Women can destroy any society to which they belong simply by refusing to be wives and mothers

 

Second Thoughts from an Ex-Feminist

The Goddess that Failed: Feminism’s Unending War Against Men, Families, and Civilization Itself

Janice Fiamengo
New English Review Press, 2026

Janice Fiamengo, born 1964, is a retired professor of English at the University of Ottawa. Entering the academy as an impressionable young woman in the 1980s, her initial acceptance of feminism must have been almost a foregone conclusion: “I have felt its euphoric exultation and its self-flattering conviction of moral purity,” she admits. She studied all the standard feminist texts and for many years took the validity of their analysis for granted. But The Goddess that Failed is not her personal story. However her disillusionment came about, she began speaking out against the movement in 2012. Her work can be followed online at The Fiamengo File. https://substack.com/@fiamengofile

The author does not blunt her message with any assumption that there must originally have been a good, moderate, or reasonable feminism that was later hijacked, betrayed, or taken to excess by wayward followers. She reminds us, for example, that the campaign for women’s suffrage in the United Kingdom over a century ago escalated from heckling politicians and smashing shop windows to arson attacks on homes and churches. Some suffragettes concocted letter bombs out of phosphorous and sulfuric acid. One threw a hatchet at Prime Minister Asquith:

Through all the destruction of property, threat to livelihoods, and physical harm to innocent bystanders, the suffragettes saw themselves as sacrificial heroines. Like many terrorists, they envisioned their cause as pure enough to justify nearly any level of violence…. They were successful in their campaign at least in part because the men they castigated as villains couldn’t bear to deal firmly with their maudlin claims and dangerous acts.

Fiamengo knows that a crucial element in feminism’s success has been the strong natural bias in favor of women that characterizes both sexes: a synergy between female in-group preference and the male protective instinct. There has been some objective research on this timeless phenomenon. In 1994, for example, psychologists Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic reported that both male and female research subjects were more likely to ascribe positive traits to women than to men, with the bias measurably stronger in women; they christened this the “women-are-wonderful” effect. Later studies found women’s in-group bias four and a half times stronger than men’s. In 2019 British psychologists Martin Seager and John Barry developed the concept of “Gamma bias” to describe “unconscious prejudice against men and boys,” as observed in the tendency of both men and women to sympathize more with women than men.

Such studies are valuable, but as with much of social psychology, they merely confirm something that has always been widely known: men are expected to put the needs of women and children first. As Fiamengo points out, feminists could never have achieved the success they have if men were remotely similar to the selfish brutes they depict. Even half a century of feminist fury has been unable to do away with men’s natural bias in women’s favor.

The other side of male bias in women’s favor is what the author calls “the empathy gap”—the often-shocking inability or unwillingness of many women to empathize with male suffering. She recounts that after the sinking of the Titanic, a group of women survivors organized to build a memorial to the men who had sacrificed themselves in the women’s favor:

Some feminists refused gratitude, noting that men had built the ship and therefore could be expected to take their lumps when it proved faulty. Some proclaimed with fury that women suffered daily under men’s cruelty; a single day of suffering and death paled by comparison.

During the First World War, thousands of British women participated in a mass-shaming ritual of their menfolk, accosting any man they found in civilian clothing to present him with a white feather as a symbol of his cowardice. They accompanied the gesture with rehearsed speeches making clear their furious contempt: “Why don’t you fellows enlist? Your King and Country want you. We don’t.” This went on for the entire duration of the war, and feathers were even given to wounded men on leave or underage boys. One sixteen-year-old was so mortified by the bullying that he lied about his age in order to enlist and was promptly killed. Fiamengo also mentions an officer awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery; that same day he changed into civilian clothes only to be given a white feather by some female passers-by: “He accepted without a word and, as a curiosity, put it with his V.C. He remarked to a friend that he was probably the only man who ever received on the same day emblems of bravery and cowardice.” The man later died at the front.

Such attitudes continue to this day, as feminists brag online about “bathing in male tears” and exult over various instances of male suffering.

The similarities between feminism and Marxism have long been noted: indeed, as far back as 1884, Friedrich Engels explicitly drew a parallel between wives and the oppressed proletariat. Most importantly, feminism shares the Marxist mental gestalt whereby society is envisaged in terms of conflicting innocent and guilty groups. As Fiamengo observes, this leaves feminism unable to affirm any universal principles of justice: “it is incapable of extending empathy to whose it has been taught to see as oppressors” or “of demanding accountability from those it has been taught to see as victims.” Because of this inability, “one of feminism’s biggest lies has been its declared aim to overthrow traditional Western gender arrangements in order to liberate men as well as women into an equal partnership.”

This last remark is a useful reminder: in the more optimistic days of early “second wave” feminism, back in the 1970s, the movement did indeed claim to seek the liberation of men as well as women from traditional arrangements. Female careerism, e.g., would supposedly ease the burden upon husbands to be sole providers for their families. Such talk has now largely disappeared.

The parallel with Marxism is instructive here as well. Officially, socialist revolution was supposed to liberate the bourgeoisie as well as the working class from the “alienation” that characterizes capitalism. The sons of capitalists would one day join hands with the sons of the proletariat in order to build the classless society of the future, and the unfortunate but necessary stage of “merciless class struggle” would barely survive as a memory. But Marxist practitioners such as Lenin quickly became too preoccupied with killing the class enemy to worry much about healing him of his capitalist alienation.

A similar development can be observed in feminism as well: an involuntarily divorced husband would not make much headway in family court by appealing to the supposed feminist goal of reducing his burdens as a provider. “The last thing aimed at by feminism,” Fiamengo notes, “is the liberation of men from their traditional roles and obligations.” Feminists alternate opportunistically between their explicit egalitarian ideology and appeals to traditional notions of male duty; logical consistency is not important to them.

For this reason, close analysis of feminist doctrine is perhaps of less use in making sense of the movement than a look at the psychological rewards it provides to adherents. A relevant 2020 study involving researchers from America and—perhaps not accidentally—Israel identifies what it calls “TIV,” the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood, as a stable personality trait involving a chronic, deep-seated feeling of being a victim across many different relationships and situations. Fiamengo summarizes:

Passionate belief in one’s victimhood creates an identifiable personality type, one that ruminates on grievance and interprets all experiences through the victimhood lens. Belief in victimhood need have no correlation with actual experience of victimization. The victim personality is characterized above all by a strong need to have one’s suffering recognized. With this need comes a conviction of immaculate morality, a resulting inability to accept criticism or disagreement, and a profound lack of empathy for those perceived as enemies. The researchers also found that people with a victim personality believe themselves justified in taking revenge on those who appear to oppress them. Even when presented with facts and evidence to rebut their beliefs, they are unwilling to relinquish their worldview, which becomes intimately associated with their sense of self. Anger at others and the belief in innocent victimhood create a toxic stew of self-righteousness and moral blindness.

Fiamengo notes that many young women experience something like a religious conversion upon “finding” feminism: “adherents feel washed clean, reborn, filled with purpose and zeal…. All of life’s dissatisfactions make sense and can be blamed on the oppressive system. Nothing is one’s own fault.”



Caption on Fiamengo’s website: Feminism Cannot Be Reformed

Obviously, not all women are feminists. American conservatives have long taken comfort from the well-attested finding that a majority of women express reservations about the label. But all radical movements involve a small, hard core and a far larger and fuzzier periphery, and feminism’s periphery now extends deeply into Western society. Fiamengo writes that, while she tries to maintain the distinction between women and feminists, this can sometimes be difficult.

A 2020 Pew poll found that only 19% of American women say the term feminist describes them “very well,” but another 42% say it describes them “somewhat well.” So that makes 61% unwilling to distance themselves from feminism unambiguously. A closer examination of the other 39% would probably reveal plenty of feminist influence as well. As the author notes, most women now take for granted that they belong to a “historically oppressed group,” and accept as a matter of course that special legal protections and government programs should promote their advancement and well-being. People cannot be marinated in an ideology their entire lives without coming to believe that at least some of its claims must be true. Fiamengo also mentions the phenomenon of “confirmation bias:” applying a feminist lens when viewing the world helps one see evidence supporting it while screening out contradictory information.

The author is under no illusions that feminism can be reformed:

Even today, half a century after the implementation of equity hiring programs as well as ceaseless female empowerment campaigns in schools and universities, many women are still angry and many men still trying to make amends. It must be stopped. We will never reach a point where feminists decide to call off the gender war, accepting that men have done enough for them. There will never come a point where the suffering of boys and men matters more to feminists than their own power.

Women can destroy any society to which they belong simply by refusing to be wives and mothers. Feminism brings such a refusal about by directly undermining women’s ability to love. No less than other hostile forces discussed on this website, it is a deadly threat to European Civilization.

F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
From replays:

StrathClydesays

I’ve studied this issue for a few years and have come to a few conclusions.
Firstly, as the authoress of the book states, there is no ‘correct’ Feminism. Feminism in all it’s guises and methods is a disease. But it’s also a disease caused by a precedent.
Secondly, it is incorrect to lay the blame for Feminism at only the doorstep of the Jews. As with many ‘issues’ of our age, the soil was first ripe for it’s poisoning. Beginning in the 19th century, men of the West began the process of becoming feminized. We advanced our civilization and societies too fast. Treitschke, was one of a number of commentators writing in the end of the 19th century who complained of it in his time and place. This feminization of the White race was enormously exacerbated in Europe in particular by the dysgenic processes caused by two fratricidal world wars. These were wars the scale of which had no precedent, and as such, the dysgenic results also has no precedent in terms of scale (though there were precedednts in a smaller scale following, for example, Greece [5th cent. BC] and Rome’s own [1st cent. BC] fratricidal wars). British-Italian social philosopher Anthony M. Ludovici wrote of it extensively following the First World War (see ‘Man: An Indictment'[1927] and Woman: A Vindication'[1929]). David S. Jordan’s book, ‘War and The Breed’, written specifically on the topic of the dysgenic cost of the industrial slaughter of the First World War is also very much worth reading.
Thirdly, and directly connected to the above, women did not simply ‘adopt’ Feminism and declare war on men. Women are built as reactive creatures, and throughout the entire history of civilization, men have always been the tone-setters, the arbiters. Or at least, they’re meant to be. But Nature deplores a vacuum. The men became feminized, lost too many of the old masculine qualities, the women became masculinized and – most crucially – the women (at the collective-unconscious level) subtly lost respect for their menfolk.
Lastly, the most profound conclusion I have come to is that Feminism and many other aspects of recalcitrant behaviour exhibited by females (“the women are out of control”) are all efforts towards provoking men in order to elicit a response from men that may befit the default masculine nature of their ancestors – one of God’s/Nature’s great attempts at ‘resetting’ for the sake of returning to a healthier equilibrium. The problem – for many, many decades now – is that men have not been responding the way women/Nature/God would prefer and have instead been accomodating women’s displeasing unwomanly behaviours (the ‘tests’) and worse, giving them more extensive opportunities to displace us and undermine masculinity that remains in our civilization.
The women give the ‘tests’, but the men have been failing them, again and again and again (“Refugees Welcome”). The modern phenomenon of White women actively seeking out new arrivals right off the boats (often at cost of their lives – proof they are acting at an unconscious level) is a classic example of this GOADING that I am talking about. These women – unconsciously, making use of the ‘skills’ gifted to her by nature/God, are trying to provoke a reaction from the menfolk by using the interlopers as pychological weapons; they are trying to trigger a reaction that would result in the resetting of the national fabric to a status that is more conducive to a safer, healthier and more beneficial state for all the natives through extirpation of the interlopers. But the men are not doing this and the women willc keep performing these ‘tests’ until the men finally colectively respond, respond in a manner that is strictly exclusive of the trends of modernity or the wishes of foreigners. In their soul, Womankind understands that it’s the menfolk who determine the course of civilzation and whether the race thrives & multiplies or declines and dies out.
“The women are out of control” Because the men have lost the will to control them.
Feminism is more about men than women.

F. Roger Devlin:

I agree that women are unconsciously hoping for us to take charge and restrain them. But this is difficult when doing so is considered “violence against women” and gets you jailed. So many men are simply shunning them altogether instead.

 https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/