Why Radical Feminism Confuses Men

I'm a feminist by the lights of a bumper sticker I saw once, which describes feminism as "the radical idea that women are human beings."  These days, however, I tend to lean more toward the Camille Paglia wing than the Gloria Steinem one.  From Mary Wollstonecraft through Elizabeth Cady Stanton through women's suffrage, through women's rights in the 70's and 80's, I'm totally with women.  This is because their demands have, at every stage, been 100% comprehensible to me, as a liberal.  They all follow logically from the social contract of a free society.  If "men" in "all men are created equal" really means humans, that logically includes women.  (And even if the 18th Century folks meant "men", the Enlightenment is an evolving idea, and I think we mean "people" today, because we've seen that women can do all the same things men can do.)  If we should live in a democratic free society, it follows logically to me that women should vote and have all the same rights as men, including the human right to be treated with the same respect and dignity as men.[1]

A Case for Liberal Feminism, but Against Radical Feminism

As I look at our society, I see progress unparalleled in any other human civilization I can think of.  As slow as western culture has been to change, neither the Romans nor the Greeks nor the Egyptians achieved anything like what we've achieved with regard to gender equality, and I don't think the men who dominated their societies cared.  As it stands, in our society in the 21st Century, women have the vote, they have the same rights as men, they receive the same pay for the same work (the 70 cents on the dollar statistic has been debunked).[2]  We've seen both Republican and Democratic female Secretaries of State.  We have a female Vice President.  In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular election, meaning that more voters in America wanted her to be president than Trump.  We've had female Supreme Court Justices.  We see female CEO's, female fire fighters, female cops, female doctors, female lawyers, etc.

To me, this doesn't look very patriarchal.  Ancient Rome was a patriarchy, in which women couldn't vote or hold public office, and women had much worse rights than male Roman citizens.  The extended family was ruled by a pater familias, a male elder, AKA a patriarch.  Fathers could choose whom their daughters married.  Daughters were expected to obey their fathers and wives their husbands.  Our society, as it stands today, would seem to stand in stark contrast to this. I doubt any ancient Roman would agree that our society is patriarchal.

Certainly, our society used to have all these patriarchal things, but it's slowly morphed into what it is now.  Somewhere along the way (I believe in the 18th Century?) women married out of love, at some point they could choose whom they married, they got the vote, they got equal rights, they've been able to leave the home and pursue the careers they like.  So, it baffles me when radical feminists insist that our society is presently a patriarchy.  When asked to account for this assertion, the radical feminists always seem to point to things that happened in the past.  I agree that 50's housewives didn't have the same status in society as men did, but that was 70 years ago.  As a Gen Xer, I was raised from Day 1 with the understanding that men and women are equal, by my schools, by my parents, and by society in general.  Today, our HR departments require us to annually renew our vows to a non-prejudicial work environment, including understanding all genders as equal.  So, I don't understand what radical feminists mean by "patriarchy", and I don't think I'm alone.  I believe that there is a quiet majority in this country that feels equal bafflement.

Now, you may point out that you think women are an "oppressed group", but how exactly are women oppressed today?  Most of the arguments I hear for so-called "oppressed groups" seem to run like this: Group G has historically been oppressed, therefore it's currently oppressed.  By that argument, all Americans are an oppressed group.  We were oppressed by the British Crown in the 18th Century.  Therefore, that logic would insist, the UK now oppresses us.  Except that it doesn't, because we won the Revolution.  

In order to demonstrate that women are currently oppressed, they would have to supply some evidence of present day oppression.  This would need to be more than a few isolated incidents, but show a pervasive pattern.  It would also need to be based on sound evidence.  But statistics like the 1 in 5 women getting raped on college campuses as been debunked.[3]  Likewise, the MeToo movement would seem to indicate a high rate of rape and sexual assault but (a) it's not clear how many of the MeToo women were lying to support their sisters and, more importantly, (b) it's not clear that sexism is the cause of this.  How do we know we don't just have a crime epidemic that's not based on a male-dominated society?  (About women lying... human beings sometimes lie, women are human beings, therefore women sometimes lie, so I'm well within my rights to doubt their claims.) [4]  I salute the courage of women speaking up, but I don't think a male-dominated society is the only explanation and, unfortunately, I also don't think MeToo provided the sort of scientific data that we need to make sense of this.  To collect that data, maybe we just need more rape kits in police stations and universal analysis of those rape kits when they are used.

Consider, for instance, that we don't tend to think of organized crime in the 1920's as being a systemic part of society.  Rather, we think of it as happening despite the best efforts of law enforcement and as being unacceptable in society.  So, there's another narrative to explain MeToo: there's a rape epidemic which is not the result of anything systemic in society but rather crime occurring in spite of the social norms that rape is wrong and which is best addressed by better law enforcement, rather than overhauling our culture.  After all, the fact that we have rape laws and that we're all taught that rape is wrong seems like pretty strong evidence that rape is actually unacceptable in our society, not, as radical feminists insist, that we have some sort of "rape culture".

Despite all this, the radical feminists instance that women are currently oppressed, but much of their so-called evidence seems to me to be propaganda, error, or ignorance, and the rest of it can easily be explained by alternate theories.  So, while I can easily see why they'd think that women have been historically oppressed (and I agree that they have been), I'm baffled as to how radical feminists have come to a present-day systemic, cultural oppression theory to explain the bad things that happen to women, rather than adopting other theories, such as the ones I've suggested, which they could easily adopt.

Please understand, I'm not saying radical feminists are necessarily wrong.  I'm only trying to explain why some of us may be baffled by their claims.

My Real Subject: Communication Breakdown

But that's not really what I want to talk about... so far I've just tried to lay out the case that people could make sense of the same facts very differently than radical feminists do.  What I really want to talk about is how it is that communication has broken down in this regard and what we can do to communicate better.

I think the problem is that the radical feminists have either failed to understand our society's virtue ethics (plural, as we'll see) or else they're deliberately trying to embroil us in a sort of never-ending blood feud.  I don't know about women, but I think that men in our free society tend to have a hierarchy of four different types of virtue ethics and non-ethics.  That is, we have a primary set of virtue ethics and three fallback positions.  These are:

• Free-society Virtues
• Warrior Virtues
• Machiavellianism
• Law of the Jungle

Free-society Virtues

17th Century Britain was a century of violence.  Rebels committed regicide against Charles I.  There was a civil war, an interregnum government, the return of monarchy with Charles II, and the Glorious Revolution.   Men literally crossed sabres on the streets of London, rather than discussing politics.  It was also a time when women were still expected to stay completely out of politics (not even to express their views).  

 

By the dawn of the 18th Century, everyone was fed up with violence.  They wanted an alternative.  As strangers gathered in coffee houses to read articles in magazines like the Spectator on subjects like top ten ways to discuss politics without coming to blows, the men actively wanted women to join them in their own parlors at home to help them discuss politics in a new, non-violent, way.  As footmen safely stowed the swords and pistols of guests in the cloakroom, hostesses and their daughters and servants would set out tea or coffee for these guests.  The ladies would join the newly minted "gentlemen" (men who are gentle hadn't much existed before this) not only to participate in what was discussed but to help men discuss it all without violence, which was something these new gentlemen realized the need for.  Through all this emerged a new concept: politeness.  We Brits (remember we Americans were still Brits at this time) had realized a new set of virtues: not the warrior virtues of feudal knights, but the virtues of a slowly emerging new concept: a free society.[5]

Today, I think our free society virtues are as follows:

1. Politeness
2. Tolerance
3. Understanding of other opinions
4. Listening to others
   
5. Reason, as applied to public debates
   
6. Courage to express our views in the public forum
   
7. Fortitude to do the same
8. Love for one's fellow citizen
9. Love even for one's political opponent
10. Respect for the people we're discussing things with

While these virtues are not always followed, they are ideals held by the majority.

Warrior Virtues 

But before these developed, we had warrior virtues.  These came out of feudalism from chivalry, but ultimately from ancient Greco-Roman warrior virtues, such as those depicted in the Homeric epics.  I think these are:

1. Courage
2. Strength
3. Honesty
4. Forthrightness
5. Fair-fighting (roguish warriors like Odysseus or Robin Hood not withstanding)
6. Making a threat display before engaging in a fight
7. Keeping the fighting away from civilization ("I'll meet you on the greensward, yonder")
8. Respect for one's enemy (well... yes... actually, yelling insults at your enemy before killing him is a weird sort of respect... if you didn't respect him, he'd be beneath your threat displays... insulting your enemy implies that he's a worthy opponent).
   

This is the sort of pattern Homer depicts in the Iliad:[6]

• Warrior A: "I am So-and-so son of Whosy-whats-its, descended in direct lineage from Hercules son of Zeus.  Divine and heroic blood flow in my veins.  Whereas you are a deer-footed ["chicken"/cowardly] bastard [without noble heritage].  I shall offer your body to the jackals."
• Warrior B: "I am Such-and-so son of Whatsy-whos, descended in direct lineage from Somehero son of Hecate.  Titanic blood flows in my veins, but I have never heard of your family.  You are dog-eyed [shit and carrion eating] scum.  To the crows with you!  Have at you."
• At this point, there's a pause, where one or the other can do something like run away (in which case they're cowards, but it wouldn't be a fair fight to kill a man in cold blood), or to realize that your grandfather stayed at your enemy's grandfather's house, that you're therefore guest-friends and must not fight.  In the latter case, you'd vow eternal brotherhood, go your separate ways, and pray to the gods that your kings didn't demand that the two of you fight, cos that would mean a conflict of virtues (loyalty to king vs hospitality laws).
  
• If they're both still there, the two fight.  Note that it's almost always one-on-one, unless there's a very good reason to not be.
  
• One of them wins.  The other's light leaves his eyes, his knees buckle beneath him, he falls, and his armor clatters thunderously about him (as Homer's poetic formula goes). 

This is obviously an ideal, but what comes through is an older, pre-modern social contract.  I think most of us today do not condone this sort of thing at all, favoring the free-society virtues, above.  I'm only trying to explore the fallback that I think many men in our society still have.  Wars are always terrible, but they're significantly worse if neither side fights fair: both sides would just go straight for the women and children, they'd gang up on each other, they'd use dishonest tactics.  In order to keep wars a little less bloody and horrible, multiple civilizations in the same region (or speaking the same language) often agreed to fight according to certain terms.  It may be hard to understand in modern times, but fair fighting was, at one time, an important human innovation.

 

Also, note that there are chances to avoid bloodshed.  Homeric banter may sound like emotional abuse to us, but it was an alternative to physical violence, to them.  It offers one side or the other the opportunity to back down.  Let's say your kingdom is being invaded.  If your warriors go out and yell insults at the invaders and then they go away and leave you in peace, you've defended your kingdom without bloodshed.  Also, there's the possibility for mutual respect among enemy warriors.  If your side proves its warrior virtues, the other side might decide they're better off with an alliance with you than conquering you (not worth the effort to conquer you, as you've shown them, but well worth the effort to open diplomatic relations).  So your warriors need tough skin in order to be called "dog eyed perverts" one moment and "honored friends" the next.  Thus, warrior virtues became the ideal.

Machiavellianism

Niccolo Machiavelli lived in the Italian Renassiance, so you may think I'm being anachronistic by suggesting that his non-virtues predated ancient Greek warrior virtues.  Machiavelli saw duplicity and nastiness all around him.  Families like the Medici and the Borgias were literally bribing and assassinating to determine who was Pope, for example.  Machiavelli developed a totally amoral, goal-oriented approach to politics in his book "the Prince".  He famously wrote, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer".

Now, this may post-date medieval chivalry, but it's clearly the sort of thing you'd get if you take away warrior virtues and don't replace them with anything.  

Machiavellianism can be summed up as: given a goal, do whatever it takes to achieve that goal, regardless of morals.  Note that, although morals and virtues fall away, reason does not.  Reason is used to figure out how most effectively to achieve your ends.

Law of the Jungle

Beneath even Machiavellianism is what I call "Law of the Jungle".  This is raw, animal, emotional-driven behavior.  It's amoral, lacks any virtues, and is not even rational or goal-driven.  It could as easily be driven by hatred as by greed, avarice, or lust.

The Virtue Stack of the Modern Male

I don't know about women (or any other gender), but, in my observation, I believe that we men have a stack of virtue systems and non-virtue systems.  We try to follow the topmost one, but drop to the next one down, if we perceive that one as failing.  Here's the stack:

• Free-society Virtues
• Warrior Virtues
• Machiavellianism
• Law of the Jungle

We try to follow the polite virtues of a free society.  However, if our opponents fail to play by those rules, we drop down to warrior virtues.  If our opponents fail to follow those rules, we fall back on Machiavellianism.  If that fails, we fall back on law of the jungle.  

This makes sense.  We're no fools.  If we're following free-society virtues, but our opponent is not, we'd be suckers to continue.  By falling back on the older warrior virtues, we keep the virtues that we can, without being suckers.  We keep fair fighting, for example.  But that only works if the other side follows warrior virtues.  If they do not, we go Machiavellian.  That at least preserves reason and a goal-oriented approach to things.  However, if our opponents won't even follow reason (or don't seem to), we may just go crazy and revert to basic human instincts: law of the jungle.

How the Steinem Feminists Inspire Men to be Unvirtuous

The problem I'm seeing is that the Steinem wing of the radical feminists typically make exactly the worst possible set of moves, in this regard, if their goal is to enter our public forum and persuade men of their positions.

1. When men make counter-arguments against them, in accordance with free-society virtues, they'll react with words like, "you male chauvinist pigs".  This is an insult: a threat display more comprehensible to men as warrior virtues than free-society virtues.  It signals men that free-society virtues have failed and men should fall back on warrior virtues.
2. Men respond, in kind, with insults and threat displays, of the "dog-eyed" variety, namely "bitch".  Now, applying the word "bitch" to a woman is undoubtedly immoral and unvirtuous by the modern ethics of a free society, but it does not go against the warrior virtues the men have fallen back on.  If you're going to insult your enemy, all the better if you can insult something essential about them!
3. The Steinemites typically do not respond well to this, to use British understatement.  The fact that they're exchanging insults with the men implies, to the men, "I'll meet you on the greensward, yonder."  The trouble is that there's no legal greensward to fight them on.  We all know that the feminists would happily call the cops on us, if we came to blows, but blows are demanded by warrior virtues, once insults are exchanged and neither side backs off.  After all, the purpose of the fair fight is to give one's opponents the opportunity to withdraw, before blood is spilled.
4. The men's MO devolves from warrior virtues to Machiavellianism.  The Steinemites are now the enemy, and an enemy totally unworthy of respect.  Had they fought honorably or backed down after the exchange of insults, they'd be a respected enemy, perhaps worthy of forming an alliance with.  However, they are not.  Since they will not fight fairly, the logical conclusion is to resort to anything necessary to win the war.
5. Except that the Steinemites are not clear in their goals.  They have not made any specific demands.  The liberal feminists of both the Suffrage movement and the women's rights movement had comprehensible demands that could be yielded to.  In those cases, the men would say to one another, "aha!  These women want the same rights as us.  Well, that's logically fair."  They could, thus, back down and yield the field, giving the women their due rights.  However, the Steinemites do not give any such clear demands.  What would it mean to yield to them?  A loss of patriarchy?  As I've pointed out, there's good reason not to think we're patriarchal.  Thus the men do not see any power that they possess, which they can give up.  Respect for women?  Of course!  But not for Steinemite women.  Steinemite women deserve no respect, in their eyes, because they've failed in all four categories of virtues.
   
6. In the end, the whole fight, from the male perspective, devolves into law of the jungle.  The Steinemites, as they see it, have no goals.  They have only hatred.  They've come for blood!  They cannot be negotiated with, scared off, fought fairly, reasoned with, or appeased.  Thus cornered, the men see themselves as left with only one option: to fight, fight dirty, and win at all costs.

Now, if you don't like the way men fight or male virtues, that's fine, but waging total warfare on men because of it will solve nothing and exacerbate everything, because it won't communicate anything else to men.  The only way forward is to follow the virtues of a free society and comport oneself well in the public forum.  If it helps, though, remember that women were the ones who introduced politeness to western culture and that your ancestresses helped to create free society virtues.  In other words, modern men's chosen virtue set in our free society is actually not masculine in origin, and men since the 18th Century in the English speaking world have recognized that they need women's help in finding free-society politeness as an alternative to pre-modern warrior virtues.

Alternative 1: Paglian Feminism

Once this is understood, there are some alternatives.  As I mentioned above, I've come to really like the feminism of Camille Paglia.  She doesn't see our culture as being currently patriarchal or male dominated, but she does fight very hard for women's rights and egalitarianism.  Paglia's tough.  She has short cropped hair.  She's a Lesbian (in fact, I believe she may now identify as trans).  She wears a leather jacket.  She may seem, at first glance, like the stereotypical feminist men think they have to go law-of-the-jungle on.  But I see a virtuous warrior in her.  I think she understands how to fight fair and she also comports herself well in the public forum.  Politeness doesn't mean making nice.  It's the balance between rudeness and making nice.  Paglia speaks her mind, but that's not entirely impolite.  Remember that courage and fortitude are free-society virtues.  She starts out understanding these virtues and applying them.  She's tough, sure, but not in a way that violates those virtues.  In fact, her toughness upholds them. 

 

As a man, I know where I stand with her, too.  She's clear on her demands, which are things like abortion rights and respect.  She uses reason to make her case.  You can discuss matters with her, and even argue with her.  I respect her as a member of our free society and I think a lot of other men will, too.

Alternative 2: Model Feminism after Gay Rights

You may think I'm crazy at first for stating things this way, but I see the gay rights movement as being the most honorable and virtuous of all the ID politics movements.  Here's why:

1. The gay community was confronted with cops at Stonewall and elsewhere.  They saw, at that time, that society was waging war against them.  Thus, society, rather than them, refused to engage them according to free-society virtues.
2. They saw clearly that the alternative set of virtues they needed to adopt was warrior virtues.
3. In some cases, many of them put on uniforms: dresses, make up, high heels, etc.
   
4. In demonstrations, they often made a show of marching in formation, demonstrating their warrior prowess.
5. They insulted their enemy with a threat display: "Your shoes don't match your gloves!"  What worse insult could they hurl than to imply that their enemies were undisciplined in coordinating their uniforms?
6. They made one, consistent demand, by which all others were comprehensible and implied, with great war cries, which they issued as they marched through our streets. The exact wording of slogans varied, but are well summed up as "We're here!  We're queer!  Get used to it!"

Laugh if you will, but I see warriors, here.  If their uniforms seem odd to you, well they said they were "queer", didn't they?  The entire ensemble goes together into one, comprehensible, honorable, threat display, easily understandable to any warrior with two neurons to rub together.

It took time, but wars do.  Their enemies were happy to insult them, as enemy warriors will.  In the end, they've been tremendously successful.  They can now love whom they will, marry whom they will, and even give blood in many states.  There's more to do, of course, but that's mop-up.  They won and should be proud of it.  (In fact, they appear to be proud of it, since they remind us every year of their warrior prowess on a day that needs no other name than "Pride Day".)  What a triumph!

I'm serious!  They understood the rules, they followed them, and they won.  It's now comprehensible that gays should have the same rights the rest of us have.  Mainstream society had to back down and return to free-society virtues.  They understood, rightly, that the game is played by trying to move up the virtue stack, not down it.  They have been tremendously successful.  Now that things are so much better for them (even though there's more to do), they've become more polite, as a reward to society being willing to be more polite to them.  It's a mark of their achievements that HR departments teach us all, once a year, that it's wrong to be homophobic, and so do our schools and universities.  I think they're an excellent model for women's issues.

What's Left to Do?

I remain fairly baffled by Steinemite radical feminism.  As I said at the beginning, they seem incoherent to me, since I don't understand why they think our society is patriarchal or male-dominated, and I don't even understand what they want, since they rage at us, instead of using reason to convince us to go along with specific demands.

If there's a radical feminist fight that needs to be fought, I'd suggest the following:

1. Make it clear what you mean by "patriarchy" and how that differs from the mainstream understanding, which would tend to see ancient Rome as patriarchal but not the modern west.
2. Make it clear why you think our society is still patriarchal, using this definition.
3. Come up with a clear list of demands for society, rather than some vague sense that women are "oppressed" and you just don't want to be "oppressed," since that's not comprehensible to many of us.
4. Stop incoherent raging.  Realize that that's not only counter-productive but that it brings out the worst in men and leads us to abandon modern moral values.  Realize that there's an alternative to rage.
5. Instead, enter the public forum according to the virtues of a free society.  Make your case, state your demands, allow debate, and stay polite, understanding politeness as something that all free people must uphold, rather than clinging to the radical feminist insistence that politeness is something men expect of women but not of themselves.  We men do hold ourselves to the virtue of politeness.  But politeness doesn't mean making nice.  As a virtue, it's a balance between the twin vices of rudeness and making-nice.  So, don't make nice with us, but don't be rude either: that way, we'll recognize that we are negotiating as equals.  Don't expect us to make nice, and realize that, when we assert ourselves, we're not being rude.
6. Rather than going against free-society virtues, actively uphold them and insist on them.  They're women's birthright as much as men's.  We men can and should be guided by those virtues, so long as our political opponents are.  Free-society virtues are to your advantage, not your disadvantage.
   

Conclusion

I hope this has helped clarify how I believe we can move forward with feminists making progress in society.

 

WARNING: If you flame me, cancel me, or otherwise rage at me for writing this post, it is you who will have failed to uphold our free-society virtues.  

---

[1] I realize that, biologically, gender is, arguably, an illusion or maybe a social construct.  However, I think most of us agree that many of us feel male or female, and many of us have been identified by society as male or female, even if that identification differs from our own sense of self.  There seem to be some sort of differences in hormones, etc. that give rise to this social construct, which are real enough.  So, I'm going to use gender to describe that, here.  I don't mean to imply binary gender, biologically.  What's more, this entire debate would be incomprehensible if we thought there was no such thing as gender.  I think most people discussing this agree that there's some sort of modeling of nature that our society does that understands a very complex and messy biological truth in terms that most of us can more readily understand and that gives rise to some sort of thought about gender.  So, I think my points still stand, even though we're realizing that, biologically, gender is some sort of complex, multi-dimensional matrix of bell curves.  More importantly, I think this clash between what I perceive as anti-male Steinemite feminism and egalitarian Paglian feminism is an important one to resolve.

And... it's counterproductive for anyone who wants to promote the biological insight that gender is non-binary to rage at conservatives (or at anyone else) who are reluctant to see this.  When societies make radically society-changing discoveries like this, people (particularly in a free society) need space and time to discuss, hash out, and figure out what they think and how they feel about it.  The best way to get our society to go along with non-binary gender is to stop emotionally abusing people and let them talk.  You can talk, too.  That's how a free society works.

[2] What happened with the "70 cents on the dollar" so-called "statistic" is that feminists rolled stay-at-home mothers into that statistic.  That gives the false impression that businesses are prejudiced against women.  In fact, businesses, on average, pay women the same, but more women than men don't work outside the home.  If you think that's a problem, that's fine, but "70 cents on the dollar" is propaganda, regardless.  If you want to convince us men of something, the worst thing you can do is be dishonest, since it's unvirtuous.  If you think, say, we should be socialist instead of capitalist because it's better for women, just say that, rather than being dishonest about it.

[3] It turns out to have been based on an informal web poll of 150 respondents.  That's bad statistics.  The truth seems to be more like 1 in 53.  That's too high, but the 1 in 5 statistic is another instance of propaganda.  More importantly, this doesn't mean that campus rape is caused by a male-dominated society.  An alternate theory is that there's just too much crime and that law enforcement needs to do better.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5XMuTAomNk

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4lju1ivuTU

[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p004y29m

[6] Please, please don't lecture me on using male pronouns in this section.  In pre-modern times, warriors were typically male.  There are some exceptions, but come on.  I've already admitted that pre-modern cultures were typically sexist.