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It’s Time for Feminism to End
Feminism began with goals that were both laudable and achievable, and it achieved them: women are today the legal equals of men. For decades now, since legal equality was achieved, feminism has been harmful to women.
Feminism has always had its destructive aspect, its misguided insistence that women adopt male practices that, for reasons of simple biology, work against women. The sexual realities for women are different, completely and ineluctably different, from those for men. Encouraging women to disregard those realities harms women. Women aren’t men, and they can’t act with the casual disregard for responsibility and consequences that nature has gifted to men as an unfortunately viable option.
There is another, more subtly corrosive quality to feminism: in an era when people talk of “safe spaces” and worry about “micro-aggression,” feminism has unwittingly removed the cultural safeguards that made it possible for women to comfortably coexist with men in public spaces. The quotidian gestures of male chivalry: opening and holding doors, walking on the street side of the sidewalk and the down-side of the stair, refraining from vulgarity and profanity in mixed company, etc., have long been resented and denigrated by feminists as lesser examples of toxic masculinity. That’s a mistake, and one with consequences: these gestures serve as an assurance to women that men are aware of the differences in physical power between the sexes, and choose to harness that power in token acts of protection.
Has feminism made women safe from men? No, as the “me too” refrains make clear, it has not. Human nature in the realm of sex is deeply wired and impossible to change quickly, if at all. What is possible is the accretion of social patterns of behavior that create safeguards for women, patterns that encourage safe behavior by both men and women. Feminism, having achieved its legitimate legal goals, has left as its only purpose the destruction of femininity and, along with it, the social safeguards that protected women.
It’s time for the feminist movement to accept victory and go home.
Published in Culture
I define “victory” as achieving legal equality. You’ll have to convince me that legal equality has not been achieved.
You need to convince me that feminism only aimed for this legal equality. In fact you already conceded to another person that it is quite diverse in its goals. Since there are other goals to accomplish it will continue to exist.
The only way to know when Feminism will end is to look at its motivations and to see how those motivations can be satisfied, assuming they can.
I am not arguing that. In fact, I’m arguing exactly the opposite: feminism is big and, beyond the very limitted accomplishment I mentioned, largely destructive of women. I know that most feminists don’t agree with me.
I have absolutely no doubt that feminism will continue, and little doubt that it will continue to the detriment of women and the culture in general. My point is that, in the best interest of all of us, it should end.
All as in most of us or all as in every single person?
All as in most of us. There are certainly some who benefit personally from participating in activism. (That is not, in and of itself, a bad thing, to benefit from passionate participation in causes — even misguided causes.)
So those who gain are only activists? There are no examples where any benefit can be discerned from acting as some feminists assert in sexual manner?
It is almost always absurd to argue that any general observation is true of every unique human being, such is the diversity of our species. I won’t make such a claim.
If you would like to make an argument, please do. I’ll consider it. My point is that I believe That feminism is now, for a variety of reasons, harmful to women.
Not if they don’t want purged.
@henryracette
I thought about changing my mind, but it’s an elective, highly experimental surgery that’s not covered by my insurance.
I have no idea how you do that, but I like it.
1) Your argument has been quite broad. That is fine as long as you provide sufficient evidence. But you haven’t really. You have stated a couple conclusions. That the quotidian exchange is now gone. That women can no longer coexist with men in the work place. You don’t give any evidence that such is true or why those are necessarily losses. You don’t even provide premises linking them to what feminism proposes.
2) You admit that feminism has various definitions and goals but argue that it should end. Just because one goal was accomplished does not mean that other goals should not be pursued. As with the plethora of movements throughout history movements tend to persist because the motivations have not dissipated. There are still labor unions even though unionism overall has declined.
There are still second amendment activist groups, even though the second amendment has become fairly safe thanks to legislation and judicial decisions. Ditto with free speech groups.
3) You mention the sexual economics and evolution that affect sexual norms but only briefly, when responding to a comment. Evolution is continuingly ongoing, as by definition evolution is genetic change. How do you know that feminism isn’t a response to said sexual economics changing (just as labor movements were responses to changes in economy)?
Feminism in 2019 wants to simply live inside its safe space and not venture out into areas where its message still has resonance. It’s won the battle in Western society, but the other leftist pressures keep it from taking that fight elsewhere over charges of cultural appropriation. They don’t want to talk about things like female genital mutilation in Muslim countries, or the general second-class status of women for the most part, because they are either fearful of having the race card played on them and/or the action is being practiced by a country hostile to the United States (i.e. — if you’re going to talk about women as second-class citizens, talking about it in Saudi Arabia is sort of OK … as long as you confine it to the Saudis. Don’t talk about it if you’re discussing the Mullahs in Iran, and it would pretty much be impossible for any feminist to put their name to a piece like this about the Taliban and its treatment of women, as Hillary Clinton did in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in 2001). Better to stay inside Judeo-Christian society and just keep upping the demands.
In a way, feminism today is where unions were a little over 50 years ago, in that they had gained a major foothold into most industrial sectors in the U.S. and Europe, but couldn’t deal with the globalization that really got going in the 1970s, and made many of their unionized jobs noncompetitive and eventually superfluous. Feminism’s demands on western society, combined with feminism’s refusal to demand the same standards elsewhere, is making more people realize the movement’s now more about exerting political power through continued claims of victimhood than it is about demanding the same treatment for everyone (a contradiction that’s going to become more obvious if the left gets its way in getting more immigrants with less assimilation into the U.S., and anti-female customs overseas suddenly are demanded here in the name of multiculturalism).
It hurts thinking about it . . .
It’s the same with black activist groups. If victory is achieved and acknowledged, the need for these activist groups goes away. By hiding the achievements, the groups continue to live and receive donations . . .
Good points, and I see this leading into more discussions of the state of men and women as they relate to each other. Currently, women (mainly feminists) are trying to remove masculine traits from men, encouraging them to get in touch with their feminine side. Yet someone wrote a post recently about how young women actually fear men, so I guess it’s not working. Their radars are always up. The same with men. The confusion is rampant in schools and universities where “feminist studies” and militant professors push it. They are confusing being masculine with being mean and aggressive. So men who want to be men have a job to do to counter this message.
It was more than quaint to see in old movies, men standing as a woman entered or left the room, giving a woman a seat, opening a door, it was a show of respect. But it goes both ways.
I’m not sure what “exchange” you’re referring to. Perhaps you could clarify that for me.
I didn’t say that women “can no longer coexist with men in the workplace,” nor anywhere else. I said that the mechanisms that helped women “comfortably coexist” with men in public spaces are being eroded.
I think our culture of casual sex, sexual identity-confusion, and disenchantment with traditional forms of dating and courtship derive, in large part, from the rejection of male/female distinction that feminism has historically championed.
I’m arguing that, in this case, it does: that the only worthwhile and achievable goal has been accomplished, and that the movement is now engaged in pursuits that are either not worthwhile or not achievable — or both.
I’d probably make a similar argument about labor unions — that they do more harm than good. In any case, pointing out that movements tend to live forever is not the same as arguing that they should live forever.
Until a few years ago, I’d have argued that your first example is inappropriate, in that gun rights are in a constant state of tension, always threatened by organized anti-gun groups and overzealous regulators. (As a resident of New York state, I can speak first-hand of the continuing precariousness of Second Amendment rights in some jurisdictions.)
But times change. Today, I’d argue that both of your examples are inappropriate: anti-Second Amendment groups continue to attempt to chip away at basic liberties (thankfully, with relatively little success), while anti-First Amendment movements gradually gain strength as efforts to ban “hateful” speech are debated in our nation’s capital.
Evolution is, with rare exception, a very gradual process. Certainly, in terms of human sexual behavior, evolutionary change is irrelevant on the scale of either the sexual revolution or, for that matter, the span of American history.
We aren’t talking about a trivial secondary characteristic here, the pattern on the wings of a butterfly. We’re talking about what is probably the second most deeply rooted and fundamental human driver, right behind the urge to survive itself.
If it sounds silly to talk about the male drive to have sex as being our prime driver, it’s only because we have developed, over centuries, elaborate cultural mechanisms to rein in male urges and impose artificial costs on the reproductive act. Feminism unwittingly works to undo those cultural mechanisms. Both men and women will suffer from that (though I suspect it’s a lot more fun, in the moment, for men).
I think feminism was a response to growing prosperity and security, and a shift from manual (that is, male*) labor to less physically demanding modes of survival. I’ve never argued that feminism shouldn’t have gotten rolling; far from it. I’m simply arguing that it’s done the worthwhile part of its job, and it should now go away. (I’d say the same about labor unions.)
* Yes, I know that manual and man come from different roots.
Excellent post Henry. Spot on. Nothing to disagree with, nothing to add.
Exchange of behavior. You are arguing that men should act like gentlemen and women like ladies. You allege that because women no longer act like ladies men no longer feel the need to act like gentlemen.
Have you done studies that show this is what women consider comfortable? I don’t ask that to be edgy. I ask because it is possible that you are projecting onto them. Is Feminism causing the erosion you allege? Or is it responding to that erosion? Again you haven’t really pointed out what exactly feminists have stated that would cause said behavior to dissipate.
But what motivates that change? At most you have made some implicit motions that it is Feminism’s fault and not something else. Implicit accusations are pretty weak.
Who says that the movement was motivated initially by that goal? How do you know that what the feminists seek is not worthwhile to females? Maybe it is, but not so for guys.
And just like those groups Feminists perceive their gains as not permanent, and that they want more gains. Just as many free speech and second amendment groups would like further protection of their goals. The motivation has not been satisfied and so the movement will go on.
Is it? Who says evolution has to occur in the time frame in order to alter sexual norms? It could have happened before and changes in environment altered sexual norms so that once selected behavior resurfaced. Periods of sexual “decadence” have occurred repeatedly throughout human history.
I would say the behavior is probably tied for first. After all the behavior ensures the continuation of the genes that allow for said behavior of survival.
Yet Feminism constantly asks for higher costs from men doesn’t it (don’t push sex on women and ask for permission during sex), and at the same time asks for the costs to women be lowered, eliminate stigma for women having multiple sexual partners and birth control, in regards to sex. What would motivate that? Perhaps the fact that feminists perceive men as getting more out of the act of sex than women are in current society.
Maybe you don’t view that as such but I would argue that is pretty intuitive. If that is true then Feminism is responding to changes in the sexual market and attempting to “rectify” a “market failure”, as females see it. That would mean Feminism didn’t start the issue on sex then–something else did.
How does growing prosperity and security, and less intensive labor relate to feminism? Saying they are linked doesn’t show how they are.
Well I have no use for it.
I came of age in the late 90’s and at that time there was that real ladette culture that was influenced by Britain. The media would write silly things about the Spice Girls and girl power but in reality if you asked an Irish woman if she was a feminist you’d get a smart answer. It was sort of restricted to mature students and lesbians when I was in college. I don’t know exactly what happened in the last 10 years but my God is Ireland full of angry young women now. And the most depressed in Europe too according to a recent article in the Irish Times.
In all the jobs I’ve had (there’s been a lot, I’m a restless sort of character) most of the workforce were female. About half of my managers were female. My wages were advertised with the job. I would be earning more today had I not frequently changed job, gone travelling, gone back to college etc. They were my choices, I knew this might be the consequence. I reject this mantle of victimhood that is being pushed on me every time a bunch of women get on a talkshow. A talkshow about ANYTHING.
I recently discovered a place near me http://www.castlecootehouse.com/percy-french which offers a rare break out of the stifling groupthink we have going in Ireland. I went along and listened to a perfectly nice English academic tell a room full of Irish women how bad we had it under the awful Catholic church. She got some push back which I don’t think she was expecting. I’m beginning to meet other women who are just as fed up as me and not just shrugging it off anymore.
Please write a post about your experiences and viewpoints. You are of the age where we can all learn something.
That’s a very nice thing to say, I’m not sure if I could gather my thoughts into a coherent post, I’m a bit of a rambler! And I’d have to upgrade :-)
@henryracette Surely you have a response? It would be a shame for such a good conversation to end.
Henry.
Sorry to keep you waiting. I’m traveling on business this week, finishing the software for a new piece of industrial automation.
I’m going to ignore all of the comments of the “how do you know that’s true / have you done studies / maybe you’re projecting” variety. If you have an opinion that differs from mine, say so and we can talk about it. I’m happy to debate, but don’t want to spend time trying to defend things you haven’t specifically challenged with a contrary assertion.
Oh, and I could be wrong about any of this. I appreciate you taking the time to have a thoughtful discussion.
Well, no, that’s not precisely what I’m arguing. I’m not saying that men no longer need to be gentlemen because women are no longer ladylike. I’m saying that the culture now broadly condemns overt behavior that acknowledges the differences between men and women.
You’re making an argument different from my own. My argument is that feminism achieved its worthwhile goals decades ago, and has been destructive since then as it pushes, not to secure the accomplishment of legal equality, but to shift the culture in a host of other ways. Those relatively modest achievements are secure: women are in no danger of losing the vote or the right to control their property or their health care.
You say they “want more gains.” I don’t doubt it, and I don’t dispute that. But it’s beside the point of my argument.
Common sense says so. Listen, as I mentioned in an earlier comment, men and women have a fundamentally, vastly, and inherently different stake in sex. It is that difference that has driven our evolution, and that difference goes deep.
We are evolved based on what was, until half a century ago (and, truly, is still today) simple physical reality: sex is far more dangerous and expensive for women than for men. Half a century isn’t long enough to change what millennia have evolved.
[Update: On rereading, I notice your use of the term “sexual norms.” I don’t think I’ve disputed — certainly didn’t intend to — that “sexual norms” can change quickly. I’m arguing that human nature, including human sexual nature, does not change quickly. Sexual norms can be driven by all sorts of things, including misguided movements like modern feminism.]
I think you’re probably right, to the extent that the threats to survival are chronic and not acute. And, for most of our evolution, there were a lot of chronic threats to survival.
Irrelevant to my argument. I’m not arguing that feminists don’t think they have good reasons for being feminists. I’m arguing that they’re making things worse by being feminists.
I haven’t argued that feminism started anything. I’m arguing that feminism is destructive as currently practiced — that its contemporary goals are counterproductive to human happiness and thriving. I’m sure feminists disagree; I think they’re wrong.
The labor linkage is pretty obvious. If your culture is primarily agrarian or heavy-industrial, it’s a lot easier to pay for your children’s food if you have a strong person — that is, a man — doing the heavy lifting. But as the market shifts to more of a service and knowledge-worker footing, women can compete more effectively, and so greater participation in the market becomes more attractive.
As we grow more prosperous as a people, we’re better able to create the safety nets, the public services and benefits, that allow mothers without husbands or partners to safely raise their children. That, like the change in the nature of our economy, makes the financial security provided by husbands less important. That, in turn, makes it easier to eschew models of male-female relationship that actually work well and are satisfying to people — models based on an acknowledgement of and appreciation for the differences between men and women.
My apologies for snipping the quote but things were getting very long and tangled. Here is my response as it relates to feminism.
1 ) You have mentioned evolution considerably so we should probably start there. Humans are animals, precisely speaking we are sexual reproductive mammals . All animals have instincts that are necessary for survival and continuation of the species. Instincts aren’t really elective, they have to happen.
Sexual reproduction falls under that behavior. As far as we can tell humans have some control over it but not totally, just like sleeping, eating, and breathing. In terms of evolution this makes sense. Why would necessary behavior be elective? Genes that coded mandatory necessary behavior would have an edge over coded elective necessary behavior in most environments, unless those environments had some negative repercussion against that necessary behavior.
2 ) Because human sexual behavior is to a large degree necessary humans cannot really approach anything close to the platonic ideal of love. For the most part it is lust. Neurochemical reactions, resulting from seeing sexual cues to fertility, that last for a time and then end. The behavior is ultimately not a primary product of will but of need, because propagation matters more than someone’s ideals.
Now you might ask how I know that is more need than will. NSFG data tends to support the assertion. When roughly 98% of a population are having sex by the age of 44, and it hits 85% by 24, it would appear that humans have a need for sex. We witness the same behavior in other animals so it not surprising. The same data also finds that roughly 70% of both females and males have had 4 sexual partners or more in their lifetime, the average from the NSFG study was 3 for females and 6 for males.
If you don’t trust the NSFG here is the family institute’s, a conservative think tank in Utah, data for women’s number of sexual partners by age cohort. It tells a similar story of increasing sexual promiscuity.
3 ) More importantly human sexual behavior does not match with monogamous sexual behavior. Roughly 3% of mammal species are sexually monogamous, meaning that the two mate and remain their only sexual mate for the remainder of their life. Here again one should look to evolution for a little insight. Which behavior would have greater capacity for expansion? A behavior that selects only one mate or multiple mates? Kind of obvious that but for some certain environments having multiple sexual partners is like spreading out risk of offspring, some might be bad and some might be good.
Humans seem to be mildly polygynous. Meaning that human males compete for sexual access to multiple females. This assertion has a plethora of academic research. Genetic research on comparisons between male and female DNA contribution have found that twice as many females have contributed to the human genome as males, by tracking y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA. In some cases the competition was incredibly fierce.
Then there is the phenotypical research. Human male genitalia bares similar physical size and sexual performance to mildly polygnous species, which tend to be categorized as harem species. The human species is also midly dimorphic, meaning there are physical differences in height and muscle mass, and that is another trait associated with polygyny.
And last is the psychological research. Humans don’t find virtue attractive. Extensive research tends to find human males view youth and physical shape in gynoid fat attractive and females finding greater age, physical shape in muscle mass, height, wealth, and prestige attractive. To shorten that the male fertility cues are purely physical while female fertility cues are both physical and social.
Human sexuality therefore is not based on goodness in any objective way but rather about fitness of a mate.
4 ) As you mentioned with females they do invest more in offspring, that is after all one of the defining traits of mammals. But the reason for that is evolution. And that error in coding that led to mammals only had an impact because it was advantageous in that environment.
But that change didn’t just end there. It meant that males would have to provide a commensurate price to engage in sexual behavior with the female, whether that be in wealth or genetic quality. Women don’t copulate down, they copulate up.
5) Today monogamous marriage is the legal standard across most of the world. Yet all that research shows, both current and past, indicates that people don’t live sexually monogamous lives. Why is that?
The likely reason is that at some time in the past 8,000 years ago a change in environment meant that males could only afford one female mate, likely the fact that agrarian society is focused on growing food through farming and that requires considerable male labor. So legal monogamy became more commonplace.
As one can imagine that would probably suit the female’s sexual desires more than the male’s. Females get to have their pick of the males and get to have his resources exclusively to her offspring. Sexual market, environment, looks very favorable to women.
But then the industrial revolution happens. Male labor isn’t so important for work, decreasing the demand for male offspring, medical advancements decrease the chances for death due to pregnancy and disease and females begin to start working more outside the home in response to their ability to meet industrial labor requirements and the growing standard of living that industrialize nations are experiencing.
Since more females are living and females don’t copulate down but up that means the number of males to copulate up with has decreased and the cost for copulating has increased. But females still want to copulate, as that behavior is higher on the pecking order than the sexual price tag.
Then several world wars and the information revolution happens (think both internet and expansion of females in higher education), further declining the need for male labor and declining the number of males in the population further. The environment has changed. Females are now in a weaker position than they were 300 years ago and cannot negotiate the prices for sex they want.
The older human sexual behavior begins to resurface and sexual promiscuity becomes more commonplace, as during that previous period it was too costly for most males.
This is where Feminism comes in, which as a movement did start at roughly the same time the industrial revolution was spreading. Its a movement that seeks to find some kind of restitution for females. It seeks to find something to satiate that price setting cost for females.
The problem is that the environment, sexual market, just smacks that behavior down like gravity. The abundance of information (internet), operating sexual ratio, living standards of people in the western world completely break down that economy of the sexes which was “monogamous marriage”.
And that kind of is the point of my long essay here. The economic and evolutionary pressures that made monogamy the best operating model have changed and Feminism seeks, unwittingly, address that desire. But it can’t solve it and so the movement continues on. Its tragic in a way.
Its tragic in the same way that conservatism has no answer either. Both ideologies assume a degree of agency that humans don’t have and cannot implement, thus making both’s advice on the matter useless.
Could, thank you for a thoughtful and articulate comment. I largely agree, but I’ll make a few minor observations.
Point 1: Agreed.
Point 2: I’d qualify your observation that “humans cannot really approach anything close to the platonic ideal of love” by saying that I think that, if it’s true, it’s true only of sexual relationships. There are other relationships that, while probably ultimately rooted in a genetic imperative for survival (e.g., those with our children, extended family, and community) are nonetheless non-sexual.
Point 3: Agreed.
Point 4: Generally agree; I assume that by “error in coding” you simply meant “mutation.”
Point 5: There’s a lot here, and I disagree with some of it. Let me try to be clear.
While I think this is probably beside the point of my original post, let’s discuss it anyway.
One can imagine a variety of reasons why successful societies might have the effect of encouraging monogamous relationships — or, more to the point, marriage. Well-ordered societies cooperate better, build more infrastructure, build stronger armies (which is critical) and political institutions, and are more stable. Well-ordered societies impose rules on their members, regulating ownership and transfer of property and the use of violence. One of the things requiring regulation of some kind is the male sex drive, and it’s hardly surprising that, as the social order grows more complex, structures evolve to reduce the chaos that unrestricted male drive creates.
The point is, controlling human sexual behavior is just one part of what successful societies do, and they do it for reasons beyond the cost of raising a child and the woman’s ability to meet that cost by herself.
Or perhaps feminism has less to do with sexual cost and more to do with a drive for egalitarianism, as seems true of other kinds of civil rights activism. The suffrage movement, for example, predates most of the industrial revolution, all of the information revolution, and all of the world wars. In the U.S., it is roughly contemporaneous with the beginning of the abolitionist movement, and seems (to me) more likely to derive from a growing awareness of social inequity than from a sense of the shifting relative costs of sexual relationships.
One could argue that more modern feminism was inspired by the growing relative cost of sexuality for women that you assert, but I don’t think I would. Again, the beginning of the modern feminist movement is roughly contemporaneous with the push for full civil rights for minorities. If there is no reason to ascribe the latter to shifting sexual transaction costs, I see little reason to credit the former with it either.
The west’s traditional and growing attraction to egalitarianism, and the activism that springs from that, seem too broad, to me, to be explained by something as narrow as sexuality. So I am going to reject the causality you propose, in favor of a more general principle at work.
None of which really touches on my original proposition, which is that the things feminists strive to achieve are bad for women (and, mostly, for men).
For example, the demand for mandated higher payment for women — under the guise of “equal pay for equal work” — is most likely bad for women if, as seems probable, the reason women make less than men on average is that women, like men, make choices based on the relative values of things, and they value things differently from men. Forcing employers to ignore this reality must, it seems, either compel them to hire fewer women, or compel women to make choices contrary to their values. Neither is going to make women happier.
For example, denigrating token symbols of male protectiveness — holding doors, moderating speech, paying for dinner, etc. — weakens the cues that remind men that they are supposed to keep their greater drives, and their greater power, in check. That reduces the number of environments in which women can feel secure from male sexual advances, and the degree of that security.
For example, because women can not, generally speaking, equal or exceed men in drive, strength, aggression, and endurance, the demand for equality will tend to drag men down, Harrison Bergeron fashion, which isn’t good either for men or for the women who depend on them. We are not made stronger by making half of us weaker.
If women had not already achieved legal equality with men, I’d be a feminist. If modern feminism were about acknowledging the differences between men and women and encouraging both men and women to appreciate those differences and respect the vulnerabilities they create for women, I’d be a feminist. If either of those things were true, I wouldn’t say that feminism has long since achieved its only worthwhile goal, and should take a bow and leave the stage.
1 ) They are non-sexual but they are all ultimately tied to a selfish desire for survival. And love isn’t supposed to be about selfish survival. It is supposed to be about a conscious desire for the good of another without thought of benefit to the one giving said love.
2 ) This is a point where you and I disagree considerably. Your explanation assumes a degree of conscious planning, like there was some kind of edict from a King that made monogamy the rule or a community vote on the matter and arguments were provided for its passage.
Culture is downstream of genes and genes are downstream of environment. As mentioned with the 8,000 years and agrarian revolution the environment made monogamy the smart move. Likely beginner crop failures and the need for manual labor meant that there were considerably more males in settled populations than females. That environment, operating sexual ratio, would mean that women’s sexual desires had more leverage. So the “spontaneous order arising” from that environment would be one where women, who want favor long term investment (which is costly), have more say.
Hence the rise of monogamous marriage for most, as we know rather well there were many agrarian societies where males would have numerous sexual liasions–whether they were Henry 8’s serial wives or King Davids parallel massive harem.
Now this change in environment did have certain advantages. As you noted it correlated with rising populations and more order. That order was the cost of the females being imposed on males. Females required more time being spent with offspring and better behavior, which would serve interests of the females because less competition and violence means more living offspring (whereas in most polygynous species competing males slaughter rival offspring with no hesitation).
This is why, as I mentioned, in the modern day we are seeing less social cohesion and fatherless children. 8,000 years wasn’t even remotely enough time to alter the genome and make man something else. So when the environmental pressures went back to his favor he goes back to doing what his ancestors did 8,000 years and how many more before.
3 ) What do you think egalitarianism implies? It is supposed to mean that the women are equal with men right? Equal value being the main implication? Why? Because women, in aggregate, have felt the shift in environment and the environment put them at a lower value than men, sexual value being the major contributor. Let me give an example to clarify this for a second.
So lets look at 100 men and 100 women in 1800. At this time only 5 of the women have higher economic and social value than the men. So in terms of the sexual market (environment) 95 of the women can copulate up, meaning they are getting the value they think they are worth or more (and also meaning they think they are getting good genetic contribution). 5% of a population being in a bad spot isn’t that big a deal.
Now go to 2019 and look at 100 men and 100 women. Lets say that 40 of the 100 women are higher in economic and social value than the men. That is a large contingent of women who cannot copulate up. Some will have to settle but others won’t. And not even mentioned in this is that the change is also in the ratio of male to female, the operating sexual ratio. In 1800 there might be 110 men for every 100 women.
There is quite the selection to pick from due to numbers and male potential for investment, which means females value is high. Nowadays it is the reverse. Which means less cost, less material and behavioral investment, for sex and more ticked women–because they are valued less.
This ties back to feminism because its historical start in the early to mid 19th century. That is literally when the industrial revolution is occurring in the UK and starting in the USA. And where does first wave feminism start? The Anglosphere that is industrializing, Great Britain and the USA, particularly the industrializing north.
As to the abolitionist movement it predates feminism in both the USA and the UK. So egalitarianism as a principle isn’t likely to explain it otherwise the varying movements would have started at the same time and gained momentum together. And just like the US and UK the rest of the west has begun to experience these issues and are seeing the same results.
4 ) Feminism will continue to exist for as long as the current environment is what it is. So will the rising Meninist movement. Because the sexual market is in a very unique position. Many women have higher economic and social value then men which means that many women have limited “optimal” sexual partners and those men who are above women in social and economic value are having a heyday, because they can copulate with nearly all of the women.
Add in technological advancements, like cars, birth control (which were probably the result of the resulting operating sexual ratio and economic change), porn and dating apps and men can indulge their sexual passions with little need to alter behavior because they can find a woman who will indulge it, physically or on video. All those things drive down sex, and by extension the value of women.
5 ) Saying that feminism adds nothing can be said of practically any normative suggestions right now on sexual culture in the world. Telling men to hold doors or be nice to women won’t make them do it. Telling women to not open their legs will have the same effect. Telling people to “appreciate” the differences between the sexes will accomplish nothing.
Feminism argues for equality between the sexes because it already appreciates the fact that there are two sexes, otherwise there would be no reason to ask for equality. Feminism’s driving animus is the fact that the sexual market favors men so it asks for equality, which in effect is asking for compensating goods for its reduced sexual value. Until those compensating goods are met it won’t stop, and because of intra-sexual competition the bar for said compensating goods will increase with time.
Unless one is willing and able to rearrange the sexual operating ratio and inflate the value of men overall there will be no end to Feminism and no return to “conservative sexual norms”.