Phil, look at the facts rather than the propaganda. There is no huge increase in male violence... in fact our official statistics all show violence is decreasing. But the feminists are doing an excellent job misrepresenting the data, endlessly expanding the definition of violence to include emotional, financial, spiritual abuse... every week there's a new addition to the list. And denying the immense amount of international research showing women are just as violent as men, particularly towards their children.
The marriage between violent men and an accelerating knowledge explosion is unsustainable.
We don't have to hate men to see that threat clearly. Hating men has nothing to do with it. It's just the recognition of real world facts.
If we don't find a way to deal with the threat presented by violent men, it's just a matter of time until all such cultural squabbling as being discussed here is swept away in a coming tsunami of chaos.
We can't afford the squabbling any more guys and gals. We need to be focused on survival of the civilization.
Hi Bettina. Your latest essay led me to Ms. Fiamengo. Thanks for that. I was appalled that Germaine Greer had written a book about the sexualization of young boys together with pics. But then on thinking about it I realized it has been openly in front of us for many years in the words of Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" .
If any of you subscribe to Spectator Australia, could you please make comments below my blog, which has just been published in their Flat White section? It is good for me if there is lively discussion on that site about my writing. https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/feminism-was-never-about-equality/
Today’s feminists are misandrists, many are single mothers, possibly separated from their male partners. They want to raise their sons and daughters with their beliefs & keep fathers estranged from their children. This will then be our future children growing up thinking men are inferior and to be despised. Women & men are different when are women going to get it. Having two sons I was happy for my husband to have a hands on relationship, helping to raise our sons. He was firm & kind, he instilled in them the importance of having an opinion, they grew up to be very confident young men. They turn to dad for some things and mum for other things. Parents have a role to play in raising children as well as extended family. My sons learned to respect women & would never harm them in anyway, but also were individuals, they wanted their partners to enjoy life away from home, have their own friends & have their own identities. Women need to understand to stop changing men to the person they want, let them be themselves, sometimes a bit rough around the edges, sometimes not politically correct and sometimes downright infuriating, but no one is perfect are they. Feminists need to lighten up and stop blaming men for their own failures. The greatest feminists are the mums who can take on any role because they have had good dads & husbands to encourage and support them.
I was raised in the perfect family to be a perfect gentleman. There never were arguments, or talks of politics, sex, or religion. What parents planned was never shared until we arrived somewhere or other. Budgeting was never discussed, no help with homework etc, BUT there were so many rules I dared not transgress. Do not hit girls – Stand up on transport for females of any age and maybe old men – Open doors for all women – Be a gentleman. It was made clear that I could never even hold a girls hand in friendship , so in my naive state, so many will have thought me not interested at all, when I was very interested. My sister used to check under her bed every night for “Ghosties!”. I thought that a real hoot, so one night I hid under her bed. Upon seeing eyes shining back, she shrieked, fled dow to my parents and I got the only beating I ever got. It is notable that Dad was called to do those honours, since in every other respect he was a non-entity in the house. Discussed nothing, mediated nothing, gave no tips of any kind to his sons – in fact when he died at age 76, I still had no idea of his opinions, his beliefs or values. I have not detected them since. Values came from mum – like “Never ever pull your pants down in the presence of a female!” So rediculous looking back, but it was clear that to trangress was to dishonour the whole family, and would be punished. I think this laid the tracks for my future relationship failures. Mum always voiced personal criticisms of any girls who were in my company. People probably thought me homosexual, but I married eventually which started a new disaster. MY POINT of all this is to get people to ponder what the consequences are of children being raised by somewhat extreme ideological parents and extended family. I now think Dad was a beaten man. Beaten down. So what of mum. A clue might come from a comment of my paternal grandfather who labelled her family “Man-haters”. Back then I thought that might be a bias limited to random individuals, but recent genealogy reveals that back around 1865 eight girls were born. Seven grew up and remained spinsters, employed in Education at high government etc level. At least one was seconded to South Africa to educate the blacks. But most notable is that all these girls were active in formation of Women’s Right & and suffrage. I cannot help wondering if situations like that won’t become inter-generational, descending generations like a cancer. Education is still the favoured propaganda channel. Another fact, might be related, mum found a job in Child Welfare department. Readers, please judge – was at 8yrs old, hiding under sister’s bed as a gag, such an unforgivable crime?
@Alan Radford. Thanks for this comment! I can relate to it, and I expect many boys of our generation can. "Mom" laid the rules in the house, just as her mom had before her, and dad had long been beaten into "yes dear", while still retaining some nominal headship in the house - just to affirm everything mom does. Boys learned that this is how to treat women (ie. utter deference, even "fear") and when we got into a real relationship didn't know what had happened to us when our respect was returned with bullying and abuse.
My heart goes out to you for the beating you received for an excellent gag! After learning your place like that, you still had years to go living in a house where you had been shown what mum thought of you.
I can't quite think of analagous "gags" that I've heard of, but Jordan Peterson has a recent interview (with on Rita Panahi, Sky News, which you'll be able to find), where he describes the disastrous consequences to boys of the "devouring mother", who undermines a boy's every attempt to acquire "competence". For men, we learn eventually that women very much value a "good sense of humour" and a man who can make them laugh. Your mum's reaction here was a crushing of a key "competence" area for you - and probably deliberately so.
Isn't it worse for everyone, even the girls? Analysing all this, Mum's peculiarities were also likely to be intergenerational. Just like my training amounts to some "social illness" she may have the same excuse. May not have known the flaws herself. Maybe she was not allowed to ask questions? I think the family talks over the table are so important - I figure that is where kids might learn about social issues, discuss politics, religion, prospects, business,
budgeting, - and most importantly conflict resolution ( all the things I missed out on).
Ever since I was a boy, being lectured by feminist teachers about the many shortcomings of my sex, enduring an educational system that treated boys like defective girls, I intuitively sensed that there must be some great lie lurking at the core of such obvious injustice.
Since then I've watched as, one by one, all of the institutions that formerly gave males a way to become men have been battered down. I've watched as boys have failed to thrive, and men have degenerated into eunuchs.
The misery inflicted on both women and men by the widespread acceptance of these lies is immeasurable.
Thank you, Bettina, for this cogent and insightful overview of Janice's extraordinary effectiveness as an advocate for men. I admire her courage in speaking out against misandry, especially in academic environments, where it is hard-wired into decision-making. It is a lot easier to ban or denounce the work of Janice and other writers who challenge hatred of men than it is to answer their arguments. It is depressing to see how the popular press lazily repeats what feminists say and thereby boosts the legitimacy of feminist views. They have become the new normal, the new consensus. These opinions, however extreme, are the center; any challenge to them must obviously come from ideological extremists who should shamed and not heard.
>> These opinions, however extreme, are the center;
Bravo! They are also the consensus of the "experts" on the "evidence". Many articles on dv, sexual assault, and the wage gap, etc. in the MSM and from organisations (eg. football clubs, the churches) will include a comment from an "expert" putting the issue into purely feminist terms - "inequality", "men need to be part of the solution", etc, and also stating that their position is "evidence based".
The "Overton Window" of what can be discussed in polite society only allows the most timid questioning of any feminism in the news. One can suggest that an issue not quite as presented, and then when they respond with "one woman a week...", "one woman in three in her lifetime,..", "women have had enough..", "it's only in recent years that a woman could open a bank account..", you'd better pull your head in.
For too many years, I made a strategic distinction between egalitarian feminism and ideological feminism. Even then, however, I understood that the former was problematic for not one or two but three reasons.
In the first place, the rhetoric of equality (which has by now, since the absorption of feminism into wokism, turned into “equity”) was often a polite veneer that hid the underlying gynocentrism. How can you support true sexual equality, after all, if your entire focus is on the needs and problems of only one sex?
Even in the 1960s, liberal rhetoric often hid misandry that was implicit in the claim that men had caused every problem that feminists identify. Anyone who challenged that assumption was attacked for “blaming the victims.” By definition, a feminist problem was a problem for women alone and therefore one that required reform (at the very least) by men. If qualified women didn’t get the jobs that they wanted, then male employers were guilty of misogyny. If women were not paid the same as men were for the same work, then their employers were guilty of misogyny. If women did not feel comfortable among men at work, then those men were guilty of misogyny for not adapting to the presence of women. If women had to work at home after returning from their offices, then men were guilty of misogyny for refusing to do their fair share of domestic labor. If infertile women (or men) felt obliged to have genetically related children through in vitro or other new reproduction technologies, then men were guilty of misogyny for making them feel so obliged—and in the case of surrogacy, researchers and clinicians (presumably male) were guilty for experimenting on, exploiting and endangering poor women ). If women were denied sole custody of the children after divorce, then men were guilty not only of misogyny but also of dishonesty for hoodwinking family courts into ignoring the hidden urge of men to control or abuse women and children. If women had to stay home to care for their children, then men were guilty of misogyny for not supporting political parties that promised free day-care (or for not quitting or risking their own jobs to care for the children). If women deplored fashions that revealed too much of their bodies, then men were guilty of misogyny for “objectifying” women (and somehow forcing them to buy clothing of this kind). The list could go on and on. And I’ve said nothing here about the double standards that often inflected these feminist claims.
Moreover, egalitarian feminism is naive. Because these feminists have usually equated equality with sameness, the seeds of transgenderism were planted long ago. Trouble is, men and women are not interchangeable. Neither are sex (a natural given) and gender (cultural interpretations of it). People are both embodied and cultural beings, not abstract theories. It took me many years to learn what is now self-evident, because, as a gay man, I had insisted that “gender” had made my life so difficult. Without any gender distinctions, I assumed, all men and women would be much happier. It is hardly surprising that even egalitarian feminists must now defend themselves as female organisms from learned authorities who claim (for political purposes) that they cannot even define the word “woman.”
By the 1980s, ideological theory was quickly replacing the naïve rhetoric of liberalism and revealing explicitly the misandry that had often accompanied gynocentrism. (This was not exactly a new phenomenon, because a few feminists and Marxists had long argued that they would have to destroy the family before any other institution, but it began to go mainstream in the academic world and within one generation far beyond it.) Like all political ideologies on both the Left and the Right, feminist ideology relies on a profoundly dualistic worldview: “us” versus “them.” Ideological feminists are not content to demand familial, societal, economic and political change by men in the present. They are not content with reform at all. On the contrary, they insist on revolution to destroy the current order and replace it with a new and utopian order. This is why they have joined forces with the advocates first of identity politics (except for the transgender movement, which denies the biological reality of both male and female) and then with the wokers (who have come to the same conclusion as feminists in connection with race). Ideological feminists insist, without empirical evidence, that men have conspired from the dawn of human history to oppress women. This comes very close to the belief that men are innately evil (even though that denies men moral agency and thus turns men into subhuman or demonic beings). Consequently, the fate of men under both the current order and the new order is irrelevant. The ideological end, they believe, justifies the means. In moral terms, revenge is a synonym for justice.
More than a few feminists today would flatly deny that feminist ideology, including its misandry, has anything to do with the “real” feminism (which was never, they add, merely one movement in any case). But not all of them are prepared to take either personal or collective responsibility for what other women (and, yes, some men) have said in the name of feminism and even of women. It’s easier to blame others as loonies and thus to stay a safe distance from them. Besides, they add, even the loonies have “pushed the envelope” for women. This amounts to condoning or even tolerating them—but also to closing ranks anyone who challenges any kind of feminism for any reason. Janie Fiamengo is among the few women even now who speak honestly and honorably about feminism.
When the channel with the Fiamengo File videos was permanently banned by YouTube, my producer Steve Brule housed them all at Odysee. They can be found here, in reverse chronological order: https://odysee.com/@StudioBruleArchive:e
Hello Janice - great to see this comment! I hope you see my response, because there is a particular video I've been searching for a couple of years, and haven't been able to find it. It's an interview with Steve Brule (I think) where the subject briefly goes to "conservatives", and you both agree that a problem rife in conservativism is that "they won't say the f word", and you also agree that any conservative movement which won't mention feminism is worthless.
Are you able to point me to that video? At a guess, it was early 2020. I had a sticky label on my desk to go back and save it, but left it too long! I've PM'ed Steve Brule with the question, but he couldn't help.
I have sometimes commented on your threads and videos with my reports as a practicing Catholic on the deep infiltration of feminism within the Catholic church and its charities. I have also spent most of my political life amongst Catholic and other conservatives (small c) and have come to the point of just laughing at what they now see as our major cultural battles - ones where they largely agree with feminists! hehe.. :)
Meanwhile, I save off your link and start searching for that video myself. Thanks!
Hi Stephen, great to hear from you. Are they all hepped up about the trans women invading women's sports? That seems to be a favorite amongst conservative men these days.
I am sorry to say that I don't know what conversation that was. It must have been one of the livestreams after one of the later FF videos, but it doesn't ring a bell.
However, it is a good and perennially true point, and I hope to write something about it for my Substack soon. Remind me if I don't, at fiamengo@uottawa.ca. You can always write me there, if you like, with ideas or thoughts.
Yes, conservatives seem to have been re-enervated by the trans in women sports issue, and see it as another "David vs Goliath" battle - but one they can win.
Conservatives also regularly speak against other LGBT activism, such as "Drag Queen story hour", pronouns and "gender identity" foolishness, legislation on "conversion therapy" and removal of parental rights on gender transition.
Stephen Baskerville called it "taking sides in the left's turf wars".
I have also observed a tendency to characterise the left as "masculine", of the obvious simpy, academic or stupid-youth type, oblivious to the fact that that most of the academic and NGO left are women, as are also the activist church committees, and to refrain from doing direct battle with these women, and to also not notice that women are the primary left voters, and to avoid confronting these also. (Eg. by deferring to "women's issues" frequently enough to avoid the appearance of being ungentlemanly). Tradcons is an apt label.
A classic reference for this is this post from The Federalist, which depicts a notorious incident in the BLM riots, where a woman was accosted by a crowd for not paying lip service to BLM on command.
In the original photograph, most of the assailants are women, but in the Federalist's cartoon, which got traction among Tradcons ("Typical!!!"), all the assailants are "lefty" males.
Here in Australia, our most notable non-feminist conservatives (almost the only ones) are Mark Latham (NSW senator) and Matt Canavan (Federal senator), who are doing great jobs! Our biggest disappointment has been Dominic Perrotet, the newly appointed Premier of NSW. A conservative, practicing Catholic, his appointment was greeted with high-hopes by conservatives. I said "Wait and see" - and was proven right! :))
I just encountered this, from E. Belfort Bax in 1907!
"All parties, all sorts and conditions of politicians, from the fashionable and Conservative west-end philanthropist to the Radical working-men’s clubbite, seem (or seemed until lately) to have come to an unanimous conclusion on one point – to wit, that the female sex is grievously groaning under the weight of male oppression. Editors of newspapers, keen to scent out every drift of public fancy with the object of regaling their “constant readers” with what is tickling to their palates, will greedily print, in prominent positions and in large type letters expressive of the view in question, whilst they will boycott or, at best, publish in obscure corners any communication that ventures to criticise the popular theory or that adduces facts that tell against it."
Hi Stephen, I also find I remember tit bits of information, but struggle to find the originals source.
When I was at school I learnt that many men did not have the right to vote, which I had forgotten about, then someone wrote an article about how his grandfather a soldier during WW1 did not have the right to vote, so in effect, the suffragettes effectively won the right to vote for men as well.
It is a great irony that women like the Professor and you Bettina exemplify precisely the sort of woman many feminists claimed to want to create. Intelligent, well educated, articulate, confident, loving and kind , open and honest. The curiously dysfunctional and eccentric women and men found a useful ideological vehicle in a strange diversion from classic Marxism begun by Engels (who lived just up the road from me while managing his family's factory in Manchester ). Applying the idea of socio economic class to women and men, jettisoning socio economic class along the way so female aristocrats, bourgeois and salariate all are oppressed even by the bin man or brickie.
Just as had been the case for decades in local government the suffragettes did not want men without "substance" to have the vote or indeed women of similarly low status, one wouldn't want ones maid turning up would one ? Here it remains a very bourgeois movement, one completely disinterested in the experience of those Communist countries that have put into policy and practice precisely the socialist feminism that is at the core of their supposed "theory". Possibly because though the USSR or China far outstrip the "west" in female Judges, Doctors, lawyers, movie makers they also had women building roads, digging ditches and collecting trash. And of course enforced equal pay, for everybody.
One important fact about women's inability to vote in earlier times often forgotten, also not mentioned in this article, is that the secrecy of voting is relatively new. In the USA, it only began in 1888. In Canada, it didn't begin until 1873 and wasn't fully adopted federally and in all provinces until 1913. When voting was public, it was a raucous and sometimes violent affair, which would have been especially dangerous for women. In the context of public voting, denying women the vote was a sensible way to protect them from violence.
Phil, look at the facts rather than the propaganda. There is no huge increase in male violence... in fact our official statistics all show violence is decreasing. But the feminists are doing an excellent job misrepresenting the data, endlessly expanding the definition of violence to include emotional, financial, spiritual abuse... every week there's a new addition to the list. And denying the immense amount of international research showing women are just as violent as men, particularly towards their children.
Well, there are bigger fish to fry.
The marriage between violent men and an accelerating knowledge explosion is unsustainable.
We don't have to hate men to see that threat clearly. Hating men has nothing to do with it. It's just the recognition of real world facts.
If we don't find a way to deal with the threat presented by violent men, it's just a matter of time until all such cultural squabbling as being discussed here is swept away in a coming tsunami of chaos.
We can't afford the squabbling any more guys and gals. We need to be focused on survival of the civilization.
Correction :-Not "sexualization of young boys" but rather sexual exploitation of young boys by older women for their own pleasure. G
Hi Bettina. Your latest essay led me to Ms. Fiamengo. Thanks for that. I was appalled that Germaine Greer had written a book about the sexualization of young boys together with pics. But then on thinking about it I realized it has been openly in front of us for many years in the words of Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" .
If any of you subscribe to Spectator Australia, could you please make comments below my blog, which has just been published in their Flat White section? It is good for me if there is lively discussion on that site about my writing. https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/feminism-was-never-about-equality/
Today’s feminists are misandrists, many are single mothers, possibly separated from their male partners. They want to raise their sons and daughters with their beliefs & keep fathers estranged from their children. This will then be our future children growing up thinking men are inferior and to be despised. Women & men are different when are women going to get it. Having two sons I was happy for my husband to have a hands on relationship, helping to raise our sons. He was firm & kind, he instilled in them the importance of having an opinion, they grew up to be very confident young men. They turn to dad for some things and mum for other things. Parents have a role to play in raising children as well as extended family. My sons learned to respect women & would never harm them in anyway, but also were individuals, they wanted their partners to enjoy life away from home, have their own friends & have their own identities. Women need to understand to stop changing men to the person they want, let them be themselves, sometimes a bit rough around the edges, sometimes not politically correct and sometimes downright infuriating, but no one is perfect are they. Feminists need to lighten up and stop blaming men for their own failures. The greatest feminists are the mums who can take on any role because they have had good dads & husbands to encourage and support them.
"The greatest feminist are mum..." in words they're mums. Instead, they should be denouncing feminism all together
What a breath of fresh air! Good to read a well written expose of the feminist movement.
Decades ago, I would say "When are women going to allow men to be equal."
I was raised in the perfect family to be a perfect gentleman. There never were arguments, or talks of politics, sex, or religion. What parents planned was never shared until we arrived somewhere or other. Budgeting was never discussed, no help with homework etc, BUT there were so many rules I dared not transgress. Do not hit girls – Stand up on transport for females of any age and maybe old men – Open doors for all women – Be a gentleman. It was made clear that I could never even hold a girls hand in friendship , so in my naive state, so many will have thought me not interested at all, when I was very interested. My sister used to check under her bed every night for “Ghosties!”. I thought that a real hoot, so one night I hid under her bed. Upon seeing eyes shining back, she shrieked, fled dow to my parents and I got the only beating I ever got. It is notable that Dad was called to do those honours, since in every other respect he was a non-entity in the house. Discussed nothing, mediated nothing, gave no tips of any kind to his sons – in fact when he died at age 76, I still had no idea of his opinions, his beliefs or values. I have not detected them since. Values came from mum – like “Never ever pull your pants down in the presence of a female!” So rediculous looking back, but it was clear that to trangress was to dishonour the whole family, and would be punished. I think this laid the tracks for my future relationship failures. Mum always voiced personal criticisms of any girls who were in my company. People probably thought me homosexual, but I married eventually which started a new disaster. MY POINT of all this is to get people to ponder what the consequences are of children being raised by somewhat extreme ideological parents and extended family. I now think Dad was a beaten man. Beaten down. So what of mum. A clue might come from a comment of my paternal grandfather who labelled her family “Man-haters”. Back then I thought that might be a bias limited to random individuals, but recent genealogy reveals that back around 1865 eight girls were born. Seven grew up and remained spinsters, employed in Education at high government etc level. At least one was seconded to South Africa to educate the blacks. But most notable is that all these girls were active in formation of Women’s Right & and suffrage. I cannot help wondering if situations like that won’t become inter-generational, descending generations like a cancer. Education is still the favoured propaganda channel. Another fact, might be related, mum found a job in Child Welfare department. Readers, please judge – was at 8yrs old, hiding under sister’s bed as a gag, such an unforgivable crime?
@Alan Radford. Thanks for this comment! I can relate to it, and I expect many boys of our generation can. "Mom" laid the rules in the house, just as her mom had before her, and dad had long been beaten into "yes dear", while still retaining some nominal headship in the house - just to affirm everything mom does. Boys learned that this is how to treat women (ie. utter deference, even "fear") and when we got into a real relationship didn't know what had happened to us when our respect was returned with bullying and abuse.
My heart goes out to you for the beating you received for an excellent gag! After learning your place like that, you still had years to go living in a house where you had been shown what mum thought of you.
I can't quite think of analagous "gags" that I've heard of, but Jordan Peterson has a recent interview (with on Rita Panahi, Sky News, which you'll be able to find), where he describes the disastrous consequences to boys of the "devouring mother", who undermines a boy's every attempt to acquire "competence". For men, we learn eventually that women very much value a "good sense of humour" and a man who can make them laugh. Your mum's reaction here was a crushing of a key "competence" area for you - and probably deliberately so.
Well, I liked the "ghost" gag! :D
Isn't it worse for everyone, even the girls? Analysing all this, Mum's peculiarities were also likely to be intergenerational. Just like my training amounts to some "social illness" she may have the same excuse. May not have known the flaws herself. Maybe she was not allowed to ask questions? I think the family talks over the table are so important - I figure that is where kids might learn about social issues, discuss politics, religion, prospects, business,
budgeting, - and most importantly conflict resolution ( all the things I missed out on).
Ever since I was a boy, being lectured by feminist teachers about the many shortcomings of my sex, enduring an educational system that treated boys like defective girls, I intuitively sensed that there must be some great lie lurking at the core of such obvious injustice.
Since then I've watched as, one by one, all of the institutions that formerly gave males a way to become men have been battered down. I've watched as boys have failed to thrive, and men have degenerated into eunuchs.
The misery inflicted on both women and men by the widespread acceptance of these lies is immeasurable.
No more. That tide is turning now.
Thank you, Bettina, for this cogent and insightful overview of Janice's extraordinary effectiveness as an advocate for men. I admire her courage in speaking out against misandry, especially in academic environments, where it is hard-wired into decision-making. It is a lot easier to ban or denounce the work of Janice and other writers who challenge hatred of men than it is to answer their arguments. It is depressing to see how the popular press lazily repeats what feminists say and thereby boosts the legitimacy of feminist views. They have become the new normal, the new consensus. These opinions, however extreme, are the center; any challenge to them must obviously come from ideological extremists who should shamed and not heard.
>> These opinions, however extreme, are the center;
Bravo! They are also the consensus of the "experts" on the "evidence". Many articles on dv, sexual assault, and the wage gap, etc. in the MSM and from organisations (eg. football clubs, the churches) will include a comment from an "expert" putting the issue into purely feminist terms - "inequality", "men need to be part of the solution", etc, and also stating that their position is "evidence based".
The "Overton Window" of what can be discussed in polite society only allows the most timid questioning of any feminism in the news. One can suggest that an issue not quite as presented, and then when they respond with "one woman a week...", "one woman in three in her lifetime,..", "women have had enough..", "it's only in recent years that a woman could open a bank account..", you'd better pull your head in.
For too many years, I made a strategic distinction between egalitarian feminism and ideological feminism. Even then, however, I understood that the former was problematic for not one or two but three reasons.
In the first place, the rhetoric of equality (which has by now, since the absorption of feminism into wokism, turned into “equity”) was often a polite veneer that hid the underlying gynocentrism. How can you support true sexual equality, after all, if your entire focus is on the needs and problems of only one sex?
Even in the 1960s, liberal rhetoric often hid misandry that was implicit in the claim that men had caused every problem that feminists identify. Anyone who challenged that assumption was attacked for “blaming the victims.” By definition, a feminist problem was a problem for women alone and therefore one that required reform (at the very least) by men. If qualified women didn’t get the jobs that they wanted, then male employers were guilty of misogyny. If women were not paid the same as men were for the same work, then their employers were guilty of misogyny. If women did not feel comfortable among men at work, then those men were guilty of misogyny for not adapting to the presence of women. If women had to work at home after returning from their offices, then men were guilty of misogyny for refusing to do their fair share of domestic labor. If infertile women (or men) felt obliged to have genetically related children through in vitro or other new reproduction technologies, then men were guilty of misogyny for making them feel so obliged—and in the case of surrogacy, researchers and clinicians (presumably male) were guilty for experimenting on, exploiting and endangering poor women ). If women were denied sole custody of the children after divorce, then men were guilty not only of misogyny but also of dishonesty for hoodwinking family courts into ignoring the hidden urge of men to control or abuse women and children. If women had to stay home to care for their children, then men were guilty of misogyny for not supporting political parties that promised free day-care (or for not quitting or risking their own jobs to care for the children). If women deplored fashions that revealed too much of their bodies, then men were guilty of misogyny for “objectifying” women (and somehow forcing them to buy clothing of this kind). The list could go on and on. And I’ve said nothing here about the double standards that often inflected these feminist claims.
Moreover, egalitarian feminism is naive. Because these feminists have usually equated equality with sameness, the seeds of transgenderism were planted long ago. Trouble is, men and women are not interchangeable. Neither are sex (a natural given) and gender (cultural interpretations of it). People are both embodied and cultural beings, not abstract theories. It took me many years to learn what is now self-evident, because, as a gay man, I had insisted that “gender” had made my life so difficult. Without any gender distinctions, I assumed, all men and women would be much happier. It is hardly surprising that even egalitarian feminists must now defend themselves as female organisms from learned authorities who claim (for political purposes) that they cannot even define the word “woman.”
By the 1980s, ideological theory was quickly replacing the naïve rhetoric of liberalism and revealing explicitly the misandry that had often accompanied gynocentrism. (This was not exactly a new phenomenon, because a few feminists and Marxists had long argued that they would have to destroy the family before any other institution, but it began to go mainstream in the academic world and within one generation far beyond it.) Like all political ideologies on both the Left and the Right, feminist ideology relies on a profoundly dualistic worldview: “us” versus “them.” Ideological feminists are not content to demand familial, societal, economic and political change by men in the present. They are not content with reform at all. On the contrary, they insist on revolution to destroy the current order and replace it with a new and utopian order. This is why they have joined forces with the advocates first of identity politics (except for the transgender movement, which denies the biological reality of both male and female) and then with the wokers (who have come to the same conclusion as feminists in connection with race). Ideological feminists insist, without empirical evidence, that men have conspired from the dawn of human history to oppress women. This comes very close to the belief that men are innately evil (even though that denies men moral agency and thus turns men into subhuman or demonic beings). Consequently, the fate of men under both the current order and the new order is irrelevant. The ideological end, they believe, justifies the means. In moral terms, revenge is a synonym for justice.
More than a few feminists today would flatly deny that feminist ideology, including its misandry, has anything to do with the “real” feminism (which was never, they add, merely one movement in any case). But not all of them are prepared to take either personal or collective responsibility for what other women (and, yes, some men) have said in the name of feminism and even of women. It’s easier to blame others as loonies and thus to stay a safe distance from them. Besides, they add, even the loonies have “pushed the envelope” for women. This amounts to condoning or even tolerating them—but also to closing ranks anyone who challenges any kind of feminism for any reason. Janie Fiamengo is among the few women even now who speak honestly and honorably about feminism.
Thank you, Bettina, for such a generous article!
When the channel with the Fiamengo File videos was permanently banned by YouTube, my producer Steve Brule housed them all at Odysee. They can be found here, in reverse chronological order: https://odysee.com/@StudioBruleArchive:e
Hello Janice - great to see this comment! I hope you see my response, because there is a particular video I've been searching for a couple of years, and haven't been able to find it. It's an interview with Steve Brule (I think) where the subject briefly goes to "conservatives", and you both agree that a problem rife in conservativism is that "they won't say the f word", and you also agree that any conservative movement which won't mention feminism is worthless.
Are you able to point me to that video? At a guess, it was early 2020. I had a sticky label on my desk to go back and save it, but left it too long! I've PM'ed Steve Brule with the question, but he couldn't help.
I have sometimes commented on your threads and videos with my reports as a practicing Catholic on the deep infiltration of feminism within the Catholic church and its charities. I have also spent most of my political life amongst Catholic and other conservatives (small c) and have come to the point of just laughing at what they now see as our major cultural battles - ones where they largely agree with feminists! hehe.. :)
Meanwhile, I save off your link and start searching for that video myself. Thanks!
Hi Stephen, great to hear from you. Are they all hepped up about the trans women invading women's sports? That seems to be a favorite amongst conservative men these days.
I am sorry to say that I don't know what conversation that was. It must have been one of the livestreams after one of the later FF videos, but it doesn't ring a bell.
However, it is a good and perennially true point, and I hope to write something about it for my Substack soon. Remind me if I don't, at fiamengo@uottawa.ca. You can always write me there, if you like, with ideas or thoughts.
Thanks for the reply, Janice!
Yes, conservatives seem to have been re-enervated by the trans in women sports issue, and see it as another "David vs Goliath" battle - but one they can win.
Conservatives also regularly speak against other LGBT activism, such as "Drag Queen story hour", pronouns and "gender identity" foolishness, legislation on "conversion therapy" and removal of parental rights on gender transition.
Stephen Baskerville called it "taking sides in the left's turf wars".
I have also observed a tendency to characterise the left as "masculine", of the obvious simpy, academic or stupid-youth type, oblivious to the fact that that most of the academic and NGO left are women, as are also the activist church committees, and to refrain from doing direct battle with these women, and to also not notice that women are the primary left voters, and to avoid confronting these also. (Eg. by deferring to "women's issues" frequently enough to avoid the appearance of being ungentlemanly). Tradcons is an apt label.
A classic reference for this is this post from The Federalist, which depicts a notorious incident in the BLM riots, where a woman was accosted by a crowd for not paying lip service to BLM on command.
https://www.facebook.com/HamiltonWasRight/photos/a.194704797808224/676829776262388/
In the original photograph, most of the assailants are women, but in the Federalist's cartoon, which got traction among Tradcons ("Typical!!!"), all the assailants are "lefty" males.
The original...
https://www.facebook.com/prageru/videos/329763624813594/
Here in Australia, our most notable non-feminist conservatives (almost the only ones) are Mark Latham (NSW senator) and Matt Canavan (Federal senator), who are doing great jobs! Our biggest disappointment has been Dominic Perrotet, the newly appointed Premier of NSW. A conservative, practicing Catholic, his appointment was greeted with high-hopes by conservatives. I said "Wait and see" - and was proven right! :))
I just encountered this, from E. Belfort Bax in 1907!
"All parties, all sorts and conditions of politicians, from the fashionable and Conservative west-end philanthropist to the Radical working-men’s clubbite, seem (or seemed until lately) to have come to an unanimous conclusion on one point – to wit, that the female sex is grievously groaning under the weight of male oppression. Editors of newspapers, keen to scent out every drift of public fancy with the object of regaling their “constant readers” with what is tickling to their palates, will greedily print, in prominent positions and in large type letters expressive of the view in question, whilst they will boycott or, at best, publish in obscure corners any communication that ventures to criticise the popular theory or that adduces facts that tell against it."
Essays in Socialism New & Old (1907), pp.108-119
Lately, I have become more aware of an extremely common theme, which is of shaming and humiliating men. In order to control and manipulate them.
George Orwell's Animal Farm resonates strongly with me.
"shaming and humiliating men"
Time honoured on the part of women. "Come back carrying your shield or on it" predated the white feather by centuries.
Hi Stephen, I also find I remember tit bits of information, but struggle to find the originals source.
When I was at school I learnt that many men did not have the right to vote, which I had forgotten about, then someone wrote an article about how his grandfather a soldier during WW1 did not have the right to vote, so in effect, the suffragettes effectively won the right to vote for men as well.
Janice later produced a video on the subject.
It is a great irony that women like the Professor and you Bettina exemplify precisely the sort of woman many feminists claimed to want to create. Intelligent, well educated, articulate, confident, loving and kind , open and honest. The curiously dysfunctional and eccentric women and men found a useful ideological vehicle in a strange diversion from classic Marxism begun by Engels (who lived just up the road from me while managing his family's factory in Manchester ). Applying the idea of socio economic class to women and men, jettisoning socio economic class along the way so female aristocrats, bourgeois and salariate all are oppressed even by the bin man or brickie.
Just as had been the case for decades in local government the suffragettes did not want men without "substance" to have the vote or indeed women of similarly low status, one wouldn't want ones maid turning up would one ? Here it remains a very bourgeois movement, one completely disinterested in the experience of those Communist countries that have put into policy and practice precisely the socialist feminism that is at the core of their supposed "theory". Possibly because though the USSR or China far outstrip the "west" in female Judges, Doctors, lawyers, movie makers they also had women building roads, digging ditches and collecting trash. And of course enforced equal pay, for everybody.
One important fact about women's inability to vote in earlier times often forgotten, also not mentioned in this article, is that the secrecy of voting is relatively new. In the USA, it only began in 1888. In Canada, it didn't begin until 1873 and wasn't fully adopted federally and in all provinces until 1913. When voting was public, it was a raucous and sometimes violent affair, which would have been especially dangerous for women. In the context of public voting, denying women the vote was a sensible way to protect them from violence.
This article with Niall Ferguson offers a compelling viewpoint on what the left is all about viewed through the lens of history/
https://youtu.be/Re0Mu8Tq4fE