Just a quick rant here, to fill the void while I’m working on something else: Why do feminists, on the one hand, claim that there are no natural differences between male and female and yet, on the other hand, constantly criticize men for typical masculine behavior? The answer seems obvious to me, after months of reading radical feminist gender theory — and scrolling through the endless madness of Feminist Tumblr — and what bothers me is that the fundamental problem is seldom stated directly, either by feminists or their critics.

Begin with the status quo, the existing social order. Whether the year is 1966 or 1986 or 2016, society at any given time has certain standards, customs, expectations and incentives that influence how men and women behave. The vast majority of people accept the status quo as the way things are, and do their best to fit into the existing social system, to succeed and be happy in life. This requires a process of maturation on the part of young people who, in order to become responsible and productive adults, must find their place within the existing system and psychologically adjust to their adult roles. The unrealistic dreams of childhood must be set aside, and the unruly passions of adolescence must be reined in, in order to attain responsible adulthood.

Thirty years ago, there was a lot of talk among psychologists about the problem of Peter Pan Syndrome, describing the attitudes and behaviors of young men who were unwilling to commit to (or emotionally unable to sustain) romantic relationships because commitment logically led to marriage and fatherhood. Being a husband and father required becoming a grown-up, and Peter Pan didn’t want to be a grown-up.

Yet this problem of perpetual adolescence (which Diana West analyzed as a cultural phenomenon in her 2007 book The Death of the Grown-Up) was not limited to childish males. Contemporary feminism is, to a great extent, an elaborate rationalization of female emotional immaturity. There is a symbiotic relationship between the irresponsible behavior of young men and the limitless rage of young women in response.

Let us ask: Is the social status quo, in terms of male-female relations, better or worse in 2016 than it was in 1966?

Your answer to that question will vary, according to what you expect adult life to be. If a girl was a high-school senior in 1966 and her ambition was to become a corporate executive, a politician, or a college professor, the status quo was decidedly disadvantageous to her. However, in terms of her romantic life, the average girl in 1966 had better opportunities than the girl in 2016. Fifty years ago, the median age at first marriage for American women was about 21, so that the high-school senior who graduated in 1966 could expect to be taken seriously — as a prospective wife in the near future — by any young fellow who showed a romantic interest in her. Insofar as marriage and motherhood are among a young woman’s ambitions, the teenage girl in 2016 has very dismal prospects in comparison to her grandmother who came of age in the 1960s.

Is it not obvious that five decades of feminism, in attempting to solve the problems of career-minded young women of the 1960s, has in many ways created a new problem for the romantic-minded young woman of the 21st century? The force of law, in terms of legislation and policy forbidding workplace discrimination against women, now guarantees that the teenage girl in 2016 has far greater opportunities to pursue professional employment than did her grandmother. However, legislation and policy can do nothing to improve her romantic life. There is no law that can force her boyfriend to take her seriously, to treat her the way a man treats the woman he hopes to marry.

Furthermore, feminism has encouraged divorce and unwed motherhood, and thus to a great extent destroyed marriage and family life in America. The young man in 2016 is far more likely to have grown up in an environment where his parents were divorced (or never married) and thus has little direct knowledge of what a stable, happy marriage looks like. He may have been shuttled back and forth between his parents’ separate homes — here for a while with his mother and her boyfriend, then there for a while with his father and stepmother, and perhaps for a while staying with one of his grandmothers — and what sort of attitudes is he likely to have developed as a result?

Of course, the destruction of traditional family life has also had an adverse impact on the childhood homes in which young women are raised, and yet no feminist will ever admit this. Feminism celebrates as “progress” anything — divorce, unwed motherhood, abortion, homosexuality — that is destructive to the family and hostile to traditional morality. Because of this, the unhappy young woman can never expect feminists to offer her an honest explanation for the causes of her unhappiness. When she is confronted by the rude and selfish behavior of teenage boys, no feminist will encourage her to ask what sort of home environment the young man was raised in. Were his parents married? Was he dumped off in a daycare center as an infant? Why didn’t his parents teach him courtesy and kindness?

Even worse, however, feminism teaches young women never to critically examine their own behavior and attitudes, nor to consider whether they are responsible for their own problems. Everything that is wrong with her life, according to feminism, is to be blamed on her oppression by the patriarchy. Because this explanation is feminism’s only answer to every question, the young feminist is constantly on the lookout for bad behavior by men, and is obliged never to say a word in praise of any man’s good deeds. The feminist’s pervasively negative portrayal of male behavior prevents her from ever having to admit that (a) there are good men in the world, but (b) none of these good men desire her romantic companionship, and (c) feminism can’t solve this problem.

We return, then, to the problem of the status quo and the standards, customs, expectations and incentives that influence how men and women behave. All feminists agree that the status quo in 1966 was entirely wrong. Yet at no point since 1966 has the feminist movement found the status quo acceptable, because if feminists ever were to announce that their movement had succeeded — our society had reached “equality,” however that might be defined — then there would be no more need for their perpetual agitation. Therefore, to justify their ongoing grievance-mongering, either “equality” must be constantly redefined, so that the ideal status quo can never be achieved, or else feminists must admit “equality” was never really what their movement was about.

Feminism is simply a political rationalization of the complaints of unhappy women. If all their demands were granted today, feminists would return tomorrow with a new list of demands.

Pointing out the obvious contradictions of feminism’s ideology and rhetoric — their claim that men and women are exactly alike, except that all men are oppressors — does nothing to persuade the feminist to re-examine the premises of her argument. Feminism is a cult, organized around the grievances of unhappy women, and once she has fully internalized the movement’s worldview, the feminist can never explain any problem except in terms of the evils of male supremacy. The failure of the movement to actually improve women’s lives guarantees its continued “success,” because the more women are unhappy, the more support for the feminist movement will increase.

Feminism is to women’s happiness what the Democrat Party is to responsible government. We look at municipal disasters like Detroit or Baltimore — Democrat-controlled fiefdoms — and see nothing but corruption, poverty and crime, yet the people who live there keep electing Democrats by landslide majorities and blaming all their problems on scapegoats. The campaign rhetoric of the Democrat Party is usually just the elaborate demonization of scapegoats like white racism or “corporate greed,” and guess what? It works.

The three keys to Democrat Party electoral success are:

1. Ignorance;

2. Hate;

and

3. Fear.

With a few minor adjustments, feminism succeeds by the same formula. And after beginning this as a “quick rant,” I’ve written 1,400 words, concluding where I began: Boys and girls are different.

All grown-ups know this. Feminists are women who refuse to grow up.

Feminism begins with the belief that all the world's problems are caused by male happiness, and will not end as long as any man is happy. — JEB DELENDA EST (@rsmccain) January 26, 2016

Feminism is about unhappy women's feelings, and converting these feelings into a political movement to make everyone equally unhappy. — JEB DELENDA EST (@rsmccain) January 26, 2016









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