Feminists have been the biggest cheerleaders of some very predatory men & nobody calls them out on it even though some of their expressions of defense for their guys are widely documented. Gloria Steinem thought a lot of Bill Clinton back in the 90s when he was up to his misdeeds & went out of her way to paint his victims as willing participants in "relationships". I wish someone would ask her what she thinks of him now? Nobody is, same with Harvey Weinstein, P. Diddy, R. Kelly & so many more, they were able to do what they did because a lot of women, helped them out for years. The entertainment biz is middle managed by a lot of women with feminists perspectives, probably why so much slop comes out of there now. But not much attention has been given to the support staff who helped them do what they did. I hope during this month of celebrating women we hold these ones up for some long overdue scrutiny.
"Negative biases about men include: predatory, entitled, emotionally stunted, collectively responsible."
The "collectively responsible" bias stood out to me here as a negative bias in general towards any group. It collapses the individual's agency and removes their dignity, placing their behavior as part of some hive mine. We see it in antisemitism towards Jews, or Critical Race Theory with white people. It's what makes identity politics so poisonous.
In so many instances the vaunted salvation (of women) comes from ditching the current partner and seeking a new one in the confines of a bar. Can someone please explain how going from one bad situation to another is truly what anyone would desire?
The grass is always greener. I speculated about what's going on for many women based on my own experience (and of not leaving my husband for a fantasy).
(Also, I would be careful not to paint “feminists” with too broad a brush either. They/we are not a monolithic group and the feminist Substackers you have been reading certainly aren’t representatives of the much wider collection of people who identify in some way with feminism.)
I said what I said, and readers can supply their own ‘not all’ based on what they’ve read of my work. Of course there are feminists are who are reasonable but I’m not referring to them here. If they recognise themselves in my writing and feel called out, they’re invited to reflect on why.
"Discernment demands that we tolerate the discomfort of not having a totalising explanation and resist the urge to replace one authority with another because the new authority appears morally safer or ideologically aligned.” - this is great. I’m anti-extremism in general, and this points to the need to resist finding quick comfort when something you once believed is destabilized. It’s better to stay a while and re-evaluate the urge toward certainty. Appreciate your reminder, Nathalie, about integrating shadow parts rather than projecting them onto any “other” or entire group.
With all the fretting about feminism-influenced societies having low birthrates (Actually, it’s capitalism+feminism. It takes 2), has anyone done any research to check for correlation between entrepreneurship rates and birth rates? Since, the same positive start-up energy (And social network) is required to start a family, as is required to start a business successfully.
Israel made me think of it. High start-up rate, high within-marriage birth rate. That's the secular Jewish Israelis, too.
Someone in some article brought up the point that the draft military service makes people more ready to risk starting a company and be positive about it. See, you serve in defense of your country and your home together, for 3 years. And you learn to rely on one another, plus high stakes make you communicate directly and deal with your BS. So when you are discharged, you have a whole social web of people who you are used to working with and trusting and fighting and resolving differences with. And you start businesses TOGETHER. It's not a solo sport. It's a team sport. Just like no one fights alone in the military (unless something has gone very wrong). And it isn't as scary to take a step out and try something new in business, together.
I think if I knew and understood start-up entrrprenuership as a team endeavor rather than a loner journey you embark upon, I'd try it, too. Maybe alot of women would.
"I describe how destabilisation can induce a rush toward grasping certainty. When trust is broken by a public figure or an institution, the individual looks for coherence and relief from ambiguity. One way to achieve that relief is by enlarging the category of threat. If certain powerful men betrayed their values, it can be stabilising to conclude that all men as a group are unsafe. When institutions protect these men, the psyche’s logic is to decide that the system itself is irredeemable. While it may or may not be true, that step can restore a sense of order by simplifying the situation’s complexity."
My impulse (which might be a psychological reflex rather than a result of logical analysis) is to re-emphasize the importance of individual virtue, critical thinking, and community/family ties.
If the system is corrupt and erected upon malign incentives we should minimize our dependence on and identification with that system. This had the added benefit of giving people more control over their lives and also seems to make them happier and more agentic. The only source of doubt, for me, is to wonder if it's even possible at this point in history for enough people to develop that kind of agency. In a world of social media and credit card debt and pornography and status games and emotional reasoning, is it really reasonable to expect people to exercise their own power and embrace responsibility? After all, that's difficult. It's much easier to take the path of least resistance. In the case of feminism, this looks like hungrily grasping at every corporate set-aside and social privilege and opportunity for sympathy, while blaming failures and constraints on some shadowy, never-quite-specified masculine structure. It's very tempting, and I can see why. The best we can do is explain to people why this is socially and personally harmful and a cop-out. You would think that feminism would want to REALLY empower women, but that would not be optimal for its political and social goals. Instead of creating capable and independent individuals, feminism creates dependency on social status and scapegoating and emotional reasoning. This leads to weaker and unhappier people in most cases. But ideologies don't care about that.
When people experience betrayal or destabilisation, the mind often seeks relief from ambiguity. Expanding the category of threat or locating the problem in a single explanatory system can restore coherence much faster than the slower work of examining incentives, contradictions, and individual behaviour.
That dynamic isn’t unique to feminism and it appears in many ideological environments where uncertainty is uncomfortable and moral clarity is rewarded.
Your point about dependence on systems is also interesting. Many people do try to regain agency by withdrawing identification from institutions and strengthening local ties, families, or communities. Historically that has often been one of the healthier responses.
The challenge is that large-scale systems shape incentives in ways that make simplification and scapegoating easier than individual responsibility. Ideologies thrive on those psychological shortcuts. Which is why I’m interested in describing the mechanism itself. Once people recognise how the rush toward certainty works, they have a better chance of resisting it.
Thanks for this. I've been reading diatribes recently by men objecting to the kinds of feminist projection thinking you describe and I've been wondering what the fuss was. I've attempted to call out the shallow thought behind the ranty projections when I see some pretense of intellectual is in the writer, but in most cases, the dialogic space seems.to be more a Clash of the Cretins than actual attempts at understanding, analysis, and a shared search for common ground. Your essay is a much appreciated palate cleanser😍
I’m engaging with this to better understand - I have a son, a daughter, a mum and a wife that I care about enough to potentially embarrass myself here 😬.
I will be a source of information, consciously and unconsciously for my family when they ask themselves about “men”.
I have been told, in this debate, that I take this to the interpersonal level, when the issues are ‘systemic’.
Something in this article made me consider whether believing the system being to ‘blame’ - removes agency. I think you stated it plainly?
In another article about patriarchy, I read about women needing to decenter men.
I’m not sure what it was that made me uncomfortable about women having to de-centre men. If you search for it on here, I’m sure you’ll come across the notion, if you haven’t already.
Basically I’m not sure if this is something I should be encouraging or discouraging, as a function of living a better life?
I’m trying to discern the best course and your work may have something to say about this?
My own personal journey suggests there’s not much good, or not much point in trying to affect anything external in the ‘system’. I can’t control it, and it detracts from the elements I can control (my reactions and integrity within the system).
From these women's perspectives, you are automatically advantaged and women are automatically disadvantaged. If you're a white man, apparently you have more privileges than anyone else, regardless of class. According to them, in order for women to gain advantage, the system needs to change. That's the feminist rhetoric. De-centring men is a necessity because men are automatically centred in their worldview.
👍 Reminds me of Camille Paglia's quip that if civilization had been left in women's hands we'd still be living in grass huts. Though maybe better off for it, one of my patron saints having argued that civilization hasn't really enlightened mankind -- much in any case, only "implemented him".
Though I'm also reminded of a quip by or about a woman, my kind of gal, who says that a hard man is good to find ... Although, now that I'm 93 (or pushing it), I don't give a damn, you see ... 😉🙂
I'm thrilled to read your comment. My perceptions of women at the tender age of 50 would be different to yours, though I agree that our englightenment seems to be stalled despite 'progress'.
👍 Thanks muchly. Though I hear something of an echo, or maybe something from the peanut gallery ..., that my comments were maybe less than flattering. Or something from those easily flattered and offended.
But that reminds me of a kind of famous parable about a fox seeing a crow in a tree with a bit of cheese in its mouth and who asked to hear the crow sing -- crows not being noted for their "dulcet" tones, although crows of different sexes might think otherwise, but copious amounts of flattery caused the crow to try doing so which led to the dropping of the cheese. News at 11 ... 😉🙂
But not sure that women are any more susceptible to that than men are -- "vanity, vanity, all is vanity saith the preacher" -- but they seem more often taken to task for it, at least somewhat unfairly.
But a lovely phrase there in your "hacking narcissism" -- got my vote, where do I sign up? Tell me more! 👍😉🙂 Definitely a puzzle, something of a rather deep rabbit hole, but one of more than passing relevance and import these days.
Though, en passant and apropos of which, that reminds me of a couple of posts from UK feminist "philosopher" Jane Clare Jones, one of whose posts featured some commentary on the Greek myth of Narcissus and Echo. Although Jane seems to have cropped the picture to hide Echo who seems a rather important, if not an essential, part of the story -- arguably, or not, someone who might rescue Narcissus from his illusion/delusion -- of particular relevance to the transwomen who were largely the focus of Jane's epistle:
Note my "Steersman" icon over in the left column at the bottom, just above the purple plus sign; something in the way of a smoking gun type of proof that she's blocked me.
But I doubt she would be terribly keen to read your latest -- your probably trenchant criticisms of much of feminism; Kathleen Stock argues, not without plenty of justification, that feminism is in serious need of a reboot, maybe into the next galaxy -- as she's something of a doctrinaire feminist herself, and brooks no challenges to her own articles of faith. But I'll have to delve a bit further into your own epistle. Will try to keep you posted as to what I find ... 😉👍🙂
Feminists have been the biggest cheerleaders of some very predatory men & nobody calls them out on it even though some of their expressions of defense for their guys are widely documented. Gloria Steinem thought a lot of Bill Clinton back in the 90s when he was up to his misdeeds & went out of her way to paint his victims as willing participants in "relationships". I wish someone would ask her what she thinks of him now? Nobody is, same with Harvey Weinstein, P. Diddy, R. Kelly & so many more, they were able to do what they did because a lot of women, helped them out for years. The entertainment biz is middle managed by a lot of women with feminists perspectives, probably why so much slop comes out of there now. But not much attention has been given to the support staff who helped them do what they did. I hope during this month of celebrating women we hold these ones up for some long overdue scrutiny.
"Negative biases about men include: predatory, entitled, emotionally stunted, collectively responsible."
The "collectively responsible" bias stood out to me here as a negative bias in general towards any group. It collapses the individual's agency and removes their dignity, placing their behavior as part of some hive mine. We see it in antisemitism towards Jews, or Critical Race Theory with white people. It's what makes identity politics so poisonous.
In so many instances the vaunted salvation (of women) comes from ditching the current partner and seeking a new one in the confines of a bar. Can someone please explain how going from one bad situation to another is truly what anyone would desire?
The grass is always greener. I speculated about what's going on for many women based on my own experience (and of not leaving my husband for a fantasy).
https://www.hackingnarcissism.com/p/marriage and here: https://www.hackingnarcissism.com/p/identityloss
(Also, I would be careful not to paint “feminists” with too broad a brush either. They/we are not a monolithic group and the feminist Substackers you have been reading certainly aren’t representatives of the much wider collection of people who identify in some way with feminism.)
I said what I said, and readers can supply their own ‘not all’ based on what they’ve read of my work. Of course there are feminists are who are reasonable but I’m not referring to them here. If they recognise themselves in my writing and feel called out, they’re invited to reflect on why.
"Discernment demands that we tolerate the discomfort of not having a totalising explanation and resist the urge to replace one authority with another because the new authority appears morally safer or ideologically aligned.” - this is great. I’m anti-extremism in general, and this points to the need to resist finding quick comfort when something you once believed is destabilized. It’s better to stay a while and re-evaluate the urge toward certainty. Appreciate your reminder, Nathalie, about integrating shadow parts rather than projecting them onto any “other” or entire group.
With all the fretting about feminism-influenced societies having low birthrates (Actually, it’s capitalism+feminism. It takes 2), has anyone done any research to check for correlation between entrepreneurship rates and birth rates? Since, the same positive start-up energy (And social network) is required to start a family, as is required to start a business successfully.
Great question! I don’t know of any research looking at the correlation between entrepreneurship rates and birth rates.
I'll dig in.
Israel made me think of it. High start-up rate, high within-marriage birth rate. That's the secular Jewish Israelis, too.
Someone in some article brought up the point that the draft military service makes people more ready to risk starting a company and be positive about it. See, you serve in defense of your country and your home together, for 3 years. And you learn to rely on one another, plus high stakes make you communicate directly and deal with your BS. So when you are discharged, you have a whole social web of people who you are used to working with and trusting and fighting and resolving differences with. And you start businesses TOGETHER. It's not a solo sport. It's a team sport. Just like no one fights alone in the military (unless something has gone very wrong). And it isn't as scary to take a step out and try something new in business, together.
I think if I knew and understood start-up entrrprenuership as a team endeavor rather than a loner journey you embark upon, I'd try it, too. Maybe alot of women would.
"I describe how destabilisation can induce a rush toward grasping certainty. When trust is broken by a public figure or an institution, the individual looks for coherence and relief from ambiguity. One way to achieve that relief is by enlarging the category of threat. If certain powerful men betrayed their values, it can be stabilising to conclude that all men as a group are unsafe. When institutions protect these men, the psyche’s logic is to decide that the system itself is irredeemable. While it may or may not be true, that step can restore a sense of order by simplifying the situation’s complexity."
My impulse (which might be a psychological reflex rather than a result of logical analysis) is to re-emphasize the importance of individual virtue, critical thinking, and community/family ties.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/jewish-cabal
If the system is corrupt and erected upon malign incentives we should minimize our dependence on and identification with that system. This had the added benefit of giving people more control over their lives and also seems to make them happier and more agentic. The only source of doubt, for me, is to wonder if it's even possible at this point in history for enough people to develop that kind of agency. In a world of social media and credit card debt and pornography and status games and emotional reasoning, is it really reasonable to expect people to exercise their own power and embrace responsibility? After all, that's difficult. It's much easier to take the path of least resistance. In the case of feminism, this looks like hungrily grasping at every corporate set-aside and social privilege and opportunity for sympathy, while blaming failures and constraints on some shadowy, never-quite-specified masculine structure. It's very tempting, and I can see why. The best we can do is explain to people why this is socially and personally harmful and a cop-out. You would think that feminism would want to REALLY empower women, but that would not be optimal for its political and social goals. Instead of creating capable and independent individuals, feminism creates dependency on social status and scapegoating and emotional reasoning. This leads to weaker and unhappier people in most cases. But ideologies don't care about that.
Thanks for engaging so thoughtfully with that section @James M.
Your emphasis on individual virtue and agency is congruent with what I discuss in other articles (like this one: https://www.hackingnarcissism.com/p/blamethesystem?utm_source=publication-searchThe difficulty, as you hint at toward the end of your comment, is that psychological stabilisation tends to work against that ideal.
When people experience betrayal or destabilisation, the mind often seeks relief from ambiguity. Expanding the category of threat or locating the problem in a single explanatory system can restore coherence much faster than the slower work of examining incentives, contradictions, and individual behaviour.
That dynamic isn’t unique to feminism and it appears in many ideological environments where uncertainty is uncomfortable and moral clarity is rewarded.
Your point about dependence on systems is also interesting. Many people do try to regain agency by withdrawing identification from institutions and strengthening local ties, families, or communities. Historically that has often been one of the healthier responses.
The challenge is that large-scale systems shape incentives in ways that make simplification and scapegoating easier than individual responsibility. Ideologies thrive on those psychological shortcuts. Which is why I’m interested in describing the mechanism itself. Once people recognise how the rush toward certainty works, they have a better chance of resisting it.
Thanks for this. I've been reading diatribes recently by men objecting to the kinds of feminist projection thinking you describe and I've been wondering what the fuss was. I've attempted to call out the shallow thought behind the ranty projections when I see some pretense of intellectual is in the writer, but in most cases, the dialogic space seems.to be more a Clash of the Cretins than actual attempts at understanding, analysis, and a shared search for common ground. Your essay is a much appreciated palate cleanser😍
Is any of it statistically wrong?
Thank you for putting this out there :)
I’m engaging with this to better understand - I have a son, a daughter, a mum and a wife that I care about enough to potentially embarrass myself here 😬.
I will be a source of information, consciously and unconsciously for my family when they ask themselves about “men”.
I have been told, in this debate, that I take this to the interpersonal level, when the issues are ‘systemic’.
Something in this article made me consider whether believing the system being to ‘blame’ - removes agency. I think you stated it plainly?
In another article about patriarchy, I read about women needing to decenter men.
I’m not sure what it was that made me uncomfortable about women having to de-centre men. If you search for it on here, I’m sure you’ll come across the notion, if you haven’t already.
Basically I’m not sure if this is something I should be encouraging or discouraging, as a function of living a better life?
I’m trying to discern the best course and your work may have something to say about this?
My own personal journey suggests there’s not much good, or not much point in trying to affect anything external in the ‘system’. I can’t control it, and it detracts from the elements I can control (my reactions and integrity within the system).
But I’m a guy - so - maybe it’s different?
From these women's perspectives, you are automatically advantaged and women are automatically disadvantaged. If you're a white man, apparently you have more privileges than anyone else, regardless of class. According to them, in order for women to gain advantage, the system needs to change. That's the feminist rhetoric. De-centring men is a necessity because men are automatically centred in their worldview.
This article about 'blame the system' and why it ignores agency might help with this: https://www.hackingnarcissism.com/p/blamethesystem
👍 Reminds me of Camille Paglia's quip that if civilization had been left in women's hands we'd still be living in grass huts. Though maybe better off for it, one of my patron saints having argued that civilization hasn't really enlightened mankind -- much in any case, only "implemented him".
Though I'm also reminded of a quip by or about a woman, my kind of gal, who says that a hard man is good to find ... Although, now that I'm 93 (or pushing it), I don't give a damn, you see ... 😉🙂
I'm thrilled to read your comment. My perceptions of women at the tender age of 50 would be different to yours, though I agree that our englightenment seems to be stalled despite 'progress'.
👍 Thanks muchly. Though I hear something of an echo, or maybe something from the peanut gallery ..., that my comments were maybe less than flattering. Or something from those easily flattered and offended.
But that reminds me of a kind of famous parable about a fox seeing a crow in a tree with a bit of cheese in its mouth and who asked to hear the crow sing -- crows not being noted for their "dulcet" tones, although crows of different sexes might think otherwise, but copious amounts of flattery caused the crow to try doing so which led to the dropping of the cheese. News at 11 ... 😉🙂
But not sure that women are any more susceptible to that than men are -- "vanity, vanity, all is vanity saith the preacher" -- but they seem more often taken to task for it, at least somewhat unfairly.
But a lovely phrase there in your "hacking narcissism" -- got my vote, where do I sign up? Tell me more! 👍😉🙂 Definitely a puzzle, something of a rather deep rabbit hole, but one of more than passing relevance and import these days.
Though, en passant and apropos of which, that reminds me of a couple of posts from UK feminist "philosopher" Jane Clare Jones, one of whose posts featured some commentary on the Greek myth of Narcissus and Echo. Although Jane seems to have cropped the picture to hide Echo who seems a rather important, if not an essential, part of the story -- arguably, or not, someone who might rescue Narcissus from his illusion/delusion -- of particular relevance to the transwomen who were largely the focus of Jane's epistle:
https://janeclarejones.com/2019/06/04/a-dialogue-between-a-trans-woman-and-a-feminist-who-isnt-just-a-figment-of-the-trans-womans-mind/
ETA: Though a bit of a fly or two in Jone's "ointment", in what she's peddling herself, since she's blocked me:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gLs0!,w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa3377247-8ac6-4e0b-acf6-c18feb9ff721_714x605.jpeg
Note my "Steersman" icon over in the left column at the bottom, just above the purple plus sign; something in the way of a smoking gun type of proof that she's blocked me.
But I doubt she would be terribly keen to read your latest -- your probably trenchant criticisms of much of feminism; Kathleen Stock argues, not without plenty of justification, that feminism is in serious need of a reboot, maybe into the next galaxy -- as she's something of a doctrinaire feminist herself, and brooks no challenges to her own articles of faith. But I'll have to delve a bit further into your own epistle. Will try to keep you posted as to what I find ... 😉👍🙂