Looking Back at Feminism, 50 Years From Now
What will people think of feminism 50 years from now, or however long it takes for a more balanced view of gender issues to permeate society?
The first question will likely be: how could we let it go so far? How could men be seen as the oppressors and sole winners in the gender role system when:
- The vast majority of homeless people and prison inmates are men
- The vast majority of people who die in work related accidents are men
- The only group of people forced to fight in wars are men
What kind of patriarchy protects its men in such a lousy way? Well, it’s certainly not a patriarchy designed to give men all the perks while leaving women empty-handed (women are the only oppressed class in history who had their oppressors go out and work in the fields for them, as Warren Farrell says).
The second question would likely be how feminism could ever have been looked upon as revolutionary, when it simply perpetuates the view that men are responsible for society while women are seen as not affecting society at all through their lives and choices. That’s a weird way of looking at things once you start thinking about it, but it is one of the root assumptions of contemporary feminism.
Feminism’s belief that women do not have agency and are constant victims of “structures”, while men have nothing but agency and cannot be the victim of structures, is so simplistic that it wouldn’t have been believable if it didn’t play into our deepest instincts. These deep instincts tell us to protect women and children at all costs, and in turn make us listen without demanding proof when a group of women (i.e. feminists) say that they are victims and need more protection.
Anyone who’s interested in truly revolutionizing gender roles (I’m not, by the way), would have passed a law forbidding men to enter combat while forcing women into combat through an exclusively female draft or military service. However, such a proposal–though truly revolutionary in the very spirit that feminism claims to be representing–will never see the light of day since it violates the most basic principle of our gender roles: protect women, let men take the risks.
Feminists have demanded more freedom and better protection for women, but they have never demanded that women take more risks and that men be better protected. There is no outcry about men dying or being injured at dangerous jobs. There’s no lobbying to have women be better represented in the “death professions” that men dominate.
When looking back at feminism 50 years from now, people will likely say that feminism did get one thing right; it opened up our eyes to gender roles, and that there is a lot of room for improvement in both gender roles. We need movements that work with gender issues, and most of all we need men and women who truly care about these issues. However, feminism is not the movement that can make change happen in a constructive way, being far too polarizing and one-sided to be able to see the full spectrum of gender dynamics.
In fact, as long as feminism is seen as the one-stop shop for discussing gender issues, we run the risk of creating more tension and more of a gender war than was ever needed. But if we can let go of feminism sooner rather than later, we will be judged more favorably in the future, and I won’t have to change the title of this post to Looking Back at Feminism, 150 Years From Now.
Pelle Billing is an M.D. who writes and lectures about men’s issues and gender liberation beyond feminism.
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October 11th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Nice.
I was also forced to wonder how far you could have gone with your bullet points that demonstrate male social disadvantage.
I have often said that equality, for women, would be a big step down. I think if we honestly examined the advantages and disadvantages of the gender roles, we would find that equality for women wouldn’t just be a step down. It would be a giant leap into a bottomless pit.
October 11th, 2009 at 8:52 am
“When looking back at feminism 50 years from now, people will likely say that feminism did get one thing right; it opened up our eyes to gender roles, and that there is a lot of room for improvement in both gender roles.”
It actually has closed eyes more than opening them by establishing as truth and fact all the lies that feminism has been perpetuating successfully for decades. Nobody questions these many lies-and anyone that does is seen as anti-female. I’d say they succeeded remarkably at selling The Big Lie: Women Good-Men Bad. Before we can even start getting to the truth we have to discredit the huge pile of lies now taken as truth and fact. It has piled up for over 4 decades-that’s a lot of bs to go after.
October 11th, 2009 at 9:26 am
Your article does rather assume that in 50 years time feminism will be a thing of the past. Just because something is rotten and riddled with inconsistencies does not mean it will disappear. Rich Zubati in his book ‘What Men Know and Women Don’t’ rather argues that the feminisation of men has been going on for thousands of years. On this time scale 50 years is not a very long time for things to change. I don’t know if Zubati is right or wrong.
I suppose what I do believe is that MRAs like to write and read these sort of articles to cheer ourselves up. I read a lot of similar article and have done for years. I read Harry only recently saying that in 10, 20 or 30 years time women will be almost absent from decision making.
I guess all these time scale are sufficiently far in the future as to be beyond living memory when the time comes.
I will certainly be dead so you don’t risk my saying ‘I told you so’.
I certainly have no futuristic insight myself. The only thing I know is that I don’t know. So I don’t know what I am about to tell you. It is what I believe but that gives it no general validity at all.
So what I see is a future being much more terrible than the past. I see no turning back or respite from what we have now. If there is to be life for men in the future then it will be a life not worth living, at least not if you are a man ( as oppose to a feminised male).
For me maleness has already been extinguished. The route was complete and all that is left is ignominy.
Well that just the way I see the future. No point in arguing about it though since all we have to do is wait and see.
October 11th, 2009 at 10:45 am
When I studied sociology at the university many years ago, the female professor criticised the government for taking steps to cut unemployment benefits for some people after 3 years of non-stop unemployment. I’m talking about Belgium here. She argued that this was discriminating for women, because the law itself did not target women explicitly, but it had the result of targeting women, because most long time unemployed were women. Therefore, she promised to throw all her weight into the political arena to oppose this law. (She became senator later.)
When I heard this, I thought to myself: the criminal laws have as result that almost all prisoners are men, so this is discriminating also. To compensate this, the criminal laws should be changed, so that they have as result that there are equal numbers of men and women in the prison.
While I was thinking about this, she had moved to another topic already, and anyway i could not stand up against this fanatic feminist professor, and against my fellow students, who were mostly equally fanatic feminists.
But I always remembered this, because it was totally unworthy for a university professor to say such a thing.
October 11th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Feminism sold itself from the beginning as oppressive class struggle between men and women-classic Marxism-instead of accounting for the differences between men and women and the pros and cons of being male and female in society. Feminism could have gone down a good road that treated males and females fairly looking for a way to advance gender roles for both men and women. Instead feminism set the stage for antagonism between men and women that has only gotten worse and worse over the decades. This may now be irreversible. Feminism did not open anyones eyes to gender roles in an honest way-but rather in a dishonest way. That can hardly be considered a positive accomplishment by any clear thinking person.
October 11th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
50 (or 150) years from now, I believe that the inevitable conclusion will be that feminism is what destroyed western civilization. After a century or so of declining (christian) birthrates, as opposed to the large immigrant muslim broods that will have voted their own into power, the status of women will have come full circle….barefoot and pregnant once again.
Delicious irony.
October 11th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
@Bard S.
My prediction is that the wreckage of the west will not take anywhere near 50-150 years.
We are now at the end of America’s global ascendency. The trip down can be much more rapid than the climb up.
40% of children in the U.S. are born outside of marriage. A large percentage of these children will live in poverty or close to it. There will be on-going and huge government funding to provide for these impoverished households for 20+ years. This trend will probably continue well beyond. Concurrently we are going to see-year-in & year-out-many baby boomers retiring. They will burden the health care infrastrusture of this country. Since Social Security was never in a “lock-box”, younger earners will see huge tax increases in their lifetimes-assuming many of them can get their post college lives started in the next few years. And don’t forget all of those without high paying (useful and employable) college degrees free of competition from low-wage illegals.
The U.S. carries debt equal to it’s GDP. China, India, on the other hand have little debt. China funds our debt. These are global competitors who will likely “eat our lunch” over the next 20 years. China has a GDP that is ~ 50% of ours in the U.S. This has doubled in less than 10 years. It’s reasonable to expect that China’s GDP will be close to that of the U.S.’ in ~ 10 years.
All of these factors form a “Perfect Storm” when you add the fact that men are fed up with being displaced as providers (income earners) to the women who continue to be hired and promoted in favor of the men and as fathers, and as a political interest group. The rate of marriage in the U.S. is the lowest it has ever been. Corporate America no longer pretends to be enforcing fairness-they now openly favor women over men in both hiring and in promotion. When does the government listen to men? Men have long ago lost the battle for fairness in Family Courts. Men are giving up in greater and greater numbers at the feminized universities. Why the Hell should America’s most productive citizens continue to try and compete in a system that is obviously rigged against them?
The point is that America faces very very tough competition abroad, economically, politically, militarily, at a time when it lacks the resources to face these challenges-including a male population willing to accept being 4th class citizens without a vested interest in the country’s future. I don’t believe ANY American male should provide for and protect ANY American female-and I don’t believe ANY American male should proviide for and protect the homeland. American men ought to live for their own interest alone-and for no one else’s.
The west-and specifically America-has a lot less time than 50 years.
It deserves what it’s going to get.
October 12th, 2009 at 3:23 am
A reawakening to a sustainable future is certainly one possible scenario.
Others are:
Matriarchy, where most men have no useful role, especially as father, while women are propped up in doing anything they want, men have no choices, and the government forces men to provide for women while women provide nothing in return. Wait, that’s the present, not the future.
Feminism, which is another for of Marxism, contributes to or completes the transformation of western society to Communism. While women under Communism may have some perks, mostly it is life and death in complete misery. Whether or not people realize that feminism contributed to our downfall would most likely depend on what the government allows to be written, spoken, and taught. This would be more of a disaster for women because they have much further to fall from their current life of privilege, and it is also the direction I believe we are currently heading full steam.
Society is decimated by matriarchal nanny state welfare policies and radical Islam overthrows weak, feminized western societies where males have lost interest in protecting women, imposing Sharia law on those who survive, and we (they) have a reversal of current gender roles such that men do what they want and women have no choices.
A self-fulfilling prophecy occurs where men, having been deemed as unworthy of fundamental rights continues to worsen for so long that it is more fact than fiction that men are a burden and not a benefit to society. Think of all of the fatherless, directionless boys out there today being taught by their single mothers that men are worthless because they fail to provide them with everything they want while they don’t believe they need to take any responsibility for anything beyond cashing child support checks. Baby boys are routinely aborted, misandry rules in courts, and society collapses into one of the other states mentioned above.
October 12th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
I love it…feminist have transposed women from , “damsils in distress.” to “stressed out , damsils “,nether of which , I concern myself…
October 22nd, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I can only hope there are actually some real men left to actually do some looking back on feminism, and that we’re not all incarcerated, silenced, self-annihilated or otherwise incapacitated.
I see hope out there, and I see that hope in places like this, and conversations I have with young men who are realizing there is something very wrong with the way we are doing things.
As in AA: The first step is admitting you have a problem.
The solutions? We’ll have to see I suppose, there are a wide range of ways it can go.
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:10 am
The generation of men who built this nation were not of my generation.( baby boom generation ).Those men had what it took ! My generation never had what took …we just took all it had !