Transcription
It was always intended to be purely ideological and it was always intended to be activist.
One thing I really love about this program is a student comes out and they've taken courses all over the map and they could put them together. I guess so I've gotten more critical about things I hear and things I see.
And it was always intended to be activist. It was meant to send out foot soldiers into all of the disciplines in academia and to all of the spheres of society to fill all of those spheres with aggrieved angry women determined to change the world. It always had an ideological lens. Men oppress women and women participate in their own oppression and in the oppression of other women.
[Music]
Welcome back to another special joint episode of Men Are Good with Tom Golden and PsychoBabo, where we expose bad therapy and the liberal narratives that contribute to our poor mental health. The crown jewel of which is feminism. And today we're going to look at exactly how we're indoctrinating generations of women into thinking that the world is oppressive and into finding grievance with everything. And that has to do with the evolution of women's studies and uh its accompanying terms, the terms that originate from women and gender studies. And who better to give us a clear picture? You all know Tom. Tom Golden is the author and podcast host of Men Are Good. He is a therapist and uh the author of several books on how to understand how mothers can understand their sons and how to treat men. Janice Viamingo is a former English professor at the University of Ottawa and I think the most articulate critic of feminism. And we also have Dr. James Nazo, author of the Nuzo Letter on Substack. We've had him here before. He does deep dives into men's health and how biased academia is against uh against men. And he exposes a lot of the damage feminism does in academia. But let's start where it all began, women's studies. It is the factory where feminist theory manufactures its vocabulary. Because before you can invent any of these terms, micro feminism or hermeneutic labor, which we're all going to get to, you first have to train a generation of young women to see the world through the lens of oppression. And for that, you need women's studies departments. But before we get to that, hi Tom. Hi Janice. Hi Jim. Welcome to PsychoBabel and Men Are Good.
Good to be here.
Thanks. So let's take a look at what they actually teach the teachers and the students themselves so you get an accurate picture of uh the atmosphere of what they produce. So I figured to teach Tik Tok along my teaching my intro to women and gender and sexualities class. So welcome to lecture one. We are going to talk about what the field of women, gender, and sexuality studies is supposed to address and the answer is everything. And in essence, we are supposed to uncover social inequality for people who are unaware of it even though they are experiencing its impacts. And so really any kind of ism, racism, sexism, you know, classism and intersectionality which is a way of connecting all different forms of oppression in people's lives to considering feminist theories, feminist activism, research methods, dissemination of our data to thinking about how the personal is political and finally the stigmatizing human experiences. That's all under the purview of women's, gender, and sexuality study.
That was the teacher and here come the students. When I was 20, I sat in a university lecture. The lecturer asked us, "Why do you think more people don't consider themselves feminists?" I said, "I think a lot of girls are scared of being seen as angry." The lecturer, to my surprise, said, "But we are angry." Which was shocking cuz I assume she would come to her own defense and say, "But feminists are angry. We're very polite and we're very kind." Instead, she unapologetically grabbed onto the anger and said, "I have a lot of things to be angry about." Aspirational discontent is a good thing. You're not hysterical. You just know things can be better.
And uh finally, we have some graduate students in case you thought, well, it's just a it's just introductory classes and they'll probably learn something reasonable in addition to this. You'd be wrong.
Each other's dissertation.
Yeah, absolutely. Um
You describe each other's dissertation.
Yeah, absolutely. Um So Tiana's dissertation is on the experiences of colorism uh for black women in the UK.
Oh, that was succinct. I thought we were okay. No, no, you don't. You don't.
Georgie was looking at how misogyny manifests on TikTok through a character study of Homelander, the Joker, and um Patrick Bateman from uh American Psycho. So, she spent hours and hours and hours in the deepest, darkest, worst parts of Tik Tok for her brilliant dissertation and it was excellent. I'm very proud of her.
I should have said more.
No, it's fine.
It's actually fine.
And Tiana worked really, really hard at timely and she interviewed loads and loads of people and also wrote a brilliant dissertation. Right. So, um Janice, how did it start? How how did we trade a whole uh well several now generations of uh of young women to see the world as it's their oppressor.
Yes. Uh through a very intellectually vacuous lens of grievance, resentment, anti-western animus and anti-male hostility. I have done some research into the origins of women's studies and I found an interesting book um that if if anyone is interested um they could take a look. This was published in 2008 by a major publisher. It's called The Evolution of American Women's Studies: Reflections on Triumphs, Controversies, and Change edited by Alice Ginsburg. And um it's interesting for all sorts of reasons but one of the reasons is that all the contributors make clear that women's studies which of course has gone through various name changes. It became gender studies. It became gender, women's, and sexuality studies. Uh it's it's um had various permutations but has actually not changed all that much. And all of the contributors make clear that from the beginning it was never designed to be an objective scholarly analysis of women's experiences, women's social and political roles, women's history, women's contributions to their society, women's, you know, contributions to art or technology, whatever. It was never designed to be an objective analysis of any aspect of being female. It was always intended to be purely ideological and it was always intended to be activist.
One thing I really love about this program is a student comes out and they've taken courses all over the map and they can put them together. I guess so I've gotten more critical about things I hear and things I see.
And it was always intended to be activist. It was meant to send out foot soldiers into all of the disciplines in academia and to all of the spheres of society to fill all of those spheres with aggrieved angry women determined to change the world. It always had an ideological lens. Men oppress women and women participate in their own oppression and in the oppression of other women. It was always designed uh to enforce ideological compliance. If a woman came into a women's studies classroom thinking that she was not oppressed, she would have to be tutored out of that misapprehension. And uh it and it it the the uh bases of um women's studies uh courses were always radical. They the the um readings ranged from left to far left and that was about it. One of the chapters in the book that I mentioned The Evolution of Women's Studies is by a woman named Paula Rothenberg. She was a high-level academic published many books including a course text on that was used in women's studies Paula Rothenberg and she includes a list of the course texts in an early women's studies course from about 1972 or 1973 and um it starts with Frederick Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, which of course is a communist text, which argues that the family is the site of women's oppression. And that just as the um the relationship between the exploitative capitalist and the exploited worker, just as that characterized the social sphere. So the relationship between the exploitative male and his exploited wife is the that's the characteristic of the woman's experience in the family. So it starts with that. It goes through the whole idea of the social construction of gender that biology has no role to play really in the sex roles that men and women take on in the family and in society. It's all man-made social constructions. The uh course was obsessed with sexual violence, not as individual aberrations widely regarded as terrible and to be um combed in society, but as a um a form of communal terrorism practiced by men against women in order to control women. and widely condoned and even celebrated. It also uh rejects heterosexuality as in any way natural. It used a book called Sappho Was a Right-On Woman which encourages women to embrace lesbianism.
And uh it also had the notion of intersectionality. It talked about the double oppression of black women and uh with the idea that um the black women's voices were more powerful and their experience was uh of a more authentic because multiple form of oppression and that white women must feel shame over their participation in white privilege and white racism. So, you know, all of the elements of feminism that flowered later on in the, you know, 1990s and into the 21st century were there really in that early course from 1972. The emphasis was anti-western. Uh, it was anti-family, it was anti-white, it was pro-Marxist, it was uh pro-lesbian, it was rape-obsessed, and above all, of course, it was uh stridently anti-male. It's funny because in the introduction to the volume, the very last thing I'll say about it, the in the introduction to the volume, the editor Alice Ginsburg notes that uh you know that women's studies has been attacked by all sorts of right-wing conservatives and Christians and she mentions the political commentator and Christian evangelical Pat Robertson. She scoffs at what he had to say. He said the feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians. She thought that was hilarious. But with the exception possibly of the witchcraft, even there I'm not so sure, every facet named by Robertson is on display in Rothenberg's syllabus.
So >> really Janice, that was fascinating and a wonderful wonderful description. Thank you very much. Jeez. That's so Jim, you you published something on your Substack. I'm going to show here a graph. Do you want to quickly uh say something about the graph of women's studies majors, graduates?
Yeah. So, I was interested myself to know whether this is a field that is continuing to grow or plateauing or descending in some way. And so I grabbed the data from the Department of Education um in which they categorize by um academic major um the number of bachelor's degrees earned in the US in women's studies and what it does show is that the number of degrees is actually decreasing and um usually it's about so throughout the 1990s and I think the early 2000s um it was on the rise. And then it plateaued at about 1,500 bachelor's degrees per year. And then ever since it's started to decrease over the past maybe like 8 years or so.
Um, and so yeah, it's about 1,500 degrees each year bachelors and then masters I think peaked around 150 master's degrees per year and then PhDs was maybe around uh 30.
Wow. Wow. And then they complain about not being able to pay off their debts. Wow. Do you think why do you think that is? Do you think they it's sort of because we have so many other types of subjects like this that they sort of redirected them to to those subjects or is it actually becoming more unpopular? Yeah, I guess I don't know for sure, but that would be one one way to go is that maybe it's just becoming more unpopular because people are realizing that once they get out with a four-year bachelors in women's studies, what the heck are you going to do with that?
Um, so that might be one realization or it's getting sort of encapsulated within some other sort of grievance studies or identity studies programs. But I did um before we got on the call, I went back and I looked at um some of those data and it is still the most popular identity studies program. And like if you compare it to Black and African Studies and how many degrees are earned there and all these different identity studies groups, women's studies is still the most um popular out of them.
Great. I wonder where they learn lesbian dance theory. I always wanted to do that. I think I'd be great at it.
So, um, yeah, after decades of this women's studies, what do we have to to show for it? Not definitely not a generation of women that's freer and happier, that's for sure. But we do have a dictionary of new terms. So, um, I guess they wanted second-wave feminism to be well, they they say that this was to fight for their right to work. And I think the third wave feminism is them fighting for the right to whine about it.
So that brings us to our first term. We're going to talk about a range of different sort of products of the these women's studies. And the first one I have nice little videos for every one of uh these terms to show you what we're talking about because I do think you know, you don't learn a lot from Tik Tok but that is something that only Tik Tok can show me is what feminists really what what they intend about something what they I'm thinking what is this what do they mean then I go to Tik Tok and then then I I feel a bit wiser after or stupid whichever way you want to look at it just Um, just yeah, brain rot. Let's go to the first one. Micro feminism.
Favorite act of micro feminism.
I like telling men to smile more.
They say it to me, so why not say it back?
And getting the nipples out.
I made a decision a couple of years ago to grow out my underarm hair, and I still get self-conscious about it, but I'm sticking with it.
Letting men in the door first before me. Not apologizing for having my period. And I will whack out a tampon and tell everyone that Auntie Flow is here.
I think artistically displaying menstrual products. Uh when the menstruation crustation station where it's like a little lobster and it has all like the tampons and the pads. Probably taking an act against manspreading. You know, when you're on Dublin bus and someone's crossing the line, I do like to step up and stop man spreading. I'd probably say not wearing makeup every day. Not in work, not in daily life, just when I'm going out on a night out or like absolutely have to, you know.
I have started to practice saying sorry less because I would say sorry for absolutely everything. Asking a man, do you have
Okay. Yeah. Uh Tom, do you want to do you want to take it away from here?
Oh boy. Micro feminism. Yeah. It's just amazing to me how the whole micro feminism thing started what four or five years ago and it was about um making feminism into everyday life, you know, so that we'll see the patriarchy in everything we do. I mean, that's kind of the what's behind all this and the examples given in the in the Tik Tok were were interesting but there's if you look online you find a lot of worse, you know, for instance um uh one was to refuse to move out of the way. If you're on the correct side of the sidewalk and a man is barreling toward you, hold your line. Let the bump happen. It's a reminder that women don't have to have to shrink or make themselves smaller to keep the peace. This is called sidewalk sexism when the pavement patriarchy exerts control over public space. I mean, that's the kind of thing. And what's happening here in my mind, the important thing is that they, the feminists are encouraging women to be in the world with a defensive and hostile stance. Their attitude starts with this defensiveness and this hostility. So something's wrong that I have to fix and I'm going to make sure that happens because it's my right to do that. I mean, this is the kind of attitude that's there. My father told me when I was a little guy. In fact, when he told me when I was an adult, too. He said, "There's no event that's as important as your attitude towards that event." Took me a while to figure out what he was talking about, but he's talking about feminists is one thing, because they go in with an attitude of hostility, an attitude of of you better make it right for me. And what does that do to their own psyche? What does that do to their own being? It it robs them really of being joyful. In my mind, that that's what it does. It robs them of being joyful. So that's my take on it.
Right? Of being able to to love, I think.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
So, Jim,
I'll I'll jump in for sure. Yeah. So, these are meant to be these little acts of resistance. uh NPR called it quote the next big thing end quote um when they wrote their article um about it um, you know, Tom gave an example of one. I I'll throw out a couple of others that I found I don't know very childish really.
Exactly.
Uh, don't ever refer to God if you're a believer as he, refer to she when you're talking about sports games at the water cooler at work. Um, don't assume the sex of the team. You know, clarify whether it's the women's team or the men's team. And um, and that was really actually quite funny because then the author went went on to then encourage women to watch more sports basically because they're not even watching. Um, and then things like, oh, just dress for yourself and all these things. Um, but it's kind of interesting because it makes it made me wonder what's going on bigger picture here. Is it sort of a sign that maybe the um, you know, the bigger efforts aren't really working as well as they would
like and so they're going to these tactics. Um, maybe some of the women getting called out in some of the, you know, the university protests and stuff, maybe that's making them shy away from those more um, kind of public acts and so they're trying these little micro feminisms instead. I don't know. What do you guys think? Yeah, I think they're so trained to see grievance everywhere. You I you see it. This is such a such a good example of how you just try to get things for free, you know, because they they only want the the titles and the the looks and the they don't they don't live in the real world. That that really struck me when I look when I saw these Tik Tok videos of micro feminism is if any man had behaved this way at work, they would be fired immediately. I've I've seen it happen in my personal life, but somehow these women get away with it. Or maybe they just work in their dad's marketing firm and that's why they can do and dress this way. Uh, I just feel for for all the men who have to to live with it. What do you think, Janice?
Yes. Well, I was thinking that about the workplace issue. I'm sure many employers are afraid to fire women for low-level bad behavior of this sort. Yes. Um, because they know that there's a a lawsuit in the waiting.
And uh yes, this is just simple. It would be considered a microaggression or even a major aggression if it were being done by men. It's it's simply disruptive, unpleasant, and quite aggressive actually. And and it has a long tradition in second-wave feminism. It isn't actually very new. Gloria Steinem's I think it's 1968 book was titled Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. So I think that idea of everyday rebellion so many of the rebellions are things that men wouldn't even notice or care about anyway. If a woman doesn't wear makeup when she goes out, men aren't offended by it. Many men prefer women not to wear makeup. I mean, it it reveals the false ideas that so many women have about how they are oppressed and how they are constrained in an allegedly uh patriarchal and male dominant society. I also wanted to mention that um a 1970 book by Shulamith Firestone uh called The Dialectic of Sex actually has on page 81 a section about her own idea of micro feminism. She's talking about how women are allegedly forced to smile in patriarchal societies. And she says that the smile is the child-woman equivalent of the shuffle indicating acquiescence of the victim to her own oppression. And she says that her dream action for the women's liberation movement is a smile boycott at which declaration all women would instantly abandon their pleasing smiles. Henceforth smiling only when something pleased them and she thought this would really strike a blow against the patriarchy. So we see that as from 1970 on uh a dominant strand in uh in feminist activism.
Yeah. And then they complain about the feminist stereotype that um people think that feminists are just so angry all the time. They look angry all the time. It's not something we think but um right so then so that was them convincing that every social interaction is a power struggle and then guess the next step was to convince them that reproducing is a patriarchal complicity and so that's how we get to something called anti-natalist feminism and uh this is actually difficult to figure out exactly what they mean with that. So, uh, let's have Tik Tok explain. As usual,
we're seeing something super interesting with anti-natalist feminism. I've been researching the Western, European, and American reproductive rights movements for over a decade now. I think we're seeing a fundamental shift. Maybe it's post-COVID, maybe it's post-Trump, I don't know exactly. A fundamental shift in how we have to frame from a feminist point of view the role and meaning of reproduction in women's lives uh in people's lives. Like through the 2010s, but especially like post 2017 um invigoration of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was a pretty public reckoning especially of white and middle-class feminist organizations and movements around reproductive rights. Reckoning with anti-blackness and sort of the failures of choice feminism and reproductive rights focused feminism that's focused only on rights and not access or structural issues. What that looked like mainly was taking up the reproductive justice framework. Reproductive justice is a lens that was developed by a group of women of color at a conference in the early 1990s. Basically says we can't just ask the courts for rights to reproduce or not. We need to talk about all of the spectrum of issues um in the context in which people reproduce and whether it is just or not. So we need to think about the right of people to not have children, abortion rights, and access to contraception. But we also have to talk about the right to have children if you want to have children. Is the government shaming you, literally coercing or forcing you to get sterilized or go on birth control or all these other things. So the right to not have children, to have children, and if you choose to have children, to parent the children that you have in safe, healthy environments free from gun violence, of pollution, and all of these things. We saw those movements say, "We're going to like really take a look at this. We need to use that reproductive justice lens in everything we do. We need to make sure that we're not just doing choice feminism that's like, 'Oh, yeah, have a kid if you want. Don't have a kid if you don't want.' Um, it's up to you." Without having that structural analysis and looking at macro social factors, looking at how race and racism and classism and all these other things impact people's both thoughts and desires around this thing and their ability to realize their thoughts and desires around these things. So, there was this big reckoning and it was messy. I think I I believe what we're going to see is another reckoning where we realize that the way that we have taken up the reproductive justice.
Okay. So, I think it's important to say here that um this is that she is a professor. That astounded me. She's a professor and I chose this video because you can really tell how how how afraid she is of using the wrong words. And in the end, it's so convoluted. It's very difficult to understand what she what what she means, what she wants to say. I don't know if if you felt the same way. Janice, can I can I jump to you? What do you have to say about this?
Yeah, I couldn't really figure out uh what anti-natalism was exactly. I mean, except that uh it's it's against big babies really and and it just seemed to me uh typical of feminism in that over the years feminists have criticized many wonderful things, whether it's western culture, marriage, male chivalry, which they called benevolent sexism, uh the nuclear family, um, you know, men's desire to protect protect women and provide for them, uh sexual intimacy, you know, you name it. Any any good in society, uh feminists have criticized it as somehow a burden for women. And I don't think they ever really focused on babies themselves, but now they're even going to focus on babies and how having babies and caring for babies is itself a kind of work that women have to bear unequally and you know, all of that sort of thing. And and so uh um what I, you know, it's it's typical of feminism in the in the sense that, uh, it it it took this Marxist um framework from the very beginning and that's why it always talks about work. It always talks about labor. It always talks about exploitation. So that everything in life, intimacy, love, caring, all the things that make us human, self-sacrifice, self-giving, being in relationship, all those wonderful things turn into reasons that women feel exploited, angry, aggrieved, and and the the feminist is trained to look at everything in terms of how is this taking away my power. How is this taking away my autonomy so that even having children and raising them and loving them becomes a burden? And so I think that's what this essentially is.
So well said. I would add that, you know, to me the theme that you hear with the anti-natalist thing is the same theme you hear with a lot of feminist ideas and that is don't tell me what to do. You know, that's kind of the overriding thing. Don't tell me what to do. Don't the world and the culture should not tell me I need to have babies.
You know, it should not tell me that I don't need to have babies. It's like it's like no matter what it is, don't tell me what to do. But I think, you know, the anti-natalist thing is kind of saying that uh we have the right to do whatever we want and no one should tell us what to do. And I think a part of this also is the lesbian thing. You know, I think that by saying you don't really have to have babies, it's kind of also pushing the idea that it's okay for women to be uh nonsexual and and not heterosexual.
Uh, that it's preferable even.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
That way no one tells you what to do.
Not even their father.
Right? And there's also this idea coupled with that that it's such a burden to be born. So feminism sort of hitched its wagon to this uh
I don't know uh what to call that ideology but you see it now in kids not kids we have to stop calling 20-year-old people kids um they break contact with their parents so we have this parental alienation epidemic and and one of the most common I just spoke to Noel Maring who's writing a book called No Contact about this and she said the most common thing that they'll say is that uh it's such a b you chose to have me and it's such a burden to be born so now you have to do this and that and you have to take responsibility and uh and and I heard that in this anti-natalist feminism.
It's such a poor poor me, poor me, I'm born into this terrible world and you are so selfish parents are so selfish to have kids.
Um, but that brings us to yes.
I was just going to sorry I was just going to say that, you know, feminism has been really effective at bringing in all the worst elements of every other ideology. So, we have the radical environmentalism, having babies is bad for the planet, you know, we have the antihumanism, life is suffering, you know, having children is a selfish act. Uh, of course the Marxism, the the idea of oppression, you know, all of those uh um very uh antihuman and um destructive hateful ideologies become part of the core ideas of feminism.
Yes. I would add one thing too, Hannah, and that is that, you know, the very thing that's going to help women mature, help them move into a space where they become mature women, that is having children, they want to do away with,
you know, because that I don't know about anybody else, but from my perspective, my experience with my wife and I over the last 40, 50 years has been just incredibly um building of character and building of self that I would never have gotten if I had not had children. I mean, we had to learn how to really deal with each other in a different kind of way.
Um, we had to we had to sacrifice all kinds of things. And it's those kinds of elements that help us build a certain piece of ourselves that we never would have found otherwise. And the anti-natalism thing is saying, "Oh, don't do that. Don't do what's going to help you feel better." You know, and of course, the the other piece is it's not just pain. It's joy. The joy you get from having children, it's incredible. It's just absolutely incredible. And these are people who are pushing that away.
Right?
But they've sort of built they bu they they made sure that at every step of a woman's life, the ideology can go in and and grip her and twist her into making that phase of her life terrible into something miserable. So it's that it's a when the baby is born, you make sure that she uh she feels uncomfortable being a mother. So we have this surge in postpartum depressions. I just wrote about that. I were making that into a terrible phase for the mother. And so at every phase if you grip feminist attitudes, you it will make sure that that phase in your life is miserable. And and and it will not if for women who harbor feminist attitudes, they will make sure that she doesn't grow with her husband, that she doesn't take responsibility, that she completely overemphasizes her own work, her own contributions, and sees everything he does as the bare minimum. And so we'll get to that. But I think with the the anti-natalist feminism, it takes us beautifully over to this choice feminism. You heard this in that Tik Tok video how she is sort of for if if kids is what you want to do and if kids is not what you want to do and she tried to thread that needle very carefully because the feminists are they're they're not agreeing on this. I have the sense that you're allowed to have kids uh if you intend on bringing up those kids with the feminist attitudes in mind. Does that make sense?
Yeah. And then so I wanted to to to quickly tell what happened to me when I had I had I have my first child and I decided to to go away from feminism and and and and quit my own, you know, I put my pride aside and said I don't want the title I want to to bring up my child and I want to be there for my husband. I was told you can't choose that. And I said in that conversation, I can't say with whom that was, but I said,
"Wasn't that what feminism was always about for me to have this choice? And I'm choosing to quit my job." And I because the hospital really begged me to stay that they ne nowhere do they have enough doctors or they're like, "How can we make this possible? 50%, 40%, what do you need?" And I was told, "You can choose how much to work, but you can't choose not to work." I was told that verbatim and I said that wasn't is I was so confused. So that brings us to choice feminism and the infighting between feminists. So uh back to Tik Tok. Here we go.
Shut up. Yes. I thought feminism is about women choosing if they choose. Shut up. Shut up. Yes. On the surface, it is a feminism can be interpreted as women having choice and agency. But how are they able to have that choice and agency is through what? Liberation from the patriarchy. All right. Choosing to serve the patriarchy isn't feminist. That is not feminist. It's a choice, but it's not a feminist choice. I feel like a lot of people want to be justified in their decisions by saying it's a feminist choice. You know, feminism is about choice. To justify behaviors that aren't particularly feminist, but they want to do it anyways, and that's fine. But choosing to work for free in the domestic sphere is not feminist. That is the antithesis to feminism. I am not saying that being a child like a caregiver or doing domestic labor is inherently anti-feminist, but doing it for you know, in the patriarchal structure that is not feminist.
Janice, your reaction.
Yes. Well, this too is actually an old uh split in feminism. There were the liberal feminists uh from the beginning and those were basically women who wanted to work for reforms within the mainstream system. They were basically happy with western society. They wanted to combat stereotypes. They wanted to secure women's freedoms and that sort of thing. And they were opposed quite vehemently by the Marxist feminists, the radical feminists, the lesbian feminists, those who uh insisted on wholesale structural change, who talked about systemic issues that needed to be transformed and overturned. You know, who were really bent on absolute revolution, who wanted to destroy the family, who wanted to destroy all the fundamental structures of western societies. And so yes, they didn't like that there were women who were happy essentially with their societies. And um so that's what we see here with the the sneering contempt for other women. Uh, of course they never managed to make clear how the true feminism is to be achieved. Who is going to enforce it? If you are against choice, then what are you for exactly? Uh, it's a wonderful example of the totalitarian underbelly of feminism rearing its ugly head. I think that's a bad mixed metaphor, but you know what I mean. Um, it it uh it is quite interesting. She doesn't quite want to say that she's against caregiving. She doesn't quite want to say, you know, why she is so opposed to the choices that many normal women want to make in their lives. And she certainly doesn't want to say how feminism is going to affect its revolution. Who is going to decide which choices are truly feminist and which are not? And how are their decisions going to be enforced? Uh, it's very easy to talk about the collective good, but if the collective good doesn't rest on a notion of the individual good, the collective good is going to be a totalitarian nightmare. And uh that's what all this contempt for choice feminism seems to suggest. I'd like to say to that woman,
look to me like she's kind of presenting herself in a feminine, traditionally feminine manner. She's got long curly hair. Uh she's wearing tight clothing. Um she like it very much of some make some makeup. Does she want somebody coming along and telling her she can't wear makeup? She has to shave her head, you know, etc. Um, where does it begin? Where does it end? Uh, I think that the debate about choice really does indicate an interesting incompatibility in feminism between the authoritarianism of its aims and the reality of that individual women do want to do things that make them happy. And sometimes that actually does involve caring or pleasing men or being sexually desirable. Yeah.
Jim, we haven't heard from you in a while, but do you want to react to this video?
Yeah, sure. Well, the the videos are very very painful for me to watch. You always do this to me, Hannah, when I
I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's so painful. Um, yeah, this is a really interesting one because I think um it's it's a it's basically a threat to the to the whole feminist project, the idea that women have volition or free will or whatever choice, whatever you want to call it. Um, yeah, once you establish that that is a thing, then that's, you know, the complete opposite to the idea of social determinism or social construction. So, um I just found it really interesting when I was reading a paper about this that um they were trying to navigate this and the best that they could and then they basically rejected the idea in the end because they realized that you can't you can't accept it because then you lose everything else, all your other arguments you're trying to make about social construction once you establish that women have the ability to make choice and volition, then you're done for.
Right?
I saw another of it. It's difficult to know which ones to choose because there are so many good ones. But I saw another one with a podcast, a woman explaining this uh about choice and how how silly women are for for thinking that making choices is feminism because you they are and I'm paraphrasing here a a little bit. We are in a patriarchy. So the choices that you make within that patriarchy, they are still oppressive oppressing you because they are choices you can't if you have two choices, you think you you you have the illusion of free will and making those because the choices are made by the patriarchy, it's not your free choice. I think I have no that's correct and I was thinking and then your choice is if you are then all of our choices are we're all within the patriarchy but Somehow if you are making a choice they like then that's your free will. But if not then if I'm choosing to be at home with my kids then that's a choice of the patriarchy. There's no no logic. No logic.
When we get on to talking about the hermeneutic labor aspect.
Oh no spoilers. No spoilers. I I just want to quickly say that this idea of volition or women having choice in who they choose for their relationships, that is a big part um of that and it's a way of making women not accountable for the people that they choose to partner with and so on. So that my point is that no wonder that there's feminists that really want to reject this idea because it's a threat to everything else they're trying to put across.
Yep.
Yeah.
Exactly. And this it's um I think this you're allowed to say, oh well, you know, you you're free to choose. You're allowed to say that women that feminism is about choice. uh if your true intention is fighting the patriarchy, it's used as a sort of shield as we're just nice little women and all we need all we want is choice uh because we're humans and feminism is about is this radical notion that women are humans too. Have you guys heard that?
Whenever you try to critique feminism, you get that in your face. So it's just don't you think we're human? And this is no, actually, if we say, well, now you're free to choose, then you see what it's actually about and it's all about fighting and hating the men. Those are the real choices.
So, um, okay, now we're going to go over to talking about all the different ways women are exploited in everyday life. So all the uh more products of women's studies. So join us uh join us over on Substack. Uh Joy, if you're listening on audio for this episode, you really should go over to YouTube or or Substack and look at the video because it it's worth it despite what Jim thinks. I think it that's fun.
Um, so see you over there. If not, then I'll see you next time.
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