)
(and/or)
who is anti-family, anti-male, anti-traditional morality
(and/or)
who is a lesbian
(and/or)
who is an atheist or who practices wicca witchcraft
(and/or)
who consistently confuse "assertiveness" with "aggression" (the opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference, but the RadFem does not understand this - they only know how to hate)".
What causes these perceptions?
The RadFems themselves, by their (loud) words and deeds. RadFems have reduced feminism in the public eye from a progressive social movement to something resembling a whining hate camp filled with ugly, fat, over educated, boorish and boring, humorless, androids. Their gender confusion alone relegates them to the near psychotics of history.
Their main figures, Marilyn French, Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon, Robin Morgan, Kate Millett, Susan Faludi, Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland and N.O.W., etc are well known for their hate filled diatribes against men. They are misandrists in every sense of the word. Most of them are lesbians as well, which, due to the reverence in which they are held by RadFems confirms but does not necessarily imply the above stereotype. They are also almost universally atheist or devotees of religious philosophies that support witch craft of satanistic theology.
And since they are the representatives of feminism, such an obviously good and progressive social movement, it is not possible to attack their views without being accused of being against women's rights, whether you be male or female, even if you are well known within the movement.
This has frighteningly put them in the very powerful position of being able to dictate their agendas without allowing the opposition to present their views. If indeed opposition dared speak out, they are vilified by the RadFems, who because they exist in the name of feminism can claim a higher moral ground (political correctness).
The targets or the chosen 'bogey man' of the RadFems are men as a whole, and heterosexual men in particular. This same 'them and us' tactic is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, 'them' being the Jews and 'us' being the Germans. As one writer said after reading Susan Brownmiller's 'Against Our Will':
"I've read Mein Kampf and in my mind it's a toss up between them." All you need do to 'Against Our Will' is to substitute the word woman for German and man for Jew and the two books will basically say the same thing, broadcasting their hate to one and all.
The most dangerous aspect of this new feminism is how it continues to demonize men in every way one can possibly think of and the fact that they do it without concern for the people they are defaming as individuals and the effect of their hate filled propaganda on society.
RadFems continuously and religiously spout facts about how men as a whole oppress women. In the work place, in the home, in everything under the sun.The fact is that this is simply not true. Consider these facts:
- Women control 86% of all personal wealth in America.
- 55% of all University graduates are women.
- Women cast the majority of the votes in America (54%).
- They win over 90% of custody disputes.
- 94% of work-related deaths are suffered by men.
- Women are the victims of 35% of violent crimes.
- The remaining 65% are men.
- 75% of murder victims are men.
- 85% of suicide victims are men.
- 24 out of the 25 worst jobs are exclusively male.
- 66% of health care is spent on women, discounting pregnancy related care.
If men are supposed to be ruling the world in some system of misogynous patriarchy then how come we let the 'terrible tragedy' of above happen?
Why did the all male government of years back give women the right to vote?
Why did the men of those times allow women the choice to go out and work if they so wished?
Why did we extend rights once only reserved for men to women?
Is it all part of some cunning plan?
RadFems like Susan Faludi would have you think it is. A thorough examination of the facts would show that the foundations of the RadFems agenda are lies. The RadFems think that the whole world - including the majority of women - are fools.
Here are a few historical dates that in their entirety make the existence of a patriarchal oppressive state a complete fallacy:
- Mary Lyon founded the 1st woman's college in US - Mt. Holyoke College in 1837.
- Antoinette Brown Blackwell was the 1st formally educated woman minister of the Congregationalist Church in 1853.
- Mary Walker was the 1st (and only) woman to receive the US Medal of Honor in 1866. She was a Civil War surgeon.
- Victoria Woodhall was the 1st woman to run for President of the US in 1872.
- Susan Salter was elected the 1st woman US mayor of Argonia, KS in 1887.
- Alice Wells was the 1st policewoman in the US in 1910.
- Jeannette Rankin was the 1st woman elected to US congress in 1916 from Montana. Only legislator to vote against both WW I and WW II.
- Ever hear of prohibition? The 18th Amendment? THE FEMINISTS DID THAT ONE in 1919 to protect "women and children" from drunken men.
- Nellie Taylor Ross was the 1st elected female state governor (of Wyoming) - 1925.
- Ever hear of "illegal" drugs and "controlled" substances? THE FEMINISTS DID THAT ONE in 1937. The entire war on drugs which is crippling our nation TODAY can be traced to racist and sexist ideals fostered by early feminists to protect "women and children" from stoned men. The movie "Reefer Madness" was all about the loosening of female moral virtue with a weed.
The fact is that we, as a society evolved. We took a major leap forward the day men realized that women were our partners, different yet equal, despite our deep seated and well-meaning cultural dogmas. The truth is that men 'and women' in the past honestly believed women were not suited for life outside the domestic sphere. Of course, these same beliefs also condoned slavery. Tradition and everything else dictated what they did. And tradition would have been incomplete without the role of everyone within the society being specified. This didn't mean that the men hated the women, or consciously sat down and said or though,
"Who shall we oppress now?
How about women?"
They simply didn't know any better. And to be perfectly honest, women also took part in the creations of those traditions. In many ancient Western societies, women, despite their limited role in the external domains of the community were held in elevated positions in society, thus the codes of chivalry and gallantry that governed men's behavior towards women.
In Victorian England, woman were considered the moral guardians of society. A protective paternalistic attitude towards women was the norm, from which came the famous "Women and children first!" call. The resistance the first feminists encountered was typical of how members of a society (men and women in this case) would resist change, should it seem threatening to the way of life they were used to. Consider the Luddites, for example.
To look at it objectively, one would see that pre-feminist traditions were based on the simple logical division of labor, severely limited though they were, not oppression. To actually have some RadFem coming up to tell me that I should feel guilty because a few centuries or even decades ago a man was politically and culturally superior to a woman in society is ludicrous. No doubt it was wrong, and there are still problems that women face today (not necessarily caused by men), but we have progressed since then and it's time we solved these problems (and men's problems) together, as partners and equals, just like the founding mothers and fathers of feminism wished.
But RadFems don't like that idea. RadFems insist that man's oppression of women is the governing principle of human societal life. Men are intrinsically bad, women are good. Men are oppressors and the cause of all evil, women are only their helpless victims. They see everything through this simple convoluted lens. This misandrous attitude pervades their thinking, their writings, their speeches and their demands. These notions are seen throughout RadFem 'scholarship'.
The following obviously misandrous quotes are from the leading icons of RadFems, from their mouths and their writings. And every RadFem believes these statements as if they were the gospel.
"One can know everything and still be unable to accept the fact that sex and murder are fused in the male consciousness, so that the one without the imminent possibly of the other is unthinkable and impossible," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 21.
"The fact is that the process of killing - both rape and battery are steps in that process- is the prime sexual act for men in reality and/or in imagination," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 22.
"The newest variations on this distressingly ancient theme center on hormones and DNA: men are biologically aggressive; their fetal brains were awash in androgen; their DNA, in order to perpetuate itself, hurls them into murder and rape," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 114.
"All men benefit from rape, because all men benefit from the fact that women are not free in this society; that women cower; that women are afraid; that women cannot assert the rights that we have, limited as those rights are, because of the ubiquitous presence of rape," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 142.
"One of the reasons that women are kept in a state of economic degradation- because that's what it is for most women- is because that is the best way to keep women sexually available," --Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 145.
"In everything men make, they hollow out a central place for death, let its rancid smell contaminate every dimension of whatever still survives. Men especially love murder. In art they celebrate it, and in life they commit it. They embrace murder as if life without it would be devoid of passion meaning, and action, as if murder were solace, still their sobs as they mourn the emptiness and alienation of their lives," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 214.
"Sex as desired by the class that dominates women is held by that class to be elemental, urgent, necessary, even if or even though it appears to require the repudiation of any claim women might have to full human standing. In the subordination of women, inequality itself is sexualized made into the experience of sexual pleasure, essential to sexual desire," -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone, p. 265.
In fucking, as in reproduction, sex and economics are inextricably joined. In male-supremacist cultures, women are believed to embody carnality; women are sex. A man wants what a woman has--sex. He can steal it [prostitution], lease it over the long term marriage [marriage in the United States], or own it outright [marriage in most societies]. A man can do some or all of the above, over and over again. -- Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone
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"Under patriarchy, no woman is safe to live her life, or to love, or to mother children. Under patriarchy, every woman is a victim, past, present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman's daughter is a victim, past, present, and future. Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman," -- Andrea Dworkin, Liberty, p. 58.
"Romance is rape embellished with meaningful looks," -- Andrea Dworkin in the Philadelphia Inquirer, May 21, 1995.
"Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies." "Rape is the primary heterosexual model for sexual relating. Rape is the primary emblem of romantic love. Rape is the means by which a woman is initiated into her womanhood as it is defined by men....Rape, then, is the logical consequence of a system of definitions of what is normative. Rape is no excess, no aberration, no accident, no mistake--it embodies sexuality as the culture defines it. -- Andrea Dworkin - The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door
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Rape, then, is the logical consequence of a system of definitions of what is normative. Rape is no excess, no aberration, no accident, no mistake--it embodies sexuality as the culture defines it." -- Andrea Dworkin - The Rape Atrocity and the Boy Next Door
"Rape is the primary heterosexual model for sexual relating. Rape is the primary emblem of romantic love. Rape is the means by which a woman is initiated into her womanhood as it is defined by men. -- Andrea Dworkin
"Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership." -- Andrea Dworkin
"Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times, along with the use of fire, and the first crude stone axe," -- Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, p. 5.
"[Rape] is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear" -- Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape, P.6
"Our culture is depicting sex as rape so that men and women will become interested in it," -- Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 138.
"Cosmetic surgery and the ideology of self-improvement may have made women's hope for legal recourse to justice obsolete," -- Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 55.
"AIDS education will not get very far until young men are taught how not to rape young women and how to eroticize trust and consent; and until young women are supported in the way they need to be redefining their desires," -- Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, p. 168.
"The dating system is a mutually exploitative arrangement of sex-role expectations, which limit and direct behavior of both parties and determine the character of the relationship. Built into the concept of dating is the notion that the woman is an object which may be purchased," -- Kurt Weis and Sandra S. Borges, Rape Victimology, p. 112.
"Patriarchy requires violence or the subliminal threat of violence in order to maintain itself... The most dangerous situation for a woman is not an unknown man in the street, or even the enemy in wartime, but a husband or lover in the isolation of their home," -- Gloria Steinem in Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem, pp. 259-61.
"I call it the Noah Ark Syndrome. The perception lingers that human beings should go two by two. Someone who is not married-either by choice or by chance- is somehow regarded as abnormal," -- Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in Glamour, February 1997.
"All men are rapists and that's all they are," -- Marilyn French Author, "The Women's Room" in People, February 20, 1983.
"My feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have little sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dachau, I watch the handsome young Nazi soldier fall writhing to the ground with a bullet in his stomach and I look briefly and walk on. I don't even need to shrug. I simply don't care. What he was, as a person, I mean, what his shames and yearnings were, simply don't matter." -- Marilyn French, in "The Women's Room"
"Men who are unjustly accused of rape can sometime gain from the experience," -- Catherine Comins, Vassar College Assistant Dean of Student Life in Time, June 3, 1991, p. 52.
"We have long known that rape has been a way of terrorizing us and keeping us in subjection. Now we also know that we have participated, although unwittingly, in the rape of our minds," -- Gerda Lerner in Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women, p. 55.
"If the classroom situation is very heteropatriarchal- a large beginning class of 50 to 60 students say, with few feminist students- I am likely to define my task as largely one of recruitment...of persuading students that women are oppressed," -- Professor Joyce Trebilcot of Washington University in Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women, p. 92.
"I feel that 'man-hating' is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them." -- Robin Morgan, (current editor of MS magazine)
"Sexism is NOT the fault of women--kill your fathers, not your mothers." -- Robin Morgan, (current editor of MS magazine)
"The phallic malady is epidemic and systemic... each individual male in the patriarchy is aware of his relative power in the scheme of things.... He knows that his actions are supported by the twin pillars of the State of man - the brotherhood ritual of political exigency and the brotherhood ritual of a sexual thrill in dominance. As a devotee of Thanatos, he is one with the practitioner of sado-masochistic "play" between "consenting adults," as he is one with the rapist." -- Robin Morgan (current editor of MS magazine) "The Demon Lover" p. 138-9
"My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others' agony." -- Robin Morgan (current editor of MS magazine) "The Demon Lover" p. 224
"Sex to this point in my life has been trivial, at best a gesture of tenderness, at worst a chore. I couldn't understand the furor about it." -- Robin Morgan (current editor of MS magazine) "The Demon Lover" p. 229
"Did she die of the disease called "family" or the disease called "rehabilitation", of poverty or drugs or pornography, of economics or sexual slavery or a broken body?" -- Robin Morgan (current editor of MS magazine) "The Demon Lover" p. 316
"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire." -- Robin Morgan, in 1974
"...rape is the perfected act of male sexuality in a patriarchal culture-- it is the ultimate metaphor for domination, violence, subjugation, and possession." -- Robin Morgan
"I haven't the faintest notion what possible revolutionary role white hetero- sexual men could fulfill, since they are the very embodiment of reactionary- vested-interest-power. But then, I have great difficulty examining what men in general could possibly do about all this. In addition to doing the shitwork that women have been doing for generations, possibly not exist? No, I really don't mean that. Yes, I really do." -- Robin Morgan
"And let's put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism--the lie that there can be such a thing as 'men's liberation groups.' Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group specifically because of a 'threatening' characteristic shared by the latter group--skin color or sex or age, etc. The oppressors are indeed FUCKED UP by being masters (racism hurts whites, sexual stereotypes are harmful to men) but those masters are not OPPRESSED. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism--the oppressed have no alternative--for they have no power--but to fight. In the long run, Women's Liberation will of course free men--but in the short run it's going to COST men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily. Sexism is NOT the fault of women--kill your fathers, not your mothers." -- Robin Morgan
"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire." -- Robin Morgan, "Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" in "Going to Far," 1974.
"And in the spectrum of male bahavior, rape, the perfect combination of sex and violence, is the penultimate (sic) act. Erotic pleasure cannot be separated from culture, and in our culture male eroticism is wedded to power." -- Susan Griffin Rape: The Politics of Consciousness
"And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual [male], it may be mainly a quantitative difference." -- Susan Griffin "Rape: The All-American Crime"
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When asked: "You [Greer] were once quoted as saying your idea of the ideal man is a woman with a dick. Are you still that way inclined?"
Dr Greer (denying that she said it): "I have a great deal of difficulty with the idea of the ideal man. As far as I'm concerned, men are the product of a damanged gene. They pretend to be normal but what they're doing sitting there with benign smiles on their faces is they're manufacturing sperm. They do it all the time. They never stop.
"I mean, we women are more reasonable. We pop one follicle every 28 days, whereas they are producing 400 million sperm for each ejaculation, most of which don't take place anywhere near an ovum. I don't know that the ecosphere can tolerate it." -- Germaine Greer, at a Hilton Hotel literary lunch, promoting her book "The Change-- Women, Aging and the Menopause". From a newsreport dated 14/11/91.
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"The institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist" -- Ti-Grace Atkinson "Amazon Odyssey" (p. 86)
"When a woman reaches orgasm with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression..." -- Sheila Jeffrys
"Number 10: Regularly beat him on the head with your shoe."
"The more famous and powerful I get the more power I have to hurt men." -- Sharon Stone On David Letterman presenting a top ten list of ways to keep your man.
"Ninety-five percent of women's experiences are about being a victim. Or about being an underdog, or having to survive...women didn't go to Vietnam and blow up things up. They are not Rambo," -- Jodie Foster in The New York Times Magazine, January 6, 1991, p. 19.
"In a patriarchal society all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent," -- Catherine MacKinnon in Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women's Studies, p. 129.
"Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated. You might think thats too broad. I'm not talking about sending all of you men to jail for that." -- Catherine MacKinnon "A Rally Against Rape" Feminism Unmodified
"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which a man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it." -- Former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan
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MALE: ... represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. 'The first males were mutants... the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.'
MAN: ... an obsolete life form... an ordinary creature who needs to be watched ... a contradictory baby-man ...
TESTOSTERONE POISONING: ... 'Until now it has been though that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from "testosterone poisoning."' -- from A Feminist Dictionary", ed. Kramarae and Treichler, Pandora Press, 1985
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Letter to the Editor: "Women's Turn to Dominate"
"To Proud Feminist, (Herald-Sun, 7 February). Your last paragraph is shocking language from a feminist. You use the entrenched, revolting male stereotypes of women and rationalise your existence by saying you are neither "ugly" nor "manless", as though either of these male-oriented judgments matter.
"Clearly you are not yet a free-thinking feminist but rather one of those women who bounce off the male-dominated, male-controlled social structures.
"Who cares how men feel or what they do or whether they suffer? They have had over 2000 years to dominate and made a complete hash of it. Now it is our turn. My only comment to men is, if you don't like it, bad luck - and if you get in my way I'll run you down." -- Signed: Liberated Women, Boronia - Herald-Sun, Melbourne, Australia - 9 February 1996
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Some feminists object to the nuclear family. Some examples
The belief that married-couple families are superior is probably the most pervasive prejudice in the Western world. -- Judith Stacey
The little nuclear family is a paradigm that just doesn't work. "Only with the occasional celebrity crime do we allow ourselves to think the nearly unthinkable: that the family may not be the ideal and perfect living arrangement after all -- that it can be a nest of pathology and a cradle of gruesome violence," she writes. "Even in the ostensibly 'functional,' nonviolent family, where no one is killed or maimed, feelings are routinely bruised and often twisted out of shape. There is the slap or the put-down that violates a child's shaky sense of self, the cold, distracted stare that drives a spouse to tears, the little digs and rivalries." -- Barbara Ehrenreich, as quoted by Stephen Chapman, from Time
"long and honorable tradition of 'anti-family' thought," waxing nostalgic for those early feminists who regarded marriage as just another version of prostitution. This deeply defective institution "can hardly be the moral foundation of everything else," she argues, pining for the day when "someone invents a sustainable alternative." -- Barbara Ehrenreich, as quoted by Stephen Chapman, from Time
"The nuclear family is a hotbed of violence and depravity." -- Gordon Fitch
"How will the family unit be destroyed? ... the demand alone will throw the whole ideology of the family into question, so that women can begin establishing a community of work with each other and we can fight collectively. Women will feel freer to leave their husbands and become economically independent, either through a job or welfare." -- From Female Liberation by Roxanne Dunbar.
"Feminists have long criticized marriage as a place of oppression, danger, and drudgery for women." -- From article, "Is Marriage the Answer?" by Barbara Findlen, Ms magazine, May-June, 1995
"The Feminists -v- The Marriage License Bureau of the State of New York...All the discriminatory practices against women are patterned and rationalized by this slavery-like practice. We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." -- From Sisterhood Is Powerful, Morgan (ed), 1970 p. 537.
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"most mother-women give up whatever ghost of a unique and human self they may have when they 'marry' and raise children." -- From Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness, p. 294
"...I submit that any sexual intercourse between a free man and a human being he owns or controls is rape." -- Alice Walker in "Embracing the Dark and the Light," Essence, July 1982. As cited in Andrea Dworkin's "Right-Wing Women"
The context of the quote in RWW makes it clear that marriage is such a form of control.
"Our research and most other studies show that wife-battering occurs in 50 percent of families throughout the nation." -- Lenore Walker, speaking at a Laguna Beach conference, as reported in the SF Chronicle
The SF Chronicle comments, "Only the most crazed man-hater could believe that."
Lenore Walker, after visiting one of the early shelters for battered women, wrote "I was struck by what a beneficial alternative to the nuclear family this arrangement [communal housing and child raising] was for these women and children." -- Lenore Walker. The Battered Woman , p.195
"The nuclear family must be destroyed, and people must find better ways of living together. ... Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process. ... "Families have supported oppression by separating people into small, isolated units, unable to join together to fight for common interests. ... -- Functions of the Family, Linda Gordon, WOMEN: A Journal of Liberation, Fall, 1969.
"Families make possible the super-exploitation of women by training them to look upon their work outside the home as peripheral to their 'true' role. ... No woman should have to deny herself any opportunities because of her speical responsibilities to her children. ... Families will be finally destroyed only when a revolutionary social and economic organization permits people's needs for love and security to be met in ways that do not impose divisions of labor, or any external roles, at all." -- Functions of the Family, Linda Gordon, WOMEN: A Journal of Liberation, Fall, 1969.
"And in the spectrum of male behavior, rape, the perfect combination of sex and violence, is the penultimate (sic) act. Erotic pleasure cannot be separated from culture, and in our culture male eroticism is wedded to power." -- Rape: The Politics of Consciousness
These and many other such like statements are what have given the term feminist its present reputation. RadFems would go to any length to protect these 'holy' doctrines, shunning any woman that refuses to to etheir party line. And together with the current 'Politically Correct' movement with its emphasis on group rights and group offences which conveniently gives 'victims' adequate reasons to attack their 'oppressors' without letting the so called oppressors defend themselves, the RadFem's can spread their misandrous beliefs without the inconvenience of their claims being subjected to scrutiny, in spite of the fact that today's argument is may be inconsistent with tomorrow's. In fact, any man who objects is called a 'typical male' misogynist (for opposing misandry, no less) and any woman who does is either 'too oppressed to see' or a 'traitor'. A proper 'feminist' (RadFem definition) would never criticize or disagree with another sister 'feminist'. No, she would just listen to it and agree, no matter how wrong she knows her 'sister' is. Luckily, very few women accept this.
The anti-male venom inherent in all RadFem writings and speeches are supported by half truths and outright lies presented as evidence to prove that there is a 'war against women' being waged by men everyday of a woman's life. The men include your father, brother, husband, lover, son, friend or even just the man walking across the street. Not some men, ALL men. These are some of their 'facts' that support their beliefs that ALL men are in some conspiracy to subjugate and oppress women:
RadFem fact: 4,000 women are killed by their husbands and boyfriends each year.
Truth: The actual number of people killed by lovers is around 1,200-1,500 each year. These types of murders accounted for only 4.9% of all murders in 1992 while 53% of murder victims were killed by strangers. The number of people killed by strangers has reached a historical high.
RadFem fact: Men commit 90% of all spousal murders.
Truth: Women represent 41% of spousal murderers. Among black married couples, wives were 47% of the spousal murderers.
RadFem fact: Fathers are more likely to kill their children.
Truth: When a child is killed by a parent, 55% of the time the mother murdered the child. This does not include the 35 million abortions in the United States in the last 25 years.
RadFem fact: Female children are being killed at a rate more than male children, which proves that there is a war against women.
Truth: Males account for 54% of murder victims aged 12 and younger. Every year more baby boys are born than baby girls, by age 10-12 (racial differences eixist) girls outnumber girls. They never look back. 67% of all citizens over the age of 65 are female. 85% of all citizens over age 85 are female.
RadFem fact: Fathers generally abuse their children.
Truth: According to the Child Protective Service's 1994 survey, physical abuse represented 21% of confirmed cases, sexual abuse 11%, neglect 49%, emotional maltreatment 3% and other forms of maltreatment 16%. Women/mothers account for substantially more than half of all the above categories except for sexual abuse. And here, only about 2% of molesters are the biological fathers. For girls, the greatest risks are live-in boyfriends, stepfathers, and the corresponding absence of the biological father. The biological father is 5 times less likely to sexually abuse their own progeny than ALL other males.
RadFem fact: Domestic violence against women is rising.
Truth: Wife abuse declined 21.8% from 1975 to 1985 and has been on the decrease since then.
RadFem fact: Nationally, 50% of all homeless women and children are on the streets because of violence in the home.
Truth: The source of this myth is Senator Biden, who has shown no study that proves this as fact. Further, 85% of the homeless are men and a significant percentage are military veterans.
RadFem fact: Women who kill their batterers receive longer prison sentences than men who kill their partners.
Truth: According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Violence Between Intimates (November 1994), the average prison sentence for men who killed their wives is 17.5 years; the average sentence for women convicted of killing their husband was 6.2 years.
RadFem fact: Family violence has killed more women in the last five years than the total number of Americans who were killed in the Vietnam War.
Truth: This "fact" is often said by Dr. Robert McAfee, past president of the American Medical Association. There were about 58,000 American casualties in the Vietnam War. According to the FBI, Uniform Crime Statistics, about 1,500 women are killed by their husbands or boyfriends each year. The total number of women homicide victims each year is 5,000. Thus, in 5 years, even if every woman who was killed was killed by a family member, the total would still be one-half the number of American casualties in Vietnam.
RadFem fact: Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15-44 in the US- more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.
Truth: The original source of this statement goes back to two papers by Evan Stark and Ann Flitcraft. First, the actual research the 'fact' is based on is a rather small survey of one emergency room. Second, in the original articles, they said that domestic violence may be a more common cause of emergency room visits than car accidents, muggings, and rape combined.
RadFem fact: 85% of women will be the victims of sexual harassment.
Truth: (This will be explained below.)
RadFem fact: Four million women are beaten and abused by their husbands and lovers each year.
Truth: The latest US National surveys put the number of abused women at around 1.8 to 2 million. And abused men at 2.1 million.
RadFem fact: 25% i.e. 1 in 4 of all women will be the victims of rape, or attempted rape in their lifetimes.
Truth: This came from RadFem Mary Koss, who took it upon herself to decide for the 'victims' that they had been raped. Nationally, 72 out of 100,000 (0.00072%) women are raped every year. It is extremely sad even if it was only 1 in a million but exaggerating so as to defame men is criminal.
RadFem fact: Women receive lower wages than men for equal work; 59 or 72 (take your pick) cents for each male dollar.
Truth: Experience and average hours per week working also play a crucial role in explaining the gap. Over their lifetimes, women tend to work total fewer hours than men do. This is because women are more likely to take time off for family matters and interrupt their careers than men are. Women who are single and without children tend to equal what their male counterparts make, but women who are married and/or have children tend to take more time off for family matters which hurts their experience and shows up in significantly lower earnings.
RadFem fact: Girls in junior high suffer a dramatic and unique loss in self-esteem due to the 'fact' that the school system is designed by the patriarchy to promote male success and discourage female children.
Truth: When 55% of all university graduates are women, how can this be true?
All of the above RadFem facts are either hugely exaggerated or just outright lies. However, any attempt to challenge these statements result in a severe reprisal from the politically correct movement and whoever it was that challenged the above 'facts' is branded a 'pro-rape' misogynist.
Why would a man get upset about RadFem propaganda statistics?
What's so very wrong with these lies, and their perpetuation?
If they incite people to action, so much the better, right?
Wrong!
Apart from the RadFem intent of demonizing men, the true horrors of domestic violence, rape, and all other such crimes stand, unfortunately, on their own merit, without the need for false statistics. Because the more the validity of something is found wanting, the less it is taken notice of. It is an insult to actual victims of these evils because it trivializes them.
So what are the RadFem's solutions to these problems?
These 'solutions', would of course have to be consistent with their agendas. Which show the true nature of the new face of Feminism. Take note of the very discriminatory 'Take Our Daughters To Work' day. Why not 'Take Our CHILDREN To Work' day? Do boys need less encouragement than girls?
(Link now defunct) Another Australian woman, Bettina Arndt protests this RadFem ideological fixation on defaming anything male and their effects on men in this classic essay:
As the essay above states, men have found themselves under attack, on the personal and political level, and any protest would result in a massive backlash.
.
Most men simply shut up, some protest, but the truly scary thing is that there are others who actually feel guilty for things they are not even responsible for.
They call themselves 'male feminists' and echo everything the RadFems tell them. Whenever you read some of their literature, you get a feeling that these men have so much self-hatred, so deeply ingrained into them that they will actually one day cut their penises off.
.
"I feel so guilty every time I hear of a woman being raped...because I know that I exalt in it as a man, even though I didn't do it...but in a way, I did..." I once read.
A man, I think he's a professor, is on the net putting up refutations of the RadFem rape statistics on his website. A 'male feminist' sent this priceless gem protesting that discrediting RadFem statistics is 'insensitive' and amounts to 'supporting rape' and 'blaming the victim'. He ended it with this...
"Why is it that we men consistently hurt ourselves, each other, women, and the environment so friggin much? What is at the core of all this anger and frustration we feel? Why do I compulsively reach for more and more power over other people, even my friends and "lovers"? Why is it that even after fucking my girlfriend I'm still so fucking alone? Go to the men's and women's studies section of your library or bookstore, and read about yourselves. Then go out and BE a just person."
The self-hatred here is so apparent it's alarming. I took particular note of his advice that men should go to the 'women studies' sections and read about themselves.
Whose writings are in these 'women's studies' sections?
- Andrea Dworkin,
- Robin Morgan,
- Marilyn French,
- Susan Brownmiller etc.
One of the most glaring things about all these writings is the fact that all of them strenuously repeat that men do not and cannot comprehend the true nature of women, but they, the 'enlightened' ones, of course, understand that 'all' men want to rape/hurt/kill/subjugate/dominate everything i.e. women, children, other men, animals, the environment etc. around them.
How do they know?
These attacks on men by the RadFems and the Politically Correct movement as the Bettina Arndt's essay states, have gone far in undermining men's most exclusive, important and beneficial roles in society. Particularly as husband and father.
RadFem attacks on the family are based primarily on the fact that men have a traditional leadership role in it. Now tradition has changed, and women are considered co-heads of the family. But for RadFems, that's not enough, because the MAN is still in it. A husband is by definition a rapist, and a father, according to RadFems is the man who wants to, or is, presently abusing his children.
Here is where I begin to understand why so many people assume that 'feminists' are militant lesbians/virulently anti-heterosexual and anti-family. Inserted into everyone of their misandrous writings is their total disdain for the roles of men in the family and in the lives of women.
Indeed, N.O.W. once released a statement in a memorandum saying...
"Every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist...."
For instance, in the RadFem acclaimed book 'The Courage To Heal' by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, men in the family, particularly fathers, are portrayed as sadists and rapists. The concept of the book is about highly dubious recovered 'repressed memories' of sexual abuse.
The two authors claim that they were both abused by a man in their family when they were children. The whole book is filled with stories from other women who also claim to have been abused , sometimes for many years, by men in their families.
The strange thing about everyone of the cases illustrated in the book is the fact that all the women 'forgot' or 'suppressed' these memories of abuse and suffered unexplained dilemmas in their lives until suddenly the memories were recovered, mostly with the aid of 'abuse' therapists.
The book sold in its thousands, and thousands of women and some few men, given new 'insight' by the book, 'recovered' memories of abuse suffered at the hands of their elder male relatives that they had suppressed.
Other women, who have not even been 'abused' have seen the 'light' and have seen the 'danger' of allowing men, particularly fathers, into their children's lives.
One woman was quoted on an LA newspaper as saying "I chose to be a single mother because I want to raise my son without the negative influence of a man in his life". The article was about single motherhood, which despite claims by RadFems to be 'liberating' is actually becoming a massive social problem.
Amazingly, the two authors who wrote the 'Courage to Heal' have not the credentials needed to write such an authoritative book on the subject. But since the book is under the banner of Women's Studies, such criticism would be dangerous to the reputation and/or career of the critic, as he or she would automatically be 'politically incorrect', which is close to being a heretic in the middle ages.
Apart from the fact that the typical attitude toward fathers in the book is accurately represented by this quote
"I'd watch Perry Mason to get ideas about how to kill my father. It was really the best of times. Every day I would get a new method",
Another scary aspect is the emphasis on distancing one's self from one's family, particularly if the family would challenge the 'victim's' recovered 'memory'. The victim, the woman, is encouraged to think of the all-female 'incest survivor's movement' as her new family. All cults use similar logic to remove the logic that keeps most people sane.
Now, it's been well documented that many of the women who go into these new 'families' come under a great deal of pressure to change their sexual orientation to homosexual, with the obvious reasoning that if a man you're supposed to trust above all else i.e. your father, can molest you, how can you trust or be in a relationship with any man?
This is further accentuated by the fact that on closer inspection almost all the women whose stories are told in the 'Courage To Heal', including the authors, are lesbians.
Even more telling are the recommendations by Bass and Davis for the 'recovering' women, no matter their sexuality, to read 'Lesbian Sex' and it's sequel 'Lesbian Passion: Loving Ourselves and Each Other', which includes chapters for 'incest survivors and their partners', to 'help' them in their 'healing'.
One lesbian therapist took this a step further by sleeping with her female patients, rationalizing this taking advantage of a patients trust as not unethical, because she's a woman. (And of course, she did it for their own good.)
Another avenue, other than the usual demonizing i.e. all men batter, rape etc., that RadFems normally use to convince women about the inadequacy of having men as intimate partners in their lives is the continuously repeated assertion that a man does not have the emotional, sexual or intellectual capacity to be a woman's soul mate that a woman has.
This of course overlooks the fact that lesbians have a break up rate far exceeding that of heterosexual couples.
Another study states that "lesbian couples are less 'sexual' as couples and as individuals than anyone else ...
47% of lesbians in long- term relationships "had sex" once a month or less, while among heterosexual married couples only 15% had sex once a month or less".
And even more disturbing: scientific studies of domestic violence in lesbian couples show violence in the range of 25% to 60% of all lesbian households. The most recent percentage is 33%, taking note of the fact that a lot of states in the US do not term same-sex violence as 'domestic', even if the violence is between intimates. In fact, even the victims sometimes don't term their abuse as domestic violence. Take this woman's words
"I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a real bad relationship."
Her female partner had smashed her head against the dashboard of her car. And another woman, who had a tooth knocked out twice by a female intimate said
"I have an inherent something in me that wants to make it work. There was always the promise that she would change. It was one of those things I thought would never happen to me."
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