Of Gynocentrism and Genocide

Some people wonder why I do this – and formulate all sorts of wrong-headed, misinformed opinions about the subject.  My motivations are actually fairly simple: I’m a father in the 21^st century, trying to protect and prosper for his family.  Because I’m a word nerd, I try to influence the culture around me in a way I find beneficial to that end.  That’s it.  That’s my whole secret plan: to make the world a better place for my children.  According to what I see as “better”.

Now some might see this as temerity, the arrogance of yet-another Straight White Male ™ railing against his declining social and financial importance and trying to turn back the inevitable march of Progress.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In many ways, I remain a Progressive, politically: that is, I think like a Progressive when it comes to doing the most good for the most people, when it comes to the environment and global climate change, when it comes to basic human rights for all – including the right to marry and control one’s own reproductive freedom.  I'm pro-Civil Rights.  I'm pro-Gay Rights.  I’m pro-Choice. 

But I’m also pro-Second Amendment.  And pro-First Amendment.  Pretty big fan of most of the others, to the point where I once was an active Libertarian, until I got sick of the whiny anti-tax stance of many of the other Libertarians.  Those things alone get me branded as “conservative” by some of my Progressive friends.  My “liberal” social attitudes get me dismissed by my conservative friends.  I’ve listened extensively to both Rush Limbaugh and NPR.  I’m comfortable with neither the liberal or the conservative label, and usually take shelter as an “independent” and vote on the basis of the candidate.  My politics follow my own consistent internal logic, and I rarely see fit to explain them to others.

But when it comes to this blog, and some of my other efforts, I can pinpoint precisely where my strong counter-feminism stance comes from. 

You see, I have two young, vibrant, highly intelligent boys, and a similarly brilliant and robust daughter.  I’m not worried about my daughter.  She’ll do fine in the coming century, the way that things have shaken out for girls of her generation.  But my boys . . . I’m preparing them for the struggle ahead to the best of my ability, like any good father, but it’s hard to prepare them for something like this:

“…What I do have is an ongoing intolerable experience that this life I and other women live is blighted by male oppression, and that this blight diseases the trunk of our species’ existence, not just the branches, not just the leaves. Every moment of our existence, this blight injures us. It kills our spirits, ruins our bodies, destroys our happiness, twists our children.”

Of course, half of those children are MALE, but she doesn’t dwell on that unpleasant truth.  Later on, she continues:

“As Sheila Jeffreys has put it, and I think we all agree, it has to start with this: there is something wrong with men. It is a pathology with both physical and psychological features. I personally think it is as old as our evolution as hominids. I think it’s a biological adaptation which is now rotten, dangerous, and vestigial. I think we have to force the scientific establishment to take a clear look at this colossal sick old mammoth taking up all the space in the living room, and make it stop distracting itself with sexy cosmologies and particle accelerators. I don’t quite have a name for this pathology. Let’s give it a real name together.”

The “pathology” that the author Vilet Tiptree speaks of is pretty much anything with an XY chromosome: Men, in other words.  Not Straight White Men ™, not the Patriarchy, but the “System” run by . . . men.  ALL men.  

This one little radfem paragraph is calling for no less than the soft genocide of half of the human race.  That includes my boys.

That’s a problem for me.

Take a look at the same paragraph, slightly altered, and see how it strikes you:

As Sheila Jeffreys has put it, and I think we all agree, it has to start with this: there is something wrong with Jews. It is a pathology with both physical and psychological features. I personally think it is as old as our evolution as hominids. I think it’s a biological adaptation which is now rotten, dangerous, and vestigial. I think we have to force the scientific establishment to take a clear look at this colossal sick old mammoth taking up all the space in the living room, and make it stop distracting itself with sexy cosmologies and particle accelerators. I don’t quite have a name for this pathology. Let’s give it a real name together.

Let me be clear, the author didn’t say “Jews”, she said “Men” . . . so it’s okay.  In fact, substitute any other group in place of “Men” and what you are looking at is something more apt for a sinister eugenics program than the “ideology of equality” known as feminism – but there it is. 


Now, “mainstream” feminists argue that the radfems are extremists, theoreticians providing valuable perspective from the margins of the movement.  That they are moved by great political passion, and their outrageous positions are born of necessity, the inevitable result of centuries of institutional male oppression and female suffering.  Radfems of the 1970s and 1980s like Dworkin and McKinnon, who famously condemned all heterosexual sex as “rape”, were among the first to use their influence within the Feminist Female Social Matrix to heat up the war on masculinity. 


The attacks against male sexuality were transformed, over the years, into attacks on men in general, and eventually evolved into genocidal screeds like the above.  When you start calling into question the necessity of the existance of half of the human race and start agitating for its eventual extinction, regardless of whether you are leading your movement or are on the fringes you have tainted any other possible argument you could make.  And any movement that does not do its best to separate itself from such vileness and reproach the authors has to be called into question as well.


Sure, the radfems are a bunch of crackpots – who takes them seriously?  Well, a lot of feminists do.  This is misandry at the most fundamental level, a hatred for men that stretches the term “pathological” as inadequate.  Yet this radfem and her spiritual sisters are a respected voice within the greater feminist community, and are eagerly looking forward to participating in the upcoming gathering of feminists that has sprungas an outgrowth of the Occupy movement.  The “fringe” of feminism is going to do its best to push for an even harsher war against masculinity and men – I can’t see them softening their tone – and as we have learned, in the Female Social Matrix, controlling the conversation is tantamount to controlling the Matrix.


The only good thing about this level of pure hatred is that it keeps shooting itself in the foot over and over again, tripped up by the rules of the very Matrix it tacitly tries to control.  Radical feminism’s own ideology is also it’s biggest hobble towards effective action.  Why?  Because feminism (especially after it’s adoption of key Marxist principals – you remember Marxism, don’t you?  Founded on the latest bleeding edge scientific principals . . . of the 19^th century?)  is committed to non-heirarchical organizational structures.  Consider this strong push in the movement, the adoption of the “progressive stack” method of organization:

"We urge that the Assembly recognize the concept of stepping back: that dominant voices and identities recognize privilege and power in the room and in themselves, and 'step back' from monopolizing a conversation in the interest of hearing a diversity of voices and experiences on the topic. We are not here to reproduce the same monopolization of voice and power as the '1%', we are here to diversify spaces for radical inclusion, and to name centuries of privilege and exploitation of particular demographics of the population, including but not limited to: women, people of colour, members of the LGBTQ populations, non-status individuals, differently-abled persons, the very young and the very old...all these voices are regularly marginalised in our societies. In devising alternate modes of being and redistribution of power in the world, it is our duty and responsibility to listen and learn from prioritising these voices that are traditionally and systemically silenced in our dominant culture. Let us be accountable to our own declarations of values – let us put these principles into practice in order to devise alternate ways of being in the world."

In other words, all of those who show any shred of leadership are forced to abandon it –officially – in favor of a chorus of diverse voices.  This is the oft-observed press for “consensus” that is so valuable to the FSM -- and don't forget that consensus is the absence of leadership.  Those who have naturally taken leadership positions in their movement and have gotten it to where it is are pulled down from power in favor of the participation of those on the margins.  This is the system which is being pushed on to the coming feminist confab.  Of course, the “unofficial” leaders who emerge in place of the original leaders will have the benefit of an even murkier and less-defined consensus behind them to lend to their credibility . . . within the Feminist Female Social Matrix.  Everywhere else?  Not so much.


Which is why I’m not terribly concerned about the vitriol from the Radfems doing more than moderately influencing the opinions of other feminists, an increasingly divided group, about as much as Andrew "Dice" Clay influenced the development of masculinity.  You see, in abandoning “hierarchical power structures” the radfems are essentially abandoning “power”.  By including everyone’s voice, the possibility for a truly effective consensus on a particular topic is lost in favor of a bland list of petty issues that will stand as a testament to their commitment to their ideals . . . but probably not much else.


Because ten thousand years have proven to my satisfaction that “non-hierarchical power structures” don’t accomplish anything more complicated than a quilting bee.  Oh, there have been plenty of examples of de-centralized hierarchies accomplishing things such as literacy programs, health education, and missionary conversions . . . but “non-hierarchical power structures” are almost an oxymoron.  And they damn sure don’t get anything done.  They just make more people feel better.  They’re an organized bitchfest, a cathartic therapy session that raises self-esteem and encourages empowerment . . . and erodes any real potential for powerful action.  What the feminists and the radfems don’t understand is that the “power” comes from the hierarchy – when individuals cede a portion of their personal power in the form of submission and obedience (“submitting to authority” implies imbuing that authority with the power of your willingness to obey it) they enrich that authority’s ability to Get Shit Done.  Whether the shit they’re doing is worthy or not is immaterial: the way to establish an effective organization is through hierarchy, not chaos.


Hierarchies work.  And over the centuries, they've been refined to be more and more efficient.  From construction crews to military unitys, hierarchical power structures accomplish things.  Non-hierarchical structures write a lot of poetry.


In fact, when you look at the great feminist-inspired movements of the past, from Abolition to Temperance to Suffrage to Woman’s Rights, it was only when large groups of women organized into male-style hierarchical structures that they accomplished any meaningful change.  That is, they could not effectively fight against the power of the hierarchy without building a corresponding hierarchy.  This modern tendancy towards inclusion and consensus and away from hierarchy and actual power to accomplish anything is doing far, far more to keep the radfems harmless genocidal, gynocentric nuts on the fringe instead of leaders of castrating legions of angry women.


So when I see bullshit like this, and the recent inclusion of certain Manosphere sites as “hate groups” by theincreasingly-irrelevent Southern Poverty Law Center, I feel like I can relax – a little – about my boys’ future.  After all, self-imposed dissarray among the self-declared enemies of your gender is a good thing.  But the fact that they have any influence at all within the greater feminist movement more than justifies my vigilence on behalf of my boys.  It also more than justifies my unwillingness to see feminism, in general, as anything less than a gynocentric, misandrous attempt to grab power (but with little conception of what power is – and what to do with it), a culture-wide Shit-Test for our collective masculinity. 


Radical Feminists freely admit that their views are not shared by the majority of feminists, much to their dismay.  But they do enjoy influence within the movement far out of proportion to their numbers, thanks to the FSM’s willingness to reward outrageous, attention-getting behavior from its members with higher Matrix position and influence.  But their presence within the movement is all the justification any male needs (or any female who has a male in their life they don't want to see sent to the castration-and-re-education camps) to quit calling himself a feminist, no matter how White Knighty he is.   Radical Feminism is proud to be an existential threat to all Men and all masculinity. 


Mainstream feminism proports to be about fairness and equality – those are the first words out of a feminist’s mouth when they explain the ideology – but if it includes bile like the above, then counter-feminism and the Manosphere have all the justification it needs to exist in defense of our gender’s right to exist.  When they start threatening my boys, I’m going to defend my family just as ardantly as I would if someone threatened my daughter.  It might be all "patriarchy-y" of me, but I can live with that.