Paradise Lost: The Bitter Pill of Global Feminism
Most persons are aware of China’s one-child policy. But few fully understand the indelible mark this human rights travesty has left on the soul of the Chinese people.
Recently professor Jing-Bao Nie of New Zealand published a remarkably candid appraisal of this policy, which represents the most ambitious demographic experiment ever conducted in human history.
China’s Birth Control Program through Feminist Lenses catalogs in chilling detail how the Chinese population-control agenda coerced hundreds of millions of women to use birth control, compelled over one-quarter of the adult female population to obtain an abortion, and ensured the forced sterilization of 37% of all married women.
The current toll is 200 million unborn babies, and counting. This moral calamity is compounded by sex-selective abortion, a widespread practice that has created a deficit of 40 million baby girls, giving rise to an impending demographic time-bomb.
Ironically, this modern-day eugenics program was sold to an unsuspecting Chinese citizenry as a tool to “liberate” and “empower” women. “No words can describe the physical pain and emotional suffering” that arise from such policies, Dr. Nie concludes.
Feminists have long been obsessed with the “problem” of child-bearing and child-rearing, viewing such activities as a baleful obstacle to female fulfillment. (As a father of three, I can state unequivocally that child-raising has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. But then, I’m not a feminist.)
Feminists are so consumed with the issue to the point of advancing totalitarian policies. In 1974, feminist matriarch Simone de Beauvoir advocated this final solution:
No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children.…Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.
Government-mandated population control and proscriptions on stay-at-home motherhood are abhorrent to women. But that didn’t stop the feminist Left from seizing on an even more radical solution: excise the traditional family. Former Ms. Magazine editor Robin Morgan made no attempt to disguise her movement’s extreme agenda:
We can’t destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.
But Morgan faced the same hurdle as the Chinese one-birth propagandists: How are we going to sell such a loopy scheme to women?
All in all, I’m just as happy when liberals don’t breed.
Annie, you are soooooo right. But there are still pockets where they thrive, like in Manhattan, most of New York State, most of Washington State and Oregon, and ALL of California. Seems like most of them come from either the east or west coast. We may have to isolate them there, for the safety of the rest of the country!
So are you simply denying the fact that abandonment of children by fathers is, in fact, a common phenomenon, and even a norm in certain communities? Because that position is simply untrue, and surely you must know it.
Facts matter. Go ahead and pick a fight with some hoary and irrelevant old feminist if that’s what you enjoy, criticize China’s oppressive reproductive policies (which were not drafted by Ms. Morgan or Ms. Magazine), but please don’t misrepresent reality. No matter what you think of the politics of feminism, surely you can rationally acknowledge that requiring fathers to pay for the children they create, rather than forcing the rest of us to support them, taking the father’s role at the behest of our tax code, is both just and ethical.
And that is true despite whatever problems men have with their ex-wives. You make babies, you pay for them. This eternal complaint about mean women forcing men to support their own offspring is hardly a conservative position, no matter how gussied-up. Men who find themselves dragged into court because they wouldn’t support their own children have nobody to blame but themselves. And they’re neither freedom fighters nor victims of some feminist conspiracy. In fact, most social problems and oppressive tax burdens would evaporate if we made it a priority to require women to identify fathers and fathers to support and raise all their children.
No matter how gruesome and silly the Robin Morgans, they are no justification for child abandonment by adult men or anyone else.
You are somewhat selective of facts about the feminist platform, metaphor, in more ways than one, of China et al.
The “welfare system” in the West, designed by liberals/feminists under rubric human rights insists on right, of both father and mother, to breed. When the offspring arrive they MUST, in the name of humanity / human rights be paid for if necessary by complete strangers of both sexes with no say in the breeding. Excusing the responsibility of the parents, mother, father or both. COMPELLING, again in the name of human rights, “free citizens” to become the nursery. Any wonder why many fathers and some notheres see an easy “ride” and opt out?
Ditto the EU and its monetary union with the inevitable consequences. Designed virtually by fiat to their hypotheses “peace” political / economic carte blanche. With little acknowledgement of who would pay for profligacy of strangers.
The designers / engineers then “shocked, shocked…” when their invitation being accepted results in the behaviour that dinosaurs warned must be the consequence : profligates taking the money and running.
Squawks from those who must pay, figuratively and concretely ,who “didn’t know” what must happen. Until human nature changes, which it shows no sign of doing at present, it still comes down to paying the bills for your behaviours, ethical or manipulative. How is it that feminists in the free affluent West, privileged, affluent AND “educated” as no others on the planet didn’t know this?
Where did the author say or imply that he advocated men not taking responsibility for their children?
His comments regarding draconian legislation, whereby a man can lose everything, including his children, to the woman in the relationship with no basis or justification were in point.
Quit frothing at the mouth with your hatred before you post a comment.
Stop. Breathe. Think.
When it comes to propaganda & downright dishonesty, the Chinese govt runs a distant 2nd to radical feminists.
The point of this article went right over your head, didn’t it? Of course men should support, and raise, their children – within families. Leaving aside what you coyly refer to as “certain communities”, where, as we all know, 70% of children are illegitimate, actual married fathers are not the ones who are abandoning their children. In fact, the reverse. Married men, in the majority of divorces, are abandoned by their wives.
A woman can be unfaithful, bear her husband a little bastard by her lover, sue him for divorce, accuse him, without any evidence, of abuse (which could include such atrocities as “not giving her money”), take his home and car and move her boyfriend in. The husband can then be forced to pay for support of both his own children and the bastard, plus the mortgage on his former home where the boyfriend now sleeps in his bed with his former wife. If he can’t make the payments, he goes to jail.
He can further be forbidden, under penalty of prison, to see his own children.
So, explain it to me again; how is this system good for marriage, or children? Why would any rational man voluntarily engage in it?
Don’t take my word for it; read this excellent article by Roger Devlin: Rotating Polyandry – and its Enforcers.
Go back to the No-Fault-Divorce movement of the 70s. On a practical basis, it obviously favored the party at fault (as any no-fault plan does). Anyone observant of human behavior could forecast the outcome — the scumbags would run untrammeled over the innocent victim/spouse. First, marriage was a religious event. Then the State said it was a civil contract; let’s keep the churches out of it. After the State got control, it removed any enforcement of the contract’s provisions. No other contracts are treated this way. Uniquely, the marriage contract is voidable at the will of one party, with no penalty. Feminists love it, as destroying marriage and the family is their number one goal. Never listen to what Leftists say; they accomplish their destructive goals while lying non-stop about everything they’re doing.
It’s hard to know where to begin to debunk such myopic poppycock, Trent. I’ll note the irony of your statement that “men who find themselves dragged into court because they wouldn’t support their own children have nobody to blame but themselves” when the writer just factually handed you the reason why dragging dads into court occurs.
Are you accusing him of lying?
The rest of your screed fares no better – under the guise of a fuller perspective, it sweeps entire generations of Welfare State “empowered” manipulators, tools, profiteers, ideologues, and even victims under the rug of feminist denial.
Up until recent activism shed light on the horrific problem of entrenched, policy-aided gender bias and discrimination by the national child support industry, some nine out of ten custodies went to women, motivating between eight and nine out of ten divorces — unilateral walk-aways, really — to be perpetuated by women. Meanwhile, statistically deadbeat moms far outweigh deadbeat dads per capita.
Men have only themselves to blame? Wrong. The current establishment is the product of leftist policies so evil that a variation of them had been abandoned by the former USSR as too destructive to society. This regime has trampled every fundamental individual right, from the supreme court-agreed right to parent to the presumption of innocence to due process to jury trial to, believe it or not, the rights to property and even liberty.
All for being male. And having the unmitigated gall to parent within a regime profiteering from single parenting.
My hat is off to PJM for featuring the learned Mr. Roberts, one of the longest-standing and wisest voices of reason and sanity standing in the face of this incessant gale of American feminist bullshit. Such overt bias and the resulting ruin are a wholly disgusting phenomenon in society’s occasional race to destroy itself for a false promise, lemming-like.
“Child abandonment” is a canard, both visibly and statistically. Where it does occur it’s a statistically minor signpost of the same Orwellian welfare state — yes, it is caused by components of a federal program to disenfranchise dads, including Title IV-D, which pays states to break up families — that also caused inescapable, generational poverty.
Facts matter, Trent. I suggest you research them as I have and come to a far broader perspective than the one you present here. It simply does not stand up to…reality.
How about women who abandon their child? This is how it works: Father doesn’t want his new born child, father is forced to pay for raising the child. Mother doesn’t want her new born child, Mother can leave child at hospital and walk away free. Can’t you see how this whole thing is rigged to favor one side at the expense of the other?
I thank God every night as I kiss my kids and tuck them into bed, and every morning as I kiss them before going to work that my ex decided to pursue her fulfillment by abandoning me and the kids. Vice taking what she viewed as inconveniences and impediments with her and making their lives miserable. Now, she can visit them at her convenience while I give them a stable, loving home. Without forcing them to deal with some new stranger.
I am a part of a growing phenomena, women in middle age simply walking out. I wish more were like my ex, leave the kids behind as opposed to using them as little pawns and hostages against their ex-husbands.
Why the hell should fathers have to pay for the children they “create” when women don’t have to? If women have a choice and only women have a choice then the responsibility is theirs and theirs alone.
Trent is simply engaged in the “honorable” profession of man hating. And a true hater she is.
Why is it that the practitioners of the destructive Gramscian meme – the serial nihiilism of modern American left/liberalism, that is – find themselves so outraged at the consequences of their very bad ideas?
One can only conclude that such people are either ignorant or are active participants in the destruction of their own culture. So which is it, Miss Trent? Don’t foul your nest and then complain about it, eh?
Everyone is jumping on Tina, but somehow I came away from the article with the same impression she did. Might have been the sentence:
“such as the Office of Child Support Enforcement were erected, based on the unfounded presumption that dads are fundamentally irresponsible and would seek to escape the financial obligations to their children”
My case – with my father – was white, middle class, and long ago. He had no intention of voluntarily sharing any of his money with my brother and me; never did and never would. His second set of children (four of them), and that wife, of course, had everything – mansion included – while we counted every penny.
We got only dribs and drabs here and there, once in a blue moon, as my mother – his first wife who put him through school – occasionally succeeded in getting him to contribute something (at one point, she hired a private investigator to track him down), until she finally just gave up. When I was growing up, I didn’t really believe all of it could have been that bad, but after my mother died and I inherited all her papers, I discovered that yes, every bit of it was true.
I met my father when I was a teenager (along with his new family) and established a relationship with him, of sorts. (As much as he was capable of.) Basically, I forgave him, and accepted his . . . limitations. But this didn’t change the fact that I knew my brother and I simply didn’t count among his children, nor did he see any need to ever give us any financial support whatever.
So in the case of my father, it was no “unfounded presumption.” There ARE fathers like this, and having something set up to deal with it does NOT mean all fathers are presumed to be that way.
Had something like the Office of Child Support existed back then, we would have been better off. They take child support much more seriously these days than they did then, and I don’t view that as a bad thing.
While we’re sharing anecdotes, here’s mine. We have a son-in-law who fathered a child while still in high school. (He is caucasian and comes from a well-off family where this is not the norm.)
Thirteen years later he continues to pay over and above his child support requirements without the involvement of the courts. The mother on the other hand remains unstable and and is contributing NOTHING to the support of the child, bouncing from place to place or staying with her parents while giving birth to two additional children.
My daughter and son-in-law would happily have the child live with them, but the mother won’t hear of it, since she would lose the monthly check.
I am not convinced that men are the problem in every case – often it is the women. Nor am I convinced that the government run system of child support is the best solution to people of both sexes being responsible for their children.
Exactly. Each case is different and should be judged on it’s merits. I do believe there is a bias in the courts favoring the mother. The kids need to be taken care of in whatever way is best for them. I also believe a lot of the problems come from no-fault divorce. (although not applicable to your son in laws case). It makes it so much easier to walk away vice work things out. The theory in alimony is the woman is entitled to live in the style to which she became accustomed to during the marriage. Makes sense if the husband walks out, or is unfaithful. BUT if she’s the one walking away, it is a marriage she’s destroying and she’s choosing to walk away from her obligations and commitments. Yet she’s still supposed to get the financial benefits of marriage? The guy is still supposed to fulfill his financial obligations of marriage but receive none of the benefits? If she’s getting alimony for the lifestyle she’s become accustomed to, then he ought to be entitled to the marital relations he became accustomed to. It should work both ways, like any other contract, the party breaking the contract should be held liable and pay the damages.
I’d like to add my own anecdote about my parents’ divorce. My mom has MS and would self-medicate on alcohol too often. This would lead to fights with my dad which she would forget about in the morning. My dad eventually grew tired of this and left, so my parents were separated but still married.
During this time, my father took a couple of mistresses. My mom kept the expectations that he would move back in and they would work things out some day. This lasted for several years. One day, one of the mistresses called my mom and left a message saying that she was my father’s lover, and that my father had left her for another lover. This shocked and outraged my mom so she filed for divorce.
Colorado is a 50/50 state, meaning each party gets 50% of the debt and assets, regardless of fault or any other factors. My mom, as I said, has MS and is on a fixed income of about 20k/year. My dad, at the time, was working in Alaska for about 100k/year. Despite this, the debt was split evenly, and so were the assets. The income differential was not a factor, nor were the fights my parents had or who caused them, or that my father was unfaithful while my parents were still legally married.
I’m not certain I like the results, but it is what it is. It seems that there is little way to create a system of a “fair” divorce, at least not without a lot of subjective judgment on the part of the presiding judge, and that too can obviously have its own huge problems.
A patriarchal society is present, I don’t argue against that. However, you do a good job of showing how something like a “good fight” can often turn itself into tyranny. By fighting so hard against the patriarchal system, feminists have actually done many big disservices to both men and women. The system they are creating is really no better than the one they are replacing; it simply has different oppressors. But hey, why should there be any problem with “man-hating” as the article quoted? Men deserve to be treated like second class citizens, so say some of the most corrupt and useless feminists of world history.
Just to say, Tnxplant, I’m not saying that the problem is entirely fathers. After all, the name of this office is “Office of Child Support,” meaning that theoretically, at least, it would go after deadbeat parents of either gender.
“(which were not drafted by Ms. Morgan or Ms. Magazine)”
No, but they come from the very same philosophy. THAT was the point.
So are you simply denying the fact that abandonment of children by fathers is, in fact, a common phenomenon
Yes.
Honestly, TINA, in a post- Roe v. Wade world, where women have the right to legally and safely terminate pregnancies for relatively small cost, your argument really holds no water.
Post Roe v Wade, women seem to hold all the cards when it comes to their reporductive rights, and the reproductive rights of men, as well. Seeing as there are other legal options to having an unwanted baby, how do women continue to justify the line that “evil, irresponsible men aren’t supporting their babies?” Presumably, if the man isn’t offiering support for the child, it’s a child he didn’t want in the first place. The women gets to choose whether she wants her life permanently altered by having a child, or whether she wants to have an abortion and end the pregnancy. Where is the man’s choice in the matter? And don’t respond that he could have chosen before he had sex- so could the woman.
No matter which way you slice it, women are able to hold men hostage with children- men have no choice in the matter, and women need to start accepting the equal responsibilities that come with equal rights, which includes raising your children responsibly, and not blaming men for all your problems.
PS- I am a woman and a single mother, who allowed the child’s father to sign away his parental rights in exchange for being let off the hook on support.
Dude, men have the power and choice over their birth-control for their bodies. They can get vasectomies and laugh their butts off at any woman trying to tell him the baby is his.
No excuses, men. Get a vasectomy if you don’t want to be saddled with children you were not prepared to have or pay for but still want to poke the whiskers of every skank on skank street. Take the control completely out of the woman’s hands and put it suarely into your lap (literally). A vasectomy is a small price compared to an unplanned pregnancy or an abortion on your conscience because you had sex with someone you know nothing about.
Now shaddup, you mindless, rutting squirters.
First off, vasectomy is not a reproductive right. Secondly, it still doesn’t excuse the fact that women have exclusive reproductive rights, while men have zero. Women have control over every moment of the pregnancy, and can legally have her own unborn child killed, paid for with out tax payer’s money. If she’s pro-life, she can decide to have the baby, then abandon it somewhere, even in a dumpster near trash.
Now, how about you take your own advice, and shut up? Go white knight for women elsewhere.
“First off, vasectomy is not a reproductive right.” Yes it is, it’s your choice, your body and YOU controlling YOUR sperm and what children YOU want when YOU want them via the ‘snip’.
“Women have control over every moment of the pregnancy [...]” Wrong again. Women often miscarry and give birth with multiple complications against their own ‘choice’ of how nature acts.
“If she’s pro-life, she can decide to have the baby, then abandon it somewhere, even in a dumpster near trash.” Holy F*CK you are a moron. How many instances of “Pro-LIFE” women have heard of dumping their children into dumpsters? Most of those “WOMEN” are young girls who are terrified and had the baby because they were too afraid of telling ANYONE.
“Now, how about you take your own advice, and shut up? Go white knight for women elsewhere.”
HAHAHAHAHA. I noticed you conveniently didn’t even deny wanting to ” poke the whiskers of every skank on skank street”.
THAT is all I need to know about YOU, skank poker.
“Wahhh. I screwed a whore and she wants me to pay for the resultant abortion or the baby.”
You pathetic, wussified wanker.
I wonder what would be your position in my case: my 10 years son moved in with me immediately after the separation, and stayed with me until the age of 19. Would you have demanded from his mother to pay her share of costs in my son’s upbringing? (If you wonder, she did not pay a penny.)
Women can abandon a child legally without legal redress in the form of abortion. Men abandoning women is their form of abortion. Women kill the fetus, men kill the relationship.
By permitting abortion and not male abandonment, men become the lesser class with less rights, clearly against the so-called human rights of all humankind.
Whilst most feminist deride men for not “manning up” to care for the children they CO-CREATED, there is no derision for women who abort. This is clearly a double standard, one I do not abide by. VAWA and modern day child support laws are simply legislation of the New Slavery against Men.
I submit if Women were allowed to abort a pregnancy at will and Men are allowed to walk away from an unwanted pregnancy at will that future coupling will be approched with a more pragmatic eye.
Making me and the rest of productive society responsible for an irresponsible uterus is BS.
Absolutely correct. And let’s not forget the necessity of women to earn a living when the men leave, and the pitiful wages women got, depsite their having to look after their kids.
And the simply fabuloous habit many men had of running around before marriage, getting their wives pregnant and simulkataneously infecting their progeny. happy days!
Some feminists are aggressive nuts. So are some men.
That’s life. Doesn’t mean we can’t try to make it better.
Well, let me reply to some of the comments that don’t simply assume I’m some man-hating feminist, which is risible. I’ve been a consistent critic of the feminist movement in its current iterations, particularly in academia, though I think that second-wave feminists, the actual law-changers, were a very different bunch, bar a few like Robin Morgan, who wasn’t taken all that seriously outside certain fey circles anyway.
Also, if you won’t stick to the subject, at least use your real name if you wish to call me fake names, OK?
I get it: you oppose feminism in general because you say you do. But did I say I lockstep support it?
No, “Carolann” and others, I didn’t. Philosophically, contemporary western feminists have much to answer for their silence on Chinese policies, but those policies weren’t invented by feminists. And that was what I was criticizing in the article — the conflation of these things, blaming “feminism” for a fascism practiced by a bunch of crazy old communist men halfway around the world. The effect of feminist activism, pro or con, on these policies is zilch. The breakup of Chinese families due to this policy didn’t happen and has nothing to do with American family structure or divorce rates or divorce courts or feminist activism. Different issues, conflated ridiculously here, which was my point.
Regarding the elemental flaw in the current welfare system — the systematic excusing of male failure to support their children that resulted in the current absence of men from most poor families — it predates feminist activism. Nobody rolled up her ugly purple pantsuit, climbed into a time machine, and went back to Congress to plant the seed that would destroy generations of families. The liberalization and warping of welfare policy was a product of revolutionary leftist politics that arose long before feminist activism, and, during the next generation. the nascent feminist movement had a very conflicted if not hostile relationship with the leftists in power, to say the least.
The entire “war on poverty” reforms were both a political tool of extreme leftists and a reaction to a breakdown of the family that also predated feminism. Vast numbers of men were abandoning the children they fathered — mostly in minority communities but also, increasingly, among white Americans. If you want to blame somebody, blame the drug culture, hippies, beatniks, blame Truman, blame Piven and Fox (I like to blame Norman Mailer for pretty much all of it — the sexual revolution being his baby, and he was no feminist). Blame the civil rights movement too, or rather their liberal supporters, who centrally advanced the idea that it was racist to question the rapidly evolving family patterns arising from government dependency and also racist to question dependency at all.
And you can certainly go ahead and blame later feminists for signing onto these policies after they had been established and later giving them their imprimatur in academia.
You can also certainly blame younger feminists of today for shutting down their minds and submitting themselves to a sheerly leftist agenda — and I certainly do and use the term “submit” quite specifically. Third-wave feminism has been dating the wrong guy for thirty years now, which doesn’t speak well of her judgment, because he’s just not that into her.
Most people here seem most outraged about divorce and custody law. And it seems that most of you are talking in very vague ways about anecdotal experiences you’ve seen or heard.
Blaming outcomes in individual divorce cases, or bad sexual behavior by certain women, on feminism is unproductive. I’ll talk about policy, if you wish, but why should we discuss “what you heard happened to Joe”?
No fault divorce law has helped some people and hurt some people, and it was hardly a legal change that arose exclusively from feminist activism or has exclusively benefitted women at the expense of men. That’s simply wrong. In reality, divorce and custody laws are complicated balances of rights and responsibilities (alimony, which reflected pre-feminist family structure, has faded as women gain more professional possibilities — the way it should work, right?). I don’t think these laws are perfect, but they are hardly some monolithic oppression-of-men tool.
If you’re upset about one piece of legislation, we can discuss it, but this self-pitying litany of personal claims of victimization (which reminds me of nothing more than a feminist studies seminar) doesn’t even barely resemble discussion, nor does it reflect certain realities denied by a few here. One: that unambiguously, statistically, men come out of divorces with a higher standard of living while women and children come out with a lower standard of living. Of course there are exceptions. and that statistic has several implications, but those are the facts. Two, that the vast majority of people who abandoned parental responsibilities, both before and after the advent of feminism and before and after divorce reform, are and were the fathers. So maybe the breakdown of the family has substantially to do with men, too, not to mention with other things other than feminism.
Ditto family policies. Ditto divorce law.
I have to admit that I’m pretty sexist in one specific way: I expect men to speak more rationally and less personally than women. Do stop surprising me. Thoughtful, pro-family, patriotic conservative women are reclaiming the good, equal rights (NOT special rights), child-and-family-supportive legacies of the second-wave feminists and thus redefining feminism itself, while exposing the irrationalities of leftist feminism. It would be nice to be able to talk about this phenomenon instead of name-calling.
Casual abortions based on the desire to have casual love affairs does not a country make yet this is what has been sold to America for a half century.
Smart and adult people before the 60s knew that it was a natural proclivity of people to rut like animals given no social boundaries and this “conservative” desire to control the behavior of young adults was wrongly looked at by the counter-culture as denying and repressing human nature rather than trying to control it. Smart and adult people had such a thing as chaperones 100 years ago because smart and adult people didn’t want their daughters date raped.
As far as feminism goes, it has been a good thing to do away with institutional disenfranchisement of half the population; if a woman wants to be a judge or truck driver that’s all for the good. The problem with feminism in its more formal adherents is that, while forcibly entering a mens only world and not taking no for an answer, when it came to front line combat feminists suddenly became all meek and female-like again. Until Vets hospitals are truly co-ed, feminism will have no credibility with me. Why should women get an equal paycheck when those driven to the brink of madness and shorn of limbs by war constitute a virtually all-male club women have no desire to penetrate or have equality within.
“when it came to front line combat feminists suddenly became all meek and female-like again.”
This is not absolutely accurate. Many more women would be willing, and eager, to join the military if they believed that they would be treated equally while there. Many female soldiers and officers report that they are deliberately harassed – and are told that if they report it they will loose the backing of their colleagues in the field. Until there are many more women in commanding positions, this is unlikely to change.
This is one reason why women would welcome gay men being openly recognised in the military, at the same time it is why men are afraid that, should an openly gay man become their superior, they would have to suffer the same harassment they have given their female colleagues.
On civil street: Receiving 28% less wages is too high a price to pay for having a door opened, a coat held or someone to stand up on the bus.
“This is not absolutely accurate. Many more women would be willing, and eager, to join the military if they believed that they would be treated equally while there. ”
First of all, define “equally”. Women are not capable of acting “equally” with males in such physically intensive fields as combat. They’re not built for it either physically or psychologically. Secondly – although this may be an obvious point – they’re women. Soldiers and sailors are known for their sexual proclivities, and indeed the common knowledge among any soldier is “if he won’t f…. he won’t fight.” Mixing young women in among a group like this is only asking for trouble – as any soldier could have told you for the past 10,000 years. A friend of mine, who just returned from serving with the Army in Afghanistan remarked that half of the Army women there were pregnant, the other half were running prostitution rings.
(Women have one distinct advantage not open to any male: they can opt out of combat by simply getting pregnant. The Army can hardly demand either birth control or abortions, although they probably should.)
As for homosexuals – they present the same problem as women: under no circumstances can a soldier be having an affair with someone in his/her chain of command. The army cannot afford an officer either requesting sexual favors from a subordinate or offering such favors to a superior in return for preferential treatment; nor can you risk the opportunities for blackmail.
James May, good points until you get to equal pay. There were no women in my infantry company,nor should there have been, but what has that to do with women being paid equally in civilian jobs. Most men don’t serve in the military, and some women are better at their civilian jobs than their male co-workers. I fail to see your logic.
To GSW, I agree, that’s why I said “formal adherents”. To both, men can be drafted and killed on the frontline, women cannot. I wasn’t suggesting women should absolutely be not paid equal wages but that I saw no reason for me to back such a thing in light of Obama’s desire to turn it into law to force the issue. If you want to be treated like men then take the same risks. Our military cemeteries are full of not women, but men. So, my logic is the logic of risk and also the notable failure of feminism to crash this party as it were, like they did the other more lucrative and less deadly ones.
I should also add in light of the other comments, that feminist’s have stood idly by while men had there parental rights taken away in the overwhelming majority of divorce cases, based on a stereotype that mothers are better parents. I guess stereotypes don’t matter when their in your favor.
Feminism has no traction for me because of its hypocrisy. It is not about justice or equality but equality and justice for women. Men have had their lives destroyed by the courts, houses they’ve built with their own hands taken away, their incomes reduced while forced into visitations on weekends, all the while paying through the nose for the privilege of fulling funding what amounts to two families.
Few cultural currents have been quite as useful to the totalitarians of the world as militant feminism. Feminists’ passion for alienating women from men and from their children, and for destroying the traditional, “mediating” structures of authority and guidance, particularly the family and religion, has turned them into tools of the most oppressive forces in the world.
It’s implausible to think that this has never occurred to the ideologues of militant feminism…which implies that an outcome in which “father” is a dirty word and the de Beauvoir vision of women regimented away from their children by State action is the end they’ve always had in view.
While many women dislike men – no doubt for good reason – feminists are FOR women not AGAINST men.
A common mistake. Truly, some women who have been badly mistreated by men during the formative years do go a little OTT in their plea for help.
However, any female who has seen how those traditional, ” “mediating” structures of authority and guidance, particularly the family and religion” have been misused, and are continuously being misused to strip women of independence and self-decision knows that we do not want to alienate women from men.
We despise male authority over grown women – it is rediculous.
What man would accept a ‘loving’ authority over whether he is allowed to work, as what and when – if he church said that his god had made him to be ‘subservient’ to his mother, to his wife?
Life is a mirror – if you turn it around and it seems unfair – then it IS unfair.
After I encountered this, I knew the rest would be nonsense.
If feminists were “FOR women not AGAINST men,” we would hear a great deal more from self-nominated feminists against the atrocities of Islam’s treatment of women, against China’s horrifying forced-abortions policy — which principally kills baby girls, you know — and against the total lunacy of ideologists such as this one, to whom marriage and motherhood apparently constitute self-enslavement, and whiners such as this one, who seems to think women are inherently flawless and deserve a far better gender for their life partners than mere men.
Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were “FOR women not AGAINST men,” as are Wendy McElroy and Christina Hoff Sommers. And you’ll note that today’s vocal “feminists” can’t bear to be compared with them.
” traditional, ” “mediating” structures of authority and guidance, particularly the family and religion” have been misused, and are continuously being misused”
That is the problem – misuse, not structure and tradition.
We are sinners. As long as sinners are involved there will be misuse. Changing the “structure” (laws) will not have the desired result. In fact it will just encourage those who misuse to look for loopholes to do just that. Look at our multi-volume, draconian tax laws if you doubt that. There are lawyers and others who like nothing more than to find loopholes and jump through them.
If it doesn’t create loopholes we need to be ready for the law of unintended consequences. Cash for Clunkers got a few old cars off the road, but also created a demand for limited resources and also filled up the salvage yards with perfectly good, serviceable vehicles ahead of their normal end of life.
When I first started going “to town” with my mom, most of the office buildings had female elevator operators. Once their wages priced themselves beyond a certain point, it became financially attractive to develop and install self service operators.
Legal directives rarely improve the situation as the lawmakers hope.
“Every revolution eventually turns on itself.”
That may well be true but by the time that the feminist revoution falls on its ass the western world will be no more than a smouldering ruin,the carcass of which will be gleefully picked clean by the Chinese,Indians and the islamist hordes,and when those countless billions of welfare dollars dry up for those modern empowered women just you wait for those self same women to start crying out for good `ole fashioned patriarchy,for some XY chump to once again start picking up the tab.
Tina,
I read the article twice and agree with most everything you have said in your reply. I can’t believe anybody here would. But where does this article excuse or hint to excusing worthless sperm donors who make babies with no intent of raising them or paying their fair share?
Because I certainly didn’t read that as the gist of the article.
Feminism is like the unions: at one time it played an important role, now it is doing nothing but causing harm to society.
Feminists have succeeded in destroying marriage. Only a shrinking minority of men are willing to put the fruits of their lifelong labor into the hands of a by then menopausal, raging harpy, intent upon punishing him for working so hard his whole life to support her and their children. The divorce laws of virtually all States actually encourage this. Disgusting!
It is not just feminism. It is the ‘me first’ generation of BOTH women and men who look down on the responsibility and sanctity of marriage. Why marry when you can just live together? The generations are becoming less and less mature as time goes by. People are less reticent to succumb to temptation today. Women are not guiltless when it comes to the modern-day ‘castration’ of men, but a real man would put his foot down and tell her where to go.
That has to be one of the most intelligent comments I have seen on the subject.
Indeed, these menopausal, raging harpies are horrid creatures. Women over 45 should be shot, or sedated, or confined, or something.
Take heart that not all women are like that. My mother is 46, and she’s still the Proverbs 31 woman she always was.
Feminism, like all other liberal platforms, has done tremendous damage to American families and the nation. The women who now run organizations purported to be feminist are nothing more than shrieking, bitter, and largely unattractive harridans. Further, they are wed to a liberal agenda rather than seeking improved circumstances for women. The entire concept of feminism has been carried to a terrible extreme, from women in the military to women in occupations such as law enforcement. Whether one likes it of not, there is a biological difference between men and women, thus one cannot perform all of the functions of the other. And rightly so. It is time for men to start fighting back against unfounded accusations and unflattering stereotypes. Liberals sold women the ‘Big Lie’ about employment, children, homes, and husbands back in the ’60s and women bought it hook, line, and sinker. Women need to wise up. Their lives will improve and society will improve.
I certainly agree with this – and have thought the same for years. Police, military, fireMEN! It’s just ridiculous for women to even be in those roles!
Feminism is a commie tool to destroy the family and usher in a one-world utopian, workers “paradise.” Destroying the family is a necessary and major step towards that end in that families transmit values that are antithetical to the goals of the godless, secular, Marxists.
Feminists are useful idiots who in their selfish ambition to “be all that they can be,” have destroyed the lives, literally and figuratively, of millions of children. They are a plague on the nation. Men, being men, have let them do it for their own selfish ends.
You said it all and then some. Best post here.
“If a mother can kill her own child, then what is left of the West to be destroyed?”
- Mother Teresa
Mr. Roberts:
Speaking at a Mexico City conference last year, Arie Hoekman of the United Nations Population Fund fervently embraced the news of family break-down. Hoekman boasted to the group,“we are in the presence of a weakening of the patriarchal structure [and] the rise of new values centered in the recognition of fundamental human rights.”
One wonders if Hoekman lives in the state-supported matriarchical society of an American ghetto.
He or she would have a grand old time babbling about the “fundamental recognition of human rights” down tha ‘hood, the barrio or the trailer park.
The anti-male stereotypes in our society have become so common that when a male isn’t portrayed as dumb, lazy or stupid, it is obvious. We are getting a Time Warner Cable ad that shows two young women having trouble with an out of control washing machine. One calls her father and he asks, “Have you tried unplugging it?,” an obvious approach that the girls hadn’t considered. The ad is so out of the ordinary that it is amusing.
That is why I married a woman from Latin America. They don’t go in for that twoddle.
Yeah – but she’ll konk you with the frying pan!
Perhaps a better analysis of the problem is the observation:
“The Revolution” has eaten its own children.
In this recession it is a profound mystery how American business could neglect an automatic reduction in payroll and increase in profit of up to 28% by simply hiring only women.
Absolutely correct – for anyone starting up a new business one of the first concerns would be to minimise costs as much as possible so logically, given that you can generally select from a pool of equally capable men and women, then only women would be chosen due to their supposed systematically lower pay rates. The simple fact that this does not happen in start-up businesses completely disproves the “inequal pay for equal work” rhetoric from certain quarters.
It’s not for nothing that our current economic situation is being called a “mancession”.
The “lesser Pay” or “28%” spoken of is the aggregate effect on wages that maternity leave (A great deal of which is volunterily extended to an unpaid status.)Child care related leave generates.
Next step:
Little Johnny is a 1st grader with some attitude issues, one day he fails to show up at school. A week later and still no Johnny. When asked about his disappearance, the school was told, “Johnny’s mom decided to have a ‘late term’ abortion”.
Same difference…
Actually, since Roe V Wade we’ve had a zero baby policy as the enlightenment paradigm. That may change if the Obama care individual mandate is upheld under the commerce clause, under the theory that “the right to choose” inactivity is an economic decision having economic consequences, and can thus be regulated as interstate commerce, even when there is no interstate commerce for medical insurance. Ah, the irony, Roe V Wade is overturned because refusing to have babies, more producers and consumers, is an economic decision impacting interstate trade and the wealth of nations. Surely the state can force the little darlings to be baby breeders with a tax penalty for failure to do so, if the state can force all the girls to buy a Blue Cross maternity plan?
Prostitution is the oldest profession for a reason:
Men have always cared more about being spurting sperm whales than caring for their offspring or women.
Hitler encouraged women to be single mothers because of their supposed “superior” genetics. How many men have had harems or raped who later were killed in wars and the women and children were left in destitution, starvation and poverty? Is single motherhood a purely feminist creation? Obviously not. Men have warred throughout history and created single mothers as a result.
Please, don’t get self-righteous about men being such good and honorable saints who have have never done harm to their wives or children. There are bad men and bad women and unfortunately sometimes the twain meet with the good women and the good men and create chaos. Laws are often a double-edged sword because they are drawn up to punish the worst of society which sometimes harms the best of society as an unintended consequence.
Men living to score as much random ‘poon’ as they can, are and have been a big part of the problem with society too.
Good fathers can and do get full or partial custody of their children and some very bad fathers do as well (especially if they have the money to lawyer-up).
The real victims in all of this mess will always be the children whether bad parents stay together and mess their children up or they break-up and still mess their children up. If people aren’t mature enough to choose a stable partner then how good of a parent can they possibly be? Do we blame the women for choosing husbands who turned out to be abusive, or cheaters or become drug/alcohol-addicts or just plain bored and wanted variety? Do we blame the men for choosing women who turned out abusive, or cheaters or become drug/alcohol-addicts or just plain bored and wanted variety?
It takes two to make a couple and it takes two to make a mistake as a couple.
Hey everybody, look ^^^. Dictionary definition of a bigot.
I disagree. After 15 years of marriage my father announced that he was leaving to “set up a new home” with the neighbour’s wife. He abandoned his wife and 4 children to play sleepover with a married woman and her 3 children. Make sense? Not to me either. I’m sure that my stay-at-home mom was not perfect, but till her dying day she had no clue what went wrong. She was never given an explanation either.
Nothing “went wrong”, he was just being a jerk. Comes with being human, not limited to males. The only point being: this behavior is neither normal nor typical and is to be abhorred no matter what the sex involved is.
Agreed. Let’s suppose that someone said that black people are more likely to be criminals. Factually correct? Yes? Bigoted? Absolutely. The question is why is someone paining with such a broad brush, not whether or not you can find anecdotal evidence to back up your assertion.
WHOA! Hold on a moment, there. Are you saying, as it seems you are, that merely to cite a fact — an observable datum or collection of data that anyone can verify — can be a bigoted act?
If not, please clarify your meaning. If so, step away from the keyboard and keep your hands where we can all see them.
Leftists were delighted with and probably encouraged (or instigated) the feminist movement.
A primary goal of the Left is to destroy families. Families are one of the primary institutions that defies tyrants. Others include churches, small towns, and small businesses. All of those institutions provide help to their members, which means that the members are less dependent on government. Since leftists want everybody to be totally dependent on government, destroying institutions that replace government services is a top priority.
That’s why all “classic” feminists are leftists. Likewise, homosexual activists, most atheists, and most city dwellers. Homosexuality also destroys families. Atheism destroys religion. City dwellers are much more dependent on government services than people who live in smaller communities. Also note that almost all small business owners are conservative, whereas the top echelons of big businesses are liberal, since big businesses are in a symbiotic fascist relationship with government and small businesses are not.
In the USSR, there were NO institutions that could defy state edicts. The state controlled everything. Without it, individuals were dead; they had no choice but to suckle at the state’s teat. Just like the commissars designed it. Just like our wannabe commissars seek to impose on this country.
Related:
Our World: The feminist deception
By CAROLINE B. GLICK
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=199339
Feminists were always Karl Marx in drag. Without the beard. Well. Some maybe.
Look, I have come to the conclusion that women, when they see men failing to be men…will step up and show more gonads than men ever thought of having. Don’t believe me? Then take a closer look at the battle of Stalingrad and tell me that women can’t fight – in that case it wasn’t for lack of gonads on the part of men; rather, it was just a lack of men, period.
Having said that…I just watch Hannity for the first time in ages. Why? Because i saw that he was interviewing the governor elect from SC, Nikkee Haley (spelling). She apparently attended a meeting of republicans hosted by the President. She asked him to repeal Obamacare because her state couldn’t afford it!!! She also asked him to give SC back the money that they had committed (over a billion doillars I think) on a promise from Obama on Yukka Mountain; a promise on which he renegged. This is a women that has no fear!!
She may well be the next president!!!! I’ve not heard this kind of quiet confidence from a woman since Margaret Thatcher of England. Margaret, upon returning from a meeting in a hotel in England was blown down the hotel stairs by a bomb blast…which killed two of her cabinet members I believe, that were walking behind her. She was interviewed in the aftermath and was as clear-thinking as the most hardened warrior; and she calmy re-interated her resolve not to be intimidated by terrorists. She promptly went about her business.
The new Gallup poll reveals that 83% of the American people dissapprove of how Congress is doing its job. And the men on the hill are acting like a bunch of wieners…All I can say at this point is: “Go girl GOOOOOOOOO!!!!!
Haley is really really impressive. She and Rubio are shooting stars.
Communication skills (not the art of LYING, the art of explaining yourself) is the most important akill of all to win office.
It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.
Feminists are for the most part, a bunch of phoney, self-loathing crackpots. When is comes to womens rights or any injustices, they have got nothing to say. That would be, I suspect, because there is nothing happening in their grey matter, except a big empty void.
So far all they have sputtered from the slime of their bigotry, is that women would problably be better off as crotch queens, counting the notches for their endless one night stands. Beyond that they have not much intelligent advise for women.
I think of these women as so self-loathing that all they can bring to the table concerning women is an inflicting of misery loves company.
we live in a time when it is exceptionally important to be very specific with one’s words.
I do not know anyone who would argue that women do not deserve equal rights and are of equal capabilit, which is the proper definition of feminism.
Tangentially, I do not know anyone who wants polluted water and air.
The point being, issues such as feminism and environmentalism have been overwhelmed and hijacked by Leftist political agendas.
There is a reason NOW never speaks out against the brutal abuse of women in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is a reason that the eco-movement has been disavowed and shunned by the founder of Green Peace and the founder of the Weather Channel – and none of the reasons involve either feminism or environmentalism.
Feminism is one of the best things that happened to men since the invention of sliced bread.
1) The burden of the costs of raising children have been lifted from men’s shoulders. Now it is expected that the mother earn a lot of the costs. A few generations ago it was a matter of family pride if Mom never had a job at any time of her life.
2) Only a couple of generations ago it was a father’s obligation to earn ALL the family’s income, including enough left over that Mom never had to work a day of her life after Dad kicked. Now Mom has to earn her own keep until her last breath.
3) The availability of sex has put a smile on a lot of men’s faces.
Of course there are some nasty consequences for men as part of the feminist package. But the wool has been pulled over the eyes of lots of women in the name of their “liberation.”
Can’t remember who said it but, in the feminist world the new definition of chivalry is offering to pay for the abortion.
The legalization and acceptance of abortion has done far more to turn women into sex objects than anything else.
I find it fascinating that Pope Paul VI predicted modern Western society in part 17, first paragraph of “Humanae Vitae”, and in the second paragraph, he predicted modern China. Pretty amazing for a Dead White Guy, eh?
“Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women…”
The irony of this remark by a pro-choice ignoramus is not lost on anyone, I trust.
In reading the above comments, it should be noted I think, that no-fault divorce coincided with the rise of welfare. With welfare the general public was made to pay for the decisions of people to have frivolous affairs or to divorce. Welfare should be abolished because the tax payer should not have to pay for bad decisions by individuals.
Kids without 2 parents tend to run wild. In my own little gang of criminals I ran with in the late 60s, none had a father, not one. We did what we pleased, smoked, drank, ran around all night and a woman didn’t have the ability to control this by herself. Without welfare women with children would be forced to live with aunts, their mother, sister and there would be more sets of eyes on the kids.
The fact that single mothers want to maintain a more free and “independent” life style while on welfare should not be the general public’s concern but paying for the new criminals should be. Running alongside this is the inevitable conclusion that abortion was in fact championed to maintain a free love life style and not something that was in any way good for our culture. The majority of women have abortions because to not do so would interfere with their ability to live the life they had before they got pregnant. A million a year seems a little excessive and casual. A woman should not be allowed to have casual abortions based on lifestyle choices.
I see many people don’t realize that it’s really a two-parent unmarried welfare state in many instances where the mother lives with the father of all her children secretly while receiving welfare and dad works under the table for cash and the couple end up living a fairly nice lifestyle on the backs of tax-payers. I knew many white couples who did this (some even sold drugs and pot to subsidize their middle-class existence) but, now illegal Mexicans are going this route more and more than the dead-beat Americans in this country.
It’s amazing what lengths people will go to in order to steal from others and do it without any shame.
The vast majority of liberals aren’t idealogical at all.
They are common thieves who have found a much safer crime than breaking into houses of people who might have guns.
My cousins lived in such a broken home. My grandparents offered to take them in, but the boys couldn’t handle the discipline. Nine years later, one of them is dead (accidental fire) and the other fathered two children out of wedlock. Their sister turned out okay in comparison, though she did give birth out of wedlock before ultimately marrying the baby’s father.
I remember what my friend Ilze had to say about NOW and feminism.
Ilze is the daughter of Latvian parents who fled to America to escape the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic.
At one time feminism in this country served the women citizens. Especially when it came to the right to vote.
The National Organization for Women, founded in 1966, uses issues important to women as a vehicle for their real purpose – political power.
I was 20 when Ilze told me the truth. She said that womens rights were just a platform. What NOW was really about was furthering a Marxist agenda. Whether or not we are treated well at work and paid fairly, are abused physically, emotionally or financially in marriage or have the right to choose what we do with our own bodies is secondary to the real objective. Socialist reform.
I took what Ilze told me with a grain of salt. What NOW has done over the years proves her words to be true.
It seems that Robin Morgan has been hurt by someone, and now she hurts others by trying to force them to share her pain and rage. Whatever the cause, she speaks with the words of Satan himself.
“Throughout history, the family has been the most cherished and protective social institution for women”.Having read the above comments, I simply cannot agree. I identified male power along with blaming and even stigmatizing women to be the most dominant aspect of the “traditional family”. What about values as for example respect? Mutual respect rules out any form of violence against women, children and men(and may prevent abortions). However, it may include the option to separate. After all, life should offer some happiness for every human being and should not be seen as some sort of punishment that might only allow the option for a better life after death.
“Men eventually discovered that vague renditions of domestic violence such as “annoyance” or “apprehension” provided the basis for legal actions that eventually stripped them of their homes, their families, and their assets. No wonder millions of men vow they will never wed.”
Women who abuse the crooked laws to rip their husbands off this way because they can will also do other things if they only get the chance.
Those women are in essence evil people and those husbands haven’t lost ‘good wives’ but merely found out the truth about the real nature of their spouse.
People need to be much pickier about whom they hook up with!
Were people better behaved in earlier times? Nops, feminism just added more opportunity to behave anti-socially, instead of improving the character and the general attitude of the population to the better.
Men are no better than women here, lots of people have a horrible attitude towards life and it’s no surprise that they are making each others lives hell.
Feminism is just another red flag to mark a problem person as such… stupid people like stupid ideas, film at 11.
Please. It’s just as bad to force women to bear children as to force them NOT to. Remember that feminism is first and foremost about freedom. Freedom from oppression built in traditional gender roles. Women should have kids if they want to, and stay child free if they want to. I praise the feminists who made it possible for me not to copy my mother’s sad life. I could have kids as well as an education and a career. I had a choice, she didn’t. That’s what feminism is about.
It is now and always has been all about choosing the right man; I have eight kids and stay at home. I get nasty comments, funny ones, encouraging ones. But what bothers me the most is when a woman says something like “I wanted to quit my job and have another baby, but my husband wants a boat.”
Also keep in mind: one of the most common reasons given for an abortion is: “I didn’t think I had a choice”.
Meh, I’m guessing that more Christian marriages have been done in by men cheating on their wives than by all the feminists in the world.
…and visa versa as well (modern times anyhow).
If feminism and ‘equality of the sexes’ has taught us anything, it is not female “superiority” but that some women can be just as dog-dirty downright nasty and blood-letting as some men if given the opportunity and we ain’t no rosy-cheeked, halo wearin’ saints. Keyword being some.
And don’t even get me started on this nightmare below:
http://www.oddee.com/item_97013.aspx
When ‘feminism’ is the very antithesis of ‘feminine’…then, we have a serious case of the gender benders rather than the case of giving the idea of womanhood power in the feminine absolute.