When any goal-oriented organization begins to near
achievement of their goal, no matter how loosely organized they are, there is a
tendency for that organization to shift the goalposts to keep from ever
“achieving” their goal, because in doing so, the organization becomes
obsolete.
This is sort of an offshoot of the “Iron Law of Bureaucracy”
where most participants in an organization eventually begin to act in a manner
that serves to expand and perpetuate the organization, as opposed to actually
meeting the organization’s goal.
I can think of a couple of examples in modern times. Some of the labor unions that exist today are
good examples – they served a great purpose at first, but as they met their
goals, the goals became increasingly trivial and increasingly damaging to the
businesses with whom they are affiliated.
The topic of this posting, however, is feminism.
Flame suit on…
In my opinion, feminism in its current permutation, and
given its current goals, is doing massive amounts of harm to society, and to
young, impressionable girls who buy into their insidious lies, hook, line, and
sinker. There are several reasons that I
believe this to be true:
1.
Feminism’s
goals have shifted:
There was a time when women were faced with a distinct lack
of choice in their own self-determination.
Their option essentially was: find a husband, get married, have his
kids, and rely on him to support you until you die.
There were a few other options, to be completely honest, but
they were fewer and much more far between than most of us would care to admit,
and many of them were pretty undesirable.
Enter the feminist movement.
Their goal was to give women choice, and through most of the early to middle
20th century, this is exactly what they did – it became much more
common for women to work outside of the home during these times, and as a
result, women were given a much broader range of choices in their lives.
Feminism wasn’t satisfied, however, and pushed further, and
this is where the feminist movement and I part ways, because they are now
causing untold misery and unhappiness with their poison, starting with:
2.
Their
goals are Now Contrary to a Woman’s Biological Imperatives:
Feminist’s have moved the goalposts now that the primary
objective – more freedom of choice for women – has been met. They are now pushing for equality between men
and women, when no such equality can ever exist, because men and women are not
equals.
If you feel your face reddening and your collar heating up
with that last statement, then I urge you to calm down and hear me out, because
you actually agree with me here, even if you don’t realize it yet.
If women and men are equals, why is there a WNBA and an
NBA? Why is there men’s and women’s
figure skating? If they are truly equal,
why the separation between them in professional sports?
Can a man give birth to children? Can a woman sire a baby? Are men generally larger, stronger, and more
aggressive than women? Are you trying to
tell me that before we had conquered speech and reason, and “society” was
hardly even a thing, that the reason that women generally did not go mammoth
hunting with the men is because the differences between men and women were
socialized, and not actual hard, concrete differences?
Is it so hard to believe that the differences between men
and women are more than skin deep? More
than simply physical differences in size and capability? Is it so hard to believe that men and women
are also different from each other on a psychological scale, wired totally
differently by biology because each sex has different biological
imperatives? That men and women were
made differently by biology, evolution, or God (whichever you prefer) so that
they could complement each other,
rather than be equals?
This is where feminism goes off the track, because they want
equality
when natural law dictates thatno such thing can possibly exist – nor should it! They say that a woman needs a man like a
fish needs a bicycle, all the while ignoring the fact that the path to true
happiness for most men and most women is to find a partner to fulfill their
biological imperatives through and with.
Feminism has shifted from attempting to create more choice for women, to
a new, strange situation where they are actually trying to remove certain,
“undesirable” choices.
A woman’s biological imperative is different than a
man’s. Feminism argues that this is
simply socialized in us by society, but they are wrong. A woman’s biological imperative is to care
for, nurture, and raise children. A
man’s biological imperative is to provide for a family, and defend them from
the slings and arrows that life throws their way. If this weren’t the case, as Aretae so aptly
points out in the previously linked posting, the human race could not exist.
I’m not saying that we should pigeonhole every woman into
child-rearing any more than we need to pigeon-hole every man into fatherhood
and corporate slavery. There needs to be
choice to do whatever you want in life.
What I’m suggesting is that there is a hard-wiring in our heads pushing
us in the direction of those things, and true fulfillment of our
psychologically needed, biological imperatives should not be hand-waived away as being part of some imposed
patriarchal societal force.
Women need choice just as much as men, but feminism has
attempted to remove and belittle one of those choices as being invalid, and the choice that they are belittling is the
choice that carries the strongest urges towards happiness and fulfillment – to raise a family and be a wife.
Don’t believe me?
Then why did the staunchest feminists of all spend most of their
middle-aged years desperately throwing money at IVF clinics in the hopes of
fulfilling their imperative (and mostly, unfortunately for them, in vain?) Why do older feminists tend to be bitter,
writing screeds on the internet about how society won’t let them be happy
unless they’ve had children, while completely ignoring the fact that society is
not the cause of their unhappiness at all?
It’s because they haven’t done what they were biologically
hard-wired to do, and they are regretting it, even if on a subconscious
level. That was their choice, and while
I’m sorry that many of them are unhappy with their choices, where I get crossed
up with them is that they are clamoring as loudly as they can to drag as many
impressionable, young women along with them on their path to unhappiness and
destruction as possible.
My wife, for instance, has seen the uselessness in the
current feminist ideology, and realizes that she only just barely, at my
urging, managed to avoid falling into their trap. She was against having children, because she
bought into the feminist line that they would be an anchor around her neck,
keeping her from fulfilling her true life and career goals. Once she gave birth to our daughter, she
constantly remarks on how stupid it was for her to put her career over her family,
because she realized that:
3.
Feminism
Simply Traded Working for your Family and a Man that you love, for Working for
“The Man.”:
Any smart person can tell you that if you’re looking for
life fulfillment and happiness only through your career, you’re generally
headed down the road to unhappiness.
Most happy men have stricken a balance between family life and their
career, and do so simply because a career is a heartless, empty thing; full of
personal accomplishment, but devoid of any love or care for you, and the person
that you are.
The corporate grind will chew you up and spit you out, and
when it does, the only thing you have is your family. Your job isn’t going to mourn you at your
funeral, nor remember you after your death.
Careers are important, but they are a means to an end, and that end is
the raising of a family, and the fulfillment of your biological
imperative.
In true “grass is greener on the other side” form, feminism
failed to understand this. They thought
that they were freeing a woman from the chains of mother- and wife-hood, so
that they could soar into a life of fulfillment through their careers, no
longer fettered by their families.
All they succeeded in doing is to shift the obligation from
husband and family, to boss and job. One
set of “chains” for another. They failed
to realize that while they saw men as being “free” because they had the option
to work outside the home, that men actually weren’t any more free, because they
still had to work, often times in soul- and body-crushing, horrible jobs that
they hated, simply to make ends meet back home.
Feminists traded “a man” for “the man” and didn’t even see
it coming.
So what difference does it make if a woman labors for the
betterment of her family, or if she labors for the betterment of her career
(and a paycheck)?
A big difference, but one opposite of the difference that
feminists would see, for the reasons listed above. A career is an empty, uncaring thing. A family is not. A career fulfills no biological
imperative. A family does. Women looked at a man’s career and envied his
ability to have one, without realizing that most happy men don’t gather their
happiness from their career, but through their family, for which their career
is merely a means to an end. Those that
only find happiness through their careers are generally not nearly as happy as
those who have stricken a balance in life, and their families suffer, too. Cave men weren’t only happy that they killed
a mammoth, they were also (and perhaps mostly) happy that they were able to
feed their family with the meat from that mammoth.
The problem with feminism is that they look to the mammoth
kill in their quest for equality, but fail to consider the fact that there
needs to be a reason for the kill, in order for it to be satisfying on a
biological level. Feminism has become a
selfish, “me first” way of looking at life, that leaves women’s every
superficial desire met, while completely ignoring that there is more to life
than superficial desires, and that the most fulfilling life that any of us can
lead is one in service to our loved ones, as opposed to one lived in service to
ourselves.
4.
The ideal
feminist lifestyle will almost inevitably lead to unhappiness:
Maybe not right away.
Maybe right now, it feels good to be in service to yourself, and to
fulfill your own superficial desires.
I’ll concede that it may even be a good thing for everyone to live like
this for a while (both women and men), if for no other reason than to get it
out of their system, and to realize that while a life lived this way can be
fun, and less stressful, and temporarily more rewarding than a life lived in
service to your loved ones, that fun and reward dries up eventually because you are hard wired not to live this
way.
Our species would never have made it if we were all so
selfish and self-centered as to live our lives in service to ourselves and no
other. We are hard wired to devote ourselves to a family. Even if you don’t feel it now, you
eventually will, and hopefully it happens to you long before it happened to the
likes of Gloria Steinem and her ilk, who spent massive amounts of money
desperately trying to fulfill their biological imperatives through IVF cinics
and finally find happiness, far after it was too late for them to do so.
My wife is a perfect example. She fell for the feminist line early in life,
and truly believed that a family, and specifically children, would ruin her
life. We spent all of our twenties
playing and traveling and enjoying ourselves, and we had a blast; but we were
living selfishly, and eventually that started to wear on me, and I wanted
more. I didn’t force anything on my
wife, but I did state my case, trying to convince her that it was time to
devote our lives to our family instead of to ourselves. I think she knew that I was right, because it
didn’t take much suggestion from my part before we had our daughter. My wife looks back at how she used to look at
motherhood and having a family, and realizes now what a fool we both were. We still travel. We still run all over the place having fun,
but now we do it both for ourselves and for our daughter. She hasn’t slowed us down, she has just given
all of the fun things we do more meaning, because now we are doing it for her
as well as for ourselves. I am so much
more happy, and so is my wife, now that we have our family.
Do not fall into the feminist trap, ladies, because the
feminist ideal, as it currently sits, is a recipe for misery and unhappiness.
One more thing, and this is important, so don’t forget that:
5.
You can
have both a family and a career if you’re willing to sacrifice a little on both
fronts:
Life is about sacrifice.
Men have known that all along, but it seems that the feminist movement
has forgotten about that. They want a
life without sacrifice, and don’t seem to understand that no such thing can possibly exist.
There seems to be a popular belief by the feminist movement that if
a woman has to sacrifice anything in getting whatever she wants out of life, that
it is unfair and a result of the patriarchy influencing their decisions. They don’t get that every choice in life
leads to sacrifice. If you have the
hamburger for dinner, you sacrifice your chances at having the steak. Men have been sacrificing for years, and it never
even occurs to us to whine about that.
I sacrificed my desire to be a forestry major, and became a
Construction Management major because I decided that it was more important to
have a paycheck than it was to be searching for a job that I love to do, but
doesn’t exist. We all sacrifice every
single day, and another thing feminism seems to be missing is that very few
sacrifices are the “either/or” choice that they seem to be foisting on young
women. There are varying levels to every
choice. You don’t have to choose between
being a stay at home Mom, or having a career.
You just have to sacrifice one for the other in varying degrees.
I have two strong women in my life, both of whom flipped the
bird to feminism and proved that you can have it all, and career vs. motherhood
and marriage is not an “either/or” choice.
The first woman is my mother, who had my older brother when
she was 21 years old, fresh out of college, and who was a stay-at-home mother
until he was 13 and I was 11. Her dream
was to be a teacher. She fulfilled her
dream to become a teacher, once she had fulfilled her dream of being a mother
and raising a family. She just put off
her career for 13 years. She is now
ready to retire this year, after 26 years of teaching. This was a long and satisfying career for
her, and yet she still got to stay at home and raise her family. She didn’t sacrifice one for the other, she
just balanced them so that she could have it all. She did a wonderful job at both, and I can’t
even begin to explain to you how much her being home with us in our formative
years meant to my brother and I.
The second woman is my wife.
She works at her career, full-time, while we work together to raise our
child, with the help of her mother. Our
daughter spends maybe 10 hours a week in daycare, and the rest of the time
she’s either with her mother, her father, or her grandma. Mrs. Goober hasn’t given up anything, and is
still working to provide for her daughter in the way that she knows best.
The insidious lies that feminism tells you is that you
should deny your path to happiness, in fulfilling your biological imperatives,
in exchange for a selfish life lived in service to your superficial desires,
and this will lead to destruction and unhappiness in the end. Just ask Gloria Steinem.
