Who’s oppressing who?One of Canada’s leading newspaper columnists takes on the ideology of feminism.
The feminism I take exception to today is not the mild and blameless right of a woman to self-actualize that all women absorb by osmosis from the cultural air we breathe, but the radical ideology that has come to dominate the movement’s academic and institutional elites over the last 40 years. This is an ideology that sees the relations between the sexes as a never-ending antagonistic power struggle, with women as eternal victims and men as eternal oppressors. It is an ideology that explains away the moral failings of women as the fault of a patriarchal "system", but holds men responsible for their actions. And most important, it is an ideology that shortchanges children by privileging the rights and importance to children of mothers over fathers. That kind of feminism is so deeply entrenched in our society’s cultural elites and the institutions they dominate -- really it is the defining ideology of our era -- that whether she wants to or not, no thinking woman can escape the necessity of negotiating some kind of relationship with its claims. However intellectually objective we all try to be, each of us brings our own particular life experiences to the decision of what kind of relationship that will be, and I am no different. So for full disclosure: I brought two relevant pieces of personal history to the table. The first is that I am the daughter -- one of three -- of a charismatic, entrepreneurial, risk-taking father. Having known the privations of extreme poverty in his youth, he was so obsessed with providing economic security for his family that he literally worked himself to a premature death. Because he was a hero to me, I am well disposed toward the men I meet, unless I am shown good reason not to be, and as a result there are many wonderful men in my life, not least my husband of 44 years and my son and son-in-law, both supportive, loving husbands of high-achieving women and engaged, beloved fathers of two daughters each. Everything in my experience with men points to the conclusion that different cultural values around relations between the sexes produce different outcomes. Normal, psychologically healthy men, raised in a society respectful of women, as Canada’s heritage culture is, are governed in their relations with women by the instinct to protect them, not to hurt them. The second element I bring to the subject is the fact that I am a Jew, and grew up at a moment of expanding acceptance of Jews as social equals, a direct result of the world’s sympathy for Jews following the Holocaust. Because of my people’s unique history, I am instinctively wary of any group – whether a race, an ethnic group, a religion or a sex - that plays a dualistic hand, scapegoating an entire group to explain the unachieved goals of its own members. For a scapegoating ideology always ends in grievance-collecting and a conspiracy theory of history. My people has been unusually vulnerable to conspiracy theory evils over the centuries. It is presently in the midst of battling a particularly destructive and existentially threatening one. Virtually all Arab and many other Muslim nations rely on Jew hatred to externalize an explanation for their own failures. It works very well. The world has not seen such a widespread and virulent strain of anti-Semitism dominating an entire region since the Nazi era. So I can say with the conviction bred of close scrutiny that I have no use for blame-laying ideologies of any kind. The time and place in which I grew up was friendly to intellectual diversity, friendly to Israel and becoming very friendly to women. The time and place I inhabit today is unfriendly to intellectual diversity, very unfriendly to Israel, not so friendly to heterosexual men, but extraordinarily friendly to women. These are some of the themes I have lived, and now they are the themes I write about. The Bridget Jones phenomenon I started writing intermittently for the National Post in 2000, and on a weekly basis in 2003. For the first several years I wrote frequently about "bad girl culture": a column on children’s hookerwear – little girls dressing like Vegas show girls with the complicity and even active encouragement of their mothers; then one on young women at Ivy League universities starting porn magazines; and a few about the demeaning custom of "hooking up": guilt-free promiscuity with no consequences, or rather none admitted. I argued that what began for women as sexual liberation had degenerated into irresponsible, intimacy-anaesthetizing, sexual libertinism, an unhealthy trend for women and for society. In its most delusional form, I cited what I considered a perfect media representation of the phenomenon: the 2001 movie Bridget Jones’s Diary. This was supposedly an update of Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen’s classic novel of a meeting of true minds. In the novel the dignified and witty Elizabeth Bennet captures the heart of the upright and gallant Mr Darcy through her strong character, integrity and intelligence. In the movie version Elizabeth has morphed into the ditzy Bridget Jones, an impulsive, chain-smoking slob of no discernible wit or understanding of human nature, entirely focused on sex, and available to any good-looking man who crosses her path without regard to his character. She is cute and sexy, nothing else. Strangely, the modern Mr Darcy character with whom Bridget ends up -- completely unrealistically, of course because in real life such a man would never take her seriously -- is in every way a faithful recreation of the original, an intelligent, refined man of taste, discernment and sexual restraint. My conclusion: "Bridget Jones’ and Mark Darcy’s screen characters illuminate a curious postmodern gender disparity in moral standards… For the gentleman is a gentleman still, but the lady has become a tramp." Feminism and demography I moved on from there to the dramatic demographic consequences feminism has had on society. As a result of feminists’ promotion of career equity with men and unrestrained sexual experimentation over early and faithful commitment, women are having fewer children later, and many are having none. Consequently, birthrates are down in all western countries, in many below the replacement levels. Canada’s current fertility rate is 1.54 per woman, behind one-child China’s 1.7. Sadly, many women realize they want to have children, but too late. They were not warned by their Women’s Studies teachers or by feminist commentators that fertility peaks by age 25, or that late pregnancies carry elevated risks, or that induced abortions pose a risk of pre-term delivery in future pregnancies. Abortion is now such a commonplace here that it is used as a backup form of birth control. Abortions in Quebec have doubled in the last 10 years: in 1998 16 percent of pregnancies resulted in abortion. Today 30 percent do. You don’t have to be a religious Christian to find that statistic disturbing. All of these realities are directly traceable to feminist doctrine. Feminists’ original goal may not have been the intention to preside over the actual demographic decline of western civilization. Their goal was to empower women. But as the old saying goes, when you are up to your neck in alligators, it’s difficult to remember that your original intention was to drain the swamp. Campaigning against men I then turned my attention to the negative and far-ranging effects, of feminism on men. Misandry, which is the female equivalent of misogyny (misanthropy is a hatred of humankind), is now entrenched in our public discourse, our education system and social services. Misandry flies beneath most people’s radar, because we have become compliant in the acceptance of theories that have nothing to do with reality, and compliant in the speech codes that accompany that tendency. Denigration of men in ways both casual and formal are a commonplace in society. Last Christmas I saw an advertisement for a butcher block knife holder in the shape of a man. The slot for the largest knife was placed in his groin. Hilarious? Imagine a knifeholder in the shape of a woman and a knife slot at the vagina. Hilarious? Not so much. Once you become aware of the phenomenon, you will see it everywhere, trust me. For overt misandry, one has only to survey the industry around domestic violence. You could be forgiven for thinking that domestic violence is a one-way street, for that is certainly the impression one has from the fact that there are innumerable tax-funded shelters for abused women, none for abused men, unlimited funds for campaigns to raise consciousness around abused women, none for abused men. There is not a single social services agency or charity in Canada advertising "family services" that offers counseling, shelter or legal services for men who have been physically abused by women. When angry feminists adduce their mantra that only men are inherently violent and that women use violence only in self-defense, I bring up a theme that is forbidden to discussion in women’s shelters: how is it then that partner violence amongst lesbians is significantly higher than amongst heterosexual partnerships? How is it that children are far, far more likely to be physically abused by their mothers than their fathers? And when they are, how can we justify a woman’s right to take her children to a shelter to escape a violent husband when there is no shelter in the country that will accept a father with children fleeing an abusive mother? The implosion of the family Finally I want to talk about the implosion of the traditional family, which can be directly traced to feminism’s repudiation of normative marriage and the role of fathers as vital to a child’s psychological well-being. In June 2006 I wrote about the imbalance, in women’s favour, in the family law system: 90 per cent of contested custody suits end in sole custody awarded to the mother. Such a skewed percentage is unthinkable in any other branch of law. The family law system is now systemically colonized by radical feminists. Their goal is the incremental legal eclipse of men's influence over women's spheres of "identity" interests, which includes children. To that end the custody issue has become a front line in the gender wars, supported by all feminist academics and institutional elites, by supine cabinet ministers and by feminist judges. To illustrate with just a few examples:
Here we are truly in George Orwell country. In simple words this statement means "The end justifies the means" and there is not a totalitarian regime in the world that does not espouse that exact excuse for their denial of rights to their citizens. In our courts the "good" that motivates them is supposedly the child’s "best interests" but in fact it is virtually always the mother’s happiness. This is not justice. Misandry in family law Misandry in family law arises from an ideology that views children as the property of women, even though many peer-reviewed studies show children want and need both parents, and no studies show sole parenting by a mother serves children's best interests. This ideology is instilled in judges during training sessions featuring feminism-driven materials, and subsequently often plays out as unaccountable kangaroo courts. The result is that an adversarial mother who initiates a divorce against the will of the father --however indifferent her parenting skills, however superb his - and even if the children spend their days with nannies or day care workers --pretty well has a lock on sole custody of the children. If she makes a false allegation of abuse in order to have him barred from the house -– this happens regularly; any unsubstantiated claim of abuse or even voicing her fear of abuse by a woman will be acted upon instantly by the police and the courts with no recourse for the man – or denies rightful access to the father, she will never be punished at all. Conversely, if he withholds support money, even if he has lost his job and has no other means of paying, he will be criminalised: His picture as a "deadbeat dad" may appear on government-sanctioned internet sites, and if he goes to jail, as is likely, he will serve a longer sentence than cocaine dealers. In the days when children belonged to both their parents, it used to be said that children were "hostages to fortune." Today they are hostages to feminism and the state. And yet every credible sociological study on record demonstrates without ambiguity that if there is a single sure indicator for success in adulthood, it is the presence of a father in a child’s life from the time he or she is old enough to negotiate a path through the world beyond her doorstep. If there is a sure indicator of failure – dropping out, drugs, promiscuity, crime – it is not poverty, it is fatherlessness in later childhood and adolescence. There is a Yiddish expression my mother used to invoke with a philosophical sigh, "der reidele dreht sich" – the wheel turns. A hundred years ago, it was homosexual love that dared not speak its name. Today homosexual love roars, and it is manliness that whispers in the shadows. Goethe said: "All theory is grey, but green springs the golden tree of life." The time for zero-sum theories – if your sex wins, mine loses – is past. Men’s voices needn’t be silenced for women’s to be heard. We need more conversation, less monologue. Only one voice should be privileged by everyone: the still, small voice of conscience. Conscience leads away from sexism and toward humanism. Humanism leads to mutual respect and trust between the sexes. And collaboration between the sexes leads to the "golden tree of life" we should all be striving toward – a healthy society. Barbara Kay writes for the National Post. This article is an excerpt from a speech given earlier this week to the McGill University Women’s Alumnae Association on the Impact of Feminism on Society. |
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In its earliest and most benign form – the political campaign to achieve equality under the law and equality in economic opportunities – feminism was a necessary and welcome reform movement. No rational person could be less than delighted to see barriers to a full range of educational and career options for women fall by the wayside.
Comments (93)
William J. Johnston said...Dear Mrs. Kay
Your article is right on the money-I know this sounds boring after so many positive comments. I found that you never missed any of the dots-you connected all of them and accurately so.
There is one question that nagged me after I read your article. The question was: Would this article have been so positively received if it had been written by a male?
I hope this article has opened many eyes.
Very sincerely,
William J. Johnston
Canada | Friday, 11 April 2008 at 12:06 am
Guyatree said...Great article!
I have been through the shelter system escaping abuse and found that I ended up walking right back into an abusive situation where the women running the shelter were en par with my abusers - some of whom were women. Funny though, that it was a male who helped me leave my abuser, found temporary shelter, motivate me back to work and help me through to getting therapy. It was also male police officers who helped me through the process of pressing charges.
Within the shelter I came across many single mothers who were encouraged to keep their children away from their fathers and also fear men in general. Young male children made to feel ashamed of their gender whilst their mothers were encouraged to exaggerate the abuse.
Based on the funding and donations, many women were encouraged to stay on past their needs. Help with vocational training, drug abuse, parenting and other means of living independently took a very long time if at all.
I now have a loving relationship, home and great career and stay in contact with some of the other women within the shelter in hopes of helping them flee their new abusers.
Again, a wonderful article and I completely agree with Barbara Kay.
Thank you for speaking out.
Canada | Friday, 11 April 2008 at 3:36 am
Ottawa Men's Centre said...Another National Post journalist called women’s shelters “One Stop Divorce Shops”. Its unfair to label all women’s shelters and those who work there as “angry feminists”. To do so is to form opinions and conclusions about all feminists when that is obviously not the case. There are many very happily married women working in the women’s shelter industry but sadly, are a minority compared to the majority who have all the appearances of a cult that promotes hatred towards men. Hatred begets hatred. Most women and men who “hate” the other gender have been though some experience that permanently causes their brains to think logically and objectively.
Most employees of women’s shelter and other Canadian Man Hating Associations seem to progress from college courses in “women’s studies” that are cess pools promoting hatred towards men. Go to any hospital and the posters are plastered all over the place. Many vulnerable women are inducted into such cults and most never recover. They create victims, they coach women to assault their husbands and claim he hit her simply to gain custody and “improve” their lives by making a positive financial decision to “get rid of him”. Many move in with another woman in a similar frame of mind, live at extremely high standards of living while their former husbands are reduced to living in poverty while struggling to pay for the high costs of being an occasional visit in the children’s lives. The reality is, its costing western countries mega billions of dollars in lost productivity. There is no promotion of marriage as an institution. There is no tax incentive to promote long term marriages.
That means most men are scared of having children and it results in a negative population growth that has severe long term economic problems. The solution is equal funding for men’s organizations and a legal presumption of equal parenting after divorce http://www.OttawaMensCentre.com
Canada | Friday, 11 April 2008 at 9:57 am
Gus Gianello said...Wonderful article. The family, has sustained the Jewish race through thousands of years. I embrace the family.
Remember George Orwell, “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Three dark things that are NEVER spoken of, effects of the ongoing Misandry wars. First, the democratic implosion of our culture. Nature abhors a vacuum--Islam will rush in to fill it. In 20 years women who demand the right to abort, may find themselves being stoned under Sharia law for showing their ankles. Without strong men and women, there are no strong families, and without strong families, there is no resistance to gynophobic cultures. (I wonder if the incidence of plural marriages and female mutilations have already started increasing in Canada?) Second, tell men long enough that they are evil and they will respond in one of two ways: (a) give us. The growing incidence of male suicide by men who were ruined through the court system. (b)self fulfilling prophecy--men become more violent, and begin to act out their roles as “woman-haters”, because they have nothing to lose. These are social considerations. The third, is a political one. When does a democracy cease to have legitimacy as a valid political model. Sadly, most Jews in Germany ignored the warning of Kristalnacht--and stayed in Germany. So, remember, Hitler was a duly elected leader, an ardent anti-smoker, and a conscientious environmentalist. NONE of these things prevented him from being a mass murderer. This is not the twilight of civilization, we are living in the embers. My wife and I, with our three children, hope to leave Canada before it is too late.
Canada | Friday, 11 April 2008 at 3:58 pm
J. Wesley Rees said...Gus:
You seem to hold the belief that you can flee the anti-family views held up by some irreparably warped feminists in the increasingly secular global anglosphere, while acknowledging the view of some demographer’s that Islam will fill this ‘vacuum’ to which you refer. Where on this earth do you believe the views you hold might be ‘safe’ for the next generation you clearly wish to protect? We all need to know.
Since the creation of the vibrant State of Israel some 60 years ago out of the dust that preceded it, the entire diaspora has been engaged in its preservation. For all those things we hold dear we can only but face squarely those who would seek to rent the fabric of what makes us who we are.
Canada | Saturday, 12 April 2008 at 3:29 am
Terry Lear said...Thanks Barbara for saying it the way it is.
Discrimination against Men in the divorce court is so rampant now that all of the young guys I know are refusing to ever get married or ever have Children. In fact almost all will probably live alone the rest of their lives.
Do I blame them? Absolutely not....!
Terry Lear - Toronto
Canada | Saturday, 12 April 2008 at 1:56 pm
Richard Fitzgibbons, M.D. said...Terry and Sam’s fear of commitment in marriage is understandable given the severe damage to men, marriage, family and the culture caused by radical feminism’s misandry and mistrust of men with its associated compulsive need to dominate. However, there are better alternatives than getting “fixed” or living alone.
Sam, the recent research at Northwestern’s Alzheimer’s Center has shown the relationship between vasectomy and early onset progressive aphasia (Pick’s disease). Vasectomy breeches a sperm barrier and allows sperm to enter the blood. In studies 60 to 70% of men who had vasectomies produced antibodies against their own sperm. Dr. Weintraub at Northwestern suggests that such an autoimmune reaction could assault the brain resulting in frontotemporal dementia.
Terry, numerous studies demonstrate that married couples are healthier, happier and wealthier than singles. One of the major reasons for these finding is because of the damage caused by loneliness to physical, emotional and mental health.
Fortunately, there are trustworthy women like Barbara Kay who reject radical feminism and narcissism and who do not find pleasure in misdirecting their unresolved paternal resentment and mistrust at men. Hopefully, you will risk searching for a woman who loved and respected her father or who has worked at forgiving him and grown in trust. When you find her, consider reading Men, Women and the Mystery of Love: Practical Insights from John Paul II’s Love and Responsibility with her.
-- | Saturday, 12 April 2008 at 11:27 pm
Staggered said...I don’t seem to be living in the same world as Barbara. I must be culturally blinded by my bias to treat every person with equal respect and dignity. I suspect that Barbara might have her own cultural biases that are affecting her world view.
-- | Monday, 14 April 2008 at 12:55 pm
Harebell said...Staggered
you and me both
Just thought I’d inform you Babs and Southpaw I’ve posted more on this topic
After a weekend where 100s of women and girls have been taken into protective custody in Texas due to the perversions of those who Babs seems to think are the victims in all matrimonial matters and also a post from Yemen vis a vis an 8 year old wife.
Why do you think you should be taken seriously?
Canada | Monday, 14 April 2008 at 3:29 pm
southpaw said...Harebell,
Once AGAIN, you make my point! You’re comparing apples to oranges. It is painfully obvious you have zero experience with Family Law and the current state of affairs in the Justice System in Ontario, CANADA.
If comparing a Canadian adult male to American cult leaders and/or the religiously insane is the best you can do, I need not worry too much that yours will become the accepted view.
Then again with the depth of the agenda-based corruption pervading Family Law maybe yours IS the “accepted” view.
Canada | Monday, 14 April 2008 at 8:46 pm
Barbara Kay said...I would like to thank the many readers who take the time and trouble to add their mostly validating and extremely gratifying comments to this site regarding my speech on the effects of society.
I must respond to “Kim” who took exception to my example of Jew hatred in Arab countries because Arabs cannot by “definition” be anti-Semitic, as their languages are themselves anti-Semitic. This is as specious an argument as saying the Germans could not hate Jews because Jews were German citizens.
Jew hatred is known throughout the world in non-Semitic languages - and is accepted even amongst Arabs - as hatred specifically of Jews. If Kim believes that my statement is based on emotion or that it was meant to stir up hatred itself, then she is not only ignorant of what is presently going on in the world, but she is a very good example of the kind of political correctness that insists all objective statements about any given “Other” are necessarily racist.
If Kim would care to take a look, through any of the numerous websites devoted to this end, of what is taught in schools throughout the Arab world regarding Jews and openly broadcast in mosques, she would be quite astonished at the open and vicious vitriol displayed, and the overt advocacy of Jew killing and Jew extermination. Conversely, I invite her to read any and all books and materials used in any Jewish school throughout the world, including Israel, and challenge her to find a single sentence or phrase that says Arabs or Muslims are hateful people.
My statement was not one of emotion but of facts so easily verified and so ubiquitously displayed that one almost has to will ignorance of them to assert they are not true (which is not to say the facts around this subject do not cause me emotion, something else entirely).
P
Canada | Monday, 14 April 2008 at 9:15 pm
Becicat said...Should be “Who is Oppressing Whom?”
United States | Tuesday, 15 April 2008 at 3:05 pm
Adebowale Oriku said...Bessicat: Should be Who’s oppressing whom.
There is no need for this hypercorrection.
Who’s oppressing who is acceptable. Who is ... whom has become stuffy and annoying.
-- | Tuesday, 15 April 2008 at 10:27 pm
Helene said...This is to ‘Kim’…
While I see clearly the point you made I think you missed the point of the article. Perhaps your own emotions have led you to ‘throw out the baby with the bath water.’ Mrs Kay might be wrong on the point you pointed out but the article was on feminism not Islam or anti-seminism.
Being wrong on one point does not make one wrong on all points.
Mrs Kay,
You speak my sentiments. I grew up with many good men, and know many more - a couple of whom are single parents. It annoys me how there seems to be a discrepancy between whats an ok way to treat women and whats an ok way to treat men. I think that made sense.
Even if you aren’t Catholic I believe you’d get a lot of insights from the “Theology of the Body” mentioned by ‘GSK’.
New Zealand | Thursday, 17 April 2008 at 4:43 pm
Frank Perk said...Interestingly, there is no mention of the role of liberalism in any of this article or in the responses. The feminist movement is hugely liberal in nature...and further erodes any facade liberals have of making sense or of being intelligent or of wanting equality. It is the liberal media that constantly pits one group against another.
I propose that we ratchet things up a notch...we need to start exposing liberals and their ignorances in the conservative media. It’s a funny thing....I grew up in the US when the majority of the women’s movement was in full gear. And I made a prediction that women would eventually become exactly that which they decried men for having displayed them as. Such as loose or a bimbo in commercials. Women rightly challenged men’s ability to portray them like this in movies, commercials etc. But now that women are running a lot of the media show, as the saying goes that power corrupts.....women are causing their own demise. It may appear that women are “gaining” in equality with men, but they are destroying themselves. A quarter of teenage girls in the US have a sexually transmitted disease. We have millions of abortions a year. The list goes on.
United States | Friday, 18 April 2008 at 3:47 am
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