This nuanced examination of the take-over of women's rights gains by non-women is truthful and honest. Barbara Key demonstrates the crux of several of the matters.. As the ex-wife of a man who believes he was "born in the wrong body" and went into stealth mode with the help of a non-certified practitioner and a PhD "sexologist' affirmer in the early 1990s,, I pose that some of the missing pieces of this puzzle happen to be the chronicles of women like me, who were told "your failure to accept your husband's identity is what broke up your family." This was literally submitted in a sworn affidavit during the custody case, after I became aware of the 26 months of deceit my then husband and his practitioners engaged in, for his "true life test."
The idea that a 36 year old man with three Ivy League graduate degrees, a wife and 2 young sons, is engaging in anything remotely "true life" as he's sitting on a barstool, make-up and mini-skirt on, in The Village, cadging a blanc de blanc from a curious man drinking at a "cultured" watering hole, is also to deny women our lives. True life for a woman involves blood, birth and death, to quote Nora Ephron.
The fact that girls are now taking testosterone and finasteride at the same time, and the very real, documented dangers of the latter are not being shouted from the rooftops, is a crime. Alienating parents and children is a crime. Telling a man to lie to his wife and they justifying 26 months of that with the phrase "true life test," is a crime. These actions just happen not to be illegal. There is so much that the average person does not know about the synthetic sex identity, to use a phrase Jennifer Bilek recently coined. My memoir, In the Curated Woods, True Tales of a Grass Widow (iuniverse) is one of only three published narratives of the women (a growing battalion, see at transwidowsvoices.org) whose marriages and self-esteem were crushed by this political misinterpretation of a mental illness called body dissociative disorder.
What a riveting response. I had not known about the transwidows group. Your voice is powerful and your writing eloquent. I will order this book immediately. Thank you for your warm and validating words.
My memoir is more than half filled with my happy memories of loving intensely the years of raising my then-young boys, and my intense love of gardening, using the natural world (book includes 50 of my flower and butterfly photos) to heal from the trauma, the actual PTSD I suffered with for about 25 years. (also sorry I misspelled your name in the first comment.) Feel free to contact me directly through the contact section of the above wordpress site. My book, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow, will be featured at Chicago's Printers' Row Lit Fest next month. I can't convince the publisher to hire more security, we'll see if I get in the news that way! Thanks, sister, for this vote of confidence!
I'm sorry that your family has suffered so much because of gender ideology. You sound like a woman made of strong stuff, though, and your voice is powerful & it's good to hear that you are publishing a memoir. We've started to hear more from detransitioners (female & finally some male ones more recently), the experiences of trans widows & their families are less known, and they are important and must be shared by more people so you can be heard. Peace to you & best of luck getting your book the audience it deserves.
Thanks, I appreciate your words muliebrity. My memoir, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022) now published, will add to knowledge of the political endgame the psychological and mental health professions have allowed themselves to be sucked into. I only realized a GREAT BIG FACT this week, 30 years later, while interviewing with Stephanie Winn (Some Kind of Therapist YT channel and substack) that the final marital therapist we went to, before the denouement after more than 2 years of deceit and gaslighting.
Neddy, my then secretly cross-dressing husband, must have told Marianne, the marriage counselor, the entire scenario first, that I just needed nudging to "learn to stay in this kind of marriage, people do . . " and that the entire 6 weeks of that expensive nonsense, my spending most of the day commuting to and from Manhatten for that 45 minutes, was all about SOFTENING me up to the idea that I just needed to "keep our family together" and become "a lesbian."
This coercion is common for the wives of men who cross-sex ideate. Take a look at a webpage called Trans Journalists Association Style Guide (or the post on my blog about it, uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com) to see the section where they tell journalists NOT TO REPORT ON FAMILIES. ("overdone") The American Association of Professional Journalists in (address in Indianapolis) adopted exactly these "styles" of reporting on the topic. Journalism is captured. This is why I am so grateful for Colin Wright.
I say always, now put this woo out of your mind, go for a walk in nature, feel the collateral beauty in this world we have. Ute Heggen
Yes, this is why I bear witness to the start of the wave in 1992. We all must be strong. My garden and butterflies keep me in life, in light. My book is half about the recovery, the gardening, with 50 color photos, my documentation of the natural life, well lived.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)
It's hard to feel sorry for feminists who continue to scream "patriarchy" and demand even more privileges for themselves while degrading men at every turn. Write a post refuting the hypocrisies and excesses of feminism and express some concern for actual men and maybe I'll give a damn. Meanwhile, enjoy the shit show intersectional liberals and feminists have created.
Real boomer woman here. I used to be a feminist but my eyes have been opened to the excesses of the movement. No longer a feminist. Agree with you 💯 Also blame it for why I haven’t married 😞
If you check my considerable oeuvre on feminism and misandry on my website, barbarakay.ca, #misandry, you will agree that I have earned your "damn." ;)
“they have enlisted children—too often their own children—as foot soldiers in the campaign to criminalize as hate speech the public defense of binary sex norms.”
Without binary sex norms, you get sex abuse without the capacity to call it out as such. What they’re seeking to criminalize is any opposition to the violation of sexual boundaries. Normalizing & creating legal protections for sexually abusive behaviors is one of the goals.
Excellent article. My eyes are finally opened to the excesses of feminism and how that got us to this regressive ideology. Spread and retweet far and wide!
Re Julie Jaman, something hot of the press, courtesy of GC News:
"Livestream today at 5:30 PST/8:30 EST to support Julie Jaman, 80 year old woman banned from the YMCA for life for telling a man to leave the woman's locker room."
One additional comment…in the 80’s I used to wear a t-shirt that said “If we can put one man on the moon why not all of them?” I thought it was hilarious at the time. Had probably just been through a bad break-up or something but I was also fully immersed in the man-hating feminism of the day. Have so many regrets…and it’s ironic because I love men…but have not married or had children. I regret my abortion too!! Biggest regret of my life is that abortion. Now I’m in my 60’s single, no kids and very lonely 😞 If I could sue Gloria Steinem and feminism into oblivion now I would! Any other women boomers up for a class-action suit? Any pro bono lawyers willing to help us? Semi serious.
I believe there are many women today, unmarried and childless, who believed the hype that making it in one's career was the primordial necessity in life for a woman. Perhaps they need a huge support group - like the Detransitioners - called the Defemini-sisters. Class action suit? (semi-serious)
Thank you for this very thoughtful essay. I think it adds both information and a rational voice to this issue. As a Biological Psychologist, I do not think that this issue is driven primarily by sexual identity, per se, except in the very minuscule proportion of cases that actually represent true dysphoria. I think it’s driven more by the quest for social power and/or status (and, perhaps, by some darker motivations). A number of people have written about the behavioral issues and violence that have become part and parcel of the trans movement, e.g., “The New Misogynists” by Christine Rosen (Commentary Magazine), and so many more. It seems more than ironic (and very sad) that people who identify as women so easily victimize women.
Again, as a psychologist, it’s telling that both male and female people attempting to identify as the opposite sex often don’t act the way we would expect them to act if they actually were the opposite sex. That is, they play out a (sometimes unrealistic) caricature the sex they want to be. Again, this suggests to me that actually being a person of the opposite sex is fundamentally beyond their reach. (I am trying to be diplomatic, here.) You read a number of such stories on the SubStack Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT)…. The caricatures of men acted out by young females are completely unlike the men that I know; the caricatures of women acted out by young males are unlike any women that I know. This, alone, should give one pause to reconsider this entire phenomenon.
I also tried to make this point in an accessible, non-inflammatory way in the essay, “What’s a Woman, What’s a Man, What’s an Alien to Do?”
Untangling this issue is going to take more than reiterating and re-analyzing what’s going on, or debating the details of molecular biology (although both help). It’s going to take a profound rethinking — a paradigm shift — to re frame this entire movement in rational terms.
Thank you again for your wonderful essay. Sincerely, Frederick
Thank you, Frederick. I like your substack and found your article on the elephants quite compelling. I agree with you, of course. The impulse to identify with animals (poor oppressed critters) is one that first caught my attention when I started writing about pit bulls and their risks. I never saw such anthropomorphism in my life. Apparently, epidemiology hasn't been invented for these people, so it is "racist" to say that some dog breeds are more high risk than others. The pit bull advocacy movement is well funded and their propaganda is as crazy as the trans activists. Anyway, you gave me some food for thought - and maybe future writing - so good to have your feedback.
Thank you, Barbara. I'd be interested in reading what you have to say about dogs. I talk about this a bit in my introductory biology lectures, that is, the way (anthropomorphized or naïve) misconceptions about animals can lead to bad outcomes including fatalities. I had no idea the pit bull advocacy movement was actually a thing... go figure!
"it’s telling that both male and female people attempting to identify as the opposite sex often don’t act the way we would expect them to act if they actually were the opposite sex. That is, they play out a (sometimes unrealistic) caricature the sex they want to be,"
Absolutely! I want to know why 99% of male-to-female "trans" don't ever look more like Mrs. Doubtfire instead of like Las Vegas showgirls.
I have always held socially liberal opinions and had gay friends, but when I first became aware of typical Drag performers years ago, I felt uneasy at their portrayal of women. This even though I had never heard anyone else express the (now-common) opinion that drag caricatures of women are degrading. "Is it just me, or is there insult in how these men perceive women?" I wondered. Do they think that "real" or "interesting" women should dress like Jessica Rabbit, wear eight pounds of makeup, walk with runway or stripper struts, and scream "Look at me, look at me!" with our every word and gesture?
👍🙂 "Jessica Rabbit - not really bad, just drawn that way ... "😉
But periodically wonder about drag performers myself. Caricature is, of course, a staple of political cartoons, and feminism is something of a political project with some questionable biases, ergo fair game. However, while they say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", much of drag seems rather gratuitously vicious, betraying more pathology than insight.
I completely agree with you... That was the basic point I made in my brief essay "What's a Man, What's a Woman, What's an Alien to Do." This phenomenon says something very important about what's going on. I find it both offensive to men (when we are caricatured), and I find it offensive on behalf of women (when they are caricatured).
Prete: "an accessible, non-inflammatory way in the essay ..."
Not sure that is the optimal strategy. As Thomas Paine put it, "He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
More recently, Jonathan Rauch argued that:
“Those who claim to be hurt by words must be led to expect nothing as compensation. Otherwise, once they learn they can get something by claiming to be hurt, they will go into the business of being offended.”
A major contributing factor in the whole transgender clusterfuck is that too many are unwilling to call a spade an effen shovel and to let the chips fall where they may.
Prete: "Untangling this issue is going to take more than reiterating and re-analyzing ...."
Indeed. A bit of a dog's breakfast, a Gordian Knot of mythic proportions. A major part of the problem is that pretty much every man, woman, and otherkin - and their cats, dogs, and gerbils - has wildly different definitions for the words in play. Seems to me that the first order of business is to work towards some consensus on them - as Voltaire put it, "if you wish to converse with me, define your terms".
Apropos of which, you may have some interest in my kick at that kitty, in my preliminary efforts to separate the wheat from the chaff:
What was particularly gratifying to see was Barbara's critique of feminism and the argument that feminism in general has to take some responsibility for the whole transgender clusterfuck - excuse my French. Really great to see Tavistock and their "hand-maidens" and "useful idiots" getting cut-off at the knees, but that really doesn't address the rot in much of feminism which will continue to have its pernicious and problematic consequences.
Of particular note in that regard is Barbara's succinct summation of that problem:
"Only an intellectual could believe that there are no innate, biology-driven differences between men and women."
Amen to that. "Barking (mad)" as feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock put it recently:
Somewhat more to the point is UK philosopher Amia Srinivasan who argued that:
“The objection I have in mind is that feminist philosophy rests on a mistake: namely, a conflation of epistemology and politics. Philosophy, at least on the conventional understanding, is an epistemic project, a project oriented toward truth or knowledge, and thus committed to the kind of unfettered inquiry that is conducive to the acquisition of truth and knowledge. Feminism meanwhile is a political project, a project oriented toward the emancipation of women and the dissolution of patriarchy.”
Hard not to conclude that "feminism" may well encompass something of a worthwhile "political project". But also some justification to suggest, and to follow Barbara's suit, that it bears some resemblance to other such "political projects" - like the French and Russian revolutions ...
Some further elaborations on those themes in my own Substack post on "Wikipedia's Lysenkoism" - the latter term referring to another "political project" that has garnered the pejorative connotation of "any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable"; lotta that goin' round these days, a sign of the times:
I started to get the inkling when I was in college and my instructors strongly implied that to achieve the best I could achieve as a female artist, I had to make feminist art.
Well, I found feminist art to be disgusting, as it is incredibly preoccupied with menstrual fluid, and that was the beginning of the end of my faith in feminism.
The suffragettes would not have been amused. They were a reform movement, they weren't trying to browbeat the world into submission to their superiority.
Thank you, Barbara. You’ve found the words to express what I’ve long felt about the state of modern feminism, where it seems that it fractured into two camps, one that insists men are to blame for all the worlds ails, and one that insists that men cease to exist, so long as they self identify as women.
I wonder how you reconcile this belief with those that we would most closely ally with, mainly radical feminists, who I staunchly support in their advocacy for protection of same sex spaces, while simultaneously cringing when no man can ever escape their ire?
It's a tightrope I have walked for a number of years. For many years I beat against the current of misandric feminism, and too flak for it, and now I am often reminded that I have switched sides, as though I had crossed the floor from one party to another. In fact, nothing has changed for me. I didn't support men's rights groups because they were men; I supported them because feminist influence on institutions like the divorce courts ended in injustice to fathers on a grand scale, and domestic violence by women against their partners and children was ignored. I stood up for good men (most men), because I actually did the research. I'm for fairness, not for men or for women. The problem with feminism, as with so many ideologies, is that they need a scapegoat for all the world's ills. The world could be a perfect place, they (want to) believe, if only it weren't for those [insert scapegoated group here]. For Critical Race theorists, it's white people - all white people - and for feminists, it's patriarchy, so all men are culpable.
"Feminism" in general certainly has a few "crimes" of its own to answer for - one of the worst being, as you put it, of dogmatically insisting that "there are no innate, biology-driven differences between men and women."
Some reason to argue that "feminism" has been hoist by its own petard as a result of transgender activism which has "weaponized" that point of view, which has turned a Dr. Jekyll into a Mr. Hyde. Not that I take any great satisfaction in what might be seen as some poetic justice since there are clearly some justifications for much of feminism.
But some evidence that transgenderism has at least "gotten the attention" of mainstream feminism - as an old joke about stubborn mules once put it. For instance, philosopher Kathleen Stock - herself a victim of that transactivism - described the problem rather succinctly in an opening salvo on her own Substack:
"Effectively, the stupid story [transgenderism] functions, for mainstream feminism, as a 'reductio ad absurdum': it reduces most of contemporary feminism to risible absurdity, necessitating urgent reflection on the tenability of prior commitments to explain how the absurdity ever got such a firm grip."
Bit light on the details so far, but I wish her every success - clearly an Augean stable that needs a serious cleaning. Though I'm not sure that she doesn't have a few "prior commitments" of her own that may preclude the requisite degree of intellectual honesty. As I may have suggested somewhat indelicately to her in a comment on another of her articles; no one complains until it's their own ox that's being gored ... 😉
But to briefly address your comments about "scapegoated groups", that is, as you suggest, something of an ubiquitous phenomenon that I certainly haven't plumbed the depths of. Though I've periodically argued that it's akin to Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" and to the "sin", to the logical fallacy of reification: seeing the behaviours of many individuals in one group as evidence of nefarious inner circles controlling events, often to the detriment of members of other groups:
This article was so good, only to arrive at a bewildering end!
I don’t mean this to be rude or dismissive, as the article was quite good, and I honestly believed it was building to a good point. It instead petered out, blamed feminism, and went into unsubstantiated bias territory about feminism having become misandric, and accusing feminism of laying the groundwork for gender ideology. I see this situation completely differently.
No radical feminists or radfem-aligned feminists (Marxist feminists, difference or equity feminists) have ever believed that the third wave (liberal feminism) is anything but a backlash against the gains of the first and second waves. It isn’t feminism at all, but a patriarchal practice itself, which is, as the author states, entirely incoherent. It also isn’t at all misandric, though it pretends to be.
Liberal feminism champions “sex work,” polyamory, sadomasochism, sex role stereotypes (which they lovingly call “gender identity”), consumer culture, “lean in,” “equality” feminism in which equality is conceived of as women acting more like patriarchal men, and on and on, ad nauseum, all of which are extremely male-centering practices, so hardly misandric. Liberal feminism represents the corporate arm of female brainwashing, replete with empty “girlboss” slogans and buzzwords like “empowerment” and “self-actualization.” It’s extremely narcissistic and self-centered, while teaching young women to submissively center men if that’s their “choice”—one of the only choices afforded to women in society, a fact which it’s verboten to point out, lest you criticize an individual woman’s vacuum-sealed “choice”—leading to generations of young women who are sexually used, raped, and abused by men who know how to spout the right slogans. Many of the women of my generation and under have been really traumatized.
Now, I understand liberal feminism (again, this is a misnomer; how about I call it “liberal anti-feminism?” That will be more accurate, and avoid confusing people about the idea that it constitutes any sort of feminism) may seem misandric. They spend a lot of time making token statements about toxic masculinity and rape culture, and even more time harping on very unimportant points, such as mansplaining and manspreading. That’s because this movement must pretend to have feminist bonafides of some sort, so it needs virtue signaling; liberal anti-feminism was probably the first movement to cave entirely to virtue signaling rather than radical activism, and I’d say that when you see that happening—as has happened with discussions surrounding race, gender and sexual orientation recently—that’s when you know that this social justice movement has been bought, and is no longer the grassroots liberation movement it once was; and liberal anti-feminism was the first to go down this route. Between the girl power slogans and the performative man-hating, it certainly loudly proclaims to be feminism, and seems misandric, which for some reason people believe (!!), despite the fact that liberal feminism persuades young women to turn themselves into, if you’ll pardon my French, f*** dolls for men. Liberal feminism is in fact an abuser’s paradise, which is why the “male feminist,” which is to say, the rapist or abuser who takes on the mantle of feminist, has become a well-known figure. Hook-up and “sex positivity” culture has traumatized young women and made a whole bunch of vulnerable women cannon fodder for predators. A movement which actively caters to male sexual narcissists and actual sadists—it promotes BDSM as a part of a feminist’s healthy sex life, remember—cannot be said to be “misandric” (unless you’re arguing that it’s misandric for women to center abusive men, which is an argument that could be made). I’d agree that liberal feminism is performatively misandric, but that’s about all.
Radical and Marxist feminism are also not misandric at all. Sure, there are plenty of individual women who hate men after a lifetime of abuse (women hating men mainly just means staying away from them and complaining on the internet; men hating women means rape and other worse forms of violence, including murder). I don’t hate men, and that’s a minor miracle, considering the sheer number of times I’ve been raped, including by men I should have been able to trust, such as my partners. Radical and Marxist feminism are *honest* about patriarchy, male dominance, and male violence against women, and how it’s a problem; we don’t lie about statistics, and rape, for example, is at an all-time high in Western nations right now, according to experts likely because of the public health crisis of ubiquitous streaming pornography which depicts the graphic sexual and other physical abuse of women. That women’s spaces are being taken away by the same liberal left which champions misogynistic and frankly criminal pornography, and the entire globally exploitative sex industry, is not an accident.
Third wave anti-feminism certainly contributed to the rise of the ideology that has caused the removal of so many of the gains of the first and second waves, including, during a time in which rape is at an all time high, the removal of safe rape crisis groups and shelters for women across the Western world, and of safe DV shelters and prisons as well. It’s been an enabler, in the same way that women will enable their abusive boyfriends to commit sexual crimes against other women. However, the real culprit, intellectually speaking, is Queer Theory, which is solidly patriarchal and has absolutely no credible claim whatsoever to feminist theory, whatever Judith Butler may say to the contrary. (I’m not sure she can even claim to be a feminist, as someone who’s not a woman anymore, can she?)
Queer Theory has caused this. Liberal anti-feminist women certainly joined the Queer Theory cause and championed rape and abuse of women and children along with the men, and liberal anti-feminist women have helped promote the queer movement, while calling it feminist. All of this is true. But liberal anti-feminism and Queer Theory are two flanks of the same Trojan horse to feminism the left served up a long time ago—pornographers and the beauty and plastic surgery industries had a huge hand in co-opting the mainstream feminist movement, just as the trans humanists and the medical industrial complex have co-opted the “queer” movement—in order to avoid the real threat that real feminism posed to both capitalism and patriarchy; the anti-feminist feminist movement and anti-gay LGBTQ movement are, unsurprisingly, both great for business.
Radical feminism has always been much more focused on the material conditions of women, which is to say, reality. Protecting the most vulnerable women of society is a priority for radical feminism, eg the focus on combating prostitution violence and sex trafficking; whereas the priority for liberal feminism is getting rid of the wage gap for upwardly mobile women (the wage gap is a real problem—as with all inequality, it affects poor and racialized women the most—but it’s not the most important issue women are facing).
For me personally, the fact that rape is essentially decriminalized in the Western world should be an enormous scandal; fewer than one percent of rapists are estimated to see jail time, rape kits degrade in warehouses, most rape survivors know this and don’t bother reporting, most reported rapes aren’t investigated, and meanwhile at least twenty percent of Americans women are raped at least once in their lifetimes (many of us many more times than that), most of the resources to help us recover have dried up, we don’t even have female only groups in which we can talk about our experiences with other women anymore, or safe spaces of any kind (finding myself naked in a locker room when a man walks in would be absolutely terrifying for me), and this huge percentage of the population who has trauma related to sexual violence is as afterthought—or worse, “bigots in need of reeducation”—when it comes to the question of our safe spaces; the epidemic of rape and society’s indifference and mistreatment of survivors is a bigger scandal that the corporate wage gap, in my opinion. That’s why I care about this issue, among many other reasons (I also care about gender nonconforming children a great deal, and young gays and lesbians).
Real feminism also isn’t misandrist. Radical feminists don’t believe men are “just like this.” Rather, men are made like this like by society, and femininity can be likewise toxic (toxic submissiveness, as we see now with the “be kind” liberal anti-feminists). Not all men are violent, but all people in society are raised with these ideas—women can be horribly sexist to other women, too—and all men do benefit at women’s expense, while suffering from their own travails, because the patriarchy also entails a hierarchy of men, and indoctrinates men into stifling roles as it does women. Plenty of men resist this programming and are well-rounded and decent people, just as plenty of women resist our programming (often over many years of our lives), too.
This is not to say the idea of there being such a thing as masculinity and femininity (roles gravitated towards by the sexes) is inherently bad. Egalitarian cultures often also have gender roles, for example; there’s just no hierarchy based on them, and no one is assigned superiority or dominance on the basis of personality traits. Another key aspect of these cultures is that they do not mind when people stray out of their sex roles, since they don’t assign status to them, meaning that gender nonconformity (wanting to be more like the opposite sex, a common human variant) becomes a non-issue.
In any case, although individual feminists may hate men, often not without reason as our cultures are still insanely violent, from all my discussion in radical feminist spaces I can safely say that readers of radical feminist theory are not misandrists, they just believe that we live in an unhealthy culture, which raises boys and girls both in ways which are damaging to them and their relationships to their own and the opposite sex. And we know that men suffer, too.
I think how misogynistic our culture has become—we’ve basically just removed all of women’s rights in the USA—bears out the radical feminist argument. The very fact that any of this is happening—that the mainstream feminist movement was hijacked by pornographers and gender theorists—shows just how misogynistic our society is, and how indoctrinated women are; again, they’re not “misandric” at all; most women of my generation (Millennial) and younger are traumatized by the culture, support abusive men (which is why so many liberal women support the gender movement, despite it being distinctly anti-feminist in its embrace of sex role stereotypes), stay with, date and are used by abusive men, experience high rates of anxiety, depression, PTSD, are in complete denial (as most victimized women and men alike do tend to remain; I didn’t admit anything had happened to me until I was 30), and dealing with massive cognitive dissonance. Suicide rates in girls and young women are on the rise, due to the depression induced by the intensely gendered and increasingly predatory beauty culture standards and practices, and by spending long hours on social media, comparing themselves to these perfect airbrushed model women; the objectification of women is reaching new heights, and meanwhile, girls are so scared of boys and sex—and everyone is so online all the time—that as the porn addiction spirals out of control, and more and more porn is consumed and spycams and revenge porn become a problem, girls and young women are having less and less sex, and the youngest generation is having way less sex than Millennials or Gen Xers had (or have, for that matter)…as the culture becomes digitized and sexually violent, and all online, women have stopped having sex with men as much (it’s become a “crisis of single men,” and women opting out of dating, apparently).
So that’s how I see these women. They may be performatively misandric and also woke, but I know the women of my generation, the trauma they’ve been through, and the way they continue to engage in repetition compulsion of it, while promoting it; it’s really sad, actually. They promote prostitution while traumatizing themselves, they promote a degrading lifestyle to other women, all while talking about their man hate out of the other sides of their mouths; man hate one sentence, empowering blowjobs the next. “Consent is sexy, and sexy is mandatory” is the infamous motto of this crowd, and that’s how I see them: as women in an abusive relationship with the liberal left (and often, liberal men).
The relationship between the sexes has become quite toxic, as men do become more unsuitable and often angry partners. Promoting “sex positivity” has turned into rape culture, unsurprisingly, and is destroying relationships. This isn’t something actual feminists think is a good situation…the promotion of all these different new sexual identities, talking about sex all the time, being pro-kink, etc. are not “feminist” positions, while I would think pro-family positions are feminist positions (motherhood especially, and families in different types and structure, even if there’s criticism of the nuclear family). And I personally think respectful monogamy is a better setup for women than this type of performative sexuality.
However, there are roles put on us, which is all that actual feminist analysis points out. Lots of matriarchal cultures have extended maternal clans which raise children together, a different form of family bonding; we think of the nuclear family as being natural when it actually separates women from each other, when women could all help each other with the raising of babies. This is an example of being critical of roles in patriarchal society, for example. In no way does that deny the physical differences between men and women, nor the maternal desires of women. That’s just one example. There are many criticisms to be made of all aspects of the dominant culture, quite apart from its patriarchal structure.
I think feminism examines different types of societies and compares them, and studies the history of kinship, family, and the history of matriarchies and patriarchies. The Mosuo are a Chinese culture where the women live in kinship groups, and practice “walking marriage;” oftentimes couples do form a bond and practice monogamy, though a girl is free to take whatever lover she likes. She leaves the window open for him to come into her bedroom in the night. When women have children, they’re raised in the homes of mothers and grandmothers. The sons stay in the home, so male children get plenty of male role models from their uncles and cousins.
The society is peaceful and pastoral. The men have power too, and seem happy with the arrangement regarding family and kinship ties. It’s an egalitarian society in which the women live and raise their children in matrilineal clans, and adult men live with their families and court women from other clans. The women work harder than the men, I think, and the society seems fairly happy, overall.
A Mosuo man, when he heard about the nuclear family, said “why would you mix something as sweet as love with economics?” He was completely baffled by the idea, which just goes to show that we’re all a product of our cultures. I think that’s all that feminism is pointing out, regarding gender roles. Women are adult human females, regardless of how they behave or present themselves. Men are adult human males, regardless of how they behave and present themselves. Cultures vary widely on these points. There are cultures in which men dress up and dance for women! This more closely mimics male animals in nature, putting on a performance to catch the female eye. Western society might be the skewed society on that front too, who knows?
Certainly, though, for all its philosophizing, real feminism has never said that men and women were anything but their age, species, and sex, so I don’t think it’s fair to blame feminism or feminist analysis for this mess, especially as, which you say yourself, gender critical and radical feminists (actual feminists) are now most under attack. Liberal feminism bears some of the blame, though far from all or even most (that’s Queer Theory), but I don’t think it can even lay claim to feminism at this point, it’s so anti-woman, and so male-centering. The centering of male women proves the point about liberal women of a certain generation being actually quite male-centering… this is why they are so sympathetic to gender-confused men, even at the expense of their own rights.
This is an excellent piece but one statement jumped out at me: "(I obviously make no judgment about the staffer in the Mountain View Pool instance.)" Why should you be afraid to make such a judgment that there is something inherently wrong with the staffer needing or wanting to be in the women's changing room? I find it ironic that so many have been cowed into not making judgments regarding the incoherence of the Gender Ideology movement when its raison d'etre appears to be more about harshly and punitively judging anyone who disagrees with them than trying to actually help those suffering from gender dysphoria (GD) to find and achieve positive outcomes.
It is important to distinguish between those suffering from GD and the trans advocates (including Big Pharma, the medical establishment, and the expanding universe of grifting NGO's and non-profits). For those who suffer from GD or now think they do, this is a serious mental health issue that should be treated with caring and compassion but not as a physical ailment (i.e. there is something wrong with the person's body). The very phrase that "I feel like a woman (man) trapped in a man's (woman's) body is a statement of profound dis-integration between the mind and body. The problem is very real but what ethical medical professional would advocate excising healthy tissue and destroying perfectly healthy reproductive organs to satisfy a patient's inability to accept their body, as if the mind and body were separate?
The only reason that anyone today even entertains the idea that the body is the cause of the non-conformity and not the mind is the fact that we now have the drugs, the medical technology, and the profit motive to advocate cutting people up so that they can have the appearance but not the reality of being the opposite sex. It is a cruel lie being sold to a suffering and vulnerable population.
I have no doubt that in the not too distant future, this will be viewed with the same horror and disdain with which we currently view phrenology and eugenics. Sadly, how many lives will be ruined before enough people will wake up to the absurdity of an ideology that is so damaging to individuals and society.
There was nothing in the article that stated he helped children to undress, that would be an inference. All I know about him is that he is allowed into the changing area and bathroom, and all the principal character said of him was that he was looking at the children. Of course I do not approve of him being there, but that is a far cry from calling him an actual "predator," a word with a precise meaning, and one that, if used, might invite a defamation suit. My point was not to attack that individual, but the systemic risk to women and children posed by gender theories that result in such "rights" for males who identify as female.
Regarding the word "predator," I need to ensure that I am not referencing that particular staffer. If there were any ambiguity about that, I could be sued for defamation. I don't think that staffer was there to help the children undress. He happened to be there when the children were there. That is all we know for sure. He could have been there to go to the bathroom himself, which he is allowed to do. So - predator-wise - I cannot make any judgment about him, and that is the truth.
This nuanced examination of the take-over of women's rights gains by non-women is truthful and honest. Barbara Key demonstrates the crux of several of the matters.. As the ex-wife of a man who believes he was "born in the wrong body" and went into stealth mode with the help of a non-certified practitioner and a PhD "sexologist' affirmer in the early 1990s,, I pose that some of the missing pieces of this puzzle happen to be the chronicles of women like me, who were told "your failure to accept your husband's identity is what broke up your family." This was literally submitted in a sworn affidavit during the custody case, after I became aware of the 26 months of deceit my then husband and his practitioners engaged in, for his "true life test."
The idea that a 36 year old man with three Ivy League graduate degrees, a wife and 2 young sons, is engaging in anything remotely "true life" as he's sitting on a barstool, make-up and mini-skirt on, in The Village, cadging a blanc de blanc from a curious man drinking at a "cultured" watering hole, is also to deny women our lives. True life for a woman involves blood, birth and death, to quote Nora Ephron.
The fact that girls are now taking testosterone and finasteride at the same time, and the very real, documented dangers of the latter are not being shouted from the rooftops, is a crime. Alienating parents and children is a crime. Telling a man to lie to his wife and they justifying 26 months of that with the phrase "true life test," is a crime. These actions just happen not to be illegal. There is so much that the average person does not know about the synthetic sex identity, to use a phrase Jennifer Bilek recently coined. My memoir, In the Curated Woods, True Tales of a Grass Widow (iuniverse) is one of only three published narratives of the women (a growing battalion, see at transwidowsvoices.org) whose marriages and self-esteem were crushed by this political misinterpretation of a mental illness called body dissociative disorder.
Ute Heggen uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com
What a riveting response. I had not known about the transwidows group. Your voice is powerful and your writing eloquent. I will order this book immediately. Thank you for your warm and validating words.
Wow! Thanks. Take a look at my most recent post about Finasteride (Propecia, Prosca) at uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com
My memoir is more than half filled with my happy memories of loving intensely the years of raising my then-young boys, and my intense love of gardening, using the natural world (book includes 50 of my flower and butterfly photos) to heal from the trauma, the actual PTSD I suffered with for about 25 years. (also sorry I misspelled your name in the first comment.) Feel free to contact me directly through the contact section of the above wordpress site. My book, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow, will be featured at Chicago's Printers' Row Lit Fest next month. I can't convince the publisher to hire more security, we'll see if I get in the news that way! Thanks, sister, for this vote of confidence!
Ute Heggen
I'm sorry that your family has suffered so much because of gender ideology. You sound like a woman made of strong stuff, though, and your voice is powerful & it's good to hear that you are publishing a memoir. We've started to hear more from detransitioners (female & finally some male ones more recently), the experiences of trans widows & their families are less known, and they are important and must be shared by more people so you can be heard. Peace to you & best of luck getting your book the audience it deserves.
Thanks, I appreciate your words muliebrity. My memoir, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022) now published, will add to knowledge of the political endgame the psychological and mental health professions have allowed themselves to be sucked into. I only realized a GREAT BIG FACT this week, 30 years later, while interviewing with Stephanie Winn (Some Kind of Therapist YT channel and substack) that the final marital therapist we went to, before the denouement after more than 2 years of deceit and gaslighting.
Neddy, my then secretly cross-dressing husband, must have told Marianne, the marriage counselor, the entire scenario first, that I just needed nudging to "learn to stay in this kind of marriage, people do . . " and that the entire 6 weeks of that expensive nonsense, my spending most of the day commuting to and from Manhatten for that 45 minutes, was all about SOFTENING me up to the idea that I just needed to "keep our family together" and become "a lesbian."
This coercion is common for the wives of men who cross-sex ideate. Take a look at a webpage called Trans Journalists Association Style Guide (or the post on my blog about it, uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com) to see the section where they tell journalists NOT TO REPORT ON FAMILIES. ("overdone") The American Association of Professional Journalists in (address in Indianapolis) adopted exactly these "styles" of reporting on the topic. Journalism is captured. This is why I am so grateful for Colin Wright.
I say always, now put this woo out of your mind, go for a walk in nature, feel the collateral beauty in this world we have. Ute Heggen
That last part about the journalists is infuriating. Stay strong, Ute.
Yes, this is why I bear witness to the start of the wave in 1992. We all must be strong. My garden and butterflies keep me in life, in light. My book is half about the recovery, the gardening, with 50 color photos, my documentation of the natural life, well lived.
Ute Heggen, author, In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow (iuniverse, 2022)
"Only an intellectual could believe that there are no innate, biology-driven differences between men and women."
Brilliant!
I agree but would replace “intellectual” with “ideologue” because not all intellectuals ignore reality.
It's hard to feel sorry for feminists who continue to scream "patriarchy" and demand even more privileges for themselves while degrading men at every turn. Write a post refuting the hypocrisies and excesses of feminism and express some concern for actual men and maybe I'll give a damn. Meanwhile, enjoy the shit show intersectional liberals and feminists have created.
Real boomer woman here. I used to be a feminist but my eyes have been opened to the excesses of the movement. No longer a feminist. Agree with you 💯 Also blame it for why I haven’t married 😞
If you check my considerable oeuvre on feminism and misandry on my website, barbarakay.ca, #misandry, you will agree that I have earned your "damn." ;)
As the noted philosopher F. Zappa said, "Do you love it? Do you hate it? There it is, the way you made it."
Great post. Testimonial illustrating a huge crime against humanity.
I posted the following today as a partial way out of this mess we parents and grandparents are in:
https://kwnorton.substack.com/p/rewilding-childhood?r=boqs0&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
“they have enlisted children—too often their own children—as foot soldiers in the campaign to criminalize as hate speech the public defense of binary sex norms.”
Without binary sex norms, you get sex abuse without the capacity to call it out as such. What they’re seeking to criminalize is any opposition to the violation of sexual boundaries. Normalizing & creating legal protections for sexually abusive behaviors is one of the goals.
Excellent article. My eyes are finally opened to the excesses of feminism and how that got us to this regressive ideology. Spread and retweet far and wide!
Re Julie Jaman, something hot of the press, courtesy of GC News:
"Livestream today at 5:30 PST/8:30 EST to support Julie Jaman, 80 year old woman banned from the YMCA for life for telling a man to leave the woman's locker room."
https://gcnews.substack.com/p/letjulieswim-press-conference-today
One additional comment…in the 80’s I used to wear a t-shirt that said “If we can put one man on the moon why not all of them?” I thought it was hilarious at the time. Had probably just been through a bad break-up or something but I was also fully immersed in the man-hating feminism of the day. Have so many regrets…and it’s ironic because I love men…but have not married or had children. I regret my abortion too!! Biggest regret of my life is that abortion. Now I’m in my 60’s single, no kids and very lonely 😞 If I could sue Gloria Steinem and feminism into oblivion now I would! Any other women boomers up for a class-action suit? Any pro bono lawyers willing to help us? Semi serious.
I believe there are many women today, unmarried and childless, who believed the hype that making it in one's career was the primordial necessity in life for a woman. Perhaps they need a huge support group - like the Detransitioners - called the Defemini-sisters. Class action suit? (semi-serious)
Good piece!
Thank you for this very thoughtful essay. I think it adds both information and a rational voice to this issue. As a Biological Psychologist, I do not think that this issue is driven primarily by sexual identity, per se, except in the very minuscule proportion of cases that actually represent true dysphoria. I think it’s driven more by the quest for social power and/or status (and, perhaps, by some darker motivations). A number of people have written about the behavioral issues and violence that have become part and parcel of the trans movement, e.g., “The New Misogynists” by Christine Rosen (Commentary Magazine), and so many more. It seems more than ironic (and very sad) that people who identify as women so easily victimize women.
Again, as a psychologist, it’s telling that both male and female people attempting to identify as the opposite sex often don’t act the way we would expect them to act if they actually were the opposite sex. That is, they play out a (sometimes unrealistic) caricature the sex they want to be. Again, this suggests to me that actually being a person of the opposite sex is fundamentally beyond their reach. (I am trying to be diplomatic, here.) You read a number of such stories on the SubStack Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT)…. The caricatures of men acted out by young females are completely unlike the men that I know; the caricatures of women acted out by young males are unlike any women that I know. This, alone, should give one pause to reconsider this entire phenomenon.
I also tried to make this point in an accessible, non-inflammatory way in the essay, “What’s a Woman, What’s a Man, What’s an Alien to Do?”
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/whats-a-woman-whats-a-man-whats-an?utm_source=%2Finbox&utm_medium=reader2
Untangling this issue is going to take more than reiterating and re-analyzing what’s going on, or debating the details of molecular biology (although both help). It’s going to take a profound rethinking — a paradigm shift — to re frame this entire movement in rational terms.
Thank you again for your wonderful essay. Sincerely, Frederick
EverythingIsBiology.substack.com
Thank you, Frederick. I like your substack and found your article on the elephants quite compelling. I agree with you, of course. The impulse to identify with animals (poor oppressed critters) is one that first caught my attention when I started writing about pit bulls and their risks. I never saw such anthropomorphism in my life. Apparently, epidemiology hasn't been invented for these people, so it is "racist" to say that some dog breeds are more high risk than others. The pit bull advocacy movement is well funded and their propaganda is as crazy as the trans activists. Anyway, you gave me some food for thought - and maybe future writing - so good to have your feedback.
Thank you, Barbara. I'd be interested in reading what you have to say about dogs. I talk about this a bit in my introductory biology lectures, that is, the way (anthropomorphized or naïve) misconceptions about animals can lead to bad outcomes including fatalities. I had no idea the pit bull advocacy movement was actually a thing... go figure!
"it’s telling that both male and female people attempting to identify as the opposite sex often don’t act the way we would expect them to act if they actually were the opposite sex. That is, they play out a (sometimes unrealistic) caricature the sex they want to be,"
Absolutely! I want to know why 99% of male-to-female "trans" don't ever look more like Mrs. Doubtfire instead of like Las Vegas showgirls.
I have always held socially liberal opinions and had gay friends, but when I first became aware of typical Drag performers years ago, I felt uneasy at their portrayal of women. This even though I had never heard anyone else express the (now-common) opinion that drag caricatures of women are degrading. "Is it just me, or is there insult in how these men perceive women?" I wondered. Do they think that "real" or "interesting" women should dress like Jessica Rabbit, wear eight pounds of makeup, walk with runway or stripper struts, and scream "Look at me, look at me!" with our every word and gesture?
👍🙂 "Jessica Rabbit - not really bad, just drawn that way ... "😉
But periodically wonder about drag performers myself. Caricature is, of course, a staple of political cartoons, and feminism is something of a political project with some questionable biases, ergo fair game. However, while they say "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", much of drag seems rather gratuitously vicious, betraying more pathology than insight.
I completely agree with you... That was the basic point I made in my brief essay "What's a Man, What's a Woman, What's an Alien to Do." This phenomenon says something very important about what's going on. I find it both offensive to men (when we are caricatured), and I find it offensive on behalf of women (when they are caricatured).
This is a very interesting point!
Prete: "The New Misogynists” by Christine Rosen (Commentary Magazine)"
You might also "enjoy" the earlier "Misogyny in Drag":
https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/07/10/trans-activism-is-now-just-misogyny-in-drag/#.W14X6NJKi71
Prete: "an accessible, non-inflammatory way in the essay ..."
Not sure that is the optimal strategy. As Thomas Paine put it, "He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”
More recently, Jonathan Rauch argued that:
“Those who claim to be hurt by words must be led to expect nothing as compensation. Otherwise, once they learn they can get something by claiming to be hurt, they will go into the business of being offended.”
A major contributing factor in the whole transgender clusterfuck is that too many are unwilling to call a spade an effen shovel and to let the chips fall where they may.
Prete: "Untangling this issue is going to take more than reiterating and re-analyzing ...."
Indeed. A bit of a dog's breakfast, a Gordian Knot of mythic proportions. A major part of the problem is that pretty much every man, woman, and otherkin - and their cats, dogs, and gerbils - has wildly different definitions for the words in play. Seems to me that the first order of business is to work towards some consensus on them - as Voltaire put it, "if you wish to converse with me, define your terms".
Apropos of which, you may have some interest in my kick at that kitty, in my preliminary efforts to separate the wheat from the chaff:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/welcome
Thank you for the reply. I will read your suggestions...
Excellent essay; well-written, hard-hitting, cogent, topical, and trenchant. Classic "Barbara Kay". 👍🙂
What was particularly gratifying to see was Barbara's critique of feminism and the argument that feminism in general has to take some responsibility for the whole transgender clusterfuck - excuse my French. Really great to see Tavistock and their "hand-maidens" and "useful idiots" getting cut-off at the knees, but that really doesn't address the rot in much of feminism which will continue to have its pernicious and problematic consequences.
Of particular note in that regard is Barbara's succinct summation of that problem:
"Only an intellectual could believe that there are no innate, biology-driven differences between men and women."
Amen to that. "Barking (mad)" as feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock put it recently:
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/lets-abolish-the-dream-of-gender
Great deal of "ideological bias in the psychology of sex and gender" as Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico put it:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
Somewhat more to the point is UK philosopher Amia Srinivasan who argued that:
“The objection I have in mind is that feminist philosophy rests on a mistake: namely, a conflation of epistemology and politics. Philosophy, at least on the conventional understanding, is an epistemic project, a project oriented toward truth or knowledge, and thus committed to the kind of unfettered inquiry that is conducive to the acquisition of truth and knowledge. Feminism meanwhile is a political project, a project oriented toward the emancipation of women and the dissolution of patriarchy.”
https://users.ox.ac.uk/~corp1468/Research_files/Does%20Feminist%20Philosophy_KCL%20talk.pdf
Hard not to conclude that "feminism" may well encompass something of a worthwhile "political project". But also some justification to suggest, and to follow Barbara's suit, that it bears some resemblance to other such "political projects" - like the French and Russian revolutions ...
Some further elaborations on those themes in my own Substack post on "Wikipedia's Lysenkoism" - the latter term referring to another "political project" that has garnered the pejorative connotation of "any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable"; lotta that goin' round these days, a sign of the times:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/wikipedias-lysenkoism
I started to get the inkling when I was in college and my instructors strongly implied that to achieve the best I could achieve as a female artist, I had to make feminist art.
Well, I found feminist art to be disgusting, as it is incredibly preoccupied with menstrual fluid, and that was the beginning of the end of my faith in feminism.
The suffragettes would not have been amused. They were a reform movement, they weren't trying to browbeat the world into submission to their superiority.
Thank you, Barbara. You’ve found the words to express what I’ve long felt about the state of modern feminism, where it seems that it fractured into two camps, one that insists men are to blame for all the worlds ails, and one that insists that men cease to exist, so long as they self identify as women.
I wonder how you reconcile this belief with those that we would most closely ally with, mainly radical feminists, who I staunchly support in their advocacy for protection of same sex spaces, while simultaneously cringing when no man can ever escape their ire?
It's a tightrope I have walked for a number of years. For many years I beat against the current of misandric feminism, and too flak for it, and now I am often reminded that I have switched sides, as though I had crossed the floor from one party to another. In fact, nothing has changed for me. I didn't support men's rights groups because they were men; I supported them because feminist influence on institutions like the divorce courts ended in injustice to fathers on a grand scale, and domestic violence by women against their partners and children was ignored. I stood up for good men (most men), because I actually did the research. I'm for fairness, not for men or for women. The problem with feminism, as with so many ideologies, is that they need a scapegoat for all the world's ills. The world could be a perfect place, they (want to) believe, if only it weren't for those [insert scapegoated group here]. For Critical Race theorists, it's white people - all white people - and for feminists, it's patriarchy, so all men are culpable.
"Feminism" in general certainly has a few "crimes" of its own to answer for - one of the worst being, as you put it, of dogmatically insisting that "there are no innate, biology-driven differences between men and women."
Some reason to argue that "feminism" has been hoist by its own petard as a result of transgender activism which has "weaponized" that point of view, which has turned a Dr. Jekyll into a Mr. Hyde. Not that I take any great satisfaction in what might be seen as some poetic justice since there are clearly some justifications for much of feminism.
But some evidence that transgenderism has at least "gotten the attention" of mainstream feminism - as an old joke about stubborn mules once put it. For instance, philosopher Kathleen Stock - herself a victim of that transactivism - described the problem rather succinctly in an opening salvo on her own Substack:
"Effectively, the stupid story [transgenderism] functions, for mainstream feminism, as a 'reductio ad absurdum': it reduces most of contemporary feminism to risible absurdity, necessitating urgent reflection on the tenability of prior commitments to explain how the absurdity ever got such a firm grip."
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/feminist-reboot-camp
Bit light on the details so far, but I wish her every success - clearly an Augean stable that needs a serious cleaning. Though I'm not sure that she doesn't have a few "prior commitments" of her own that may preclude the requisite degree of intellectual honesty. As I may have suggested somewhat indelicately to her in a comment on another of her articles; no one complains until it's their own ox that's being gored ... 😉
But to briefly address your comments about "scapegoated groups", that is, as you suggest, something of an ubiquitous phenomenon that I certainly haven't plumbed the depths of. Though I've periodically argued that it's akin to Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" and to the "sin", to the logical fallacy of reification: seeing the behaviours of many individuals in one group as evidence of nefarious inner circles controlling events, often to the detriment of members of other groups:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)
This article was so good, only to arrive at a bewildering end!
I don’t mean this to be rude or dismissive, as the article was quite good, and I honestly believed it was building to a good point. It instead petered out, blamed feminism, and went into unsubstantiated bias territory about feminism having become misandric, and accusing feminism of laying the groundwork for gender ideology. I see this situation completely differently.
No radical feminists or radfem-aligned feminists (Marxist feminists, difference or equity feminists) have ever believed that the third wave (liberal feminism) is anything but a backlash against the gains of the first and second waves. It isn’t feminism at all, but a patriarchal practice itself, which is, as the author states, entirely incoherent. It also isn’t at all misandric, though it pretends to be.
Liberal feminism champions “sex work,” polyamory, sadomasochism, sex role stereotypes (which they lovingly call “gender identity”), consumer culture, “lean in,” “equality” feminism in which equality is conceived of as women acting more like patriarchal men, and on and on, ad nauseum, all of which are extremely male-centering practices, so hardly misandric. Liberal feminism represents the corporate arm of female brainwashing, replete with empty “girlboss” slogans and buzzwords like “empowerment” and “self-actualization.” It’s extremely narcissistic and self-centered, while teaching young women to submissively center men if that’s their “choice”—one of the only choices afforded to women in society, a fact which it’s verboten to point out, lest you criticize an individual woman’s vacuum-sealed “choice”—leading to generations of young women who are sexually used, raped, and abused by men who know how to spout the right slogans. Many of the women of my generation and under have been really traumatized.
Now, I understand liberal feminism (again, this is a misnomer; how about I call it “liberal anti-feminism?” That will be more accurate, and avoid confusing people about the idea that it constitutes any sort of feminism) may seem misandric. They spend a lot of time making token statements about toxic masculinity and rape culture, and even more time harping on very unimportant points, such as mansplaining and manspreading. That’s because this movement must pretend to have feminist bonafides of some sort, so it needs virtue signaling; liberal anti-feminism was probably the first movement to cave entirely to virtue signaling rather than radical activism, and I’d say that when you see that happening—as has happened with discussions surrounding race, gender and sexual orientation recently—that’s when you know that this social justice movement has been bought, and is no longer the grassroots liberation movement it once was; and liberal anti-feminism was the first to go down this route. Between the girl power slogans and the performative man-hating, it certainly loudly proclaims to be feminism, and seems misandric, which for some reason people believe (!!), despite the fact that liberal feminism persuades young women to turn themselves into, if you’ll pardon my French, f*** dolls for men. Liberal feminism is in fact an abuser’s paradise, which is why the “male feminist,” which is to say, the rapist or abuser who takes on the mantle of feminist, has become a well-known figure. Hook-up and “sex positivity” culture has traumatized young women and made a whole bunch of vulnerable women cannon fodder for predators. A movement which actively caters to male sexual narcissists and actual sadists—it promotes BDSM as a part of a feminist’s healthy sex life, remember—cannot be said to be “misandric” (unless you’re arguing that it’s misandric for women to center abusive men, which is an argument that could be made). I’d agree that liberal feminism is performatively misandric, but that’s about all.
Radical and Marxist feminism are also not misandric at all. Sure, there are plenty of individual women who hate men after a lifetime of abuse (women hating men mainly just means staying away from them and complaining on the internet; men hating women means rape and other worse forms of violence, including murder). I don’t hate men, and that’s a minor miracle, considering the sheer number of times I’ve been raped, including by men I should have been able to trust, such as my partners. Radical and Marxist feminism are *honest* about patriarchy, male dominance, and male violence against women, and how it’s a problem; we don’t lie about statistics, and rape, for example, is at an all-time high in Western nations right now, according to experts likely because of the public health crisis of ubiquitous streaming pornography which depicts the graphic sexual and other physical abuse of women. That women’s spaces are being taken away by the same liberal left which champions misogynistic and frankly criminal pornography, and the entire globally exploitative sex industry, is not an accident.
Third wave anti-feminism certainly contributed to the rise of the ideology that has caused the removal of so many of the gains of the first and second waves, including, during a time in which rape is at an all time high, the removal of safe rape crisis groups and shelters for women across the Western world, and of safe DV shelters and prisons as well. It’s been an enabler, in the same way that women will enable their abusive boyfriends to commit sexual crimes against other women. However, the real culprit, intellectually speaking, is Queer Theory, which is solidly patriarchal and has absolutely no credible claim whatsoever to feminist theory, whatever Judith Butler may say to the contrary. (I’m not sure she can even claim to be a feminist, as someone who’s not a woman anymore, can she?)
(Continued)
Queer Theory has caused this. Liberal anti-feminist women certainly joined the Queer Theory cause and championed rape and abuse of women and children along with the men, and liberal anti-feminist women have helped promote the queer movement, while calling it feminist. All of this is true. But liberal anti-feminism and Queer Theory are two flanks of the same Trojan horse to feminism the left served up a long time ago—pornographers and the beauty and plastic surgery industries had a huge hand in co-opting the mainstream feminist movement, just as the trans humanists and the medical industrial complex have co-opted the “queer” movement—in order to avoid the real threat that real feminism posed to both capitalism and patriarchy; the anti-feminist feminist movement and anti-gay LGBTQ movement are, unsurprisingly, both great for business.
Radical feminism has always been much more focused on the material conditions of women, which is to say, reality. Protecting the most vulnerable women of society is a priority for radical feminism, eg the focus on combating prostitution violence and sex trafficking; whereas the priority for liberal feminism is getting rid of the wage gap for upwardly mobile women (the wage gap is a real problem—as with all inequality, it affects poor and racialized women the most—but it’s not the most important issue women are facing).
For me personally, the fact that rape is essentially decriminalized in the Western world should be an enormous scandal; fewer than one percent of rapists are estimated to see jail time, rape kits degrade in warehouses, most rape survivors know this and don’t bother reporting, most reported rapes aren’t investigated, and meanwhile at least twenty percent of Americans women are raped at least once in their lifetimes (many of us many more times than that), most of the resources to help us recover have dried up, we don’t even have female only groups in which we can talk about our experiences with other women anymore, or safe spaces of any kind (finding myself naked in a locker room when a man walks in would be absolutely terrifying for me), and this huge percentage of the population who has trauma related to sexual violence is as afterthought—or worse, “bigots in need of reeducation”—when it comes to the question of our safe spaces; the epidemic of rape and society’s indifference and mistreatment of survivors is a bigger scandal that the corporate wage gap, in my opinion. That’s why I care about this issue, among many other reasons (I also care about gender nonconforming children a great deal, and young gays and lesbians).
Real feminism also isn’t misandrist. Radical feminists don’t believe men are “just like this.” Rather, men are made like this like by society, and femininity can be likewise toxic (toxic submissiveness, as we see now with the “be kind” liberal anti-feminists). Not all men are violent, but all people in society are raised with these ideas—women can be horribly sexist to other women, too—and all men do benefit at women’s expense, while suffering from their own travails, because the patriarchy also entails a hierarchy of men, and indoctrinates men into stifling roles as it does women. Plenty of men resist this programming and are well-rounded and decent people, just as plenty of women resist our programming (often over many years of our lives), too.
This is not to say the idea of there being such a thing as masculinity and femininity (roles gravitated towards by the sexes) is inherently bad. Egalitarian cultures often also have gender roles, for example; there’s just no hierarchy based on them, and no one is assigned superiority or dominance on the basis of personality traits. Another key aspect of these cultures is that they do not mind when people stray out of their sex roles, since they don’t assign status to them, meaning that gender nonconformity (wanting to be more like the opposite sex, a common human variant) becomes a non-issue.
In any case, although individual feminists may hate men, often not without reason as our cultures are still insanely violent, from all my discussion in radical feminist spaces I can safely say that readers of radical feminist theory are not misandrists, they just believe that we live in an unhealthy culture, which raises boys and girls both in ways which are damaging to them and their relationships to their own and the opposite sex. And we know that men suffer, too.
I think how misogynistic our culture has become—we’ve basically just removed all of women’s rights in the USA—bears out the radical feminist argument. The very fact that any of this is happening—that the mainstream feminist movement was hijacked by pornographers and gender theorists—shows just how misogynistic our society is, and how indoctrinated women are; again, they’re not “misandric” at all; most women of my generation (Millennial) and younger are traumatized by the culture, support abusive men (which is why so many liberal women support the gender movement, despite it being distinctly anti-feminist in its embrace of sex role stereotypes), stay with, date and are used by abusive men, experience high rates of anxiety, depression, PTSD, are in complete denial (as most victimized women and men alike do tend to remain; I didn’t admit anything had happened to me until I was 30), and dealing with massive cognitive dissonance. Suicide rates in girls and young women are on the rise, due to the depression induced by the intensely gendered and increasingly predatory beauty culture standards and practices, and by spending long hours on social media, comparing themselves to these perfect airbrushed model women; the objectification of women is reaching new heights, and meanwhile, girls are so scared of boys and sex—and everyone is so online all the time—that as the porn addiction spirals out of control, and more and more porn is consumed and spycams and revenge porn become a problem, girls and young women are having less and less sex, and the youngest generation is having way less sex than Millennials or Gen Xers had (or have, for that matter)…as the culture becomes digitized and sexually violent, and all online, women have stopped having sex with men as much (it’s become a “crisis of single men,” and women opting out of dating, apparently).
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So that’s how I see these women. They may be performatively misandric and also woke, but I know the women of my generation, the trauma they’ve been through, and the way they continue to engage in repetition compulsion of it, while promoting it; it’s really sad, actually. They promote prostitution while traumatizing themselves, they promote a degrading lifestyle to other women, all while talking about their man hate out of the other sides of their mouths; man hate one sentence, empowering blowjobs the next. “Consent is sexy, and sexy is mandatory” is the infamous motto of this crowd, and that’s how I see them: as women in an abusive relationship with the liberal left (and often, liberal men).
The relationship between the sexes has become quite toxic, as men do become more unsuitable and often angry partners. Promoting “sex positivity” has turned into rape culture, unsurprisingly, and is destroying relationships. This isn’t something actual feminists think is a good situation…the promotion of all these different new sexual identities, talking about sex all the time, being pro-kink, etc. are not “feminist” positions, while I would think pro-family positions are feminist positions (motherhood especially, and families in different types and structure, even if there’s criticism of the nuclear family). And I personally think respectful monogamy is a better setup for women than this type of performative sexuality.
However, there are roles put on us, which is all that actual feminist analysis points out. Lots of matriarchal cultures have extended maternal clans which raise children together, a different form of family bonding; we think of the nuclear family as being natural when it actually separates women from each other, when women could all help each other with the raising of babies. This is an example of being critical of roles in patriarchal society, for example. In no way does that deny the physical differences between men and women, nor the maternal desires of women. That’s just one example. There are many criticisms to be made of all aspects of the dominant culture, quite apart from its patriarchal structure.
I think feminism examines different types of societies and compares them, and studies the history of kinship, family, and the history of matriarchies and patriarchies. The Mosuo are a Chinese culture where the women live in kinship groups, and practice “walking marriage;” oftentimes couples do form a bond and practice monogamy, though a girl is free to take whatever lover she likes. She leaves the window open for him to come into her bedroom in the night. When women have children, they’re raised in the homes of mothers and grandmothers. The sons stay in the home, so male children get plenty of male role models from their uncles and cousins.
The society is peaceful and pastoral. The men have power too, and seem happy with the arrangement regarding family and kinship ties. It’s an egalitarian society in which the women live and raise their children in matrilineal clans, and adult men live with their families and court women from other clans. The women work harder than the men, I think, and the society seems fairly happy, overall.
A Mosuo man, when he heard about the nuclear family, said “why would you mix something as sweet as love with economics?” He was completely baffled by the idea, which just goes to show that we’re all a product of our cultures. I think that’s all that feminism is pointing out, regarding gender roles. Women are adult human females, regardless of how they behave or present themselves. Men are adult human males, regardless of how they behave and present themselves. Cultures vary widely on these points. There are cultures in which men dress up and dance for women! This more closely mimics male animals in nature, putting on a performance to catch the female eye. Western society might be the skewed society on that front too, who knows?
Certainly, though, for all its philosophizing, real feminism has never said that men and women were anything but their age, species, and sex, so I don’t think it’s fair to blame feminism or feminist analysis for this mess, especially as, which you say yourself, gender critical and radical feminists (actual feminists) are now most under attack. Liberal feminism bears some of the blame, though far from all or even most (that’s Queer Theory), but I don’t think it can even lay claim to feminism at this point, it’s so anti-woman, and so male-centering. The centering of male women proves the point about liberal women of a certain generation being actually quite male-centering… this is why they are so sympathetic to gender-confused men, even at the expense of their own rights.
This is an excellent piece but one statement jumped out at me: "(I obviously make no judgment about the staffer in the Mountain View Pool instance.)" Why should you be afraid to make such a judgment that there is something inherently wrong with the staffer needing or wanting to be in the women's changing room? I find it ironic that so many have been cowed into not making judgments regarding the incoherence of the Gender Ideology movement when its raison d'etre appears to be more about harshly and punitively judging anyone who disagrees with them than trying to actually help those suffering from gender dysphoria (GD) to find and achieve positive outcomes.
It is important to distinguish between those suffering from GD and the trans advocates (including Big Pharma, the medical establishment, and the expanding universe of grifting NGO's and non-profits). For those who suffer from GD or now think they do, this is a serious mental health issue that should be treated with caring and compassion but not as a physical ailment (i.e. there is something wrong with the person's body). The very phrase that "I feel like a woman (man) trapped in a man's (woman's) body is a statement of profound dis-integration between the mind and body. The problem is very real but what ethical medical professional would advocate excising healthy tissue and destroying perfectly healthy reproductive organs to satisfy a patient's inability to accept their body, as if the mind and body were separate?
The only reason that anyone today even entertains the idea that the body is the cause of the non-conformity and not the mind is the fact that we now have the drugs, the medical technology, and the profit motive to advocate cutting people up so that they can have the appearance but not the reality of being the opposite sex. It is a cruel lie being sold to a suffering and vulnerable population.
I have no doubt that in the not too distant future, this will be viewed with the same horror and disdain with which we currently view phrenology and eugenics. Sadly, how many lives will be ruined before enough people will wake up to the absurdity of an ideology that is so damaging to individuals and society.
You make no judgement about a man who chooses to make his living invading female-only spaces a d helping little girls undress???
There was nothing in the article that stated he helped children to undress, that would be an inference. All I know about him is that he is allowed into the changing area and bathroom, and all the principal character said of him was that he was looking at the children. Of course I do not approve of him being there, but that is a far cry from calling him an actual "predator," a word with a precise meaning, and one that, if used, might invite a defamation suit. My point was not to attack that individual, but the systemic risk to women and children posed by gender theories that result in such "rights" for males who identify as female.
Regarding the word "predator," I need to ensure that I am not referencing that particular staffer. If there were any ambiguity about that, I could be sued for defamation. I don't think that staffer was there to help the children undress. He happened to be there when the children were there. That is all we know for sure. He could have been there to go to the bathroom himself, which he is allowed to do. So - predator-wise - I cannot make any judgment about him, and that is the truth.