Feminism as pseudo-sophisticated collective narcissism

Women are not a finer form of Homo sapien. (I)

This is the first of five posts — second, third, fourth, fifth— on careerist feminism and what it has wrought.

Mostly, I enjoy Alice Evans’s work. She is empirically-minded, global in her perspective and does field work among the non-WEIRD.¹

Moreover, I have no trouble with gender-egalitarianism.² Beyond any moral point, I have read more than enough history, anthropology, and historical anthropology, to be well aware that gender-egalitarian societies are much nicer to live in. Moreover, a key European-cum-Western advantage was that it was the most gender-egalitarian of the major Eurasian civilisations. Hence it was much more able to utilise the talents of women, particularly elite women, who weren’t sequestered off in the women’s quarters, locked in struggles with each other over the prospects for their children.

I am, however, increasingly irritated by Alice Evans’s feminism.

Feminism is a very different matter from gender-egalitarianism. A poll conducted by Survation (30 November - 3 December, 2015) on behalf of the Fawcett Society in the UK found that 81 per cent of women, and 84 per cent of men, supported equality for women. Only nine per cent of women (and five per cent of men) identified as feminist.

The overwhelming majority of British men and women could and did draw a very clear distinction between feminism and equality for women (i.e., gender egalitarianism). This is perfectly rational of them.

A standard feminist response to substantial proportions of women not identifying as feminist is to claim some combination of such women not knowing their own interest, being deluded by male pressure, or having malign motives, such as racism (e.g. supporting “white supremacy”). This “women who disagree with us are morally/cognitively inadequate” take is classic “there is something wrong with you for not going along with what I want” narcissism. It is a particularly egregious manifestation of what feminism has become — the self-righteous, collective narcissism of highly educated career women.

In the UK, that is about 9 per cent of women or so. Michael Malice, bad man that he is, calls these women AWFLs (Affluent White Female Liberals). While they are hyper-liberal on social issues, they are far less liberal-minded about what it is acceptable to say.

They propagate an aggressive, highly intolerant, sense of public propriety. They also privilege their own interests. Both these patterns are purveyed through increasingly feminised education systems. This is helping to create gender-polarising female-privileging and male-alienating responses among the most recent age cohorts emerging out of said feminised education systems. (Though how robust findings of such polarisation are seems to depend on precise questions asked.)

Caroline Veronez on Unsplash.

Feminism as collective narcissism

That feminism has become collective narcissism is almost ridiculously easy to demonstrate. Consider, believe all women. It is hard to conceive of a more blunt endorsing of women as a finer form of Homo sapien. (Except, to make the narcissism even clearer, one doesn’t believe all women when it is inconvenient to do so.)

If you criticise/mock men it’s feminism, if you criticise/mock women it’s misogyny. To talk of the upsides of men is to manifest patriarchy, toxic masculinity or some other sin. To talk of the downsides of women is misogyny.

Violence against children — about half of which is perpetrated by women — has been written out of domestic violence. Domestic violence has becomes purely about intimate partner violence by men, with domestic violence by women written out of the social script.³

In employment, appointing a woman represents achievement. Appointing a man never is: indeed, can be seen as a mark of shame. It is fine to celebrate the appointment of a woman, because she is a woman. It is never fine to celebrate the appointment of a man, because he is man. It is never required to appoint a man, it may be required to appoint a woman.

If boys don’t do as well in — increasingly feminised — school and education systems, that is because there is something wrong with boys. If women don’t do as well in masculinised systems or environments, that is because there is something wrong with men.

In any field, if women are doing better than men, that is a matter for social congratulation — and a putative sign of male inadequacy. If men are doing better than women, that is a matter for social action — and a putative sign of male moral inadequacy.

The presumption that males falling behind is not a moral concern turns up even in apparently neutral measures, for instance:

For each nation, the Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) assesses the degree to which girls and women fall behind boys and men on 14 key indicators (e.g., earnings, tertiary enrollment ratio, life expectancy, seats in parliament) on a 0.0 to 1.0 scale, with 1.0 representing complete parity (or men falling behind). [Emphasis added]

It is fine to change the rules to advantage women. It is never fine to change the rules to advantage men. There are no downsides to having things run by women; having things run by men is presumptive social failure.

The clearest cultural expression of this self-righteous feminist narcissism is the rash of writing out,  and writing down, of beloved male characters in various movie and TV franchises.

Feminist narcissism can be boiled down to a single proposition: women have lots of legitimate complaints about men, men never have any legitimate complaints about women.

The larger patterns of Feminism is almost textbook female narcissism. Indeed, of the 15 listed common features of female narcissism, contemporary careerist feminism regularly displays:

(1) Being Self-Centered or Self-Absorbed; (2) Never Admitting Fault; (3) Pettiness & Inability to See the Bigger Picture; (4) Obsession With Social Status; (5) Addicted to Social Media; (6) Exploitative of Others; (7) Being Overly Vain; … (10) Sensitive & Reactive; … (12) Playing the Victim Card; (13) Passive Aggressive & Manipulative; (14) Bullying or Being a “Mean Girl”.

Some years ago, a friend was doing the remedial reading class at the secondary school he taught at, it having become an established problem that local primary schools were turning out a persistent minority of (mainly boys) who couldn’t read and write. He announced to the class that he had a new book for them to go through. One boy put up his hand and said:

Let me guess sir, it’s about a girl and she’s got problems.

A functionally illiterate boy in junior secondary had spotted the pattern. Really, what mattered was what happened to girls, and particularly bad things happening to girls. Strangely, this had failed to engage, or successfully educate, boys like him.

After all, the one group not deemed to require positive role models in their lives are white males.

It is never enough

It is conspicuous that women are doing very well in Western societies. In fact, much better than any other societies in human history and, across various social indicators, on average better than men.

Yet, we have feminism regularly selling the nonsense that Western societies are structures of oppression. Indeed, feminism regularly carries on with the self-righteous bullshit about women in Western societies being an oppressed or marginalised group.

This is a large part of how it ends up that a heterosexual European-ancestry male working in a coal mine in a depressed rural community is triply “privileged” while a female Haitian scion of a wealthy family who went to an elite private school is triply “marginalised”. This is the feminist narcissism of highly educated career women in action. There are few groups that feminist academics and scholars can be more reliably expected to be dismissive of than working class men.

When will feminist women in Western societies stop whining? Never, because it is their status and social leverage strategy. A strategy of calling something sexist or misogynist until they destroy, control or dominate it.⁴

All-in-all, are we surprised that British men and women are fine with female equality but do not  identify as feminist? They have too strong a sense of fair play.

For me but not for thee

Nowadays, feminism generally means some highly educated career woman talking about things that matter to highly educated career women. The way motherhood is treated as something to avoid, or something whose most urgent concern is that it not get in the way of one’s career, likely doesn’t resonate with a lot of women. The only time careerist feminists can be reliably expected to talk up motherhood is to sideline fatherhood.

What careerist feminism regularly manifests is zero-sum thinking: female-good, male-bad.

Note that women being able to work, or go back to work, while or after having kids is not the same as having no impact on your career. The latter leads to the taboo in admitting that women with young kids are less productive due to lack of sleep. Or, indeed, that it is silly to expect otherwise.

Then there is the way Trans has come to dominate approved thinking among the highly educated. Many men, angry at the way feminism trashed male freedom of association, are clearly only too happy to use Trans to trash female freedom of association.

The way a putatively feminist establishment has happily degraded women’s sport, let manipulative and abusive men into women’s prisons, allowed people with penises into women’s refuges, and into female spaces more generally, while “gender critical” feminists get treated as moral pariahs — particularly by other women who identify as feminist — clearly does not “sell” feminism to the general British public.

It says how far the careerist feminism of the AWFLs has moved from motherhood being a core manifestation of being a woman that the current epitome of “progressive” femininity is a biological male who has cut his bits off. (Or have not and so are still entirely capable of rape.) How does such a (maybe) emasculated male “know” they are a woman? By comporting with various stereotypes of being “female”. For if you do not define women by biology, you define them by stereotype.

An AWFL mother, transing her child — that is, sterilising the child and putting them on hormones for life — gains all sorts of social kudos in her social circle.

That an aggressive moral propriety is feminised by no means precludes it from being wielded against non-conforming women. Just as polygynous patriarchy disadvantages low-status males. Hence a common operational strategy in polygynous societies — particularly pastoralist ones — is to say “those people over there have women, steal theirs”. Something that the Quran sanctifies with its 15 references to those whom your right hand possesses (ma malakat aymanuhum or milk al-yamin).

The lack of concern among British AWFLs — who can go from zero to outrage in 280 characters — about what are euphemistically called Asian grooming gangs has been striking. Such gangs are overwhelmingly Muslim gangs, but one must use a term — Asian, even if some perpetrators are from North Africa — that implicitly slanders Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. Why? Because accuracy would be Islamophobic.

The social leverage from controlling legitimacy by wielding an aggressive and linguistically intolerant form of public propriety — and the convenience of keeping their Pakistani nannies — is demonstrably much more important to the oh-so-feminist British AWFLs than what has been happening to thousands of working class and welfare class, often underage, girls.

Female experience (real or alleged) that advances the self-legitimating narrative counts. What does not, doesn’t. Working class women brutalised by Muslim grooming gangs; women and girls raped by trans-identifying men; Israeli kibbutzniks raped and killed: these women and girls do not advance the narrative. So careerist feminism gives them the silent treatment or, even more appallingly, denounces the last as “settler colonialists”.

This conception of truth — as that which advances the legitimating narrative — is ultimately Marxist. There is plenty of competition within progressivism for Marx’s focus on economic processes, for his valorisation of the proletariat and demonisation — indeed, demiurge-isation — of the bourgeoisie. There is much less competition for his dialectical faith as the underlying belief structure of progressivism. All forms of Critical Theory are further manifestations of it.

Differences in cognitive and social patterns between men and women matter. Noting that female-typical does not mean female-only, just as male-typical does not mean male-only.

Men, boys (and tomboys) form teams. Women, girls (and sissies) form cliques. You can see this pattern in any schoolyard.

For evolutionary reasons discussed in the next post, female-typical friendships are based on emotional investment. Female-typical behaviour is not to have friends of a lower socio-economic background because they are not worth the emotional investment. It is well within male-typical behaviour to have friends of a lower socio-economic background, for you never know when you will need them on your team.

As the “Asian” grooming gang contortions show, women are generally not the social solidarity sex. For a fieldwork report on women not being the social solidarity sex, see Jo Freeman’s 1976 essay, ‘Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood’.

The dramatic contrast between the way the “Asian grooming gang” saga has played out compared to the enormous public fuss over the sexual exploitation of poor girls in late Victorian England is revealing. Victorian England’s masculine establishment displayed a much higher sense of  solidarity with poor girls than has our progressive, feminist and feminised equivalent.

Feminism, old and new

Louise Perry has argued for retaining — in effect fighting for — feminism as incorporating family-positive views. She is in much the same situation as Hayek in his famous essay Why I Am Not A Conservative, wanting to retain the label of liberal and not being forced to say libertarian.⁵

The resemblance is even stronger as Louise Perry does not want to embrace what often very restrictive traditional roles for women. She is not giving up on gender-egalitarianism. She wants to embrace and proclaim the full WEIRD package of rejecting sexual violence against women, of not tying the status of women to their fertility, of women having opportunities to work, of a politics that deals with the issues specific to women, and of women being active in politics and government. She wants to hold onto the tradition that goes back to Mary Wollstonecraft of taking such issues seriously and a politics that faces the specific vulnerabilities of women. As she says:

This is the original feminism, and so I am going to keep using the word, just for obstinate reasons.

The Survation poll shows that she has lost that argument among the British public. The problem is that careerism — particularly motherless careerism — demonstrably wins in moulding feminism. Feminism has become what the AWFLs, and devoted-agent radicals,⁶ have made it.

References

Scott Atran, ‘“Devoted Actor” versus “Rational Actor” Models for Understanding World Conflict,’ Briefing to the National Security Council, White House, Washington, DC, September 14, 2006. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6801978.pdf

Roy F. Baumeister, Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men,  Oxford University Press, 2010.

Joyce F. Benenson with Henry Markovits, Warriors and Worriers: the Survival of the Sexes, Oxford University Press, 2014.

Harry Frankfurt, ‘On Bullshit,’ Raritan Quarterly Review, Fall 1986, Vol.6, No.2. https://raritanquarterly.rutgers.edu/issue-index/all-volumes-issues/volume-06/volume-06-number-2

Jo Freeman, ‘Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood,’ Ms magazine, April 1976, pp. 49-51, 92-98. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm

Tim Kaiser, Marco Del Giudice, Tom Booth, ‘Global sex differences in personality: Replication with an open online dataset,’ Journal of Personality, 2020, 88, 415–429.

Jemima Olchawski, Sex Equality State of the Nation 2016, Fawcett Society. Poll conducted by Survation, 30 November - 3 December, 2015.

Jessica K. Padgett and Paul F. Tremblay, ‘Gender ­Differences­ in Aggression,’ in The Wiley Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences (eds. B.J. Carducci, C.S. Nave, A. Fabio, D.H. Saklofske and C. Stough), October 2020, 173-177.

Daphne Patai & Noretta Koertge, Professing feminism: Cautionary tales from the strange world of women's studies, Basic Books/Hachette Book Group, 1994.

Tania Reynolds , Roy F. Baumeister, Jon K. Maner, ‘Competitive reputation manipulation: Women strategically transmit social information about romantic rivals’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2018, 195-209.

David Rozado, ‘The Great Awokening as a Global Phenomenon,’ arXiv, 4 Apr 2023, 2304.01596. https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.01596.

Marten Scheffer, Ingrid van de Leemput, Els Weinans, and Johan Bollen, ‘The rise and fall of rationality in language,’ PNAS, 2021, Vol. 118, No. 51, e2107848118.

Daniel Seligson and Anne E. C. McCants, ‘Polygamy, the Commodification of Women, and Underdevelopment,’ Social Science History (2021), 46(1):1-34.

Gijsbert Stoet and David C. Geary, ‘The Gender-Equality Paradox in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education,’ Psychological Science, 2018, Vol. 29(4) 581–593.

Will Storr, The Status Game: On Social Position And How We Use It, HarperCollins, 2022.

1. Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic.

2. Sex is biology, sex roles are the behavioural manifestation of sex, gender is the cultural manifestations of sex. How egalitarian a society is a cultural matter, part of the social being emergent from the biological.

3. Males, being the physically stronger sex, dominate intimate partner violence, as they dominate all violence between adults. But they are not the only perpetrators.

4. The original version of this was Marxism — call something classist (“bourgeois”) until they destroy, control or dominate it. This is a pattern that has since been generalised. Hence Critical Race Theory calling something racist until they destroy, control or dominate it; Transactivism calling something transphobic until they destroy, control or dominate it; and so on.

5. Liberal has become a deeply context-specific term, meaning very different things in the US, in Australia, in Canada, in Europe.

6. The notionally secular Hermetic gnosticism that has evolved into “wokery”, pouring the spiritual into the social, has a long history of producing zealots who — if not full kamikazes — are certainly highly motivated. Any notion of capacity/culture/outcome trade-offs for sacred victim groups has become anathematised, for instance.