Feminism

I am afraid the future is looking dark and feminism might be shooting itself in the foot. In this article, I address different aspects of what I found in self-proclaimed feminists. I am not saying this defines a feminist, I am criticizing anyone who holds these views. You can read feminists as "radical feminists" in your head if that helps. I also think I might have conflated feminism with progressive/leftist ideology that is becoming popular.

In this 20 min post (underlined words take you to sources), I want to explain some terms feminists use and my position on them. Sexism and Racism are often said to be "systemic". Some right-leaning people then point to the absence of any laws that discriminate on the basis of gender or race. Laws that prevented females from voting or redlining are examples of "systematic" discrimination - a careful, intentional method that is part of a system.

Left-leaning people would then explain how making something illegal does not mean it stops happening. The right might retort that the same is true for all crimes like murder and theft, we can make it illegal and work together to punish the criminals. The left explains how when they say we have a rape culture or that racism/sexism is systemic, what they mean is that there are social norms that make these crimes widespread and not condoned. You see victims of these crimes finding it hard to speak out, afraid of being shamed for putting themselves in danger, for being a victim, accused of being a liar. We see people trying to justify the crime, drawing from religion, biology, history, etc, they watch racism happen and don't speak out, nor feel indignant. Laws are just words on paper and to implement them, society has to agree, norms have to change.

Are there that many rape apologists in our society? Do people let their friends get away with casual racism? Are there inaccurate harmful stereotypes being passed down in our culture that make it harder for victims to report crimes? to prosecute and get justice? That is the arena where this discussion needs to happen. Is your culture sexist? racist? castist? I think people underestimate how homogenous their bubbles are, our lived experiences are widely different depending on our community. This is why red pill guys feel like the feminists are exaggerating the problem, it is likely that the kind of guys who fall for this ideology grew up in privileged bubbles where they did not see sexism rampant around them. It's easy to ignore your privilege. They don't have a representative sampling of society. They also feel the pressure of all these laws that apply across bubbles.

The effects of culture are undeniable, your career opportunities, the kind of words we use, what we spend our time on, etc are all impacted. The right should acknowledge the power of norms - shared social expectations, acceptable behaviors, the language we use, and shared beliefs.

Once we understand this much, we can move onto a common refrain - what is this scary patriarchy? Any problem the feminist sees, they blame this monster for it. As Maslow said - "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail". It's not helpful if they stop at pointing to this amorphous, broadly defined concept as a reason instead of proposing actionable solutions and concrete problems. Giving the problem a name does feel like you have explained something, I do wonder how many who use this term understand it. It is important to delve deeper and not stop at "patriarchy being the problem".

Liberal feminists see patriarchy as a system where power is distributed unequally. From reading about it, I see it as a term that covers a lot of things - rigid gender roles, sexism (valuing women less), restrictions on the freedoms of women, control over their own body, etc. Patriarchy hurts men by making them oppressors, forcing them to dominate, and killing their souls. I am not a fan of how this word is used everywhere because I think beliefs should pay rent, if "patriarchy is a large cause of male suicides" is a belief then if that is true, it needs to constrain/predict some experiences.

It is also important to distinguish between two types of power - "control over institutions, politics, the direction of society and "control over one's life". For most of history, neither men nor women had much control over their lives. They were both confined by gender roles. For most of history, the elites who had the first type of power were a small group of people who happened to be men. This does not mean this power was used for all men.

It is a reality that problematic norms arose that restrict women's freedoms. Who they get to marry, what kind of careers if any they could choose, if they wanted to be a mother, stigma on casual sex, etc. Families want a son to carry on the "family name", so they invest more in the son. The problems that feminists tackle by law are reproductive rights, marital rape, etc but they believe that these are just symptoms of a deeper problem of patriarchy.

In urban areas filled with liberals, these norms have been overturned so it's hard to make the case that patriarchy is systemic in western countries. It is left in certain communities and third-world countries. It is also important to note that while norms that restrict women's freedoms are being dismantled, men are still expected to make the first move, pay for the first date, earn more, provide, protect, get drafted, get longer sentences for the same crime, forced to pay child support for someone else's kids, get shamed for being vulnerable and showing emotions, etc. Most feminists claim that this movement will fight for both genders, but they stand in the way of funding solutions to men's issues and don't accept that women can be perpetrators.

There is a need for a movement that looks into what is causing all the workplace deaths, homelessness, suicides, etc that affect men, ensure that proportional taxpayer money is spent. There are no special commissions or departments for men's issues. Even when feminists see these issues, they reframe it as a women's issue, like "benevolent sexism" turning this into a competition of who suffers more. Feminists need to understand that this is not a zero-sum game when it comes to showing compassion (in funding it is and that needs to be proportional). Just like there are areas where females suffer, there are areas where men suffer disproportionately. Men are not privileged in all domains and not all men are privileged. It is also a common assumption that dismantling the patriarchy and removing norms that restrict females will automatically fix these issues for men by removing norms that restrict men. But in fact, while norms that affect men might loosen, it does not directly fall apart as a consequence.

When old norms are removed, new norms are created to fill the gaps. Norms tell us how to behave, it's important for both genders to feel good about themselves. The feminist narrative has space for great women role models but men are demoted to silent allies who agree with anything they say. Otherwise, they paint men as horrible predators and this has a lot of consequences in terms of men turning to MGTOW, Red Pill, gaming, porn, etc as they no longer find meaning in life. I keep seeing feminists spend time critiquing most parts of what is commonly accepted to be masculine as toxic while not really working on appreciating positive aspects of masculinity. There is rarely "healthy masculinity" portrayed in the media and when it is, most girls find the man to lack charisma and appeal. Just like good men wished they could find all girls attractive, I'm sure feminists also wish they could find these kinds of men attractive.

We can guess how the real biological differences between the genders back in the ancestral environment caused "the patriarchy" to be created. Feminists try to wrongly claim there are no differences and that is why we need to give both genders more freedom. The fact is, giving individuals freedom, choice, equal treatment makes sense even if we acknowledge the minor differences, especially with the advent of technology - birth control pills, contraceptives, abortion, better law enforcement, etc we as a society can tolerate more individual freedom. These norms belong to an outdated environment, freedom is good intrinsically since it allows for diversity and exploration of new lifestyles. So for the sake of innovation and creativity, we should try to give individuals more choice.

Like I said before we can't remove norms, we can only replace them with others. We are now playing a risky game by adopting new norms based on naive beliefs and the consequences of this new culture will take time to manifest. By then it might be too late. This is especially troubling since feminists want to export their ideology to every country and thus put all of humanity's eggs in one basket. If there are some long-term flaws with this ideology, we are all fucked. This is why I am a big supporter of decentralization and diversity of thought. It is the ultimate arrogance to imagine we are right when we are so stupid.

Now let me list my major beef with the feminist ideology -

So my first issue with feminism is the false beliefs they propagate. Ok so we don't know how much of this is cultural, but there are psychological differences between men and women cross-culturally but the left makes it sound smaller than it is and the right exaggerates them. Stereotypes based on these force women to work way harder than a man to prove herself. Feminists believe it might be harmful to talk about them, maybe girls will hold themselves back if they knew? The problem is when politics leak into academia and affects the hypothesis that is chosen when people get canceled for suggesting unorthodox viewpoints. Even the few feminists who agree there are differences only agree to physical differences like muscle mass, bone size, height, etc.

Now, these differences are seen on a population level, on average if you look at large groups. For individuals, it does not matter that much since there are tons of women who can run faster than me, beat my ass, etc. It does matter in terms of how we decide to separate sports based on gender to make it fair if sexism is the reason for the overrepresentation of males in STEM jobs. It is important to note that these small average differences are exaggerated at the tail ends of a distribution.

Sexual dimorphism is science and it just sucks when feminists are pro-science when it suits them and then ignores science elsewhere. I also notice how feminists always rely on anecdotal evidence instead of statistics when arguing. Most feminists have personal experiences that draw them to this ideology and overly rely on pathos.

The same thing applies to the real consequences of this ideology in terms of unhappiness, stress, single-parent families, dating, etc that are only slowly being realized. Feminists seem to focus on what the world should be rather than what reality is right now. Since women used to contribute with valuable unpaid labor at home, now guys have to pick up the slack or women have to work way harder to juggle kids, household chores, taking care of the elderly, work, and at the end of this it's no wonder they lose their sex drive. Is it really smart to tell our children it's ok to focus on a career in our 20s and then watch them struggle to start a family in their 30s? Is it right to tell people that they should not settle or compromise on their standards when any successful relationship is based on exactly that? We need to be aware of the tradeoffs here and have a discussion around what we can do to tackle them.

Shaming of femininity and masculinity generates an androgynous culture of people who don’t turn on the opposite sex. This hurts everyone since there is a scarcity of attractive people.

Blue pill ideas like "there is a person for everyone. When you stop looking the right girl will come.", "Just be yourself", "Just be a nice person", "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", "You can be friends first then date later" are misleading and wrong. There is a culture of fear regarding cold approaches, taking initiative in dating which holds men back from shooting their shot.

My second issue is hypocrisy. They hate when we stereotype women, Muslims, black people, etc. But they have no issue stereotyping men. There is a lot of anger and hate toward men and this ideology encourages that, it frames history as women being oppressed and men being the oppressors, while in fact both men and women were oppressed by society in different ways in order to survive an ever crueler environment. It's not healthy to frame history like this and not productive to the future if you want both genders to work together.

Laws are made to target men but racial profiling is evil, even if a few black men steal or Muslims commit terror acts they rightfully point out it's a small minority. But in the case of crimes by men, somehow feminists feel the issue is too pervasive? Then is it ok to stereotype if we have sufficient evidence that part of a group commits crimes?

Feminists practice collective punishment. Using ideas of toxic masculinity, they try to shame men for lots of natural behaviors. When it the women's body it's her choice but feminists think it's ok to tell men how and when they should show emotions, be vulnerable and not be self-reliant? Shame is an effective tool and should be used to control antisocial behavior, but it should not be overused. It seems hypocritical when we see feminists rage at anyone trying to shame obese women into losing weight.

Any sane person will start to see a pattern here where there are double standards with feminists markedly biased against men and for women, and this is not going to be good for either gender in the long run. Women don't mind ranking men based on height, income, looks. Maybe they don't do it explicitly but they treat men ranking women as something horrible. You can work on your looks if you know exactly which percentile you currently fall in. Women tell men how to change to attract them all the time but feminism says men should not tell women how to change. Women are not told masculine traits are unattractive to men and instead are encouraged to turn masculine. Men as asked to lower standards when they struggle to find a partner while women are told they deserve what they want. FDS is fine but MGTOW and Redpill are horrible.

Women are allowed to have preferences and choose who she wants to sleep with, she gets freedom but men are shamed for having preferences. Men can't ask women how many partners she has had before, feminists claim it is not relevant, it is "slut-shaming", weight? it's "weight-shaming", age? the list goes on. Men are called shallow, insecure, and asked to accept any women they see. But your weight reflects your food habits, exercise, lifestyle choices, it is in your control. Your body count is a reflection of your past choices and there is sufficient evidence it matters. The risk of divorce is more after two partners. Men don't prefer to marry girls who are at a higher risk of cheating on them. But they don't mind casual sex as long as the girl is attractive. There is a risk of STDs. Women having daddy issues, in search of validation and other mental issues have a high body count.

Some people have restricted sociosexuality treat sex carefully, they want to explore it together with their partner, their values are not compatible with someone who is ok with casual sex. Now, most guys are also hypocrites here in the sense they would have casual sex and hold themselves to a different standard. But this still does not mean it makes sense to shame people who judge a prospective partner based on her sexual history. Some men want virgins but then complain about their low libido later, the reality is sex-positive women with a high libido are not likely to have such a low body count. A number does not contain much information, what matters more is the context in which those encounters happened. So it is totally wrong when feminists try to justify girls lying about their relationship history by explaining it is "because she knows the guy will react negatively".

Some feminists seem to want to turn into men - aiming for masculinity, strength, power, money, status, independence, not showing emotions. They work out to get muscular, learn self-defense, act less agreeable, angry, etc. Maybe this is their way of overturning gender roles, by explicitly breaking them. It is important to remember some of these women might be happier doing something more traditional. But feminism shames women who want to embrace these gender roles. The reverse of patriarchy is not the answer and would equally constrain the freedom of women. Since these norms used to be really rigid feminists hate these norms. They don't really respect their own or other's "choice" to be a mother, to conform to the gender roles. They call them brainwashed by the patriarchy. The only right option is to give up on the institution of marriage, family, and kids and focus on serving the transient economy during their fertile years.

Freedom and equality are values that stand contrary to each other. To increase the representation of women, to reduce "inequality", you have to restrict individual freedoms. You need to incentivize certain behaviors like promote career women, give them respect, and shame homemakers. You can see feminists ask why only when women want to choose traditionally feminine roles. They want to make it "not her choice" and convince her to pick a masculine career say in the STEM fields.

Another example of hypocrisy is when it comes to trans rights. Transwomen are supposed to have female souls say trapped in a male body, they subscribe to gender essentialism where they believe they were born this way, they are naturally a female, say in terms of the brain or immutable traits. This flies directly against the feminist view that gender is socially constructed. But feminists seem to be able to not even see the contradiction here.

My third issue is personal responsibility, the left as a whole has an issue with keeping the locus of control externally. They blame externalities for anything that happens, refuses to take responsibility and believe they can control their life. The right typically looks inward and at what they can do. Feminists take this to a new level with people racing to the bottom in a competition of who is more oppressed. This victimhood mentality where your identity is linked to you being a victim means you are stuck and can't stop being a victim. There is the exaltation of weakness, the fetishization of powerlessness as a virtue. This leads to oppression Olympics/race to the bottom.

This is also why they struggle to imagine women as perpetrators of crime. This hurts women since it diminishes their agency. Feminists try to underplay the statistics that point to women also being perpetrators of violence. Their idea of "Believe women" forgets women are humans too, they can lie, malign, falsely accuse people. This is eroding an important legal principle of our justice system - innocent until proven guilty. They argue powerful men need to carry the burden of proof since often they are above the law. Only due to the media trial did they bother trying to defend themselves. Usually, they are powerful enough to prove their innocence in the courts but that does not make the news and their legacy is tarnished.

In many places, women are in fact not having any say in making decisions. Women are accurately placing the locus of control in those cases. I am just pointing out the ideology does not seem to correct this as women get more empowered. Even after the feminist is empowered, has an income, and lives by herself, she continues to frame her life where she is the subject, trying to explain everything based on externalities.

In every relationship, we have rights and responsibilities. With power, choice, and rights we should also give associated responsibilities. As a society, we decide to what extent we need to be careful and attentive to other people's needs, what is polite behavior is a norm. Notice every person's right is another person's responsibility. With feminism, there is a hypersensitivity to harm. The norms are shifting to make it everyone's responsibility to walk on eggshells all the time being super careful not to offend or "disrespect" anyone. These are subjective ideas where the line can be redrawn easily. Feminists are not willing to be responsible for their own feelings, they want others to be responsible for them. This is horrible for a healthy dialogue and it can lead to misunderstandings as you increasingly start using innuendo and beating around the bush. Feminists believe they are perfect and that everyone else around them needs to change to suit them.

There is always a balance here, feminism used hypersensitivity as a tool to force us to address harm explicitly, to prevent us from ignoring our feelings. We need to be polite and there need to be moral consequences for being an ass, not legal ones. It is important to teach that the attitude you take/how you respond matters more than what people say.

My fourth issue is identity politics, their ideology encourages people to cling to their group identity and this leads to society fragmenting based on religious, ethnic, economic, gender, etc. People stop treating each other as individuals, tribalism comes back, everyone is supposed to just parrot the group talking points. There is a chilling effect on freedom of speech. Interestingly while the ideology seems to attack individualism at this level, when it affirms female choices it promotes individualism often at the expense of family. It seems to make more people selfish.

The state and economy now serve the individual with apathy and over time these institutions ossify too. Is it really the purpose of life to focus on oneself? to "grow" and "experience" a lot. When the inevitable end for all individuals is death? Is it not better to structure society in such a way that we focus on how best to leave a legacy? mold the next generation? On a deeper level, this seems to be runaway capitalism, for the sake of labor, we might be crippling our future.

My fifth issue is them shutting down dissent, using ad hominem attacks. Anyone who disagrees with them is instantly alt-right, far-right, a misogynist, incel, etc. It says a lot about them when you see how badly they take criticism. Deplatforming, boycotting, they want spaces where their views are not challenged. The right acknowledges there are reactionaries among them and mostly disowns them when they claim racial/gender superiority. The left fails to do that with their radical side, they don't even seem to acknowledge that there is a radical part of their movement. The moderate feminists thank the radical feminists for pushing the Overton window. I don't think most feminists are able to respectfully disagree, they have to convince you to agree with them. Their dogma is absolute, only trash humans can fail to see their obvious points. Feminism can never be too extreme in their eyes

The problem is so bad that they point to privilege and focus too much on who says the point as compared to judging the point by its merit. They conclude white people don't know the black person's lived experience so they have no right to comment. The same is true of a women's right to choose to get an abortion. The fetus's rights, the father's rights are not even part of the "allowed" conversation. We don't need to experience a crime to be against it on principle, it's possible for you to be against slavery and murder without having experienced either.

My sixth issue is feminists lobbying for affirmative action, enforced diversity, quotas, etc. They are pushing for equality of outcome, they start with the false assumption both genders are equal and then look at the reality and see how there is inequality leading them to the conclusion there is sexism stopping it from becoming 50/50. Just like how the wage gap mostly disappears when you adjust for various variables, similarly, we can explain most of the disparity between the genders in many jobs for reasons other than sexism.

The point is to fight for equality of opportunity, to maximize choices for the individual. Raise awareness about career choices, give scholarships, reward merit, showcase individuals from every group that makes it, remove application fees, open new exam centers, fund upskilling where you empower the weaker groups to be able to win in the final fair exam. Just don't put your thumb on the scale. It hurts meritocracy when you enforce quotas, it makes the women who earned the seat question their competency and it makes the men who work hard disheartened when they feel they lost to someone who was not better than them. Feminists don't seem to care about efficiency. But I do need to acknowledge that to some extent much like the special consideration we give disabled people, there might be cases where we give structural advantages to people who are struggling for the sake of allowing them to reach their full potential. Women might bring in a fresh perspective and diversity is not bad but it's not good enough to sacrifice meritocracy. Affirmative action is touted as a temporary panacea that never goes away, it just reaffirms group identity. It leads to a backlash where society looks to the far right as the answer to the left's appeasement of minorities.

While feminism claims to be for equality, in many of their talking points you can clearly see the anti-men stance they take. They want to popularize vasectomies as an alternative to pills and condoms.

My seventh issue is their insidious way of changing the language and thus the culture. They are trying to use the implied force of the state by passing hate law legislation, they are conflating existing words to shame people into adopting their language. Language is an extension of culture, instead of convincing people of their ideology about trans people, about sexuality, etc. They are trying to change the language people use which is a manipulative way to change norms. They use feminism to mean a movement for good, to break gender norms for both genders, to destroy the evil patriarchy. Instead of inventing positive concepts like healthy masculinity, they make the idea of "toxic masculinity". There is a lack of high-resolution, nuanced words that are used by feminism.

They are also policing humor, which sucks. Alleging that jokes/video games can lead to real-world behaviors, they are making implicit bias tests widespread. All this without any scientific evidence supporting their case. They are pretty much already in the thought police category. The speech policing that they do makes potential allies detest them since they are decreasing people's freedoms. The right way to make this change is to change their minds and make them want to use the right terms. Using the implied force of the state is due to impatience and it will backfire.

Consider how giving women's looks a number is morally outlawed. This is to push the idea that beauty is subjective. There is an objective component of beauty we can work on. Women do work on it but then try to claim it's wrong to judge people based on looks.

There is also increasing hypersensitivity that feminism encourages where concepts are being used for broader ideas, gradations of sexual assault are lost, harassment, rape are all inching towards the extreme definitions. Trauma, abuse, and violence are now related to speech.

Feminists have a very flexible idea of what it means to be either gender. They treat men according to their own conception of what masculinity means and many times men with more rigid, narrow ideas of masculinity feel uncomfortable when faced with what they see as misgendering. But feminists call these men insecure in their gender identity while the issue here is miscommunication. Insecurity surrounding your identity makes you more likely to be defensive, overcompensate and react emotionally but even people secure in their identity will find it uncomfortable if people invalidate it.

My eighth issue is that this ideology recruits people with insecurities, fears, and trauma. It amplifies them and I've noticed how defensive feminists are. They have this negativity bias where they always interpret any ambiguous situation in a bad light. They almost never give you the benefit of doubt. People who had bad experiences in life are drawn to this ideology which reinforces their fears. They shape their identity around these negative experiences and cling to them, making it harder for them to grow beyond them. They should not let it define them. It might be healthy to acknowledge it and know that anger is normal, but I feel feminism take

My ninth issue is that feminists support having a large powerful government and they want to let them invade our privacy. It is a slippery slope to give up the education of our children to the state. It is better for the culture to be passed down by the parents, we should not centralize our ideologies too much. Even if you believe that the ideas the govt pushes are better than what most parents give their kids, you need to think long-term. Are you ok with letting society become so homogenized? don't you want diversity of values and cultures? If values and norms are centrally distributed, companies and other power groups, elites will decide the culture of every generation. I believe in decentralizing until our species matures enough that concentration of power does not corrupt institutions.

My tenth issue is that feminists support certain truths that are harmful to us in the long run. I agree with moral relativism and nihilism, but it's not healthy to encourage people to hold these views. This directly affects motivation and altruistic behavior. Feminists need to be wary of the long-term effects of certain beliefs, in terms of falling birth rate, the inverted demographic pyramid, etc, there are real issues when you give up useful fiction. They are right in identifying that people are rude to each other, but we never focused on that. We don't think about our inevitable death and that keeps us sane. Any serious conversation around contentious issues will involve risking being rude and hurting feelings, so they are choosing a bad tradeoff here.

While I am sex-positive, I am worried about how increasingly people are decoupling the physical act of sex from emotional intimacy. Sex-negative feminists are a rare breed but they might have a point. I'm not sure casual sex should be promoted. Porn and many kinks deserve a closer examination and most feminists seem to think they are totally ok. But they also seem to be ashamed about seeing women as sexual creatures, breasts should not be sexualized, objectification is wrong. I think feminists should ideally embrace that sexuality is part of humans and men should not be shamed for feeling natural feelings.

My eleventh issue is about how they try to change the world without changing themselves. JP said "clean your room", Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world". When feminists say they want to break stereotypes, I don't see most of them acting out their beliefs. You want more women in math and science? Be a woman who pursues math and science. You want more women as CEOs and winning at business? Start a business. Pay for dates, make the first move, don't date toxic men, aim for jobs that have a lot of responsibility, marry a househusband, live a life breaking these gender roles that you hate. I find it sad how they use feminism to distract themselves from how messed up their own life is. The previous generations of feminists were the change they desired but now more of them seem to be just keyboard warriors.

My twelfth issue is how often and much they overreact. They let emotions take over and often throw away the baby with the bathwater. They are hurt by some men and decide all men are trash, instead of deciding it was that one man that did not deserve trust, they question if trust itself makes sense anymore, one level deeper. They see some legitimate issues with the institution of marriage so they decide the institution should be abandoned. It is risky to be dependent on your partner so they decide to become independent instead of helping men become humans worth depending on and trusting. They act like men and want men to act even manlier in order to bring their feminine side out.

But there are some good things too, read them in part II of this post on Feminism.