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Editor's Note: This series of articles was originally a speech delivered fifteen years ago. It's interesting to note what has changed since then, and what hasn't. This is the second section.
So what makes feminists tick? They do and believe some truly weird things, but there must be some logical bases for them.
Well, indeed there are, though they might not be ones we’d agree with. At least I hope not. Let’s take a look at the core fundamental values, or tenets, of feminism.
The one basic, fundamental belief of feminists, that underlies all their activities, is a good, solid, deep-seated, misandry. That’s right: their beliefs are all based on misandry.
Misandry is defined as not liking men. You might have run into the word misanthrope or misanthropic; a misanthrope is someone who doesn’t like people. A misogynist is someone who doesn’t like women; a misandryst is someone who doesn’t like men. And feminists are the clearest example of misandrists around.
According to feminist leaders, men are the source of all that is bad in the world, not the least of which is the oppression of women. They see the way the world works as one vast conspiracy designed to keep women under foot. And of course, the conspiracy is driven by men.
A prime example of what the feminists see as oppression is what they term “the beauty myth.” As feminists see it, the whole idea of female beauty is a malignant male plot—women spend all their time and money being pretty and trying to attract men, and don’t notice that they are being ruled over.
Just think of it, girls: every time you check that makeup, you are contributing to your own oppression; your own slavery, your own subservience to the iron fist in the velvet glove. You are willingly cooperating in your own imprisonment.
You think your boyfriend or your husband loves you, or cares about you? Wrong! He just makes you think he does, so he can get your free maid service; someone to pick up his dirty socks in the morning for free!
I’m not making these things up--To quote Sheila Cronen, a respected feminist leader:
Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking marriage. Freedom for women cannot be without the abolition of marriage.
Ummm. . . Does this view of life sound a bit bizarre to you? It does to me! Speaking as a guy, I don’t think the whole point of romantic love is to get someone to do your laundry for you.
But think about it from their point of view for a moment. Feminists are the greatest conspiracy theorists on earth--they think that fully half of the population of this planet, or at least of this country, is involved in one vast conspiracy against them! They think all men are ganged up on them, to beat them down, to keep them oppressed.
Well, let me tell you, if there is a conspiracy of all men against all women, then we’re doing a really awful job, letting all these feminists go running around yapping like this. Someone needs to call Conspiracy Central and find out why Gloria Steinem and the rest of the bunch haven’t been bumped off by now.
Well, folks, I’ve got good news for you. There is no conspiracy of men against women. There simply is not. But that doesn’t stop the feminists from believing in one, and taking rather drastic steps to oppose it.
They even take one of the most special relationships created by God, the marriage act, and say it is equivalent to rape. Feminist leaders say that descriptions of marital sex sound pretty much like descriptions of rape, so what’s the difference? In both cases, it’s a man victimizing a woman, making her subservient, a passive participant.
To quote Catharine MacKinnon, law professor—a law professor!--at the University of Michigan:
Compare victims’ reports of rape with women’s reports of sex. They look a lot alike. In this light, the major distinction between intercourse (normal) and rape (abnormal) is that the normal happens so often that one cannot get anyone to see anything wrong with it.
I hope nobody feels this way. It’s hard to argue against this point of view, it really is; it’s so patently absurd there’s not a lot I can say. I’m not going to get too deep into this issue, but it should be self-evident that rape and married love are about as different as it is possible for two things to be.
Especially when you take this view to the logical extreme, which of course the feminists don’t hesitate to do. According to the official publication of the National Organization for Women (NOW):
The simple fact is, every woman must be willing to be recognized as a lesbian to be fully feminine.
I didn’t make that up, folks: the feminists themselves said it. Actually, it makes sense in a perverse way: isn’t it better to love an equal than an oppressor? And only a woman can truly understand another woman, so only a woman can truly love another woman, right? Well, it may make logical sense, but that doesn’t make it right.
So the key, underlying, primarily important tenet of feminist belief is that men are bad. As Gloria Steinem once said, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” “We hate men, what are they good for.” The quotes of feminists should be enough to prove this is true.
Well, if this is what feminists believe, how is the movement still alive? Nobody in even remotely their right mind would ever agree with this kind of tripe; so how is it that feminists and feminist beliefs are of such prevalence today?
It seems that feminists use a time-honored liberal tactic: lying and fudging. And, of course, the sympathetic media cooperates.
For example, have you ever heard that one in four American women are raped at some point in their lives? I’ve seen that statistic cited in a good many places, in magazines, newspapers, television, and so on.
From time to time you will see coeds at colleges marching around campus at night carrying signs: “Take back the night! One in four!”
Now, in no way am I belittling rape, or in any way defending the vile criminals that commit it, and I certainly agree that crime has become incredibly prevalent in our society. But isn’t one in four just a bit high? And where did the statistic come from, anyway?
Well, there is one study that came up with this conclusion. It was, of course, conducted by a feminist, who asked 3000 college women various questions about their sexual experiences.
Here’s where the one in four came from: The questioner counted as rape or attempted rape any event involving sexual intercourse when the woman didn’t want to, as determined by the woman after the fact. In other words, in the eyes of this feminist, sex that the woman didn’t want or regretted afterward equals rape.
Now, I’m not denying that all of those instances involve wrong, inappropriate behavior. And I’m not defending the men involved in them.
But not all sex is rape. And even the victims realized that. Of the women that the researcher counted as having been raped—of the one in four women—only one-fourth of those actually thought they had been raped.
The others thought it was miscommunication or a crime less than rape, and quite a few didn’t even feel victimized. So instead of being one in four women being rape victims, it’s actually more like one in sixteen. And that’s only with college women, who are a lot more likely to get raped than, say, aged grandmothers.
Still far, far, far too high, and an indictment on our society, but a far cry from one in four. The feminists fudged the statistics to make them look impressive.
Sometimes they don’t even bother with that much. Here’s a classic. Does anybody remember Super Bowl 1993?
Around that time an interesting report came out that Super Bowl Sunday is the day of the year on which more women get abused than any other. The thought is that sports fans are busy watching the game and will beat up on their women if they interrupt.
This report got bigger and bigger as the Bowl approached: Articles appeared saying that women’s crisis centers got more calls on Super Bowl Sunday than any other. Even NBC, broadcasting the game that year, put on a public service announcement reminding men that abuse is a crime.
One little catch: The whole affair was a complete lie.
One professional and honest reporter, Ken Ringle, tried to track down where the report came from. And he found out: The feminists had been citing a study of domestic violence conducted at Old Dominion College.
The authors of that study, when reached, said that, far from finding that Super Bowl Sunday had an outburst of domestic violence, rather, football games had no effect whatsoever on the amount of reported abuse.
The entire report, the whole story, was a complete and utter fraud. And the liberal media swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, without even bothering to check on its accuracy.
Well, when confronted with the facts, did the feminists recant and say they had been wrong? Not on your life! They waffled, and said they did not give out statistics.
In fact, the original lying feminist, Lenore Walker, was offended and angry—ha! Offended and angry!--at the reporter who uncovered her fraud.
He had called her, she said, trying to ask her how she dreamed up the report, but she wouldn’t call him back. So she said that that’s why he wrote the article about her, because he was just ticked that she wouldn’t return his call. She said:
He felt as if he was entitled to talk to me; because he did not get what he was entitled to he got angry and decided to use his pen as a sword as a batterer does with his fist when he does not get what he thinks he is entitled to.
So the feminist set her critic at the same level as a wife beater because he cared more about the facts and about truth than about feminist dogma.
Even today, this report refuses to die, and in fact reappeared on the news just last week, despite the fact that it has been proven to be false.
Clearly, these feminist leaders believe in situation ethics. The end justifies the means. They have a moral imperative: What they are trying to do is so very important, it justifies any means whatsoever that they choose to use to promote their ends, whether that involve lying, deceit, fraud, unfair attacks on critics, pillorying the innocent, or any other act that we would normally classify as wrong.
And these folks claim the moral high ground?
Well, let’s just make it perfectly clear. Maleness is not evil.
Yes, there are evil men. Yes, there are wife-beaters. Yes, some men feel that women are there only to serve them, and that they have a right to whatever they want from a woman.
But saying that all men are this way, that Man as a whole thinks Woman as a whole is his slave, is wrong. And wrong methods are never right, even for the best of causes.
I’m reluctant to quote a man with a college named after him, but he said, “It is never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right,” and nowhere is this more true than in feminism.
To be continued...