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“ Men did not historically spend significant portions of their adult lives tied to their babies and therefore vulnerable, and with less ability to produce for themselves, leaving their welfare in large part dependent on whether they were lucky enough to have kind and respectful men in their life”

Wrong. Replace “babies” with “women” and the statement is true. Women sacrifice for babies, and men sacrifice for women.

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And thus, by proxy men sacrifice for children. Men have historically sacrificed for both women and children. And even then, if most men were forced to choose, they’d sacrifice for children rather than women without hesitation.

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>Their sexual expression is not limited by the threat of pregnancy, something women have only recently gained any meaningful control over.<

I think this statement encapsulates a large pillar of your worldview that many people do not share. When you describe pregnancy as a threat, you are communicating a fundamentally anti-child, anti-family, anti-life ideology. This sentiment is not only instinctively repellent to many people, it is highly maladaptive and out of sync with basic biological reality. You're telling people that "women's rights" means going extinct. Evolutionary pressures suggest that this is an unsustainable paradigm over the longer term.

What's strange is that logically, I don't think there is any real reason why identifying as a feminist *must* come along with this anti-reproduction ideology, yet it almost always does. Perhaps that part of the discussion deserves a bit more focus. No matter what else someone might tell me, I simply can't give much value to a worldview that sees reproduction as a threat to be eliminated.

My other comment is that, if you're actually worried about being placed into the Handmaid's Tale somehow, this is also a good reason to drop the label "feminist" and stop obsessing over the topic. For a certain period of time it seemed that people were fairly content with the achievements of the Civil Rights movement, at least by comparison to today. And then what happened? Race grifters kept pushing and pushing and pushing, they refused to take the W. The result is that today many people on the right have concluded that destructive anti-white DEI nonsense was an inevitable result of Civil Rights, and that the whole thing may have been a mistake from the start.

Young men today have been made expendable and most of them know it. Society has little use for them besides maybe to make the green line go up, although they may not be needed even for that as the endless waves of migrant workers continue to flood in. If they then continue to hear nothing but more hand-wringing over how the Handmaid's Tale might be right around the corner, I imagine this would only cause them to completely dismiss anyone calling themselves a "feminist" as an enemy against whom they must harden their heart. And I'm not sure if I could blame them. You can't have good faith interactions based on hyping up the fear that the other party are secretly ravenous degenerates who might suddenly turn to cartoonish villainy at a moment's notice.

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This seems like an extremely uncharitable read of me. I’ve written many pro natalist pieces and posts about fertility and why women should be more aware of fertility timelines and how the unfair burden of domestic work relative to paid work (the “second shift” women with children face after work) is exaggerated and not backed up by self reported data.

Pregnancy is something that is wonderful in certain situations and terrible in others. Having no control over when or how many children you have (and not having the option of abandoning them with the other parent) was a very hard thing to manage for women, including for women who wanted children and highly valued family. Also, my view is super normie and not repellent to many people, actually.

My writing pushes back on the excesses of feminism in the majority of posts and points out unreasonable or exaggerated claims of oppression.

Reading your comments makes me think I must just be a terrible writer, because you don’t seem to understand what I’m saying at all, despite engaging with several posts.

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If you’re worried that the problem is you, it isn’t. Your writing is perfectly clear.

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I think we just have very different worldviews. No matter what else you may have said about pro-natalism, I think you value reproduction very differently than I do. The connection of pregnancy --> threat stood out quite viscerally to me. It's a sentence that someone like me could never write.

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>I imagine this would only cause them to completely dismiss anyone calling themselves a "feminist" as an enemy against whom they must harden their heart. And I'm not sure if I could blame them.

I'm already at this point. Even the so called “good” feminists will waste far more time and energy defending the label of feminism then they would even acknowledging the ways feminists harm men and boys. They do it reflexively.

At this point, I consider anyone calling themselves a feminist an enemy of men.

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What a limiting, wilfully self-harming approach! Judging everyone to be the worst and most extreme kind of the thing you disagree with. A recipe for frustration, misunderstanding and failure.

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Why? Most regular people don't label themselves feminists. Even the very few I've encountered in real life distanced themselves from the label quickly when I pointed out what and who feminists really are.

Only online have I found people misandrist enough that they'd spend more energy and time defending the label and definition of feminism than acknowledge the actions that harm men and boys. And such people, the so called "real feminists" don't really matter much.

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So you happen to move in circles where feminists are rare. There are lots and lots, and feminist misandrists are few. Probably a majority of my co-workers self-identify as feminists. Very nice people. You should try and move past this hostile attitude. Giving people the benefit of the doubt pays off in my experience

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I move in circles where professed misandrists are rare, yes. I like it that way. I know what they do when they're given real power and how rest clap along like seals.

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Men's liberty is restricted by sex when they're drafted to fight wars, including by governments headed by women; or when they receive substantially longer prison sentences than

women do for committing the same crime.

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Yep, that’s the best example of where men have generally been denied free choice - I think drafts are really hard to stomach but they do appear to be necessary in some cases, male only drafts are clearly wrong imo, but I also think that if men and women are drafted equally it’s fine to put them in positions where they’re most able, which will likely mean men are more likely to be on the front lines given their greater strength etc.

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To be clear, I didn't take a position on the draft here, just pointed to it as an example of a sex based limitation on men's freedom. It's not a potential limitation either, like a hypothetical revoking women's voting rights. It's an actual limitation that already occurs. Just ask a Ukrainian man under 40—that is, on the off chance you can find one still alive.

But what about my second example? Women get barely half the sentence men receive for committing the same crime. That seems to be another sex based limitation on men's freedom. Again, not a mere hypothetical one, either. Since feminism is about equality between the sexes, the sentencing disparity must make feminists furious. Yet oddly, I've never of a feminist objecting to it.

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I don’t know about the logic for the sentencing difference you bring up, but I’d ask if there are differences in recidivism etc. and wouldn’t be surprised if there are, although I also could imagine juries or judges being easier on women due to seeing them as more vulnerable etc. and this being a case of actual discrimination against men via implicit biases. I do think it’s a problem if men are clearly discriminated against with sentencing, I just don’t know enough about the issue and wonder whether this apparent sign of discrimination could be a result of differences not captured in the data available, as it sometimes is with data showing women being underrepresented in a given industry.

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If there were differences in rates of recidivism between, say, black men and white men, and that difference was used to justify consistently harsher prison sentences to black convicts than white, then I presume all fair minded people would call that injustice. Treating people not as individuals, but on the basis of their group averages seems like the definition of unfair. It's easy to see in this hypothetical example, but it goes on unremarked on and all but unnoticed when the victims of the disparity are men. I never even heard of the sentencing gap until 5 or 6 years ago, but apparently it's been the case forever.

I agree that the degree of the disparity, in this case, might owe, in whole or in part, to factors not captured in the raw data. I agree that the perception of women as more vulnerable is likely involved. But deeper questions lurk below these observations. Why would "the patriarchy," a system alleged to exist to structurally advantage men and disadvantage women, consistently treat women less harshly than men in its enforcement arm, the criminal justice system? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Why would the patriarchy, of all systems, care if women were, or seemed, more vulnerable? Or if some other mitigating factors might reasonably tend to merit lesser average sentences? Why does even the bare fact of the sentencing disparity seem to be obscure? If it went the other way, do you think it would be better known? Or that any feminist would hesitate to blame it on misogyny?

I think feminism is well named, but poorly defined as a movement for legal and social equality between the sexes. It seems better described as a women's interest lobby.

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Yes, I agree that sentencing differently on the basis of race or sex alone is wrong, I was suggesting that the disparity in sentencing rates could be due to factors not captured in the data you cite

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I allowed it might well be. My point is that such nuances are lost by feminists and others when disparities favor men.

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"We demand equality of outcome!!11!! We won't be happy until there are as many women in jail for rape as there are men!!11!!" 😉🙂

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Equality of outcome will never happen without the law putting its fingers on the scale, because men and women aren't equal to begin with. Neither is better, in some objective sense, but they're different, and their differences will always manifest at scale. There will never be as many female rapists in prison as male ones because women are less able and prone to rape than men are. Everyone understands this. No one seriously objects to it. But when a disparity favors men—say a disproportionate representation of physicists or chess masters—it's treated as de facto evidence of discrimination and/or patriarchal conditioning. Even the possibility that men might, even on average, be more interested in physics or chess than women are is dismissed as self- evidently wrong, and indeed hateful. It's beyond tedious at this point, and lacks even the virtue of consistency. Disparities that favor women are natural, but disparities that favor men are artificial? Why?

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That WAS a bit of sardonic or sarcastic jest on my part. To mock the same rot in much of feminism -- at least the woke-ish version -- that you referred to.

You might note my previous comment and Note -- at least the latter of which Regan Liked (two Likes are two too many?) -- which elaborates on your points:

https://www.allcatsarefemale.com/p/why-call-it-feminism/comment/69485293

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I understood, but the point seemed worth making anyway.

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Women risk their lives to have children, men risk their lives to protect families. Not only their families, the nation. That’s mutual sacrifice for the nation. It’s been the historical arrangement for a reason.

But “equality” is drafting women during their most fertile years; and who will always be primary caregivers of children (and often primary or secondary caregivers of aging relatives).

When we fail to respect the differences between men and women, women always pay the price.

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I applaud you for articulating the pragmatist position that males and females biological differences would result in different outcomes in measures as extremes as death in combat

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Shorter version: even if war was common so that the draft burden meant men were substantially worse off it would be no reason not to fix unnecessary ways the law and social norms disadvantage women (and vice versa).

Tho re: need for draft why not just give women who are drafted steroids. The health risks for modest use and liberty imposition are small relative to war risks. Still leaves issues of sexual violence.

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And if we go back to the medevil or even Tudor period both genders were highly bound by gender specific norms. Men had to do one kind of work -/ whether they liked it, had a bad back etc etc, and women another. Men were literally tortured as legal punishment in ways women weren't and they even were hit with harder knockeruppers for napping in church.

Even today men are far more likely to be the victims of physical assault and certainly murder. And it may not feel similar but isn't danger resulting from other men applying a sex stereotype to you much like the dangers women face as a result of their gender.

This is why I think this whole comparison narrative is a huge mistake. What we count as harm or benefit is mostly a matter of perspective (is being seen as physically threatening a benefit or grave harm exposing one to risk and causing some romantic advances to be seen as more threat than flattery) that itself is being determined by our gender norms. And it's virtually impossible to total up harms and benefits especially given different preferences.

It should be enough that there are some ways that gender norms impose unnecessary harm and make people feel unhappy to motivate us to change them. If the end result is women being better off than men or vice versa ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ surely that statistical fact is no reason to not remove unnecessary restrictions from people in one of those groups to make things equal.

After all it's people not demographic groups that experience joy and are made to suffer.

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in Israel EVERYONE serves in the military for two years - women & men are given equal opportunity to fight for their country. The though that men, with greater strength should be on the front lines instead of women is sexist bullshit which runs counter to the concept of equality...

You want true equality = DEMAND to place women on the front lines defending America! Otherwise it's the same old cry that women only want equality when it suits them!

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I thought women were less likely to be in front line combat even in Israel though. I have no idea what is needed for military performance in various positions, but assume it has something to do with physical strength and if so that will affect who is assigned to which position. There’s nothing sexist about judging individuals based on their abilities and giving them jobs accordingly.

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Sep 21Liked by Regan Arntz-Gray

I’m not a fan of “feminism” as a word but respect everything you write in this post. I like how you frame your goals around gender equilibrium and anti-sexism since it makes space for differences while increasing freedom and agency. Good post.

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Thanks so much, Jeff! Appreciate the comment :)

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> "What makes someone a feminist?"

Good question, particularly with so many "no true feminists" floating about. 😉🙂

But somewhat apropos of which and somewhat in passing, an important question of more than passing relevance: would you agree that some cats are male? 😉🙂

In any case but more broadly and as British feminist Amia Srinivasan pointed out, feminism is less a philosophy than a political project, the latter of which has been corrupted by some quite unscientific claptrap. As Maya Forstater pointed out, the rejection of evolution is feminism's "Achilles heel".

As Substacker Helen Dale pointed out, too many "feminists" haven't a clue that "evolution didn't stop at the neck", that there are bedrock differences between the sexes that extend into differences in behaviours, personalities, and abilities of one sort of another.

Somewhat briefly on that point, I'm reminded of a classic pun from Oscar Wilde:

"Woman: what is the essential difference between men and women?

Wilde: Of that madam, I cannot conceive ..."

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I think the problem here becomes most obvious by the time you get to "Most historical societies have not denied rights to men on the basis of their maleness...", the problem is that you're picking and choosing what issues are most important in terms of sex discrimination and role selection, and doing so in a way that you're prioritizing what is salient "to women" (really a very narrow slice of "women" who are really best described as more like "feminist thinkers". Obviously, by such criteria, men will not have been in as much of a bind historically, but that's a selection bias problem.

To give a specific example, when you're talking about having to "efface" yourself, and having to serve the collective good, rather than yourself, you make it out like this is one-sidedly expected of women but this is actually more relevant to men than to women historically. Swearing of public oaths, codes of conduct, signifiers of following and upholding the current social order, rites of passage to enter society as adults, are all things that men are generally more likely to be bound by and expected to engage in, not less.

We view men, by default, with more suspicion than women, and thus we need more reassurance that they're on our team, and we need men to be more public and vocal about doing things for the group than we demand from women. Acting "like a gentleman" is basically just effacing yourself for women specifically. Formal etiquette has no shortage of rules that explicitly preference women over men as a result (but you'll find a dearth of the reverse). Even informally, what is holding a door open for a woman to go first, but showing, as a man, that you're serving the interests of others before helping yourself?

The things you take to be "effacing", rather than representing all of the things that I think of as "effacing" seem to really just reflect a very specific subset of things that come to your mind, specifically because they are talked about because they are part of a certain theory of women's oppression.

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I know it's a bit of a quibble, but I think it's a mistake to say that women lacked power during sexist times. That might be true in the nobility but outside that group it's hard to say who had more power. Indeed, the assumption that women obviously lacked power denies them their agency in perpetuating and enforcing those same gender roles on their son's and daughters and in policing their community via informal mechanisms.

What seems true is that a significant minority of women ended up in pretty shitty situations (abusive husband etc). Though, by the same token, men were subject to pretty horrific legal punishments and executions (some sources suggest 1% of the population) not applied to women.

But -- as always -- relative power or suffering is not only hard to define/determine but pretty unimportant. What is important is that the suffering of being trapped in a bad situation can be truly massive and that for women much of this suffering was the result of norms about gender and marriage. Whether or not women wielded power or even if men had it just as bad is a distraction.

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A meme in theologically conservative protestant churches until very recently has been that the average congregation skews 60/40 women to men and that among the young and unmarried, single men almost never attended church. Now, this may have changed a little in the last couple of years (though not as much as one would think) but most of these churches have not become more conservative on sex roles than they were in...say the mid '90s. For much of the 20th century and even through the first decade of the 21st, it would appear that some significant minority of women found value in upholding the nexus of their own oppression.

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Despite the impression some people give it's actually usually members of a given gender who do most of the enforcement of gender norm conformity. Indeed, if you think about it for a bit this almost has to be the case.

This is why the academics in women studies define the patriarchy as something like "the enforcement of gender roles by society" even when it's other women. I think it's a stupid term to use -- they aren't willing to call the people suggesting it's a man vs woman thing out as mistaken -- but the right concept.

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Thank you. It's interesting to read about the women who were against suffrage:

https://kirkcenter.org/essays/a-cause-lost-and-forgotten/

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I can't tell from what you've written - do you currently feel you love in a patriarchal society? Or is the fear just that we could backslide?

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