Do Feminists Have A Point?

     Perhaps more precisely, do feminists have an agenda?

     It’s not a question one can answer with perfect certainty. However, there are signs and portents one must regard with due seriousness:

• David Gelernter notes that feminist dogma now trumps combat effectiveness.
• The mighty Ace of Spades notes that female privilege now outranks the ordinary rules of politeness.
• Ann Althouse notes that feminist “rape culture” notions obviate the use of the word “no.”
• Stephen Green notes feminist transformation of ordinary behavior to a threat.
• Twitchy notes that Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner is being reviled for being a Republican.

     These outcroppings of feminist activism and its consequences don’t all point in exactly the same direction. However, among their common effects is one that suggests fundamental significance: they all reduce men to second-class status:

• Combat is the emblematic male undertaking.
• The alternative to politeness in discourse was once pistols at dawn.
• Male interest in a woman is “politically incorrect” and might be “triggering.”
• Boys and young men were once expected to carry knives and to learn their many uses.
• Even a hero(ine) of the “trans” migration is disallowed any divergence from feminist gospel.

     These are just the bits I could cull from my 4:30 AM news sweep. If I were to keep at it once I’m more awake, I’m sure I could find others – and I’m just as sure they’d be consistent with the ones above.

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     The stronger, more innovative, generally more capable sex – that’s the male sex, just in case you were in any doubt – has always behaved in certain ways, preferred certain activities, and predominated in certain trades. Men have also been the conceivers and codifiers of all the laws and social customs that have historically protected women from male predators. Women have benefited from that aspect of the division of labor far more than they’ve ever admitted, whether publicly or to one another.

     Now and then, individual women have succeeded in rising to male levels of accomplishment and prestige. They’re noteworthy for being exceptions to the pattern of their sex. They don’t disprove anything about the larger pattern of men as the driving forces of economic and social progress, or as the defenders of civilized society.

     The arrant nonsense about women having been “oppressed” by that pattern is refuted merely by noting that even today, with the law and a huge social current in their favor, women continue in their old pattern:

• Very few women become warriors, or seek out dangerous or physically exhausting trades;
• Very few women become significant inventors, innovators, or serious scholars;
• Very few women rise to the pinnacles of business success;
• Very few women aspire to political elevation.

     All those male bastions remain so, despite the tailwind that law and social trends provide in women’s favor. Inasmuch as there are criminal penalties for just about anything one might do to discourage a young woman from entering the military, the dangerous trades, the sciences, the technologies, venture capitalism, or national politics, the only conclusion a rational man could draw is that they’re just not interested.

     And really, why should they be, as long as there are plenty of men to do all that painful, wearying, grotty stuff?

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     The last sentence in the previous segment should serve as a reminder, and a warning. Women would be well advised to ponder it seriously.

     Any trend in law or prevailing thought that undermines men’s protective, supportive attitudes toward women will have its worst effects on women. It cannot be said more plainly...or too often. Moreover, women are learning this in the most direct of ways, from the hyper-patriarchal Muslim invaders of Europe.

     Though feminists seek to “have the cake” – male protectiveness, enterprise, and productivity – while “eating it too” – legal and social privileges for women at men’s expense – they’ll soon find themselves in the far less enviable condition of paying for cakes that others will eat. Already there are important trends that point in directions millions of women are lamenting, such as the “marriage strike.”

     Ironically, both feminist activism and the reactions against it are driven by an emotion: resentment. Women are being encouraged to resent men’s predominance in the traditionally male endeavors and fields. When feminists succeed in marshaling law, custom, or important institutions (e.g., the media and universities) behind their agenda, men affected by those things resent it sufficiently to cluster unto themselves, excluding women by personal decisions women cannot countervail. With one another, we have no need to concern ourselves with what goes on “outside.” Our resentments cease to trouble us. We can relax.

     The pity of this is that smart, sensible women – women who appreciate men and don’t regard femininity or the traditional division of labor between the sexes as “oppressive” – are as affected by the results as their feminist counterparts. Once again, the laws of reality prove indifferent to anyone’s preferences or opinions.

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     If there’s an achievable goal in feminist activism, it can only be the only sort of dominance feminists can possibly obtain and hold for a while: dominance over women.

     Some of this is easy to spot. Much feminist cant is directed at controlling the opinions and decisions of non-activist women. Insults such as those hurled at Sarah Palin, Carly Fiorina, Joni Ernst, and Marsha Blackburn – “they’re not real women” – have no chance of affecting their overt targets. They’re made to constrain the opinions and behavior of women generally: to “keep ‘em toeing the party line.” And to some extent, they’re effective. For how long? No one can say...especially as men’s reactions to the perverse incentives feminism has produced will play a part as well.

     If I were a woman, I’d resent such attempts at mind control more greatly than any comment about my appearance from a man...but then, I am a man. And all propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding, that’s a difference that matters.

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     How did it begin? With power-hungry feminists, of course. With the hijacking of the admirable drive for equality of the sexes before the law. It got its initial foothold with the emergence of motels, reliable contraception employed by the woman, and the gradual destigmatization of adultery, divorce, and the production of illegitimate children. It seeped further into our culture in seemingly innocuous ways, for example through fiction about men’s marginalization of women and men as an “evolutionary dead end.” It strutted publicly with “equal employment opportunity” laws and the use of quotas to bend employers to feminist demands. It reigns supreme in contemporary hysteria over “microaggressions” and “trigger warnings,” and the nonexistent “rape culture.”

     All of those things are still with us. Yet others are with us as well. Mankind – Oops! Sorry! I meant to type “huperoffspringkind” – is a single house, more so than any nation. It will not long stand divided against itself. As with so many other things: We shall see.