oratorasaurus:

chipperface:

oratorasaurus: Feminism hurts women too. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. OH my goodness, holy shit, I think they’re serious.

I posted that because I was thinking about the phrase that feminists use whenever you show them the issues that men face due specifically to their gender. You all know the phrase I am talking about: “The patriarchy hurts men too!”. I honestly detest this phrase, and all others similar. It’s condescending, using the hypothesis of “patriarchy” to blame all gender problems primarily on men while at the same time implying that the problems women face are much worse. In addition, the phrase only seems to come up when arguing with MRAs and seems to be a tactic to try to hold on to their agenda and ideology in the face of evidence to the contrary.

I thought I would make a list of some of the areas where feminism hurts women. Although not all problems faced by women can be blamed on feminism, many of the problems that women face are made worse by feminism.

The wage gap: The perception that gender discrimination causes the wage gap hurts women by making then not go into certain fields. By insisting the pay gap is not due to women’s choices, feminism denies women the information they need to make choices that increase their earnings.

Feminism exaggerates the rates of both domestic violence and rape, which causes women to treat the entire world with distrust, especially men.

Feminism denies the causes and situations in which domestic violence occurs. By denying that domestic violence situations are often reciprocally violent, feminism denies women knowledge about a potential sign or even cause of serious domestic violence.

By fighting against equal custody presumption feminism places more of the burden of child care on women, which make it harder for women to be career oriented.

By portraying problems facing women as all men’s fault, feminism causes women to ignore or not seek out things they can do to prevent things they dislike from happening. For example, women often complain about unwanted male attention, yet many of the women I have met do not seem to know how to ask someone to stop and actually seem to expect a bystander to do it for them.

By denigrating male sexuality and blaming men for the portrayal of women in the media, feminism spreads the perception that men like the women in the media. This enforces the marketing strategies companies use to get women to think that women need their product to look a certain way or to simply be beautiful in order to get a man. Whereas in reality, male tastes are extremely broad.

Feminism, because of the way it focuses on some issues makes it hard for men to treat women as equals in certain situations. An example is fear of harassment causing men to not associate with co-workers or fear of allegations of sexual impropriety causing men to not go into the teaching sector.

Feminism makes women seem like children in certain situations, such as by not making a woman responsible for consent given when drunk. Absolving women of this responsibility seems to be implying that women are weak and not capable of handling themselves and making responsible choices, and forces men to take a paternalistic attitude towards them.

Affirmative action causes men to question the merits of women’s successes-even legitimately hard working, talented women.

Statutory rape and sexual assault by women is often seen as harmless and sometimes downright titillating. This can lead to perceptions that women are incapable of truly visiting harm upon others, which allows that behavior to continue relatively unchecked. Combine that with statistics indicating the majority of child abusers and sexual predators experienced some of form of abuse as children, and one can see a vicious cycle that harms everyone.

Feminism downplays and marginalizes female victims as well as female perpetrators of domestic violence and rape in lesbian and trans domestic situations. By portraying all perpetrators as men, they are denying a voice to a proportion of society that often doesn’t have its victim-hood taken seriously because of the belief in women’s purity and inability to cause harm.

Feminism can sometimes be constricting in its expectations it puts on women to fulfill their ideal definition of womanhood. Women are expected to juggle the twin goals of career and motherhood, and while any woman who edges towards being too work oriented is often ostracized by conservative elements in society, feminism also does its share of shaming women who conform to the traditional roles that they find obsolete. This shouldn’t happen in a movement that prides itself on women’s rights to choose their own goals, but it does.

Feminism spreads a victim mentality among its female followers. This hinders success and productivity. It also provides a tempting universal excuse for failure. Even in the face of real discrimination, you’re still better off trying to succeed regardless than sitting back and complaining. It’s no coincidence that few successful women are dedicated feminists while most radical feminists have done little else with their lives than blame and complain.

By blaming all sexism on men, feminism is acting in contrast to its stated goals of equality. Many women are very sexist but feminism teaches them that they are not rather than holding them accountable. Women must do their part for equality too but feminism actively hinders that.