Thursday, November 24, 2011

Conclusions on Feminism Part 2

"Feminism is the radical notion that women are adults."

The problem in America is that we treat women like they are part child, part adult. 
That's really, really it. 
Too many Americans see women as "Adults Lite" or "Children Plus" and it is reflected in the way we employ them, use them in our armies, punish them when they commit crimes and mourn when they are abused. 

As a society, we abhor men who sexually abuse young girls and boys. We somehow see women who do the same thing as slightly less culpable.  I think this is similar to the way that we see less harm in a 19-year-old man having "consensual" sex with his 17-year old girlfriend than we do a 40-year-old man and a "consenting" 17-year-old girl.


Why do we do this? Sex with an under-age child is harmful to them no matter the age of the perpetrator, right? Not exactly. We think of that 19-year-old man as more of a child than the 40-year-old. And we certainly don't think a crime has necessarily been committed when 14-year-olds have consensual sex with each other, right?


Well, what's more child-like than a 19-year-old man? A 19-year-old woman. That's part of the reason why society doesn't care as much when an older woman has sex with an underage boy.



You could even make the case for eye makeup that embiggens their eyes and hairless bodies as the ideal vision of female beauty being tied to the childization of women.
(Yes, I just used two words that aren't words in one sentence. But you knew what I meant, didn't you? That's right. Deal with it.)

Hell, we even have a federal organization named "Women, Infants & Children."


I think this ties into one of the biggest problems facing Feminism today. The effort that has been put into getting women the right to vote and into the workplace has been crucial for women to physically, financially and legally "leave the nest" of child-like status when they were passed from parents to husband for custodial care hundreds of years ago.


But now, women are permitted the benefits of adulthood without many of the societal expectations and responsibilities we expect of adult men. 


Women are still:
Able to avoid parental responsibilities via abortion, adoption or abandonment
Able to sidestep military drafts via exclusion from selective service
Able to sidestep career "duties" via relative ease of being a housewife
Able to sidestep or mitigate criminal sentences 


Don't get me wrong: women being excluded from voting and employment opportunities are not the only ways that women have been and still are harmed by this mentality. Those were just the most egregious and systematic/institutionalized issues. Women still have many issues to deal with today - just add Jezebel to your daily reading and you'll be bombarded with (mostly) valid issues.


That said, there are certain benefits to being a woman today in the same way that there are things that are pretty awesome about being a kid (assuming you're not in an abusive home.) I think Feminists think that these "benefits" to being a woman either A) aren't really benefits at all or B) think they'll go away on their own as Feminism grows in popularity. 

It is especially apparent when feminists stand up for women accused of crimes. They may outright defend them or may look for reasons (systematic/gendered or otherwise) to excuse their behavior. This is blatant childization of women. We do the same thing when a child is accused of a horrific crime - "What kind of home did they grow up in? Were they being abused? Were there drugs involved?" We excuse and mitigate the consequences of the behavior of juveniles because they are less developed than adults. 


When you do it with women, you're saying the same thing. You're saying they're less culpable for their actions because they are "less developed." It's bullshit and I've only seen a few feminists speak up about this.



And that's why I butt heads with Feminists. Women have been committing crimes for the entire length of humanity because people commit crimes. Men, women and children, too. We are all human beings - animals with great intelligence, capability for good and evil acts and an incredible knack for adapting to our environments. 

It makes sense for women to who are enjoying the recently-earned benefits of full adulthood to fail to recognize the increased responsibilities that come with that position. It's called a "catch." And right now, men are the ones primarily being caught by it.


To those of us wishing to change our environment - socially or politically - we'd best not forget the animals we're dealing with: Apes that want to get the most reward for the least effort. It's in our programming.

6 comments:

  1. Nice post.

    I think you need to abandon the abortion-as-birth-control argument because that’s more biological reality than anything else. As far as abandonment/adoption goes, it’s assumed that the woman had a valid reason to abandon the child, unlike a man who does it on a whim. A teenage girl is almost universally considered to be more mature and reliable than a boy her age. That’s adult-perfect rather than adult-lite in operation.

    As far as violent crime goes, a female perpetrator is considered such an aberration that something awful must have happened to cause her to snap like that. Again, more like pedestaling women as a group rather than infantalization. Same with any issue where women are behind men. SAT-math, that’s because the test is sexist. SAT-writing, that’s fine because it is the natural order of things.

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  2. I was always told growing up that girls are more "mature" than boys. That is why I never questioned the fact that I often observed younger women with older men--and I'm not even counting Hugh Hefner in this one--more like your example of the 17 year old with the 19 year old. Then I was told that my observations occurred because of something called "female hypergamy." At least that's what the manosphere guys say....

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  3. Great stuff, I'm bookmarking this in my resources folder on responses to feminism.

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  4. Hello there.

    I really don't appreciate being publicly slandered as a "misogynist", and I especially don't appreciate your pals at NSWATM silencing my calm, civil response to your malicious accusation through censorship.

    Just wanted to let you know!

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  5. Everything point you make is better explained if you posit that women are treated like royalty, not children.

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  6. It is especially apparent when feminists stand up for women accused of crimes. They may outright defend them or may look for reasons (systematic/gendered or otherwise) to excuse their behavior. This is blatant childization of women. We do the same thing when a child is accused of a horrific crime - "What kind of home did they grow up in? Were they being abused? Were there drugs involved?" We excuse and mitigate the consequences of the behavior of juveniles because they are less developed than adults.

    If you go to a feminist website and check a post on false rape accusations, it will almost invariably be couched in terms of how how such accusations make it more difficult for the real accusations, with almost no concern for the actual men accused, or condemnation of the false accuser. Feministe's post actually went so far as to argue that the Duke Rape accuser was actually raped based on little more than the fact that most rape accusations are correct, and complained about people subjecting her to the same treatment her accusers had been getting for almost a year.

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