Antifeminism

Antifeminist protest in Warsaw, Poland by the far-right All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolska) group

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Anti-feminism refers to any ideology which:

• Thinks that feminism has already achieved its goals and that third-wave feminists are just whiny
• Thinks that the feminism movement uses wrong means or defines its goal incorrectly (criticizing the means and definition of goals is frequently an aspect within the feminist movement as well, however)
• Opposes the entire project of feminism
• Opposes equality between the sexes^{[note 1]}
• Considers one biological sex inferior to the other (typically women to men)^{[note 2]}
• In the United States, opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment
• Any combination of the above

Worth noting is that people who ideologically oppose only certain schools of feminism, though not all schools, and do not oppose (but indeed support) the wider struggle of feminism itself are to be considered — as they consider themselves — feminists.^{[note 3]} With the increased tensions of culture war, and the prominent activity of TERFs and other misandrists, it's however also worth noting that there's many who hesitate to associate themselves with feminism, not for ideological reasons, but because they wish to separate their own identities from those of people who, to such objectors, seem to have stolen the focus of and come to represent feminism.

For example, we all recognize that one may fully adhere to one school within politics (be it liberal, conservative, socialist, or miscellaneous) and that doing so is sufficient for said person to be safeguarded from accusations of being "anti-political" without needing to somehow endorse all camps and spectra in all of politics first.^{[note 4]} Yet, there's also persons who definitely hold political convictions, but still hesitate to make politics and political engagement part of their identity on account of taking a dim view of politicians and their methods, presenting themselves as anti-political.

Furthermore, acknowledging differences between the sexes is in no way inherently antifeminist — notably, celebrating the fundamental differences between men and women is one of the core tenets of the postfeminist school of feminism.^{[note 5]}

Many individual schools of feminism are incompatible, just as many individual schools of politics are. This phenomenon is just as little a contradiction in feminism as is the identical cases of differing opinions within politics. Quite to the contrary, this diversity of thought is the opposite of dogmatic and is rather indicative of the nuance and richness of thought within feminism.

In fact, the very suggestion that the broad scope of feminism is some monolithic ideological project driven on by a radical activist intelligentsia is nothing but conspiratorial propaganda invented by neoreactionary anti-progressives and perpetuated by antifeminist groups like the men's rights movement as their continued cultivation of victimhood (while themselves conducting a smear campaign against feminism) is crucial to the perpetuation of their fringe views.

The term "antifeminist" itself is rightfully considered pejorative among progressives, much as "feminist" is used as a snarl word by cliques espousing the views this article covers. However, many antifeminists do proclaim themselves as such.

Traditional gender roles[edit]

Phyllis Schlafly, a woman who spent her life fighting against women's rights.

This view, disproportionately held by those on the right wing, holds that there are "traditional" gender roles for men and women which are inherently good. Usually in the Western world, these "traditional" gender roles are those held by men and women during the 1940s-1950s — as opposed to agricultural and pre-industrial traditional roles.

Social conservative view[edit]

Social conservatives are the most visible and influential opponents of feminism, often using a straw man depiction of feminists' support for abortion rights as an excuse not to take any of their other opinions seriously, turning complex arguments into one-liners like, "They don't want to take responsibility for their (sexual) actions" or "They want to have their cake and eat it too." This is depressingly similar to conservative Christians accusing atheists of being atheists only so they can live "sinful" lives.

Concerned Women for America and Phyllis Schlafly have decreed that a woman's only place is in the home (despite Schlafly being a college-educated activist attorney who has worked outside it for much of her life) and that feminism destroys women.^[2] Some female wingnuts (e.g., Ann Coulter) have stated a wish to abolish women's suffrage due to feminism's attempts to free women from their traditional roles as servants to their husbands.^[3]

Another great example is Rick Santorum, who has a gold mine of hilariously sexist views against feminism.^[4] He wrote a whole chapter of his book It Takes a Family^[5] about women and feminism. Its memorable moments include:

Conservative religious view[edit]

Due to the social conservatism inherent in many religions, many churches are behind the times in gender equality or even actively oppose it. This has made many religious communities a cornerstone of antifeminist sentiment.

A preacher at a tent revival once proclaimed, "Women's Lib! Let me tell you about women's lib. If my wife came home talking about women's lib, she'd (chuckle, chuckle) she'd be picking herself up off the floor." At this point, the wife jumped up shouting, "Amen, Amen", which was quickly emulated by most of the congregation.^[6]

Far-right view[edit]

In populist far-right circles, it is also relatively common to pretend to be feminist while actively promoting traditional gender roles — often reminiscent of Kinder, Küche, Kirche.

For instance, Frauke Petry, one of the three party leaders of Alternative für Deutschland, said that "chance equality" is needed and not "result equality".^[7][8] In a party that has the enforcement of traditional gender roles in the party program, that certainly means a lot:^[9]

This equates to an unwillingness to push for increased female equality or break any hurtful gender norms, leaving the status quo intact.

Choosing tradition[edit]

Some feel that truly empowering women means they should be able to take on "traditional" feminine roles if that suits them personally. Some advocates for this broader approach to feminism argue that Western women are under pressure to do too much.^[10] This has some genuine truth to it, but it is unclear how feminism would prevent women from pursuing whatever role they want.

Feminism was good, is bad[edit]

In some corners, feminism has gained a bad reputation; this is especially evident when pro-equality public figures refuse to use the term, with reasons ranging from a feeling that the term has taken on a negative connotation to an outright misunderstanding of core feminist beliefs and aims.^[11] According to a 2014 speech to the United Nations by actress Emma Watson, this is based on the idea that feminism is "dogmatic" or "man-hating."^[12]

"Modern feminism"[edit]

How antifeminists see feminism. (Note that antifeminists of the time always saw the current "wave" as evil, much as current antifeminists see current feminism as evil.) In all honesty, every wave of feminism had a few bad eggs that shouldn't be used against the moderate majority.

It is common among MRAs, conservatives, and other modern antifeminists to say that "modern feminism" is somehow different from "true", "real", "historical", or "traditional" feminism. Modern feminists are supposedly (1) supporters of female supremacy and/or (2) misandrists.^{[note 6]} These arguments are usually supported by quotes such as "all men are rapists" or similar instances of feminist extremism. However, such examples are extreme minorities within feminism^{[13][better source needed]} (comparable to TERFs or lesbian separatists), as any investigation of feminism should show. Antifeminists often like to bring up how most of the opponents of the women's suffrage movement were other women without noting that there was a schism, particularly in the British women's suffrage movement, with the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (more commonly known as the suffragists) led by Millicent Fawcett favoring parliamentary discussion and the creation of Bills versus the Women's Social and Political Union (called "suffragettes" derogatorily by Charles Hands in The Daily Mail – proving that old prejudices die hard – but quickly adopted this label themselves) led by Emmeline Pankhurst who preferred direct action and used more militant tactics.

"Feminazism"[edit]

Rush Limbaugh even invented his own pet derogatory term, "feminazis."^[14] He then tried to retract this, claiming that he has no regrets about using the term, although he insisted that not all feminists were feminazis – apparently, this applies to only 25 of said feminists, who live predominately in the United States.^[15]

"Egalitarianism"[edit]

If you see someone proclaiming themselves as an "egalitarian" rather than a "feminist", try to figure out whether they're:

1. Holding fundamental feminist views (read: striving for equality) but don't want the label (for whatever reason)
2. A garden variety antifeminist concern troll

In the first case, it's people trying to evade the hate spawned by the rage fest that is the contemporary "debate" about feminism. Being egalitarian and feminist are not mutually exclusive. Crucially, egalitarianism is a central thesis of non-crank feminism in that it seeks to promote equal rights for everyone. It can be held to debate that the opposing syntactical term "machismo" is negative, turning "feminism" into the same thing on the opposite side of the spectrum and only positive by convention. The "Egalitarian" label attempts to keep the same meaning currently attributed to "feminism" without the bias or unwanted association with radical feminists (aka feminazis). This still carries problems, however. Similar to the problem presented by "All Lives Matter" responses to Black Lives Matter, it is an empty, dismissive, feel-good platitude that doesn't solve anything while also diminishing the real disproportionate treatment of women by assuming men are equally mistreated; the goal of egalitarianism is, after all, to try to level advantages and disadvantages and thus by definition give proportionally more advantages to females and femininity than to males and masculinity.

In the second case, "egalitarian" is a strategic buzzword antifeminists and MRAs use to pretend to be progressive. It's the ideological equivalent of "What about men's rights"? In their minds, everyone already has equal opportunity (or men are the oppressed sex), so feminism (and other progressive movements) are either unnecessary or outright harmful.

Advocating for feminism is seen as discriminatory against the majority, rather than an attempt to correct centuries of bias against women and the LGBT community — a view based on nutpicking certain radfems instead of focusing on sweet mainstream movements like sex-positive feminism.

"Radical feminism"[edit]

“”Feminism is an ill? Radical feminism only, it turns out, which tries to overthrow the whole system of thinking on which we have hitherto depended as opposed to the tradition of female emancipation, beginning with Wollstonecraft and people like that, which is I think a completely different thing, and part of the natural reform of our institutions and our way of seeing things.

—Even conservative philosopher Roger Scruton takes care not to impugn all of feminism[16]

Unlike the other three terms, this is both;

• A genuine branch of feminism with genuine problems (which other branches of feminism are not blind to)

and

• A snarl word thrown around carelessly by antifeminists hoping to spread confusion

Radical feminism includes in its branches TERFs (who exclude trans people), SWERFs (who exclude sex workers), and other people who like equality — just not for those people. Notable nuts include Andrea Dworkin and Valerie Solanas.

"Feminism has achieved its goals"[edit]

This is a common argument, almost always levied by men (but occasionally by privileged white women). Because they do not personally witness gender-based oppression, it must not exist. This ignores the rigid gender roles that still exist and the wage gap. These antifeminists view third-wave feminists as whiny and complaining about petty microaggressions. They exaggerate and cherry-pick the views of feminists to support this conclusion.

Rape culture[edit]

Feminists both of yesteryear and today emphasize the importance of addressing modern rape culture (essentially, how society justifies, normalizes, or in other ways encourages sexual assault). This goal is something that no one except the most aggressive antifeminist types (and MRAs) think is a bad goal.

Conservative/libertarian "criticisms"[edit]

As with all social issues, most of the American Right's criticisms revolve around how feminist criticisms of the way in which society treats sexual assault doesn't fit in their "everyone is an individual" framework. Admitting that women are oppressed would mean having to revise their ideology to go beyond their belief that capitalism is beautiful and produces no systemic inequalities.^{[citation needed]}

Everything is rape[edit]

However, some academic feminists have made unprecedented observations of rape culture, finding "rape" in places that largely have nothing to do with sexuality or sex. For example, what later became known as the "Beethoven rape controversy" was ignited by this statement by feminist musicologist Susan McClary:

Andrea Dworkin, the noted anti-pornography feminist, believed the cesarean section surgical procedure intended to save the life of a woman and fetus when vaginal birth was not possible was rape, stating "the uterus of the whore [is] entered directly by the new rapist, the surgeon."^[18] Charming!

These… unique viewpoints certainly do exist, and it is worth taking the time to refute some of the more widespread and egregious ones, but they are unfortunately used in attempts to stereotype the entire feminist movement. In some cases, similar quotes are either fabricated or mined. One of the most common is "all men are rapists" or "all sex is rape", usually misattributed to Catharine MacKinnon (although she and Dworkin undeniably had very extreme views as to what constituted rape), Marilyn French, or some other feminist figure of your choice.^[19] According to MacKinnon, the quote misattributed to her was "made up by the pornography industry in an attempt to undermine her credibility,"^[20][21] and although Marilyn French did actually write the phrase attributed to her, what is usually not mentioned is that it was said in the person of a fictional character (based on Valerie Solanas) in French's novel The Women's Room.^[22] Most feminists agree that all of these viewpoints are excessive, to say the least.

Silencing rape defendants[edit]

Another core issue feminists frequently address is the genuine problem of rape victims being silenced and stigmatized, which has yet to be fully dealt with. On the other hand, at times, this gets taken to extremes and ends up with people who uncover or discuss simple factual problems with a specific rape allegation being accused of rape apology.

One of the more disturbing cases of this occurred when Rolling Stone first published "A Rape on Campus", when the first writers who did basic fact-checking reported a vast array of glaring inconsistencies and gross journalistic misconduct; instead of jumping at the hope that such horrific events as the article described hadn't happened, a large number of people launched shrill accusations of blaming the victim. When it became clear that the allegation was false (chief among the blindingly blatant falsifications was that the person accused of orchestrating the rape didn't exist), a few, including Jessica Valenti, refused to accept it as such. While their argument that the case would make it more difficult for people to report campus sexual assault had some merit, it seems not to have occurred to them that unquestioningly supporting a disproven allegation would have the same effect, making it harder for victims of actual assaults to be taken seriously. There was also a strange reluctance to even admit to the possibility—which at that point was what every piece of evidence pointed to and would seem to be the best outcome—that nothing had occurred in this specific case.^[23][24][25] Many, although not quite all, apologized for their condemnations and emphasized that attacking wrongfully accused people did not help combat the many hardships real victims face.^[26][27][28]

Feminism as based on a bad idea[edit]

Many women self-identify as feminists but have been highly critical of either the practices of modern and postmodern feminism or their underpinning ideologies — Marxism is a common target for this. These include Christina Hoff Sommers, Wendy McElroy, Camille Paglia, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Kate Fillion, Daphne Patai, and others (some of the aforementioned have said very loopy things as well, and many critics deny they are feminists at all).

Critical theory and Cultural Marxism[edit]

It is sometimes alleged that feminism is a branch of "critical theory" or "Cultural Marxism".^[29] This, frankly, is ridiculous. The Frankfurt School -- which created both critical theory and Cultural Marxism -- was created in 1923.^[30] Critical theory arose in the 1930s,^[31] and Cultural Marxism in the 1960s, with its first use as a term in 1973 (if you don't consider its roots in Nazi Germany's 'Cultural Bolshevism').^[32] Feminism, on the other hand, was first used to mean "advocacy of women's rights" in 1895,^[33] and women's suffrage movements (the precursors to modern, organized feminism) were active even earlier -- the UK's first women's suffrage society formed in 1865,^[34] and the Seneca Falls Convention was in 1848.^[35] It is hard to claim that feminism is a subset of critical theory when it predates the earliest critical theorists by at least 70 years.

Cultural relativism[edit]

Some have accused feminism, or at least some feminist schools of thought, of dressing up cultural relativism in the garb of women's rights. Krishna Mallick has encouraged working closely with cultural relativists, where the similarities were noted.^[36]

First-world, middle-class white, privileged point of view[edit]

Perhaps the most common and most significant criticism laid against modern feminism had been the privileged gaze of largely white, middle-class writers working on the issues of, and focusing on, the experiences of, the white middle class for a white middle-class audience (white feminism). Much of this criticism has come from within the feminist movement, as women of color and women who are from or work in areas of poverty have emphasized that what matters to a white college-aged woman doesn't necessarily resonate with women fitting other demographics across the socioeconomic spectrum (see intersectionality). Hence this is a form of feminist critique rather than antifeminist.

Possibly the best example of what is criticized in this way is Sheryl Sandberg, the corporate feminist and billionaire whose book Lean In drew widespread criticism^{[citation needed]} for being utterly blind to race/class issues, her downplaying of gender discrimination in the workplace as well as being insufficiently critical to how capitalism screws over women who aren't as rich as Sandberg.

Racism[edit]

Feminists of color often criticize mainstream feminist activism for not focusing enough on race issues that affect women of color and often engaging in racist behavior. Again, this is a form of feminist critique of trends that also exist in feminism, showing that feminism is multifaceted and cannot be reduced to a single doctrine.

Feminists who engage in racist behavior are referred to derisively as "white feminists".^[37]

Progress[edit]

As in atheist, humanist and skeptical movements, change is afoot, though slowly. More articles^[38] appear in mainstream feminist sites about poverty, more discussions of Third World needs (Third World feminism), and writers from various backgrounds^[39][40][41] are included in the mainstream dialogue and are writing about their experiences and needs,^[42][43] targeting others with similar experiences and needs.

Marxist and third-worldist criticism[edit]

Marxist feminists have criticized liberal feminism, not because they oppose feminism but because they believe many feminists define progress in female equality with men by their access to capitalist and imperialist systems. (For example, they take issue with the common view of women being allowed in combat or having places in the Forbes 500 cited as signs of progress.) Rather than criticizing feminism in general, they'd rather have the bourgeois privileged, middle-class feminists care more about working-class and poor women.

Many third-worlders also criticize how first-world feminism frequently glosses over the fact many of the women whose empowerment they promote will engage in exploitative and imperialistic behavior towards women in the third world.

Libertarian view[edit]

Individualist feminism holds that the key to women's equality is not through government intervention or social upheaval (as the vast majority of the feminist movement believes to be true) but rather through providing equal rights for everyone without respect for gender — which, they argue, will ultimately lead to true equality.

Civil liberties groups such as the ACLU have often criticized feminist opposition to "pornography" as a threat to freedom of speech, such as the Catharine MacKinnon-inspired anti-pornography laws enacted in Indiana and Canada, which sought to define pornography as a civil rights violation. The Indiana ordinance was struck down as a violation of the First Amendment. The courts struck down the Canadian statute as a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.^[44][45]

Men's rights[edit]

The "men's rights movement" generally opposes feminism, though some men's rights activists argue that the world needs both male and female reforms. Many more MRAs, though, want to see a "total end" to feminism and, by extension, abort the move towards equality between sexes.

MRA talking points have four main groups:

1. That women have used feminism to exploit men.^[46]
2. That science (e.g., evolutionary psychology) supports the view that males and females are biologically different.^[47]
3. That feminism doesn't successfully address several men's issues: domestic violence against men, female-on-male rape, etc.
4. That society is biased toward females: women are favored in child custody hearings, etc.

It is worth noting that — in addition to men raising these issues from the perspective of men's rights — notable, prominent feminists have also taken them on. For instance, some feminists criticize the bias against men during custody hearings because such cases assume that women are the traditional caregivers and argue that the idea that women cannot rape men is premised on the mistaken notion that men, as such, are always receptive to sex and able to fight off a woman.^[48]

Unfortunately, any positive intentions of the men's rights movement have been permanently tainted by the widespread misogyny of its members. Fringe theories often circulate in MRA forums, e.g., claims that feminism is responsible for men's misery or that feminists are intent on destroying all men. Even when it comes to some of the more legitimate issues, they quickly descend into gross distortions; for instance, on issues of domestic violence against men, an oft-repeated trope is that women always start fights and that a man, therefore, must resort to bashing her skull in and sending her to the hospital.^{[citation needed]}

Feminism and neopaganism[edit]

There has been some cross-pollination between neopaganism and radical feminism, leading to various works of pseudohistory. This commonly involves goddess myths and portrayals of Wicca as the direct descendant of a vast, unified, and ancient goddess cult (for which no actual evidence exists). It also tends to accompany pseudohistories of the European witch-hunts that inflate the number of deaths by witch-hunts and ignore the fact that, while women were the victims in most cases, men were often accused of witchcraft (around a fourth of the time). Use of the phrases "Burning Times" or "patriarchal genocide" is usually a good sign you're reading one of these pseudohistories.

See also[edit]

• Feminism
• Rape culture
• MRA
• MGTOW

Notes[edit]

References[edit]