don't you think it's true? Here’s comedian Bill Burr on the inequality of ‘women’s rights’
Monday, March 8, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
More Islamic “Feminism” On Display Worldwide; Where is NOW?
NOW has always been criticized in the feminist front for failing to rally behind issues that really matter to most women. It was and still is too elitist in character that the question of whether they are really feminist in the true sense of the word continues to be raised. In the following article Debbie Schlussel issues a stinging rebuke to NOW but knowing NOW, they would just laugh this out.
Yet two more examples of Islamic feminism on display for the world to see. And, yet, predictably, the feminist hags from NOW (the National Organization for ugly Women) and other so-called women’s rights groups exhibit the usual crickets chirping. Utter silence.
First there is our “friend and ally in the War on Terror” (and the enabler of it), the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Don’t dare complain there . . . if you have female plumbing and aren’t accompanied by your male watcher. It could lead to some unwanted scars and a long, um, “vacation” from society.
A Saudi woman who filed harassment claims in Saudi Arabia without being accompanied by a male relative has been sentenced to 300 lashes and 18 months in jail, Human Rights Watch said.
Sawsan Salim lodged a series of complaints in 2007 at government offices and in court in the northern region of Qasim in which she alleged harassment by local officials, the New York-based rights group said. She was sentenced in January on charges of making “spurious complaints” against government officials and appearing “without a male guardian,” the group said in an e-mailed statement received today. . . .
Bandar bin Mohammed al-Aiban, president of the government- run Saudi Human Rights Commission, couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.
Ha! A Saudi Human Rights Commission? That’s gotta be the oxymoron of the year.
Then, there’s popular Indonesian musician, Ahmad Dhani.
The Indonesian music genius, who is the force behind super rock band Dewa 19, has publicly supported polygamy in a heated debate with a Muslim women’s movement leader in Jakarta.
“Polygamy in Islam doesn’t degrade women,” the spiritually inclined Dhani told Detik Hot. “Any Muslim woman who objects to it is insulting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Prophet Muhammad, who was a polygamist. . . .
Maria Ulfah, the outspoken leader of PP Fatayat NU said: “Do not equate ourselves with the prophet, Mr Ahmad Dhani.
“He was willing to marry an 80-year-old widow. But our men today mostly want to marry more than one wife because of sex.”
Yup, this is “civilization” in the Islamic world. As I always say, it’s unfair to say the Islamic clash with Islam is a “clash of civilizations.” After all, that assumes there are two civilizations.
And what is so different between those Muslims and the ones in the West (including America)? Nothing . . . other than reaching critical mass, which they’ll ultimately achieve here because we’ve done nothing to stop them.
And, of course, while all of this goes on, American feminists are more concerned with the important things . . . like women becoming members of all-male golf clubs or the next WNBA draft. Priorities and perspective–the two gifts of the women’s rights whiners.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Men as the Enemy: What Some Feminist Say
"My feelings about men are the result of my experience. I have little sympathy for them. Like a Jew just released from Dachau, I watch the handsome young Nazi soldier fall writhing to the ground with a bullet in his stomach and I look briefly and walk on. I don't even need to shrug. I simply don't care. What he was, as a person, I mean, what his shames and yearnings were, simply don't matter." Marilyn French; The Woman's Room.
"All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman." Catherine MacKinnon
"To call a man an animal is to flatter him; he's a machine, a walking dildo." Valerie Solanas
"I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig." Andrea Dworkin
"I feel that 'man-hating' is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them." Robin Morgan
"The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race." -- Sally Miller Gearhart, in The Future - If There Is One - Is Female.
"If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males." --Mary Daly, former Professor at Boston College, 2001 http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/r/roberts/03/roberts081203.htm
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Feminist Laws Persecute Men
by Stephen Baskerville Ph.D.
(Abridged by Henry Makow)
Men accused of rape today enjoy few safeguards. "People can be charged with virtually no evidence," says Boston former sex-crimes prosecutor Rikki Klieman. "If a female comes in and says she was sexually assaulted, then on her word alone, with nothing else -- and I mean nothing else, no investigation -- the police will go out and arrest someone."
(Abridged by Henry Makow)
Men accused of rape today enjoy few safeguards. "People can be charged with virtually no evidence," says Boston former sex-crimes prosecutor Rikki Klieman. "If a female comes in and says she was sexually assaulted, then on her word alone, with nothing else -- and I mean nothing else, no investigation -- the police will go out and arrest someone."
Almost daily we see men released after decades in prison because DNA testing proves they were wrongly convicted. Yet the rape industry is so powerful that proof of innocence is no protection.
"A defendant who can absolutely prove his innocence ... can nonetheless still be convicted, based solely on the word of the accuser," write Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson in Until Proven Innocent. In North Carolina, simply "naming the person accused" along with the time and place "will support a verdict of guilty." Crime laboratories are notorious for falsifying results to obtain convictions.
'WOMEN NEVER LIE'
The feminist dogma that "women never lie" goes largely unchallenged. "Any honest veteran sex assault investigator will tell you that rape is one of the most falsely reported crimes," says Craig Silverman, a former Colorado prosecutor known for zealous prosecutions. Purdue University sociologist Eugene Kanin found that "41% of the total disposed rape cases were officially declared false" during a nine-year period, "that is, by the complainant's admission that no rape had occurred."
In the infamous Duke University lacrosse case, prosecutor Michael Nifong suppressed exculpating evidence and prosecuted men he knew to be innocent, according to Taylor and Johnson. Nifong himself was eventually disbarred, but he had willing accomplices among assistant prosecutors, police, crime lab technicians, judges, the bar, and the media.
"Innocent men are arrested and even imprisoned as a result of bogus claims," writes Linda Fairstein, former head of the sex-crimes unit for the Manhattan District Attorney, who estimates that half of all reports are unfounded.
Innocence projects are almost wholly occupied with rape cases (though they try to disguise this fact). Yet no systematic investigation has been undertaken by the media or civil libertarians into why so many innocent citizens are so easily incarcerated on fabricated allegations. The exoneration of the Duke students on obviously trumped-up charges triggered few investigations -- and no official ones -- to determine how widespread such rigged justice is against those unable to garner media attention.
MEDIA COMPLICITY
The world of rape accusations displays features similar to other feminist gender crimes: media invective against the accused, government-paid "victim advocates" to secure convictions, intimidation of anyone who defends the accused. "Nobody dependent on the mainstream media for information about rape would have any idea how frequent false claims are," write Taylor and Johnson.
"Most journalists simply ignore evidence contradicting the feminist line." What they observe of rape characterizes feminist justice generally: "calling a rape complainant 'the victim' -- with no 'alleged'." "Unnamed complainants are labeled 'victims' even before legal proceedings determine that a crime has been committed," according to CMR.
Rape hysteria, false accusations, and distorted scholarship are rampant on university campuses, which ostensibly exist to pursue truth. "If a woman did falsely accuse a man of rape," opines one "women's studies" graduate, "she may have had reasons to. Maybe she wasn't raped, but he clearly violated her in some way."
This mentality pervades feminist jurisprudence, precluding innocence by obliterating the distinction between crime and hurt feelings. A Vassar College assistant dean believes false accusations foster men's education: "I think it ideally initiates a process of self-exploration.... 'If I didn't violate her, could I have?'"
Conservative critics of the Duke fiasco avoided feminism's role but instead emphasized race -- a minor feature of the case but a safer one to criticize. Little evidence indicates that white people are being systematically incarcerated on fabricated accusations of non-existent crimes against blacks. This is precisely what is happening to men, both white and black, accused of rape and other "gender" crimes that feminists have turned into a political agenda.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE = PROSECUTION OF MALES
Like rape, domestic "violence" is defined so loosely that it need not be violent. The U.S. Justice Department definition includes "extreme jealousy and possessiveness" and "name calling and constant criticizing."
For such "crimes" men are jailed with no trial. In fact, the very category of "domestic" violence was developed largely to circumvent due process requirements of conventional assault statutes. A study published in Criminology and Public Policy found that no one accused of domestic violence could be found innocent, since every arrestee received punishment.
Here, too, false accusations are rewarded. "Women lie every day," attests Ottawa Judge Dianne Nicholas. "Every day women in court say, 'I made it up. I'm lying. It didn't happen' -- and they're not charged."
Amazingly, bar associations sponsor seminars instructing women how to fabricate accusations. Thomas Kiernan, writing in the New Jersey Law Journal, expressed his astonishment at "the number of women attending the seminars who smugly -- indeed boastfully -- announced that they had already sworn out false or grossly exaggerated domestic violence complaints against their hapless husbands, and that the device worked!" He added, "The lawyer-lecturers invariably congratulated the self-confessed miscreants."
Domestic violence has become "a backwater of tautological pseudo-theory," write Donald Dutton and Kenneth Corvo in Aggression and Violent Behavior. "No other area of established social welfare, criminal justice, public health, or behavioral intervention has such weak evidence in support of mandated practice."
FALSE CLAIMS A STRATEGY
Scholars and practitioners have repeatedly documented how "allegations of abuse are now used for tactical advantage" in custody cases and "become part of the gamesmanship of divorce." Domestic abuse has become "an area of law mired in intellectual dishonesty and injustice," according to the Rutgers Law Review.
Restraining orders removing men from their homes and children are summarily issued without any evidence. Due process protections are so routinely ignored that, the New Jersey Law Journal reports, one judge told his colleagues, "Your job is not to become concerned about the constitutional rights of the man that you're violating."
Attorney David Heleniak calls New Jersey's statute "a due process fiasco" in the Rutgers Law Review. New Jersey court literature openly acknowledges that due process is ignored because it "perpetuates the cycle of power and control whereby the [alleged?] perpetrator remains the one with the power and the [alleged?] victim remains powerless." Omitting "alleged" is standard even in statutes, where, the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly reports, "the mere allegation of domestic abuse ... may shift the burden of proof to the defendant."
Special "integrated domestic violence courts" presume guilt and then, says New York's openly feminist chief judge, "make batterers and abusers take responsibility for their actions." They can seize property, including homes, without the accused being convicted or even formally charged or present to defend himself.
Lawyer Walter Fox describes these courts as "pre-fascist": "Domestic violence courts ... are designed to get around the protections of the criminal code. The burden of proof is reduced or removed, and there's no presumption of innocence."
Forced confessions are widespread. Pennsylvania men are incarcerated unless they sign forms stating, "I have physically and emotionally battered my partner." The man must then describe the violence, even if he insists he committed none. "I am responsible for the violence I used," the forms declare. "My behavior was not provoked."
CHILD SUPPORT CHOKE-HOLD
Equally feminist is the child-support machinery, whereby millions have their family finances plundered and their lives placed under penal supervision without having committed any legal infraction. Once they have nothing left to loot, they too are incarcerated without trial.
Contrary to government propaganda (and Common Law tradition), child support today has little to do with fathers abandoning their children, deserting their marriages, or even agreeing to a divorce. It is automatically assessed on all non-custodial parents, even those involuntarily divorced without grounds ("no-fault"). It is an entitlement for all divorcing mothers, regardless of their actions, and coerced from fathers, regardless of their fidelity.
The "deadbeat dad" is far less likely to be a man who abandoned the offspring he callously sired than to be a loving father who has been, as attorney Jed Abraham writes in From Courtship to Courtroom, "forced to finance the filching of his own children."
Federalized enforcement was rationalized to reimburse taxpayers for welfare. Under feminist pressure, taxpayers instead subsidize middle-class divorce, through federal payments to states based on the amount of child support they collect. By profiting off child support at federal taxpayer expense, state governments have a financial incentive to encourage as many single-mother homes as possible. They, in turn, encourage divorce with a guaranteed, tax-free windfall to any divorcing mother.
While child support (like divorce itself) is awarded ostensibly without reference to "fault," nonpayment brings swift and severe punishments. "The advocates of ever-more-aggressive measures for collecting child support," writes Bryce Christensen of Southern Utah University, "have moved us a dangerous step closer to a police state."
GULAG FOR 'DEADBEAT DADS'
... Assembly-line hearings can last 30 seconds to two minutes, during which parents are sentenced to months or years in prison. Many receive no hearing but are accused in an "expedited judicial process" before a black-robed lawyer known as a "judge surrogate."
Because these officials require no legislative confirmation, they are not accountable to citizens or their representatives. Unlike true judges, they may lobby to create the same laws they adjudicate, violating the separation of powers. Often they are political activists in robes. One surrogate judge, reports the Telegraph of Hudson, New Hampshire, simultaneously worked "as a radical feminist lobbying on proposed legislation" dealing with child support.
Though governments sensationalize "roundups" of alleged "deadbeat dads," who are jailed for months and even years without trial, no government information whatever is available on incarcerations.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics is utterly silent on child-support incarcerations. Rebecca May of the Center for Family Policy and Practice found "ample testimony by low-income non-custodial parents of spending time in jail for the nonpayment of child support." Yet she could find no documentation of their incarceration...
We know the arrests are extensive. To relieve jail overcrowding in Georgia, a sheriff and judge proposed creating detention camps specifically for "deadbeat dads." The Pittsburgh City Planning Commission has considered a proposal "to convert a former chemical processing plant ... into a detention center" for "deadbeat dads."
Rendered permanently in debt by incarceration, fathers are farmed out to trash companies and similar concerns, where they work 14-16 hour days with their earnings confiscated.
MORE MALICIOUS MAYHEN
Other incarcerations are also attributable to feminism. The vast preponderance of actual violent crime and substance abuse proceeds from single-parent homes and fatherless children more than any other factor, far surpassing race and poverty. The explosion of single parenthood is usually and resignedly blamed on paternal abandonment, with the only remedy being ever-more draconian but ineffective child-support "crackdowns."
Yet no evidence indicates that the proliferation of single-parent homes results from absconding fathers. If instead we accept that single motherhood is precisely what feminists say it is -- the deliberate choice of their sexual revolution -- it is then apparent that sexual liberation lies behind not only these newfangled sexual crimes, but also the larger trend of actual crime and incarceration. Feminism is driving both the criminalization of the innocent and the criminality of the guilty.
We will continue to fight a losing battle against crime, incarceration, and expansive government power until we confront the sexual ideology that is driving not only family breakdown and the ensuing social anomie, but the criminalization of the male population.
Ever-more-repressive penal measures will only further erode freedom. Under a leftist regime, conservatives must rethink their approach to crime and punishment and their unwitting collusion with America's homegrown Stalinists.
Stephen Baskerville is associate professor of government at Patrick Henry College and author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Anti-Feminism: What Is It?
By Pranav S. Atit - 3/24/2008
The feminism in this era was, however, restricted to eradicate the suppression of women. The feminist movement achieved its aims and now seeks higher status for women than for men. Then emerged different classes of feminist and thus it lost its basic foundation. Anti- feminist ideas then arose.
It is therefore, important do define anti-feminism to know what the ideology is aims to achieve.
INTERPRETATIONS OF FEMINISM AND ANTI-FEMINISM
Feminism originated as the belief that women should not be disadvantaged by their sex, that they should be recognized as having human dignity equal to that of men, and that they should have the opportunity to live as fulfilling and freely chosen lives as men can.
Feminism comprises a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities and discrimination against women. Feminism is also described as an ideology focusing on equality of both sexes.
Modern feminist political activists commonly campaign for a woman's right to bodily integrity and autonomy on matters such as reproductive rights, including the right to abortion, access to contraception and quality prenatal care; for protection from domestic violence; against sexual harassment and rape; for workplace rights, including maternity leave and equal pay; and against other forms of discrimination.3
Feminism is both an intellectual commitment and a political movement that seeks justice for women and the end of sexism in all forms. ...motivated by the quest for social justice, feminist inquiry provides a wide range of perspectives on social, cultural, and political phenomena.
Feminism is divided into liberal feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, post-structural feminism, black feminism, third world feminism, secular feminism, post colonial feminism, etc. Feminism has been thus divided into many varieties leaving the term to be misused and the basic purpose of the term being disregarded. While the liberal feminists assert on equality, the radical feminists aim to reconstruct the society. The scope of feminism has been expanded to such an extent that the fundamentals of feminism have been misplaced.
Anti-feminism refers to the opposition to feminism. Anti-feminism is also defined in a negative context as male-chauvinism and therefore sexism, or masculinism. It can also be said that since feminism is interested in women’s rights, anti-feminism is against women’s rights.
We need to take each of the components in detail to analyze if anti-feminism is in fact related to any of them or only an ideology against the negatives of feminism.
ANTI-FEMINISM v. SEXISM OR MALE CHAUVINISM AND MASCULINISM
Sexism is the discrimination against people based on their sex. It includes male and female chauvinism.
Male Chauvinism is an activity indicative of belief in the superiority of men over women.4
Arthur Schopenhauer, a male chauvinist, claimed that "woman is by nature meant to obey."
Anti-feminism has no such ideal. Anti-feminists oppose feminism.
The superiority of men over women is in fact more expounded in theories of feminists showing the sufferings of women.
As in The Second Sex Book5 by the noted feminist, Simone de Beauvoir, it is stated “Now, woman has always been man’s dependant, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shared the world in equality. And even today woman is heavily handicapped, though her situation is beginning to change. Almost nowhere is her legal status the same as man’s, and frequently it is much to her disadvantage. Even when her rights are legally recognized in the abstract, long-standing custom prevents their full expression in the mores”. The author has made a deliberate attempt to show that there is superiority of men over women. She has also expressly stated that women are “heavily handicapped” even in the present world, although actually, women have advanced and are no more dependant on men.
Anti-feminists on the other hand propound that women have advanced in all spheres and share equal status in the world and due to this reason feminism is not required.
The view of anti-feminists that women are not dependant on men and that they share equal status, shows that this ideology is very different from male chauvinism.
Masculinism is associated with men’s rights and seeks to promote them. Masculinism, like anti-feminism, is also a response to feminism, but masculinism gets into concerns of equal child rights and social issues affecting men’s rights.
Masculinism is thus a counterpart of feminism and seeks to empower males in society and redress discrimination against them. Anti-feminists differ from masculists as anti-feminism is an ideology against feminism rather than an advocacy of male rights.
FEMINISM AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS
Feminism is automatically associated with women’s rights and benefit by the people. Women’s rights include physical protection and safety, emotional protection, appreciation for her being a unique human being and the right to express her opinions.
It is clamed that feminism is not against homemakers and is all about choice.
In The Second Sex, 19496 by Simone de Beauvoir it is said “A parasite sucking out the living strength of another organism...the housewife's labor does not even tend toward the creation of anything durable.... Woman's work within the home is not directly useful to society, produces nothing. The housewife is subordinate, secondary, and parasitic. It is for their common welfare that the situation must be altered by prohibiting marriage as a 'career' for woman.”
Feminism is profoundly opposed to traditional conceptions of how families should be organized, since the very existence of full-time homemakers is incompatible with the views of feminism.
Years after the beginning of the modern feminist movement, there is yet an astronomically increased number of single mothers, teenage mothers and women in their 40's struggling with infertility, women are sexualized and coerced into selling themselves, there is also the triple talaq system, deterioration of family values, thus, the women do not have a sense of physical or emotional security. If feminism is a movement for women's rights and for improving the position of women, its ultimate test should be a reality check of women's well-being, security, in which case it has failed.
The foundation that anti-feminism is against women’s rights is because it is automatically assumed that feminism is working toward women’s rights but it is clear that it has not achieved much.
CONCLUSION
Anti-feminism is, thus, not male chauvinism or masculinism as is generally believed.
Anti-feminists point out that feminists impose tremendous pressure on traditional women by denigrating the role of a traditional housewife.
Anti-feminism as a term is also used by feminists to call others within the group of feminists who do not have the same ideas. Feminism is full of clashes and has misplaced its basic aim of women’s rights.
Anti-feminists point out that feminism has not succeeded in its main goal and has diverted to other interpretations and has also been misused. There have been many cases, recently, of the misuse of the dowry laws under IPC 498A by women using them as a weapon against their husband and his family. Even a three year old child has been arrested as due to these stringent laws7. There are anti-feminist organizations like the Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF) which work as an advocacy group against the alleged abuses of domestic violence legislation in India, and provide support for men and their families who have suffered intimate partner violence or have been accused of domestic violence themselves.
Antifeminists furthermore point out cases when feminist policies and regulations are detrimental to both female self-esteem and the areas, which such policies are applied to, referring to cases of "special treatment" and lower requirements particularly in physically demanding professions, like military and rescue services. Since women who are hired are trained to handle less demanding tasks, reducing effectiveness of a unit, while still making it impossible to refuse hiring them.
Defining anti-feminism is a tough task like defining any other social ideology as there are always going to be differences of opinions.
Anti-feminism, thus, refers to the opposition against feminism in some or all of its form. As, feminists have failed to achieve their objective and have deviated from it, anti-feminism looks to prevent feminism from spreading its malpractices.
This article first appeared on Global Politician
Monday, March 1, 2010
Antifeminism
Antifeminism is opposition to feminism in some or all of its forms.
In the narrow sense the term antifeminism connotates individuals, organisations or ideologies which criticise or reject feminism of the modern industrial countries of the West, claiming that the use of the feminist ideology in its praxis did more damage than good. These critics primarly refer to radical feminism which antifeminists accuse of encouraging misandry and female sexism.
For these reasons the term antifeminism has started to signify feminists who criticise feminism for straying into extremism.
Antifeminist stances
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, 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.
Antifeminist writer Jim Kalb describes the stance 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 criticise the misandric policies of Western governments, including anti-male discrimination in the areas of reproductive rights, child custody, alimony, and property division in divorce, pointing to statistical figures. They also object to affirmative action/ positive discrimination, against men in the form of quotas in the areas of employment, education, politics, and healthcare
Antifeminists sometimes point to an increase in divorce and family breakdown and attribute as its cause the influence of feminism. They also cite that crime, teenage pregnancy, and drug abuse are higher among children of fatherless homes, considering that 66-80% (depending on the source) of divorces are initiated by women and that single mothers are accountable for 49% of all child abuse cases.
Furthermore, antifeminists argue that feminist organizations and researchers frequently use fake statistical data and research, pointing out a number of cases where such incidents have occurred.
Antifeminists say that feminists impose tremendous pressure on traditional women by denigrating the role of a traditional housewife, instead promoting the business woman, woman leader models, as well encouraging women into competitive environments, where they may not be able to perform as well as males, if only for purely physical reasons.
Antifeminists point out cases when feminist policies and regulations are detrimental to female self-esteem. For example, women sometimes receive "special treatment" in the form of gender norming, which is lowering physical fitness requirements for women in some professions such as military and rescue services. Women who are hired are expected to handle less physically demanding tasks, which may reduce effectiveness of a unit. These policies make it impossible to refuse hiring women.
Those who have been called Anti-feminists, but eschew the label themselves
Feminists such as Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, Jean Bethke Elshtain and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese have been labeled "antifeminists", or holders of antifeminist views, by other feminists because of their positions regarding oppression and lines of thought within feminism (which Sommers has controversially defined as gender feminism). Authors Patai and Koertge argue that by labeling these women "anti-feminists", the intention is to silence them and prevent any debate on the state of feminism. It 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.".
Other feminists such as media critic Jennifer Pozner claim that Paglia, Sommers, Elshtain and Fox-Genovese use the feminist label as a ruse. In describing what she believes is a method of "so-called rebel feminists" who use "Leftist lingo to gain rebellious credibility in a supposedly politically correct culture," she identifies what she argues is a contradiction: "[they] [b]ecome vocally indignant at [other feminists] refusal to tolerate [their] 'dissenting feminist voice'" and then "[g]o 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." and "(...) substantiate your claims by using faulty research methods and superficial interviews. Rarely contact the authors, activists and psychologists you libel."
Antifeminist organizations
As of 2008[update] the most successful antifeminist organization in the US is STOP ERA, now known as Eagle Forum, 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 other conservative organizations, 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.
Outside the United States, organised antifeminist groups have been conspicuously less successful. In Australia, Babette Francis has led Endeavour Forum (formerly "Women Who Want to be Women") for over twenty-five years, but has failed to halt ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), as well as the eventual introduction of medical abortion in Australia, and the successive liberalisation of laws related to abortion in Australia within every state and territory . REAL Women of Canada has similarly failed to halt same sex marriage and decriminalisation of abortion in Canada, while Britain has never had an organised antifeminist group of its own, and New Zealand's "Women for Life" (1983-2004) ceased to exist several years ago.
Source: Wikipedia
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)