I liked your article about the how the feminists are controlling nearly all of the areas of all life in the world. When I e-mail the feminists groups about equality about the definition of the word “equality”, they strangely have no definition. They are silent about even the definition of something that they say is central to their philosophy. They can’t define what they believe in and therefore do not respond. Interestingly enough they never give any statistics about pay differential. Not empirical data to prove their assertions so why bother to try to prove them wrong? The media is also at fault by constantly tauting their message with no rebuttal to false accusations.
Yes, your underlying assertion is correct. If men continue ignoring their claims of injustice, we will end up like the French men without any rights.
Pat

The reason nobody will define equality is because it is literally impossible to define something self-contradictory. The best anyone can do is point to a specific example and say “here, this is an example of an equal right”; but those examples never hold up to scrutiny (in practice you will find that either the putative example is not a right, or it is not equal, or both). In actual fact there is no coherent concept of equal rights at all. The concept “equal” is meaningful in the abstract, as is the concept of a “right”; but they are mutually exclusive.

The entire philosophy of equal rights (of any sort, ever, whether libertarian, Marxist, or whatever) is built on a self-contradiction. As any logician can tell you, a self-contradiction can be used to construct an argument for or against literally anything at all. In practice this is constrained by common sense and tradition to a degree, but the reason so much of modernism seems arbitrary, narcissistic, and self-serving is because that is precisely what it is; and a self-contradictory ideology of equal rights is the foundation.

What I find far more disturbing is Rod Paige’s decision, with no rebuke (so far as I’ve read) from his boss. This must be evidence #793 that President Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” isn’t any kind of conservatism. There’s a limit to the number of times one can say, “Give him some leeway until he’s taken care of the terrorism and Iraq problems.”

I’m always bemused when I read an item about the French being undone by some liberal ideology, especially on the sexual level. I think of the French as having a deeply engrained character and savoir faire that would resist, at the existential level, ideologies that I think the French adopt more for reasons of ego and political fashion than for genuine belief. The idea that the French have actually allowed the groin-kicking, kiss-initiating, always-on-top-during-sexual-embrace image of women to leave the movie screen and become incarnated in real life is startling and depressing.

This feminization and demoralization of Frenchmen, if true, also bodes very badly for their ability to resist the Muslim hordes among them in the years to come.

Matt is right, but there’s more to say. For one thing, equality must be quantifiable, and there’s no way that equal treatment between qualitatively unlike human types can be quantified. More to the immediate point: feminists can’t afford to be precise on this point because they have historically had two conflicting images of their goals. On the one hand they want all the rights that men have; on the other hand they want superior treatment in some areas. For example, equal status in the army; but acceptance of easier standards in the performance of tasks that require upper-body strength. Such contradictions run through all versions of feminism for the past hundred fifty years. This is a giveaway of the real truth that equality is only a slogan, not a goal, of the movement.

“This is a giveaway of the real truth that equality is only a slogan, not a goal, of the movement.”

I agree with Frieda’s post and I’ll observe further that equality is always only a slogan in every movement that invokes it. Nobody really believes in equality, because to believe in equality is to believe in an incoherent Nothing.

“Modern men see women as ‘castrating, vengeful, power-hungry and obsessed by men’s sexual performance.’ “

[When women love, they feel fulfilled from sex. When they don’t love, they become obsessed by men’s sexual performance because they are drinking a sort of water that never slakes thirst — they keep wondering, “Where’s all the pleasure I’m supposed to be getting from this? There must be something wrong with his technique!” The thirst for fulfilling sex can never be slaked in a woman who does not love. Women’s lib and leftism of course have taught women not to love but rather to feel proud, disdainful, and competitive vis-a-vis men, whence the obsession of women’s-lib-steeped women with men’s sexual performance.]

“While sounding a concerned tone for men, Elle noted that French women were still paid 30 per cent less than men … “

[The same claim in the States has been debunked. When all relevant factors are considered, women are paid essentially the exact same thing as men.]

“Men, the survey said, were driven to distraction by the conflicting demands of modern women. They were paradoxically being encouraged to adopt feminine traits while women still expected them to be virile.”

[Women do not use language the same way men do, and often, men cannot take women at their word when they say they want this or that. To listen to what they say “to the letter” sometimes is to commit relationship-suicide. Of COURSE women want men to be virile and not feminine. They NEVER wanted anything else. If a man listens to the lying left once, shame on the left. If a man listens to the lying left twice, shame on the man.]

“Being a male today is a nightmare. The male identity feels battered by the paradoxical demands of women … and a society that is going their way, from law, morality to advertising and techiques of reproduction … One gets the impression that a new war of the sexes is emerging, with the former dominated becoming the dominatrixes.”

[Women keep making more and more “paradoxical demands” because they’re frustrated: women’s lib, lesbianism, remaining childless in order to pursue boring office “careers” and whatever else the left is offering women simply — surprise, surprise!! — is not fulfilling them. The formerly “dominated” are become dominatrixes because that’s exactly what women will always do when not “dominated” by men — they will “dominate” the men instead, as punishment for not being dominated by them in the first place. (“Dominated” of course isn’t quite the right word here but the point is understood by everyone I think.) Women instinctively reject passive, effeminate men, for whom they utterly lack respect.]

“The saddest group seemed to be those aged 20-25, who the magazine defined as ‘subjugated and feminised.’ It is not rare that they cultivate a gay image in which they find a model for acceding to femininity. Behind the abandonment of their virility there lies another odd ideal: that of ‘homosexual fusion’ with the woman, a loss of differentiation between sexes.”

[Exactly thus are taken a nation’s first faltering steps toward what amounts to Eloidom.]

In France they have TV, and they’re an advanced welfare state. As a result, the family is no longer the primary institution through which people connect to the social order. One connects through employer, friends, pop culture, and the state bureaucracy.

Sex roles and masculine virtue have no special connection to any of that. In fact, they’re at odds with the receptiveness bureaucratic employers and the state look for, the self-indulgence pop culture encourages, and the purely sentimental friendship at home in a social order that has abolished personal responsibility and so has no need for personal character.

So there’s no accepted place for masculinity to exist, and it’s at odds with the interests of dominant social institutions. Why be surprised that it’s disordered, in France as elsewhere?