A while back, Diversity Chronicle sent me “Feminism and Freedom” by Michael Levin. I just finished reading it, and thought I’d share some thoughts about it with my readers.
Firstly, here’s an accurate summery of the book from Amazon:
Combining philosophical rigor with detailed knowledge of a wide range of subjects, Michael Levin presents a thorough examination of feminism as both a theory and as a generator of social policy. His book provides a much-needed counterweight to uncritical feminist scholarship prevalent in so much social science writing.
Levin argues that feminists deny that innate sex differences have anything to do with the basic structure of society. He shows how this denial leads feminists to interpret observable differences between male and female roles as the result of discrimination and restrictive social conditioning rather than as the free expression of basic preferences. Levin concludes that feminist proposals for remedying this imaginary oppression systematically thwart individual liberty.
The first chapters of Feminism and Freedom show the conflict between feminist ideology and recent developments in anthropology, neurology, child psychology and behavioral genetics, as well as basic principles of scientific method. The author then moves to a wide-ranging discussion of affirmative action, comparable worth, and the impact of feminism on education, military manpower policy, language, family life and sports—showing in each case how feminist policies run counter to classical liberalism. Written in a lively, challenging, and accessible style, as controversial as it is timely, Feminism and Freedom is must reading for anyone interested in understanding society and preserving liberty.
There’s no doubt that Prof. Levin is an exceptional author; his book “Why Race Matters” opened my eyes to the reality of race. Similarly, this book opened my eyes to the true nature of feminism. However, due to Levin’s broad (and academic) vocabulary, many readers will find themselves reaching for their dictionaries.
The book also has more typographical errors than one would expect from such an illustrious author.
What I gleaned from the book is that there is no such thing as “moderate feminism.” All feminism is radical – because, by definition, feminism is at war with nature. In any other age, feminism would never have gained traction, but because its advocates piggybacked the movement onto liberalism in general – and “civil rights” in particular – they were able to hijack government and education on all levels. The results have been catastrophic and tragic. Countless billions of dollars, of taxpayer money, have been wasted, and countless lives ruined due to the feminist agenda.
The book was published in 1987, so the statistics cited therein are dated, but still very relevant. This book was written ten years prior to “Why Race Matters,” and one can already see hints of the latter work in the former – though the author annoyingly gives sympathetic words to the black civil rights movement. Ostensibly to highlight the contrast between the struggle for blacks (which, he says, has merit) with the struggle for women (which, he says, does not have merit). He may have simply been trying to stay out of trouble in this way.
If he were to write the book today, he might have included a chapter on the role of Islam vis-a-vis feminism. But he didn’t, so I’ll claim the insight for myself:
Feminism paved the way for the advance of Islam in Europe. By pressuring women to be like men, and forcing men to be like women, feminist societies left many women feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. Many women simply do not WANT to be just like men; they want to be WOMEN. But Western society made this difficult, and sometimes even impossible.
Along comes Islam, with clearly defined roles for the sexes. In Islam, many Western women found a way to be women again – even with the blessings of the liberal establishment!
As for the unhappy men, some of them also convert to Islam – or commit suicide. Or both.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_feminists
“feminism” is a vital element of the currently dominant, NY/Hollywood-mediated Kosher Culture of Death – abortion, porn, feminism, homosex, etc. – which is, in turn, a full-frontal attack on White reproduction. And at this point an overwhelmingly successful attack, as White birthrates have plummeted. The globalist Jews are in a vast hurry to get rid of the Whites, though, and have supplemented this assault by taking down America’s (and Europe’s) borders and insourcing thousands of hostile Blacks, Mestizos, Asians, and Muslims each and every day. As it stands now, absent collapse of the Universal debtPonzi the Jews are running (which buys consent), the White Race will be extinct in Europe and North America before the end of the 21st century. And who can blame the Jews for carrying out the largest democide in human history? They simply do not wish to be pogrom’d, or ghetto’d, or holocaust’d. Ever. Again.
Of course, Professor Levin is also Jewish, and so am I.
No! You’re Jewish? How have I not known this all these years? I thought maybe your name was Jewam Ongyou and you were Asian. Or the blog name was an instruction to someone named Ongyou engaged in negotiations. Good grief. So there really is a Jew among us huh? Guess I’m gonna have to be more cautious now.
Wait, where did my shekels go? I had them right here a minute ago..
did I say you or Levin weren’t Jews? Of course I didn’t. CA at Western Rifle Shooters is also a Jew and an all around great guy. And then there’s Ilana Issacson-alias-Mercer. And numerous other pro-White Western Civ Jews, which might add up to 2% of organized Jewry. But I’m talking about a central racial tendency. Not Outliers
“In Islam, many Western women found a way to be women again”
wow, this makes sense. more so than the simplistic “wimmin like alphas, muzzies are alphas, wimmin like muzzies”
Yep. Around here, male muslim marriage with Western girls is epidemic.
Why did the white man accquiese to his own suicide? Did he think that geograpical
seperation was going to keep these brutes away from his women? The moslem objective
was-and is-world domination.
Will white males have to convert to Islam to have any hope of procreating with women?
Or will they simply be genocided?
If things are going the the way they are going, then yes, they will have to convert in order to procreate. My whole blog is running about that theme. Contact Robert Stark, also part Jewish like me. He even wanted an interview over the telephone with me for a audio broadcast.
The reason the Right in Europe is run down by Muslims is because it cannot make up its own mind. Are Muslim women poor oppressed creatures that should be pitied, or brown she-monkeys that should be expelled to their own countries and starved to death by withholding development aid?
The Right doesn’t understand that in military history, the Theban phalanx always beat the Spartan phalanx. You HAVE to take in account that Muslim society is basically agnatic, while Western society, even in its most conservative, ‘sexist’ versions, is basically cognatic. Even if Nationalists succeed in killing each Muslim, then still they have to face the fact that many white women have been “broken in” by Muslims, with or without consent. Not nice to start a family with.
This won’t be resolved politically. Nor will mass uprising work since even in well armed America, the people are insurmountably outgunned by the government. The days of our Revolution are long past. Our *only* hope is for an American (or Swedish or name your Western nation here) General Pinochet to emerge with support of the nation’s military and without outside foreign military opposition. A nationalist military dictatorship is our one chance at saving the West. And, like Pinochet, that regime must be willing (eager even) to track down all socialists and take them for scenic helicopter rides. We must rid our genome of the defective genes responsible for socialist ideology. The Arabs, negroes, and aborigines will leave of their own accord when they begin seeing the skies raining white socialists.
Go even to the right of a nationalist military dictatorship. Go for a theocracy. A theocracy that means business if it promises eternal damnation to its enemies.
If you do not deal with subversive “religious” people, they will stab you in the back, like they did to Pinochet. Even Opus Dei nowadays brags about “returning democracy”.
The book also has more typographical errors than one would expect from such an illustrious author.
Don’t blame the author. He had a publisher: Transaction Publishers who boast of their “enduring reputation for excellence as an independent publisher,” but who were too lazy, cheap, or incompetent to proofread what they published. The public should hold publishers to the higher standards that used to prevail before Murdoch and a handful of others took over most of the independent publishers and maxed profits while minimizing added value. If the independent publishers proceed on the same path, there’s no reason for their continued existence.
I’m glad you enjoyed the book! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject of feminism. I also agree with your observations about white women converting to fundamentalist Islam. No doubt many white women do so in order to try to obtain a traditional role as a wife and mother.
At the same time, I am sure many white men are attracted to Islam because of feminism as well. They want to find a good wife, who is a virgin, who wants to be a house wife and a stay at home mother. Believe it or not, many westernized Muslims openly embrace feminism, to the detriment of their own people and culture. I once conversed with a Muslim who told me how the women at the local mosque in the US turned his wife against him, and she ended up divorcing him.
There are some traditional Christians who still reject feminism, but unfortunately they are few and far between. Feminism is a poison. It kills the family. I regard it as one of the most harmful ideologies ever created. Feminism is not worthy of respect, but only contempt. Men and women are different and naturally they should have different roles in society and in the home.
don’t you think that Muslims overdid it a bit? Surely there’s a fine balance to be struck between granting women complete sexual freedom and unaccountability to their families and society at large, and demoting them to chattel status.
This is about South Italians, but I think it’s way worse in Muslims:
“The personality traits of this larger area tend to cluster about two points: (1) The restriction of personal trust and loyalty within the kinship group (usually the extended or nuclear family) with a consequent inability to offer loyalty, trust, or personal identification to residential groups (villages, neighborhoods, parishes), voluntary associations, religious beliefs, or the secular state, resulting in large-scale lack of “public spirit,” combined with “corruption,” and paralysis of these other kinds of associations. (2) The combination of powerful patriarchal social tendencies with female inferiority (except as a mechanism for producing sons) leads to many psychological ambiguities: strong emphasis on female premarital virginity (both as a symbol of family honor and as an economic good), segregation of the sexes in social life, fear of women as a threat men’s virility (witches and belief in “the evil eye”), the need to demonstrate male virility by social “touchiness” and other behavior, including fantasies of demonstrations of male dominance over bulls, other men, and unattached women.”
Don’t know about you, but to me all of this is deeply repugnant.
“complete sexual freedom and unaccountability to their families and society at large”
sorry, this wasn’t something you said, I just thought one step ahead, that’s why it seems disconnected from your argument. I was speaking of the manosphere contention that the character traits wimmin select for (i.e., reward with s*x) are not the same that are conducive to having a civilization, that’s why all cultures – except the feminist West, and only recently – tried to restrict female sexual choice in some way.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/02/does-the-manosphere-morally-corrupt-men/
…but the rest stands.
@ad84 – re the link you provided, I disagree. The “cure” is restoration of nature’s risks and consequences for females making bad sexual choices. The result, as noted, is dysgenic. Science has removed all risk and consequence. Government has gone a step further and provided reward for bad choices via welfare and affirmative action to the single mother. There ought to be reward for healthy reproduction and family, with penalties for anti-social reproduction. A married family of four plus should be tax exempt while a single mother should be sterilized before receiving welfare benefits. We are getting today exactly what we are paying for..
re honor:
A woman’s immodesty or unfaithfulness forfeits her honor and shames the men in the family in whose keeping this honor is vested. Men must put the lapse right at all costs, if need be killing the dishonored woman. A man who kills his wife or daughter for her unfaithfulness, real or supposed, goes to prison glad to have preserved his family’s honor. […] His only alternatives are to be dishonored himself or to leave the community altogether. The community thinks well of him as he pays whatever the penalty may be.
re public spirit:
Shame-honor ranking effectively prohibits the development of wider, more socialized types of human relationship. Status considerations of the kind are impervious to Western concepts of contractual relationships.
Pierre Bourdieu, the French social anthropologist, has pointed out that no dishonor attaches to such primary transactions as selling short weight, deceiving anyone about quality, quantity or kind of goods, cheating at gambling, and bearing false witness. The doer of these things is merely quicker off the mark than the next fellow; owing him nothing, he is not to be blamed for taking what he can. (2)
re ambiguities: my exposure to Muslims is limited, but I’ve seen Arabs on the internet on more that one occasion say something to the effect of “all wimmin are hoes except mommy.” This level of unreflected compartmentalization (aka hypocrisy) can’t be healthy.
like I said, all of this is deeply repugnant to me and I think it is also at odds with everything that made the West great.
All true, but much of the success of feminism is the fault of weak “men.” How many men do you know who can do very basic manly things like change a car tire, replace spark plugs, repair the roof on a home, etc? They instead sit all day in a cubicle like a secretary from the 1950’s and pay a more manly nonwhite to do the man’s work around the home. In my observation, this is the large majority of American men today. How can a woman respect this? What is such a “man” doing that a woman cannot do as well or better? When 90%+ of “men” are terrified by a simple tool like a chainsaw, is it any wonder that we see feminism rising?