Antifeminism

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Antifeminism is opposition to feminism in some or all of its forms.[1]

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Antifeminist comments periodically appear in U.S. political punditry. For example, in a 1983 syndicated column, Pat Buchanan wrote, "Rail as they will about discrimination, women are simply not endowed by nature with the same measures of single-minded ambition and the will to succeed in the fiercely competitive world of Western capitalism."[2]

Libertarian feminists such as Camille Paglia, Christina Hoff Sommers, Jean Bethke Elshtain and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese have been labeled "antifeminists", or holders of antifeminist views, by other feminists. [3] [4][5] Some argue that in this way the term "antifeminist" is used to silence academic debate about feminism, and represents "an enormous extension of women's power, allowing any sort of criticism of either women or feminist ideas to fall under the watchful eye of their ideological guardians."[6].

Jennifer Pozner, a feminist media critic, claims that libertarian feminists use the "feminist" label as a ruse. In describing what she believes is a method of so-called "rebel feminists" who use "Leftist lingo to gain rebellious credibility in a supposedly politically correct culture," she identifies what she argues libertarian feminists have a strategy:

“ Anti-feminist women who attack feminism under the guise of the liberal cause of women's advancement are far less easy to dismiss than right-wing critics such as Phyllis Schlafly or Rush Limbaugh. Yet Schlafly and Sommers are both listed in the speakers guide of the Young Americas Foundation, a group which routinely gives $10K grants to student groups to bring conservative lecturers to their campuses. Sommers is also a speaker for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, another right think tank, which dishes out the dollars to sponsor lecturers who "counter the Marxists, radical feminists, deconstructionists, and other 'politically correct' types on your campus." The media seize the rhetoric of self-proclaimed "feminist dissenters" such as Sommers and Rophie as proof that feminism is failing women ("See," we are supposed to think, "even the feminists now admit their movement is passé"). They are compensated highly for their complicity: Sommers received over $164,000 in grants from the conservative Olin, Bradley and Carthage foundations for Who Stole Feminism, in addition to a six-figure advance from her publisher, Simon and Schuster.
Some questions arise in response to Roiphe's smug assertion that "some feminisms are better than others." Which "brands" of feminism should be considered beneficial to women, and which should be discounted? Whose "feminism" should we trust: the feminism of young activists who lead self-defense workshops, staff battered women's shelters and rape hotlines, push for anti-discrimination legislation, and study and teach women's history, or that of ideologically Right "feminist dissenters" such as Sommers and Roiphe, who constantly mock young women as neo-Victorian wimps? The answer is simple—using Leftist lingo does not make the package any less conservative. Sommers' and Roiphe's "feminisms" consist of one overriding premise: that activists for women's rights are intellectually and sexually naive, and should not be taken seriously when they speak in the classroom or of the bedroom. This is classic backlash fare, and should be dismissed as such. Feminism, in its most pure form, is an ideological movement for women's political, social, and economic equality. These goals—along with complete sexual autonomy for women—form the vision of contemporary campus feminists. Their agenda, not faux-feminists' distorted picture of their movement, is the version of feminism that is truly "better than others.”

Uncovering the Right on Campus, copyright 1997 by the Center for Campus Organizing

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche expresses his belief that women are naturally more cruel and contemptuous of truth than men, and that the emancipation of women threatens to compromise what he considers these admirable feminine qualities.

“

Since the French Revolution the influence of woman in Europe has grown smaller in proportion to the increase in her rights and demands, and the "Emancipation of Woman," to the extent that that is desired and demanded by women themselves (and not just by superficial men), has, as a result, produced a peculiar symptom of the growing weakening and deadening of the most feminine instincts. There is a stupidity in this development, an almost masculine stupidity, about which a successful woman—who is always an intelligent woman—would have to feel thoroughly ashamed.”

He goes on to write that, "The thing in woman that arouses respect and often enough fear is her nature, which is 'more natural' than man's nature, her genuine predatory and cunning adaptability, the tiger's claws under the glove, the naiveté of her egotism, her uneducable nature, her inner wildness, the incomprehensibility, breadth, and roaming of her desires and virtues," and concludes that these superior qualities can only thrive when women are repressed or relegated to subordinate roles. He attacks the men of his time he sees as "idiotic friends of women and corrupters of women among the scholarly asses of the male sex who counsel woman to de-feminize herself in this manner and to imitate all the foolish things which make 'man' in Europe and European 'manliness' sick, people who want to bring woman down to the level of a 'common education,' perhaps even to reading the newspapers and discussing politics. Here and there they want even to make women into free spirits and literati: as if a woman without piety were not something totally repulsive and ridiculous to a profound and godless man."[7]

Nietzsche also writes that if a woman is "corrupted" by having the same freedom as men, it "make[s] her incapable of her first and last profession, giving birth to strong children." Although Oswald Spengler's own expressed views on women were generally more empathetic and less inflammatory than Nietzsche's, Spengler endorsed the Nietzschean opposition to feminism for many of the same reasons. Spengler also expressed concern that both men and women in Western countries no longer wanted to get married and raise children, claiming this would eventually result in the destruction of Western Civilization. But while Nietzsche argued for stricter societal controls on women, Spengler found it deplorable for either society or the state to force women to meet a "standardized type… in body, in clothes, in mind," which he considered a sign of cultural decline or inferiority[8]. In The Hour of Decision Spengler attacks both feminism and modern misogyny as signs of Western culture in decline.[9]

Much of feminism also conflicts with the Nietzschean view of world history, continued by admirers and emulators such as Spengler, which rejects the traditional linear notion of world history headed toward a greater goal. Because feminist ideology chooses to portray history by the relations of what it identifies as victims and oppressors in a subjective way, claiming to represent the victim's perspective, it falls under the category of "slave morality." Furthermore, feminism positions itself as an ideology that revolves around what it claims to be intellectual assertions about relations between the sexes, and thus runs in opposition to the fundamental core of Nietzschean declared anti-rationalism.[citation needed]

As of 2006 the most successful antifeminist organisation in the US is STOP ERA, founded by Phyllis Schlafly in October 1972. Schlafly successfully mobilised thousands of people to block the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment in the USA[10]. It was Schlafly too who forged links between STOP ERA and other conservative organizations, as well as single-issue groups against abortion, pornography, gun control, and unions. By integrating STOP ERA with the so-called New Right she was able to leverage a wider range of technological, organisational and political resources, successfully targeting pro-feminist candidates for defeat[10].

Critics dispute studies, and conclusions drawn from studies, of the behaviour of children from fatherless homes labelling them as misleading and alarmist and refer to counter-research to support their claims:

“ Research on the impact of father involvement on children provides evidence that high levels of paternal participation tends to increase children's cognitive competence, empathy, and internal locus of control. These children are also characterized by reduced sex-stereotyped beliefs. However, these positive outcomes may result because the fathers sampled wanted to be and enjoyed being involved in childcare, not just because they were involved per se.”

Fatherhood and Family Law: the Myths and the Facts. Compilation.

Australian sociologist Michael Flood responds that although children of two-parent families generally do better psychologically and educationally than children of single-parent families, that does not necessarily mean that correlation between these two factors implies that one is the cause of the other, and that neither divorce, nor fatherlessness in themselves are the cause of it. In his discussion paper he uses studies to argue that it is the quality of parenting and the child's relationship with the parents that plays the main role. That children are negatively influenced by the situations in families characterized by violence, psychological problems, substance abuse, or economic insecurity and that it is the couples where such situations are frequent that are more likely to get divorced.[11]

In an article released in the American Psychologist (June 1999), psychologist and researcher Louise B. Silverstein and psychologist and researcher in coding and analysis Carl F. Auerbach explained the conclusions their research brought them to:

“ We have found that the stability of the emotional connection and the predictability of the caretaking relationship are the significant variables that predict positive child adjustment…
[O]ur research with divorced, never-married, and remarried fathers has taught us that a wide variety of family structures can support positive child outcomes.”

June 1999 American Psychologist (Journal) "Deconstructing the Essential Father," by Louise B. Silverstein, Ph.D.and Carl F. Auerbach, Ph.D., Yeshiva University]

  • Redefining the New Woman, 1920-1963 (Antifeminism in America: A Collection of Readings from the Literature of the Opponents to U.S. Feminism, 1848 to the Present), Howard-Zophy
  • Un-American Womanhood: Antiradicalism, Antifeminism, and the First Red Scare, Kim E. Nielsen
  • Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females (1983; ISBN 0-399-50671-3).
  • Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1992; ISBN 0-385-42507-4)
  • Cynthia D. Kinnard, Antifeminism in American Thought: An Annotated Bibliography (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1986, ISBN 0-8161-8122-5)
  • Jane J. Mansbridge: Why We Lost the ERA, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1986
  • G. Swanson, Antifeminism in America: A Historical Reader (2000) ISBN 0-8153-3437-0

  1. ^ "Anti-feminist." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989
  2. ^ Pat Buchanan In His Own Words. FAIR (1996). Retrieved on [[2006-09-30]].
  3. ^ Judith Stacey, Is Academic Feminism an Oxymoron?, Signs, Vol. 25, No. 4, Feminisms at a Millennium. (Summer, 2000), pp. 1189-1194
  4. ^ Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, Review: 'Feminist Attacks on Feminisms: Patriarchy's Prodigal Daughters', Feminist Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1. (Spring, 1998), pp. 159-175
  5. ^ BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine,by Margaret Cho (Foreword), Lisa Jervis (Editor), Andi Zeisler (Editor), 2006
  6. ^ Patai, Daphne; Noretta Koertge. Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies. ISBN 0739104551. 
  7. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil
  8. ^ Oswald Spengler: The Hour Of Decision: Part Two, II. World Powers And World Wars
  9. ^ Oswald Spengler: The Hour Of Decision: Part Four, IV. The Coloured World-Revolution
  10. ^ a b Tierney, Helen (1999). Women's Studies Encyclopedia. Westport, CT, USA: Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated, p. 95. 
  11. ^ "Fatherhood and fatherlessness" Micheael Flood, Ph.D.
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