Elmarnieh wrote:
Nope calssicam feminism is about getting the law to treat women as equals with men.
This is about subjugating men and saw the rise with Dworkin et al not the suffragettes.
TL; DR: Classical feminism has always been about subjugating men, using "equal rights" under the law as an argument, while failing to demand equal responsibility. Control of this narrative by pretending women had no power, ignoring the fact that women have immense power in the form of men's inherent biological drive to please women in order to secure a mate and reproduce. That desire to please has prevented effective counter-narrative until recently, when feminism has gone completely over-the-top in cases like this one. The average woman is not a feminist at all; she's an egalitarian.
Classical feminism was about subjugating men as well, although in a far less intentional and obvious manner.
Suffragettes and the like demanded equal eights for women, but did not demand and actively avoided equal
responsibility. Women demanding the vote did not demand the draft, for example. Modern child support law arose from the "tender years doctrine" which came from efforts to protect the "rights" of women during divorce, while ignoring the fact that the reason children had gone with the father after divorce was that he was presumed responsible for their safety and welfare, which made perfect sense; men did the vast majority of work outside the home, earned most of the money, and therefore were held responsible for the family's finances. Although this doctrine is not technically in use any more, its effects still persist with vast favoritism towards women in divorce proceedings.
Tax and marital property laws were similar; in the UK the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 (for example) gave women control of their own property in marriage and the right to a fair division of assets upon divorce, but did not assign her any responsibility to use her income for the upkeep of her spouse or children as the husband had, nor any tax liability. The practical effect of these laws was that a man could be punished for his wife's failure to pay those taxes, and that he did not have control of her money to make sure she did so.
Classical feminism gave rise to the "angry feminism" of "second wave feminism", Dworkin, and other such types mainly because of this sort of focus on rights, while ignoring responsibilities. It did so because at the time, technology simply didn't yet permit women working in the vast majority of jobs because someone had to be at home, and the man was vastly more suited to physical labor. Furthermore, population was much, much lower than today and childbirth still fairly dangerous in the late 1800s/early 1900s, so women's role in childbearing was still a major matter of societal survival and advancement.
Most feminism of that era arose from middle-class/wealthy women wondering "why can't I be a lawyer/broker/banker/doctor like daddy, and why can't I have my own property in marrige" and agitating for those things, and ignored that Daddy, before he was a lawyer, was likely to have fought in the civil war and marched his company or regiment into rifle fire, and that her husband might end up doing the same thing in the Spanish-American war or her son in WWI. Even by WWII, where technology permitted more, women still stayed home - they went to the factories out of necessity, but women were not clamoring to be allowed in the infantry at that time, either.
We see them only now getting into those combat arms because again, technology permits - barely. Yet problems with the physical ability of women to fight in high-intensity combat are already appearing, and the simple fact is that few women actually want to do this. Some women want to do these male jobs, but even out of those that do, a large proportion only want the ability to do so because they previously couldn't; not because they are all that excited about directly exposing themselves to enemy tanks. Military jobs, like police work and firefighting have societal status and prestige, much like the barristers and bankers of the 1870s. Women want those jobs, but don't want to be coal miners nor garbage collectors for the most part - jobs that are hard, and pay well (often better than the 3 previously-mentioned uniformed jobs), but lack the same status.
Essentially, early feminists played traditional attitudes of needing to protect women against Western ideals of equality under the law to redress
obvious inequalities of rights, while ignoring
less obvious inequalities of responsibility. Over the years, the persistence of this attitude resulted in the situation we face today, where almost any area where gender issues arise massively favors women. Inequality of rights or results is easy to point out, but inequality of responsibility is harder to recognize because it requires second, third, and fourth order effect thinking and most people habitually don't do such thinking.
The average woman has never been a feminist at all, even though some call themselves that; the average woman is an
egalitarian, who is perfectly content not to be drafted or serve in the infantry as long as she can serve in the quartermasters and get paid on the same scale as the male soldier. The average woman gets led along by feminists pointing out "inequalities" like the "gender wage gap" by feminists pointing out "inequality" without explaining why that inequality exists, and aided by a society conditioned to assume discrimination in the case of even minor group discrepancies. The average woman is pretty reasonable about understanding that the pay gap exists because of gender differences in
type and amount of work done when its pointed out, and is quick to recognize unfair situations like child support orders that take up most or all of gross income in the midst of massive unemployment.. as long as it doesn't affect her personally in a negative way.
That isn't because women are hypocrites or anything; it's human nature. Men are just as likely to put self-interest ahead of principle; it's just that men are presently the losers in almost all areas of gender equality and so they don't have the opportunity in that area. Men do it in other areas.
Feminism has never been about "equality"; it's been about "equality in the good stuff". A hundred years ago it was the vote, without the draft. Unfair inequalities in marital property rights, taxes, and such were addressed, but responsibilities were not addressed along with them until much later. The 1960s saw the addressing of other unfairness (equal pay for equal work) but that has distorted into a demand for equal pay across the genders in general (gender wage gap) that ignores type and amount of work performed, and just like the wealthy women of yesteryear wanting to be barristers without considering that poor women did not want to work in the foundry or coal mine, talks frequently about female CEOs as if they actually mattered, ignoring that the wage differences of millionaires aren't really that important to the status of equality to the average person. The on-the-job death rate gap, by the way, is suspiciously left out of the conversation; men account for about 92% of on the job deaths.
This/ explains why, and while normally I would avoid a blog post, in this case it's important because he cites the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, and then goes on to do the gender analysis the government avoids. Probably because pointing out the "gender death gap" would bring the ire of feminists down on the elected official.
Rape statistics are no different; rapes are "underreported" because A) prison rape is mostly ignored A) rape against men is not taken seriously, regardless of prison or not, and regardless the the gender of the perpetrator and C) feminists continue to portray proper investigation of rape and due-process rights of the accused as "victim blaming" and "you won't be believed by the police", thus frightening women into not reporting. Education campaigns against rape continue to portray the average man as a rape threat, ignoring that the typical date rapist is a recidivist who will offend as often as he can get away with, thus facilitating the manipulation many rapists engage in to discourage reporting ("I made a bad decision; I'm sorry; it'll never happen again." Yes it will. Probably next weekend, to someone else). Furthermore the lid is starting to come off of this with feminists endlessly trying to protect false rape claims from detection, and making absurd claims like the one in the OP, so far in defiance of common sense that they are prejudicing the system against rape victim advocacy, if not the victims themselves.
The bottom line is that feminism has always been about selective equality. Most women are not feminists. Most "male feminists" really aren't either; these people are mostly just people who have been selectively informed by feminist activism controlling the national narriative on these issues. The feminist, like her forebearers, (temperance movement, anyone?) is an angry controlling woman seeing only the facts she wishes to see, and using screaming outrage to get her way, relying on the wish of the average person to appear fair-minded to gain support for her prima facia grievances. She's not any different than Jesse Jackson misrepresenting race relations to make himself wealthy and gain political power.
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