Category Archives: Feminism

Men have enough trouble figuring out what women are all about; throwing 70 more undefined "genders" into the mix is at the very least unhelpful.

It's a mistake to think feminists want "equality" or ever did. If men and women are enemies battling for power, as the feminists would have it, then the end goal of the women cannot reasonably be a détente; instead, it must be unconditional surrender of the men.

And here's one strategy to achieve total dominance: the feminists indeed wanted to free women -- contrary to all reason -- to have as much sex as they wanted, but that was only step 1. Step 2 is now to have women use sex to accuse their lovers of rape.

Thereby bringing all the coercive might of the state upon their heads. All is fair in love and war which are, according to the feminists, the same thing!

What a clever roundabout plan hatched by some crafty dominatrix long ago.

It's hard not to conclude that while men are an order of magnitude more physically violent than women, women in their turn are an order of magnitude sexually dirtier than men.

As an extra subtlety, however, nothing is worse than a violent woman or a male sex fiend.

How many identities has the political correctness movement been able to synthesize?

So, there are blacks and maybe brown people, though the latter tend to be foreigners, and we seem to be killing them in large numbers; there are a number of sexual disorders which have received the blessings of the PC; and there are the women who, though a majority, have been lumped by feminism into a single homogenous mass. Seriously, is that all?

Consider Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up routine on immigration:

I am for open immigration but that sign we have on the front of the Statue of Liberty, "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...," can't we just say, "Hey, the door's open, we'll take whoever you got?"

Do we have to specify the wretched refuse?

I mean, why don't we just say, "Give us the unhappy, the sad, the slow, the ugly, people that can't drive, that they have trouble merging, if they can't stay in their lane, if they don't signal, they can't parallel park, if they're sneezing, if they're stuffed up, if they're clogged, if they have bad penmanship, don't return calls, if they have dandruff, food between their teeth, if they have bad credit, if they have no credit, missed a spot shaving;

in other words, any dysfunctional defective slob that you can somehow cattle prod onto a wagon, send them over, we want 'em."

Why aren't the PC defending, for example, all of those miserable bastards? Why aren't they legitimate (and oppressed) identities?

Or take Ko-Ko's little list of society offenders, including "the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs; all people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs"; etc.; why aren't the PC championing them?

Kill all white men, according to one such, Bahar Mustafa.

As an economist, however, I feel it is my duty to point out that it would not be in the self-interest of the "queer feminists," whatever ideology or "identity" that signifies, to kill all white men, because of... you know, the civilization that would, uh... collapse.

Hat tip: Lew Rockwell blog.

His communist Holiness expresses the following opinion:

We should support with decisiveness the right to equal pay for equal work. Why is it a given that women must earn less than men? No! They have the same rights. The disparity is pure scandal.

But no arbitrary Smith has a "right" to earn the same or more as any arbitrary Jones, including in a special case of this general rule in which Smith is a woman, and Jones is a man.

Francis said the "radical equality" that Christianity proposes between husband and wife must bear new fruit.

Francis has spoken out frequently about how the Catholic Church in general must give greater value to the "feminine genius"...

But if men and women are "equal," then there is no special "feminine genius," because the feminine is equal to the masculine is (presumably) equal to neuter.

I'm not sure Francis has thought any of this through.

So, it's not a problem that people were falsely accused, a national scandal was created viciously, chaos reigned on the University of Virginia's campus, and lives were ruined.

No, it's that many unsophisticated people unfortunately pay attention to such trivial injustices that caused the "message" about the "culture of rape" to be "lost."

If the massive slander had never been exposed, then the ends would have very well justified the means for the leftists or feminists; how sad for them that the perfectly valid general ideological "point" might now be overlooked because of this particular irritating failure. I'm sure next time the feminists, etc. will lie more carefully.

Women are having nearly as many extramarital affairs as men.

In a number of ways. First, it will create powerful incentives to women not to have more children than they can "afford." The private safety nets may well refuse to assist a genuinely irresponsible mother. By "afford" I mean that a family will not have a marginal child, if the parents feel that this child will impair the standard of living of both the parents and their existing children "too much," i.e., below what they find acceptable.

Second, it will strengthen the institution of marriage, insofar as women will know that it is in their interest to have a provider for them and their children. No public welfare here!

Third, it will eliminate taxes, thereby easing the burden on the majority of the population.

Fourth, it will create ever greater prosperity, thus, e.g., making day care, if such a thing is desired, more affordable. Both (3) and (4) will reduce the utility of a second income from the mother's wages. An average man should be able to support his entire family on his own paycheck alone. This does not mean that women ought not to work; merely that they will have an expanded choice about what to do in life.

Fox-Genovese mentions an interpretation of a feminist argument that "men are not as good mothers as women," saying that feminists probably don't mean that. That there is even a controversy here is hard to believe. For it is obvious to everyone that women, indeed, are better mothers than men, while men are better fathers then women.

Fox-Genovese apparently thinks that the role of the mother is identical to the role of the father in a family. And of course, that's not the case. In my book, I call the mother an "unconditional nurturer," and father, a "guardian and guide." Thus,

the father’s task of guiding his children toward moral goodness is more important than the mother’s job as unconditional nurturer; or rather, the latter is subordinate to the former, just as health is a means to contemplation.

The peculiarity of parenthood consists in the fact that ultimately, there is in it no division of labor. Like dressing oneself or brushing teeth, one can't hire someone to do these things for him.

It is possible that Alice the manager works for A, Inc. and pays Betty the nanny to look after her children. However, from the social point of view, the situation in which Alice cares for her own kids, and Betty is thereby released from service to find work at B, Inc. is almost indistinguishable.

Further, few people can afford to hire nannies. Now we get to the argument that daycare should be run or subsidized by the government in order to free women to work. Again, it's unclear why this is more efficient. First, employment is not a path to self-esteem for women; women become factors of production for the sake of satisfying consumer desires.

Second, this will result in higher taxes, possibly to the working women themselves; of course, taxes harm society quite capably in and of themselves.

Third and most important, in daycare or kindergartens, the children are unloved. They are anonymous, impersonal, customers. Love is tangible; it can be seen and felt, and children do feel it, when they are loved; it's the most beautiful and rare thing in the world. Children in their capacity as consumers of parental care are deeply harmed, rejected, wither through their mothers' selfishness. Fox-Genovese is correct in saying that what "the child above all needs" is to "feel loved and 'at home'." Mises argues that "From the parents the child learns to love, and so comes to possess the forces which enable it to grow up into a healthy human being." But the only way to learn to love is to be loved first.

In short, if you are having children, you'd better be prepared to sacrifice everything for them, including your very life. It is likely that you will not actually be called upon to do this, but it is beyond the shadow of a doubt that your own ambitions will be scaled down.

Choose carefully.

Now feminists officially want women to be like men. (Unofficially, they want men's power without men's responsibility.) I already pointed out that this involves women allowing themselves to have petty vices. But where else do women fall short of men? How about in the number of murders committed? Ultimately, the desire for equality must involve efforts to equalize the number of violent crimes perpetrated by men and women. The ultimate "privilege" of being a man is his prerogative to go insane and kill lots of people. When a man does something like that, it's considered to be part of life. A ruthless male warlord slaughters a village. What's the big deal? In today's news, male insurgents in Afghanistan down a helicopter and kill 30 male Navy SEALS. Eh, happens every day. If a woman did it, then that would be a scandal. The "unfair" "double standard" must entail a desire on the part of the feminists for more women to be cold-blooded murderers, thieves, and con artists in order to desensitize the public to the women's newfound "equal" bloodlust.

I never understood why people liked The Sopranos. It is a tribute to the actors' skill that the characters they portrayed were so disgusting. Tony and his gang are monsters disguised as men. They are filthy inside. And they dare call themselves Catholic. I found watching them nauseating. One moment he pats you on the shoulder, the next he pumps you full of lead. I personally could never be around such people, even if they were not violent. The fiery unpredictable and unmanageable arbitrariness of the Mafiosi -- from generosity to hatred in 2 seconds -- is more than I can stand. The reductio of feminism is that their logic drives them to advise women to imitate Tony Soprano.

The paragons of feminist high achievers then are all the women in prison for violence. Those women have broken through the glass floor rather than ceiling, but I suppose the feminists will take progress wherever it may occur.

Of course, the reply will be that women want to remain better than men at those things, such as law-abidingness, at which they are already better, but be equal to men in those things at which they are presently worse. (With the help of the government rather than honest market competition.) At the very least, this is deeply unfair. Switch "women" and "men" in the sentence above; how is the resulting proposition not an anathema to feminists?

Look, women are better than men at some things; worse at others. I do philosophy; Whiskas makes treats for cats. I have an agreement with Whiskas: they don't philosophize, and I don't produce cat food. Let's keep the division of labor, shall we?

Is it really true that a woman whose main job is caring for her children at home is not a "person"? Is it the case that stay-at-home mothers fail to develop their personalities or mature as human beings?

Let me suggest that mothering is a highly complex job that requires enormous professionalism and responsibility. You are supervising the growth and development of human beings in a way that will make an indelible mark on their characters and destiny, including their immortal souls. "If anyone causes one of these little ones -- those who believe in me -- to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea," (Mt 18:6) our Lord warns all mothers and fathers.

Dealing with children is a highly specialized job within the social division of labor. It is invaluable for the "consumers" who are the children; it requires non-trivial skills; and it can be highly rewarding, as the mother watches her children grow and improve in nature, virtues, and arts.

If the job is well-done, then the children will grow up to be holy and eager to seek their own happiness and that of other people. They themselves will have children. And they will become friends with their parents. Achieving these goals is extremely difficult and requires full self-giving, attention to detail, delicate discernment of spirits, patience, understanding, and numerous other qualities that are unlikely to be present in a woman at the outset and are developed in the process of looking after her children. The woman, too, grows in her powers of doing good to her children.

Quite frankly, I am in awe of the women who have successfully brought up their children. A person finishes his maturation in his 30s. A mother must then supply her child for 30 years with unfailing love and devotion. This is unbelievably hard, but fun, too.

No, a woman becomes a great person, if she cares for her children well.

A feminist may simply argue that all she wants is to give to women the same opportunities in life than men also have. I have argued that women's nature prevents some of such opportunities from being available to women. But the offensiveness of feminism does not lie with the falsity of its arguments. It is due rather to two things.

First, feminists are coercive. If they said: "Employers irrationally prefer to hire men over more qualified women," and attempted to change that by peaceful persuasion, then there would be little to object to in their efforts. They are dissatisfied with popular culture? Well, then, they are free to contribute their own ideas to it. They could start a business and pick up female employees at bargain rates. But no, feminists run to the government and demand laws that destroy freedom of association. It is not as if men enjoyed a legal privilege over women, such that a business owner who hired a woman could go to prison or be slapped with a $10,000 / day fine. No, people remain relatively free to hire and fire whoever they like. Feminists aim to ruin that freedom. Not content with making their case that women make good lawyers and doctors, feminists want to force employers to hire women. Since most government officials are still men, this is yet another attempt by feminists to feign helplessness in order ruthlessly to cease some commanding height of society.

Second is the feminists' tactics in arguing. If I think that feminism is mostly nonsense, then feminists do not say that I am intellectually mistaken but that I am morally evil. By arguing my points, I am, ipso facto, a bad man, perhaps, a woman hater. I am part of the problem. I am a troglodyte. I keep women down. In other words, they poison the well. And this is disingenuous, though it does have the expected by the feminists effect on the public. No wonder, people are afraid to reply to feminist arguments. They'll be painted as exploiters, defenders of rape, and goodness only knows what.

Fox-Genovese points out: "Planned Parenthood still reminds potential contributors about how much the pregnancies of poor unmarried women cost taxpayers, suggesting that the wide availability of birth control and abortion will reduce the bill." Well, let's spell it out, shall we, lest there be any confusion. This is obviously about blacks. Liberals view the spread of blacks as a natural disaster, like plague of locusts. Is that reasonable? I don't know, but that abortion has been justified as a measure to prune the black population is certainly true. The steps from permitting black women to abort their children to forcing them to abort to, finally, sterilizing them seem to follow naturally.

The most ridiculous thing is that this despotic and inhuman ideology could have been avoided, if we had economic laissez-faire. For under freedom, everyone is responsible for their own children. There are ruthless market incentives against irresponsible sex.

So, first, liberals chose to give (other people's) money to women for having illegitimate children out of "compassion." The psychology of races is such that blacks were encouraged to have many more such children than whites. Black fathers were often much stricter with their daughters than white fathers with theirs, and for a good reason. In the end, they couldn't save the situation. Mix in the drug war, the black guys' naturally greater violent tendencies (hey, as Kramer said in Seinfeld, "Mother nature is a mad scientist"), especially when fatherless, and we have our locusts.

The liberals were horrified by this. Of course, coercive "compassion" had to stay. Still, liberals became "concerned about overpopulation by 'poor' and 'minority' children." Since we live in a scientific age (especially in which the government is imagined to be able to successfully manage the economy), their second step was to attempt to find methods to stem the tide of black bastards, so that "they" would not supplant "us." And we wonder why some blacks think the CIA is selling crack in their communities!

Fox-Genovese betrays her allegiance when she claims that "most Americans willingly acknowledged that easily available, publicly funded abortion would deter society from punishing women whose new sexual opportunities led them into a mistake." Publicly funded, huh? Let me use the standard labels for a bit. Liberals claim that conservatives practice repression: they aren't satisfied with just leading righteous lives, as they see it, themselves and avoid abortions; they want to force women who do not subscribe to their moral view also not to have abortions. Yet here we have liberals not only wanting conservatives to endure the sight of dead babies in their midst but also pay for killing them! How are liberals not repressive, the very vice they accuse conservatives of?

Abortion, according to feminism, is "the guarantee that women (and men) could enjoy sexual freedom without consequences." Alright, let's consider sexual freedom. The striking fact is that a woman who wanted to sleep around and have many partners could never in any society really be stopped. Sex has never been illegal; a woman who seduced a married man could never be charged with any crime; in a big city like New York, no one cared how promiscuous a woman was, anyway. A woman who set her mind on being a slut would always succeed, as plenty of men would always be there to grant her her wish of sexual gratification. Moreover, women can use their sexuality as a way to gain power over men and have often done just that; this is an ancient as sexual reproduction itself.

What loose women did not have was respectability. Their status was close to that of male criminals. Consider that the phrase "get in trouble" means different things for men and women. For men, it means run afoul of the law, go to jail, and the like. For women, it means get an unwanted pregnancy. So, women who whored were outcasts, banished from good society. And this bothered them. How to fix the situation, they wondered? Institutionalizing sacred prostitution was probably out of the question. Very well, how about enshrining "sexual freedom" as a fundamental human right?

Now proper ladies do not benefit from a large variety of whores out there. Too many sexually active women in the wild, and men can obtain sexual satisfaction easily, which creates an incentive against marrying. This is against even of rightly understood interests of men, for whom sex ceases to be a stepping stone to love and loving marriage. Prostitutes tempt men who usually succumb quite readily.

There are reasons why whores are rejected from polite company. A woman is built for the difficult task of bearing children. She can't engage in risky behaviors and remain fit as a mother, physically and mentally. Fox-Genovese writes that "by the time Tracey had finished graduate school, she had had five abortions, and she was beginning to fear that she could never have a child." Whoring is thus against women's nature. In addition, promiscuous women lose the capacity to bond with a husband or fall truly in love. Hence, promiscuity is against men's nature. Men do not "respect," offer consideration to, fall in love with, or marry whores, except in movies. In enjoying their sexual freedom, women have sabotaged both the procreative function of sex and the unitive one.

Again, becoming a whore has always been an option for a woman in any society. But women cannot complain that there are social sanctions against this sort of thing. You do the crime, be prepared to do the time (and don't whine, if you are caught); you sleep around, don't expect invitations to posh parties (and again, don't whine, if such invitations, indeed, are not forthcoming). They should grasp their own true interests and support such sanctions, even if they suffer from them personally. It would be anti-social to do otherwise.

Fox-Genovese recalls how in her salad days as a college student, she and her fellow feminists wanted to free women from the custom of taking their husbands' last names upon marrying. Now Mises argued that this custom is a matter of honor. It changes nothing substantive but is a sign that the wife honors her man. Why would she do that? Well, ideally, men protect women from all possible harms, so that they could bear children in safety and peace. But a protector is prepared to sacrifice himself for his charge, the wife and children. The husband is the family's first line of defense. What payment can a selfless guardian who does his duty expect other than honor?

If American soldiers really did protect our lives, property, freedoms, etc. (which they don't), putting their lives on the line, then how could they possibly be compensated by us for the risks they undergo? A guy sits on a grenade, and his legs are blown off. He survives but is confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. There is nothing we can do to recompense him except to honor him. We tell him that his heroic service was not in vain and is appreciated.

That's exactly the meaning of the woman's taking her husband's last name. It is a sign not that she is now his property but rather that she honors him for the favors shown to her. And here we have feminists refusing to do something so measly and unencumbering as that for the closest person in their lives, their husbands. Feminists seem to be simply ungrateful to men for building a civilization around them for all women to enjoy.

It is true, of course, that men have destroyed, as well as built; made some women miserable, as well as happy. But they have built more than they have destroyed, as evidenced by what we see around ourselves; and created more female happiness than they have taken away. Overall, as a class, they do deserve to be honored.

If men really decided to give it 100% to competing with women, then women, on average, would be left safely in the dust. It is true that men feel that in so doing, they would be "beating up a girl." But feminism has been around for a long time. People, men and women, don't take kindly to being duped, including guilted into making unwarranted sacrifices. This solicitude will end, if it has not ended already, replaced (reasonably enough) with jaded cynicism. Men's natural desire to protect women will wither, and women will be left on their own facing a hostile and defiant world. And in that case, they will be very unhappy.

Here is another way in which women's power games are anti-social. For other women may well have to face a fire that incompetent female firefighters will fail to put out, losing their home in the process. A woman as a producer may benefit from foolish privileges to herself, but as as a consumer and citizen she does not benefit from similar privileges to other women.

Fox-Genovese asserts that "it would be heartwarming to believe that a woman CEO of Dow Pharmaceuticals would welcome the opportunity to provide free measles vaccines to every child in the country." It would be heartwarming, in other words, for the CEO to steal other people's money and spend it on the causes dear to her (or to our author). She is in a position of a Mafia kingpin who tries to buy absolution for his crimes and respectability by donating extorted money to the Catholic Church.

Women must have a weakened concept of property rights. It does not occur to them that feeling good about themselves for works of mercy derives from stolen items and therefore, is illegitimate. Could they have spent too many hours with children? Perhaps, to a woman, taking tax money is like preventing a child from eating cookies before dinner. They only do what's in the child's best interest. Similarly, her victims should be happy to be stolen from, an illusion that even a Mafioso would not be under.

However, the CEO of Dow Pharmaceuticals would surely welcome a "social program" aimed at vaccinations, woman or man. Her company would profit by selling the vaccines to the government.

Moreover, if vaccines do cause autism and other ills, then she would be a veritable merchant of death.