The gender wars have begun. Here is the playbook.

Larry Kummer, Editor

7 years ago

Summary: The gender wars have begun. The major conflict of our time, it is changing the shape of America. This is a summary of its why, who, and how.

“In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
— From The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis (1943).

ID 129085104 © Bulat Silvia | Dreamstime.

The gender wars have begun. This will be the major social conflict of our time. Bigger than the US military’s nostalgic dream of fighting Russia, China, and Iran. Bigger than the Left’s nostalgic yen for obsolete communism. Bigger than the Right’s lust for plutocracy or imaginary libertarianism. It is already reshaping America, but is too big for us to see.

The FM website has ten score posts about the “gender wars” – exploring many ways to understand the rapid, radical evolution in gender roles and institutions. Under its stress, the bolts are popping out of American society. It is too complex to see clearly, with many factors in motion: ideology, technology, the changing nature of work, the evolution of human rights, etc. This makes it difficult to understand, and almost impossible to find solutions.

Some people explain it by describing the kaleidoscope of events. Some explain by looking at causes (e.g., William Lind blames followers of the Frankfurt School of social theory). Neither is an operationally useful perspective. We need something that explains people’s behavior, how we got here, and suggests new paths to a better future. We need something that gives us one end of the giant ball of string that is the gender wars. That is what this post does. This picture flatters neither men nor women. It is speculative, as these matters lie beyond the edge of the known.

The result of feminism, and a cause of feminism:

ID 140171752 © Maksim Artemchuk | Dreamstime.

Women tell the harsh truth

Kevin Frazier to Charlize: “Have you ever dated a longshot? …For the average guy {asking you out} is a long shot.”

Charlize Theron: “It really isn’t. I’ve been single for ten years. It’s not a long shot. Somebody just needs to grow a pair and step up.”

— Interview with Theron on “Entertainment Tonight” about her new film Long Shot (trailer), about a beautiful and powerful woman (the Secretary of State) falling in love with a hapless beta.

Theron repeats a theme heard on the Left and the Right. Men need to grow a pair. Or, weak men are screwing up America. We hear this even from conservative Christians – see Dalrock’s posts documenting this (e.g., this new example). Men have not been listening.

This perspective is operationally powerful. It focuses our attention on what that we can change (of course, women like Theron might not like the result of men taking their advice). It also has predictive power, pointing to a dark future if we continue on this path. For example, weak men (i.e., without a pair) are unlikely to implement a The Handmaid’s Tale scenario (a favorite scary tale of feminists). But before discussing the likely future, how did this happen?

She despises weak men in her personal life, but enjoys a society filled with them:

ID 126380924 © Alyona Buravtsova | Dreamstime.

We built the house we live in

“{Modern} moralism condemns certain keystones, removes them, and then blames both the nature of the stones and the structure when it collapses.”
— Allan Bloom in Closing of the American Mind.

Strong societies work to raise boys fit to run their society and avoid the chaos created by “feral” (unsocialized) men. Sparta and Republican Rome are extreme examples. This was also America. We raised boys with stories of strong men, and encouraged boys to become like them.

“On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”

In modern America we do the opposite: we socialize boys to make them weak.

How did this happen? Disasters (excluding natural disasters) usually result from multiple and reinforcing errors. So it is in America today. Feminists produce weak sons. Dads subservient or acquiescing to their feminist wives produce weak sons. Hollywood produces shows and commercials about weak men (especially fathers) and strong women (especially mothers) – and mocks or condemns traditional men. Too-busy families produce weak sons. Single mothers produce weak sons. Feminist-dominated institutions – such as our schools, churches and youth groups – produce weak boys. Institutions that train boys to be strong, such as Boy Scouts and male-only sports programs, are under attack.

Christina Hoff Summers described this in her book, The War Against Boys (2000). Since then the attacks have become more open, more powerful. For a follow-up, see The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys Are Struggling and What We Can Do About It by Warren Farrell and John Gray. For a horrific example of this, see the brutal indoctrination of boys in a woke high school, using tactics similar to those of China’s Cultural Revolution.

Stating the obvious. ID 108180837 © Susan Vineyard | Dreamstime.

The fruits of their victory

“What are little boys made of
What are little boys made of
Snips & snails & puppy dogs tails
And such are little boys made of.”

“What are little girls made of
Sugar & spice & all things nice.”

— Ancient adage. First by poet Robert Southey (1774–1843).

We are reaping the harvest from generations of this program. Young men are withdrawing from dating and marriage, graduation rates of boys are falling in high school and college, and men are “dropping out” of the rat race (aka the labor market). Feminists chortle about their victory, announcing that “men are the weaker sex” and proclaiming The End of Men And the Rise of Women (details here).

This victory results from a revolutionary insight by the Left – and the ignorant complacency of the Right. Long ago, Cornell Professor Judith Long Laws (author of The Second X: Sex Role and Social Role, 1978) taught me that gender was a social construct. Time has proven her and her peers correct. Much of what we considered “male” and “feminine” behavior resulted from how children were raised. The Left used this insight as the basis for a revolution, remaking society by changing its foundations. Conservatives laughed at this foolish theory and allowed the Left to change America.

They have weakened men beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Entropy makes destruction easy. But their most radical success was with women. What we saw as women’s natural state was the result of intense indoctrination. For example, we thought pronatalism was natural, but it resulted from raising girls so they wanted to be mothers and knew how to raise children. Now women are free to follow their own nature (their “core programming”). These new women are often slightly feral (i.e., like unsocialized men); see music videos for examples. But more important is the achievement of the Left’s dream in the 1960’s: the collapse of gender roles (details here). America’s new women are often unisex in dress and behavior (except when girls dress to play and work, cosplay), and each generation becomes more so.

Each year provides more evidence that results of this revolution are incompatible with anything remotely resembling our “traditional” family structure (details here). America’s families are lab rats in one of the biggest experiments, ever. Bet on bad results.

There is no “fault” in how men and women are behaving. People live as they were taught as children. Today’s men and women act on the values the Boomers and Gen X taught them. The resulting system produces positive feedback. Attack the marriage and family, undermining their foundations. Change schools to weaken boys. The result: lots of single mothers. Single mothers tend to produce weak boys. Repeat for several generations. See the New America.

The inevitable counter-revolution

The New America looks stable, but has contradictions guaranteeing its fall. First, as the Bible says, there is always a remnant. America has reservoirs of masculinity where the forces of liberal indoctrination are weak and the environment is Darwinian. Such as on the streets of our inner cities, in the military – and in these jobs.

From the press release about the 2017 “Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries.“

Second, woman will bring the new order down. We smashed the traditional family system and discovered that unsocialized women often like bad boys (i.e., those with dark triad behaviors). Many women love criminals (even serial killers). And they dislike beta men – often with a visceral hatred (here’s a fun video illustration). For example, see this graph from OkCupid’s vast database. I do not know its source; it is drawn from the data in their 2009 report – showing that “women rate an incredible 80% of guys as worse-looking than medium.”

Perhaps women are dissatisfied with an America overflowing with weak men. That would explain some of women’s support for open borders (e.g., see this survey of young women). The vast majority of migrants come from patriarchal societies. Many come from failed states where men treat women a bit like animals. Many new women want strong men, and will do what it takes to get them.

Men’s growing recognition of these things will shatter the current system. On January 1610, Galileo saw moons orbiting Jupiter – not Earth – and our conception of the universe changed. When men see how the new gender game works, America will change.

Another factor makes a counter-revolution possible. Women will – like iron filings near a magnet – reorient themselves deferentially in the presence of strong men. This effect begins in high school. Also, see radical feminists deferring to Islamic patriarchs, donning hijabs and ignoring their treatment of women. For example, Kathleen O’Day Wynne was Ontario’s first female premier of Ontario and the first openly gay head of government in Canada. When she visited the Masjid Toronto mosque, she wore a hijab and docilely sat in the back until given permission to speak. How would she have responded to such instructions by a Catholic priest?

What happens next?

The courses of revolutions are unpredictable, as are their endings. But we can, if we wish, take responsibility for America, the first step to regaining control. It is all about our choices, and our willingness to pay the price needed to build a better future.