Feminism as Group Strategy

Few things are as divisive for Whites as feminism. From the Left, feminism is part and parcel of the Good itself. It is something serious, something even the postmodern folks can’t make fun of or doubt it. From the Right, it has sometimes been used with genuine good faith for defending Western values threatened by Islam: Pegida argued for gender equality, among other values, recognizing the moral and social status of feminism.

As a teenager, I had been raised within the leftist narrative and believed that feminism was part of so-called progress. Of course, it wasn’t a major issue for me, but it wasn’t a problem either–and if it was in line with Western values attacked by those violent dark-skinned boys, why criticize it? My point of view changed when I realized that its struggle for “equality” did not care at all for my interests and well-being. There was a discrepancy between, on the one side, what I have been told, what I have been raised for, and on the other actual experience. The comfort zone I had taken for granted as an achievement from my parents was turning into a prison of weakness. To make a long story short, I kicked myself in the ass, learned game through trial and error, and was more successful than I could ever imagine.

This journey was not only field-oriented, but also immersed within an academic environment. It made me wonder what feminism actually was and what people who claimed to be feminists wanted. When they talked, I could feel that something was wrong but couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Now, after some time as a red-pilled guy evolving in academia, I think two points are crucial to grasp for having a general view of what constitutes feminism.

First, it is less about what it explicitly claims to be than about enforcing a particular narrative and world interpretation. When one faces a notion like “feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings,” one faces a set of implicit assumptions packed into a bullet-like string of words.

Second, feminism can be understood as a group strategy. It is, and has always been, a way to create a group awareness, a social identity, and a device for gaining power.

If the second point reminds you of something else, it is no coincidence.

A Familiar Pattern

Western society values universalistic, inclusive views. A small group comes, pleads for “tolerance,” “humanity,” and clothes itself inside universalistic words to get acceptance. As the group complains of unfair persecution, it drives pity, manages to earn social recognition as a legitimate particular group. At this stage, they can present as citizens among other citizens or as scholars among other scholars. But this norm-blending doesn’t last for long. Instead, from this moment on the group will start collective and aggressive actions. Shame regular people, all while complaining that you are persecuted or oppressed. Calling them out for their actions becomes harder and harder. Soon it becomes taboo to mention them as a group. While they can talk about themselves as a group, laymen have no right to do so and have to remain silent. The small group turns into a set of organized networks, tribe(s) inside official institutions, and overthrows regular people the institutions have been created for.

This is a familiar pattern. It describes how Jews presented themselves as the innocent victims of an irrational anti-Semitism while speaking in the name of “humanity,” then taking over markets, mass media, show-business, and, of course, the academic realm. Those who asked for “tolerance” when their influence was limited now have zero tolerance over any disturbance from White gentiles. The same has been done by feminists, LGBT-ers, and later Muslims. All have abused Enlightenment mottos of universalistic values for gaining power, then push their own agenda.

One can see it clearly when the only thing able to really hinder one of those groups seems to be another group. Individuals with a critical stance can hardly weigh in the official debates. It is all too easy for SJWs to shame them and destroy their careers. However, when one of those ascending interest group starts to threaten another one, the situation becomes far less easy.

The pattern has already been played several times since at least 1945. It was already played before with Jewish organized groups seizing public life in Germany, leading to a dialectical process that would eventually produce Nazism. Is has been played by Muslims, by feminists pretending to speak in the name of all women, by some trannies and homosexuals with tribalistic tendencies, and so on. It is being played again at a more local level in various university departments. After settling lefty strongholds, feminists have started to attack philosophy departments, which have been a safe space for more traditional views. They are using blogs, student newspapers, and academic journals for doing what they always do: framing facts and events with their own vocabulary, shaming guys, posing as either victims or helpers, using the strength of opinion and reputation to force people of responsibility to act in accordance with their agenda.

A graduate philosophy student once noticed that blogs and “gender” events started to accumulate influence in the profession. He was echoed by Brian Leiter, a philosophy teacher who recently wrote a book on Nietzsche’s morality. The statement was short: it criticized the “opinionated know-nothings (and insincere posturers)” running those blogs and events, without explicitly mentioning their feminist and “minoritist” agenda. That was enough to sparkle a feminist answer which starts by a complete reframing of the issue, complaining about how there are too many White males among tenured professors, how any disagreement with feminism stems from a clash of interests and not from a genuine concern with truth, and so on.

The answer fits nicely into the described pattern: it pretends to defend “people at the beginning of their careers” and asks for “tolerance” toward “feminist approaches.”

Of course this is only a first step. Uglier things come ahead. In the 1960s, feminism started with the famous picture of a masculine woman making a bras d’honneur and demonstrations calling women to “starve a rat” by not cooking. They have been aggressive and accusatory since the beginning and there is no reason to believe their behavior will change. Indeed, after claiming victimhood and concern for the young researchers, the feminist answer proudly announces how those “young researchers” were able to pressure and silence older professors–which means, White males. They make no mystery of their intentions to force quotas on the seminaries organizers and prevent White guys from presenting there. This is exactly the same dictatorial and aggressive mindset one can find in Susan Okin’s idea that the State should directly organize family life, or in Andrea Dworkin’s misandric view of heterosexual consensual sex.

Within the framework of this strategy, the plea for “tolerance” is just a way to make one lower his guard and be thankful for getting punched in the face. Same thing when they write long rants against “the patriarchy” and interrupt any criticism of their views by a “don’t denigrate us!” It means nothing but “don’t criticize us” and “shut up.”

Blogs are used as strategic instruments, as well as Twitter and other social networks. Those enforce a mob mentality, coordinate an extensive bunch of SJW/feminists to act quickly and swiftly.

There is an extensive continuity between works by scholarly-minded feminists and SJWs whose verbal IQ is probably 20 points lower. All aim for influence and keep pushing their agenda, which means their own view of what is true or false, right or wrong, accumulates influence.

When I was an undergraduate, I had to write a short paper about a contemporary school of ethics. Out of taste for challenge, I chose a school by mere chance: it happened to be “care ethics,” something a bit fashionable at the time. It turned out that “care ethics” thinkers were a bunch of feminists pretending to care about “vulnerable people” while extensively referring to each other’s works and almost no one else’s. The clan spirit at its finest. Of course, “vulnerable people” turned out not to be White males, even the younger and most clueless ones. Pushed to its logical consequences, care ethics emphasize that vulnerability is the key component for determining one’s moral worth and how much attention one deserves. This victim worship seems to have been dropped by the vast majority of feminists in favor of more aggressive theories, which is hardly surprising when one considers the importance of aggression and accusatory stances as defining features of feminism since the 1960s.

Is Feminism a Philosophy?

Basically, feminism is both a social identity and a set of assumptions about the world. Feminism is the idea that during most of history, women were oppressed by men or “the patriarchy”, i.e. institutions systematically favoring men and degrading women. Feminism is the idea that all women on Earth form a class, in the Marxist sense, turning non-feminist women into gender traitors. Most importantly, it is the idea that human history started with noble savages, fine tribes where everyone was happy, where women could be Amazons and hoped to be. This noble savage view degrades Western history and civilization to the rank of “oppression” and “patriarchy.” The reversal is, of course, that Western men don’t deserve what they have, didn’t do their own positive accomplishments. Eventually, feminism evolved into gender theory, the idea that masculinity and femininity are nothing more than “social constructions,” lies from the “patriarchal” society to prevent people from being queer, gay, bisexual or whatever their heart desired.

Sentences like “feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings” only make sense within this perspective. They were crafted to trigger emotional buttons, leading regular people to accept the features described above without consciously weighing them. This is exactly what Aristotle would have called rhetoric–and what I would call emotional manipulation–on a massive scale. Nonetheless, there is philosophical content in there. Feminism is built upon a partly Marxist “sense of history”: the whole history of the world follows, or ought to follow, an immanent process of progress aiming for a classless society. When it comes to “social progress”, no postmodernist or feminist is a genuine relativist. They genuinely believe in the reality of “progress” or “sense of history” existing independently from the contents of our minds. Their whole narrative of an oppressive traditional Western society is comforted by this absolute idea of a “historical progress” where they held the role of the avant-garde.

Needless to say, in a narrative based on the idea that whatever was positively associated to White men and traditional Western society ought to be destroyed, we can only hold secondary roles. At best, we are “allies” begging for respect and attacking our White fellows. At worst, we are full-fledged villains who ought to be defeated, shamed, then either forgotten or hated, just like Bull Connor. I once met with a retired scholar from the University of Western Ontario. He told me how J. Philippe Rushton got singled out by his coworkers after leftists accused him of “racism” and isolated him within the walls of the UWO. To be “respectable” within the feminist framework, we ought to endlessly apologize for the very identity we were born with–that is, Whites, males, of European ancestry–and be thankful for being used and dispossessed.

Genuine and modest care for truth, the bedrock of the scientific method, may be enough to get you accused of believing in an “epistemological superiority” of Western culture, i.e. “White privilege.” No intricate argument is too ladened with sophistry, no insult is too strong, to make you stay within the bounds of the official discourse. Feminism isn’t about women: it is about using women as pawns for destroying Western society. It is about “equality” only if the word “equality” can be used in a way to enforce the anti-White, anti-Western narrative and its set of key assumptions. Actually, any difference that can be quantified can be presented as an “inequality” and binded with moral reprobation, but feminists only do so with a tiny set of human differences and discourses that they can use for an endless trial of White civilization in the name of oppressed “minorities,” including women conceptualized as a Marxist class.

Feminism is about conceptualizing what the Western world was, and still partly is, as “unfair” and “inegalitarian”. It is about enforcing a compelling narrative darkening the past in general (to the exclusion of good savages) and White males in particular. It is about having an accusatory mindset, plus a guilt-prone mindset for White guys. Feminism is about producing self-righteous, entitled, highly emotional sluts who will be better at office politics than anything else. Actually, it is only part of a wider strategy for displacing White men and earning influence, cultural power and money at their expense while stuffing minds within an Orwellian concept box, making it hard to think outside key assumptions.

Words are only tools for steering honest people’s psychologies. Words like “equality,” “rape.” or “privilege” are used for enforcing the anti-White and anti-Western narrative. The definition of “rape” has been extended so much that a girl having remorse for sex she consented to can be described as “rape,” an expansion that remains weak compared to a Dworkin-inspired view where any heterosexual sex should be considered as so ugly and wrong that one would lean towards conceptualizing it as “rape.” The whole use and recasting of “rape” has been tailored for turning it into a weapon usable at will against men.

Same thing for feminist/postmodern use of “privilege.” This word is used in such a way that it implicitly denies any birthright Whites have over Western culture and society. Indeed, it denies any special potential we would have and any merit or accomplishment on our behalf. As the French philosopher Simone Weil, puts it, “work is not accomplished anymore with the fruitful awareness of one’s utility, but with the humiliating and scary feeling to possess a privilege given by a temporary favor of fortune, a privilege one excludes other human beings by the very fact to have it.” Everything positive we do, everything we build, everything we inherit, becomes morally negative and ought to be stripped from us.

Is that a philosophy? Well, if one meansa full-fledged worldview, yes, it is. But as far as it goes, feminism is against the very practice of philosophizing. Asking fundamental questions about, say, the nature of the world, the origin of our beliefs, or how we would define the abstract notions floating in our heads stirs too much doubts. Feminism can use philosophical skepticism if and only if it is targeted at the very features it aims to destroy. It is a whole Weltanschauung made of unspoken core assumptions. Being skeptical against those assumptions, or simply formulating them explicitly without previously kneeling down to “gender equality” and other totems from it, can be deemed as “bigoted,” “misogynistic” and so on. All philosophies are not good for endless philosophizing. Some of them turn into more-or-less conscious group strategies, some of them conquer a cultural hegemony, as Gramsci wrote, becoming able to steer the public discourse. Feminism is not only about freeing girls’ basic instincts, allowing them to do whatever they want to do with no responsibility or even destroying families: it is also about sticking with the previously laid out metaphysical assumptions about progress, history, and the nature of man. When those assumptions are threatened or even mentioned in public, feminists react quickly and allow no heresy.

Ever heard about Catherine Vidal? If you don’t speak French, probably not. Vidal is a pseudo-scientist who claims to have found in the brain proofs that all sex differences–apart from genitals– are learned, hence a “social construction.” Famous in France, she goes completely ignored by English-speaking scientists, which is probably caused by the fact that her “science” contradicts any serious neurological research, to the point that American feminists want to stop research. The French cultural left merely ignored evidence and kept gushing as if it didn’t matter. Until two researchers publicly pointed the flaws in Vidal’s “research.” A fashionable columnist, Peggy Sastre, discarded Vidal’s pseudoscience in favor of a stance closer to evolutionary psychology. Sastre usually defends libertarian feminism, an unlimited right to promiscuity and shaming any male voice that objects. But she also claims to support an “evofeminism” accepting “biological sex as the basis of gender.”

What happened? Well, Sastre has already published several books with prestigious French editors and writes for the Nouvel Observateur, one of the leading Leftist orthodoxy magazines. She masters the social codes of feminism–“the patriarchy”, etc.–and crafted a pretty consistent position. Nonetheless, her “evofeminism” breaks from a major philosophical position of traditional feminism, the blank slate or hard dualism between nature and nurture. Plus, Vidal’s “research” had been used for many years as a scientific alibi for rejecting outright that “genders” have any base in innate nature. This was enough for Sastre to receive hostile comments from older sixty-eighters claiming that she was about to lock down women into their kitchens. Those sixty-eighters are White males. They can be considered as inferiors to Sastre’s sex in the moral hierarchy of the anti-White, “oppressed minorities” narrative. But they are also firm believers in this narrative and seem to have no problem calling out a woman who violates a core dogma of feminist orthodoxy. In their mind, any relation between human nature and so-called gender roles amounts to lock down women inside kitchens, just as any defense of White interests and HBD amounts to supporting Hitler. Thus, as “evofeminism” rejects a core philosophical thesis of the central Left orthodoxy, it triggers powerful emotional reactions from believers–even old dirty hedonistic sixty-eighters who are a hundred percent White and male.

The Fall of Feminism?

So far feminism can be defined by two essential aspects: a philosophy, mostly rooted in Marxism and postmodernism; and a group strategy. Both aspects are intertwined, which makes feminism difficult to explain in a plain, analytic, non-manipulative way. The sentence “feminism is the radical idea that women are human beings” doesn’t explain anything but mostly shocks the hearer and compels him to believe in key assumptions that remain implicit. Feminist philosophy is never explained in a systematic way. When one of its parts is explained, the explanation usually takes for granted the other key assumptions, which means that feminism ultimately rests on a logical circle. However, this logical defect doesn’t prevent it from being extremely efficient at stirring up resentment against men, especially Whites. A regular girl who starts absorbing feminist philosophy starts to perceive many masculine acts as morally wrong, going so far as equating unwanted male attention to rape and battery. By creating perceptions of “oppression” or undeserved “male privilege” or “White privilege,” feminist philosophy creates resentment; by upholding so-called “equality” and “progress”, it gives an aim, a telos, as well as a strong motivation to act against the perceived injustices.

While the feminist worldview may appear silly and forced, particularly since it uses sophistry and groundless accusations to discard evidence-based science, it has grown up with incredible success, to the point of determining–along with other anti-White stuff–what deserves respect or scorn. Asking for “tolerance,” then pretending to care about “justice” and finally shutting up any different voice by calling to “consensus”–i.e. think and talk within our framework or go die while we make history–such is the infamous pattern that leads to our present-day situation.

On one hand, feminism is serious because of its domination in the academics and the mainstream media. It is serious because mastering public respectability implies influence over a huge crowd. As Gamergate has shown, serious feminists organize to steer the media and organize fluxes of money even in fields like gaming that were previously safe. In academia, it will become harder and harder to simply be a White guy. “Affirmative action” policies will get you more and more excluded from public events while your decent teachers will have to kneel to feminist networks. One can recognize a mortal enemy in the person or group who says “change” or “progress” to mean our dispossession. The harder to swallow part is when you evolve within an academic environment: money here is limited, you are depending on the system, and while the cake is shrinking, the larger parts go to influence networks.

On the other hand, it seems that we are dealing with a clay-footed giant for several reasons.

First, it clashes with science. Feminist key assumptions contradict findings in neurology, evolutionary psychology, traditional personality psychology, and ethology. Postmodernism aimed only to discredit the scientific method as “western” and “imperialist.” Well, maybe Westerners stumbled upon the method fit for discovering truth. Science despised by feminists and postmodernists remains stable and truthful. While PC can and shall crumble or turn into a set of strongholds in balkanized societies, science is appealing because knowledge is appealing. Guys calling for “consilience,” a general union of knowledge between humanities and the so-called hard science, want to put the postmodernist and PC bullshit to the test of the scientific method. Bullshit could never survive that.

Second, many girls are only engaged in a superficial version of feminism. They claim to be “feminists” because they want to be perceived as intelligent and/or out of fear of misjudgment. However, talk to them smoothly in private and they will show you a brighter aspect. Many girls recognize the built-in differences between men and women, don’t see themselves as a class of harmless victims, nor do they want a war against men. They admit daydreaming about having children or caring for babies. Femininity is not dead because it is primarily built in. Most of all, they enjoy submitting in bed. Feminism is a fight against nature, it is an uphill battle. It can work with entitled, overtalkative bossy sluts, out of touch with their inner needs–in a word, the perfect consumers and workers–but quite less with really feminine women.

Third, feminism as a group strategy can become self-destructive under certain conditions. SJWs’ high emotivity can lead them to attack their own friends and allies. Self-identified “PoC” or “WoC” may attack a Jewish or White SJW for a joke, a perceived lack of involvement in some Internet battle, or even the sheer fact of being clear-skinned. SJWs’ aggressiveness and lack of self-control makes them inherently unstable. Besides alienating alone from more moderated people, SJWs can attack each other quite easily. Or attack the moderated people whom they came from in the first place.

Four, as an unchecked power, feminism was free to radicalize, eagerly pushing its agenda and finding more topics to complain about with no limits. Such a power can be used to pursue personal interests. This is what the whole Gamergate affair is about and feminists’ complete lack of honesty was revealed to the public. Vice in plain light, good old-fashioned ugly behavior. Another front for the red-pilled and another source of unease for sane women. Peggy Sastre, whom we already mentioned, questioned the consistency of the “street harassment” concept. Given her acceptance of evolution, her calm tone and what seems to be a quest for social harmony rather than anti-man warmongering, one can wonder if she is a feminist at all. Zoe Quinn, Jessica Valenti, and their consorts are celebrated for cheating and finger-waiving while Sastre is constantly called out by sixty-eighter males in the Nouvel Observateur comments.

Five, even among the radical Left and its vast array of anti-White groups, there are many breaks. Black feminists want “justice” rather than “equality,” an euphemism to say that they want revenge. How much time those “WoC” will accept being lectured by Jewish and bourgeois White girls? Muslims don’t really like feminists either. Leftists dreaming about a “convergence of social struggles” won’t have it. Too many different interests are involved within the PC camp. Their irreducible differences, their mutual antagonisms are appearing in a clearer and clearer light. A French Left journal, Marianne, expressed the explosive idea that feminists could be a front against the Islamization of Europe. While this seems unlikely, it shows how wide the potential cracks are within PC.

Upon the whole, then, feminism is bound to either radicalism or trifle fighting. French feminist associations ridiculed themselves by fighting for deleting mademoiselle–an alternative to madame, designating an unmarried woman–from administrative forms before embracing the cause of “gender” and LGBTBBQ. They have to justify their existence as a group and must always find new “injustices” to be offended upon. From the beginning, it is a class war transposed as a general scheme of relationship between the sexes. While it may be possible to see a downfall of feminism, stemming from several factors such as a mismatch with other PC-ladened interests, in the middle term it is all more likely to see an increasing difficulty for non-Leftist White guys to pursue a career within North American academia. The cake is shrinking and organized groups are the ones who are going to have the bigger slice.

Truth is, feminists are worse than an annoyance. They’re a menace to us men. They’re dangerous. They are our enemies, and they are out to get us put in jail or prison for nothing. They are out to get us fired from our jobs for fake sexual harassment bullshit, thereby depriving us of a means to earn a living. Feminists are our deadly enemies, and there can be no peace accords with them. –Robert Lindsay