Lately, I have been hearing more from self-identified feminists than I have for about three or four years. This is thanks to the Ladies Against Feminism site starting a Facebook page. Though you have to go through a vetting process to post articles on their website, all you have to do to post on their Facebook page is to click the "Like" button. A surprisingly large number of feminists, often two or three at a time, click that "Like" button so that they can express how much they dislike the group. In speaking with many of them, I have come to a realization that feminism can be likened to another group that rose in this country during roughly the same timespan. Feminism is like a worker's union.
My experience with (and distaste for) unions goes further than the newspaper stories I read or the discussions in conservative media. The same goes for feminism, and my experiences with both are strikingly similar. I'd like to outline a few similarities here.
Feminism, like unions, started with a good intent. The first worker's unions were formed to address a power imbalance between the workers and their employers. The intent was to bring people together to form a stronger bargaining power, correcting the excesses of the 19th century. Feminism was formed to address a power imbalance between men and women, and operates much in the same fashion. Both groups held protests and made their case, pushing initially for the kinds of equality championed in the Bible.
Feminism, like unions, was quickly diverted from its original intent. It wasn't long before unions started demanding more. As representatives only of the workers, they push for worker's rights at the expense of employer's rights. This creates hostility between those who should be cooperating. It also leaves unions in the place that they once fought against. They are now the ones in power, and with few employers being capable by law to challenge them, they have become the oppressors. The same can be said of feminism, where once they fought to allow women to open bank accounts and now they struggle to give women equal pay for inequal work. (More on that later.)
Feminism, like unions, degrade the worker by lumping him in with a group that may not share his/her abilities or ethics. Without the union, a poor worker is quickly removed and an excellent worker is quickly rewarded. With the union, however, all workers are lumped together, and so they are all treated the same. This happened to me when feminism sought to 'equalize' the number of women in math and science, regardless of the average woman's prowess or desire to compete in those areas.
I was a computer programmer, and I was a genuinely good one. I could have become a 'crack programmer'. When I was hired on a co-op position, I was already correcting the code of my group's 'crack programmer'. I especially loved working with C and Assembler, preferring to get into the guts of the logic and work with as little as possible between me and the hardware.
Many people reading this do not know that much about how computers and the computer industry works, so let me tell you that this is an unusual gift and an unusual focus for a woman. Nevertheless, feminism continues to push women into the programming field. The problem is that, though women on average make decently good maintenance programmers, the one who can build new code from scratch is rare. Now, if the only women entering the field were those who were genuinely good at the job, the only female programmers entering the workforce would be treated much as the men. This was my experience at the beginning of college, before the feminists really 'discovered' the field. By the time I was hired, though, most companies were wary of a female programmer and automatically relegated her to the maintenance section.
Before anyone starts calling these people chauvinists on my behalf, let me assert that I have seen the work of the average female programmer and I agree with them. The typical woman who was prodded into the field by feminists anxious to prove that women could do whatever men could do is sadly inferior to her male counterpart in the area of code-writing. Unfortunately, I was lumped in with them and lost in the shuffle. My manager, recognizing my intelligence, tried to push me onto the management track. All I wanted to do was to write code, and if the market had not been saturated by less competent women in the name of feminism, I might have succeeded.
Feminism, like unions, hate when their members negotiate their own way. In my last full-time job outside of the home, I ran into trouble. I was a working mother, struggling to balance family and employment while my husband finished his degree. I tried to work out some alternate arrangements with my employer to better suit their needs and mine. Unfortunately, union rules prevented us from compromising. The same rules that prevented them from cutting me some slack also prevented me from giving them a little more in return.
It is true that feminists keep asserting that they wish to give their members a choice and allow them to be homemakers and stay-at-home mothers if they so choose. However, they keep insisting upon representing me in order to give me 'freedoms' that I do not want (mostly in the area of paid daycare so that I can work outside the home and extra benefits for singles so that I do not have to be married) while removing privileges that would make my job much easier (like the right to modify the terms of a service agreement in my husband's name). Feminists insist upon speaking for all women, even the ones that they are putting at a disadvantage.
Feminists, like union officials, don't want membership in their ranks to be a voluntary matter. Well, they aren't entirely against the membership being voluntary, as long as everybody voluntarily agrees to join. Union officials and feminist leaders both engage in attempts at intimidation and shaming in hopes of forcing the reluctant to join their ranks. If you are not a feminist, you are not a proper woman. If you are not a feminist, you are cooperating with people who want to enslave women as blacks were once enslaved by Southern plantation owners. If you do not subscribe to feminism, you don't count.
I mentioned the Ladies Against Feminism Facebook page above. To their credit, a few of the feminists have simply left peacefully when they understand that we do not wish to embrace their philosophy. The rest, however, quickly devolve into insults and anger. They keep a mask of politeness for as long as they think that they can convert us, and then turn very ugly when we politely refuse to be converted. I would like to think that this was not a hallmark of feminism, but as I encountered this in my college and my workplaces as well, there is only so much that separates "random incidences" from "systematic behavior".
Feminism, like unions, have become sufficiently blatantly political that the only logic in the people and policies they support is that they are in agreement with the leftist Democrats. We live in the odd world where those who claim to support the workers are giving political contributions and doing favors for those whose policies are keeping the workers from improving their lives. In the world of feminism, those who should be championing the efforts of women in politics are demonizing female conservative politicians and circling the wagons for male politicians who mistreat women. They are quick to protest against conservative men who treat women decently, but they have a poor track record of opposing socialist countries that oppress their women severely.
Feminism, like unions, has outlived its usefulness. The tide has turned. It is possible for a woman to hold down a job without feminists screaming outrage. It is possible for a worker to negotiate with an employer (and, indeed, the richer ones are the ones who do their own negotiating) without a union threatening a strike. The abuses have been over-corrected, and now we need a movement in the opposite direction. Our brothers, husbands, fathers, and sons do not need to be our enemies.
Before feminism, women were able to participate in society. Though the situation in the 19th century needed to be corrected, it did not need a scorched-earth solution. Now the best thing we can do is to let wounded relations heal, and the continued acerbic mannerisms of feminism are only hurting those whom they claim to protect.
