Interview with the Independent Women’s Forum on the War on Men
I was interviewed for a piece by the Independent Women’s Forum on my new book, the war on men and why men are “Going Galt.” Here are a few highlights:
Smith has a book coming out from Encounter Books entitled Male Strike: Society’s War on Men. The thesis of the book is that the deck is so stacked against men that they are “going Galt,” as Smith puts it. The term comes from Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged in which society’s productive members went on strike—led by John Galt—because they were being exploited.
“In the case of men, the government and the politicians work in cahoots with women to extract money from men,” Smith says.” And then men aren’t entitled to a lot of the benefits, such as WIC (Women, Infants and Children Program) or a lot of welfare.”
The male strike can take the form of not marrying, not going to college or working at low-paying jobs and taking up hobbies to avoid paying into a system that uses state and federal programs to transfer men’s taxes to women. And taxpayer money doesn’t just go to what we regard as traditional welfare programs. Smith cites the Violence Against Women Act, which funnels taxpayer dollars to organizations staffed by activist women.
Another good quote:
“One reason women promote the war on women is that many of these women have degrees in such things as women’s studies and hold academic jobs, and they are the ones yelling because they know that if their benefits were cut out, who the hell needs them? They are not necessary but there is a lot of funding for these things. It’s all about money.”
Paraphrased from a comment over at Chateau Heartiste:
‘Wisdumb’ n.: The collective body of knowledge coming out of women’s studies programs.
Good stuff, but I can’t fathom why intelligent, educated, and aware women still feel the need to identify as a member of the supremacist movement called feminism.
There are plenty of things you could call yourself to identify your stance on opportunity, liberty, and equality without ascribing positive attributes to a violent hate cult.
In the interview, I meant that I believe in the equality between men and women which is what feminism used to mean–not any more, of course. But your point is well taken.
Yes and I don’t mean to cast negativity at you because I know where your head is at. I’d just like to see more women like you say “I am NOT a feminist, and here’s why…” Because the hate cultists DO use the “good feminists” to obfuscate their intentions. It’s one of the main tactics they’ve used to become so powerful, in fact.
Feminists talk about “empowering women”. That’s code for disempowering men. Feminism was NEVER about equality.
Probably true. My guess is that early feminists used equality to get what they wanted and when they did, threw it under the bus with the men. I do think there are some equity feminists who still care about equality between the sexes but the word feminist now has a hollow ring to it. I was watching some game show with Drew Carey where he asked the question “how many women in the US describe themselves as feminists.” You will be happy to know it was very few, something like 19 % I think, so being a feminist these days is not something most women embrace–at least not as a label.
Feminism is the status quo.
Hey, there was a time when “liberal” meant someone who respected private property, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now it’s the opposite.
Dr. Helen,
Having been a big fan of you and your work for as long as you’ve been blogging (the pleasure of reading it goes back to the blog’s first post!) I am anxious to read your new work on the subject. One question, though. Are you asking blog visitors to hold off on Amazon pre-orders in order to increase your first day sales? A lot of author’s do that and if it helps to generate sales for your book I am happy to do wait also. Let us know what your plans are.
Also, do you plan on a Kindle version? I’m aware of your fondness for that type of publishing but I don’t see a Kindle version offered at Amazon. Is this simply because the book is not on sale yet?
Having read you for so long I’m absolutely positive that this new book of yours will be great. I anxiously await its arrival.
Thanks so much for your kind comment. My book is with the publisher and should be out in the spring. As it gets closer, I will keep readers posted about when it is up on Amazon. I think there will be a Kindle book that might come out a bit later than the hardback.
As the mother of two young men, I thank you.
At this point “feminism” means one believes men aren’t needed and might be counterproductive. I’ve dropped the label a while back.
watching the D.N.C. blather on about the “war on women” was so predictable and pathetic.
Mitt Romney could easily refute the “war” with facts,but he strikes me as a white knight.
I can’t fathom why intelligent, educated, and aware women still feel the need to identify as a member of the supremacist movement called feminism.
That’s because the “womyn” in the movement are neither intelligent, particularly educated, or aware. They’re Lenin’s “useful idiots”.
I’m not talking about the kool aid drinkers, I’m talking about women like Dr. Christina Hoff-Sommers who has been branded a heretic by the Feminist movement yet still insists on calling herself a feminist.
Good question. Perhaps some right thinking women continue to identify themselves as feminists because they see themselves as reformers who must hold on to the label to reclaim it. Just a thought.
Trey
I think it’s because she’s trying to reclaim/redefine the word “feminist”. I don’t think it’s going to work, though. Not because of any fault of hers, but just because it’s a lost cause. “Feminism” is now widely understood to mean just another corrupt special-interest group, and I don’t think anyone is going to be able to change that.
CHS is probably still an egalitarian to some degree.
Excellent interview, all well said.
Pretty hard to convince my self to get married when all my friends are getting soaked in child support payments. Getting married will lead to a lower quality of life. Ya I think I’ll play computer games instead.
I’ve built a satisfying career where I make a nice middle-class income AND I get to play a lot of video games.
Meanwhile, nearly all the marriages I see look like something out of a Japanese horror movie.
It’s not a hard choice.
There is nothing feminine about feminism. Feminism objectives were never egalitarianism and equality. Their objectives have always been getting even with, and punishing men; obtaining revenge and reprisal against men; attaining superiority over adult men; condemning little baby boys to a life of false guilt.
Indeed Kurt. From a drama perspective, they move from inhabiting the victim role, we are innocent and hurt and cannot protect ourselves, to the perpetrator role, we are justified in our acting out because you leave us no other choice. This is all an alternative to problem solving! Like in race politics, solutions are eschewed and denied because once a solution is in place, there is no more opportunity for drama or profit.
Trey
The cogent points you make have been things MRA’s have been saying for years, but these points coming from men are always quickly and maliciously labeled by the powers that be (NOW and eunuch Biden) as misogyny.
For an educated female to expound upon these points in a book is definitely a step forward in the Men’s Rights Movement.
I imagine Dr. Smith will receive tons of criticism and outright hatred for publishing this book. The studies and statistics she uses will be questioned endlessly and seemingly “contradicted” by ideologically biased studies and statistics so loved by news websites such as The Huffington Post.
Still, to use the term “feminism” to define a movement that supports equal rights for both genders is not the best approach as the word excludes one gender just as VAWA only includes one gender thus making the very title sexist.
In this day and age, men feel like they need women like Helen Smith to stand up for them as if the radical feminist controlled government is a bully and men are the victims who have no voice. Men really have become discredited (as misogynists, rapists, batterers, harassers) and disenfranchised in this day and age.
“The cogent points you make have been things MRA’s have been saying for years…”
Exactly, but they need some direction and to move into the mainstream.
‘I imagine Dr. Smith will receive tons of criticism and outright hatred for publishing this book’
So what? If the book (but mainly the ideas) make people stop and think about what is happening to men in this country, I am willing to deal with it. I understand that is worse for a man to make these points, though Warren Farrell and Michael Guirian do it very well.
Dear Helen:
“I understand that is worse for a man to make these points, though Warren Farrell and Michael Guirian do it very well.” Worse is a bit of an understatement.
Just for fun, have your man or a male friend call around looking for help as a battered / abused male (use a generic phone, recomend a disposable cell) and have it recorded. Call a shelter, the cops, any organization that deals with DV.
Try even getting a help for a male patient who has been battered or abused. It’s rough –I agree with you and this needs to change. Education is the start. A revolution is the end. As men become more aware of what is happening to their rights in this country, I hope they will say enough and fight back.
Thanks yet again Doc Helen for an excellent article. I wish there were more “Open Minds” like yours to see what is really going on. My own experiences & battles have been long and arduous. I am, as I define myself an “Equalitarian” meaning that regardless of gender, colour, creed, race, sexual orientation or any other factor, that as “Human Beings we are ALL Equal” and therefore should all have the same rights, privileges and and equality within the workforce.
The overall effect of modern “Feminism” which is a far cry from the original movement of the early 60′s for equality @ work, home, school and under the law has deviated from it’s origins to where Feminism is now the “Politically Acceptable Racism” of the day. The western society has changed to such an extreme that “Men are guilty till proven more guilty” yet we see female school teachers having sex with teen aged boys (still statutory rape) get off with losing her teaching licence or suspended sentences, yet a Male teacher accused of such, even if there is NO SUPPORTING EVIDENCE of any wrong doing are charged, arrested and 95% of the time convicted for things they did not do…. The reason I mention this, is today in our news, 2 female teachers got off, based on only their own word, without any evidence to support the claims, yet a male teacher accused was convicted without ANY evidence whatsoever and his credible evidence was not allowed in court. Pretty soon the M word will be at equal footing with the N word yet MEN will never have a Reverend Martin Luther King to stand for us.
I celebrate the near future when the only men that want anything to do with women are trying to have sex with them or take their money.
If the mussies win they will go back to being property.
And the funny thing is that the femenist leaders will, if lucky, be relegated to the kichens. It is the hot looking young ones that will get what the leaders want and think they deserve.
Boys will be boys.
Yes. And women will be blaming men for not protecting them from the Muslim patriarchs that Barry ushered in.
Dr. Helen gives us another reason to homeschool children, especially boys, so that they will be reared in freedom with all the natural self-confidence they have.
I think people mistake the suffragettes with feminists.
The suffragettes argued for the right to vote, for equal education, equal opportunity, equal employment, and equal pay. They had a legitimate argument.
The feminists argue for superiority, for birth control, promiscuity and abortion. Exactly how that empowers women I’ll never know, but the goal of feminism is not empowering women, it’s denigrating men. Feminism is misandry on estrogen.
David Bowie sang it best. “Ah, wham, bam, thank you ma’am. Suffragette city.”
Then Rod Stewart sang it better. “In the morning, don’t say you love me / Cause I’ll only kick you out of the door / Yeah, I’ll pay your cab fare home / You can even use my best cologne / Just don’t be here in the morning when I wake up.”
I wouldn’t call that “going Galt.” I’d call it realizing that these days all a woman has to offer a man is sex, and well debt. Take the sex, leave the debt.
She can buy her own house. This is the logical conclusion of feminism. She offered me sex. I had sex with her. End of story. I’m done. It’s not like she’s not easily replaceable. I can get sex any time I want.
Is she going to be my life partner? Is she going to be my helpmate? Is she going to be the mother to raise my children? No, of course not, that would be oppression. So, what is she worth? A tequila shot, a lie to the face and one quick night in a hotel.
And now she doesn’t like it. I don’t care. This is the way she wanted it, or at least that’s what she said.
It’s simple due to female hypergamy, women will eventually want more than “equality”. Therefore feminism is the natural evolution of women’s’ suffrage as time passes. What was once equality becomes redirected towards female supremacy and gynocentricity as the fem-collective secures rights and laws in their reproductive and political favor by exploiting manginas and white knights with their sexuality. However, men who do not want this will find themselves “shamed” for not adhering and supporting the hidden matriarchal status quo.
I see a lot of criticism of feminism in blog discussions of these issues. However, I think the much bigger issue is simply the financial costs of having a family. Many guys don’t want to commit to the conventional life pattern simply because they see the financial struggles that people with kids have. Housing, education, and health care costs have exploded over the past 30 years compared to mean income. In contrast, the cost of almost all material goods, everything from furniture to big screen TV’s, have dropped relative to mean income. This is true for most services as well (e.g. international travel). Financially speaking, its much more rewarding to not have kids than to have them these days.
The other factor is that careers are less stable these days. Who wants to raise a family on a shoe-string budget when you can live a single or married couple life with lots of fun and travel? Usually when I trots these points out on MRA blogs, one or more persons offer up religious mumble jumble in reponse, as if religion is the magic cure-all for financial problems. Its not. Furthermore, religion is a drug that I seem to be completely immune to.
I say this because this was the calculation going through my mind when I decided never to have kids. My choice had nothing to do with feminism or men being screwed in divorce and family courts. Yes, I know the latter is a major disincentive for family formation and rightly so. However, it just seems to me that the financial and life style sacrifices are much more a part of the calculation going through most mens’ minds than the divorce and family courts.
I can’t help but think financial issues are the root of all of this.
Another point I want to say is that conventional wisdom seems to hold that men tend to be dreamy types whereas women are more practical and down-to-Earth. Its my personal experience that this is completely backwards. With regards to family planning and financial issues, its the men who are practical and are realistic and it is the women who are the dreamy types with all kinds of fantasies about their future.
Hey Dr. Helen,
Don’t forget to e-mail me when the book does come out. We’ll get you what publicity we can in the Manosphere.
Cpt.
Thanks, I will let you know and I appreciate your help!