a self-canceling project
FEMINISM
by
DAVID SOLWAY
______________________________
David
Solway is a Canadian poet and essayist (Random Walks)
and author of The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and
Identity and Hear, O Israel! (Mantua Books). His
editorials appear regularly in PJ
Media. His monograph, Global Warning: The Trials of
an Unsettled Science (Freedom Press Canada) was launched
at the National Archives in Ottawa in September, 2012.His latest
book is Notes
from a Derelict Culture. A CD of his original
songs, Partial to Cain, appeared in 2019.
One hears a lot of talk about cancel culture these days, but
little discussion of how a cultural movement goes about canceling
itself. This is especially the case with feminism. The entire
program is ruptured by flagrant violations of common sense and
manifold contradictions it cannot resolve. One scarcely knows
where to start in disentangling the skein of incongruities,
mystifications, fallacies and inconsistencies which comprise
its dogma and determine its destructive course in the public
domain.
Many
of the movement’s disabling contradictions have been abundantly
documented in various books, some of the most decisive including
Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young’s misandry volumes
Spreading Misandry and Legalizing Misandry; William
Collins’ The Empathy Gap; Patricia Pearson’s
When She Was Bad; Christina Hoff Sommers’ Who
Stole Feminism?; Suzanne Venker and Phyllis Schlafly’s
The Flipside of Feminism; Janice Fiamengo’s Sons
of Feminism; Bettina Arndt’s #MenToo, Stephen
Baskerville’s The New Politics of Sex; Esther
Vilar’s The Manipulated Man; and Megan Fox’s
Believe Evidence: The Death of Due Process from Salome to
#MeToo to mention only a few. Some of these self-canceling
anomalies are worth reviewing to demonstrate the magnitude of
feminism’s ideological incoherence.
As
I wrote in an earlier article, “The most flagrant contradiction
in the feminist psyche is modeled on the entitlement behavior
of feminists who morbidly inveigh against the ‘patriarchy’
while enjoying the benefits of a world the much-maligned patriarchy
built—a world of comfort, ease, leisure, advantage, convenience,
security and plenty which they have no intention of rejecting
or abandoning.” Attacking the patriarchy as the most oppressive
institution on the face of the planet and vilifying men as rapists,
conquistadors, exploiters and irremediably toxic abusers of
women, they issue their writs of attainder from a cozy, safe
and privileged environment that men created for them. Every
amenity they enjoy, every labor-saving appliance, utensil, mechanism,and
implement they take for granted, every technological innovation,
scientific discovery, and medical advancement from which they
benefit is almost entirely the gift of men that they refuse
even to acknowledge.
Moreover,
the feminist movement could never have flourished without massive
support, sympathy, and legal instruments emanating from so ostensibly
demonic an institution as the hated ‘patriarchy.’
The feminist takeover of the university, for example, owes chiefly,
as Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge point out in Professing
Feminism, to “the active collaboration of well-placed
male allies, who stimulated intentional receptivity to feminist
ideas.” Where, they ask, “was the much-maligned
patriarchy while this unprecedented expansion and neoconfiguration
of the academy was occurring?” A society clearly prepared
to embrace feminist demands was “bolstered by legislation
endorsed by the ‘patriarchal’ government in Washington,
D.C.” Such willingness to help the feminist cause on the
part of male administrators is tactically scrubbed by feminist
advocates, a form of lying by omission.
Feminists
tend to rely on circular reasoning to further their agenda,
analogous to the spurious logic of the white supremacy canard,
best elaborated by celebrated feminist Peggy McIntosh in White
Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. She writes:
“I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize
white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege.”
The argument boils down to this. If a man denies that he is
privileged, it follows that he is in fact privileged since,
as male feminist Michael Kimmel has also argued, “privilege
is invisible to those who have it.” In a gross parody
of deductive logic, invisibility is regarded as proof of the
condition that is being denied. Since denial means that one
is part of a repressive regime that has normalized violence
against women (as it supposedly has against non-whites), a man
who denies rape culture—like a man who denies “white
supremacy”—is seen to participate in it.
But
illogicality—or lack of common sense—is not merely
a problem in feminist dogma; it is actually a feminist goal.
For example, many strains in feminist epistemology are hostile
to the traditional practice of science. Feminist claims about
the exclusionary nature of scientific method and the concept
of objectivity as a male stratagem to de-privilege female ways
of knowing reveal the deep irrationality of feminist practices.
As Paul Gross demonstrates in Noretta Koertge’s edited
volume, A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths
About Science, citing a profusion of sources isolating
the pathogens of feminist discourse, feminists tend to redefine
the ideal of objectivity as “something vaguely akin to
multiculturalism.” Gross alludes to a paper by Elizabeth
Lloyd glossing Helen Longino’s "Science as Social
Knowledge," where we find that objectivity in science derives
“from the critical intersection of different groups and
individuals with different social and cultural assumptions,
and different stakes.”
In
other words, science is not about truth but about the political
desires of various competing or colluding groups. Radical feminists
like to insist that “scientific results are inseparable
from the politics of the scientist.” Objectivity, it turns
out, is all about power struggles, male dominance, and systemic
oppression. Of course, such statements are meant to be taken
as objectively true, another revelatory contradiction made in
bad faith.
Not
content with trying to destroy science, feminism has also mounted
a campaign against biology, claiming that gender is a social
construct. Now in an irony of self cancellation, it is hoist
with its own petard. The transgender phenomenon is a relatively
recent development that has splintered the feminist juggernaut.
Despite the swell of corporate, institutional and pedagogical
support for the transgender movement, resistance is mounting
not only among the public at large and from parents who find
their children undergoing trans indoctrination in the schools,
but among many staunch and vocal feminists who cannot tolerate
the righteous pre-eminence of men who profess to be women, who
act like women, resemble women, and who have been medically
and legally ‘re-assigned’ or ‘confirmed’
as women. Hence the recent campaign of lesbians and gays to
drop the “T” from the LGBTQ acronym, for which they
are being predictably attacked as “transphobic bigots.”
Yet,
if gender is indeed a social construct, as feminists have argued
for decades, then men who have transitioned — whether
surgically, hormonally, or cosmetically — have every claim
to be regarded as women. After all, feminists are among the
chief advocates for identity choice and women’s rights.
From the canonical standpoint, a man who has socially reconstructed
himself as a woman has joined the female sex. ‘She’
is a woman, enjoying all the rights and privileges that feminists
have fought for and won—except that many feminists, as
we see, continue to resist the intrusion of transwomen into
their ranks. From the radical standpoint, such people are still
biological males and therefore toxic, patriarchs in deceptive
guise. Many feminists, or TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical
feminists), have changed their stripes, opportunistically believing
that sexual identity is not a construct but a biological given.
Transgenderism
relies on deception as does feminism. It is a biochemical contradiction
that is even more profound and certainly no less dangerous,
especially when one considers that transgender activists routinely
urge governments to subvert parental rights and expose children
to various forms of mutilation. A sign of its power comes from
Sweden where an LGBT altarpiece unveiled at St. Paul’s
Church in Malmo, representing gay and lesbian couples in the
Garden of Eden, was removed since it featured a transgender
serpent. Trans advocates were not impressed. But that is no
excuse for the feminist tendency to play both ends against the
middle, and to argue from expedience rather than truth.
Feminism
has also poisoned the wells of justice. Feminists argue with
growing success that the justice system as we know it, predicated
on the principles of due process and burden of proof, is a masculine
invention for the oppression of women. Women who claim they
have been sexually assaulted must be believed even in the absence
of evidence. “Rarely is it ever suggested,” writes
Law professor David Tanovich in a discussion of both the status
of ‘fact evidence’ in Canadian law and the tenets
of the U.S. Federal Rules of Evidence, “that the complainant
is lying in these cases.” Similarly, examining many cases
and episodes of male-female conflict, Tim Goldich in Loving
Men, Respecting Women: The Future of Gender Politics concludes
that “the more serious sexist disadvantage is inherent
in the male’s presumed guilt, not in the female’s
presumed innocence.” It seems to go without saying that
only men are guilty of sexual misconduct or, worse, capable
of sexual assault.
Indeed,
the category of sexual assault has become a cowcatcher apparatus,
whose application ranges from rape to merely touching a clothed
body in a sexual way (however that may be interpreted). The
euphemism of preponderance of evidence in cases of sexual litigation,
which allows the trial judge to decide what seems more likely
among opposing narratives, is gradually encroaching upon the
concept of beyond a reasonable doubt. It has been an integral
part of so-called campus tribunals under Title IX and the purport
of Obama’s “Dear Colleague” letter, which
enjoined the lowest possible standard of proof in sexual assault
cases.
In
such cases the accused, almost always a man, found he had no
recourse to justice as it has been commonly understood for centuries.
(Fortunately, the 2011 Dear Colleague letter has been rescinded
by U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos). The situation is much
less clear in Canada, where both Civil and University administrations
tend to steer in the Title IX direction in the absence of cut-and-dried
formal legislation. In any event, “Propensity of evidence,”
as Tanovich puts it, enables “the prospect of wrongful
conviction.”
Additionally,
a woman who claims without evidence to have been sexually assaulted
or molested can lie with impunity and will seldom if ever be
counter-prosecuted for obstruction of justice or bearing false
witness if her story is shown to be devoid of probative value,
that is, found improbable, fabricated, internally contradictory
or collusive. She is the beneficiary of the power of deference.
The testimony of Christine Blasey Ford against Justice Brett
Kavenaugh in last year’s Senate confirmation hearings
is a case in point. An article by Mollie Hemingway and Carrie
Severino in The Federalist methodically details “21
Reasons Not to Believe Blasey Ford.” The evidence for
Kavenaugh’s presumed guilt was so sketchy, inconsistent,
contradictory, unreliable and uncorroborated as to have constituted
an exercise in juridical frivolity. Perhaps the most famous
instance in Canada involved CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi, whose
plaintiffs were shown to have conspired together, lied to police,
and lied on the witness stand. In both cases no charges were
preferred against the female complainants despite their mockery
of judicial process. In short, the female lie will trump the
male truth. How the feminist movement can be permitted to invade
formal legal space and prosper in a democratic polity escapes
both reason and morality.
The
contradictions that render feminism illogical and self-canceling
show no sign of abating. The legal system, as noted, is where
its efforts are most destructive. Canadian law, in particular,
has entered the realm of logical paradox, if not of pathological
absurdity. For example, Bill C-36 makes it illegal for men to
purchase sexual services while protecting women who sell their
sexual services. Thus a prostitute is free to go about her business
but a man is prohibited from communicating with or soliciting
her, on pain of a maximum penalty of ten years imprisonment.
The law also makes it illegal to advertise sexual services,
but does not apply to the woman who does so, only to the operator
of the website or other media she may use. This is the sort
of legal bêtise and juridical gobbledygook one can expect
when a nation becomes feminized.
In
their triumphal march, feminists have also taken over the public
square, transforming it into a feminine space in which men are
insensibly compelled to adopt the idiom and comportment suitable,
in the words of German sociologist George Simmel, to “a
more feminine sensibility.” In so doing, men have given
up their masculine culture of risk-taking, venturesomeness,
robust argument, disregard for sensitivities, and respect for
fact and have been forced to conform to more feminine attributes
such as solicitude, empathy, personal feelings, and unfettered
emotion. The refusal to accede to this development sheds light
on the feminist detestation of a macho president like Donald
Trump, a man who builds towers, is combative by nature, and
is unafraid to act with pugnacious authority.
The
war against the president is also a war against unabashed manliness;
it is a microcosm of the larger civilizational issue. For example,
writing from a homophilic perspective, International Academy
of Sex Research Fellow Eric Anderson in Inclusive Masculinity
welcomes the “softening of heterosexual masculinities.”
This will presumably tenderize the West and make life ever more
agreeable for all—though it will also render the Western
world vulnerable to the unashamed masculinity of its foreign
enemies and competitors. The current guidelines released by
the déclassé American Psychological Association
announce that “traditional masculinity—marked by
stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is,
on the whole, harmful.” Psychologists should focus “on
supporting men in breaking free of masculinity.” An epicene
Barack Obama has declared that women are better than men: “if
every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant
improvement . . . on just about everything.” Similarly,
the aptly named Ruth Whippman, writing in The New York Times,
contends that we should teach men to be “more deferential.
To reflect and listen and apologize where an apology is due
. . . To aim for modesty and humility and cooperation rather
than blowhard arrogance . . . Sell the female standard as the
norm.”
Some
of these latter may be wonderful virtues in their appropriate
place, but they are not, by and large, the defining attributes
of the male sensibility. As columnist and historian Louis DeBroux
argues in The Patriot Post, teaching men that they
are defective women in a sure fire-recipe for gender confusion,
social breakdown, and a Pandora’s box of cultural ills.
“It creates men who are either feminized, weak and self-loathing,
or men who are angry and resentful at being declared evil from
birth.” The prospects for normal life in a functional
society dwindle by the day. Domestic anarchy becomes the rule,
not the exception. “The relationship between men and women,”
writes Megan Fox in Believe Evidence, “is a mysterious
and beautiful thing. When each is acting within their boundaries,
there is no end to the joy that comes from male and female love,
familial or romantic.” To contend, as feminists and their
male enablers do, that men should become more like women is
to distort the relationship and introduce a schism into the
culture that can lead only to turmoil and unhappiness for both
men and women. This may partly explain why marriage is in decline
and the MGTOW movement (Men Going Their Own Way) is gathering
momentum.
Feminism
is an irrational doctrine and an ultimately self-canceling project
that has lost contact with reality, having rejected both biology
and history. In a social and political environment that has
exiled common sense, feminism has been valorized owing in large
measure to its contradictory nature. Operating wholly in the
realm of conjecture and offering not the slightest proof of
its stentorian convictions, it nonetheless maintains its unholy
grip on Western sensibility. Promoting and institutionalizing
the rule of the arbitrary in public and professional life, it
has gone a long way to unmanning the culture.
