How to Destroy Feminism, "Root & Branch"

 

It is well within our power.

Janice Fiamengo’s devastating new expose of feminism occasions some thoughts about how we might act upon her insistence that feminism is beyond reform or redemption and that it must be, as she says, “destroyed, root and branch”.

And if Dr Fiamengo’s book is not occasion enough, the trial of Lindsay Clancy for the gruesome murders of her own children — and perhaps even more, the chilling, mass-psychotic endorsement of those acts by both feminists (predictably) and millions of women under their influence — would seem to make the elimination of this deadly ideology an urgent imperative.

Dr Fiamengo’s scathing indictment of feminism sits atop mountains of less articulate discontent and legitimate anger. Even before the Clancy trial, the internet generally and the “manosphere” in particular were exploding with debates, arguments, and yes, enormous amounts of pointless chatter — all attesting to the ongoing breakdown of families, marriage, courtship, dating, sex, childbearing, childrearing, “relationships” generally between not only the sexes but also the generations, and finally, as she puts it, “civilization itself”. And now we might extend the list to basic human decency. This fear and anger proceeds from the growing realization that almost all of it results from feminist ideology.

Yet amid the growing consensus that feminism is a plague on our society, I also detect unbroken pessimism about the prospects that we can ever hope to rid ourselves of it. It is the most hazardous agenda of the left to criticize, and so hardly any effective opposition exists. From the quarters where we most expect resistance — conservatives and churches, for example — we find not only silence but active collaborators.

Dr Fiamengo herself refrains from offering solutions, and elsewhere she has expressed doubts about how to put an end to it. Others who attribute impending civilizational collapse to feminism are likewise at a loss to offer much hope. Another harsh academic critic of feminism, Dr Danielle Sulikowski (likewise recently interviewed on The Mansplainers), whose intriguing anthropological theory attributes civilizational decline to dysfunctional, feminist-inspired sexual dynamics, often ends her video interviews saying she sees no hope in checking the trends she describes and admits she can offer no remedies.

All this comes alongside a broader consensus that is now emerging in many fields of public affairs, perhaps most notably international politics, that contemplates the catastrophic decline of western global hegemony and even western civilization itself — predictions likewise frustratedly devoid of solutions. Seldom does this larger consensus connect the decline to sexual trends such as feminism (at least not openly), but the final result is the same.

So, can we really be rid of this pestilence?

Yes, and it is actually simple; it may even happen without our conscious or active effort. Feminism can be eradicated, unlike the way it imposes itself, without resorting to authoritarian measures or censorship or infringing anyone’s personal freedom.

It is true that little will be achieved by traditional political methods: voting, letter-writing, lobbying, litigation. Nor by engaging with the vast, largely feminine media industry catering to feminists and conveying chit-chat about “relationships”, he-said/she-said, celebrity gossip, other gossip, and similar self-indulgences.

Fortunately, the chatter is now superfluous. Janice has exposed the horrors of feminism — radical, liberal, “moderate”, socialist, the lot. Armed with this book, and a few others like it (many of which she cites),¹ the rest of us can concentrate our energy on using the power men still possess, not to complain about the problem but, as men have always done, to solve it.

What Is Needed

Breaking the back of feminism requires that men regain control of the two things that give women and feminists power: sex and children. Men can exercise their natural leadership role and free themselves, women, and their societies from the feminist-driven trainwreck by taking back their authority over the two things that naturally “empower” women and give feminists the leverage to inflict their tyranny over men and the rest of the society: sexuality and the reproductive system. These were the first things that feminists learned to control before they came to control, as Fiamengo shows, almost everything else.

Once men regain control over these two things, everything else will fall into place. Men’s secondary grievances will be easier to rectify. We can then all resume normal lives: finding mates, raising families, rebuilding our deteriorating civilization. We can even once again (strange as it may be to say) entrust children to the care of women.

Here Is How

So how do men regain their control over sex and reproduction? The first is relatively easy and provides the means to the second. In fact, many men have already embarked on this path without realizing it. They just need to do so with more determination and purpose.

Men can regain control over the terms of sex just like women do: by withholding it; by sexual self-control. This is already being provided spontaneously by the Marriage Strike: men’s impromptu boycott of marriage, families, and women generally. This is the larger importance of MGTOW, “incels”, and healthy versions of demands for male self-reliance. This trend is already starting to bite, which is why feminists and tradcons are so annoyed by it.

This in turn provides the leverage men need to re-establish iron-clad rights and authority over their children. Prior to the modern state’s quasi-totalitarian intrusion into private family life, this authority could just be assumed, not only by law, but simply through superior male strength. Nowadays, under the overweening state that effectively supersedes and neuters that strength, it is called “custody”, and it is bestowed by overmighty functionaries, from whom it can be re-acquired only by influencing or controlling the state power, which means taking it back from women and feminized men. Men must therefore use the leverage they are now steadily acquiring from the Marriage Strike to single-mindedly demand custodial authority over all children born within a legally binding marriage contract.

But demands must be backed by strength. Enough women can be persuaded to surrender their monopoly over reproduction, and even enlist themselves as allies to enact laws restoring paternal authority – but only if they are deprived of husbands and male attention for a time. Men exercising sufficient sexual self-control to boycott marriage and families are building the leverage they need to regain control over the reproductive system.

Those with public voices must be the ones to make clear to the world — including women, tradcons, churches, media, and the judicial/bureaucratic authorities — that these are the terms that men demand before they will return to engagement with women, mating, reproduction, and the rest. And they are the terms for resolving those manifestations of the crisis that agitate even the political class and mainstream media: birth dearth, fatherlessness, crime, shootings, plus many more ills from which they avert their eyes and hold their tongues but that lie within our power to remedy.

These conditions are not my opinion. The existing trend shows that they are a matter of objective fact.

Scolding and nagging and demonizing men are pointless. Nothing will change until the injustices of the custody machine are rectified. Change the laws and clean up the courts, and women — along with men, and children, and entire societies — will once again have families, along with the blessings and benefits that accrue from them: an abundance of happy and well-adjusted (and safe) offspring, social stability, law-and-order, economic prosperity, political freedom, constitutional rights, an enduring civilization.

Once men regain their authority over reproduction, feminism will wither. The cat women can still rant on about “inequality,” “wage gaps,” “male violence,” even “reproductive rights”, and whatever petty “unfairness” they care to concoct (“himpathy”? “gender washing”?), but no one will care. With fathers firmly ensconced as heads of their families, the cat women can no longer recruit massive numbers of teenage girls, and they will gradually age out of the population.

Is that not a pleasant thought?

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An important virtue of this book is that Fiamengo is a professional scholar and cites sources. This is important not only for fairness but because it establishes a body of literature and shows the world that she did not dream all this up last week. Unlike our Tweets, this book and its documentation does not join a gazillion others out there in cyberspace. Politicians, judges, media, other scholars cannot dismiss it as some passing fad. Fiamengo cites a rich body of high-quality literature, published in mainstream publications and going back at least three decades, much of which is in danger of being forgotten. Some authors sacrificed enormously for their honesty, and some were so burned that they turned to other topics and never looked back: University of Arizona psychologist Sanford Braver’s book on divorced fathers; Helen Smith on the Marriage Strike; Melanie Phillips’ scathing book on gender politics; Cathy Young’s numerous articles on fathers and feminism, including a cover story in the The American Spectator; Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young’s books on misandry; plus more recent authors like William Collins, author of The Empathy Gap. She also cites my books, especially Taken Into Custody, where I likewise try to cite the many brave scholars and journalists who risked and often sacrificed their careers to challenge the injustices against fathers and children: Daniel Amneus on father custody; John Waters, who used (and gave up) his post on the mainstream Irish Times to expose the injustices; Kathleen Parker, who wrote a good book on men before being bought off by a cushy job at the Washington Post; Donna Laframboise’s series of exposes of domestic violence shelters in another mainstream newspaper; Canadian Senator Anne Cools’ outspoken criticisms of feminism; anti-feminist campaigner Phyllis Schlafly, who single-handedly defeated the Equal Right Amendment and who valiantly took up the cause of fathers against resistance from her own organization. (I know I have omitted some who deserve mention.)

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