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The Frontman Fallacy is the mistaken belief that people (men, specifically) in positions of authority in democratic systems use their power mainly to benefit the categories of people (the category of men, in particular) they belong to. In western countries, male leaders are accessible only to a very small portion of their constituency (women's groups, among them) and they tend ignore appeals from men's groups.
In fact, we don't have to look any further than President Bill Clinton for a perfect example of a Frontman. He was so pro-Feminist that the main thing which prevented him from being impeached for perjury about his extra-marital affair with Monica Lewinsky was the organised support of the Feminist movement. The Feminists were grateful for his support on abortion, bringing homosexuals into the armed forces - in fact, his across-the-board support of all their causes.
For all its power, however, Feminism is basically a brain-dead ideology that achieved its remarkable victories through a combination of bullying, blatant lies, simple-minded distortions and emotional blackmail, rather than on the intellectual merits of its arguments. Kate Millett, for example, is a very important name in the intellectual history of modern Feminism, yet her reasoning is rife with errors:
If one takes patriarchal government to be the institution whereby that half of the populace which is female is controlled by that half which is male, the principles of patriarchy appear to be twofold: male shall dominate female, elder male shall dominate younger. (Kate Millett, 1972: Sexual Politics. London: Abacus. Page 25).
That is Millett's definition of patriarchy. Her crucial point is the notion of "control." What Millett means by this term is made clear as follows:
(O)ur society ... is a patriarchy. The fact is evident at once if one recalls that the military, industry, technology, universities, science, political office, and finance - in short, every avenue of power within the society, including the coercive force of the police, is entirely in male hands. (ibid, page 25).
It is a good rule of thumb that, if you want to look for the weaknesses in someone's argument, find sentences starting with words such as "evident," "evidently," "obvious," or "obviously." These flag the weak assumptions the writer/speaker needs to prop up with confident-sounding language. In this case, the weakness is the fact that there is a large number of males in these professions does not logically imply they are "controlling" women any more than they are controlling other men. Men may occupy many high-status positions, but they comprise the majority in very many low-status occupations, as well. More importantly, if the "coercive force of the police" is directed mainly at women, why do men constitute the overwhelming majority arrested by the police?
Feminists assume that male officials usually promote the interests of men over those of women, which is seldom the case. True, male officials may at times have been unaware of a female perspective on certain issues, but this was counterbalanced by paternalistic chivalry, which has led male officials to treat women more leniently than men. Nowadays, in Western societies, Feminist propaganda is the ruling ideology, and few male officials are unaware of Feminist positions on everything under the sun - whereas pro-male viewpoints are either derided or ignored. At the same time, male chivalry has hardly decreased, and Male Feminists are anti-male, so that women now have it both ways.
Female feminist officials, on the other hand, use their power almost exclusively to benefit females. For example, New Zealand Minister of Women's Affairs, Christine Fletcher, used her power to establish the position of Women's Health Officer in her Ministry. She did this without the slightest attempt to prove women have greater health needs than men, who certainly don't have any "Men's Health Officer." This sexist woman just felt "passionate" about the issue, and that was that!
Fact is, we can make a case that democratic countries are actually matriarchies, and male politicians are the paid servants of Feminists. The litmus test is whether the (mainly male) politicians enact legislation favouring men's interests more than women's interests. What we find is during the last two hundred years western history is peppered with examples of mainly male governments enacting legislation benefiting women more than men. Since the late 18th Century (see Chapter 15 for a historical rundown), mainly male governments have enacted legislation giving women the vote, according women equal pay with men, liberalising abortion laws, increasing penalties for rape, and so forth, all without protecting men's interests in family, mating rituals, work-place behaviours or educational institutions.
Vaginal politics
Most decision-makers in society's political institutions may be men, but they have done and do little for men and much for women. Why?
Male decision-makers are subject to pressure from individual women (friends, family members, etc.), as well as female pressure-groups. Feminism created the slogan, "the personal is political," thereby turning many a bedroom into a battleground, forcing men to choose between their marriage and their principles, between love and integrity, between wealth and poverty. Feminist policies also contributed much to the virtual demise of the single-income family with a male breadwinner in favor of the two-income family. While employers' need for workers grew at about the same gradual pace it always had, the supply of workers almost doubled over the span of a few years. Wages stagnated while profits grew and the male executives who prospered as a result have a vested interest in perpetuating the Feminist system and catering to Feminist sexism.
Here is an example of Male Feminist behaviour: at a regional meeting I attended of teacher union representatives, the chairman, who was the male partner of a high-profile Feminist teacher, started the meeting by telling us on which floors the toilets were, and saying, dead-pan, there were combination-locks on the women's toilets, but not the men's, because men were too stupid to operate combination locks! No one protested this blatantly sexist remark, but as he gazed across the room he received a glance of affirmation for his Uncle Tom-like behaviour from the women. Imagine the enraged reaction had he said women were too stupid to operate combination-locks.
How can they get away with such behavior? Where are the groups speaking on behalf of men? Women's pressure groups far outnumber men's. For example, as of December, 1999, a search at Alta Vista for "men's rights" produced 2,256 pages/results while searching for "women's rights" produced 39,527 pages/results - 17.5 times as many. Evidence of just how much Feminists dominate gender-issues: men's voices in this area are virtually silenced by the overwhelming pressure Feminists bring to bear on male decision-makers. On this basis, one could almost suggest women have about 17.5 times as much power as men in western societies.
There are various forms of power in Society:
- the power of decision-makers, such as politicians, judges and juries;
- military and police power;
- the power of the media to cover and package issues as they see fit;
- the power of the education system to inculcate values it and its individual employees believe in;
- the power of pressure-groups to influence the media, politicians and bureaucracy;
- the power of bureaucrats to interpret legislation and regulations, and discriminate against certain clients.
This last sort of power is also now largely in the hands of women: the December 1998 New Zealand Household Labour Force Survey shows men concentrated in employment categories involving working with objects, whereas women are concentrated in occupations dealing with members of the public.
Men outnumber women in:
- Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing by 107,300 to 49,900;
- Manufacturing by 195,700 to 86,300;
- Construction by 104,300 to 12,500, and
- Transport, Storage, and Communication by 70,300 to 34,000.
On the other hand, women outnumber men in:
- Education by 89,600 to 41,000, and
- Health and Community Services by 98,400 to 23,100.
In Other categories ("Wholesale and Retail Trade, etc.", "Business and Financial Services," "Other Services", and "Not Specified"), men and women were present in roughly equal numbers. Although these figures are for New Zealand, the proportions are not significantly different in other western countries. This gives women disproportionate power in administering and interpreting - on a daily basis - the rules and regulations affecting the lives of men, women and children. Whenever a man or boy comes into contact with a social worker, court psychologist, teacher, etc., that person will probably be a woman, or - even if not actually a woman - a member of a female-dominated profession with a hefty bias against men.
Misandry in the mainstream
Nowadays, Feminism is so mainstream that Mussolini's granddaughter, the leader of a Neo-Fascist party, described herself as a Feminist. However, 20th Century Feminism originally tacked itself onto the back of the Left in general, and Marxism in particular. This is the part of the political spectrum which loves to use the word "oppression."
Certainly, various ethnic and social groups "oppress" other ethnic and social groups all over the world, and to various degrees in different ways. But the relationship between men and women is much more cooperative than the relationship between ethnic groups because men and women (still) need each other to produce and raise families. Ethnic groups are not usually so indispensable to each other.
So applying the "oppression" model to male-female relationships has only been feasible academically by bullying intelligent men into acquiescence and making them fear for their careers or marriages if they publicly disagree. Thus the field of Women's Studies was intentionally isolated from the need for rigorous academic analysis, and this has allowed it to be almost entirely polemical in nature.
Ironically, there is a considerable contradiction between the Marxist and Feminist approaches to the notion of political power. Marxism defines a "Capitalist" as someone who makes money from money; i.e., by directly or indirectly making money from other people's work rather than from his/her own productive work. Capitalists use their money to influence the political system, including the decision-makers, who are usually not Capitalists themselves. Marxists do not point to the class a decision-maker comes from as evidence they make decisions in favour of that particular class. Marxists would regard that approach as naïve and simplistic.
Feminists, by contrast, rely heavily on the Frontman Fallacy. They point to the number of male decision-makers as evidence the political system favours men. This is extremely superficial and has flourished only because of the lack of intellect, objectivity and male input into Gender Studies. Hence, Women's Studies is really an ideology rather than an academic discipline. As such, its popularity must eventually wane.
Ideologies are akin to religion. Like religions, an ideology such as Feminism or Marxism is compatible with more or less any state of affairs in the real world. All theologians and ideologues worth their salt can explain virtually any natural event as being irrelevant to their beliefs, and therefore compatible with them. However, religions have an other-worldliness that gives them greater durability than ideologies. Political, economic and military failures tend to be blamed on governments and their ideologies more often than on religions. Hence, ideologies come and go.
Marxism is no longer the force it used to be. Feminism has been around longer than Marxism, and is bound to be weakened by the virtual demise of Marxism because of the de facto alliance between the two (e.g., The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, Shulamith Firestone, 1971). Feminism started off as an underdog ideology, but has long since become firmly entrenched in the establishment. This is helping remove the blinders from all the men conned by their claims of oppression. In fact, I am quite pleased that New Zealand (at time of this writing) has a female Prime Minister, a female leader of the main opposition party, a female Chief Justice, and a female head of Telecom, the country's largest company, because it makes it harder for the Feminists to portray all women as victims of the "Patriarchy." As the Feminists consolidate their power, people will see them as the establishment. With that kind of status comes the glaring scrutiny they have avoided for so long, and this cannot help but contribute to their eventual demise.
Another factor undermining the Feminist foundation is their victim mentality. Typically, this casts white male capitalists as agents of oppression. Due to the demise of Marxism, however, few buy into this anymore. Marxism was at the forefront of the search for oppressed minorities. Their strategy was to identify and unite such groups into a victim coalition, or "Broad Left." Feminism was quick to proclaim women an oppressed minority (despite that they are usually in the majority). This made Feminism and Marxism natural political allies. With the supporting stratum of Marxist political theory gone, Feminists have had to wrestle with how to convert to capitalism without losing their victim status. (e.g., Fire With Fire: The New Female Power and How to Use It, Naomi Wolf, 1994) Thus far, they have had little success in managing the transition with their victim status intact.
However, it would be self-defeating for us to just sit on our hands and assume the war has already been won! Anyone who is aware of the damage Feminism does will of course want to contribute to putting an end to it as soon as possible. Once Feminism peaks (which may be very soon), some of our efforts can be directed toward negotiating a Post-Feminist World Order (PFWO), where the human rights and interests of men, women and children (born and unborn) are all taken into account.
Firestone's feminism
Shulamith Firestone is one influential Feminist writer who used Marxism as a starting-point. She begins by citing the 19th Century German Communist theorist Engels with approval, though she thinks he did not go far enough:
Engels did observe that the original division of labor was between man and woman for the purposes of child-breeding; that within the family the husband was the owner, the wife the means of production, the children the labor; and that reproduction of the human species was an important economic system distinct from the means of production. (Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, 1971, New York: Bantam, pp. 4-5)
Even if we take a narrow, purely physical view of reproduction, Firestone's analysis is very distorted. The male along with the female is part of the means of sexual production. And many acts of sexual intercourse are usually required for each fertilisation. Moreover, the male usually expends much more energy in these acts of coitus than does the female. If there is foreplay, as is often the case in modern western societies, the man is typically much more energetic in this phase of intercourse as well as in the actual coitus.
Additionally, the ultimate "owner" of the children varies greatly from culture to culture, and time to time. The ultimate test, I would say, is who gets custody of the children in cases of separation or divorce. In the western world, this is almost always the mother. Thus, in the contemporary western world, at least, women are the real "owners" of the "product." In about ninety percent of cases, according to the consensus of fathers' rights activists on the Internet, mothers gets sole custody of their children after a divorce or separation. This bias against fathers often takes the form of the "Natural Caretaker Doctrine" - the belief that the person who has the most day-to-day contact with children is the person best suited to have custody after separation or divorce.
It is a well documented fact that fathers have a very difficult time obtaining custody due to the pervasive anti-father prejudice that still exists in many parts of the Family Court system.
What's more, reproduction properly includes all the years devoted to rearing (feeding, housing, educating, etc.) the children. Typically, as the primary breadwinner, fathers expend a substantial proportion of their time and income for that purpose. If, as argued above, it is the mother who is the real "owner" of the children, then it is really the mother who is exploiting the father in this particular economic system. When you get right down to it, men are an oppressed minority in western society today. They are a genuine minority, unlike women, who are a privileged majority dressed up by Feminists as an oppressed minority.
The comparison of women with oppressed minorities has generally been done in a completely unbalanced way. Their hunt for similarities between women and genuine minority groups has been more than a little biased. The obvious differences between women and genuinely oppressed minorities, on the other hand, have been determinedly overlooked. For example:
- women are a numerical majority;
- they have a greater life-expectancy than men;
- much more research is done into their diseases than male diseases;
- Gynecology is a medical field in its own right, but specifically male diseases are hidden away in Urology;
- women have the vote but do not have to do military or alternative service in countries where men have to do this - e.g., Germany and the United States;
- women are much more likely to get custody of children on separation and divorce than men are;
- many more men than women are in jail, even when women live unscathed on the proceeds of their male partners' crimes.
There are objective reasons for the recent changes in male-female relationships: the contraceptive pill, home labour-saving devices and the mechanization of the workplace. By themselves, these developments paved the way for women to enter the workplace in much greater numbers, and this has had a domino effect on society: attitudes toward sexual harassment have changed, fast foods are in greater demand because fewer women are at home making traditional home-cooked meals, and so on. Feminist propaganda facilitated this process, but in a negative way. By portraying women as an oppressed minority, they obtained many unwarranted privileges for women (e.g., almost automatic custody of children on separation or divorce) in addition to the ones they already enjoyed as a result of male chivalry.
Ironically, Feminists believe their own lies. So they almost never seek equality with men in areas where men are at a disadvantage compared to women - how many demonstrations have you heard of demanding that women be subject to the draft on the same basis as men? Certainly, many Feminists are ruthless in using their positions of power to advance their cause. Until this changes, is it really a good thing to promote even more women into positions of even greater power? As the "False Prophet" says:
There's no use in exalting the humble and the meek. They don't remain humble and meek once they're exalted. (Martin Burke, The False Prophet)
Feminism is now so much part of the establishment in the West it is hard for people - particularly those who have undergone a conventional university indoctucation - to imagine any alternative world-view. One of the few contexts in which such alternative world views can be glimpsed is the following description of the debate that preceded the setting up of an "Introduction to Feminist Theory" course at an American University in the early 1980s:
About eight years ago, when I decided to develop at Williams College a course entitled "Introduction to Feminist Theory," several of my colleagues had two predominant and for the most part inconsistent reactions. One colleague branded the course "a political polemic." It turned out that he saw feminist theory as a monolithic ideology into which unsuspecting students would be indoctrinated. Another colleague criticised the course for almost the opposite reasons: He saw nothing theoretical about feminist theory at all. Echoing many early critics of feminist thought, he described it as a random mixture of complaints pointing out, but scarcely analyzing, the subjugation of women. (Tong: Feminist Thought: a Comprehensive Introduction, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1989, p. 1)
Rosemarie Tong won the argument, and students at Williams College (as elsewhere) would hear little more about any possible arguments against Feminism; instead, many semi-unsuspecting students were indeed indoctrinated into an ideology which, although not by any means monolithic, was based on the axiom that women are oppressed, and was dedicated to the liberation of women from this supposed oppression.
There is some validity, also, to the criticism that Feminism is not so much a theory (or group of related theories) as an unsystematic collection of complaints (or "organised nagging").
(T)he feminists' attack on males is also one of the strongest indictments of science and the scientific method that it is possible to make. On generous scientific grounds, it seems clear to me that the evidence which feminists such as Kate Millet and Ti-Grace Atkinson use to support their case is, on balance, irresponsible in its selection and ... narrowly and unfairly interpreted... (Tiger: Male Dominance? Yes, Alas. A sexist Plot? No, reprinted in Ruth (1980), p. 205).
The intellectual calibre of the arguments put forward by Feminists is usually very low, frequently stooping to ad hominem attacks, because they are not forced to defend themselves against organised, systematic criticisms from opposing schools of thought, as happens with most academic disciplines. The people who read what Feminists write are generally true believers already, and any academics who disagree are usually intimidated by fear of what Feminists can do to them or their careers if they voice their disagreement. So the closest analogy to a Department of Women's Studies is a Theological College.
Another reason for the poverty of the theoretical content of Feminist thought is that Feminism is, first and foremost, a political movement. Like Marxism, Feminism is more interested in changing the world than analysing it. So, in most cases, they don't just sit back and take a balanced and rational look at society. Rather, they do about as much rational analysis as they think they need to back up their political demands, or to formulate new ones.
A third reason for the theoretical poverty of Feminism is that it is about society, which means Feminist theory can only be as developed as Sociology is as a whole. Many people will agree Sociology is far from achieving the scientific status of a subject like Chemistry, for example. (Maybe this is why Sociology attracts mostly Leftist students.)
Conclusion
Feminism is an intellectually substandard body of theory, and it will not survive any sustained academic attack once the Frontman Fallacy is recognised for what it is. What is most lacking now among male academics is the courage to criticize Feminism head-on. Until that changes, denunciations of Feminism will have to come principally from female academics and male non-academics.
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