Posted on 12/11/2001 6:50:52 AM PST by dead
Divorce, child care and pensions have grown as radicals urged women to flee the family 'monster', writes Barry Maley.
For some radical feminists, males are patriarchal oppressors and the family is their torture chamber. So they impose a taboo on men talking about the effects of feminism upon family life and the rearing of children. Yet these feminists have dismissed the preferences of a great many women, gloried in the expulsion of men from the family, and made life harder for many children.
But first, an important distinction. There are two kinds of feminism: "liberal" or equal opportunity feminism, and gender feminism. Liberal feminism has essentially won the battle for equal legal, political and property rights and for fair treatment in the workplace. Apart from a few sullen neanderthals, men in general have endorsed (and often helped) these victories for women.
Any remaining inequalities are less the result of unfair, systemic discrimination than the reflection of different choices arising from female and male preferences based, ultimately, in biological differences between the sexes. Which brings us to the essential thesis of gender feminism.
This is that biological differences between the sexes are of no significance in shaping the behaviour of men and women. "Gender" is entirely a social and political construct fashioned by men as an instrument with which to segregate, disenfranchise, and oppress women. Dependence on men, exclusion from the world and banishment of women to the kitchen and the nursery, Betty Friedan said, were the results.
After asserting that women have the same needs as men for power and control, Friedan says: "When woman was denied access to satisfaction of those needs in society as a person in her own right, she made home and the family into a vehicle for her power and control, status and self-realisation [which] then became her Frankenstein monster."
Escape from the family "monster" became the centrepiece of the gender feminist agenda. This escape - if children were still to be born and cared for - could only be achieved if mothers entered the workforce en masse, preferably on a full-time basis and if family leave and child care were readily available. It meant men had to share equally in the tasks of rearing and domestic maintenance, that public support for dependent wives and children had to be reduced, that privileged access to promotion and public office through "affirmative action" programs needed to be routinely established and that escape from marriage had to be made easier.
The struggle to implement this feminist agenda was reflected in public policy throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with success entrenched by the 1990s.
Escape from marriage was made easier by no-fault divorce. Demands for state-subsidised child care were rapidly and extensively met. Pensions for sole parents (of whom about 90 per cent were women) removed responsibility from fathers and transferred it to the state (ie, the taxpayer).
Concessions in the tax system for families with children were steadily whittled away. These moves, in combination with Friedan's definition of women's domesticity as no more than incarceration for idiots and "parasites", attracted (or compelled) more and more mothers of infants into the workforce.
For such feminists, gender is a malevolent social construction by men, without any connection to real, innate differences between the sexes. It follows that transformation of the social environment must become their political objective. In this are the seeds of a monstrous tyranny because the only agency with the power to reach to the heart of civil society in a program of manipulation and social engineering is the state.
Logically, therefore, the state should take over the entire care and education of children. Otherwise, according to gender feminism, the inherently corrupt "patriarchal" family continues to do what it has always done - instruct its children and reproduce a male-dominated culture destined to oppress and subjugate women. As many women are coming to realise, the core proposition of gender feminism is that the institution of motherhood is the root cause of the oppression of women.
It is gender feminism's contempt for the family that best explains why there is a backlash against it by women who accept the centrality of children and family as a cherished fulfilment for women. This includes women who also see maintaining a career or returning to work after children as desirable ends.
But the final irony is that feminist success has emancipated more men than women from family responsibilities. Men are freer, if not happier. In the end, the main casualties of gender feminism have been the children who don't see their fathers - and less of their mothers.
Barry Maley is senior fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. This article is based on material in his book, Family and Marriage in Australia, to be released by the centre tomorrow.
It follows that transformation of the social environment must become their political objective. In this are the seeds of a monstrous tyranny because the only agency with the power to reach to the heart of civil society in a program of manipulation and social engineering is the state.
Brilliant stuff.
Men have voted for this stuff too.
Not necessarily the state. I disagree. An anarchic rule of democracy would just be enough to have these bolshevics even do that while the state sits powerless, burried under the PC burqua. Terrorism with suicide bombers or via democracy is illegal. Femi-Nazis campaigning for this terrorism in the US should be just as illegal as muslim terror fronts.
I have always said that Feminism was the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on Women, by Men. It allows guys to get laid, basically, for free! No responsibility, no guilt, no problems..
Yes, most of them spineless cowards who don't have the balls to stand up to this genderless society BS and remind both men and women out there that women and men have the traditional roles for a REASON. Mankind has survived and thrived for thousands of years with men laboring to provide for the family and women laboring to raise and nurture the family. Look at the kind of society we're becoming now that divorce is so prevalent and parents pay to have someone else raise their kids so they can fulfill their career ambitions. And boy oh boy, don't point a feminist to the Bible. The Bible clearly states that a women's place is in submission to her husband, and this only feeds the feminist rage against marriage as instituted in the Bible. Forget for a second that the husband is commanded to love and respect the wife, not be a slob in a wife-beater t-shirt demanding a hot meal and a little action whenever he wants it. Men and women both too often forget their place, and society today isn't helping to remind them of it much, even in the church.
Great article.
Men have voted for this stuff too.
There’s no shortage of feminized males who buy into this crap. Most were raised by single or divorced mothers.
Feminazi BUMP
Amen, well said! I'm sick of the whole thing...so many mindless sheep, so few who can actually string more than one thought together and make a logical construct out of it so they can see where this stuff takes them. Truly sad.
Child support, alimony.
...no guilt, no problems..
Loss of home and family, male-bashing throughout media and entertainment...
Feminism is above all else a war of Lesboedipal ideological patricide against men.
My conservative friends and I have discussed Feminism at length, time and time again. We have come to the conclusion that Feminism is the root of all evil in our country. I realize that’s an oversimplification….LOL…..but we just think most serious social problems started when Feminist became powerful. Where would we be as a country if they never had any serious influence? A lot better off, IMHO. It’s an interesting thing to think about.
Some days I have a lot of hope though. I hear about more and more women leaving work to go home to care for their children. I have 4 sisters raised by a mother and step mother who had careers and they all say now there is no way they will ever work once they have their own children. It hurt us to have working mothers and we all knew it then and know it now.
For the record, I want it publicly known that I HATE Feminists. I hate them for what they have done to men AND women in this world, especially the worlds children (alive and dead). I am a woman and I AM powerful as a loving wife to a wonderful man and as an active, conservative, GOOD mother to my children and in my community. I volunteer up at my children’s school and sub on occasion. The children who have working mothers cling to me like a clinging vine. It’s heartbreaking.
I understand women have to work sometimes, especially single mothers and I am not trashing them. I am trashing selfish people who have a house they can’t afford, two or three cars, beautiful clothes, a boat, etc, etc, etc. People have forgotten that children mean sacrifice. We want kids and don’t want to sacrifice. Having children means my husband and I will do without until our children are grown. I will NEVER work outside the home. NEVER. If only to spite Feminists!!!
Forgive my self-righteousness, but I hate seeing so many lonely, sad children. This issue really bugs me.
I agree with you 100%. This may be a vulgar thing to suggest but for all the trashing prostitutes get for being whores, at least they are SMART. They charge for sex. Promiscuous women are STOOPID!
I guess I’m a capitalist at heart, but heck, I ain’t sleeping with no one for free. Sex with me is gonna cost ya! (Not “you” you, general you). LOL
Feminism doesn’t work. All the penis envy, career envy, power envy they have has only caused them to self-destruct. Name ONE happy feminist. ONE! They are all miserable human beings, unfulfilled in life, and all they have to show for their battles is a stupid career they can’t take with them when they die. Like you said, the only ones to really benefit from Feminism are men…..they are free, not women. Women aren’t free. They have sex with men they aren’t married too, get pregnant, kill their baby, feel guilty the rest of their life, or have the baby and live in poverty or at least hand the baby over to someone else to raise. That’s freedom???
If Feminist think they can offer me freedom, I want no part of it. In fact, I don’t want to be free. I’m happy in my “enslavement” my husband and children have me under.
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