Feminism: The Dark Side

Part 1

The Feminist movement has a long history in the United States, beginning I believe, with women arguing that they should have the right to vote. They were right. According to our values and our Constitution, they should have the same rights as men: to vote and to compete for and obtain jobs for which their skills and abilities qualify them. They should also have the same pay and privileges if holding the same jobs and the same responsibilities as men. All Christian nations have accepted this philosophy and established laws protecting these rights. (The same is not true of nations following Muslim laws.)

The fights for those “privileges” were won over a long period of years. But since the nineteen seventies Feminism has gone far beyond such rights in their claims, and their successes have brought a dark side to “feminism.” Major evils have arisen from their publicized and adopted values.

Modern feminist leaders, primarily women who have eschewed marriage, have diminished the most important single element of femininity: the maintenance of a home and the raising of children. Only women can bear and nurse children. Men can’t. For any civilization, the one vital requirement for its continuation is the production and raising of children who will accept and support that civilization and its values in a responsible fashion. Women can produce those children and, with the support of responsible men, can raise such citizens.

As an example, I believe that my mother, in bearing and raising three children who became law-abiding citizens did more for the future of the United States than did my father, a responsible and law abiding citizen who spent his life working as a salesman to support her and the children. Let me note, however, that my father assisted her in this by both his efforts and example in providing a living for the family and his support of her and the family at home.

During their thoughtless harangues the feminists of the seventies diminished the role of the stay-at-home mother and often spoke of the mistreated wives held in subjection and mistreated by errant husbands. Did such women exist? Certainly! Did such husbands exist? Certainly! But advocates of modern “freedom” of employment and sexuality never compared the lot of such wives to those of the girls and women who worked – slaved would be a better word – in factories and as servants for minimum wages.  Compare “mistreated” wives with factory girls. Those factory girls were also expected to provide “favors” for their employers – if they wanted to keep the jobs they held. One text I read of the garment industry reported that attractive young women were expected to provide sexual favors for their foremen. Otherwise, they joined the ranks of the unemployed, with no recourse in the law and no way of supporting themselves. At least wives had the protection of laws, if they chose to claim them. 

Has this changed? Do attractive young women no longer accept the indignity of the casting couch in hope of bit parts in movies? Sorry, but my years of working as a professor, a counseling psychologist and in the military have provided me with too many examples of young women willing to exchange “favors” for advancement in their careers. I believe the “casting couch” continues to exist in many forms, in many occupations despite laws forbidding sexual “harassment.” In my volunteer work for the Federal Employees Union and for Equal Employment Opportunity in addition to real charges, which I documented, I also encountered some women who used the laws against discrimination and sexual “advances’ to advance their careers with false charges of “sexual harassment” or “sexual discrimination.”

I haven’t heard of feminism addressing these topics: those of the abuse of working women and by working women of “protectionist” laws. The world of work for women has not really changed; it has only become more subtle. A woman in a happy marriage is still significantly better off than a single woman in the world of work: at least studies in which mature women, twenty years following college graduation, reported their happiness and satisfaction with their lives reported married women as significantly happier – according to their own reports – than single women. 

Thus, just as married women raising families do more for our nation than most men in the jobs they hold, they also find greater happiness than men, married or single, or single women. By diminishing the value of the housewife and encouraging young women to seek a life of employment, our modern feminists are also encouraging them to choose a life which may provide temporary privilege and enjoyment, but whose end ensures greater loneliness and unhappiness.