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on Sunday 11 May 2008

by Wendy McElroy





It has become commonplace to hear that feminism is dead. I don't know if that's true but I do know that feminism's best hope...maybe its only hope of becoming relevant again...lies in listening to the voices of men demanding justice, the sort of men you'll hear speaking this afternoon.



When they speak, their voices sound similar to those of women in the 60's when the feminist movement, called Second Wave feminism, swept through our culture like a force of nature and left it changed forever. The women demanded of men, "Give us equal rights, give us respect." Forty years later -- two generations later -- the situation has been reversed. It is now men, not women, who are protesting against systematic discrimination against their sex. Even the issues around which the complaints gather are similar to those raised in the '60s. Men are saying



they are not taken seriously by the police as victims of domestic violence. Similar to female rape victims from decades ago, society tends to stigmatize and blame men who are victims of spousal abuse.

their health concerns are virtually ignored compared to women's concerns. For example, spending on breast cancer has long outstripped prostate research by a 3:1 ratio at the National Institutes of Health even tho' prostate cancer is deadlier.

the family courts discriminate against men in divorce, especially in matters of child custody and visitation rights.

the widespread rape of men in prison is almost undiscussed as tho it were a matter of no social concern.



The list of specific complaints could scroll on and on. But, in general, what men are calling for is nothing less than what women demanded and received from men decades ago -- equality under reasonable laws...and a little bit of respect.



'60s feminism was a cultural revolution. And it is no exaggeration to say that another revolution is in progress -- this time led by men. It is not headed by elite voices or promoted through tax-funded organizations. It is a grassroots movement, consisting of individuals who have been battered so badly by the system that they are now committing a large of portion of their lives to say "no!



At the risk of being repetitive, let me talk a bit more about grassroots movements. They are movements that begin with isolated individuals who become outraged with an injustice that affects their lives -- maybe the public school system, minimum sentencing laws, or an encounter with a policeman. They become so outraged that they say "no" to authority. They usually begin by saying "no" on a local level, to their school board or city councilors. But, if the injustice they're complaining about is widespread, the voices multiply quickly to become a powerful political force. Perhaps the most powerful political force there exists: the voice of the people.



The typical men's rights activist is the guy in the street -- a man who has lost access to his children after a divorce; the co-worker has been falsely accused of sexual harassment; your neighbor who is a victim of domestic violence but who was turned away from the shelters your taxes support because he was male.



The typical women who speaks out for men's rights does so out a commitment to fairness and a concern for the overwhelming majority men in our lives who are decent human beings...our fathers, brothers, sons...our friends. I speak out also from political concern. The last decades of the 20th century redefined women's relationship to society and to men. The first decades of the 21st century will redefine men's relationship. And, as a woman and a feminist, I want to be in on that process because I think "Justice for Men" is the most important battle within our society today.



I call myself a feminist. Which raises a question: what kind of feminist am I to be listening to men and be concerned about justice for them?



The dominant voice of feminism today is what has been called "gender feminism" -- the sort of feminism you'll see and hear this weekend at National Organization for Women Convention. And one of the myths that NOW-style feminists have been able to successfully sell is that anyone who disagrees with their approach on almost any issue, from sexual harassment to child custody, is anti-feminist and even anti-woman. That accusation is absolutely false.



The truth is that there are and there always have been many schools of thought within the feminist tradition: from socialist to individualist, liberal to radical, Christian to Islamic. And when you think about it, the diversity of opinion makes sense. After all, if feminism can be defined as the belief that women should be liberated as individuals and equal to men as a class, then it is natural for there to be disagreement and discussion as to what a complex idea like liberation means and how "equality" should be defined. It would be amazing if all the women who cared about liberation and equality came to exactly the same conclusions are to what they were.



I opened by saying that I did not know if feminism was dead. But I have no doubt that NOW-style feminism is dead...and I say "Good riddance!" NOW-style feminism is dead because it systematically introduced privileges for women into the law, it ignored the just complaints of 50% of society -- men, it has turned the sexes against each other in the workplace and academia, it demeaned any feminist -- like me, Daphne Patai, Camille Paglia -- who committed the sin of disagreement.



So...in answer to the question "What kind of feminist am I?"...I am an individualist feminist, what is sometimes called an ifeminist.



Individualist feminism is a school of feminism that stretches back to the 1830s to the antislavery movement in the US....and to Mary Wollstonecraft and classical liberalism in Europe. It defines liberation for women as the right of every woman to control her own body and property, to make every peaceful choice with her body and property that is possible. From marriage, to prostitution, to celibacy. A woman's body, a woman's choice. Individualist feminism defines equality in a simple, straightforward manner. Every individual -- female/male black/white -- should be treated identically under laws that protect everyone's person and property equally. The equal protection of everyone's right to peacefully choose.



I am going to delve more deeply into theory in a few minutes in order to make clear how individualist feminism and NOW-style feminism differ dramatically in their approach to men but, before doing so, I want to raise just one issue in order to dramatize how thoroughly men have been slighted and dismissed by most feminists...and by the law. And that issue is abortion.



Abortion may well be the single most over-discussed, over-debated topic in North America...but one question is almost never addressed -- "What is the role of men?"



I am pro-choice: a woman's body, a woman's right. But that doesn't mean that I believe men -- the prospective fathers -- are dismissed from the picture. Saying that the ultimate decision on abortion rests with the pregnant women doesn't mean that men are uninvolved and have no role to play or should have no voice. They are the prospective fathers; of course, it is an issue of proper concern to them. My most recent book -- an anthology entitled Liberty for Women that came out last year -- has a lengthy essay on abortion and I made sure it was written by a man... precisely because men have been silenced on this issue.



What role should men play? Well...Consider one aspect of abortion that deeply impacts them. If a woman decides to carry a pregnancy to term, then -- under the current system -- the man can be held legally responsible for providing financial support for that child for the next 18 years. He has no say in the situation. The woman can decide to become a mother or not. The man cannot opt out of fatherhood. He has no say; he has no rights.



And yet, without having any rights, the man has legal responsibilities that extend for almost two decades. I don't believe there should be responsibilities without rights. And, yet, responsibility without rights is what exists today for men in this area.



And, by the way, I repeat that I am pro-choice and I believe it is a woman's body, a woman's right. My purpose in raising this issue is not to suggest that men should have control over a pregnant woman's body. That's not the only alternative. One option could be the right of a father to relinquish all parental claim and responsibility thus giving him a chance to relinquish fatherhood on the same level as the woman can decide against motherhood.



My main purpose in raising this issue is to provide an example of how men are not included in discussing matters that are of vital concern not only to society but also to their own lives.



Why have men's voices been silenced?



The explanation returns me to theory and to NOW-style feminism.



In the '60s, Second Wave feminism took off like a rocket for a combination of reasons... A new generation of women were dissatisfied with the answers provided by their mothers; they wanted instead to leave the kitchen and go to work or to universities. The sexual revolution exploded, due partly to a new birth control method -- the pill -- and women experienced a heady new sexual freedom; sex ceased to be so tightly linked to pregnancy. The Vietnam War led an entire generation to question values and to resist authority. It was a time of social instability...rather like now with our fear of terrorism, military action, and grassroot discontent.



In 1966, NOW was founded. There was anger at men, largely because laws and policies discriminated against women -- for example, the callous manner in which police handled rape complaints from women. But the anger against men was usually focused on specific issues, like rape, and on specific men, like rapists. The Second Wave was liberal feminism and it wasn't anti-male -- tho', certainly, those voices were there as well. But the early and more liberal NOW welcomed men, like Warren Farrell and the actor Alan Alda, both of whom became symbols of the enlightened man. The focus tended to be on women's liberation NOT the need to disempower men.



At the same time, another strain of feminism advanced as well -- gender feminism...sometimes called radical feminism. A key book in the evolution of gender feminism was Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, which was published in 1953. The book was blatantly anti-male. But much more than this...it was philosophically, ideologically, politically anti-male. It wasn't just a screed. The book was an ideological attack heterosexualism and the traditional family as male oppression, claiming that the existing institutions of society were to blame for the subjugation of women. In order to liberate women, gender feminism began to spin out a revolutionary theory that sought to sweep away of white male culture or patriarchy. It was men versus women.



You see the difference between liberal and gender feminism here... Liberals objected to particular discriminations within society, like hiring practices, and they didn't reject men so much as they wanted men to change. Gender feminists rejected men -- all men as a class -- because they were oppressor, the enemy of women. They didn't object to any particular aspect of society; they objected to it all. The institutions of society...such as the family, religion, the law...had to be deconstructed and then reconstructed to liberate women.



Through a series of events within feminism -- AND I DON'T HAVE TIME TO SKETCH THE HISTORY BUT ONE LARGE FACTOR WAS THE FINAL DEFEAT OF THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT IN 1984 -- through a series of events liberal feminism declined in prominence and gender feminism advanced. In 1973, feminism had won a tremendous victory in Roe v. Wade and an optimistic movement began to focus very tightly on a fresh effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. In March 1978, one hundred thousand demonstrators marched on Washington, D.C. in support of the ERA. Yet, after frustrating extensions and delays, the measure was finally defeated in Congress in 1984.



The defeat of the ERA was a stunning blow to the liberals within feminism whose voices had dominated. Not so with radical feminists who had always viewed the ERA as a "Band-Aid" solution. It served as a confirmation of their position. And, so, gender feminists offered a new solution to a discouraged movement -- a new political theory based on gender oppression that viewed men as class enemies. And about 1983 to 1984, you saw the rise of gender feminism ad it started to dominate the feminist movement in general.



Or, more accurately, liberal feminism began to absorb the theory of gender feminism, to more closer and closer to the gender feminist worldview. And it is at this point that you see men, like Warren Farrell, becoming disillusioned with feminism -- and NOW in particular -- because of its growing bias against men and all things male. Farrell quit NOW and the organization turned against him with a vicious passion.



Let me dwell a bit more on theory. Gender feminism can be defined as the school of feminism that views men and women as separate and politically antagonistic classes. Men as a class oppress women as a class. Men oppress women by establishing patriarchy -- or male rule -- and capitalism. The combination of these two is called "white male culture." Everywhere and at every moment, white male culture acts to subjugate women. Through domestic violence, advertising, pornography, rape, hiring practices, the use of male-dominated language, sexual harassment, through textbooks in public schools, prostitution...the alleged oppression permeates every aspect of society. And it amounts to nothing less than a full-fledged gender war.



It is no wonder that the goal of NOW-style feminists who have largely bought into gender theory is NOT equality with men but advantage over them. They don't want to be equal to their oppressor; they want to stop the oppression.



One of the key terms in gender theory is "class" -- men as a class...that means every man...oppresses women as a class. And I want to use the term to illustrate how deeply gender feminism and individualist feminism differ in their approaches to men.



So...class. There is nothing inherently wrong with separating the sexes into classes. Men and women have differences. Medicine, for example, often separates the sexes. Women are examined for cervical cancer and men for prostate problems. But when doctors separate the sexes they don't claim that the fundamental medical interests of men and women conflict. The doctors realize both sexes share the same basic biology that requires the same basic approach of nutrition, exercise, oxygen and common sense in terms of lifestyle. In other words, although medicine separates men and women into separate classes for certain purposes, it doesn't deny their shared humanity. It acknowledges the fundamental truth: men and women are both human beings with common needs to which there are some exceptions due to biology...again cervical cancer.



By contrast, gender feminism doesn't say that men and women share a common humanity and, so, have common political interests, like respect for private property. It says men and women do not share the same basic human needs -- politically speaking. This is like a doctor saying the two sexes do not have the same fundamental needs in nutrition and so on.



By contrast, individualist feminism looks at men and women and sees -- first and foremost -- individual human beings with a common, shared humanity. And, just as men and women share the same basic biological needs, we share the political needs: the same rights and responsibilities. The most basic human right is to the peaceful enjoyment of our own bodies and of our own property. The most basic human responsibility is to respect the peaceful decision other people make with their bodies and their property. To legally tolerate -- if not respect -- the choices of others.



In other words....the highest political good for both men and women doesn't come from their sexuality. It derives from their being human beings. Although men and women can be validly sorted into separate classes for all sorts of reasons -- from medicine to marketing strategy -- their basic rights and responsibilities cannot be sorted in that manner. Because those rights and responsibilities preceded any consideration of sexuality just as they precede any consideration of skin color. Those are secondary characteristics: sex, skin color, height, ethnicity... The primary characteristic is our membership as individuals in the human species. And THIS, the primary characteristic is where our rights arise.



And laws protecting those rights -- or enforcing those responsibilities -- should make no distinction between men and women. The law should treat them equally both in terms of its content and of its application...that is, how the content is interpreted by courts, in police policy, and so forth. By contrast with gender feminism, you can see how individualist feminism not only embraces the possibility equality with men, the demand for equality is an essential aspect of the ideology. Privilege for either sex is anathema.



By this definition of feminism -- individualist feminism -- the burning priority today is to remove from the law all privileges and disadvantages that are based on sex. This includes privileges for women such as affirmative action. The law must become gender-blind and see only individuals standing before it.



This must occur for the good of women as well as men. I say "for the good of women" for several reasons.



There can be no peace or goodwill in our society as long as the law treats categories of people differently, as long as 50% of the population -- men -- are second class citizens.

As well, women must stop relying upon a paternalistic state and privileging laws. We've got to stand on our own feet.

Equally, I don't believe it is ever in the best interests of anyone to oppress another. The anti-slavery advocates of the early 1800s used to argue that slavery damaged the slave-owned psychologically as much as it did the slave. And I think there is a great deal of truth to that.

Finally, the men who will benefit from true equality are friends and family -- people whose wellbeing sometimes mean as much to us as our own. You don't do a woman any favor when you pass laws that privilege her daughter at the expense of her son.



Happily, I think society is heading toward true equality under the law and the Men's Movement is just one confirmation of this. As I said, NOW-style feminism is dead...



The problem is -- it is still kicking. It is kicking because, over the last decades, it has embedded privileges for women and inequities under the law into the institutions of society. And it is going to take hard, sustained work to remove them.



Again, let me give you a concrete illustrate what I'm talking about when I speak of institutions. And, in concluding the example, I'll tell you why I think advocates of equality should be encouraged by it.



Going back again to about 1983 when gender feminism started to ideologically dominate the mainstream of feminism...a new term became embedded in our culture: sexual harassment.



I should pause to make clear what I mean by sexual harassment. By sexual harassment I don't mean unwanted touching, grabbing or any other form of physical aggression. That's battery, that's assault, that's a crime. And laws against those crimes have been on the books for many years. All that was needed decades ago when sexual harassment became a hot issue was have those laws rigorously enforced. Because physical aggression should be punished.



Instead gender feminists created new law, new policies that, for example, prohibited "a hostile working environment" in which women feel offended by words and other non-violent behavior. That's what I mean by the term sexual harassment. That's what I mean...words and non-violent behavior that is considered offensive.



Sexual harassment is a good example of how NOW-style feminism has institutionalized its politics into society for two reasons:



First of all, everyone is familiar with it because sexual harassment legislation and policies have permeated virtually every business and classroom in North America. The law now regulates which attitudes toward women can be manifested, what language about women can be expressed ...even on private property. Through these laws, government reaches into the private sector and regulates attitudes and words to an extent that would be unimaginable in the 1960s, even the '70s.



Second, sexual harassment has become what the iconoclastic feminist Daphne Patai in her book "Heterophobia: Sexual harassment and the Future of Feminism" calls a multi-billion dollar growth Industry. The Industry consists of the many people who make a good living off the issue of sexual harassment and, so, have a vested interest in continuing presence in society as a "problem" to be solved. These people are lawyers, researchers, consultants, educational professionals, writers, administrators, lawmakers, psychologists, and media people. Collectively, they form a strong barrier against any attempt to dismantle what has become the institution and the industry of sexual harassment.



I said I would conclude this example with words of encouragement. And this is them. The term "sexual harassment" only entered our culture about twenty years ago. As a legal concept, it was introduced by gender feminist Catharine MacKinnon in a 1979 book entitled "The Sexual Harassment of Working Women." There, MacKinnon argued that violence against women in the workplace was not a form of battery or assault -- her objections were never about physical violence against women. She argued that sexual harassment was a form of discrimination, a violation of civil rights, that should be handled by civil lawsuits and under the Civil Rights Act. The next year, in 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission expanded its guidelines to include sexual harassment. The first court case that really established the idea of a hostile working environment was Meritor v. Vinson in 1986.



That's how recent they are -- the sexual harassment policies with which we live. About 20 years. Even though it impacts the lives of every person in this room, sexual harassment is only two decades old. This is encouraging for two reasons: if it can be built in our lifetimes, it can be dismantled as well...and probably much faster. For better or worse, it is usually easier to take things apart than to construct them. It is also encouraging because twenty years is one generation and that's about as long as it takes for people to realize that something isn't working. To realize that the sexual harassment industry doesn't solve social problems...it creates them.



It is instructive, however, to examine why sexual harassment succeeded as an issue. I think there are valuable lessons that men can learn from the success of the feminist movement.



When Lin Farley's book on sexual harassment appeared in 1978 -- and it was the first book on that subject -- it galvanized women. The book was entitled "Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job." And it chronicled truly appalling instances of discrimination that literally destroyed the careers of innocent women. The success of sexual harassment as an issue came largely from the fact that Farley (and others) told stories. She let you see and feel the human cost of discrimination so that -- even someone like me, a sexual harassment skeptic -- I found it impossible to read Farley's book without feeling that something in society was badly wrong, badly askew. I wouldn't have passed a law but I would have been willing to pick up a protest sign and picket specific companies.



This was and is a great strength of feminism. It showed the human misery being caused by unjust laws and unfair social behavior. Consider the issue of rape. In the '60s women who had been raped were -- as I mentioned -- in much the same situation as male victims of domestic violence today. The police did not take them seriously. Society often blamed them as though they had somehow brought on their own rapes by dressing provocatively or being promiscuous.



When women stood up and expressed their pain openly and without shame, they opened a window into their own experiences and made people vicariously feel the agony being raped...and being raped not just once but twice, the second time by a legal system that did not understand or care... It was when people viscerally realized the depth of damage being done to innocent human being, it was then that society began to change. Because nothing is as politically powerful as shining a spotlight on injustice and refusing to look away. And nothing does this as effectively as telling the unvarnished truth.



Daphne Patai did a wonderful job of expressing the human cost of sexual harassment policies in "Heterophobia," part II of which is entitled "Typifying Tales." She drives home the savagery of these laws and policies at universities where those who are accused have no presumption of innocence but must prove they are not guilty...they must prove this to committees who often have the power to ruin their careers and lives. The accused -- almost always men -- have no right to face their accuser or to question witnesses, no right to a lawyer or even, necessarily, to know the exact charges being brought against them. And the charges can be brought for nothing more than assigning the wrong homework, telling the wrong joke...



One of the typifying tales Patai offers is of an over-weight professor who, by all accounts, was popular, personable, and competent. In the middle of a lecture one day, a female student heckled him by calling out a comment about the extreme size of his chest. He observed that she had no similar problem and, then, continued with his lecture.



The student filed sexual harassment charges against him with the university. There was no allegation of battery or of his trying to exchange sex for better grades. The charges were based solely on the classroom incident. A witch-hunt followed. It was so extreme that the professor committed suicide. After which, in a press release, the university administration expressed a grave concern: namely, that the Professor's death would not discourage other similarly "abused" women from "speaking out."



Pause for a moment and reflect on your reaction to the university's statement. Everyone I've talked with about this example has had a similar response: Outrage at the university. Empathy with the man. Anger toward the female student. A conviction that things should change.



That's the power that speaking the simple truth of injustice has on most human beings, male or female. That's the power of telling stories.



So let me tell you another...this time about another form of institutionalized discrimination against men...discrimination in the family court system. Many of your will already be familiar with it.



Last year, a 43-year-old man named Derrick K. Miller walked up to a security guard at the entrance to the San Diego courthouse, where a family court had recently ruled against him on overdue child support. Clutching court papers in one hand, he drew out a gun with the other. Declaring: "you did this to me," he fatally shot himself through the skull.



Miller is not an isolated case. There is an alarming rise in male suicide in most western nations. According to a 1999 surgeon general's report, suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in America, with men being four times more likely to kill themselves than women. A round of studies conducted in North America, Europe and Australia suggests that one reason for the increase may be the discrimination fathers encounter in family courts, especially regarding the denial of access to their children.



Consider Warren Gilbert who died of carbon monoxide poisoning, clutching a letter from the child protective service. Or Martin Romanchick — the New York City police officer who hanged himself after being denied access due to charges brought by his ex-wife, which the court found to be frivolous. There are now websites that list the many names of men...and I do not believe overstate the facts when I say...men who have been driven to suicide by the despair caused by institutionalized discrimination against them, especially in the family courts. These men spoke out in the only way they knew how. They destroyed themselves in the face of a system that deprived them of dignity, justice, and -- in the some cases -- of the children they loved who made living worthwhile.



This must change.



What are the specifics of that change. Well...I don't speak for the Men's Movement but I do have an opinion on how genuine equality can be achieved. Eliminate all mandatory affirmative action laws and programs, and remove the issue from the court system. Do the same with sexual harassment. Introduce the rebuttable presumption of joint custody into the family court system. Recognize male victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, and treat them in same manner as female victims. Refuse to accept the bias against boys in public schools or other tax-funded agencies...perhaps even by refusing to pay the taxes that victimize males. These changes would be a good start. And I know that the speakers who come after me will expand more on the specifics of change that must occur...



In concluding my talk today, I must express a fear. I pointed to "telling stories" as something valuable that the Men's Movement could learn from feminism. Now I would like to provide a cautionary tale. The evolution of feminism from the '60s to present day is a cautionary tale on how a political movement can become dominated by rage and lose the voice of reason. I dread the possibility that men I know and respect may someday look at me as "the enemy" simply because I am a woman. And I'll do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen. Because that's how we got into this mess in the first place...



Feminism must extend a hand of goodwill toward men who are being destroyed by gender bias in the system. Women must stand up and call for the elimination of all law and all application of law that discriminates on the basis of gender, whether or not the discrimination supposedly benefits women. Because it doesn't. It can't possibly.



Women are individuals and anything that weakens individual rights based on a shared humanity harms women as much as men.

Transcription of a speech delivered before a man's rights group.It has become commonplace to hear that feminism is dead. I don't know if that's true but I do know that feminism's best hope...maybe its only hope of becoming relevant again...lies in listening to the voices of men demanding justice, the sort of men you'll hear speaking this afternoon.When they speak, their voices sound similar to those of women in the 60's when the feminist movement, called Second Wave feminism, swept through our culture like a force of nature and left it changed forever. The women demanded of men, "Give us equal rights, give us respect." Forty years later -- two generations later -- the situation has been reversed. It is now men, not women, who are protesting against systematic discrimination against their sex. Even the issues around which the complaints gather are similar to those raised in the '60s. Men are sayingThe list of specific complaints could scroll on and on. But, in general, what men are calling for is nothing less than what women demanded and received from men decades ago -- equality under reasonable laws...and a little bit of respect.'60s feminism was a cultural revolution. And it is no exaggeration to say that another revolution is in progress -- this time led by men. It is not headed by elite voices or promoted through tax-funded organizations. It is a grassroots movement, consisting of individuals who have been battered so badly by the system that they are now committing a large of portion of their lives to say "no!At the risk of being repetitive, let me talk a bit more about grassroots movements. They are movements that begin with isolated individuals who become outraged with an injustice that affects their lives -- maybe the public school system, minimum sentencing laws, or an encounter with a policeman. They become so outraged that they say "no" to authority. They usually begin by saying "no" on a local level, to their school board or city councilors. But, if the injustice they're complaining about is widespread, the voices multiply quickly to become a powerful political force. Perhaps the most powerful political force there exists: the voice of the people.The typical men's rights activist is the guy in the street -- a man who has lost access to his children after a divorce; the co-worker has been falsely accused of sexual harassment; your neighbor who is a victim of domestic violence but who was turned away from the shelters your taxes support because he was male.The typical women who speaks out for men's rights does so out a commitment to fairness and a concern for the overwhelming majority men in our lives who are decent human beings...our fathers, brothers, sons...our friends. I speak out also from political concern. The last decades of the 20th century redefined women's relationship to society and to men. The first decades of the 21st century will redefine men's relationship. And, as a woman and a feminist, I want to be in on that process because I think "Justice for Men" is the most important battle within our society today.I call myself a feminist. Which raises a question: what kind of feminist am I to be listening to men and be concerned about justice for them?The dominant voice of feminism today is what has been called "gender feminism" -- the sort of feminism you'll see and hear this weekend at National Organization for Women Convention. And one of the myths that NOW-style feminists have been able to successfully sell is that anyone who disagrees with their approach on almost any issue, from sexual harassment to child custody, is anti-feminist and even anti-woman. That accusation is absolutely false.The truth is that there are and there always have been many schools of thought within the feminist tradition: from socialist to individualist, liberal to radical, Christian to Islamic. And when you think about it, the diversity of opinion makes sense. After all, if feminism can be defined as the belief that women should be liberated as individuals and equal to men as a class, then it is natural for there to be disagreement and discussion as to what a complex idea like liberation means and how "equality" should be defined. It would be amazing if all the women who cared about liberation and equality came to exactly the same conclusions are to what they were.I opened by saying that I did not know if feminism was dead. But I have no doubt that NOW-style feminism is dead...and I say "Good riddance!" NOW-style feminism is dead because it systematically introduced privileges for women into the law, it ignored the just complaints of 50% of society -- men, it has turned the sexes against each other in the workplace and academia, it demeaned any feminist -- like me, Daphne Patai, Camille Paglia -- who committed the sin of disagreement.So...in answer to the question "What kind of feminist am I?"...I am an individualist feminist, what is sometimes called an ifeminist.Individualist feminism is a school of feminism that stretches back to the 1830s to the antislavery movement in the US....and to Mary Wollstonecraft and classical liberalism in Europe. It defines liberation for women as the right of every woman to control her own body and property, to make every peaceful choice with her body and property that is possible. From marriage, to prostitution, to celibacy. A woman's body, a woman's choice. Individualist feminism defines equality in a simple, straightforward manner. Every individual -- female/male black/white -- should be treated identically under laws that protect everyone's person and property equally. The equal protection of everyone's right to peacefully choose.I am going to delve more deeply into theory in a few minutes in order to make clear how individualist feminism and NOW-style feminism differ dramatically in their approach to men but, before doing so, I want to raise just one issue in order to dramatize how thoroughly men have been slighted and dismissed by most feminists...and by the law. And that issue is abortion.Abortion may well be the single most over-discussed, over-debated topic in North America...but one question is almost never addressed -- "What is the role of men?"I am pro-choice: a woman's body, a woman's right. But that doesn't mean that I believe men -- the prospective fathers -- are dismissed from the picture. Saying that the ultimate decision on abortion rests with the pregnant women doesn't mean that men are uninvolved and have no role to play or should have no voice. They are the prospective fathers; of course, it is an issue of proper concern to them. My most recent book -- an anthology entitled Liberty for Women that came out last year -- has a lengthy essay on abortion and I made sure it was written by a man... precisely because men have been silenced on this issue.What role should men play? Well...Consider one aspect of abortion that deeply impacts them. If a woman decides to carry a pregnancy to term, then -- under the current system -- the man can be held legally responsible for providing financial support for that child for the next 18 years. He has no say in the situation. The woman can decide to become a mother or not. The man cannot opt out of fatherhood. He has no say; he has no rights.And yet, without having any rights, the man has legal responsibilities that extend for almost two decades. I don't believe there should be responsibilities without rights. And, yet, responsibility without rights is what exists today for men in this area.And, by the way, I repeat that I am pro-choice and I believe it is a woman's body, a woman's right. My purpose in raising this issue is not to suggest that men should have control over a pregnant woman's body. That's not the only alternative. One option could be the right of a father to relinquish all parental claim and responsibility thus giving him a chance to relinquish fatherhood on the same level as the woman can decide against motherhood.My main purpose in raising this issue is to provide an example of how men are not included in discussing matters that are of vital concern not only to society but also to their own lives.Why have men's voices been silenced?The explanation returns me to theory and to NOW-style feminism.In the '60s, Second Wave feminism took off like a rocket for a combination of reasons... A new generation of women were dissatisfied with the answers provided by their mothers; they wanted instead to leave the kitchen and go to work or to universities. The sexual revolution exploded, due partly to a new birth control method -- the pill -- and women experienced a heady new sexual freedom; sex ceased to be so tightly linked to pregnancy. The Vietnam War led an entire generation to question values and to resist authority. It was a time of social instability...rather like now with our fear of terrorism, military action, and grassroot discontent.In 1966, NOW was founded. There was anger at men, largely because laws and policies discriminated against women -- for example, the callous manner in which police handled rape complaints from women. But the anger against men was usually focused on specific issues, like rape, and on specific men, like rapists. The Second Wave was liberal feminism and it wasn't anti-male -- tho', certainly, those voices were there as well. But the early and more liberal NOW welcomed men, like Warren Farrell and the actor Alan Alda, both of whom became symbols of the enlightened man. The focus tended to be on women's liberation NOT the need to disempower men.At the same time, another strain of feminism advanced as well -- gender feminism...sometimes called radical feminism. A key book in the evolution of gender feminism was Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, which was published in 1953. The book was blatantly anti-male. But much more than this...it was philosophically, ideologically, politically anti-male. It wasn't just a screed. The book was an ideological attack heterosexualism and the traditional family as male oppression, claiming that the existing institutions of society were to blame for the subjugation of women. In order to liberate women, gender feminism began to spin out a revolutionary theory that sought to sweep away of white male culture or patriarchy. It was men versus women.You see the difference between liberal and gender feminism here... Liberals objected to particular discriminations within society, like hiring practices, and they didn't reject men so much as they wanted men to change. Gender feminists rejected men -- all men as a class -- because they were oppressor, the enemy of women. They didn't object to any particular aspect of society; they objected to it all. The institutions of society...such as the family, religion, the law...had to be deconstructed and then reconstructed to liberate women.Through a series of events within feminism -- AND I DON'T HAVE TIME TO SKETCH THE HISTORY BUT ONE LARGE FACTOR WAS THE FINAL DEFEAT OF THE EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT IN 1984 -- through a series of events liberal feminism declined in prominence and gender feminism advanced. In 1973, feminism had won a tremendous victory in Roe v. Wade and an optimistic movement began to focus very tightly on a fresh effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. In March 1978, one hundred thousand demonstrators marched on Washington, D.C. in support of the ERA. Yet, after frustrating extensions and delays, the measure was finally defeated in Congress in 1984.The defeat of the ERA was a stunning blow to the liberals within feminism whose voices had dominated. Not so with radical feminists who had always viewed the ERA as a "Band-Aid" solution. It served as a confirmation of their position. And, so, gender feminists offered a new solution to a discouraged movement -- a new political theory based on gender oppression that viewed men as class enemies. And about 1983 to 1984, you saw the rise of gender feminism ad it started to dominate the feminist movement in general.Or, more accurately, liberal feminism began to absorb the theory of gender feminism, to more closer and closer to the gender feminist worldview. And it is at this point that you see men, like Warren Farrell, becoming disillusioned with feminism -- and NOW in particular -- because of its growing bias against men and all things male. Farrell quit NOW and the organization turned against him with a vicious passion.Let me dwell a bit more on theory. Gender feminism can be defined as the school of feminism that views men and women as separate and politically antagonistic classes. Men as a class oppress women as a class. Men oppress women by establishing patriarchy -- or male rule -- and capitalism. The combination of these two is called "white male culture." Everywhere and at every moment, white male culture acts to subjugate women. Through domestic violence, advertising, pornography, rape, hiring practices, the use of male-dominated language, sexual harassment, through textbooks in public schools, prostitution...the alleged oppression permeates every aspect of society. And it amounts to nothing less than a full-fledged gender war.It is no wonder that the goal of NOW-style feminists who have largely bought into gender theory is NOT equality with men but advantage over them. They don't want to be equal to their oppressor; they want to stop the oppression.One of the key terms in gender theory is "class" -- men as a class...that means every man...oppresses women as a class. And I want to use the term to illustrate how deeply gender feminism and individualist feminism differ in their approaches to men.So...class. There is nothing inherently wrong with separating the sexes into classes. Men and women have differences. Medicine, for example, often separates the sexes. Women are examined for cervical cancer and men for prostate problems. But when doctors separate the sexes they don't claim that the fundamental medical interests of men and women conflict. The doctors realize both sexes share the same basic biology that requires the same basic approach of nutrition, exercise, oxygen and common sense in terms of lifestyle. In other words, although medicine separates men and women into separate classes for certain purposes, it doesn't deny their shared humanity. It acknowledges the fundamental truth: men and women are both human beings with common needs to which there are some exceptions due to biology...again cervical cancer.By contrast, gender feminism doesn't say that men and women share a common humanity and, so, have common political interests, like respect for private property. It says men and women do not share the same basic human needs -- politically speaking. This is like a doctor saying the two sexes do not have the same fundamental needs in nutrition and so on.By contrast, individualist feminism looks at men and women and sees -- first and foremost -- individual human beings with a common, shared humanity. And, just as men and women share the same basic biological needs, we share the political needs: the same rights and responsibilities. The most basic human right is to the peaceful enjoyment of our own bodies and of our own property. The most basic human responsibility is to respect the peaceful decision other people make with their bodies and their property. To legally tolerate -- if not respect -- the choices of others.In other words....the highest political good for both men and women doesn't come from their sexuality. It derives from their being human beings. Although men and women can be validly sorted into separate classes for all sorts of reasons -- from medicine to marketing strategy -- their basic rights and responsibilities cannot be sorted in that manner. Because those rights and responsibilities preceded any consideration of sexuality just as they precede any consideration of skin color. Those are secondary characteristics: sex, skin color, height, ethnicity... The primary characteristic is our membership as individuals in the human species. And THIS, the primary characteristic is where our rights arise.And laws protecting those rights -- or enforcing those responsibilities -- should make no distinction between men and women. The law should treat them equally both in terms of its content and of its application...that is, how the content is interpreted by courts, in police policy, and so forth. By contrast with gender feminism, you can see how individualist feminism not only embraces the possibility equality with men, the demand for equality is an essential aspect of the ideology. Privilege for either sex is anathema.By this definition of feminism -- individualist feminism -- the burning priority today is to remove from the law all privileges and disadvantages that are based on sex. This includes privileges for women such as affirmative action. The law must become gender-blind and see only individuals standing before it.This must occur for the good of women as well as men. I say "for the good of women" for several reasons.Happily, I think society is heading toward true equality under the law and the Men's Movement is just one confirmation of this. As I said, NOW-style feminism is dead...The problem is -- it is still kicking. It is kicking because, over the last decades, it has embedded privileges for women and inequities under the law into the institutions of society. And it is going to take hard, sustained work to remove them.Again, let me give you a concrete illustrate what I'm talking about when I speak of institutions. And, in concluding the example, I'll tell you why I think advocates of equality should be encouraged by it.Going back again to about 1983 when gender feminism started to ideologically dominate the mainstream of feminism...a new term became embedded in our culture: sexual harassment.I should pause to make clear what I mean by sexual harassment. By sexual harassment I don't mean unwanted touching, grabbing or any other form of physical aggression. That's battery, that's assault, that's a crime. And laws against those crimes have been on the books for many years. All that was needed decades ago when sexual harassment became a hot issue was have those laws rigorously enforced. Because physical aggression should be punished.Instead gender feminists created new law, new policies that, for example, prohibited "a hostile working environment" in which women feel offended by words and other non-violent behavior. That's what I mean by the term sexual harassment. That's what I mean...words and non-violent behavior that is considered offensive.Sexual harassment is a good example of how NOW-style feminism has institutionalized its politics into society for two reasons:First of all, everyone is familiar with it because sexual harassment legislation and policies have permeated virtually every business and classroom in North America. The law now regulates which attitudes toward women can be manifested, what language about women can be expressed ...even on private property. Through these laws, government reaches into the private sector and regulates attitudes and words to an extent that would be unimaginable in the 1960s, even the '70s.Second, sexual harassment has become what the iconoclastic feminist Daphne Patai in her book "Heterophobia: Sexual harassment and the Future of Feminism" calls a multi-billion dollar growth Industry. The Industry consists of the many people who make a good living off the issue of sexual harassment and, so, have a vested interest in continuing presence in society as a "problem" to be solved. These people are lawyers, researchers, consultants, educational professionals, writers, administrators, lawmakers, psychologists, and media people. Collectively, they form a strong barrier against any attempt to dismantle what has become the institution and the industry of sexual harassment.I said I would conclude this example with words of encouragement. And this is them. The term "sexual harassment" only entered our culture about twenty years ago. As a legal concept, it was introduced by gender feminist Catharine MacKinnon in a 1979 book entitled "The Sexual Harassment of Working Women." There, MacKinnon argued that violence against women in the workplace was not a form of battery or assault -- her objections were never about physical violence against women. She argued that sexual harassment was a form of discrimination, a violation of civil rights, that should be handled by civil lawsuits and under the Civil Rights Act. The next year, in 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission expanded its guidelines to include sexual harassment. The first court case that really established the idea of a hostile working environment was Meritor v. Vinson in 1986.That's how recent they are -- the sexual harassment policies with which we live. About 20 years. Even though it impacts the lives of every person in this room, sexual harassment is only two decades old. This is encouraging for two reasons: if it can be built in our lifetimes, it can be dismantled as well...and probably much faster. For better or worse, it is usually easier to take things apart than to construct them. It is also encouraging because twenty years is one generation and that's about as long as it takes for people to realize that something isn't working. To realize that the sexual harassment industry doesn't solve social problems...it creates them.It is instructive, however, to examine why sexual harassment succeeded as an issue. I think there are valuable lessons that men can learn from the success of the feminist movement.When Lin Farley's book on sexual harassment appeared in 1978 -- and it was the first book on that subject -- it galvanized women. The book was entitled "Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job." And it chronicled truly appalling instances of discrimination that literally destroyed the careers of innocent women. The success of sexual harassment as an issue came largely from the fact that Farley (and others) told stories. She let you see and feel the human cost of discrimination so that -- even someone like me, a sexual harassment skeptic -- I found it impossible to read Farley's book without feeling that something in society was badly wrong, badly askew. I wouldn't have passed a law but I would have been willing to pick up a protest sign and picket specific companies.This was and is a great strength of feminism. It showed the human misery being caused by unjust laws and unfair social behavior. Consider the issue of rape. In the '60s women who had been raped were -- as I mentioned -- in much the same situation as male victims of domestic violence today. The police did not take them seriously. Society often blamed them as though they had somehow brought on their own rapes by dressing provocatively or being promiscuous.When women stood up and expressed their pain openly and without shame, they opened a window into their own experiences and made people vicariously feel the agony being raped...and being raped not just once but twice, the second time by a legal system that did not understand or care... It was when people viscerally realized the depth of damage being done to innocent human being, it was then that society began to change. Because nothing is as politically powerful as shining a spotlight on injustice and refusing to look away. And nothing does this as effectively as telling the unvarnished truth.Daphne Patai did a wonderful job of expressing the human cost of sexual harassment policies in "Heterophobia," part II of which is entitled "Typifying Tales." She drives home the savagery of these laws and policies at universities where those who are accused have no presumption of innocence but must prove they are not guilty...they must prove this to committees who often have the power to ruin their careers and lives. The accused -- almost always men -- have no right to face their accuser or to question witnesses, no right to a lawyer or even, necessarily, to know the exact charges being brought against them. And the charges can be brought for nothing more than assigning the wrong homework, telling the wrong joke...One of the typifying tales Patai offers is of an over-weight professor who, by all accounts, was popular, personable, and competent. In the middle of a lecture one day, a female student heckled him by calling out a comment about the extreme size of his chest. He observed that she had no similar problem and, then, continued with his lecture.The student filed sexual harassment charges against him with the university. There was no allegation of battery or of his trying to exchange sex for better grades. The charges were based solely on the classroom incident. A witch-hunt followed. It was so extreme that the professor committed suicide. After which, in a press release, the university administration expressed a grave concern: namely, that the Professor's death would not discourage other similarly "abused" women from "speaking out."Pause for a moment and reflect on your reaction to the university's statement. Everyone I've talked with about this example has had a similar response: Outrage at the university. Empathy with the man. Anger toward the female student. A conviction that things should change.That's the power that speaking the simple truth of injustice has on most human beings, male or female. That's the power of telling stories.So let me tell you another...this time about another form of institutionalized discrimination against men...discrimination in the family court system. Many of your will already be familiar with it.Last year, a 43-year-old man named Derrick K. Miller walked up to a security guard at the entrance to the San Diego courthouse, where a family court had recently ruled against him on overdue child support. Clutching court papers in one hand, he drew out a gun with the other. Declaring: "you did this to me," he fatally shot himself through the skull.Miller is not an isolated case. There is an alarming rise in male suicide in most western nations. According to a 1999 surgeon general's report, suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in America, with men being four times more likely to kill themselves than women. A round of studies conducted in North America, Europe and Australia suggests that one reason for the increase may be the discrimination fathers encounter in family courts, especially regarding the denial of access to their children.Consider Warren Gilbert who died of carbon monoxide poisoning, clutching a letter from the child protective service. Or Martin Romanchick — the New York City police officer who hanged himself after being denied access due to charges brought by his ex-wife, which the court found to be frivolous. There are now websites that list the many names of men...and I do not believe overstate the facts when I say...men who have been driven to suicide by the despair caused by institutionalized discrimination against them, especially in the family courts. These men spoke out in the only way they knew how. They destroyed themselves in the face of a system that deprived them of dignity, justice, and -- in the some cases -- of the children they loved who made living worthwhile.This must change.What are the specifics of that change. Well...I don't speak for the Men's Movement but I do have an opinion on how genuine equality can be achieved. Eliminate all mandatory affirmative action laws and programs, and remove the issue from the court system. Do the same with sexual harassment. Introduce the rebuttable presumption of joint custody into the family court system. Recognize male victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, and treat them in same manner as female victims. Refuse to accept the bias against boys in public schools or other tax-funded agencies...perhaps even by refusing to pay the taxes that victimize males. These changes would be a good start. And I know that the speakers who come after me will expand more on the specifics of change that must occur...In concluding my talk today, I must express a fear. I pointed to "telling stories" as something valuable that the Men's Movement could learn from feminism. Now I would like to provide a cautionary tale. The evolution of feminism from the '60s to present day is a cautionary tale on how a political movement can become dominated by rage and lose the voice of reason. I dread the possibility that men I know and respect may someday look at me as "the enemy" simply because I am a woman. And I'll do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen. Because that's how we got into this mess in the first place...Feminism must extend a hand of goodwill toward men who are being destroyed by gender bias in the system. Women must stand up and call for the elimination of all law and all application of law that discriminates on the basis of gender, whether or not the discrimination supposedly benefits women. Because it doesn't. It can't possibly.Women are individuals and anything that weakens individual rights based on a shared humanity harms women as much as men.

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