Closed captioned
Waaaaay
back in 1998, I didn't have a blog (of course, very few people did) but
I had a web page into which I wrote various opinion pieces. I wrote the
following satirical piece "The Wisdom of Feminism" to point out some
contradictions that I had back then observed in the mainstream feminist
thought. Before writing this piece, I only had any real experience with
Finnish feminism (which may here explain certain cross-cultural issues
in some points), but now that I re-read this article after everything
that I have read and learned since then, certain issues truly seem to
be surprisingly universal and don't need much meta-level translation.
Of course, the Finnish feminists typically just copied brainlessly what
they had read in books and other publications by the American
feminists. I now even remember the feminist writings where I copied
most of the phrases that I here use to describe the feminist opinion in
general.
So to educate and amuse my readers here in 2006, here is this old piece of mine again, this time translated in English. I have annotated the text with a couple of footnotes, written from the present-day point of view, to point out a few additional things.
Despite being satire, I hope at least one feminist reading this will recognize some of her opinions and thus become a bit more aware about contradictions in her worldview. But then again, logical consistency is an oppressive tool of patriarchy, since the holistic women's way of knowing can't be forced into such restrictive constraints. Or something.
Situation: A woman complains that she feels like this one man at her workplace sometimes looks at her too long, as if he desired her sexually. The woman feels bad about this.
Feminists: "No woman has to tolerate anything like that in her life. Go to your boss right now and demand that the sexist pig is fired immediately. In situations like this, always remember the simple rule of thumb: it is harassment if the woman feels like it. If your boss doesn't obey this demand, make the situation public and get good compensation for your suffering."
Situation: A blue-collar man thinks that another man at his workplace of physical work is homosexual. Therefore he doesn't want to share the locker room with him, since the idea of a gay man looking at him in the shower makes him uncomfortable.
Feminists: "You are one stupid homophobe! Why do you think that every homosexual would want to look at your naked body? Listen now, homosexuals have better things to do than ogle a fat and ugly middle-aged man such as you. [1] Your fears of lusty gays just emerge from the fact that you are secretly gay! You know, you seem to realize that you are gay, but stubbornly refuse to admit it. Just accept the fact that you are gay, so the whole issue doesn't bother you so much."
Situation: At the woman's request, a doctor is going to abort a pregnancy, since the fetus is female, disabled, non-white, carries the (currently only hypothetical) gene for homosexuality etc.
Feminists: "That's horrible, and you just can't do that! Think of the social consequences of selective abortions. They are tools of eugenics and oppression, boo hoo hoo, you are just like Hitler and nazis. Here we see once again how the white heterosexual men can't accept minorities who are different but want all people to be just like them. Men just try to use invasive medicine to eliminate all diversity, unable to accept that different groups have different abilities but are all equally good. This crime against humanity must be stopped immediately!"
Situation: At the woman's request, a doctor is going to abort a pregnancy, and the fetus would be male, able-bodied, white and carries no bad genes.
Feminists: [cheerfully] "No problemo!"
Situation: A woman, fresh back from her Mediterranean vacation, gushes to her girlfriends how the men over there were so wonderful. Those men constantly kept telling her what beautiful eyes and smile she has, and then in bed they were so exciting that words fail her. So totally different from the disgusting, patriarchal and unenlightened Finnish men. During her trip, the woman met Abdullah, fell fiercely in love with his chocolate eyes and intends now to marry her and pay his airplane tickets so that they can start a family here.
Feminists: "Ooh, that's so wonderful! Tell us more!"
Situation: A man, fresh back from his Far East vacation, tells his chums how women there treated him very differently than women in here. And not just in bed, where they were total sex machines. Therefore he intends to give up the Finnish women completely, and bring an Asian girl over here so that they can start a family in the cold but affluent North.
Feminists: Now that is truly horrible oppression of women! When men can't handle the idea of strong independent women that they can't treat any way they want, they must bring in women from third world as sex toys, maids and cooks. Such trade in women violates the human rights of all women and our society can't give any signal of it being acceptable. Ladies, we must pass a law that bans such mixed marriages between Finnish men and Asian women, and meanwhile go to the airport to organize a demonstration against these women! [2]
Situation: Employers do not have a duty to hire the female applicant, when both men and women apply. Women don't have quotas in fields in which they are underrepresented but in which salary and social status are higher than average, and the university examinations are the same for men and women. Since schoolgirls are typically more interested in horseback riding and various airheaded soft science fields than in math and science, women tend to be underrepresented in many lucrative fields in which math and science are prerequisites.
Feminists: "Here we see it again how women are second class citizens and oppressed."
Situation: Men have a legal obligation of spending a year of their lives in military service, during which they are de facto slaves with no more rights or freedoms. [3] Women have no such duties, but they can start their adult lives and go study immediately, or spend the year sitting on a sofa eating chocolate. If the war breaks out, every man is expected to sacrifice his health and life to protect women who spend their time in safety, far away from the front. The same applies in every single crisis or emergency, where the principle "women and children first" never wavers.
Feminists: "Well... we guess that's kind of wrong, if you want to think about it that way. But to oppose that... I don't think we'll bother. Besides, instead of military service, women give birth to children so they should stay home... omygod strike that back, of course they don't have to. [look around] Hey, is that my phone?"
Situation: A female athlete could compete in some sport, e.g. skeet shooting, equally with men. Yet, men and women don't compete together in such sports but have their own series.
Feminists: "Now there's the true nature of the male sportsmanship again for us to see. It doesn't matter in any sport what you have between your legs. It's not like you shoot the clay targets with your penis, ha ha! The fragile male ego just can't take the idea of losing to women. God, are you men just pitiful fools, or what?"
Situation: In virtually every single sport, men completely dominate. Usually this difference between sexes is so massive that the best female athelete in the world could perhaps compete with the best men of some county-level championship. Therefore women get their own special series in which they can compete without men coming over and humiliate them, and they get to pretend that winning such a series is just as great as winning the men's series.
Feminists: "Is this men's idea of fun, getting to use their size and strength advantage to tackle women? Do you seriously think that a woman could compete with men in running or in some stupid ballgame? There should be separate series for men and women in all sports, sorry I mean in sports where men are better. This way also women get to compete without some man coming in and being totally sovereign."
Situation: Young anarchists smash the windows and ruin the walls of fur and meat stores.
Feminists: "Of course, we can't allow all illegal things. But these young citizen activists should be listened to and understood, since they may have something important to tell. It's the young who inherit the world we leave them so they worry about these important issues. Therefore in high schools, junior highs and even in the elementary schools there should be discussion lectures where representatives of all kinds of alternative activist organizations could present their views. We think that our rigid patriarchal society should have an open mind and listen to alternative views. The mainstream shouldn't always rule, but some alternative thinking is often good!"
Situation: Representatives of industry organize an educational campaign for schools about how nuclear energy is a good thing.
Feminists: "How on earth it could be possible to organize brainwashing sessions in the Finnish schools? Oh geez, the patriarchy tells young and impressionable kids that energy and high standard of living are somehow good things. And certainly they will not give any time for alternative views, but keep obsessing about the engineer-technocrat propaganda that we have proven to be wrong a million times. Doesn't even one of you atomic lords remember the millions of people who died in Chernoble, Harrisburg and Hiroshima, and the hundreds of billions of damage? What the heck is wrong with our system when you can tell kids that nuclear energy is good, but leave them blissfully ignorant of that the same money invested in alternative medicine instead of the hypertechnological and phallic mainstream medicine could eradicate all illnesses on Earth? Or the fact that a fragment of a pot found by an archeologist without a doubt proves that the Sovi... I mean, the neolithic era was a peaceful female-ruled time with no war or poverty or rape? But the male hegemony will never let people know about this!"
Situation: A man claims that men are naturally stronger and more talented, and have more initiative and ability. Therefore they tend to be overrepresented at the top of society and especially the business world.
Feminists: "There you see again how our decades-long attempt to educate people has been wasted. How much more work do we feminists have to do for you stupid men to understand that men and women are equal? Your stubborn denial of truth only proves that you men are afraid of strong and independent women, with your fragile male ego shattering if you ever lose to them."
Situation: A man and a woman plan and execute a crime and get caught. The court will usually decide the man to be more responsible and thus gets a harsher punishment. The man will go to jail while the woman typically gets only probation. In the unlikely event of the woman being sent to jail, this is not too bad since compared to men's prisons, the women's prisons are more like vacation centers.
Feminists: "Now there is absolutely nothing wrong there, if that's what you are trying to say! It's clear that in a situation like that, a man and a woman can never be equals. I bet that the man had tempted or forced that woman to be his conspirator, and thus deserves his harsher punishment. I wouldn't be surprised if the man had threatened to leave that woman if she refused to participate in the crime. And what the heck is wrong in women's prisons being more comfortable than men's? Do you really want the women to rot in cold cells instead of living normal lives with their children? You must be a real misogynist to want something like that."
Situation: In a movie, instead of the typical aristocratic blond man, the villain is a homosexual, female, non-white etc. The hero, a white straight man, wins by killing the villain and his henchmen, and the audience likes this. [4]
Feminists: "It's not hard to see where all the hatred towards women and minorities comes from. The entertainment industry is ruled by men and its products are aimed at men. There doesn't seem to be much hope in creating change in male thinking as long as they are brainwashed with garbage like that to hate women and other oppressed minorities."
Situation: In a movie, hero(in)es are morally superior minorities who, by their wits and skills, humiliate and defeat the stupid and mean villains who are white males. No matter how much bad the latter try to do, the brave hero(in)es defeat them each time. And while we are at it, other oppressed minorities are given the chance to hurt the hated white males.
Feminists: "What a great flick! It tells a lot about the male ego that they refuse to like an alternative movie in which they are not the good-guy winners and heroes."
Situation: A member of an ideological movement X that feminists generally dislike says something that feminists find offensive.
Feminists: "Even if that one slip was just an isolated event, and it is not, it is a rather worrisome revelation about the way all supporters of X really think. I am really scared that the ideology X and its supporters are creating a backlash against women. Has all feminist work so far been in vain, and will the equality be thrown to garbage like a used dirty rag? All members of X and especially its leaders must now publically make penance and announce that they support our ideas of equality."
Situation: Feminism becomes a target of criticism about its some ideological hypocricy or contradiction which is claimed to be an essential part of feminism since it either follows from the basic axioms of feminism or is in practice supported by the majority of feminists.
Feminists: "The criticism like that badly misses the point, even though somebody who calls herself a feminist might have said something like that. Feminism is not a movement that forces its adherents to think uniformly in certain way. It's more of a way of thinking and observing the world in a cool and alternative fashion. It follows that for you to be able to ascribe anything negative to feminism, you must first ensure that every feminist in the world really believes it. Because how could you otherwise claim that something really is a part of feminism? When you think about it, you'll see that feminism simply cannot contain anything bad or negative or contradictory."
Situation: Some man who believes in equality suggests that during the first weeks of pregnancy, a man could sign a paper giving up his parenthood and all rights and responsibilities that follow. The pregnant woman could then freely continue the pregnancy or abort.
Feminists: "And here we see again how men just want to use women as sex machines to throw away if they should get pregnant. Sorry, women refuse to be used for sex by men for their pleasure, since we want commitment. If a man doesn't want to become a father and pay child support, use contraceptives or keep his zipper closed. If a man chooses to have sex, he is aware of the possible pregnancy and automatically agrees to be fully responsible for it. There are no arguments against this, and if you don't want to accept it, that's your problem. It is not a question of fairness or equality, since pregnancy is a naturally unfair event. It is just natural that sex can lead to pregnancy. If this happens, the man should pay for it and not just selfishly think about his own freedom --- and if that scumbad won't, government should force him to do so."
Situation: A man opposes abortion and argues that if a woman chooses to have sex, she is aware of the possible pregnancy and automatically agrees to be fully responsible for it. If a woman doesn't want a child, then she should not have sex. If the women don't like this, don't come whining to men how you can't be responsible for your own choices.
Feminists: "What possible right have men to assume that mere consent to sex somehow makes women responsible to carry and raise a child for the next twenty years? This is totally horrendous enslavement of women and oppression of their natural sexuality. The women's sexuality must be a pretty frightening topic for men, since they have punish it by forcing women who just seek pleasure to give birth to children. Do you seriously claim that women who have sex must take the small risk of contraceptives failing? Sorry, that is just sick misogyny. Feminism clearly still has lot of work left in eliminating the anti-woman attitudes of men."
Situation: Men do better than women and are overrepresented in some field in education. [5]
Feminists: "I'm sure you really want to claim that this somehow proves men to be more intelligent. This is not the case, but the real reason is the brainwash that patriarchy [6] does to young girls to believe that they wouldn't do as well in that field as boys. There are countless reasons why women are underrepresented in that particular field, and none of them is in any way related to their different mental skills and abilities. These reasons don't disappear by you refusing to acknowledge them and opposing quotas to girls."
Situation: Women do better than men and are overrepresented in some field in education.
Feminists: "Hah, it looks like that women just do have more innate ability in that field. So what do you guys think now that it is men who need help? The entrance exams are equal and treat everybody the same way, so what could you possibly want in top of this? Certainly not quotas, since you can't compete with the modern independent and intelligent women? Of course we feminists would like to have equal results in that particular field also, but we don't really feel like doing anything for it, since if you men don't want to use the options already available to you, tough luck. We have already done everything possible."
[1] Yes, this is what certain feminists argued when some Finnish men complained about homosexual men in the public pools and saunas. I wonder what would happen if men ever tried the same defense when a woman complains about sexual harassment.
[2] Yes, the Finnish feminists once really did organize such a demonstration. No accusations of racism were ever flinged, as I recall.
[3] This is how it worked in a nation of five million people that shared a long border with Soviet Union.
[4] I would like to point that this was years before I had read anything by Steve Sailer, even though I use the words "aristocratic blond". Curiously enough, I can no longer remember what movie I was thinking about when I wrote the rest of that situation.
[5] And this was way before Larry Summers, obviously.
[6] Question: Why doesn't the all-powerful patriarchy brainwash the majority of young attractive women to lust after middle-aged white men who are somewhat overweight? After all, most leaders of patriarchy are precisely such men. And remember, it is the feminists who claim that there is no evo-psychological basis whatsoever for the target selection in sexual attraction, but everything is socially constructed and all preferences are learned from the environment and culture! (Of course, this general principle doesn't apply to homosexuals, who are born that way and therefore also can't be changed in any way.) So are all these middle-aged white guys who run the patriarchy just stupid or something? Or are there some kind of limits to their immense cultural programming powers?
So to educate and amuse my readers here in 2006, here is this old piece of mine again, this time translated in English. I have annotated the text with a couple of footnotes, written from the present-day point of view, to point out a few additional things.
The Wisdom of Feminism
Despite being satire, I hope at least one feminist reading this will recognize some of her opinions and thus become a bit more aware about contradictions in her worldview. But then again, logical consistency is an oppressive tool of patriarchy, since the holistic women's way of knowing can't be forced into such restrictive constraints. Or something.
1. Sexual harassment
Situation: A woman complains that she feels like this one man at her workplace sometimes looks at her too long, as if he desired her sexually. The woman feels bad about this.
Feminists: "No woman has to tolerate anything like that in her life. Go to your boss right now and demand that the sexist pig is fired immediately. In situations like this, always remember the simple rule of thumb: it is harassment if the woman feels like it. If your boss doesn't obey this demand, make the situation public and get good compensation for your suffering."
Situation: A blue-collar man thinks that another man at his workplace of physical work is homosexual. Therefore he doesn't want to share the locker room with him, since the idea of a gay man looking at him in the shower makes him uncomfortable.
Feminists: "You are one stupid homophobe! Why do you think that every homosexual would want to look at your naked body? Listen now, homosexuals have better things to do than ogle a fat and ugly middle-aged man such as you. [1] Your fears of lusty gays just emerge from the fact that you are secretly gay! You know, you seem to realize that you are gay, but stubbornly refuse to admit it. Just accept the fact that you are gay, so the whole issue doesn't bother you so much."
2. Woman's body, woman's choice
Situation: At the woman's request, a doctor is going to abort a pregnancy, since the fetus is female, disabled, non-white, carries the (currently only hypothetical) gene for homosexuality etc.
Feminists: "That's horrible, and you just can't do that! Think of the social consequences of selective abortions. They are tools of eugenics and oppression, boo hoo hoo, you are just like Hitler and nazis. Here we see once again how the white heterosexual men can't accept minorities who are different but want all people to be just like them. Men just try to use invasive medicine to eliminate all diversity, unable to accept that different groups have different abilities but are all equally good. This crime against humanity must be stopped immediately!"
Situation: At the woman's request, a doctor is going to abort a pregnancy, and the fetus would be male, able-bodied, white and carries no bad genes.
Feminists: [cheerfully] "No problemo!"
3. Intercultural relationships
Situation: A woman, fresh back from her Mediterranean vacation, gushes to her girlfriends how the men over there were so wonderful. Those men constantly kept telling her what beautiful eyes and smile she has, and then in bed they were so exciting that words fail her. So totally different from the disgusting, patriarchal and unenlightened Finnish men. During her trip, the woman met Abdullah, fell fiercely in love with his chocolate eyes and intends now to marry her and pay his airplane tickets so that they can start a family here.
Feminists: "Ooh, that's so wonderful! Tell us more!"
Situation: A man, fresh back from his Far East vacation, tells his chums how women there treated him very differently than women in here. And not just in bed, where they were total sex machines. Therefore he intends to give up the Finnish women completely, and bring an Asian girl over here so that they can start a family in the cold but affluent North.
Feminists: Now that is truly horrible oppression of women! When men can't handle the idea of strong independent women that they can't treat any way they want, they must bring in women from third world as sex toys, maids and cooks. Such trade in women violates the human rights of all women and our society can't give any signal of it being acceptable. Ladies, we must pass a law that bans such mixed marriages between Finnish men and Asian women, and meanwhile go to the airport to organize a demonstration against these women! [2]
4. The systematic oppression of women
Situation: Employers do not have a duty to hire the female applicant, when both men and women apply. Women don't have quotas in fields in which they are underrepresented but in which salary and social status are higher than average, and the university examinations are the same for men and women. Since schoolgirls are typically more interested in horseback riding and various airheaded soft science fields than in math and science, women tend to be underrepresented in many lucrative fields in which math and science are prerequisites.
Feminists: "Here we see it again how women are second class citizens and oppressed."
Situation: Men have a legal obligation of spending a year of their lives in military service, during which they are de facto slaves with no more rights or freedoms. [3] Women have no such duties, but they can start their adult lives and go study immediately, or spend the year sitting on a sofa eating chocolate. If the war breaks out, every man is expected to sacrifice his health and life to protect women who spend their time in safety, far away from the front. The same applies in every single crisis or emergency, where the principle "women and children first" never wavers.
Feminists: "Well... we guess that's kind of wrong, if you want to think about it that way. But to oppose that... I don't think we'll bother. Besides, instead of military service, women give birth to children so they should stay home... omygod strike that back, of course they don't have to. [look around] Hey, is that my phone?"
5. Sex segregation in sports
Situation: A female athlete could compete in some sport, e.g. skeet shooting, equally with men. Yet, men and women don't compete together in such sports but have their own series.
Feminists: "Now there's the true nature of the male sportsmanship again for us to see. It doesn't matter in any sport what you have between your legs. It's not like you shoot the clay targets with your penis, ha ha! The fragile male ego just can't take the idea of losing to women. God, are you men just pitiful fools, or what?"
Situation: In virtually every single sport, men completely dominate. Usually this difference between sexes is so massive that the best female athelete in the world could perhaps compete with the best men of some county-level championship. Therefore women get their own special series in which they can compete without men coming over and humiliate them, and they get to pretend that winning such a series is just as great as winning the men's series.
Feminists: "Is this men's idea of fun, getting to use their size and strength advantage to tackle women? Do you seriously think that a woman could compete with men in running or in some stupid ballgame? There should be separate series for men and women in all sports, sorry I mean in sports where men are better. This way also women get to compete without some man coming in and being totally sovereign."
6. Tolerance for alternative thinking
Situation: Young anarchists smash the windows and ruin the walls of fur and meat stores.
Feminists: "Of course, we can't allow all illegal things. But these young citizen activists should be listened to and understood, since they may have something important to tell. It's the young who inherit the world we leave them so they worry about these important issues. Therefore in high schools, junior highs and even in the elementary schools there should be discussion lectures where representatives of all kinds of alternative activist organizations could present their views. We think that our rigid patriarchal society should have an open mind and listen to alternative views. The mainstream shouldn't always rule, but some alternative thinking is often good!"
Situation: Representatives of industry organize an educational campaign for schools about how nuclear energy is a good thing.
Feminists: "How on earth it could be possible to organize brainwashing sessions in the Finnish schools? Oh geez, the patriarchy tells young and impressionable kids that energy and high standard of living are somehow good things. And certainly they will not give any time for alternative views, but keep obsessing about the engineer-technocrat propaganda that we have proven to be wrong a million times. Doesn't even one of you atomic lords remember the millions of people who died in Chernoble, Harrisburg and Hiroshima, and the hundreds of billions of damage? What the heck is wrong with our system when you can tell kids that nuclear energy is good, but leave them blissfully ignorant of that the same money invested in alternative medicine instead of the hypertechnological and phallic mainstream medicine could eradicate all illnesses on Earth? Or the fact that a fragment of a pot found by an archeologist without a doubt proves that the Sovi... I mean, the neolithic era was a peaceful female-ruled time with no war or poverty or rape? But the male hegemony will never let people know about this!"
7. Strong independent women
Situation: A man claims that men are naturally stronger and more talented, and have more initiative and ability. Therefore they tend to be overrepresented at the top of society and especially the business world.
Feminists: "There you see again how our decades-long attempt to educate people has been wasted. How much more work do we feminists have to do for you stupid men to understand that men and women are equal? Your stubborn denial of truth only proves that you men are afraid of strong and independent women, with your fragile male ego shattering if you ever lose to them."
Situation: A man and a woman plan and execute a crime and get caught. The court will usually decide the man to be more responsible and thus gets a harsher punishment. The man will go to jail while the woman typically gets only probation. In the unlikely event of the woman being sent to jail, this is not too bad since compared to men's prisons, the women's prisons are more like vacation centers.
Feminists: "Now there is absolutely nothing wrong there, if that's what you are trying to say! It's clear that in a situation like that, a man and a woman can never be equals. I bet that the man had tempted or forced that woman to be his conspirator, and thus deserves his harsher punishment. I wouldn't be surprised if the man had threatened to leave that woman if she refused to participate in the crime. And what the heck is wrong in women's prisons being more comfortable than men's? Do you really want the women to rot in cold cells instead of living normal lives with their children? You must be a real misogynist to want something like that."
8. Silver screen entertainment
Situation: In a movie, instead of the typical aristocratic blond man, the villain is a homosexual, female, non-white etc. The hero, a white straight man, wins by killing the villain and his henchmen, and the audience likes this. [4]
Feminists: "It's not hard to see where all the hatred towards women and minorities comes from. The entertainment industry is ruled by men and its products are aimed at men. There doesn't seem to be much hope in creating change in male thinking as long as they are brainwashed with garbage like that to hate women and other oppressed minorities."
Situation: In a movie, hero(in)es are morally superior minorities who, by their wits and skills, humiliate and defeat the stupid and mean villains who are white males. No matter how much bad the latter try to do, the brave hero(in)es defeat them each time. And while we are at it, other oppressed minorities are given the chance to hurt the hated white males.
Feminists: "What a great flick! It tells a lot about the male ego that they refuse to like an alternative movie in which they are not the good-guy winners and heroes."
9. Who represents whom
Situation: A member of an ideological movement X that feminists generally dislike says something that feminists find offensive.
Feminists: "Even if that one slip was just an isolated event, and it is not, it is a rather worrisome revelation about the way all supporters of X really think. I am really scared that the ideology X and its supporters are creating a backlash against women. Has all feminist work so far been in vain, and will the equality be thrown to garbage like a used dirty rag? All members of X and especially its leaders must now publically make penance and announce that they support our ideas of equality."
Situation: Feminism becomes a target of criticism about its some ideological hypocricy or contradiction which is claimed to be an essential part of feminism since it either follows from the basic axioms of feminism or is in practice supported by the majority of feminists.
Feminists: "The criticism like that badly misses the point, even though somebody who calls herself a feminist might have said something like that. Feminism is not a movement that forces its adherents to think uniformly in certain way. It's more of a way of thinking and observing the world in a cool and alternative fashion. It follows that for you to be able to ascribe anything negative to feminism, you must first ensure that every feminist in the world really believes it. Because how could you otherwise claim that something really is a part of feminism? When you think about it, you'll see that feminism simply cannot contain anything bad or negative or contradictory."
10. Woman's body, woman's choice II
Situation: Some man who believes in equality suggests that during the first weeks of pregnancy, a man could sign a paper giving up his parenthood and all rights and responsibilities that follow. The pregnant woman could then freely continue the pregnancy or abort.
Feminists: "And here we see again how men just want to use women as sex machines to throw away if they should get pregnant. Sorry, women refuse to be used for sex by men for their pleasure, since we want commitment. If a man doesn't want to become a father and pay child support, use contraceptives or keep his zipper closed. If a man chooses to have sex, he is aware of the possible pregnancy and automatically agrees to be fully responsible for it. There are no arguments against this, and if you don't want to accept it, that's your problem. It is not a question of fairness or equality, since pregnancy is a naturally unfair event. It is just natural that sex can lead to pregnancy. If this happens, the man should pay for it and not just selfishly think about his own freedom --- and if that scumbad won't, government should force him to do so."
Situation: A man opposes abortion and argues that if a woman chooses to have sex, she is aware of the possible pregnancy and automatically agrees to be fully responsible for it. If a woman doesn't want a child, then she should not have sex. If the women don't like this, don't come whining to men how you can't be responsible for your own choices.
Feminists: "What possible right have men to assume that mere consent to sex somehow makes women responsible to carry and raise a child for the next twenty years? This is totally horrendous enslavement of women and oppression of their natural sexuality. The women's sexuality must be a pretty frightening topic for men, since they have punish it by forcing women who just seek pleasure to give birth to children. Do you seriously claim that women who have sex must take the small risk of contraceptives failing? Sorry, that is just sick misogyny. Feminism clearly still has lot of work left in eliminating the anti-woman attitudes of men."
11. Education and quotas
Situation: Men do better than women and are overrepresented in some field in education. [5]
Feminists: "I'm sure you really want to claim that this somehow proves men to be more intelligent. This is not the case, but the real reason is the brainwash that patriarchy [6] does to young girls to believe that they wouldn't do as well in that field as boys. There are countless reasons why women are underrepresented in that particular field, and none of them is in any way related to their different mental skills and abilities. These reasons don't disappear by you refusing to acknowledge them and opposing quotas to girls."
Situation: Women do better than men and are overrepresented in some field in education.
Feminists: "Hah, it looks like that women just do have more innate ability in that field. So what do you guys think now that it is men who need help? The entrance exams are equal and treat everybody the same way, so what could you possibly want in top of this? Certainly not quotas, since you can't compete with the modern independent and intelligent women? Of course we feminists would like to have equal results in that particular field also, but we don't really feel like doing anything for it, since if you men don't want to use the options already available to you, tough luck. We have already done everything possible."
[1] Yes, this is what certain feminists argued when some Finnish men complained about homosexual men in the public pools and saunas. I wonder what would happen if men ever tried the same defense when a woman complains about sexual harassment.
[2] Yes, the Finnish feminists once really did organize such a demonstration. No accusations of racism were ever flinged, as I recall.
[3] This is how it worked in a nation of five million people that shared a long border with Soviet Union.
[4] I would like to point that this was years before I had read anything by Steve Sailer, even though I use the words "aristocratic blond". Curiously enough, I can no longer remember what movie I was thinking about when I wrote the rest of that situation.
[5] And this was way before Larry Summers, obviously.
[6] Question: Why doesn't the all-powerful patriarchy brainwash the majority of young attractive women to lust after middle-aged white men who are somewhat overweight? After all, most leaders of patriarchy are precisely such men. And remember, it is the feminists who claim that there is no evo-psychological basis whatsoever for the target selection in sexual attraction, but everything is socially constructed and all preferences are learned from the environment and culture! (Of course, this general principle doesn't apply to homosexuals, who are born that way and therefore also can't be changed in any way.) So are all these middle-aged white guys who run the patriarchy just stupid or something? Or are there some kind of limits to their immense cultural programming powers?
It always seemed to me like the feminist issues that you satirically discussed in your piece were American. Sexual harassment charges in particular have never been a big issue in Finland. Granted, some feminists (Naisasialiitto Unioni) have been talking about rape for a long time, but Finland has actually never had a high profile sexual harassment case with celebrities involved or anything like that in court. It seems to me that Finns are much more sane about sex than the Anglosphere.
Off topic: Finland is no longer as purely white as you lead people to believe in your post the other day. When I take the bus from the city center to Hervanta (a suburb of Tampere where Ilkka and I are both from) in the evening there is a high likelihood that there is at least muslim woman wearing a scarf over her head in addition to the usual few Indian, South Asian, or other dark skinned foreigners. In addition to those foreigners, there is nearly always a group of foreign, mostly European, group of exhange students who go to one of the universities in town. So, in addition to those foreigners who fail to stand out from the crowd until they open their mouths, we have a visible minority of those who do. It's nothing special.
Posted by Markku | 5:07 PM
You know, you are still not using the definite article properly. For example:
... where I copied most of the phrases that I here use to describe the feminist opinion in general.
Drop the definite article above. It is wrong and looks clumsy.
Posted by beenaround | 8:45 PM
The posting is quite interesting, none-the-less.
Posted by beenaround | 10:55 PM