Feminism And The Decline Of America

By Christopher DeGroot: Ninety-seven years after being granted the right to vote, women now threaten the stability—indeed the very possibility—of the democratic experiment itself. Consider, for example, Michelle Obama’s recent cant about women “voting against their own voice.” For her, voting women are all one side: against men, of whom President Trump, the terrible patriarch, is the representative. The former first lady’s point of view echoes that of a previous one: the tragicomic Hillary Clinton, who, like a vampire, will never go away, alas. Now on a book tour, contemplating a Columbia professorship, using every occasion to lie to herself about “what happened,” Hillary Clinton is singularly representative of the worst sort of woman, of whom there are now millions in America: Forever delusional and manipulative, she will never recognize her own failings; she will never concede the main reason Donald Trump is our president—that he, like Bernie Sanders, frankly addressed the problem of global capitalism, which has been devastating for the working and middle classes, and which, as Edward Luttwak predicted in 1994, now finds the world taking a fiercely nationalist turn.
Feminists like Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton are operating on a divide-and-conquer strategy: divide the sexes in order to conquer man, their so-called oppressor. Of this destructive approach New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand is a typical example. Like many “educated” women, she is opinionated but ill-informed, and hence the folly of her efforts to advance “gender equality.”
Gillibrand appears to know nothing of the abundant research demonstrating that men and women, even in childhood, before any “patriarchal acculturation,” display different interests, a facet of human nature that the “unequal workplace” must later reflect. Her mind being a bundle of academic clichés and bad at logic, Gillibrand is the type who takes mere disparity for ipso facto proof of discrimination. Does a corporation have more male employees than females? Yes. Ergo, fight the patriarchy, poor sisters. No disinterested historical inquiry is needed to establish whether there really is discrimination, implicit bias, or whatever trendy term allows Gillibrand to spread unwitting confusion, as if she were accomplishing something noble.

And so it is with most feminists. Like the losing team in high school, they will never just acknowledge the overall superiority of male ability and accomplishment, even though it is as plain in 2017 as it was a thousand years ago. IQ tests show time and time again that while the sexes, on average, are of roughly equal intelligence, men preponderate the extremes: There are more male dunces and geniuses both, and certainly it is to the latter category, whether the man be General Washington or William Shakespeare, that we all owe so much of what is best in life. Still, there is nothing people resist more than the awareness of their own inferiority. “You cheated” is therefore the feminists’ constant childlike charge, and it is quite powerful owing to men’s obtuse paternalism, which is only exacerbated by the irrational lust that motivates them.
Indeed, the truth is that most men haven’t a clue about women, who are far from being the perpetually exploited angels that men, in their lack of experience with women, naively idealize them to be. Witness all the predictable paternalist cant about Harvey Weinstein and Hugh Hefner, and the failure to note any female agency in regard to them. The Bon Jovi cover band, the spoken-word poet, the third-string athlete, the 40-year-old hipster who knows somebody who knows somebody famous, the affluent CEO who has neither taste nor culture—such mediocrities never lack admirers among the Second Sex, who, having very little judgment, are naturally taken with the vulgar world’s appearances. Women are by nature very willing and eager status whores, although certainly this ugly truth is not something that any man wants to believe, least of all the conservative Christian, who is happy to make “a victim” out of a shameless whore-on-the-payroll like Holly Madison. In women the ordinary man is looking for a mother figure whom, however, he shall also sleep with. From a moral point of view, man has throughout his savage history been an essentially evil being. Shaped in response, woman finds that the proverbial “nice guy” is the last thing she craves. In the face of evil, woman thinks, “He is worthy.” “Nice guy,” in her subtle vocabulary, is code for wealth, and, God willing, a way to philistinism. As every broke and not particularly dashing Casanova learns, having exceptional success with women amounts to besting them at a wicked game, wherein their preternaturally skillful dissimulation gives them a major advantage.
For feminists—those perpetual victims and damsels in distress, ironic testaments to the need for the patriarchy they vainly oppose—the world is one vast conspiracy: President Trump and suchlike bad men behind the scenes working to subjugate them. Most feminists know nothing of the massive evidence that contradicts their unfailingly trite and predictable assertions (“argument” is not the right word). And being driven mainly by a longing for power and the resentment that comes so easily to women, they are content to remain in ignorance. The wage gap is a myth that vanishes once we adjust for the fact that men work more than women and more dangerous jobs. But this is not something feminists are interested in considering, even though Christina Hoff Sommers—an exceedingly rare reasonable feminist, trained and accomplished in philosophy—has been proving the point for a long time. Nor do feminists want to look into the evidence that the pseudo-philosopher Judith Butler and her many illiterate acolytes are wrong: that gender is not a mere social construct, but a determined biological endowment, a reality that no medical doctor or scientist would deny, as the palpable absurdity would be professional suicide.
Feminist zealots and the growing number of female politicians whom they influence are likely to remain on a mission to bring about equality of outcome; that is to say, utter sameness with respect to men and women in the workforce. They are playing mission impossible, however, and the wonderful irony, unseen by them, is that it is women themselves who, by their opportunistic mating preferences, create the patriarchy they are supposedly against. Notice that many professional women, once the biological clock has begun to tick more loudly, select a high-ranking male and, thereupon working much less or not at all, let him be the primary breadwinner. America’s upper class, indeed, remains far from the gender equality that so many conformist intellectuals pretend to value. With her husband bringing in the money, a woman can have more time to raise and cherish the precious children. While feminists—who are now defined by their envy of male status—may find it difficult to imagine, not every woman feels that the endless political maneuvering and mask-wearing of spineless corporate America is preferable to time spent among people who actually care about one and vice versa. That so many women—well-educated and highly talented—would make this decision is merely reasonable, especially from a biological point of view. For women are driven by hypergamy, their will to power, as it were, and in that respect they complement the patriarchy that is nothing but civilization itself—which is to say, everything. It’s no wonder that women rarely marry down but usually either marry up or stay within their social class. Certainly that is just how it should be, because such selectiveness is best for the species. Nature aims high, not at producing social justice warriors.
Feminists won’t be satisfied until the workforce’s most prominent positions feature an equal number of men and women. Lost in their status idolatry, that stand-in for modernity’s dead God, people do not reflect that women, on the whole, simply aren’t interested in leadership to the degree that men are. And no wonder: As women, they are already powerful, while men need the power of the workplace. Women, from puberty on, feel a profound sense of emerging identity. Their changing bodies, and the incessant and empowering male attention they receive, as well as their anxious competition with other women (the psychobiological equivalent to male status struggle), reveal that they are uniquely beautiful objects of desire, determined by their maternal destiny. Life is different for men. We have to perform, to prove ourselves, and so we fiercely compete to that end. While woman have supreme biological value simply because they are women, we men must labor to become something worthwhile, and indeed, much of that is done in order to be able to win over women.
Our essential difference from them is evident here. Consider the gorgeous woman who lives on my street. Seeing her get into her gleaming new Mercedes Benz, I infer that she probably has a good job, some savings, and a university degree (or else probably a rich male provider). But I perceive that, even if she did not have those things, in virtue of her beauty alone, she would still possess tremendous power, power over men: who, in their desire for her, would go out of their way to please her, in 2017 no less than in 1917. Now, I am not an ugly man, but when I walk down the street, women don’t approach me asking to buy me a coffee sometime, or dinner, or whatever. No, a man must achieve something to attain the rank he wants in the human hierarchy. And hence, then, the extraordinary competitiveness and frequent obsessiveness of the best men; in particular, the geniuses among us, who are often rather difficult and unusual personalities. Such extreme drive is rare in women because, being the superior sex by virtue of their very biology, they have rather less to prove and therefore less motivation.

Accordingly, for many men, it is the workplace that matters above all. For there a man defines himself, he becomes a man. And yet, in most instances, all the labor comes to little more than a means to women and the creation of children; a job’s main value is that it enables a man to compete for a woman’s affection and reproduce with her. Notice the word “compete”—for men, this burden is unceasing. It is in our nature to strive and justify ourselves by the results of our efforts. This is what makes divorce and the loss of his children so crushing for a man, who can’t simply replace a woman as a woman can a man. Without his family, and in particular, his beloved children, it seems to him that a man’s entire life has been worthless. The situation is especially galling since where our grandmothers would have been grateful for the way of life men now work tirelessly to provide for their wives, millions of American women, duped by unrealistic expectations, believe they can do better, that they “deserve” as much, that they “should not settle,” being so very special, for after all, have they not been regularly complimented by men since they were 13? And besides, did not Jennifer’s husband take her to Jamaica last year? Jennifer, who still thinks she’s so cute, even though her aging figure hasn’t held up as well as yours! Oh, that unappreciative Tom! Not just unappreciative, but emotionally distant, too. Yes, yes, that’s it. Because he doesn’t tell you you’re pretty anymore (since you aren’t). And when will he ever get promoted? Why, he’d better get it together fast, as the expensive expert couple’s therapist (paid for by him), with her mighty Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College and long list of publications, handily agrees.
I come now to my central insight. It is that once woman’s transcendent psychobiological power is combined with legal equality, it eventually comes to pass that women are effectively more powerful than men—a condition, however, that only deft psychologists can readily perceive. Yet look around: Today women vote, pay their own bills, own their own property, earn more degrees than men, are admitted into universities, and get jobs just because they are women. They no longer need men to provide for them. Furthermore, the state itself, so long as the Democrats can help it, shall be a lifelong provider or de facto husband. Meanwhile, in a trend that is likely to increase, vast numbers of men are dropping out of society because the vanishing nuclear family—like a rational spirit of chivalry, destroyed by feminism—no longer affords the ordinary man (that is, most men) a life worth living. Why, then, work at all? What is a man to do with his leisure? What is there to look forward to after work? Playing video games? Watching pornography? Smoking marijuana or swallowing opiates? Ah, a never-ending childhood—that is the reward for enduring the soulless office! A team player during the day and Pee-wee Herman at night! Our grandfathers may not have liked their jobs, but they could still come home to satisfying women, now an exotic breed.
“Gender progress,” interestingly, parallels the “progress of global capitalism”: In each case, the structure itself contains the seeds of awful future conflict, which, of course, few people notice or know how to deal with.
Today even to talk about fairness from a male point of view is virtually synonymous with misogyny. We men therefore have a very hard road ahead.

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