There is a quote from one of the characters in the play/film, The History Boys, which touched me deeply:
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
I had the pleasure of rediscovering that special feeling so beautifully expressed in the quote above when I began reading The Fraud of Feminism by E. Belfort Bax. The book was written in 1913.
His commentary and insights into feminism are astonishingly fresh and as relevant and applicable today as they were more than one hundred years ago.
It was a remarkable experience to read a passage relating to what today would be labelled “virtue signaling” and to see that the very same behavior was occurring in 1913 (and long before) for the very same reasons as it exists today.
So far as courage is concerned, which was perhaps the first of the chivalric virtues in the old days, it certainly requires more courage in our days to deal severely with a woman when she deserves it (as a man would be dealt with in like circumstances) than it does to back up a woman against her wicked male opponent.
It is a cheap thing, for example, in the case of a man and woman quarrelling in the street, to play out the stage rôle of the bold and gallant Englishman “who won’t see a woman maltreated and put upon, not he!” and this, of course, without any inquiry into the merits of the quarrel. To swim with the stream, to make a pretense of boldness and bravery, when all the time you know you have the backing of conventional public opinion and mob-force behind you, is the cheapest of mock heroics.”
This insightful comment succinctly sums up so much of what transpires on Facebook, Instagram and any other platform provided by our puppet masters.
How often do we see people loudly “taking a stand” on an issue related to gender which is one they know is already supported and backed by the government, media, education system and those who control cyber space? They are then showered in praise and congratulations for demonstrating such courage by hundreds or even thousands of other like-minded cowards.
Celebrities are particularly adept at this ploy, but there are many others who make a daily habit of exhibiting their moral virtue and courage by commenting on an issue knowing the numbers and the power are right behind them.
It really is farcical.
Bax is quite brilliant in the way he dismantles the fraudulent claims made by feminists and he provides many examples of the hypocrisy and blatant double standards of the law and society when it comes to the treatment of men and women.
In an earlier article Feminism and Female Suffrage, 1910, Bax says:
I propose to show, as briefly as possible, not only, that women at the present time, considered as women and apart from the class to which they belong, suffer no sort of social injustice to which the men of their class are not equally exposed, but, on the contrary, that as women they enjoy privileges, and hence constitute a privileged order of human beings, not only as against the men of their class, but as against men generally, as men. If this be so, I contend not only does the practical urgency of the Suffrage claim, even if it were conceded in the abstract, fall to the ground, but even the abstract right itself would disappear, since the granting of it would amount to the piling up of an additional privilege on an already privileged class.
It is shockingly revealing to read such words when one knows they were written during a time feminists (and most of today’s general population) would proclaim to be the dark old days when women were supposedly little more than slaves to their husbands, oppressed and restrained by a government and society which viewed them as second class citizens at best. Bax makes it abundantly clear that women were privileged in numerous ways — most of which we are familiar with today.
That the object of a large number of these women who are now clamouring for the franchise is not merely to maintain but to extend their legal privileges is evident to anyone. They want the suffrage as a weapon wherewith to carry on a sex-war, with a view to the dominance of the female.
He provides concrete evidence of this privilege women possess:
Let us address ourselves to our more immediate purpose, which is to show the privileged status of women before the law, alike in itself and still more in its administration.
- Let us begin with the civil law, and, first of all, with that relating to the status of the married woman. No woman can be imprisoned for debt (“contempt of court”) no matter what means she may possess, although her husband may be for the non-payment of her debts. Not even can her property be attached for the payment of a debt if settled on her in due form.
- Neither can she be served with a bankruptcy order unless in relation to a business carried on apart from her husband and in her own name.
- She is free to leave her husband, and he has no legal power to detain her or compel her to return. He has no control over her personal property. She, on the other hand, can obtain an order for restitution of conjugal rights, by which he is ordered to return, or she can obtain alimony or maintenance, according to her “station in life.”
- The husband is responsible for any slander or libel she may commit although he knew nothing of it or even disapproved it. He is liable, that is, for damages and costs, while she escapes with absolute impunity.
From the above it will be seen that the infamous British law sticks at no outrage on the most elementary principles of common rectitude in privileging the married woman at the cost of her husband.
- Among all the women’s rights advocates I am not aware of one who, in her zeal for equality between the sexes, has ever suggested abolishing the right of maintenance of the wife by the husband. On the contrary, they are usually only too eager to increase the husband’s burdens in this connection. By an Act passed in 1895 this liability for maintenance was extended to a wife notwithstanding her adultery.
As has been remarked of the judges in this matter, “every moth-eaten scrap of privilege which is in favour of the wife they retain. All privileges of the husband, no matter how firmly established, they deny as ever having existed.”
- The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 a boy of fourteen can be convicted for committing a sexual offence with a girl of sixteen, to which he was actually incited by the latter, who, by virtue of her sex, is held guiltless by the law. I know of a case in which a female was produced as witness against several boys, younger than herself, whom she had seduced, but the Court held that this precocious creature could not be punished, although her victims were duly sent to gaol.
- As regards prison treatment, it is well known that flogging is absolutely abolished by the Act of 1820 where women are concerned. Hanging is practically abolished by usage for women who murder men. Women, if they find prison discipline irksome to them, have, as a rule, only to create a sufficient disturbance to get it relaxed. A very flagrant case of this kind occurred some years ago at Wormwood Scrubbs. In any case the duration of sentence is, on the average, about one-third that which a man would receive for a like offence, while the “hard-labour” is generally little more than nominal.
I could literally quote pages of Bax’s eye-opening facts on female privilege and the abuse of the notion of chivalry to have men do their bidding, but once again, I would urge you to find his book and essays through this link and read the work for yourselves. It punches a huge hole in yet another feminist myth which has repeatedly told us that women were regarded as having no value or power in society until about… yesterday. This patent lie has been drummed into the hearts and minds of boys and girls from an early age which helps to explain the current world in which we exist.
Fortunately, the wonders of technology have provided us with the opportunity to strike back and I think we all know there is a growing awareness about what is really behind the whining, ranting voices of feminists demanding equality.
A comprehensive archive of essays and books by Bax can be found here. A number of them are directly related to his objections to feminism and a demand for more empathy and justice for men and boys.
Sound familiar?
