Sunday, August 10, 2008

Feminism ... just ... got ... worse ...

Penny Red is angry:

You bloody traitor, Kathleen Parker. You weak-willed, belly-showing traitor.


What would make a young socialist feminist so mad? How could Kathleen Parker so enrage her?

Penny Red is upset that Kathleen Parker wrote a column in defence of men and fatherhood. Parker's column is worth reading in its entirety, but it ends on this note:

As long as men feel marginalised by the women whose favours and approval they seek; as long as they are alienated from their children and treated as criminals by family courts; as long as they are disrespected by a culture that no longer values masculinity tied to honour; and as long as boys are bereft of strong fathers and our young men and women wage sexual war, then we risk cultural suicide.

In the coming years we will need men who are not confused about their responsibilities. We need boys who have acquired the virtues of honour, courage, valour and loyalty. We need women willing to let men be men – and boys be boys. And we need young men and women who will commit and marry and raise children in stable homes.


I think this is exceptionally well put. Penny Red, though, intensely dislikes the quote because she thinks it is right that men are marginalised, that culture disrespects and dishonours masculinity, and that men and women engage in a sex war.

Here is how Penny Red responds to Kathleen Parker:

Women have been raising children alone for centuries untold, and, since feminist liberation, we have been enabled to provide for ourselves and our children on a more basic level. If that alienates men from their traditional roles of breadwinner and head of the table then too bad. I was raised by a single mother who was also a part-time lawyer; it did me no harm whatsoever, and I fully intend to be one myself one day.

... So, precisely in what way do children ‘need’ fathers - or is it, in fact, fathers who need children? ... The plain fact is that now that women are allowed to financially provide for themselves, we no longer need husbands to raise children effectively, if, indeed, we ever did. What women could do with, fundamentally, are wives –other people, male or female, to share the load of domestic work and money-earning in a spirit of genuine support and partnership. When more men can stomach seeing themselves in the role of 'wife and father', then we’ll have a basis for negotiation.


This is bad enough, but it gets worse. Penny Red goes on to state that a child is only the mother's - that the father has no rights at all when it comes to a child. She is willing to balance this view by stating that the father is therefore under no obligations, financial or otherwise, to the child:

Why is it unarguable that a man should support his offspring? With state help, most women are perfectly capable of doing so on their own ...

... Before they are their own, my kids will be just that - mine - and my money will pay for the nappies and school shoes.

So sorry about your balls, guys, but before they are their own these babies are ours, and they will remain ours whilst they are born from our bodies. We would be only too delighted for you to help us – genuinely help us – with the work of raising the next generation, but fatherhood is a privilege, not a right. If you’re truly man enough to be a wife and father, bring that to the table and we'll talk.


How should men respond to this? There are a couple of ways I think are unhelpful. The first is to get angry and resentful toward women in general. Not all women are Penny Reds. In my own neighbourhood of Melbourne there are many genuinely lovely young women who still represent a more traditional womanhood. The best comeback to the Penny Reds is to find such a woman and live happily with her.

However, it's not helpful either to entirely ignore women like Penny Red. She represents a trend within modernism which has real influence within our culture. If we take the attitude that it's most masculine just to shrug off women like Penny Red, we allow the situation to get worse. A real advantage we have as men is the ability to apply ourselves in a concentrated way to a problem in order to solve it. We shouldn't leave it to sympathetic women like Kathleen Parker to take on the problem of feminism. It should be our aim to work patiently and perseveringly to entirely rid our culture of the negative influence of feminism.

How do we do this? There are at least four ways to argue persuasively against Penny Red's politics.

The first is simply to point out the factual errors. On average, children raised by single women don't do as well as those raised in more traditional families. Nor do most single mothers manage to do well financially on their own. The provider and protector roles of men are not yet redundant, in spite of the role of the state in supporting single motherhood.

The second approach is to point out just how unliveable Penny Red's politics are. Feminism has reached the point at which feminists themselves are rarely able to follow their own principles in practice. For instance, Penny Red declared early in her post that she intended to become a single mother. However, later we learn that she has left herself considerable wriggle room:

I love my partner deeply and would be thrilled to bear a child who carried half of his genetic material. If we are still together at the time my child is born I will be only too happy for him to help me raise it, for him to share legal guardianship and for my child to call him ‘dad’. And this is not because it’s his moral or genetic right, but because I’m lucky enough to have met an emotionally and domestically literate man who I think would make a wonderful parent. But I want him around because he's a fantastic person, not because my kids need a male parent. And if he doesn't want to be involved, I'll manage.


So she does have a male partner and she would be "thrilled" to bear his child and she thinks he would make a "wonderful" parent and she would like her child to call him "dad". But the fact of his being male is just ... well, fortuitous. What seems clear is that Penny Red does want to live with the father of her child, in spite of all her arguments that men are superfluous.

Which leads on to the third problem with her politics. Penny Red, despite wanting to live with the father of her child, has undercut her own position in such a relationship. If men and women were really to believe the arguments that she makes, then how could a woman keep a man in a long-term relationship? If a man no longer believes his role as a father is a necessary one, and if he believes that he has no obligations to a child which, after all, is his wife's and not really his, then a woman is going to have to work overtime to keep him around. She is going to have to really exert herself to keep him happy.

To put it another way, when a man believes that his children are his own in a significant way, and that their welfare depends on his masculine role within the family, then he is much less likely to leave in a crisis. A woman in such a relationship can relax a bit, knowing that her husband has reasons to stay.

The final approach is the most important. What Penny Red has done is to apply, in a radical way, liberal autonomy theory to the lives of women. If the key aim in life is to be autonomous, then why wouldn't a woman assert that her child is her own and not someone else's? Why wouldn't she want to negotiate a role for the father on her own terms? Why wouldn't she claim that fathers are unnecessary and that she as a woman can manage on her own?

So if we really want to undermine feminism in Western culture we have to attack at the root of the problem - by decisively rejecting liberal autonomy theory. This means rejecting the idea that individual autonomy is the overriding, organising principle in society. We need to confidently assert other goods as well, including (as Kathleen Parker does) what is good for the survival of our own tradition.

25 comments:

  1. "Why is it unarguable that a man should support his offspring? With state help, most women are perfectly capable of doing so on their own ..."

    State help? Translation: financial assistance of men. She still wants men to have financial responsibility, but with no involvement.

    You can't have your cake and eat it too.

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    Replies
    1. But they do. The whole child stealing racket is a national scandal. Blameless individuals, not seeking litigation of any kind and not accused of any criminal or civil wrongdoing, get dragged into sham courts and ordered to write cheques to court officials on pain of losing their children or being incarcerated without trial if they don't acquiesce. Feminism is just a trojan horse ideology for statist power freaks and godforsaken harpies.

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  2. Leon, good point. I notice that Thordaddy wrote along these lines too at Penny Red's site:

    "To say that mothers can do without fathers while relying on the "state" is a distinction with very little difference.

    Who picks up the bulk of that "state" tab other than obligated husbands and fathers?"

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  3. You know, its easy to dismiss these radical feminist calls because they will never be implemented by law. But, as you point out, that overlooks the danger that these feminists may influence young women in having hostile attitudes towards men and families.

    As you point out, not only does that undermine women having husbands and children (which the vast majority want), but it also increases the likelyhood of single parents. Looking after even one child alone is sure no easy job. And the life outcomes for fatherless children are much poorer.

    Anyway, you might be interested to know that Tim Blair has also been stirring a feminist bee-hive lately:

    http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/nobody_wants_to_marry_a_pottymouth/

    http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/such_language/

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  4. I just noticed this article by Angela Shanahan in The Australian:

    "For a long time Australia's fertility has been viewed simply as a problem of women balancing work and family obligations. But that is a symptom of the problem, not a cause. Australia's fertility is part of a much bigger picture, the family picture.

    "The main reason for infertility everywhere in the Western world is late marriage and later family formation. Australia's families have been in a parlous state, assailed ideologically and practically from all sides. Young people, particularly educated young people, have been vigorously discouraged from any thought of family formation, at least until their 30s. This of course shrinks the window of fertility for women.

    "But, at the same time, sex is simple and comes with a no-obligation mentality. Consequently there has been a sharp rise, almost a doubling from the early 1990s, in the number of ex-nuptial births to women in their 20s who have no tertiary education. These are girls who would have married and had several children by their 30s but can no longer expect the father of their children to marry them. No doubt many of them would like to, even if they can live well enough within the welfare system.

    It is these 20-something girls, with limited education, who are the ones paying the price for the so-called sexual revolution of their parents' generation.

    "However, for the educated middle classes, who have other things to occupy them in their 20s, such as education and professional training, there is a buffer against the corrosive "no strings" new morality. Yes, they have delayed marriage and babies - the dramatic fall in the fertility rate of the '80s and '90s reflected this - but eventually the middle classes are marrying and having children, forming stable families with no great harm done along the way. But for the young underclass mothers and their children, this is not the case. These girls are providing a growing proportion of the nation's children, about 30 per cent of all births, which means a larger proportion of our children are growing up fatherless, with all the problems that entails: poor education, lack of family stability, lack of male role models and so on. Not a good prospect for one of the richest countries in the world. "

    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24148793-7583,00.html

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  5. I agree that the sentiments voiced by Ms Red are deplorable and I pity both the child she is considering bringing into the world and the man with whom she will do it. I do wonder, though, how much can be done on the political to improve the situation.

    What I mean is that I can't see how any conceivable legislation intended to support traditional families and deter people like Penny Red from breeding on their own terms would achieve a desirable result.

    For example, limiting the social assistance provided to single mothers would make life very difficult for women whose single-motherhood is not an ideological choice but a sad necessity. By increasing the pressure on single mothers to work full-time, it would also limit their ability to be good mothers.

    As far as i can see, in general, government regulation of private relationships cannot fail to be heavy handed, punishing those who, even with the best of intentions, have made bad choices. It also would appear counterproductive, overemphasising the family's role as an economic unit to the exclusion of the emotional attachments necessary if the traditional family is to provide a favourable environment for the raising of children.

    I'd be interested to hear what people here have to say about this.

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  6. erratum: (paragraph 1) "political" should read "political level." Sorry.

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  7. Autonomy theory seems to be jumping the rails and just becoming a demand for power. "I'm autonomous, and what's more, the child belongs to me, not you."

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  8. I love my partner deeply and would be thrilled to bear a child who carried half of his genetic material.

    "Marsha, I want to mix half of my genetic material with yours."

    "Oh Frank, you're sooo romantic!"

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  9. Oh yes, almost forgot:

    With state help, most women are perfectly capable of doing so on their own ...

    "I am a strong, independent woman! With merely the perpetual help of vast governmental bureaucracies, I can do anything!"

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  10. I wonder who the Baby Daddy will be. Minnie Driver the Hollywood Actress echoed similar sentiments about the Father of "Her Child". She does not want the Father to have any interaction with "Her Child". This malignant narcissism is a prime characteristic of Gender Feminists. Who are unsuited to have children. And see Men as walking ATM Machines and Sperm Donors.

    An astute Man would never had a child with such a Woman. Who clearly hates Men, and self identifies herself as a Lesbian. Wow what a surprise that is.

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  11. A great post, Mark. Well written and articulate.

    One weakness, though, I think:

    "...then a woman is going to have to work overtime to keep him around. She is going to have to really exert herself to keep him happy."

    Not really. Such a woman as Penny does not see the need to work to keep a man around, nor will she do so. That is because Miss Strong Independent Woman depends on the coercive power of the State to keep the man around, at least the portions of him that matter to . I.e., the fruits of his labor.

    And ditto to what Leon at 10:10 on 10 August said. Interesting that the feminist fantasy always involves forcibly expropriating resources from men to support the shiny happy matriarchy.

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  12. Men have always had a problem dating a woman with someone elses child… What makes feminists think that men will want to even consider women AT ALL if even their own children aren’t his?

    Preposterous.

    Women need to seriously speak out against feminism and denounce it publicly. All this talk of men coming to the rescue of women yet AGAIN, will not teach women the responsibility/place they once had. It will only further foster the notion that not matter what ridiculous, retrograde notions they foist upon society – men will clean it up. We men are damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. If we ‘take’ charge, then we’re being chauvinistic. If we allow them to ‘take charge’ then we’re accused of not doing enough to help (ie. be more sensitive, help with housework, more government handouts, etc… ad nausium.)

    The best thing that men can do, I believe, is to not back down from their masculinity and be honest about their opinions and teach other men the value/reason of what it is to be a man. Men teaching other men. A man cannot ‘create’ a woman.

    No. I think it is up to women.

    As to the comment of JAL:
    “As far as i can see, in general, government regulation of private relationships cannot fail to be heavy handed, punishing those who, even with the best of intentions, have made bad choices. It also would appear counterproductive, overemphasising the family's role as an economic unit to the exclusion of the emotional attachments necessary if the traditional family is to provide a favourable environment for the raising of children.”

    A demarcated separation of church/state is needed. The law needs to get out of personal relationships. The law confers far too much power to the female. A man has no rights in marriage today, only responsibilities.

    Unfortunately, it will take the law changing to reverse the marriage decline. Feminists like Penny Red just ad fuel to the fire that men are avoiding at all costs, and it would behoove women to not only avoid her feminist philosophy – but to also speak out against it whenever it comes about publicly. It will be women who will need to clean up this mess (to at least half way) before men will start to trust them enough again, to resume their historical chivalry.

    Remember… what man seeks is not ‘knowledge’, but certainty - and women offer virtually nothing to men thesedays apart from the ‘certianty’ (and even that is suspect) of a quick ‘good time’.

    Feminism has reduced women to sex objects… nothing more.
    Women need to start acting like something ‘more’.

    -Bobby.N

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  13. Leon Bertrand said...

    >>For a long time Australia's fertility has been viewed simply as a problem of women balancing work and family obligations. But that is a symptom of the problem, not a cause. Australia's fertility is part of a much bigger picture, the family picture.

    >>"The main reason for infertility everywhere in the Western world is late marriage and later family formation.

    Late marriage is in itself merely a symptom. Half of the core problem is a continuing massive immigration which, among other deleterious consequences, inexorably pushes up house prices to unaffordable levels, making it less than conducive for large (or early) family formation.

    "Follow the Money": raising children costs (a lot) of money. If there is
    no unrelenting, massive immigration then there is no downward pressure on wages and no upward pressure on housing.
    If we were to live in an economy whereby the AVERAGE man can work
    a job that can help buy a house (on a single, AVERAGE salary) and keep his wife at home taking care of their children (that's plural) then
    your "infertility problems" disappear.

    For more on this, please refer to:

    http://tinyurl.com/5rsdtx

    The other half of the problem is the noxious effect cultural marxism
    has had on our culture, as manifested by feminism and the anti-male Divorce Industry.

    The incipient Marriage Strike by a growing number of young males
    in reaction to feminism and the Divorce Industry bodes ill
    for career women in their mid-30s who have only just now discovered
    that their biological clocks are ticking, after spurning the attentions
    of hard-working, nice-guy, beta males all through their twenties.

    and
    +++
    Jal said...

    >>What I mean is that I can't see how any conceivable legislation intended to support traditional families and deter people like Penny Red from breeding on their own terms would achieve a desirable result.

    Three effective pieces of legislation would be:
    1. An immigration moratorium lasting at least three generations, i.e.,
    60 years.
    2. A complete dismantling of the Divorce Industry which gives women
    and their lawyers carte blanche to ride roughshod over men and contract law.
    3. Upon divorce, males should receive mandatory custody of the children.
    Most divorces in the Western World are initiated by women because
    they are almost always assured of a very favourable court ruling by their feminized judicial Galahads. I realize this last may appear "too radical"
    to some, and so a "compromise position" would be mandatory joint custody.

    Over a century ago, when males had mandatory child custody, the
    divorce rate was very, very low. Many women today cite "being bored"
    as a good reason for getting a divorce. Essentially, as it currently stands, women break the contract and are rewarded for doing so.
    At present, the educated male is apprehensive (and rightfully so)
    about entering a one-sided contract whereby should divorce ensue
    (and why should it not?), he has responsibilities for life and she has access to his wallet for life.

    If the law were changed so that one is penalized (and not rewarded)
    for breaking a contract, then perhaps fewer women would find themselves
    so "bored".

    As for detering women like Penny the Red, with the above legislation it
    would not be necessary: a growing number of women are seeing
    past the self-destructive feminist lies as evidenced by the increasing number of columns in mainstream papers of recent years of (often times former) career women complaining about the utter vacuity of the career-girl/cosmo-girl lifestyle. In a milieu conducive to family formation,
    the number of Pennies (breeding fatherless kids with all their potential social pathologies) would not be costly (pun) to a society
    since they would be few and far between.

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  14. Mr. Richardson, you write that 'The provider and protector roles of men are not yet redundant, in spite of the role of the state in supporting single motherhood.'

    On the contrary; if one were to take a gendered perspective, the role of the State confirms the primacy of men as bead-winners: we pay more tax than women becuase we work more.

    Moreover, regarding the following: 'If a man no longer believes his role as a father is a necessary one, and if he believes that he has no obligations to a child which, after all, is his wife's and not really his, then a woman is going to have to work overtime to keep him around. She is going to have to really exert herself to keep him happy.'

    This is unfortunately the dominant liberal mindset: to seek the father-figure in the form of the State-as-material-provider. This mindset is common among the radicals and the moderate feminists. It is one of the reasons why the female franchise contributed so much to the growth of the welfare state and state socialism.

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  15. With state help, most women are perfectly capable of doing so on their own ...

    Not independent after all.

    Back to the drawing board.

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  16. In the interim, however, no man should get married without a prenup.

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  17. I really do not understand why men should be concerned with women's fertility.
    I don't understand why men still want to have children, since they are the cause of untold misery.

    Now that men have been FREED from the manacles of marriage, shouldn't we rather celebrate?

    Can't we accept the fact that women provide the sole support for their OWN kids?

    Why should we worry at all about feminism? Let them say what they want: the more they speak, the freer we are.

    After all, raising kids requires a fair amount of self-sacrifice: it's always been women's job. A man should not sacrifice his life just for that. Life is way too short to sacrifice it for the sake of children.

    The greatest benefit that feminism brought to men is that men no longer have to plan their lives according to an agenda they have not made: being the breadwinner.

    Men can now be as selfish as they wish and take tender loving care of themselves.

    There is so much more that life can offer, other than wasting it on kids.
    There is no shame in doing that.

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  18. I don't understand why men still want to have children, since they are the cause of untold misery.

    Who told you this? You've been deceived. Most other things pale in comparison with the rewards of being a father.

    Now that men have been FREED from the manacles of marriage, shouldn't we rather celebrate?

    I can understand someone in an unhappy marriage, or whose marriage has hit a rough spot, saying this.

    But a good marriage is a great blessing. Why would a man want to be liberated from it?

    After all, raising kids requires a fair amount of self-sacrifice: it's always been women's job.

    Always? Since recorded history began, Western man has worked for his family.

    If anything, the paternal role was both more distinctive and more fully developed prior to the industrial revolution.

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  19. "But a good marriage is a great blessing. Why would a man want to be liberated from it?.

    A great blessing?

    Maybe, but then so is cohabitation.
    Without the death penalty hovering above your head.

    Marriage was constructed or concocted for two main reasons:
    1-The children
    2-The women

    What about the men?

    Slavery for them.

    A blessing eh?

    No matter which way you look at it, marriage is the most abominable of all human institutions. Even under the very BEST circumstances.

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  20. I hope feminists realise what happened to the women of Berlin after German males had been dispatched

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  21. "Penny Red does want to live with the father of THEIR child"

    Fixed that for you. Great article, sir!

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  22. It is written, - "When good men do nothing evil rises."-
    In ways, it is men who are responsible for infectious viruses like the miserable Penny Red. Hmmm...."red" ...How appropriately named this little socialist is!

    But back to my point. Men allowed this virus to multiply, because they became more and more like the Penny Reds of this world wanted. Emotional, considerate and tolerant of things that they knew they should speak up about. Weak!

    I say no more Mr nice guy. It's time to treat these people as the village idiots they really are. They should be stood up to, chastised, ridiculed, marginalized and sent off to live like a clown in an out-house. And this should be done at every opportunity.

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  23. Penny Red is a spoiled brat.

    These videos on you tube explain it well.

    http://www.youtube.com/user/TheHappyMisogynist

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