Feminism as a one-sided women’s rights movement (a.k.a never not rotten)

A while back, I wrote:

In reality, Feminism is, and always has been, a one-sided women’s rights movement, which has rarely shown much concern for men’s rights or for equal responsibilities and equal duties. (Here, I wanted to reference a recently encountered and very informative text by someone else, which likely was https://antifeministpraxis.com/2017/03/31/feminism-was-never-not-rotten/; however, this link currently leads to a message of “This domain expired”. For a semi-replacement, see a text on Ellen Key. For issues with more modern Feminism, see any number of earlier texts.)

Since then, I have found a link to the missing contents through an archiving service—and I strongly recommend it to my readers:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191009062955/https://antifeministpraxis.com/2017/03/31/feminism-was-never-not-rotten/

(In addition, just in case, I will reproduce the full text below.)

Doing some additional research, I found a few other interesting links, including:

1. A review of “There’s No Place Like Work” by Brian C. Robertson.

   Some claims made in the review are quite interesting, e.g. that:

   The first [misconception] is that the women’s movement of the 19th Century was like its 20th Century counterpart, an effort to liberate women from the bondage of housewifery.

   The facts show exactly the opposite. Women’s organizations throughout that century fought to liberate women not from the kitchen but from the workplace.

2. A series of excerpts from “Woman and the law; a comparison of the rights of men and the rights of women before the law” (1875!) by Russell H. Conwell, which deal extensively with a surprising favoring of women over men in the U.S. 19th century, e.g. that:
   

   She may be worth a million, and he have nothing but his labor; yet he must support her in good style, and supply the needs of the family from his wages, without assistance from her. If both together commit a trespass, or assault, or any like misdemeanor, he is punished and she excused. Worse than that is the law whereby the husband is punished for any wrongful act of the wife in his presence, although it might have been beyond his power to prevent it. If she strikes a man, the recipient of the blows has no right to strike back unless to save his life, and her husband must pay for the damage by fine or imprisonment.

3. Excerpts from works by Belfort Bax, “The Fraud of Feminism” (1913!) and “The Legal Subjection of Men” (1908!). (The titles should be self-explanatory.)

Disclaimer: All the aforementioned authors and books were previously unknown to me. I do not vouch for their quality, beyond the excerpts encountered, nor for their correctness. (If I find the time, I might do some deeper reading later.)

In addition, if off topic, I found a brilliant and brilliantly mocking series of texts on “Why I don’t take feminists seriously” by Mike Adams of Townhall, which shows much of what is wrong with modern Feminism. See respectively part I, part II, part III, part IV, part V, part VI, part VII.

As an aside, with an eye at a few earlier texts on abortion, I note him quoting (in part VII) a deranged-seeming woman saying

And the baby, when it is inside of her, is her body.

If this is taken to imply that the baby is actually part of “her” body, and if this horrifying ignorance is common among women/feminists/pro-abortionists/whatnot, it would explain quite a lot about that idiotic slogan “my body; my choice”. The baby is, by any even remotely reasonable standard, a separate entity in a separate body, only connected over the umbilical cord, with its own DNA and (beyond a certain point) own brain, heart, and whatnot. To see the baby as a part of the woman’s body, similar to an appendix, is as untenable as considering a human in a car a part of that car or a human on a dialysis machine a part of that machine. (In contrast, if mere ownership is implied, this ownership claim is extremely dubious, as noted in one of the previous texts.)

The same deranged-seeming woman also made claims about the baby as a parasite, which are, at best, highly misleading (but not unknown to me from others): A parasite is something that deliberately* exploits something or someone else against the nature and will of the something or someone, and to the disadvantage of that something or someone. The baby, on the other hand, has been put in the womb without having a say in the matter, almost* always by an act of and by the mother (!), in correspondence with the nature of both the mother and the womb, and it usually is (has until recently been?) considered a good or very good thing by the mother, herself. (This entirely apart from any arguments about the relative value of humans vs. e.g. hookworms.)

*Where “deliberately” should be seen in an extended sense. That hookworm is following its in-built reactions without true thought.

**Rape would be a rare exception. However, even an accidental and/or unwanted pregnancy through consensual sex is self-inflicted by the mother, be it by negligence or through taking a risk and having bad luck.

Finally, the full text of “Feminism was never Not Rotten” by Karen Straughan (a.k.a. GirlWritesWhat). (With reservations for loss of e.g. formatting through copy-and-paste.)

Years ago, when I embarked on my investigation into the feminist movement and what it has become, I subscribed to the understanding that there had once existed a magical age of feminism. Of course I did. It was common knowledge, even among anti-feminists, that early feminism was a noble and well-intentioned movement, and that somewhere along the way it was hijacked by lunatics and man-haters bent on female supremacy.

I was curious as to exactly when, and by what means, this virtuous movement had been corrupted, so I went on something of an archaeological expedition, digging through piles of documents and old news articles and treatises from as far back as the late 1800s and earlier, transcripts of speeches given by well-known suffragettes like Susan B. Anthony.

My unexpected findings were as follows: Feminism has never been a righteous movement seeking equality. The “noble” Suffragettes were soaked in sexism, classism, racism, eugenics enthusiasm and the mindless pursuit of female privilege. The Declaration of Sentiments, widely believed to be the official manifesto of the First Wave, was nothing more than a hate-filled screed, simultaneously indicting and convicting the male sex of the wholesale criminal enslavement and subjugation of all women, through all of history.

I found a First Wave populated by terrorists and elitists who did little to conceal their malice, dishonesty and thirst for power. They were skilled at isolating any given statute from its full context and declaring it as discrimination against women, even when the overall set of laws to which it belonged conferred immense privilege on women. And always, their “reforms” focused on the one, isolated statute, always leaving those privileging women untouched.

They sought, and received, the automatic right of mothers to custody of children after divorce, but did nothing to change the financial obligation of fathers to provide all material necessities to said children.

They sought, and received, the right within marriage to hold and keep their own property and income untouchable by their husbands, but did nothing to change the legal obligation of husbands to financially support their wives, to pay their wives taxes, or to repay their wives debts.

They sought, and received, the right to vote, but did nothing to change the civic obligations of men toward the state, including military conscription, which had informed the primary justifications for universal male suffrage, nor did they campaign to impose any such obligations on women.

And through every effort on the part of those early feminists ran a vein of resentment, blame and indifference toward men. Resentment of “privileges” that were bought and paid for by men through their formal obligations to others. Blame cast on men for single-handedly constructing the entire system with no care or concern for women’s wellbeing, safety or happiness, seats in lifeboats nothwithstanding. Indifference to the responsibilities imposed on men by this same system, or the male sacrifice, hardship and suffering which resulted.

While men were dying in their thousands to win the right to form a union and earn enough to support their wives and children, early feminists were campaigning for a woman’s right to take a man’s children away from him through separation or divorce, and still enjoy the same access to his wallet she’d become accustomed to in marriage.

While men were dying in their millions to protect societies in which most men didn’t have the vote, early feminists were terrorizing and injuring innocent civilians, demanding votes for women.

I was, to be honest, appalled by the entitlement of those early feminists, and by the nonchalance with which they portrayed men, as a sex, as not just capable of, but guilty of, treating their own wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters with sociopathic disregard. Little wonder these selfish, elitist, divisive women were, contrary to the revisionist history we’ve all been fed, no more popular among ordinary women back then than their modern counterparts are today.

A friend of mine has said that modern feminism is simply feminism without the mask. But my investigations showed me that feminism has never worn a mask. It has never needed to conceal the bitter core of hatred, blame, prejudice and supremacy that form its nucleus

Suffragettes were notorious domestic terrorists, lobbing bombs, lacing letter boxes with acid, setting fire to train stations, and even attempting to assassinate the British Prime Minister. But far from attempting to conceal their crimes, they relied on traditional notions of chivalry to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. And the very subjects of their ceaseless hate campaign — men — eventually gave them everything they wanted, and more.

Pretending that First Wave feminism was virtuous not only erases the systemic injustices of which they were the primary architects, it erases the anti-male resentment and blame that have always infected the roots of the movement. It’s time we stop idealizing them, and begin seeing the entirety of feminsism for what it really is.

History is written by the victors, and feminism has been on a winning streak since its inception. Within that official history we are told only good things about the “brave women who risked their lives for women’s equality”. Some may find it deeply upsetting to discover that feminism has never been the righteous movement we’ve been told it was, but we have a moral obligation to examine political movements and history with our rose-tinted glasses off before we form an opinion. To do otherwise is to indulge in the wishful thinking of children.