Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Does Feminism Work?


Feminist firebrand Lindy West is in ecstasy. I’m sure you wanted to know.

Writing in Jezebel West trumpets the good news: feminism is working! It's changing the world. Naturally, West does not say whether it is changing the world for better or worse.

It would be better news if West knew what the word “works” meant, but when you are dealing with an ideologue it is best not to quibble over meanings.

For West, the good news is that more and more people have been indoctrinated in feminist ideology. They may not be living feminist lives quite yet, but, according to a survey conducted in Great Britain they no longer respect traditional gender roles.

She quotes the study’s conclusion:

The vast majority of young people – about 80% of women and 70% of men across all races, classes, and family backgrounds - desire an egalitarian marriage in which both partners share breadwinning, housekeeping, and child rearing.

West is not too worried about the fact that, when it comes to practicing what they tell researchers, people seem to fall back into the familiar old gender roles:

Whatever they actually do in practice, the fact is that 70% of men expressed a desire for an egalitarian relationship. That's huge. And it makes sense that it would take time for practice to catch up to theory. We can want equality before we achieve it. In fact, we have to.

West never considers the possibility that a perfectly egalitarian marriage, of the kind that more and more young people have been brainwashed into thinking they want, is simply dysfunctional. It is a throwback to an economy where there is no division of labor or specialization, and where everyone grows his own food, makes his own clothes, and schools his own children.

A feminist utopia, if you like, but a profoundly reactionary vision, nevertheless.

West is right on one score: a vast majority of women in one survey would rather divorce than become housewives. Clearly, young women have been brainwashed by feminism, but will their attitude contribute to marital stability?

When it comes to traditional gender roles, West is filled with blinding contempt.

The great feminist epiphany, she explains, occurred when women discovered that: “we're more than just babymakers and rug-scrubbers and penis-receptacles.”

To me this sounds like raw misogyny.

West denounces the traditional division of the sexes in typically intemperate terms:

For years and years and years and years and years and years, the expectation was that you should find a "good" husband, and then you're taken care of. 4 LYFE. You take care of the house, beat the rugs, maybe you get a cute little vanity degree, you sleep in a weirdly chaste twin bed with your hair in a scarf. That's your "job." He pays the bills, provides the penising, trips over the ottoman, maybe has an affair or two. That's his no-quotation-marks job. He's happy. You're happy. The end. Except — PLOT TWIST — women weren't happy. And it wasn't the end, it was the beginning of all this shit we're endlessly shouting about.

One might ask how she knows that all of the women who chose such a lifestyle were unhappy, but that would be unkind.

We do need to ask how all of that feminism is working out for women today. Are they happier? Do they have better and more stable marriages? Do they have more or fewer divorces? Do they have as many children as they wanted? Do they have more or fewer eating disorders? Do they take more or less psychiatric medication? Do they consume more or less alcohol and narcotics? Do they suffer more or less abuse?

One doubts that West would be impressed, but the kind of egalitarian marriage that most young people today want and that most parents today want their children to have is, as other studies have shown, 50% more likely to end in divorce and 100% more likely to contain abuse.

Why isn’t Lindy West cheering that news?

And then there’s this: men who follow the feminist playbook and do more womanly household chores have less sex than do men who limit their activity to more manly chores:

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, as they say: the more housework married men do, the less sex they have, according to a new study published Wednesday.


Husbands who spend more time doing traditionally female chores -- such as cooking, cleaning, and shopping -- reported having less sex than those who do more masculine tasks, said the study in the American Sociological Review.

"Our findings suggest the importance of socialized gender roles for sexual frequency in heterosexual marriage," said lead author Sabino Kornrich, of the Center for Advanced Studies at the Juan March Institute in Madrid.

"Couples in which men participate more in housework typically done by women report having sex less frequently. Similarly, couples in which men participate more in traditionally masculine tasks -- such as yard work, paying bills, and auto maintenance -- report higher sexual frequency."

The article concludes:

But both men and women in couples with more traditional household labor divisions said they had more sex.

"The results suggest the existence of a gendered set of sexual scripts, in which the traditional performance and display of gender is important for creation of sexual desire and performance of sexual activity," Kornrich said.

How long before men figure out that the feminist vision is a trap? How long before women figure it out? How many broken homes will it take before people discover that utopian feminism leads to dystopia?

9 comments:

Dennis said...

The mere existence of fiction like this is to convince themselves and their like minded cadre. Despite all of the information that points to just the opposite.
One only has to a lot of causes now run by radicals and one sees a last ditch effort to be relevant in a world that is gradually leaving them behind.
It should not surprise anyone that it is so easy to point out how factually incorrect most of this drivel happens to be. This is a death cult that is in the process of and will eliminate itself.

Kath said...

Young people are so confused nowadays. Many girls pay lip service to feminist ideals but from what I've seen, secretly long for traditional marriage and children.
It is very sad because they cannot find suitable husbands. When they do, many will not know how to get along because marriages have become so politicize by the feminists.

Boys need strong examples and training so they can grow up to be responsible for their families. In the current climate, it is a wonder that any of them figure out how to be husbands and fathers.
How the heck is our civilization going to survive all of this nonsense?

JPL17 said...

Feminism has created a nightmare world in so many ways.

As one example, when 70% of men surveyed "express[] a desire for an egalitarian relationship [in marriage]," what that tells me is that 70% of men still want sex with women before marrying them, but have learned to conform their thoughts to feminist dogma.

Sam L. said...

Many men have already figured this out. And don't marry these women.

Anonymous said...

I think many men actually thought they would be happy in an egalitarian relationship, with no one dominating...similar to that between two close male friends...and thought that was what they were getting when they married. What actually seems to often happen, though, is that the woman perceives the man's egalitarian spirit as weakness, and then seeks to play the dominant role herself. In that case, there is either endless conflict, or the man acquiesces and is then treated with contempt.

And while a man in a dominant role was restrained to a certain extent by absorbed ideas of chivalry, no such limitations seem to apply to a dominant female.

Anonymous said...

Good insight. I can think of a few real life examples.

DeNihilist said...

Jeez Stuart, you just know that the lack of sex in the more equal marriages, is because the dudes are tired. Haven't woman been telling us forever, that housework/raising children is tiring?

DeNihilist said...

interesting synergy. Rational Male posted on the same subject. Rollo has some good insights.

http://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/choreplay/

Dennis said...

I think one will find that only a few are true believers and the vast majority of the others pay lip service to it if at all. The true believers reside mostly in the "blue" areas.
The best one can do is to try to find the talents and skills of each partner of a marriage and utilize them to create a synergy if possible. Once one tries to ensure all things are equal one is destined to fail. We just are not alike!
I suspect that the more some males try to take over what has been traditional a female role the more disrespect that they get from the women involved with them. The strong will almost always gravitate to those with the same characteristics.
Feminism has always made the mistake that a woman who chooses being a wife and mother is in a weak position, but nothing could be further from the truth. If anything women are the most powerful force in that marriage.
A happy woman, secure in her femininity is far more likely to have great sex because she is at peace with herself and the people in her life whereas those constantly trying to find equality, competition and self actualization are not.
Can anyone explain to me why most feminist seem so unhappy? If feminism is so great why are they so conflicted? If they were really outdistancing men would they have to keep trying to convince themselves?