Should women preach to men - The rise of feminism

The vocal platform of Feminism is that all women living in all cultures are in one way or another oppressed by  men. Feminism claims to promote an ideology that liberates women from this oppression. However is feminism really for women? Is there more under the surface?

Perhaps the single most powerful influence on feminist ideology was the 18th-century Enlightenment theory about the individuals natural rights. Mary Wollstonecardt's A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) was foundational, applying the principle of natural rights to women, arguing that women have equal worth with mena dn therefore have the same rights. What began as a movement for the educational, political and economic liberation of women has become a movement targeted at freeing all women from their partriarchical cultures which they claim oppress women through the tyranny of marriage, sex and child-bearing which they claim have been created to own and control women. They therefore "advocate the abolition of marriage and the nuclear family, which should be replaced by alternative forms of reproduction and child-rearing." (New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology, IVP, 1995, p 380)  Feminists exist both within and outside of the church, accusing the church of propagating a negative view of women. Feminists outside the church have often regarded Christianity as a partiarchal religion which has devalued women, and they view the church as a powerful agent of oppression.

There exists, three main groupings of modern day feminists:

1. The post-Christian feminists, believing that Christianity is irredeemably patriarchical, have abandoned the church and attempt to construct an alternative feminist religion and ideology (See M. Daly, Beyond God the Father, Boston, MA, 1973)
2. The revisionists are critical of the male centredness of traditional theology, but they do not reject the Bible completely. They believe that there are liberating elements within the biblical text. Their aim is to reinterpret the Bible and liberate it from partiarchy. The most distinctive featury of their theology is their emphasis on 'woman's experience' as the key to interpreting the Bible.
3. Biblical feminists do not believe that the Bible itself is misogynist, but they challenge some of the ways in which it has been interpreted, who tend to employ a hermeneutic (method of interpretation) of deculturization or re-examine the biblical material but emphasize careful exegesis rather than the cultural conditioning of the Bible. (New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology, IVP, 1995) 

The proponents of feminism have proliferated books, television, movies and academia so much that you are deemed to be out dated, and even sexist and chauvenistic if you argue otherwise. "censorship is directed worard any woirk questioning the basic tenets and consequences of feminism, and a decidedly slanted picture of this movement is being presented in the media." (David J Ayers, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 2006, page 313)

While articles such as those in Time magazine by feminist Claudia Wallis, entitled Onward Women (vol. 134, no. 48. December 1989, pp 80-89) are being written which hide the true beliefs of feminism by exclaiming that feminism is really "for" all women, which contradicts the true nature and ideology of feminism which, as the agenda of many key feminist leaders is to completely eliminate such traditions as full-time mothering and male support of women and children, viewing women who live in such conditions as deceived and oppressed. As late as 1981, feminist organization NOW's founder Betty Friedan referred to stay-at-home mothers and male breadwinners as "obsolete." Her friend, feminist leader Simone de Beauvoir, asserted in 1975 that "No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children... Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice., too many women will make that one."

One must look at the implications of feminism closely as what is often put forward is absent of the "hard" items such as lesbian marriage, "unisexism" ans an ideal for children, or placing women in combat concealing the offensiveness of this ideology and its real goals. A large number of studies have shown that a majority of the "socio-cultural specialists" of our society who entail the artists, people in media and communication, social and behavioural scientists are "left" in political persuasion and "pro feminist". This bias infiltrates our culture as Davidson has pointed out, "No aspect of modern life has been so inadequately debated as feminism. Every year, thousands of feminist books pour off the presses... in contrast, books that present opposing viewpoints are rare, and the 'Lace Curtain' of networked feminists make sure that they seem even rarer." (Gender Sanity, 1989) This in turn affects the publication of non feminist books as feminist pressure makes the publication of works that challenge their position argudous and costly. Publishers are often hard to find. Many agree to publish, only to alter their decision later under external or internal feminist pressure. Two authors who, using respected and widely available studies, confronted the myth of male predominance in domestic abuse were threatened by feminist with loss of research grant monies. (Davidson, Gender Sanity, 1989)

The assumptions of feminism

The assumptions of feminism are general sexual "non-differentness," full cultural determinism of sex roles, and the undoubted changeability of sex roles. Michael Levin explains:

"Feminism in its contemporary form is an empirical doctrine leading to recommendations for social action. The doctrine has three main tenets:

1. Physical differences apart, men and women are the same. Infant boys and girls are born with virtually the same capacities and if raised identically would develop idenitically.
2. Men occupy positions of dominance becuase the myth that mwn are more aggressive has been perpetuated by the practice of raising boys to be mastery oriented and girls to be person oriented. If this steriotyping ceased, leadership would be equally divided between the sexes.
3. True human individuality and fulfillment will come only when people view themselves as human repositories of talents and traits, without regard to sex." ("The feminist Mystique," Commentary, vol 89, no 6, 1980, pg 25)

In general this is a pure "nurture" argument, reflecting a school of thought that sees all human morality, thought, and behaviour, ultimately, as products of culture and socialization. Referred to broadly here as the "cultural determinist" school, this implies an extreme relativism. All aspects of human life, outside of necessary physiological functions (breathing, eating, etc.) are seen as subject to variation. When given the evidence, some feminists do admit to some innate biological difference, but they minimize its impact and relevance. Miost, however, ignore it entirely or deny its existence. This is a fatal mistake as "if there are important biologically-based differences between the sexes, the rest of contemporary feminism falls apart... what is obviously unattainable cannot be the object of rational human effort. In this sense, if the factual assumption of feminism is wrong, the rest is irrational." (Michael Levin, The feminist Mystique,Commentary, vol 89, no 6, 1980, pg 25)

Feminists view all differences between male and female sexes as a result of male dominance and oppression  and "justice" requires the eradication of such "unnecessary"differences. Feminism aims to achieve equal female and male wages (which requires female participation in full time work to the same extent as men), equal educational outcomes, an even distribution of men and women in every occupation, at every level and will not stop until our children's "subjective gender identification" is unisexual or at least completely non predictable based on their biologcal sex.

Are the feminist presuppositions true?
Whilst there exists an ongoing pressure and bias, professionals in the biological and social sciences are generating findings that support the traditional viewpoint that healthy individuals and societies express, rather tahn deny, the complementary differences between the sexes. Universally, social outcomes reflect what one would expect, given the kind of neurological, hornmonal, and other physical sex differences uncovered by biologists and physiologists. (Melvin Konner, The tangled wing, 182, Stephen Goldberg, The inevitability of Patriarchy, 1974, Stephan Goldberg, Reaffirming the Obvious, 1986, James Neely, Gender: They myth of Equality, 1981, Corinne Hunt, Males and femals, 1973, Gilder, Men and Marriage, Davidson, The failure of Feminism, Yves Chrissten, Sex differences in the human Brain, Michael Levin, Feminism and freedom, 1987) Stephen Goldberg, an expositor of the universality of sex role differntiation, has used empirical studies on humans, mostlye anthropological, to sustain and defend this position through about seventeen years of intense debate. He states: ..."the sexual stereotypes now so derided turn out to be basically correct." (Reaffirming the obvious, p 5) "If accross the dazzling variety of cultures, such similarities consistently emerge, it is a distortion of logical to assume that each society has found an essentially similar way through socialization alone....Socialization alone, thought esstnial to human development and carried out in very different ways, cannot produce the same basic patterns of relationships and divisions of labor between the sexes without some innate qualities shared across cultures and time."(David j Ayers, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 2006, page 316) The cultural determinist school, says levin, "...ignores the question of why every society has chosen to do things the same way... Given the universality of sex-role differentiation  the feminists' 'taught' collapses into 'innate': it is evidently an innate feature of human beings that they will train their male and female offspring differently."

The primary examples of universal male/female differences lie in the areas of male dominance, superiority in status achievement, and patriarchy. These have been accompanied by sexual division of labor, in which men are generally "instrumental" and oriented toward mastery of the external world, while women are " expressive," relationship oriented and directed toward domestic concerns, particularly child rearing.
Anthropologist William Stephens states: "...these are the apparent near-universals of husband-wife rules:

1. A standard division of labor by sex.
2. The "essential femininity" of some tasks, such as child care, and the "essential masculinity" of other tasks, such as fishing.
3. Power and privilege: the husband's status is either equal or higher than the wife's; matriarchies are rare."

He goes on to say that if there are any societies that even come close to full sexual egalitarianism, what we have seen in western culture over the last 50 years comes "as close as any." Even communist societies which are heroized and put forward as "sex-netural" in ideology such as Cuba, Chine and the U.S.S.R are cruel, economically retarded and far more partriarchal than the average western nation.

A case study
With not evidence pointing to a successful feminist egalitarian culture, feminists have looked at creating one. They look to "eradicating male ideology in favor of an egalitarian, feminist one; providing unisex childrearing and universal day care to enable all women to work at "meaningful" (i.e. paid) jobs; providing equal access to all occupations and status positions, including political ones, and strongle encouraging female participation in these; downgrading the centrality of marriage and family life in favor of community work and individualized expression; and heightened sexual freedom (at least for adults)." (David j Ayers, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, 2006, page 319) The problem for feminists is that such an experiment has already been tried - the Israeli Kibbutz, and it has failed.

This was a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism. As Davidson points out, the Bibbutzniks sincerely and carefeuuly "sought to implement a unisexist conception of equality between the sexes. the actual conditions of life in the Kibbutz closely parallel the changed feminists advocate to eliminate gender distinctions in America." (The failure of Feminism, pp 233-234) Feminists and cultural determinists of all types were claiming the Kibbutz was "proof" that marriage, family, and sex roles were not universal. In 1954, Spiro claimed "the family... does no exists in the Kibbutz." However, by 1979, Spiro had completely rejected his earlier view and had begun a critique of feminist ideology itself. The reason, as Tiger and Shepher documented in 1975, is that by then the Kibbutz had "reverted" to "male domination" in the political and economic sphere, sex-biased occupational patterns in the labor market, and disproportionate female attention to home and family. Worse (from a feminist point of view), the females in the Kibbutz had led the way, demanding mmore time  with their children, insisting on larger homes and time to work in them, and asking their husbands to stay out of the "female" jobs at home! Women began to turn down "status" occupational and political opportunities consistently in favor of time at home, even when these were insistently offfered, and even where female candidates had better qualifications that the avaiable males. Thus male "political oppression" and "sexists divisions of labor" were being demanded by ideologically committed, egalitarian women with no evidence of any coercion by males. This was a suprise as their system provided for professional child care and provided adequate living space for couples, so there was no "need" for wives to be domestically oriented. Women were choosing to have larger families and homes and voluntarily relinquishing available day care in fabor of personal contact with their children. One Kibbutz women exclaimed to Tiger and Shepher about the author's supposedly "incredible" findings: "Why is it all so suprising? What did you expect women to do?" (Lionel Tiger and Joseph Shepher, Women in the Kibbutz, 1975, pp 242-281) The authors state that the typical feminist ""explanation" of the actions of Kibbutz women

"assumes that men are the center of all things, and that women, lacking any autonomy, must forego thoughtful and independent choices... [Yet] they are not only independent of men in the Kibbutz, but willing tna able to act in important ways frowned on and unseccessfully opposed by the men... [P]eoples' actions are not necessarily the unhappy performances of the duped and confused, and may well reflect what people wholeheartedly want to do... As for those who claim that women who are eager to bear and raise children are tyrannized and obsolete, they can see for themselves how contemporary women on the Kibbutz are."

Such unanimous and consistent findings leave even the most prolific feminists such as leading advocate of cultural deterministm, the anthropologist Margaret Mead, having to concede in 1973 that "it is true... that all claims so glibly made about societies ruled by women are nonsense. We have no reason to believe that they ever existed.. Men have always been the leaders in public affairs, and the final authorities at home." (Quoted in Goldberg, Utopian Yearning versus Sceintific Curiosity," p 31) And in spite of her work being cited by feminists as "proof" that arguements for universal patriarchy are wrong, Mead stated, "Nowhere do i suggest that I have found any material which disproves the existence of sex differences." Writes Goldberg, "Just as patriarchy, male dominance, and male attainment of high status roles and positions are universal, so is the association of nurturance and emotional socialization with the women universal.... [and] in every society it is women who are responsible for the care and rearing of the young." (Goldberg, The Inevitability of Patriarchy, p 44)