When will feminists stop blaming men? When will they stop calling the traditional social order and gender roles “patriarchy”? When will start to acknowledge that “women hold up half of heaven” and “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” and recognize how much influence women have on the world – how much they socialize kids into all these oh-so-horrible gender roles, how much they reinforce them in their own lives and choices, how much they keep the system going – and how much responsibility they have?
When they give up hypoagency, that’s when. Only when they give up hypoagency and not until then. Don’t hold your breath though. Hypoagency is the foundation of their (traditional) gender identity, otherwise known as toxic femininity.
There was a time when feminists thought toxic traditional feminine roles were part of the problem, but that was before the big push in the early 80s for women to go into the corporate world, when they slammed up against the stone wall of reality of what men’s lives were actually like, as opposed to their envious fantasies.
Oh yes – men lived lives of privilege they told themselves, privilege denied to women for no good reason at all! They went off to stimulating, fulfilling jobs while women stayed home up to their elbows in exploding diapers, muffled in Feminine Mystique…. Men went from exciting, fulfilling jobs to exciting golf to exciting all-male clubs where they plotted world domination.
Then women started entering the corporate world as something above clerical help and slammed right into the reality of the lives of the men they aspired to joining. What they found didn’t align, not at all, with their understanding of those men and those exciting, fulfilling lives they supposedly enjoyed at the expense of women – that unimpeachable understanding of the oppressor that all oppressed unfailingly have. They found cutthroat competition. They found dehumaninzing objectification of people as nothing more than units of production. They found they were 20 years behind their male peers in learning the social skills they needed to succeed – an impregnable, inscrutable game face that never, ever betrayed fear or pain, lack of any interest in pleasing people as a source of validation rather than benefit – basically learning all the things little boys had better learn before they are 10.
The movement had a choice then. It could either continue the examination of traditional gender roles – they were good at finding the faults in the traditional male role, a lot less energetic when it came to the female equivalent – or they could get self-exculpatory and defensive and blame all their failures and difficulties on men, call it sexism or misogyny or whatever – but basically go for the hypoagentive option.
Now coming out of a culture that insisted on female hypoagency, that fetishizes victimhood with its innocent victim/evil oppressor, righteous/unrighteous dichotomy and where the customer is always right, which way do you think did they go?
Well, given that feminism was already demonizing men in the guise of blaming the Patriarchy for the evil things WOMEN did to other women – slut-shaming – and in this connection, think of who it usually is that gives mothers who try to nurse in public the most grief; “the exploitation of an underclass of nannies and housekeepers that makes all these high-flying careers possible“, even murder – when a mother-in-law in India pours kerosene on a daughter-in-law as a way to extort more dowry money out of her family and the analysis is “Well, that’s patriarchy; trans:The Patriarchy made her do it!” – you can guess pretty easlily which way they went.
Because as gwallan says:
“Fundamental…No woman will do wrong without a male compelling it in some way.”
…and so even when she does do something wrong, it wasn’t realy her doing it, she was just a puppet with some man on the other end of the strings, so she’s still morally pure. And notice how some very Victorian notions of moral purity and correctness are central to so much feminist and Social Justice warrior discourse.
“One of the reasons for the failure of feminism to dislodge deeply held perceptions of male and female behaviour was its insistence … that women were victims, and men powerful patriarchs, which made a travesty of ordinary people’s experience of the mutual interdependence of men and women”
Copyleft takes it a step further:
“A smart feminist movement would have recognized this fact and focused on issues of class and economic power along with freeing up gender-role expectations. But the real-world feminist movement wanted women to cling to their victim status, so they ignored the facts. And they faded into comical irrelevance.”
This is the tragedy of feminism, that it never achieved escape velocity, that it never got clear and free of the culture it claimed to analyze and criticize. People have a very hard time outrunning themselves, and that includes their fundamental gender conditioning. And in the end it was clinging to the very gender roles that feminism said it meant upend that defeated feminism. And everything people criticize in feminism comes from that failure – the failure to engage men’s issues in any serious or competent way that The Good Man Project reflects, white feminists’ stubborn inability to keep from doing and saying such racist crap, over and over again –it all comes out of failing to analyze and examine themselves, comes out of choosing to instead validate and you-go-grrrl each other in their safe spaces.
That’s how feminism degenerated into a sorority instead of becoming a sisterhood for all women and to all men.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
You forgot to mention the direct ways that women subjugate other women and the way in which feminism fails to address that. From their incoherent response to slut shaming (they somehow seem to understand that it’s mostly something women do to each other, but somehow want blame men for it) to the way in which women’s high powered careers depend on an underclass of nannies and housekeepers.
Damn you’re right on that one. So much of what men get blamed for is really stuff that women do.
Ginkgo said:
“Damn you’re right on that one. So much of what men get blamed for is really stuff that women do.”
Fundamental…No woman will do wrong without a male compelling it in some way.
Haven’t you heard: Women have no choice but to slut-shame other women due to the myth of male weakness (which is the myth that men can’t control their sexual urges and have to rape/assault of aroused in any way). The fact that many women believe this myth in no way put any onus on them to stop believing in it – men must stop the myth about them being unable to control sexual impulses by controlling their sexual impulses and using the myth as an excuse for not controlling their impulses.
All this was offered as an explanation by Schwyzer when I pointed out that perhaps women should do something about slut-shaming after he wrote about an article by a woman describing her experience of walking top-less in Central Park in NYC. She did note that more women than men were staring, whispering and/or making remarks.
This is an excellent article that makes several powerful points… I agree that feminism never really recovered from the shock of gaining access to “men’s world of power and privilege” and finding out that being a wage slave actually sucked too.
All their fantasies of comfort, respect, and power that men were allegedly enjoying turned out to be false; in reality, men were enduring tedium, grinding abuse, hyper-competitiveness and backstabbing, coming home drained of all energy and joy and enthusiasm for life. And now women were getting to enjoy that ‘privilege’ too.
It didn’t add up. In the comforting feminist narrative, men were enjoying all the perks of power! But as Scott Adams pointed out, “those are OTHER men. The men YOU see every day are powerless peons getting trampled on and ignored every day, just like you are.”
A smart feminist movement would have recognized this fact and focused on issues of class and economic power along with freeing up gender-role expectations. But the real-world feminist movement wanted women to cling to their victim status, so they ignored the facts. And they faded into comical irrelevance.
“Fundamental…No woman will do wrong without a male compelling it in some way.”
Stealing this one; look for it above the line in a couple of hours.
“A smart feminist movement would have recognized this fact and focused on issues of class and economic power along with freeing up gender-role expectations. But the real-world feminist movement wanted women to cling to their victim status, so they ignored the facts. And they faded into comical irrelevance.”
Stealing this one; look for it above the line in a couple of hours.
“when I pointed out that perhaps women should do something about slut-shaming after he wrote about an article by a woman describing her experience of walking top-less in Central Park in NYC. She did note that more women than men were staring, whispering and/or making remarks.”
Stealing this one; look for it above the line in a couple of hours, in the ocntext of women policing breats-feeding mothers.
The cognitive dissonance of feminists amuses me to no end. They walk around calling themselves sluts for a day but when a guy tells them he likes sluts they react to him with utter contempt. Slutwalks have the same mentality as “sex positive” feminists who deal with their contempt for female sex workers by persecuting the male customers, instead. Personally, I think of feminism as a form of slut shaming in and of itself.
Men are also blamed for characteristically female thoughts and attitudes, but only when they’re harmful. I notice more women treating their children like objects, like dolls to dress up or things to discard when they’re inconvenient, than men treating anybody like that. And it’s not even that many women who do that, so female sociopathic behavior is attributed to all men. Seems to me that men are sociopathic (when they are) in a different way.
So it’s not just women’s actual misdeeds that get blamed on men, but their thought crime as well.
Theodmann,
“I notice more women treating their children like objects, like dolls to dress up or things to discard when they’re inconvenient, ”
The male equivalent of that is forcing boys (mostly) into sports for the father’s own ego reasons or similar self-serving ambitions for the child.
Well said. This is why feminists like “Mad Men” so much, I think: because it shows the world of work as feminists pictured it back then 😉
Generally, it’s done by linking the concept to the male oppression of women on a sexual sense (Rape Culture, etc.) that they Know exists. Of course, the fact that this contradicts their own rhetoric (of men determining women’s worth in proportion to their level of sexual availability) has apparently slipped right by most of ’em. Some say it’s part of some sort of complicated double-bind intended to maintain control of women, but that’s a level of Conspiracy Theory above and beyond even, well, most feminist theories.
Truth is, if a women is more available to men, that increases her sexual worth to men. Which makes it harder for other women to compel men to do things for them for the lure of sex. It’s not men trying to oppress women, it’s women trying to shut down a competitor.
“Truth is, if a women is more available to men, that increases her sexual worth to men. Which makes it harder for other women to compel men to do things for them for the lure of sex. It’s not men trying to oppress women, it’s women trying to shut down a competitor.”
Slut-shaming as market share protection. I have been saying this for a long time.
“Of course, the fact that this contradicts their own rhetoric (of men determining women’s worth in proportion to their level of sexual availability) has apparently slipped right by most of ‘em.”
Being able to ignore the inconsistencies in your belief system is the mark of a truly blessed true believer.
SYABM, when I post our stuff to reddit, people love it.
What about the fact that men can be feminist too? I am a feminist and so is my brother, father, uncles…. I don’t think that that feminists ‘point the finger’ or blame anyone, well at least I don’t because that is very difficult to do. Instead I work on trying to fix the problem at hand. Gender equality is perpetuated by both women and men, and I think that that is something pretty widely known.
KLE: “What about the fact that men can be feminist too? I am a feminist and so is my brother, father, uncles…. I don’t think that that feminists ‘point the finger’ or blame anyone, well at least I don’t because that is very difficult to do. Instead I work on trying to fix the problem at hand. Gender equality is perpetuated by both women and men, and I think that that is something pretty widely known.”
Maybe you should start doing some spring cleaning, so to speak, and speak out against the feminists that do. Like the ones who thought my hurt and trauma mattered not because I was a white-priveledged male and worse things happen to women and girls.
When will feminists (and many women in general) stop blaming men? It will take a long long time – because now misandry has largely been accepted by society. People are well away of the literal crimes against men that are a complete miscarriage of justice in divorce and family law courts. If women were treated this way, these buildings and the ‘wise’ judges inside would be razed to ground level. But, men endure – that’s what we do. And we (like idiots) will never unite and push back against a female oppressor because to do so would mean to stop competing against other men for the affection of our very oppressors. It’s a paradox. Feminism uses the male ego against itself. It uses men’s inner self-doubt and resulting ego to ensure that men will not come together and fight for their own rights. Look at the reputation of MRM members: where women fighting for womens rights are deemed modern day warriors, where MRM members are cast as wimps, losers and other “failed at life and love” types who are bitter misogynists who need mail-order brides because they could not “measure up” (not-so-subtle phallic reference always emphasized of course).
But then we see the flip side and hear women cry and moan that there are no good men left. Oh, there are plenty of good men out there, but many have seen dads who have had their asses handed back to them in family law court. And seen how society praises mom for “going it alone” while mocking dad for wanting things like HIS freedom, and maybe a relationship in midlife. These young men are chastised for being video game playing, pornography addicted underachievers – but can we blame them? Their feminist mommies emasculated them with the help of a progressively more anti-male school system, and their dads were labelled as chumps and losers for having affairs after decades of sexless joyless marriages to ball-busting man hating witches.
Why on gods green earth would ANY young man want to marry ANY female on the planet? And when you add stats like these:
– 50% of people will get divorced
-75% of divorces are instigated by women
-If you’re lucky, you get the financial burden of divorce
-If she’s angry, and many are encouraged to be angry by feminists and other bitter divorced women, she’ll accuse you of abusing her and your own kids (physically and even sexually), and countless other lies that she won’t even have to substantiate in the least, at which point you’ll lose everything including your reputation, and you won’t get to see your own children. You can end up paying for children conceived out of wedlock that are not even yours, and you have to pay child support and also alimony even if she remarries a wealthy man and your contribution is neglible to them, but puts you in a position of financial ruin and poverty.
Ladies: you think you won. You won nothing. Feminism was based on hatred and lies and you bought into it because, well, you’re human and you’re greedy.
Young men: your reasons for not marrying are valid. Enjoy sex with women, and any companionship they offer. If they want to move in with you, say “In five years or so….okay?” or just move on to the next one.
They ALL SAY they love YOU and want to be with YOU when they want the ring and the house and the minivan and the 2.3 kids and the dog and the fish. And they all talk about “forever after” and “happily ever after” – and expect you to keep your vows even if they gain 200 pounds or turn into hormone-filled raging sexless psychopaths. If THEY, however, find any reason at all to not want to be married anymore, they can call it quits and you’re largely going to fund the operation. (That’s ‘equal’ according to feminists – men must pay for sins of patriarchies past I guess…).
So remember: As long as women do not tear down these anti-male laws, precedents and attitudes, they are part of the problem. They are reaping the benefits of real discrimination and inequality.
The next time women say there are “no good men anymore”, say “Whether there are is irrelevent, in the absence of marriable women.”
Welcome, KLE!
“What about the fact that men can be feminist too? ”
And yet there are plenty of feminists that deny that a man can ever really be a feminist, ohnly and ally. And for those feminists that do allow the possibility of male feminists, these male feminists are always only allowed in on sufferance.
“I am a feminist and so is my brother, father, uncles…. I don’t think that that feminists ‘point the finger’ or blame anyone, well at least I don’t because that is very difficult to do”
You might want to look at feminism a little more extensively then. Feminism’s whole victim narrative blames men for oppressing women. Are you familiar with the Redstockings Manifesto, a seminal text for mainstream feminism? It’s full of finger-pointing and all aimed at men.
http://www.redstockings.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=76&Itemid=59
Welcome , Northern Guy. That’s a cry frorm the heart and it covers a lot of ground. Good comment.
Feminists blaming men They blame that which is outside of them. Men are outside. Blame them. Read Dr Teasdale’s new jaw-dropping book : “Controlled Women and Constipated Men”. What a brave eye opener that argues most women are controlled by mental disorders.