The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally projected, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetary, and another portion as the site of a prison. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
It seems sensible, at this stage, to pose the question: why is all this happening? The answer I can offer up, for the purpose of this lecture, is not historical but psychological: it offers explanation through reference to the mental state of feminism’s operators. There certainly are historical processes at work, explored elsewhere, but no social movement survives purely for the sake of its history. Nobody is born a feminist. There must be some stimulus, or stimuli, working to remodel formerly non-feminist women and men into activated feminists. But we cannot explain feminist conversion by the agitation of those already existing feminist activists. We can certainly believe that feminist activism plays a role in recruitment, but this is not adequate as an explanation. Why would an individual then commit to feminism, rather than any other particular social movement whose advocates engage in agitation for the purposes of ideological recruitment?
It must be that feminism offers such individuals something that other movements do not. I propose that, by opening up space for perfectly satisfying, collective man-hating, feminism offers a form of catharsis eagerly seized upon by those already predisposed to misandry. There are probably as many rationalizations for misandry as there are individual feminists – we would have to explore the intimate details of an individual feminist’s life, particularly her mental culture, to come to a conclusion about when and why she decided to blame an entire sex for each of her inconveniences. What is common to them all is hostility to masculinity, i.e. maleness. When the initial excitement brought about by mutual indulgence in sexual hate has died down, the lines of communication between feminists remain open. Feminism provides more than the opportunity for catharsis. The feminist soon realizes that she need not restrict herself to echo chambers, but might try her hand at real change. A thrill rushes through her at the thought of not just disparaging, but actually hurting men. Backed up by an extensively organized, generously funded and institutionally-connected movement – one that enjoys a rosy reputation as defender of that greatest virtue of our time, equality – she sets to work. Feminism is a misandrist’s dream.
Implicit in what I have written above is the corollary that feminism does not create misandry. Feminism promotes, endorses, reinforces, organizes and aggrandizes misandry, but it does not generate it outright. A woman who is not antipathetic towards men will not become so upon exposure to feminist thought. More likely, she will recoil at its odious philosophy. Feminism simply provides a space for women and men who were already misandrically-inclined to congregate and make plans.
The forerunner to feminism was traditional Gynocentrism, a self-sustaining social system which taught women that men should sacrifice on their behalf, and taught men that they were defective women. The female privilege inherent to this sexual ecology was undoubtedly accompanied and reinforced by animosity towards men – the ‘flawed’ sex – most particularly those men who did not conform to the Gynocentric role expected of them. Feminism departs from this model, not only in the sense that it provides organization for this misandry, but also in the instability of its operations. Feminism relentlessly demands greater male sacrifice for the benefit of women. This is a process to be intensified without an end point. Such a process lacks forward planning or any semblance of equilibrium. Ever greater constraints are placed on the very class of people whose labor and genius sustains the social order in which feminism can thrive. The parasite is killing its host, and will either be purged or die along with it. Feminism is simply not sustainable.
But it is not as though feminists think in these terms. Despite their forays into such recondite subjects as jurisprudence and post-modernism, feminist thought ultimately resolves to the validation of primal emotions. The central tenets of Western-style justice systems, evolving as they did under patriarchy, aspired to impartiality and objectivity in all proceedings. We speak of habeas corpus, the right to trial by jury, the presumption of innocence, punishments which fit rather than exceed corresponding crimes, and so on. That these doctrines of civic freedom have lasted for so many centuries is testament to the integrity of the generations of men who inherited them. Feminists, in their efforts to replace these ‘outmoded, patriarchal’ institutions, do not engage in anything like the deep thought that begat their careful construction. Much less do they entertain the notion of impartiality. All feminist legal innovation – whether it is introducing the presumption of guilt (for men), advocating an inquisitorial rather than adversarial trial system (for men), or proposing that women should not be punished at all when they commit crimes – flows from the same source: the violent and vindictive emotions of individual feminist operators. Feminism is so dangerous because it exists to validate these emotions, and to assign them a permanent place in discussions over how society might be better organized.
The success of feminism in this regard can be appreciated when we consider the popularity of collective guilt, anathema as it is to the principles of neutrality and impartiality underpinning our liberal justice systems. Collective guilt is an emotional discharge, a visible effect of concentrated class hatred. It is an attack on the verifiable truth of individual moral agency. Under a system of collective guilt, one’s actions have no bearing on one’s fate. Human beings are sent to the gallows for the circumstances of their birth. There is no purpose for trials, or any institution which exists to ascertain the facts of the case and to assign guilt. Guilt is already assigned; the facts are irrelevant. What follows collective guilt is collective punishment.
Feminists are not yet in a powerful enough position to deliver collective punishment to the entirety of the male sex. Instead, they cast as wide and as deep a net as possible, hoping to snag as many men and boys as they can. Wherever an individually identifiable man appears on their radar, he becomes the latest pariah, even if the accusations against him are weak and unfounded. This is irrelevant; all that matters is that he has been identified. Then, he becomes the target for unbridled angst, a public piñata, an effigy of all men, of maleness itself. He becomes the personification of the entire male sex, and the collective punishment that feminists yearn to deliver unto all men is inflicted onto him. Even after he is proven to be innocent of all accusations, the attacks intensify, as though the reluctance of the world to acknowledge his guilt is an even greater injury than the charges brought against him. In a short while, he will be forgotten, and a new whipping boy will be discovered. Until that time, feminists will try to outdo each other in editorials, speeches, and in the comment sections of newspapers and weblogs, calling for the most grotesque mutilations and acts of violence against him.
An impartial legal system, which treats human beings as individuals, is a barrier against collective punishment. To do away with it altogether would allow for the punishment of many more men, on the basis that they are men, which is why feminists have fought so relentlessly to overturn impartiality. Bit by bit, feminist agents within government, academia and the legal system have replaced individual moral agency and the rule of law with the micro-management of people. As the mantra goes, the personal is political – it is, increasingly, the business of the state. Even when not explicitly framed like this, the underlying principle of all feminist innovation is to bring the state to bear down, ever more closely, on our personal, everyday existences. If the personal really is the same thing as the political, then political correctness must be personal correctness – a perverse and pervasive system of control which scrutinizes an individual’s every move, in order to lock him into place. You must be personally correct, in terms of your beliefs, your desires, your pursuits, your tastes – right down to the jokes you are permitted to laugh at – according to their standards. They being the self-declared ‘victims’ of society, who are nevertheless powerful enough to enjoy lunch with the President and set out the terms on which the government is to run your life.
The idea is not that men should overcome all the obstacles in their struggle to be politically/personally correct. After all, those who are demanding that men run this daily gauntlet are the very same people lining up to beat them with clubs as they try. The idea is that men should, so to speak, die trying. The intention is that men fail. For as long as average men manage to live peacefully, and even successfully, more and greater incursions into their personal space shall be required. It is at the point of failure -; when men have failed to live up to the increasingly constrictive rules set out for them – that they can be punished. The ordeal gets tougher by the day and with each passing of new legislation.
At the extreme end of societal micro-management, we find states like North Korea, a brutal, totalitarian dictatorship which controls all forms of media, place severe restrictions upon speech, association, movement and access to information, and detains dissidents and their families in concentration camps where many die from starvation or medical experimentation. Western societies are separated from the continuum of despotism, on which we find North Korea, by a small number of fundamentals, some of which have already been referenced: respect for the autonomy of the individual, the presumption of innocence, the separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers, etc. These doctrines correspond precisely to those which feminism aims to tear down. The violent, vindictive emotions from which feminism springs are, by nature, irrational; there exists no internal, rational boundary, to suggest that enough is enough once a certain benchmark is reached. The furious impulses at the heart of feminism would not stop short of constructing a totalitarian regime which restricts men’s speech, their association and movement, and detains them in concentration and labor camps where they are subject to starvation and mutilation.
Are we so far removed from savage regimes like North Korea that this is not a possibility? We should not allow ourselves to be misled by appeals that we live in a democracy, and that the leaders are ultimately accountable to the people. Our democracy is only ostensible, offering little real choice. The bipartisan consensus between leading parties ensures that the state continues to grow, and the feminist agenda is further promoted, whether the new government cloaks itself in red or blue. Facing no serious political opposition, the leaders do not have to bow to the people to secure their mandate. All public pandering is superficial, though highly effective, in the same way that all totalitarians have enjoyed the popularity of the masses. By definition, totalitarians must be populist: the support they must mobilize, in order to remain in power, cannot be that of an armed minority alone. In exchange for the sponsorship of the masses, totalitarians caress their egos, giving enthusiastic praise to them for their courage, declaring them the inspiration of all progress. At least, the greater part of them are praised. Groups which are not in favor are, in contrast, treated with contempt prior to their destruction. It is the majority which becomes tyrannous – as Alexis De Tocqueville warned – when the leaders isolate a particular segment of the population for blame and castigation. Enjoying their glorification on behalf of the leader, the chosen majority will side against the undesirables, and treat them with abominable malice. It is a story that has played out, over and over, throughout history – not least in the populist tyrannies of the twentieth century.
Today, our leaders exalt the feminine and malign the masculine – a prejudice running so deep that it has become normalized, to the point where few consider it unusual for the President to bash men on Father’s Day. Men – who are, indeed in the minority, making up 49% of the population – are suffering the early stages of the tyranny of the majority. Leaders of all parties pander, first and foremost, to the female majority, and particularly to the pressure groups set up (supposedly) in their interests. More pernicious than this is the entry of women into politics – not because of the fact that they are women, but because almost every female politician, whatever her party allegiance, makes women’s issues her priority. In contrast, male politicians swear their allegiance to the principles of their party and to the demands of their constituents, but not to men’s issues. There are no politicians who make men’s issues a priority, but plenty – male and female – who run on the cross-party, women’s issues platform. The world is not so simple that we can say men are over-represented because they are present in greater numbers. Although there is a greater number of men in politics, it is women who are over-represented, because more politicians represent them than they do men. The sex of the politician makes no difference to the legislation that he passes. In courting the female vote, and particularly in his efforts to please feminist groups (organized misandry), he will perpetuate and extend chivalry, he will publicly belittle his own sex, and he will pass ever more anti-male legislation, sanctioning the brutalization of ordinary men.
Systematic destruction follows systematic contempt. The eventual outcome of feminism is nothing less than a Holocaust, the almighty crescendo to mark the success of a century or more of sexual warfare and the demonization/degradation of the masculine. Those men, such as the male politician who has stoked the fires of gender tribalism to win votes and benefit his own career, will become the concentration camp facilitators and the enforcers of population reduction programs. They shall be the Uncle Toms, the Judenräte atop white horses, who will ultimately meet the same fate as the men they have helped exterminate. The anti-male, homicidal and genocidal violence in feminist rhetoric is well documented:
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness … can be trained to do most things – Jilly Cooper, SCUM (Society For Cutting Up Men)
I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig – Andrea Dworkin
Kill your fathers – Robin Morgan
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex – Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto
It is no accident that in the ancient matriarchies men were castrated, sacrificially slaughtered, and excluded from public forms of power; nor is it an accident that some female supremacists now believe men to be a distinct and inferior species or race. Wherever power is accessible or bodily integrity honored on the basis of biological attribute, systematized cruelty permeates the society and murder and mutilation contaminate it. We will not be different – Andrea Dworkin
Why have any men at all? … The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race – Sally Miller Gearhart
If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males – Mary Daly
The stock feminist response is to point out that these quotes are from radical feminists, who have not been active for a long time, and do not represent mainstream feminism. While it is not exactly true that they do not represent mainstream feminism, we can find more recent examples of feminist attitudes:
It is time that government had a strategy on changing men away from power and oppression as part of its strategy for women and gender justice … Changing future agendas for women involves changing men; changing men involves deconstructing men and reducing men’s power; and, in the longer term still, this may even involve the abolition of men” – EuroPRO-Fem, a European men’s pro-feminist network
The following is extracted from a recent discussion on a feminist weblog:
Allecto: I think there is a very simple solution to the ‘problem’ of the team sport of gang-raping that is so popular as a form of gay male bonding between football players.
Mandatory castration of all men who play football and all men who watch football. This would be a quick and easy solution.
bonobobabe: I like your castration idea. I’d take a step further and castrate all male babies at birth.
Mary Sunshine: There is no remedy for this situation other than to halt the emergence of any more human males.
Two caveats must be advanced before we go any further. The first is not a compromise; it is not self-censorship or moderation. It is a statement of fact. The overwhelming majority of women do not, and would not, support the extermination of men. The question of whether all or most or only some feminists support the extermination of men is one that I shall address in a couple of weeks’ time. Clearly, there are feminists who do not openly support the extermination of men. Nevertheless, they have a role to play in the process, as do all misandrists. For the time being, it will suffice to say that all feminist self-reflection and self-criticism reaches the verdict that they are not being ‘feminist enough,’ i.e. it results in further radicalization. I quote from the back cover of Zillah Eisenstein’s The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism, a feminist text which arrives at this very conclusion:
Eisenstein shows that liberal feminism is ‘self-contradictory’ because it ‘accepts liberalism and at the same time rejects its patriarchal base.’ Yet in truth, feminism is ‘potentially subversive’, to both liberalism and the capitalist patriarchal state, and it must and can become radicalized as it pushes against the limitations of what can be accomplished within the context of the state … Eisenstein advances the view that liberal feminism contains within itself the seeds of radical change.
The significant point about the above quote is that Eisenstein, the feminist author, rejects the ‘patriarchal base’ of all liberal institutions; that is, she would happily do away with legal impartiality, equality before the law, presumptive innocence, and so on. Retaining these doctrines, which exist to protect innocent people, is not on the feminist agenda, and Eisenstein comes to the very same conclusion that I have presented in this lecture: that liberal feminism will become radical when it achieves all it can through the liberal state. The violent and vindictive emotions will not be satiated, ever. Once feminism has gone as far as it can go through the liberal state, ‘liberal feminists’ will turn against it and plot its overthrow.
The second caveat is that the physical destruction of men is not inevitable. It is the logical outcome of feminism, but our future is not set in stone. Given that feminists have explicitly called for forced male labor and the presumption of innocence to be removed when men are accused of rape, and that lawmakers are seriously floating the suggestion that those found guilty of sex offences should be physically castrated, we might conclude that we are already some way down the feminist road to hell. Feminism has no internal brakes; a victory does not temper the feminist’s violent emotions, but provides the momentum for her to push for greater results, in the knowledge that she can get away with hurting men. Any barrier to the progress of feminism will therefore have to come from outside feminism. It is up to external agents to build a brick wall in feminism’s path.
We are more than sixty years into an organic process that will leave humanity with an irrevocably changed society. The catalyst for the abolition of Gynocentrism is its own radical and unsustainable expression in feminism. Those same social and conceptual changes which made feminism possible prompt the question of why men should put up with any form of Gynocentrism. The critical mass of opposition to Gynocentrism, resulting in its overthrow, will be reached as soon as feminism is exposed to the world. What remains to be seen is whether feminism shall expose itself, or whether it will be exposed by counter-feminists. The former will occur if the movement becomes powerful enough to explicitly launch the physical destruction of men. My own view is that feminists will make this final roll of the dice, and that they will be ultimately unsuccessful, although many men will suffer tortuous deaths. The other possibility is that feminism is exposed in advance of this, preventing much of the violence, and allowing for the repeal of all Gynocentric rule with minimal bloodshed. Whatever the case – whether feminism exposes itself, or is exposed – it is done for. Cast in the disinfecting sunlight of the world’s gaze, held to account for its grievous transgressions, never again will feminism be tolerated.
Adam
