Antifeminism

Antifeminism refers to opposition to feminism, which may take different forms. It refers to a range of views that either criticize feminist ideology in general or argue that it be restrained. Some critics equate certain neoconservative intellectuals' views with antifeminism, although they say the label is unfair.

People such as Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers and others who call themselves feminists have sometimes been labeled "antifeminists", or holding anitfeminist views, by other feminists for their opinions of perceived "oppression" and for their labeling of beliefs with which they disagree as "gender feminism". Some argue that in this way the term "antifeminist" is used to silence academic debate about feminism, and represents "an enormous extension of women's power, allowing any sort of criticism of either women or feminist ideas to fall under the watchful eye of their ideological guardians.". Feminists such as Jennifer Pozner blast that claim and argue the feminist label is a ruse. In describing what she believes is a method of so-called "rebel feminists", she identifies what she argues is a contradiction: "Become vocally indignant at [other feminists] refusal to tolerate [their] 'dissenting feminist voice'" and then to "Go directly to the media. Do not pass up the college lecture circuit. Do not turn down close to $200K in Right Wing grants" and wait "for the money to come rolling in". She goes on to further counter claims of silencing debate or criticism: "Use your role as 'rebel feminist' to denounce every feminist concern other than women's economic advancement."[1]

Antifeminist ideas

Many antifeminist proponents say the feminist movement has achieved its aims and now seeks higher status for women than for men.

Others consider feminism a destructive force that endangers the family. For example, conservative political scientist Paul Gottfried describes this antifeminist position:

Serious conservative scholars like Allan Carlson and F. Carolyn Graglia have maintained that the change of women’s role, from being primarily mothers to self-defined professionals, has been a social disaster that continues to take its toll on the family. Rather than being the culminating point of Western Christian gentility, the movement of women into commerce and politics may be seen as exactly the opposite, the descent by increasingly disconnected individuals into social chaos.

Traditionalist Catholic writer James Kalb describes antifeminism thus:

To be antifeminist is simply to accept that men and women differ and rely on each other to be different, and to view the differences as among the things constituting human life that should be reflected where appropriate in social attitudes and institutions. By feminist standards all societies have been thoroughly sexist. It follows that to be antifeminist is only to abandon the bigotry of a present-day ideology that sees traditional relations between the sexes as simply a matter of domination and submission, and to accept the validity of the ways in which human beings have actually dealt with sex, children, family life and so on. Antifeminism is thus nothing more than the rejection of one of the narrow and destructive fantasies of an age in which such things have been responsible for destruction and murder on an unprecedented scale.

Antifeminists often decry what they call the misandric policies of Western governments. They sometimes point to an increase in divorce and what they consider "family breakdown" and blame the influence of feminism. They claim that crime statistics, teenage pregnancy, and drug abuse are higher among children of fatherless homes. Their opponents argue that correlation does not imply causation and that they may be drawing the wrong conclusion by only looking at part of a complex situation (ie., ignoring alcoholism or socio-economic status), and social ills can also be the result of a father's decision.

Antifeminist comments periodically appear in U.S. political punditry. For example, in a 1983 syndicated column, Pat Buchanan wrote,

Rail as they will about discrimination, women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism.

Feminist allegations of antifeminism in history

Feminists routinely claim that Western history is littered with antifeminist practices in the sense of hostility to equal rights for women. Many of these practices were deeply interrelated. For example, religious antifeminism supported political antifeminism. A great body of literature, avowedly feminist and otherwise, exists on these practices, their interrelationships and their causes. Only a few examples are outlined here:

The denial of leadership roles for women in some Christian denominations, for example the Roman Catholic Church, is a long-standing example of antifeminist practice. In effect, such denominations hold to, or have held to, the opinion that women are not called to particular religious vocations. Similar antifeminist practice can be found in other Judeo-Christian faiths, both historically and presently, although the scriptural justifications vary. The rape of black women slaves in America was justified by the perception that, because the women were non-white they were therefore non-Christian and in turn impure.

Politically, Western Europe provides abundant examples of antifeminist practice. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, the hereditary system of kingship meant that power was handed down patrilineally. Thus, while a woman could inherit a throne, it was not a common occurrence.

Femists further claim that the development of democracy did not break traditions of political antifeminism. Like their Athenian ancestor, modern Western democracies denied suffrage to women. This practice was not changed until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. Somewhat counter-intuitively, the introduction of democracy actually increased political antifeminism in terms of leadership roles, in that women were generally explicitly barred from office. Changes to this limited-suffrage mode of Western democracy were actively opposed by groups who can reasonably described as antifeminist.

Economically, women were denied various occupations on the grounds of their sex. The right to own property of various kinds has also been frequently restricted on the grounds of gender.

Socially, in addition to the religious restrictions touched upon earlier, women's dress or public behavior has been regulated in many Western cultures. For example, in nineteenth century America, women were not permitted to consume alcohol in public.

Antifeminism in Nietzschean philosophy

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche expresses his belief that women are naturally more cruel and contemptuous of truth than men, and that the emancipation of women threatens to compromise what he considers these admirable feminine qualities.

Since the French Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has grown smaller in proportion to the increase in her rights and demands, and the "Emancipation of Woman," to the extent that that is desired and demanded by women themselves (and not just by superficial men), has, as a result, produced a peculiar symptom of the growing weakening and deadening of the most feminine instincts. There is a stupidity in this development, an almost masculine stupidity, about which a successful woman—who is always an intelligent woman—would have to feel thoroughly ashamed.

He goes on to write that, "The thing in woman that arouses respect and often enough fear is her nature, which is 'more natural' than man's nature, her genuine predatory and cunning adaptability, the tiger's claws under the glove, the naiveté of her egotism, her uneducable nature, her inner wildness, the incomprehensibility, breadth, and roaming of her desires and virtues," and concludes that these superior qualities can only thrive when women are repressed or relegated to subordinate roles. He attacks the men of his time he sees as "idiotic friends of women and corrupters of women among the scholarly asses of the male sex who counsel woman to de-feminize herself in this manner and to imitate all the foolish things which make 'man' in Europe and European 'manliness' sick, people who want to bring woman down to the level of a 'common education,' perhaps even to reading the newspapers and discussing politics. Here and there they want even to make women into free spirits and literati: as if a woman without piety were not something totally repulsive and ridiculous to a profound and godless man."[2]

Nietzsche also writes that if a woman is "corrupted" by having the same freedom as men, it "make[s] her incapable of her first and last profession, giving birth to strong children." Although Oswald Spengler's own expressed views on women were generally more empathetic and less inflammatory than Nietzsche's, Spengler endorsed the Nietzschean opposition to feminism for many of the same reasons. Spengler also expressed concern that both men and women in Western countries no longer wanted to get married and raise children, claiming this would eventually result in the destruction of Western Civilization. But while Nietzsche argued for stricter societal controls on women, Spengler found it deplorable for either society or the state to force women to meet a "standardized type... in body, in clothes, in mind," which he considered a sign of cultural decline or inferiority[3].

Spengler's concept of "strong race" defined as "the eternal warlike in the beast of prey man," an ethos rather than a zoological notion, was similar to Nietzsche's "Will to Power." Nietzsche considered this a masculine attribute, once writing, "The happiness of man is, 'I will.' The happiness of woman is, 'He will.'" Unlike Nietzsche's concept, Spengler believed women, specifically mothers, could have "strong race." Spengler did not share Nietzsche's rejection of Goethe's notion of an "eternal feminine" metaphysical presence, instead viewing it as engaged in a neverending war with the masculine Will to Power. In The Decline of the West, he writes, "Woman in childbed wins through to victory." Noting that the Aztecs "honoured the woman in labour as a battling warrior," he views childbirth as an expression of a constant struggle for dominance between the sexes inherent in every healthy culture[4]. When a civilization loses its warlike instincts (between the sexes and against other peoples), he believed, it falls into decline and succumbs to "Caesarism" before eventually falling to enemies with stronger "race." Spengler continues this theme in The Hour of Decision, in which he attacks both feminism and modern misogyny as signs of Western culture in decline.[5]

Much of feminism also conflicts with the Nietzschean view of world history, continued by admirers and emulators such as Spengler, which rejects the traditional linear notion of world history headed toward a greater goal. Because feminist ideology deals with victims and oppressors in a subjective way that sympathizes with the former, it falls under the category of "slave morality." Finally, it is an ideology that revolves around intellectual assertions about relations between the sexes, and thus runs in opposition to the fundamental core of Nietzschean anti-rationalism.

Antifeminist organisations

As of 2006 the most successful antifeminist organisation in the US is STOP ERA, founded by Phyllis Schlafly in October 1972. Schlafly successfully mobilised thousands of people to block the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in the USA. It was Schlafly too who forged links between STOP ERA and conservative organizations as the Moral Majority, the American Farm Bureau Association, and the John Birch Society, as well as single-issue groups against abortion, pornography, gun control, and unions. By integrating STOP ERA with the so-called New Right she was able to leverage a wider range of technological, organisational and political resources, successfully targeting pro-feminist candidates for defeat.

Further reading

Literature critical of feminism

• Alan J. Barron, The Death of Eve: Women, Liberation, Disintegration (1986) ISBN 0949667366
• Alan Carlson, The Family in America: Searching for Social Harmony in the Industrial Age (2003) ISBN 0765805367
• Alan Carlson, Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis (1991) ISBN 1560005556
• Gilbert K. Chesterton, Brave New Family (1990) ISBN 089870314X
• Thomas Fleming, The Politics of Human Nature (1988) ISBN 1-56000-693-5
• Maggie Gallagher, The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting Love (1996) ISBN 0895264641
• George Gilder, Men and Marriage (1992) ISBN 0882894447
• Steven Goldberg, The Inevitability of Patriarchy (1977) ISBN 0812692373
• Steven Goldberg, Why Men Rule: A Theory of Male Dominance (1993) ISBN 0812692373
• F. Carolyn Graglia, Domestic Tranquility: A Brief Against Feminism (1998) ISBN 0965320863
• Mary A. Kassian, The Feminist Mistake (2005) ISBN 1581345704
• Linda Kelly, Disabusing the Definition of Domestic Abuse: How Women Batter Men and the Role of the Feminist State (2003)
• Myron Magnet, Modern Sex: Liberation and Its Discontents (2001) ISBN 1566633842
• Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young, Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men (2006) ISBN 0773528628
• Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture (2001) ISBN 0773522727
• John Piper and Wayne A. Grudem, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (1991) ISBN 0891075860
• Mary Pride, The Way Home: Beyond Feminism, Back to Reality (1985) ISBN 0891073450
• Phyllis Schlafly, Feminist Fantasies (2003) ISBN 1890626465
• Phyllis Schlafly, The Power of the Positive Woman (1977) ISBN 0-87000-373-9
• Howard Schwartz, The Revolt of the Primitive: An Inquiry into the Roots of Political Correctness (2003) ISBN 0765805375
• Lionel Tiger, The Decline of Males (2000) ISBN 0312263112
• Esther Vilar, The Manipulated Man (1972) ISBN 0953096424

Literature about antifeminism

• Redefining the New Woman, 1920-1963 (Antifeminism in America: A Collection of Readings from the Literature of the Opponents to U.S. Feminism, 1848 to the Present), Howard-Zophy
• Un-American Womanhood: Antiradicalism, Antifeminism, and the First Red Scare, Kim E. Nielsen
• Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females (1983; ISBN 0-399-50671-3).
• Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1992; ISBN 0-385-42507-4)
• Cynthia D. Kinnard, Antifeminism in American Thought: An Annotated Bibliography (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1986, ISBN 0-8161-8122-5)
• Jane J. Mansbridge: Why We Lost the ERA, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1986
• G. Swanson, Antifeminism in America: A Historical Reader (2000) ISBN 0-8153-3437-0

See also

• Anti-suffrage
• École Polytechnique massacre
• Male chauvinism
• Masculism
• Men's Rights
• Misandry
• Misogyny
• Paleoconservatism
• Patriarchy

Individuals linked to antifeminism

• Adam Norton
• Ernest Belfort Bax
• Ann Coulter
• Caitlin Flanagan
• George Gilder
• Marc Lépine
• Mary Pride
• Phyllis Schlafly
• Mary Augusta Ward
• Otto Weininger
• Philip Gordon Wylie

External links

• How Not to Criticize Feminist Epistemology, by Elizabeth Anderson, review of "Scrutinizing Feminist Epistemology" concluding "[it is a] failure by its own evaluative standards of civility and avoiding gross error, tribalism, cynicism, and political correctness."