The progressive revolution rests on the ability of progressives to create a coalition of “oppressed human identities” that can then be used as shock troops to advance that revolution.

Now the most important thing to understand about those “oppressed human identities” is that they both “are and are not” real identities. Some are real in the sense that even progressives are occasionally forced to work within the bounds of reality. But none are real in the sense that, once an identity is processed by the progressive, it becomes a pseudo-identity.

And the progressive revolution has also now reached the stage at which pseudo-identities are rapidly being multiplied. This multiplication serves two purposes. First, it increases the numbers and irrationalism of those who claim to possess these pseudo-identities. Second, it serves the purpose of intimidating ordinary men and women “who only want to get along” into remaining silent in the face of increasingly bizarre progressive claims about reality.

The progressive intends that, in the future, everyone will either possess an “oppressed identity” or will be made to bow down before the “holiness” of those who do. These will be the only options.

However, there is a problem with this progressive strategy.

For the multiplication of pseudo-identities is not just unreal, it is becoming increasingly surreal. And that means that the progressive revolution can succeed only if a majority of the population also becomes surreal in their comprehension of reality, or else becomes so intimidated that they will agree to anything to be left alone. But it seems unlikely that this kind of strategy can succeed, at least in the long run.

In this essay, we will analyze one progressive pseudo-identity: the pseudo-identity of feminist.

What is the difference between a woman and a feminist?

This sounds like the opening of a joke. But it is the key question, because in purely rational terms it is quite easy to distinguish between a woman and a feminist. First, there are people who are called women. Second, there some women are feminists. The rational categorization is just that easy. Feminists constitute a subset of women.

This is not how the feminist sees reality.

In an essay on progressivism, I noted that progressives believe that it is progressives alone who are fully human. The progressive then divides non-progressive humanity into two groups. First, there are those people who are “educable.” Such people could be called proto-progressives, since they are on their way to becoming progressive. All that they lack is the proper education. But second, there are those who are “uneducable.” These are people who willfully and consciously reject progressivism as a form of delusional thinking. The progressive calls such people “reactionaries” or “fascists.” They are the enemies of the human race.

Since feminism is a form of progressivism, the same formula is followed. The feminist believes that it is only those women who are feminists who are fully women. The feminist then divides non-feminist women into two groups. First, there are women who are “educable.” They could be called “proto-feminists,” since all that they lack is the proper education. But second, there are those women who are “uneducable.” These are women who willfully and consciously reject feminism as a form of delusional thinking. Such women are “reactionaries” or “fascists.” To the feminist, the reactionary woman is not a real woman at all. She is the enemy of women.

Any woman who consciously rejects feminism is a pseudo-woman.

Of course, the reader may be acquainted with someone who calls herself a feminist, but who then rejects the idea that an anti-feminist woman is “not a real woman.” But it would be more accurate to say that the reader is acquainted with a woman who is only a proto-feminist. She may consider herself to be a feminist, but the real feminist understands that she is just a proto-feminist. She is not “fully educated.”

What is a woman?

Human beings are binary. We are male or female. Thus the scriptures: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them.”(Genesis 1.27) Of course, there are hermaphrodites. But the hermaphrodite does not constitute a “third sex.” The hermaphrodite is an impaired human being. There are only two sexes. Biology concurs.

The feminist –the progressive – does not concur. The progressive now believes that humanity consists of “101 genders,” with yet more genders to be discovered.

In the essay on progressivism, I made the point that to possess a real human identity means to have an identity that is different from – that it is unequal to – all other human identities. Indeed, that is the meaning of the word identity. The words “different” and “unequal” are synonyms. “Celebrate diversity” really means “celebrate inequality.” And this is why the core progressive belief in “the equality of all human identities” is complete nonsense. Just as there is no such thing as a “square circle,” there is no such thing as an “equality of human identities.” Progressivism, at its root, is delusional.

Now it is because males and females are radically different kinds of human being that they are real identities. And they are real identities precisely because they are unequal. The progressive’s “101 genders,” on the other hand, are all pseudo-identities because they are all "equal." Progressives have deliberately invented the “101 equal genders” so that they could deny the existence of the real – and therefore unequal – human identities called male and female.

To the progressive, a “gender” is not a real identity at all, although it is called an “identity.” Instead, the progressive has reduced the idea of “identity” to being a “mode” of “being human.” To the progressive, the identity of “human being” is the only real identity. Indeed, this is why humanity cannot be made up of two sexes, since only two sexes would be unequal. Instead, humanity must be made up of 101 genders, which are all “equal modes” of being human.

In reality, of come, human beings come in two sexes and no genders at all. And because the identities of male and female are real human identities, they are unequal. Male and female are not “modes” of being human. They are the two kinds of human being.

Male and female are real human identities because they are unequal identities.

In response to this assertion, the feminist will demand to know: in what way is the female identity inferior to that of the male?

Because the feminist – and the progressive – believe that women are substantively equal to men, anyone who states that women are unequal to men is not only attacking the core progressive belief in “the equality of all human identities,” but is someone who is objectively “anti-woman.”

To the progressive, the claim that there are substantive differences between men and women is, by definition, a false claim. And this means that any empirical evidence that is presented in support of such a claim can be explained away by the progressive belief that all women, whether in the past or in the present, have been “socially constructed” to be inferior to men. Once this “social construction” is overthrown by the progressive revolution, women will finally be seen to be substantively the same kind of human being as men.

This is the core feminist delusion.

To refute the feminist delusion, let us begin with an analysis of the radical physical differences (inequalities) between men and women.

In 1998, the 203th ranked male tennis player in the world played two sisters who were already in the top rank of female tennis players. A decade and a half older than the two sisters, he quite easily beat both the same afternoon. The matches were not close. In the morning, he played a round of golf. He then ate lunch, during which he drank a couple of beers and smoked a pack of cigarettes. Then he easily beat them. (1)

A second example: In 2016, the Australian woman’s Olympic soccer team, one of the top women’s soccer teams in the world, lost a game (7-0) to a team of teenage boys. The oldest boy was fourteen. Now it is true that, on that particular day, the best players of the women’s team were absent. On the other hand, the women’s team routinely played teams of teenage boys in their middle to late teens as part of their training. And they nearly always lost to those teams of late teen boys, even when their best players were present. (2)

Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely.

There is a radical difference in the physical nature of men and women. They are not even close in their physical abilities. If every major sport was combined so that both sexes played on the same teams, there would be no top female athletes at all.

It is only in the movies or on television that women are as physically capable as men. On the screen, a five foot four woman cop, weighing less than 140 pounds, can easily throw to the ground and hand-cuff a resisting, six foot tall, 180 pound male. It is only on the screen that a woman karate expert can easily dispatches a male karate expert or even several male karate experts at once. None of this has anything to do with reality.

Now the radical physical difference between men and women is more than just a matter of male size, or of male weight, of male testosterone. Men’s arms are, on average, seventy-five percent more muscular than women’s. The top half of the male body is 90% stronger. Men have a far heavier and denser bone mass. “[Their] heart is bulkier, their percentage of hemoglobin is higher, their skin is thicker, their lungs bigger, [and] their resistance to dehydration is higher.” Men’s reaction times are significantly shorter than women’s reaction times. Men’s visual acuity is better. (3)

And there is this to consider: “only the strongest 2.5-5% of the female distribution overlaps with male mean strength. Mirroring this, only the weakest 2.5-5% of male distribution overlaps with mean female strength.” One study that measured handgrip “found that 90% of females had less hand grip strength than 95% of the male group.” The strongest control group of females was surpassed by 2/3 of males. Even athletically elite females managed to reach only the 25% percentile of untrained males. (4)

Physically, men and women are radically different (unequal) kinds of human being.

Now there are two feminist reactions to this.

First, there are some feminists who argue that physical differences are now irrelevant in advanced societies, where physical strength no longer plays a role in most professions. However, these same feminists will then go on to argue that women should nevertheless be allowed to serve as beat policemen, as firemen, or as soldiers in combat or in combat-related roles, “as long as they meet the physical requirements.” The problem is that they can never actually meet those requirements. So the requirements are deliberately and radically lowered for women, while the public lie is then put out that women are now meeting those requirements. Indeed, this kind of public lying is now central to the “advancement” of women in such jobs. (5)

Second, there some feminists who argue – and this now the belief of most feminists – that the radical physical differences between men and women are nothing more than “social constructions.” Most feminists now believe that the physical differences between men and women exist only because women have been “socialized” into becoming physically inferior. They also argue that the physical abilities of men and women are now radically narrowing as women become “liberated.” And they expect physical differences to largely disappear in the future.

Now there is a small grain of truth in this otherwise imbecilic belief. In organized sports, the differences in the physical performances of men and women have narrowed in recent decades. However, the most likely explanation for this is that women, who were previously not as involved in organized sports are men, are now topping out at what it is physically possible for them to achieve. And it should be understood that the recent “narrowing” in physical performances between men and women is quite marginal.

However, far more important than the radical physical differences between men and women are the radical metal differences that exist between them.

A radical mental inequality exists between men and women

The empirical evidence for those mental differences is overwhelming.

Let us start with general intelligence. More than a century of I.Q. tests have demonstrated that there is a major difference (inequality) between men and women in the distribution of intelligence.

Men dominate both the highest and the lowest ranges of I.Q., while women dominate the middle range. Therefore males are both superior and inferior to women when it comes to general intelligence. In the top five percent of I.Q., there are 5 men for every woman, while in the top one percent there are 7 men for every woman. Just on this basis alone, and without taking into account any differences in aptitudes between the sexes, it is easy to predict that men will dominate those professions where I.Q. matters. (6)

Of course, feminists – and progressives – have long attacked the idea that there is a standard measurement of intelligence. But there is no rational reason to doubt the accuracy of the I.Q. test. As a scientific measurement, that accuracy has been demonstrated, time and again, for the last one hundred years. When progressives and feminists attack the concept of IQ, they do not do so on scientific grounds. Of course, the reason why they can never accept the validity of such tests is because the tests reveal that the core progressive belief in “the equality of all human identities” is a delusion. (7)

There are also tests that measure human aptitudes. And these tests also reveal radical differences – inequalities – between men and women. (8) If we were to summarize those differences in a one word, we might say that men “systemize,” while women “empathize.” Men build and understand systems; they are focused on systematic relationships. Women deal with and understand people; they are focused on human relationships.

This is why men dominate professions like engineering, the sciences, and philosophy. They dominate those professions, not because of sexual discrimination against women, although such discrimination may exist as a consequence of that domination. Men dominate those professions for the same reason that they dominate physical sports. Male aptitudes are simply a better match for such fields. (9)

One division of aptitudes is into three categories: verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning, and spatial/mechanical reasoning. While highly intelligent people of both sexes are proficient in all three areas, even the most intelligent human being will have a greater proficiency in one area rather than in another. And there is a sexual dimension to this division of proficiencies.

“Numerical and spatial reasoning are especially important to pursuit of STEM fields and in this area there has been demonstrated substantial sex differentiation. Late adolescent males demonstrate a 6.4 point mean advantage in numerical ability and a 13 point mean advantage in spatial/mechanical ability. A standard deviation difference in spatial aptitude is massive. In addition, the mean differences between males and females in these sub-abilities grow as they age.” (10)

Now the feminist – and the progressive – usually respond to this reality by pointing to some particular woman, working in a profession that is otherwise dominated by men, and who is demonstrably better than most of the men found in that profession. The feminist – and the progressive – then treats this as “proof” that there are no real mental differences between men and women.

But there is a problem with this kind of argument.

If we say that “women are shorter than men,” the counter-argument cannot be that there are some women who taller than most men. The counter-argument does not refute the general truth that women, on average, are shorter than men.

And this brings us to a wider argument. The average physical and mental differences between men and women are not small differences. And they represent a complexity of difference that ensures that men will always be dominant in society. One social scientist calls this reality “the inevitability of patriarchy.”(11)

Patriarchy is a universal social phenomenon.

Let us begin by defining our terms. By “patriarchy,” we mean the dominance of male leadership in society. And when we state that patriarchy is a “universal social phenomenon,” we mean that every society, in every culture, in every civilization, throughout the whole of human history has been a patriarchy. There are no societies that are not patriarchies. (12)

Even today’s most advanced societies are patriarchies, as any feminist will inform you.

Now there are some feminist scholars who claim that there were major societies in the remote past that were matriarchies. That is historical fantasy. This claim has no basis in reality. Then there are other feminist scholars who claim that anthropologists have discovered a few, small societies, whether in the remote past or in remote corners of the world, that have been matriarchies. This claim is also untrue, but at least an argument can made that such societies have existed.

The problem is that the claimed matriarchies, on closer examination, always turn out to be patriarchies. To take one example: there are primitive societies that are matrilineal in their organization. Property and social authority descend through the female line. But it then turns out that it is still the men who control that property and social authority. (13)

However, since claims for the existence of matriarchies routinely turn up in the anthropological literature, and since it is at least possible that such a society might have existed somewhere, let us assume for the sake of argument that there have been matriarchies. The problem is that every society of consequence in history has been a patriarchy.

Why?

Is there a single “sufficient cause” that would explain why every society of consequence in history has been a patriarchy?

Reality is complicated. One can generally find multiple “causes” for anything that exists. A single “sufficient cause” for a phenomenon can be delineated only if, in the absence of every other cause, that cause alone would be sufficient to explain why the phenomenon exists. Is there a “sufficient cause” that would alone explain why every society of consequence has been a patriarchy?

The neuro-endocrinological uniqueness of the male brain alone explains why male social dominance is a universal social phenomenon.

It is not only that higher levels of testosterone define ordinary male behavior. It is that the male fetal brain is radically altered in the womb by testosterone. It has been conclusively demonstrated that, due to this physical event alone, males become intellectually and emotionally focused on questions of social dominance and achievement. It is because males are radically narrowed in their emotional focus by this radical physiological event in the womb that they become the dominant achievers in society. (14)

In the social sciences, it is quite unusual that a conclusion can be stated with this kind of certainty. This is one of those few cases. The feminist – and the progressive – have responded to this reality by simply ignoring this evidence. The progressive belief in “the equality of all human identities” must be true no matter what the evidence.

Feminist theory replaces evidence.

Feminist theory rests on three glaring contradictions.

First, feminist theory argues that there are no substantive differences between men and women. Men and women are substantively alike as human beings.

Second, feminist theory also argues that women are inherently superior to men. This of course contradicts the argument that men and women are substantively equal, but the feminist chooses not to observe the contradiction. The feminist then goes on to argue that men, due to their inherent inferiority to women, are responsible for all the wars, all the oppressions, and all the tragedies of human history. Men have employed their superior physical strength, their male lust for violence, and their lust for male domination, to create the sordid history of humankind.

Men value toughness, hierarchy, and competition. Women value sensitivity, equality, and community. Therefore substantive differences actually do exist between men and women, and these differences reveal that women are superior to men. The rise of feminism signals the creation of a new kind of human society in which the superior female traits will become dominant. Real human history now begins.

Third, feminist theory argues that women are inherently inferior to men. This of course contradicts both the argument that the sexes are substantively equal and the argument that women are inherently superior. But again, the feminist chooses not to notice the contradiction. According to this feminist argument, female inferiority derives from women’s superior traits, which can never hold their own against the barbarism of the inferior males. It is because women are inherently inferior in their female superiority that men will inevitably dominate society unless a political and social order is established that will permanently hobble the males. A radical political and social transformation is needed to ensure that men are permanently kept from dominating women.

This will entail the creation of a new kind of state which will completely supervise and control of all human relationships, so as to create an equality between men and women. Once this equality is created, women’s superior traits will then rule. But this can only happen if Male traits are permanently suppressed by a deliberate, and final, social engineering. An all-pervasive system must be created so that the delicate and sensitive creatures called women will never again be oppressed by the indelicate and domineering men.

Once again: each of these three arguments contradicts the other two. But most feminists believe all three arguments to be true.

Hysteria: The key feminist social tactic (15)

I purposely use the word hysteria, since any male who uses this word to describe women will immediately cause the feminist to become hysterical. I also use this word since it is a stereotype about women, and the problem with stereotypes it is that they are true. Of course, there are hysterical men. But that is not stereotypical male behavior.

Now the feminist will vehemently object to this “untrue” stereotype and will become hysterical if we continue to insist that the stereotype is true. And this is because the deliberate cultivation of female hysteria is a key feminist tactic.

A notable event in the use of this tactic occurred at Harvard College in 2005. (16) The president of Harvard, the noted American progressive Larry Summers, was taking part in a symposium on the question of why there were so few women “in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions.” He began his remarks by agreeing that this was mostly the result of a socialized sexism, but went on to note, to his own stated personal dismay (“I would far prefer to believe something else”), that there was substantial empirical evidence that “overall IQ, mathematical ability [and] scientific ability” in the general population was heavily weighted toward men. Therefore the problem, Summers argued, was not as clear-cut as many feminists portrayed it.

Needless to say, the roof fell in on Larry Summers. Summers began by issuing apology after apology and then completely repudiated his remarks. As the feminist outrage built, he even went to the length of organizing a number of rich progressives to raise 50 million dollars to create a new feminist center at Harvard to study such questions. It did not matter. Larry Summers was toast. He was removed as president of Harvard.

Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at MIT, who was present at his speech, walked out of the speech with several other women and was among the first to demand Summers’ head. Here is her public statement: “I felt as if I was going to be sick. My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow… I just couldn’t breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill.” Neither at the time nor later did Hopkins, or any other feminist, offer a reasoned argument showing why Summers' statement was false. Instead, feminist “arguments” consisted solely of public descriptions of their symptoms of female hysteria.

Of course, the problem was that a rational argument against Summers' statement did not exist. The superiority of males to females, in matters of “IQ, mathematical and scientific abilities,” has been empirically shown to be true, over and over again, for almost a century. The evidence for such differences is even more conclusive today than in the past. But the evidence no longer matters. All that matters is feminist hysteria. And the hysteria won. The event at Harvard is snap-shot of the institutional self-destruction that is now characteristic of today’s society. It is not feminism that has triumphed, but irrationality.

Recently, two liberal academics completed a long-term, social scientific study of women in science. (17) Since they were liberals, they were expecting to document a pervasive sexual discrimination against women in the hiring of professors of science. What they discovered – to their own surprise – was the opposite discrimination. They found that, going back for at least a quarter of a century, women with the same scientific credentials and experience as men were twice as likely to be offered jobs as professors of science than were men. For more than a generation, a pervasive sexual discrimination had favored women in the hiring of professors of science.

Yet there were still few women professors of science. It appeared that the real problem was that women were simply not interested in becoming professors of science, despite benefiting from a rampant sexual discrimination.

Now the feminist response to this study was, first, to assert that the study was radically flawed (it was not flawed), and second, to assert that, even if sexual discrimination now favored women in science, the reason so few wanted to become science professors was that they had been “socialized” from childhood into never considering such fields. Thus, according to the feminists, even more sexual discrimination was needed to bring women equally into the teaching of science.

When we look at all of today’s laws, regulations, programs, and other systems of social coercion dealing with the relations between the sexes, what we see is a vast and pervasive sexual discrimination in favor of women and against men. It seems that feminists are not opposed to sexual discrimination at all, so long as that discrimination allows them to achieve, or to pretend to achieve, the social outcomes of which they approve. And when those social outcomes do not appear, feminists are prepared to double down with further programs of sexual coercion.

Of course, from the standpoint of the feminist delusion, there can be only one reason why so few women are interested in becoming professors of science. They are the victims of a pervasive sexual discrimination. It cannot be that most women simply do not have the aptitudes or the interest in pursuing such professions. Therefore the feminist has to propose even more radical solutions to end this “pervasive sexual discrimination.” Everyone in society must be coerced into conforming to the feminist delusion. Feminists cannot rest until there are as many women science professors as men, since “all human identities are equal.”

But let us briefly imagine a very different kind of society. Since our imagined society is a free society, women can – in principle – hold any job that they want, but only to the extent that other free men and women voluntarily agree to hire them. Thus they will not hold such jobs to the extent that those free men and women voluntarily decide not to hire them. And since this is a genuinely free society, all hiring will be a matter of the personal judgment of those who hire. In other words, men and women will be free to deny a woman a job, for any reason at all.

Let us even assume that there is a general bias against women holding certain types of jobs in this society, a bias that is pervasively held by both men and women. But since this is a genuinely free society, men and women are perfectly free to exercise this bias. Because this is a society that is governed by the free choices of individuals, and since most of the people in this society believe that it is in the nature of reality that women should not hold certain types of jobs or that they will not be interested in holding such jobs, few women will be found in those jobs.

From the feminist point of view, this would be a profoundly immoral society. Indeed, this is a society that must be abolished. And so it has been.

Although America is still technically a free society, the progressive judicial and bureaucratic elements of today’s America now exercise a pervasive control over all human relationships, a control that will be even greater in the future, as the progressive elite works to achieve their ultimate goal of creating society based upon “the equality of all human identities.”

But in reality, since women are fundamentally different than men, not only will that goal never be achieved, but the attempt to achieve it will create a society that will control human beings as its primary imperative. It will be a society that will effectively end human freedom. And this means that the real goal of the feminist, like the real goal of the progressive, is not the creation of a universal equality, but the creation of a universal slavery.

The real feminist goal is not equality, but slavery.

The structure of feminist belief may be described as follows:

There are no substantive differences between men and women. Therefore every society of consequence in history has been “socially constructed” to conform to the entirely false belief that there are substantive differences between them. This patriarchal delusion is so deeply engrained in our human consciousness that the “commanding heights” of today’s society – the central state, the public schools, and the popular culture – must be employed to create a thorough-going social supervision, social coercion, and final education, to achieve the complete eradication of this false patriarchal consciousness of reality. Because it is people of virtue – feminists and progressives – who will control these instruments of coercion, the creation of a new human society is inevitable.

In reality, those who simply want to control other people will inevitably rule this new society. Now the average feminist, like the average progressive, really does believe that the goal is the creation of a universal human equality. Indeed, they are not lying when they say they believe that goal is equality. They are not liars, but fools.