I’ve spoken about the limits of feminism before, but today I’d like to explore them further.
Feminism, as a whole, is not without some wide appeal. Women almost everywhere, for example, could get on board the whole “equal pay” train, and most would also agree with many feminist points relating to the evils of domestic violence and the like.
The core of modern gender feminism (the variety that you and I will most regularly encounter in western society today), however, is one that is fundamentally tied to the wishes and desires of affluent, white, western women above all others, and one that privileges their concerns more than anyone else’s. I shall explain why this is.
The Core
To understand this, it is necessary to dive into the very depths of feminist history.
The core of the feminist movement is its opposition to “traditional gender roles”. Feminism began as a movement built by affluent western white women (most of whom were firmly restricted to domestic life) in order to challenge the notion that a woman’s place was in the home and nowhere else. It sought to show that women could be successful outside the home as professionals and thinkers, while also making the case that women could and should have an equal say in matters that go on outside their kitchens (e.g., the right to vote).
The thing is that these problems are, for the most part, white ones, specifically white western ones. Whereas western white women fought during the first and second waves of feminism to carve out roles outside the home, black, Native American, and even many Asian women have held such roles within their respective societies for centuries.
A Difference In Labor
In Africa, women had long labored outside the home. Whereas European gender roles often restricted women from performing labor crucial to society’s sustenance (e.g., working in the fields), African women had long played a crucial role in their society’s economic sustainability, performing extensive fieldwork and other indelicate but necessary chores. This was true long before slavery, and is still true to this day. They, unlike European women, exerted direct influence on the production and transport of food and in other forms of labor. African women have long been expected by their men to have some sort of say outside of the domestic realm.
Native American women (ancestors of the majority of Hispanics we know today, for the record) were doing the same thing. It was very common throughout Native America for women to perform all kinds of agricultural and other forms of manual labor in their communities.
When you study the “civilizing” missions attempted by Anglo-Americans in Native American societies during the 19th century and examine documents like the Lewis and Clark Journals, you’ll see that this was a key bone of contention among Anglo-Americans looking to find solutions to the Indian “problem” as they saw it.
The fact that Native American women were performing actual labor was considered by white Americans to be evidence of their savagery. Meriwether Lewis thought it ridiculous that Native American women he met were sometimes seen performing acts of “drudgery” he considered improper for women, and took this as a sign that Native cultures did not respect their women. Most Europeans agreed with him, and would for centuries after he made his journey.
You would see this emphasized in American Indian “education” policy, whereby Native Americans were forced onto reservations or into boarding schools to be “civilized.” This civilization was based on the notion that they would adopt traditional European gender roles—their men would stop hunting and start farming, while their women would stop farming and start sewing.
Black women in the Americas, like Native Americans before them, spent centuries during and after slavery working outside of what Europeans would consider “traditional gender roles.” White western women were often shielded from serious work and protected in the home—these same women would be the ones to kick off the feminist movement and begin asking for more responsibility outside the home.
Black women already had this, as did Native American and some South Asian women. From a “feminist” perspective, Europeans actually brought Native American and African women backwards. They were already “liberated” from restrictive cults of domesticity—they did not need affluent white women to tell them how to find this liberation.
A Difference In Family Structure
Many African women also lived in matrilineal societies. Whereas European women long existed in a society that saw their marriage to a man as essentially a forfeiture of their economic and social independence, African women could maintain much of this due to matrilineal organizations that gave them greater control over family life and their children’s future.
The same was true of Native American women. In many Indian societies, it wasn’t uncommon for the father’s line of descent to prove somewhat inconsequential to the actual status of the child, a reality far removed from European norms that conveyed status largely on the basis of the father’s name passing to a child.
Differences In Male Dominance
Feminism also called for an end to the patriarchy and the dominance of men over women, an initiative that still animates the movement to this day. The problem, of course, is that the “patriarchy” referred to there simply hasn’t persisted in every society.
Black men, for example, haven’t had true dominion over their women for centuries. In Africa, the black man often had polygamy and certainly plenty of authority, but he also often dealt with matrilineal lines of social organization that limited his dominion and influence over his women and progeny.
In the new world, the black man was essentially a pack horse for his first several centuries. He had no real power to keep his family together (it could be split apart at anytime should a slave owner choose, often deliberately), and he also had no power to guard the sexuality of his women. He had no status or influence relative to the white men who took near undisputed dominion over the sexual capacity of the black female.
White men kept black women as mistresses or concubines and quite frequently impregnated them with very little opposition from black males who, frankly, could do nothing about it. Black men had no real power to stop their wives, sisters or daughters from being used in this way or sold indiscriminately. They had no control over black female mobility or sexuality.
Thus, when white women (over whose sexuality white men did maintain some control) come out and complain about freeing themselves from the “oppressive” control their men had over them, it becomes difficult for blacks to interpret things in the same way. Black men have not historically controlled black women in that way.
Black men also have not prevented black women from seeking roles outside the home in large part due to economic reality. Black males, unlike their white peers, didn’t have the money to fund the stay-at-home mom lifestyle so many white women felt “oppressed” by during the mid-century prior to the second wave feminist explosion in the sixties. While white women were reading “The Feminine Mystique” and ruminating about the “oppressive” nature of their role as pampered suburban housewives, black women were working in what were usually less than ideal conditions.
So how can black women adopt this white feminist narrative regarding the “patriarchy”? They can’t, really. Neither can Native American, Hispanic or even many South Asian women. That narrative comes from a (usually well-off) white woman’s perspective, and other groups simply haven’t had the same experiences.
The Eastern European Model
It must also be noted, lest you think this is strictly a white vs. non-white dynamic I’m trying to establish, that many Eastern European white women of today can’t adopt the western feminist narrative either because communism also saw them “liberated” from traditional gender roles.
While white women in the UK and USA were busy talking about their oppressive restriction to the home and their desire to do all the things men can do, Soviet women were on the frontlines putting bullets in German heads. Eastern European women were entering male realms of society (serving as combat pilots, combat troops, tank gunners, and also working in factories even after the war) earlier and in greater numbers than women elsewhere. The same was true, to some extent, in Communist China.
Thus, when white western feminists started going on and on about the need to be liberated from “traditional gender roles,” you could imagine that such calls may have had less pull in the east. These women had already had a greater taste of such “liberation” than any western white women at that point, and possibly greater than any western women have today (how many females do we have serving as frontline combat troops in the US military?). They simply did not have the same urgent need for that narrative, and many have probably already learned enough about it through experience to know that it has serious pitfalls.
To these and other women (Africans, Native Americans, and some Asians), traditional gender roles might not even seem quite so harmful. Some may even associate less traditional roles with oppression and/or racism. Black women, for example, could argue that they were forced outside of more traditional European gender roles due to racist limitation of black male earning potential, arguing that white female status as housewives within older cults of domesticity was actually a sign of privilege. To them, the white western feminist perspective is simply not as easy to understand, much less fight for.
Western gender feminism as we know it today is a middle/upper-class white, western female phenomenon. Its focus on minimizing the value of traditional gender roles and on the promotion of unrealistic gender equalism is founded on the status those women have historically enjoyed as the most well-protected, pampered, adored, and privileged women in history, and it is designed largely to serve problems that resonate with that experience. Other women can have “feminisms” of their own to address problems they face, but they would be fundamentally different from the kind of feminism we most commonly see here in the west.
Read Next: Modern Woman In Wanting To Be For Herself, Has Destroyed Herself
Excellent observation, I had never thought about it in such a way but it definitely agrees with my sense of American lack of objectivity when it comes to the rest of the world and other cultures.
My take from this is if you want to have the greatest civilization the world has known, you better enforce traditional gender roles. If you want to live at the level of native americans or africans, allow liberation from gender roles.
Amen
So true. There is no major civilization that is a matriarchy. All of them are patriarchies.
are you saying women are inherently inferior than men and so for that reason a matriarchal society could not be able to prosper??
yes
Great Britain’s monarch is a queen, the Chancellor (highest office) of Germany has been a woman for over 1o years, Canada has had a female Prime Minister…need I continue? Just because the US couldn’t handle a female president doesn’t mean female run societies don’t work, it just proves yet again that Americans are ignorant…Why are you misogynists so ill informed? It really hurts your case
That’s the truth!
What a falacy! Here in South America (we are not white by the way) the most avanced and wealthy countries have women as Presidents of their Nations and business managers (Chile, Brazil, Argentina)
haha, Argentina, Chile. Only the government is wealthy, those countries are still quite poor as a whole country.
They have way less national debt than the US’ 19 trillion…
I didn’t take it that way. Who’s to say what we have is progress? We have more “things” – we have more war and social disparity as well too.
WHat level would that be? Because I’m pretty sure the Native American and Africas were doing just fine before the white man came and fucked that all up.
My exact thoughts… They came and imposed by force new gender roles and society and then come back hundred of years after telling these people that they should respect women more, and their societies are backwards… So arrogant, especially that all was imposed by white people.
Even in Europe it is germanic people that destroyed the Greco-Roman civilization making Europe go back a 1000 years.
Just an example Rome started to have a sewage system from 600 bc. London in the UK had one only from 1870. I think it’s a good example of the damage white people can do
That….was too beautiful for words.
The roots of the feminist movement come from the 19th century temperance movement that ultimately resulted in alcohol prohibition.
Watch the PBS special on the history of alcohol prohibition and this becomes very clear. It’s a great documentary.
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/
It is *so* obviously the same people being pain in the ass feminists today who were marching on capitols to get booze banned 100 years ago.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Modern feminism is like a carpenter that you hired to fix your house, who fixed your house now he will not leave. Furthermore he keeps breaking shit and telling you it needs repair.
MWAHAHAHAH, EXCELLENT representation. Made me laugh and it relates so well.
I dunno, the traditional Stepford Wife role has been the norm for East Asian women ever since Confucius came along, the communism bit is really more an exception.
This classic text for example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lessons_for_Women
Was written by a woman for women… and contains doctrine that would likely explode the brains of modern feminists.
Yet I’ve never met an Asian woman who embraces feminism as radically as many white women.
>my face when all the vocal proponents of “only whites can be racist” I’ve met were white chicks
>my face when some white female social justice zealot gets offended on my behalf when I don’t even care
Forgive a stereotype, but I’ve often found that white people have a flair for ideological extremism.
Forgive a stereotype, but I’ve often found that white people have a flair for ideological extremism.
Cultural Revolution? Juche?
All based on western ideologies
you noticed how the Stepford Wives were all middle/upper class. The women who conformed to this notion in East Asia were also upper/middle class. Poor people ALL worked gender be damned. If it wasn’t communist run, then you HAD the option of the wife not working but then you now just cut your earnings even shorter. After all, there are WAYS to save up and become rich through the generations. But before Confucian, the dynasties were pretty much all communism, monarchy.
feminism was invented by jews to subvert western culture. mission accomplished.
all privileged is for the jews, white women are victims of jewish abuse.
Preach!
You must be mentally incompetent. A black man agreeing with a white racist with the word nigga in his screen name. What happened to you?
OMG woman this post is so old!!!!! I have to click on view to see what it says.. Do you have something against me? 😔
Great post.
There will be some mad white guys commenting though as you have attacked their ‘princesses’
What is sad is the affect of slavery on blacks. In Africa I don’t think I met one single mother, marriage is highly valued and families are extremely close.
Jamaicans and black Americans are still completely fucked due to what happened to them
It wasn’t slavery so much as the war on poverty that destroyed the black family.
The war on drugs has been especially brutal for the black race, mandatory minimum sentencing has destroyed many families.
Using drugs has been hard on the black family not the directives to stop them. You can’t keep up a family on drugs.
And if you can’t get a job that pays decently? (And understand I don’t support minimum wage, but still.)
OTOH, you can get involved in high-risk, high-profit ventures, and have enough money and status to get laid left, right, and center, AT ONCE…
What’s a nigga gonna do? Seriously, that’s a no-brainer. Work a 7-11 and get shot, be out of work or dead, and unable to afford decent medical care; or, work the dope trade and do the shooting. Make a serious profit. Have hos hanging on your arms all the time. Buy a car or jewelry, ’cause you FEEL like it.
The war on (some) drugs has been a disaster, and a racist control scheme (intentional or not, it IS), for quite some time.
And BTW: I’m a racist white, and don’t much like blacks, and recently found niggerdom isn’t limited to USA-born blacks. (See South Africa, Rwnada, Zimbabwe, etc.) But it’s not limited to blacks alone, either, it just correllates well enough that I am cautious…
you are gross.
I know quite a few families where the parents get stoned and, once they are old enough, the kids join in. They do well for themselves. I think a prison sentence/record is about 100x more damaging than any amount of weed-smoking.
you…are the weirdest racist I have ever read on the internet. Hates us black folks but has sympathy towards black dope dealers….well then, I’m at a loss how to feel about you.
As a white guy we love our women a little to much. It seems Asian men have it about right. Although feminism is infecting that part of the world as well.
You would think that white men would start to wise up, seeing that their precious princesses are not so saintly. but white men seem to be the best at burying their head in the sand in regards to our women
During the Meji Restoration after Japan was opened up by force, the Japanese government sent agents all over the Western world to establish relations and learn as much as they could about modern tech and warfare.
The Japanese agents’ trip reports are really funny. Translated versions are online somewhere. They were totally agog at how Americans treated their women like princesses, and this is the 1860s and 70s, mind you. They found gender relations in the US particularly strange, even more-so than in Europe.
Wasn’t it also during this last Iraq and Afghanistan war that those who we recruited and paid to be on our side had a lot of trouble taking orders from women? Or that they couldn’t comprehend how pussy whipped our men were?
And of course there were all those pictures of prisoners being humiliated. Our women laughing at them, or pointing and laughing at them while they were naked. Which had to be the ultimate humiliation for men from such a patriarchal culture. And you would have these beta man in the background cheering their “princesses” on the whole time. Probably thought they would get laid after those pictures were taken and most of them were probably left jerking off dreaming of when they could get back to their fat/ugly white wife who was out fucking around on them every night.
Every race has it’s strengths and weakness and for sure the white men from the west has a very big weakness when it comes to his love affair with his “pure as the snow princess.”
It’s funny you say that. Because it seems like many black men want nothing to do with their own women. I’m black myself and never dated a black woman… We we’re discussing this a few days ago at work. Another co worker (young black female) said that’s a red flag…… Men, regardless of color respond to femininity, vulnerability…..
I never heard a white guy say that… And some people say black men have self hate issues… I think it’s partially true.
“Many black men”? You hate yourself and thus have never learned to appreciate your own women.
You don’t know me from a hole in a wall. I never dated a black woman and I’m not obligated to. If non black women have been attracted to me and treated me better, that’s what I’m going with. I love myself very much. I know who parents are and have a excellent relationship with them.
You can always count on some random black guy to show up and start degrading black women. In almost every blog this is what happens. Even though you don’t want us black women anymore, if you happen to find yourself at the ugly end of police brutality or go all Ray Rice, I will still stand up for you. Our loyalty runs deep for black men even if it isn’t reciprocated. (I guess we black women have the same problem white men have, we spoil our significant others to the point of ruin.) Truth be told, everyone knows black men have failed their communities no matter how much you try to distance yourselves from the mess you all allowed to happen. Black women are just trying to hold things together for our community without it completely falling apart. So, run to your Kim Kardashians. As for us black women, we’re good.
Thanks for responding. This is 7 months ago.
My thoughts about who I want to date/marry changes constantly. I just turned 29, 2 months ago. I’m right outside NYC. I’m very close to making it big in my industry. I never smoked in my life, don’t party, never forced a woman to have an abortion, not promiscuous, etc. My parents have been married for 39 years, together for 42. A black man who is my father is my hero. My mother who has stood by father since day 1. I’m not with the bashing. You blew it out of proportion because you simply saw that I never dated a black woman and I said I wasn’t obligated to.
Open your eyes and stop being ignorant. Throughout the drugs epidemic, free love aka sexual revolution, women’s revolution, some families still stayed together. The secret mission is to destroy the family. The mission is even stronger with the black family.
I do not hate/degrade black women.
they seem to be trying to take a page from Post WWII Germany.
The Black Americans are having so much trouble because they tried/try to integrate into a White culture. In Africa, there’s no such problem. The problem isn’t oppression or something like that. The problem is diversity + proximity.
Not true, though not inaccurate.
Look at the Nation of Islam WRT 1960s film clips: Well-dressed, disciplined, organized, well-spoken, competent men.
And then there are the niggers in “da hood” today.
Do the math: Black skin isn’t the problem race hucksters, past racism, government handouts are the problem. Booker T Washington; Frederick Douglas; Sidney Potier; Bill Cosby. To name a few successes across the years.
“Black skin isn’t the problem race hucksters,”
Yeah it’s their average IQ of 85 that is.
Well, I was being polite… 😉
But my point was that being black doesn’t HAVE to mean poverty, and that the White Man isn’t the cause of their problems. The Civil Rights Movement showed a LOT of successful black men (and women) – as opposed to the ghetto niggerz of today, who should be shot on sight.
And THEY complain about racism, when told by their elected officials (Mayor Michael Nutter of Philly, for instance) that if they don’t want to be treated like niggers, they need to stop ACTING like niggers.
Can’t define your culture as “everything that white culture is not” – because one thing white culture is (well, at least used to be; not so much, currently), is FUNCTIONAL.
If you grew up in inner city Detroit with a crack abusing single mother, you’d be lucky if your IQ was 80.
Negative! There are some functional families in black culture, shit.. I think more than what we think is functional in black culture. This is not racist neither, but I think white culture have many problems as well…
What is your definition of functional? White culture is demonic! How many whities act like “Niggers”?
I don’t know about Jamaica, but black Americans had very high marriage rates and very low single parenthood as recently as 1965. Blaming dysfunction on slavery and “what happened to them” is, in fact, part of the problem. It feels like a noble thing to say, but it’s actually dead wrong and hurts black people much more than it helps them. Black people are now encouraged to blame their problems on something that hasn’t existed for 15 decades; and the more they buy into that narrative, the shittier their neighborhoods get, because they lose all sense of personal responsibility.
Bullitt315 is correct that the “war on poverty” and also “wars on racism”, which removed all sense of personal responsibility from the black community, are what has destroyed black America. Welfare, support for single motherhood, and racial solidarity politics (where 95% of blacks vote for the black candidate regardless of his competence, and you end up with absurd nightmare governments full of corrupt assholes, like in Camden, Newark, Detroit, St. Louis, etc).
Compare pictures of the South Side of Chicago today and pictures from the same streets 50 years ago. Night and day. The people in those sepia photographs had a *much* closer relationship to slavery than today’s blacks; many of the older folks were the actual children of freed slaves. But they had dignity and self-respect. Today’s fucked-up black communities have neither, and yet they ironically blame it on slavery. It’s pretty absurd.
This is a good post, but you’re discounting the boom of the drug industry. Cocaine, crack, meth, and heroin destroyed many of those neighborhoods. The crack epidemic didn’t happen until the 80’s. I don’t disagree with you about personal responsibility, but you can’t leave out the impact of narcotics on poor black neighborhoods.
I still remember learning from someone a generation my senior Reagan was rather paranoid about educated blacks, to the point he ordered the CIA to dump drugs in traditionally American black neighborhoods.
In regards to your statement about blaming something that happened nearly 15 generations ago, I just want to point out that black americans have been slaves longer than they have been ‘free’ from physical slavery and much longer than ‘free’ from civil slavery. I’m trying to say that in the history of america, black americans being seen as an equal part of society is a fairly recent thing. Of course they are still affected.
This is something only a white person would say or agree with. You really need to study some history and understand how blacks have been systematically oppressed long after slavery ended. Including denying housing and forcing blacks to live in ghettos where the government flooded the streets with drugs intentionally to try and hinder the progress of blacks. and thats just the tip of the iceberg. Its really easy to say the ridiculous things you say because your white and have extreme priviedge in this country. You don’t care about the plight of others, nor have you taken the time to learn the plight of others. Your shameful.
Ah, the good old “CIA is behind drugs” conspiracy. The rest if valid, but that point is just ridiculous. As is your misuse of the word “your” in that last jab.
Dude, stop insulting and dismissing that fact a ‘conspiracy’.
You need to read Gary Webb’s book Dark Alliance.
Wow! Play that victim card sista. It always works!
I dunno man, evidence that the CIA brought drugs and guns into the community is pretty potetent. Let’s not deny it outright my brother. Remember, the job of the CIA is to conceal and hide any and all evidence of ANYTHING they do, good or bad. Usually to stop enemy nations from having a tactical advantage and to stop the citizens they protect from knowing the atrocities they have also done. Nothing’s more sacred than public perception. Without it, civilization falls apart.
Quite right.
Thomas Sowell has some great info on marriage rates among blacks and whites since the civil war.
” In Africa I don’t think I met one single mother, marriage is highly valued and families are extremely close.”
That totally explain’s their sky-high rate of aids infection.
/sarc
Not to mention, in most parts the husband has multiple wives. Worked in the health industry was in Africa for sometime and most men (especially in Muslim areas) had 4-6 wives minimum.
Hey, genius, where were “most men” getting these wives?
what do you mean?
It was welfare not slavery that broke the black family.
…and it was privilege, white women gaining money without earning it and men giving it to them without conditions that resulted in modern women.
And drugs…
Probably yes. And capitalism too. Capitalism needs inequalities (gender, race) and poverty to thrive. It’s a way to get low cost, slave like labor force. Again that economical system (that gave us ww1 and ww2) is white people invention.
Seems like Western civilization gave the women what they wanted. I’m sure that as society grew wealthier the women moaned and groaned about being “liberated” from field work and other domestic tasks. Then once they got their wish, they decided they needed to be “liberated” from their idleness and boredom. Western men failed one giant shit test. The lesson here is to not listen to what a women says she wants but to benevolently guide her to what is best for her.
Attack away, you’ll get no angry backslash from this white man. Our ‘princesses’ are unbearable, you can have em, that is if you can tolerate them. I know I can’t.
effect, baby, effect.
There are a number of posts flying around my school feminist group (by predominantly white middle-class women) paralelling their present cause to the slavery and oppression of Africans. It’s astonishing bullshit.
I’m white and not not mad at all lol. White women have been so privileged and pampered as described in the post that now they are the most immature women on earth, stuck in teenage. Feminism would have been much better in the US if black women run it.
temperance movement —bullshit, those were white women who were tired of having their men come home drunk, feminism was a marketing scam started by jews, particularly edward bernays whose uncle was sigmund freud, one of his greatest campaigns was to masculinize women by getting them to smoke. Women were only allowed to smoke in designated areas, or not at all. If caught violating this rule, women would have been arrested……(common sense whiteman rule) Bernays staged the 1929 Easter parade in New York City, showing models holding lit Lucky Strike cigarettes, or “Torches of Freedom”.
After the historical public event, women started lighting up more than
ever before. It was through Bernays that women’s smoking habits started
to become socially acceptable. thanks jews!
jews, particularly Frank Kameny also staged the great homosexual moment when they intimidated the APA to normalize homosexuality ….In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association
(APA) removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from the APA’s Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders (DSM-II). again, thanks jews for gaying up and feminizing society, whilst at the same time, making our women
more masculine.
jews also brought black slavery to the whiteman. while euro man was bringing his white woman and children to america, the Caribbean based jew slavers were bringing niggers into our midst, the slave trade was entirely a jew venture, and to this day blacks are the slave race of the jews, but jews have graciously given whites the credit for slavery, and we have stupidly accepted credit, even though not only did we not profit from it, we are being murdered raped, and robbed blind by blacks. jews win again.
“…slave trade was entirely a jew venture..”
I have long gone ancestors that were involved in the slave trade. And none of them were Jewish…. At most, they may have gotten the loan to buy their slave ships from some Rothschild.
The specific names, companies, and locations have been id’d again and again, but Amerika is gonna hear what it wants to hear.
Now that we’ve got the NAACP (jewish-founded) and the SPLC (guess who?), we’re never likely to hear the end of it.
Dude, such passion; you should convert. You know, join the winners.
Slavery existed all over the world at that time and still exists to this day in Africa, India and other parts of Asia it only stopped globally when the UK and US put an end to it. Saudi Arabia didn’t abolished slavery until 1960, Prince Bandar until recently the Saudi Ambassador to the USA was the son of a concubine African slave and a prince and rose to the most important foreign service office in his country. Unofficially slavery still exists in Saudi and other parts of the Arab world. http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/saudi-offers-castrated-african-slave-for-sale-on-facebook/
Forgot to mention global capitalist and neo-cons as well.
so which societies dominate the others? those that control women (including their labor) or those that indulge and protect them and basically give them whatever they want?
Western countries current success and supremacy is largely due to the actions of men from decades ago who lay the foundation for prosperity, security and the male-dominated family. But with the rise of feminism these countries are increasingly becoming less prosperous, less family-oriented and more lawless and disorderly. SO to answer you question, Western countries dominate Eastern countries for now, but they are quickly rotting from the inside out due to feminism and destruction of women’s gender role as a wife and mother who should support, be submissive to and obedient to her boyfriend/ husband or father and who should not be entitled to his property, money and children in the event of divorce.
+1. Great comment!
The fact that great grandpa created steam engines and firearms, in no way whatsoever indicates that his great granddaughter (or great grandson for that matter) cheering for the lynchmob du jour’s latest program of sophistry, is in any way contributing to the so called prosperity of the West.
I keep saying it, we have a lot of explaining to do with the ancestors and our descendants.
pretty much the entire world disagrees with you, judging by the rates of immugration to the US & the West vs the fucked up rest of the world.
things have declined here, but not because of the wimmenz, its because of men consenting to be raped repeatedly by their corporate masters since its not manly to complain about it or some damned
thing
What’s ironic is that many black females have bought into the idea that what these white middle class women are fighting for is what they (black women) are fighting for. Black women have accused black men of being oppressive…funny how they are unaware of their own history…am glad you clarified this score…
Think you’d appreciate whatever this gentleman have to say.
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9CFDABBEFE9AB4BE
Athlone, you were right until you implied that a large number of African societies are matrilineal. Not true. In Africa (and in much of the non Western world), male dominance is almost complete (as it should be). Any female influence requires male approval and can be withdrawn at any time.
So while women do raise children and do work outside the home, and attend college, the man runs eveything.
Also, polygamy is rare. Legal in many jurisdictions but rarely practiced.
It’s tempting to equate the black experience in the “New World” with the black experience worldwide but such an approach would not be valid.
There are one billion Africans, speaking hundreds of languages (not dialects, languages), in an area three times the size of the lower 48 U.S. states, so it’s possible to find some matrilineal societies but it’s rare. Very rare.
Size of Africa: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/cartography
So, while I agree with the general thrust of your argument, I disagree with much of the foundation.
I disagree. Most men do not control their women in large numbers even in societies where they are given permission to do so. The vast majority (90%) of men in any society are manginas (bitch worshipers). Patriarchal societies only exist on the backs of those 10% who are real men, control/ dominate their women and get everyone’s social and sexual needs met. Look at India, it’s infested with manginas, but everyone considers it a patriarchal society. Why? It’s because those 10% of men who do exercise their masculinity and authority act as an inspiring example to the 90% of defective males.
?????
The idiotic idea that some small percent of a society somehow gets “everyone’s needs met”, is exactly the fallacy that leads down the path to Progressive dystopias.
Patriarchal societies exist where there is no government restricting male dominion. Afghanistan and tribal Pakistan are prime examples. Once some guys are suckered int putting down their guns because someone else tell them bending over and grabbing their ankles will feel good, it’s already on the inevitable path to being over.
“The vast majority (90%) of men in any society are manginas (bitch worshipers)”.
sorry to butt in here but exactly how many societies have you been to? how do you know how “any” society is?
dude you rebutted a well informed statement that probably comes from first hand experience with your personal opinion and speculation. furthermore the basis of your statement is nothing more than a regurgitation of memes passed around sites like these. your “stats” are just good round numbers you picked because they sound about right to you.
thats how women argue.
Very good point African men are like male lions. The female lions do most of the work, like hunting and chasing prey and raising the cubs and the male lion lays about lazily, eating the kill of the female lions and exerting himself occasionally to fend off other animals. African men have authority over women, and some don’t have the sense of responsibility that go with it.
In western societies, we lived in much more egalitarian societies such as the ones you described up until the industrial revolution. Marriage was a contract where the man would provide the majority of the economic sustenance while the woman took care of the entirety of the household and also some extra production value in the form of cheese, butter, sewing, etc. That meant days of exhausting work for the woman as well as the man. Marriage was seen as more of an economic partnership to keep the household up and running and have heirs to the land running about more than anything else.
With the industrial revolution and the subsequent move into cities, the number of necessary chores and activities for women dropped significantly. This meant more free time, which could be spent working. They entered the workforce in record numbers, which lead to more income, and more free time.
The prude Victorian outlook no doubt emerged from the perceived need to control women and their sexuality once they had free time and access to a number of suitors. Choice leads to increased infidelity, after all.
It is all about destroying the capacity of the bourgeoisie to replicate its own cultural narrative, and has nothing to do with colour. White women NOT born into the richest 10% have always worked in Western culture, the difference is that work was seen as something to bring in money to the family, not as an end in itself. It was only the demand that work should be a meaningful activity in itself that unleashed the twinset and pearls hamster into the workplace. Electrification meant that all of a sudden work wasn’t mainly drudgery for those without a University education, and work in the home was no more carrying laundry to and from the wash-house, tending a range from cain’t see to cain’t-see, and scrubbing and brushing and beating and mending. I have no idea where you get the idea that white women don’t work in the fields in Europe, you are welcome to come and look through the photographic archives at my local library any time. Peasantry is an equal opportunity employer, and I urge you to think harder before painting with a broad brush across an entire continent.
The white people you’re talking about are the NE and Californian upper middle class, predominantly WASP, predominantly liberal. They’re not the non-WASP immigrants of the late C19, they’re not the Bible-belt middle class, and they’re not the descendants of plantation-supporting whites. They do, however, happen to be standing close to the same Tribe that had been working hard for seventy years to reverse their exclusion from the elite institutions, by building and buying the means of forming public opinion – newspaper, film, radio and television. Are the white people you refer to the progenitors, or the first victims?
Feminism exists because our society got too rich and stayed peaceful, prosperous and stable for too long while our men became weak minded. Poor White women, which was most white women, had to work outside the home too. Only the wealthy could keep their women idle and not working. The Western White man picked up equality and liberty in the 18th century and thought it should extend to all eventually. This did not happen with the other races until a century or two centuries later, namely the 20th century and maybe the 19th century. Feminism got its start in rich households first, yes almost all of them were White. However, it is more a function of wealth than race because as wealth spreads and the world becomes technologically more advanced, feminism spreads.
For 99% of human history if you wasted energy on idiotic shit like gay marriage and keeping feminists happy rather than forging a strong society and military, then the nation over the mountain range would come rape the women and kill everybody. It happened regularly. Read about the destruction of the Phoenicians cities, or the Iroquois Nation’s conquests.
Our society has gotten soft and crazy because the dangers of famine and conquest have been the checks that keep cultures grounded in reality.
Exactly.
Competition and strength always comes before compassion and empathy. Moral arguments are not logical arguments. Feminists will never understand this.
…you should have your own little corner of this blog, you could call it : “Not My Fault” or maybe the “Kick Whitey Korner” or “Slavery Today”…
My favorite piece of this terdly example of writes-manship is the bit about black women having a history of being out there in the thick of the labor….if by labor you
mean, “welfare” or “bastard children”, you might be onto something.
http://i.imgur.com/RXTgZ5J.gif
by labour you can add fighting sexual harassment and rape from white men as well. Or else how do you explain 30% of Black American men having Paternal white ancestry.(heres a clue it wasn’t because of consensual sex). Black women have always worked outside the home since slavery.You may dislike black people but there is some facts in this article. Typing racist shit makes you look like a uneducated idiot. Obviously u seem threaten by facts. A bit of advice stay away stormfront
For your information most black children were raised in two parent homes until the late 60s and 70s when divorce was becoming acceptable for all races. Also single parent homes are true for whites as well, how else do u explain such good moral white shows as 16 and pregnant lol . BTW 38% of welfare recipients are whites about same percentage as blacks. hispanics are lower than both
there are also other maternal based cultures like southern india where oldest woman calls the shots and north african women(egypt tunisa morrocco algeria) also call the shots at home life.
though its weird though that feminsim iss growing in middle east and india…maybe women greedy to have more but then theyll wind up becoming stressed and depressed like our western women.
tradtional girls seem to be the happiest
the western woman is too dam spoiled and now its influencing other nations….fuck
shoulda put george carlin up….he trashes feminsim (bill maher too)
Athlone,
I normally find your analysis spot on, but you’ve overreached a bit here.
First of all, you seem to reduce the world to Native American, African, and European cultures. That’s natural in the US, but globally, the majority of the world’s population has lived in Asian and Islamic societies for the past few millenia.
Secondly, you exaggerate the degree of power that women held in Native American and African societies. It may be true that certain Native American societies had some powerful roles for women, but this has often been exaggerated by those looking to romanticize the Other, Rousseau-style. Take a look at the most powerful and best understood pre-Columbian society – the Aztecs. Women were given a primarily domestic role, while men were trained for war. For a few intellectually honest feminists, reading scholarship about Aztec gender roles must be a crushing experience. (See Inga Clendinnen, “The Aztecs: An Interpretation”)
I do think a lot of this talk about “matriarchal” African societies is derived from modern black nationalism and a few romanticizing scholars. While there were matrilineal societies in Africa, this does NOT mean matriarchal. In fact, in all known societies, men have dominated existing political structures. In any case, the vast majority of African societies were and are patrilineal, meaning men held great power in both families and politics.
You may win points against black feminists by pointing out how foreign upper class women’s concern are, but don’t romanticize the black past by declaring Africa a feminist continent. It just ain’t so.
Your first concern is valid but I think in this case he is tailoring the article to the audience. Which is why I think his emphasis seems to be on the effects of slavery on African-American women more than the role of women in African culture.
Asia was mentioned in the article, albeit briefly. I knew of some examples that supported my point in Asia (a couple of commenters have elaborated nicely on them), but I focused on Africa and Native America because a) I am more knowledgeable about these examples and b) this article was long enough as it was.
All I really attempt to put forward is the notion that women in these societies did, in general, wield more influence outside of the home than their European peers. I wasn’t claiming that these societies were matriarchal, simply that their respect for what Europeans would consider “traditional gender roles” varied quite widely, and often didn’t exist.
I never said it did. I posit that matrilineal descent did give women a measure of power that European women generally lacked. That doesn’t necessarily mean that said societies are matriarchal and men lacked great political/social power themselves, it simply means that said societies stood outside of the realm of European traditional gender roles, a fact that will inform their women’s view of European feminism. Patriarchy lives in Africa, but it is not the “patriarchy” that modern white western European feminism is fighting.
First off there have been Aztec women that were warriors in the past. Even the Zapatistas in the Mexican civil war were largely a lot of Nahuatl peasants men and women of indigenous descent rebelling together against the Spaniard elites. I’m not denying that domestic life was a thing but to say that even in patrilinial native societies there was no women warriors is a lie. Does this mean i condone feminists? Not at all. They copied off the Iroquois my people and yet they only intended whit women to vote.
But my point is this even among the patrilinial Lakota or the Shawnee women were important. My tribe is and shall always be a matriarchy. You might look down on us but without us there would be no constitution. The founding fraudsters copied us
the latest dating systems has our confederacy dating back to the year 1100, significantly older than most scholars previously thought. of course asking us would have been easier.
“The Great Seal
The eagle symbolizing the Iroquois Confederacy held six arrows, one for each of the Six Nations. The eagle on the American seal holds 13 arrows, one for each of the 13 original states.
From the US Government’s official booklet on the Great Seal, describing the lengthy search for a suitable design:
The Congress still was not satisfied. On June 13, 1782, it presented the collected work and recommendations of the three committees to Charles Thomson, Secretary of Congress. Thomson was not an artist, but he was a practical man with the ability to get things done. He selected the best features of all the previous designs, assigning prominence to the eagle. Feeling that the new nation’s symbol should be strictly American, however, Thomson replaced Barton’s crested Imperial eagle with the native American bald eagle, wings extending downward as though in flight. He placed in the left talon a bundle of arrows and in the right, the olive branch. Providence.
Note the connection between the seal’s design and Thomson’s deep familiarity with Indian culture. Most Indian tribes hold the eagle sacred. They don’t feel the same about Ben Franklin’s choice for a national symbol, the wild turkey.”
http://www.bluecorncomics.com/july4th.ht…
Eagle
Another symbol taken from nature is the eagle. The
eagle, a powerful bird, can fly high and far and has very
good eyesight. This bird was chosen by the
Haudenosaunee to fly above the Tree of Peace. The eagle’s
sharp eyes can see afar to guard against anything that may
approach the Tree of Peace with evil intent. The piercing
scream of the eagle warns the people when the
Confederacy is threatened. The symbolism of the eagle
means that the Haudenosaunee government should be
protective of its people and be watchful for anything that
might harm the Confederacy.
Cluster of Arrows
The cluster of arrows is another symbol of unity. The
Peacemaker, a Huron man by the name of Deganawida,
who was considered to be the founder of the
Confederacy, used the symbol of bound arrows to point
out the importance of unity. The Peacemaker took one
arrow and easily broke it. He then took two arrows, and
with a little more effort he broke them. Three, then four,
arrows were clustered and broken, but when five arrows
were bound together, he could not break them. The cluster
of arrows, then, symbolizes the strength that results
from the joining together of several nations.
http://www.yorkers.org/leaflets/pdfs/Hau…
In 1754, Franklin met with Colonial and Iroquois leaders to discuss how the colonies might govern themselves. It was called the Albany Congress. Hendrick, a Mohawk chief, showed them how the Iroquois Confederacy worked. “To illustrate the power of unity,” Mr. Tarbell says, “Hendrick used the example the Iroquois used when their nations came together: He held up one arrow and broke it, then held up five arrows bound together and showed how they could not be broken.”
The next day, Tarbell notes, Franklin presented a plan for a new American government designed to weld the individual Colonies into a unified whole. It was called the Albany Plan of Union, and it included many features of Iroquois law.
An Indian symbol on the dollar bill?
The Founding Fathers didn’t adopt as much of the Iroquois model as Franklin had advocated. Some scholars dismiss the idea that Iroquois government had any influence on the shape of the United States government today. But then why were Iroquois leaders invited to hear debates about the Declaration of Independence? Tarbell asks. The native delegation slept in Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, in a room just above the one in which the debates took place.
the eagle has also been part of our constitution dating from the year 1100.
“We place at the top of the Tree of the Long Leaves an Eagle who is able to see afar. If he sees in the distance any evil approaching or any danger threatening he will at once warn the people of the Confederacy. “
It is generally believed that soviet sniper kills IN GENERAL were highly inflated for propaganda purposes.
Western women have always had working roles. The idea that europeans did not have females laboring outside of the home is completely false. Both this article and feminists seem to misunderstand this concept, the idea that women were not free to make a wage outside of home was exclusive to the wealthy because doing that sort of work made their marriageability less appealing.
Most of the commenters have written about where they take issue with the piece. As men we focus on where we differ. It’s our nature to dissect and improve as doing so we leverage what we uniquely bring to the table that might be of value in making something, in this case the logic of Athlone’s argument, work better. This can only be expected. As men we are honed to compete and be judged solely on our own merits, in this case before the virtual tribe.
But obscured by our efforts to improve the logic is acknowledgement of what a brilliant synthesis of ideas it already is, and acknowledgement of what a powerful piece of writing the author has accomplished. In the face of this absence of unreserved praise, for all the evils of feminism the feminine mind still shines as the yin to our yang. It’s simple acknowledgement without dissection is like a native beauty from someplace where girls still love men. Right now in the west that feminine mind may be warped towards reinforcing women’s feminist privilege, which she has done with devastating effectiveness compared to our failure to band together over our male intellectual differences. But in the end she is a compliment to us that will
prove indispensable to our mutual progress and survival through the times that
are surely coming. Both psychologically and biologically neither sex can thrive alone.
However the mostly male commenters did raise some points that bear investigating in another article that I for one would eagerly anticipate Athlone’s insight on. When talking about the collapse of the black family in America, aside from the welfare state pushing black men out of the home, and aside from hundreds of years of slavery that forever shaped the fabric of black American culture, there is also the question (hinted
at in Athlone’s article) of what other factors enabled the black woman man to put the black man out of his home. Or alternatively what forced him to leave on his own? And out of welfare, slavery, and these other factors, how can one objectively distinguish which were decisive?
This question has broad implications. There are many other peoples who’s communities have been devastated by Western divorce. That the enforcement of family law and government policy has a pervasive effect on the relationships between men and women that might not be uniform across culture or ethnicity begs the question of whose template for the contract between the sexes is being enforced? What demographic dominates the judicial and legal profession? Without demonizing
such a demographic if it does indeed exist, is it reasonable to believe we are all carbon copies of these people and that what works for them works for everyone? Are women in other demographics the same as their women? Where for example some demographics of men see a slap literally as their duty as leader of the household where it is the only way to address a wife’s out of control behavior … what happens if those men refuse to accept the emasculated male role foisted on them by that demographic who determines the law? This elite who govern everyone else believe unequivocally that a wife’s forgiveness of that slap, or her acknowledgement of what both she and her husband in some cases may believe is his God-given right to give it … is worse for society than subjecting children to fatherlessness as a result of divorce. They would never allow the wife’s subsequent pouting to be resolved with nothing more than charm or some earnest make-up sex. When their assumption is applied to other cultures are they right?
It’s also worthwhile considering whether black men might face a particular disadvantage before family courts full of this distinctly different demographic of people who not only might tend to live a very different reality, but who also might be hostile to the world view those black men tend to have. In fact on these same grounds it’s worthwhile to question the very existence of ALL laws that invade the sanctity of the family. WHEREVER there is a cultural gap between the judged and those passing judgment … could anything other than such hostility ever be possible?
“Life at the Bottom” by Theodore Dalrymple, has polemics on the issue of morally continent people with social capital enforcing their mores on the morally incontinent and socially bankrupt, but based on his work with the British, rather than American, underclass.
The Publisher’s Weekly review of Dalrymple’s book quoted on Amazon calls it “repetitive social analysis”. It might make some good points but from the looks of it none I haven’t heard many times before so I might agree. My point is that all the discussion trying to lay the blame for the collapse of the black family on either welfare or slavery leaves out the question of what you might call “cultural relativism” … whether all the underclass (or any class) profits from having the exact same cultural values as all others. Are the values that benefit a working class muslim taxi driver the same values that benefit a white christian working class factory worker? Are the values that benefit an orthodox jewish service sector worker the same values that benefit a working class black airport porter? And are these the same values that benefit the elite class (the lawyers and judges) who insert themselves into all these families through the family law which the elite make in their own image?
Without attempting snark, does “values” resolve to “positive outcomes” for values(subscript 1 …. n), either intracommunity or intracommunity. I suggest, following from Dalrymple, that intracommunity values are a source of disadvantage when used as a guide for behaviour and life choices in a multipolar society.
However, I suspect this whole exchange is drifting far from either the initial post or indeed the mission of the Kings website.
Fantastic post, gotta be the best writer on here, smashes it every single time!
Feminism is cultural imperialism.
But western women too have a long history of doing farmwork, factory work, and so on. It’s mostly the most affluent positions that they’ve been excluded from (of course there are exceptions to that too, several English Queens for example). As you said it was the affluent women who rose up first.
Lower-class western women always helped their husbands with the harvest, worked as maids, and so on, also in many parts in the 1800s women and children formed the majority of factory workers.
btw, feminism was started specifically by white women from wealthy families. Poor women already did tons of constructive work before feminism began, they worked in factories in the late 1800s for crying out loud
Yet, even then, black women were denied factory work and remain relegated to farming and maid services to those same women that worked the factories. Yes, factory workers hired black maids. Who do you think was at home raising the kids while they worked? The men?
The Last of the Mohicans:
Duncan: You there, Scout! We must rest soon, the women are tired.
Magua: No, two leagues, better water. We stop there.
Duncan: No, we’ll stop in the glade just ahead. When the ladies are rested, we will proceed. Do you understand?
Magua: [speaking Huron] Magua understands that the white man is a dog to his women. When they are tired, he puts down his tomahawk to feed their laziness.
Duncan: Excuse me, what did you say?
Magua: Magua said… I understand English, very well.
“Magua understands that the white man is a dog to his women. When they
are tired, he puts down his tomahawk to feed their laziness.” EPIC!
So what were you trying to argue with this point? That Native American/Black/Asian cultures are more equal? Yes, they WERE, until European colonizatiation occured and tried to implement European gender roles (as you have pointed out). What you have failed to recognise is that this is often the cause for the CURRENT inequality and thus when “privileged white women” speak out against sexism they are addressing issues which, while they manifest itself in many different ways, are ubiquitous. If you were trying to prove that white women should shut up about feminism while their “sisters” are suffering you have clearly failed miserable as you have tried to say that there is no sexism in these cultures which, by your logic, would mean that CLEARLY this is not an area of concern. However this is clearly untrue, as can be seen by campaigns that aim to raise women out of poverty, which recognize that 2/3 of the poorest people in the world are woman and thus the issues of discrimination and poverty are intrinsically tied to sexism and which therefore require gender-based solutions such as (in developing countries) female education.
I was trying to show that women in other cultures have related to their men in ways distinct from the relations European women have established with their men and that this will, in turn, probably result in their engaging feminism in a way that may differ from what we’re used to seeing/hearing in the west.
In other words, not everyone views or engages with gender in the same way.
I am trying to show that white western women should not assume that their views on what is “sexist”, “misogynist”, “oppressive” and “feminist” are universal. Other cultures have different histories and are going to have different methods of engaging with gender relations. As I noted at the end of the piece:
Also, as noted at the beginning of my piece:
Some feminist issues have broad appeal. It is when we get into the more nuanced and controversial aspects of modern western gender feminism (ex: what is the patriarchy, what is the value of traditional gender roles, etc) that we will start to see cross-cultural differences. I’m stating that this should be acknowledged. That it isn’t acknowledged (white western feminist visions tend to take precedence over nearly all others) is a function of white female privilege.
I thought the women’s rights movement in the US started originally in response to domestic abuse by alcoholic husbands and that’s why the movement was was so closely associated with the temperance movement. Otherwise, I think your argument is compelling.
White women of privilege have taken on the fight for women’s rights because they had the economic and racial freedom to do so. Not having to worry about lower needs like having enough money or being targeted for their race gave them the ability to concentrate on higher level needs like their role as women in society. This does not make their goals less relevant. If everyone women had enough money and were free from racial prejudice they would be fighting this fight.—says a proud great-granddaughter of a suffragette.
There are many rich African and Asian women, who do not suffer from poverty or racial prejudice , but they are still not interested in feminism.
That last image was completely distasteful. It’s one thing to champion a cause for non-white women, but to degrade the existing feminism which exists for a serious reason is not the mature way to do it.
However, I do support a lot of what you have to say. What I disagree with is the need for “a fundamentally different type of feminism.” The simpler answer is for every group to fight for the same things for all people. Instead of focusing on how to empower women, native american women, people of African decent, Jews, Sikhs, homosexuals or transexuals, we should focus on how to give every person the same amount of power/stature/respect/opportunity, or at least without regard to which group they come from.
And that need not be fundamentally different. The lessons learnt by feminists, black rights activists and all others can be shared modified applied and expanded towards the common cause.
Actually only Ghana and ivory Coast only had matrilineal sturctures
I’ve also read on Thulean Perspective that the original Slavic, Roman and Germanic pagan religions were matriarchies until they found out that women got pregnant from men fertilising them, at which point they became patriarchies.
good article.
Glad to have across this piece. The issue is international and equally divides black women from white women and black women from black men. These same questions have been made among black women in Brazil. For example: http://wp.me/p1XDuf-40G
There is a simple word for what you describe: ethnocentrism.
So for these reason you have written, women don’t deserve to be paid as equally as men for doing the same work? The reason is because of history and race? I believe that most modern feminists just want to be free to do what is right for them and their family, whether that mean staying in the home or going to work. They are tired of being told what to do by both men and women in every book, article, column, social study, blog entry. And by the way, calling domestic abuse against women evil is not feminism. It’s humanism and common decency. Deciding to not beat up your wife is not a movement.
men have had dominion over females since ancestral times all over the globe; it was the natural order of things; life expectancy was 20-25 years of age, so females were either pregnant of breastfeeding or taking care of childer (remember, human children cant fend off for themselves for about a decade); consider human beings become fertile at about 13 years of age, and ten years later they would be dead on average; so the ones risking their asses, highly skilled warriors and hunters, builders, protectors, explorers, were the men, women were shackled by NATURE (not by “the partiarchy”) to be weaker; is a male was weak he either died or the females wouldnt mate with him (or his children would die); and this you see in biology, women are less capable physically and (in some respects) mentally ; the only thing they excel at when compared to males is linguistic tasks (which were essential for mate fitness testing and mate selection aka “gossip”); men added survival value, women added reproductive value; feminism has such a profound denial of science and evolution at its core that its mind boggling all their crud is accepted in the 21st century; we have 4.5 billion years of evolution hardwired into our puny biology ladies and gentlemen
And that’s why I’m not a feminist.
Feminism is Jewish woman privelage (not white as they’d like all of us to believe).
Betty Friedan (AKA Bettye Naomi Goldstein)
Gloria Steinem
Bella Abzug
Susan Brownmiller
Ruth Rosen
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Carol Gilligan
Phyllis Chesler
Andrea Dworkin
Shulamith Firestone
What do they all have in common? Why could it be? They are all jews, hmm….
Anti-woman, anti-feminist bullshit.
I hope you contract a deadly disease, sexist garbage.
Aww, you have so little control over your own emotions that a message on a website caused you to create an account just to try to exert your (nonexistent) control over a woman. Daily life must be hard for you, dude.
And of course you’ve made your Disqus history private so that I can’t see what other dreck you’ve been posting.
I can feel your seething rage at being denied access to my account.
cry about it.
Anti-feminist=/=Anti-woman.
While you do have a point when you reflect on the role of women in African and Native American societies you’re not taking into account the transformation of gender roles as they’ve crossed into the modern era. You’ve pointed out that feminist movements were originally started by affluent white women, but who else would’ve started the movement had it not been for them? Surely you’re aware of the theory called the triangle of needs in which individuals must first fulfill their basic needs of food, shelter, etc. before they can achieve or attempt to attain personal goals. Affluent white women had the foundations in order to start these movements… other women did not because of the discrepancy that existed between the male and female spheres regarding income and how they were perceived socially. Also, so what if it’s a white problem – it’s still a PROBLEM and second of all you have to take into account that Europeans essentially colonized the world throughout the 18th-20th centuries, as a result Europeans (white Europeans) brought their culture and customs to peoples belonging in countries all over the world. It is for this reason TODAY that the tribal lifestyle that you’ve pointed out where African societies were matrilineal and Native American societies allowed for women to have significant roles are few in number as people have decided to move to more concentrated areas and adapt to an urban, modern way of life within industrialized societies. As if the fact that it’s a problem for white women on PAPER isn’t enough (i.e. that women receive 77 cents to the dollar), white women aren’t the only ones included in this statistic – it’s all women, all women of all races within the workforce. Feminism is a movement that advocates equality and equality only. Some women have begun to resent men for treating them like objects etc., however, this is NOT feminism. The fact of the matter is that women, even today, still aren’t regarded as equals to men and until women receive equal pay and are treated as equals in the workforce and in the social sphere, then women will continue to fight for equality. Laws can’t change mindsets because gender inequality is a cultural institution that requires gradual change, and Feminism is ultimately a force for good that will hopefully advance the modern mindset to the point where women will eventually be regarded as equals to men.
As a Black woman, I have to disagree with you. Women weren’t meant to be equal to men in all things. We have different skill sets, strengths, weaknesses that balance each other out. Our roles as women are EQUALLY IMPORTANT yet different. We black women don’t understand white women need to control everything. If you have a good man, strong rational leader, good provider then what is the problem? You were born a woman, therefore you have an important role to fulfill in the world that men can’t perform. We are responsible for bringing life into the world and nurturing it. The power trip and power grab is a useless battle that is costing you guys your men. Maybe my perspective is wrong but that is how I see it from a black woman’s perspective. Careers are nice to have but they are no replacement for a good man that is willing to die for you and your children. Black women have always looked at feminism as a white women thing. We could never identify with it cause we never had a choice whether to work or demand more pay from a job. Men need to feel like men by earning and providing, it’s in their DNA. Take that away from them is like taking away their manhood. They don’t think like we women do. They think like men and we have to let them have their role. Matriarchal societies never progress. In Africa, they are very rare because the men lead. I’m not sure what happened to our black American men. I think welfare in the 60s had a lot yo do with the demise of the black family.
A very true article. Thanks for writing.
Does that mean that feminism is an improvement, as it takes us from the restrictive, domestic, European model to the more common model that is naturally practiced by many of the other cultures?
At least this explains why white woman aren’t taken seriously in too many parts of the world. The biggest laugh I get from western white women is when they make the comment “a woman can have a baby and be back at work the next day” NOPE any person who visits ROK or not for that matter could not name a single western white woman that had a baby one day and be back at work the next and yet in Africa, parts of Asia, South America possibly even the former communist Russia this occurs on a daily basis.
As a black woman, we are taught early on to be self sufficient and survivors. We are told that a man may or may not be a part of our future as husbands. Life is hard and you have to play the cards you are dealt, I truly believe we live many lives over and over again in various forms. You have to take pride, honor and happiness from the life you currently are given. Black women were the first mothers. We are taught to always put ourselves last. Our men and children will always come first over what we want. But, I see middle/upper class white women complaining more than anyone when they are given so much. So adored by everyone and it still isn’t enough for them. Their vanity is immeasurable. Black women walk into a room and we have to prove our femininity. With other women it’s automatically given. Black women are strong. We are very good at coping with circumstances. Look at the suicide rates and black women are the least likely group to commit suicide yet we are the largest group of all races/ethnicitygender in college. I listen to some of my white female coworkers and they can be mean, demeaning to some of the black women and laugh at us behind our backs. We just ignore them because they seem so silly, immature because a lot of them haven’t really experienced the battles that we have. I’m not saying all white women are spoiled, just a certain segment but they all have some form of white privilege. They seem to have high, totally unrealistic expectations for life. Regardless of all of this, black women are more confident than all other groups. We have learned to define ourselves and not try to be some fake image on a magazine cover. Tight clothes, crazy hairstyles, loud laughter, we own it. We are our own women. White women are trying to find and define feminism, black women were born with it. God bless all of you guys and our country as well : )
Although some Hispanic (from Spain/Portugal ) may have Amerindian heritage, as a whole, they still are European in culture, religion, family structure and language. Just as some anglos have Amerindian blood. That doesn’t mean Hispanics as a loose term should even be considered native/Amerindians.
I feel like Communism really didn’t do much for China. My friend, an amazing woman with a medical degree who is now a psychiatrist for autistic children, was continuously ignored by her parents in favour of her unemployed younger brother because of her gender. Communism gives many promises it cannot keep. Gender equality is one of them. Communism was intent on destroying Chinese culture in favour of industrialization. Communism promised equality throughout all classes, genders, races, but it has brought little more than destruction. Moreover, not to be rude, but I just saw a tiny discrepancy. You said that female participation in the military is beneficial this article but says the opposite here: http://www.returnofkings.com/12529/you-go-girlism-is-more-toxic-than-feminism… I was wondering if you could elaborate on any details I missed that might show the difference between women engaging in military combat in the “You-go girlism” article as compared to the women serving Russia’s military this article. Thank you for your time! I appreciate the informative nature of your articles!
Your Chinese friend’s parents favor their son over her because gender inequality remains a part of Chinese culture. The inequality is that the oldest son of the family is obligated to care for the parents in their old age. No matter what the daughter accomplishes, no matter how rich she becomes, she will not lift a finger to help her mother and father once they’re too old to provide for themselves. That unemployed son is their only hope for a warm meal and dry bed until their end of days.
This is why China’s “One Child Policy” had so many rumors circulating of families killing off baby girls in hopes the next one would be a boy. It’s not because the Chinese dislike baby girls, it’s because a single child means it had better be a boy, or those parents would starve once they reach old age.
Well, she is currently the one who is taking care of her parents as her brother is unemployed as every child does feel a duty to take care of their parents, no matter what gender they are. And let me just point out that an unemployed son is more of a burden than a “hope for a warm meal and a dry bed.”
The idea that daughters do not take care of their parents is very outdated as daughters now are able to find employment as well. I do not know where you’re from, but women do take care of their parents in China.
Sounds like it’s time some reparations were sent to all the non white women harmed by many decades of white feminism.
Ladies, warm up those cheque books and start writing!