Feminism and Injustice

By Philip Carl Salzman

What do feminists want? Is feminism an inclusive movement striving for gender equality and justice for all, or is it a partisan movement seeking advantage and benefits for females at the expense of males? What exactly is feminism's attitude toward males? Is it reasonable, as feminists demand, that we "believe women"? Does feminism encourage false accusations against men? What is the punishment for false accusations? Do we live in a "rape culture"? How do feminists wish to change science? Should we ignore the works of "dead white men"? Does feminism lead to single parent families and detrimental results for boys without dads? Does feminism benefit or undermine male performance in education? Does feminism distort the pictures presented in the media? Is feminism a violation of "social justice"? Feminism and Injustice explores the transformative political movement of feminism from a critical social and cultural approach. Examined are feminism's assumptions, ideology, strategies, and goals, and its consequences for our society and culture.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781999271008

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Biography

Introduction

Feminism is the transformative ideology and social movement of the latter half of the 20th century and the first half of the 21st century. In its ambition and success, it can be likened to the fascist and communist ideology and movements that transformed countries in Europe and around the world in the first half of the 20th century. In contrast to those movements, which in many countries, such as the USSR, Cambodia, and Cuba, through over-ambition and over- extension, destroyed themselves, while continuing strong in a few, feminism has entirely succeeded in transforming the West, including America, Europe, and the Anglosphere.

Like other such social movements, feminist ideology offers a value goal that is widely attractive: equality, in this case equality between men and women. It made the case that for most history, women had been subjugated to male patriarchy, subordinated, suppressed, and victimized. Feminism, it said, was going to right this wrong and advance the universal value of equality. The reality has turned out to be rather different: feminism in practice has become an attempt to benefit females at the expense of males. Equality is demanded for females, but never for males.

Feminists have advocated for females to be awarded the monopoly on judicial truth: Believe women. They have demanded that females have the monopoly on rights to children by successfully opposing joint custody by mothers and fathers. Of course, feminists have excluded males by denying fathers any say in the fate of their unborn children. Feminists also claim monopoly on higher truth by denying science, such as that sex differences are determined largely by biology. Feminists claim that sex roles are entirely socially constructed. They have their own feminist truth, whatever scientists say. In fact, feminists wish to impose a new feminist science, which will be based not on evidence but on social justice.

While feminists have made positive contributions to society, such as encouraging women to develop their capabilities to the fullest, including participation in the workforce, the deleterious effects of the feminist revolution for our most basic institutions have been massive. For example, the feminist vilification of toxic males, and the view that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, has resulted in the undermining and destruction of marriage, family, procreation, and child rearing. While the positive effects of feminism are broadly appreciated and recognized, its negative results have not been.

In regard to reproduction, Feminists appear to value above all responsibility-free and consequence-free sexual relations, and in consequence demand an unlimited ability to kill their unborn babies, although the practice was supposed to be rare. Between 1970 and 2015, there were 45.7 million legal abortions in the United States, and thus 45.7 million babies were denied to the American population. In 2017, the American birthrate was 1.72, far below the replacement rate of 2.1.

In regard to marriage, only a few more than half of all Americans marry, and they do so at a later age, five years later, in their late twenties, compared to 1970. In spite of the greater maturity of married partners, half of all marriages end in divorce. To what extent does feminist ideology contribute to unreasonable demands and unwillingness to compromise in marriage?

In childrearing, some 30% of American children are raised in one parent homes, a pattern characterized by relative poverty, poor educational results, crime, and incarceration. Fully 70% of African American children are raised in one parent homes, usually a female parent, with the deleterious consequences for the children, especially male children, which have been well-researched and documented. All of these changes are unintended consequences of feminism and its influence on women’s attitudes, public culture, and laws, although this is never mentioned in mainstream accounts.

The chapters that follow, which are based on articles I have published in the last years, address various aspects of feminism and the consequences of female supremacism. Feminism is now a dominant ideology in America and the West, and is the source of many injustices in our allegedly enlightened societies. It is my hope that, recognizing the negative consequences of feminism, we will return to the values of individual integrity and universal equality, individual merit and objective science, that have been unduly undermined by feminism.

Chapter One: Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right: How Not to Bring about Social Justice

The early Greek version of the Hippocratic Oath included the following commitment: I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. A Latin version states, I will utterly reject harm and mischief. A later version is from the Hippocratic school: Practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient. Thus comes our sense that do no harm is a basic principle of medicine.

In dealing with social relations, we teach our children a similar lesson: Two wrongs do not make a right. If you are done an injury, do not multiply the harm by doing an injury back. This a rejection of the law of talion: "Lex talionis—the principle or law of retaliation that a punishment inflicted should correspond in degree and kind to the offense of the wrongdoer, as an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; retributive justice." Lex talionis is the law of tribal societies based on balanced opposition among groups, potential retribution being the main form of deterrence against attack. What worked in tribal societies does not work in complex civil societies, particularly in liberal democracies. Civil societies require civility; replying to injury by injuring back is a violation of civility, lowering all parties to uncivil behaviour. We say: do not lower yourself to the level of the one who injured you. Two wrongs do not make a right; two wrongs double the initial harm. We urge: be the bigger person who is strong enough not to retaliate. We teach: be civil, and if others are not, that is on them, not on you. We plead: be civil; do no harm.

The principle do no harm is in our time being violated by those who claim to be champions of social justice. These activists, many of whom would identify themselves as progressives, strive to advance the interests of those who they claim are victims of oppression, and they strive to constrain those who they deem to be oppressors. Identification of victims and oppressors is not, however, on an individual basis. Rather, progressives see people divided according to categories of gender, sexual preference, race, religion, class, ability/disability, ethnicity, etc. Certain genders, sexual preferences, races, religions, classes, etc., such as women, gays, blacks, Muslims, workers, natives, and disabled, are victims, and certain others, such as males, heterosexuals, whites, Christians, middle and upper classes, and able bodied, are seen as oppressors. Now there is no doubt that in the past many people have been oppressed, have suffered, and have failed to reach their potentials, among them many women, blacks, homosexuals, workers, and natives. I find it easy to be sympathetic with such people, because I come from a community that has historically suffered enslavement, forced displacement, discrimination, pogroms, and attempted genocide.

The solution to oppression for progressive advocates of social justice is to provide advantages for members of oppressed categories, and to disadvantage members of oppressor categories. However, the problem with privileged access and special benefits for some is that it victimizes those in other categories who received reduced access and a reduction in benefits. For example,

The de facto discrimination [in elite university admissions] against Asian and Asian-American students is spectacular, undeniable, and shameful. They are in effect subjected to the same quota system that the Ivy League once used to keep down its Jewish population — the bamboo ceiling, some call it. Asian-American groups pursuing litigation against these policies have demonstrated that students of Asian background on average have to score 140 points above white students to have similar chances of college admission — and 270 points higher than Hispanic students, and 450 points higher than black students. The Asian penalty is especially heavy in places such as California’s prestigious state universities.

Excluding members of oppressor categories, while encouraging members of oppressed categories is the basic, progressive strategy. A recent example is the announcement of research grants for social justice journalism at Brandeis University, for which only females and people of colour are eligible. White males, from the paradigmatic oppressor category, are excluded. Presumably that would include also Jews, who, as everyone knows, have never suffered any oppression. On the other hand, I suspect that Hispanics, who are considered white by the U.S. Census, would be considered people of colour by the Brandeis bureaucrats.

The reverse racism and reverse sexism and reverse ethnic, class, and sexual orientation discrimination that characterizes illiberal progressive measures such as affirmative action try to right a wrong by committing another wrong. Progressives seem to believe that two wrongs do make a right. But in fact harm is done to many individuals who happen to fall into alleged oppressor categories, whatever their personal characteristics, social relations, and political commitments. Contemporary anthropologists have rejected essentialism, the idea that members of a cultural category all have the same essential characteristics. But progressive social justice advocates reduce everyone from being unique individuals to being no more than members of gender, racial, ethnic, and sexual categories.

Anomalies abound: For example, blacks and Hispanics from well-to-do middle class and wealthy families are favoured over whites from poor working class families and one parent families. Jews, once blocked or greatly restricted from entering elite universities, as they were excluded from many neighbourhoods and social organizations, are now deemed by progressive social justice warriors, some themselves Jewish, to be members of the white oppressor class, and not to count as a minority targeted throughout history. In Canada, affirmative action is seen in favouring members of First Nations for university places and posts. This is not a benign action which does no harm. Rather it excludes, not only the bad