CHRIS writes:

Today’s column in the Thinking Housewife prompted two responses from within–a question, and a prediction:

Question: Is feminism a problem unique to the English-speaking world; ie, US. UK, Australia, Canada? I have read in numerous magazines that the Scandinavian Countries indeed reserve a certain percentage of political seats in their parliaments for women–whether they work for those seats or not. Furthermore, abortion has long been a way of life not only in that part of Europe, but in those countries of the former Eastern Block.

However, in none of those countries (this includes France and Belgium) have I read of the systematic efforts within government and corporate structures to deprive men of their self respect, as in US and the UK. Portugal, for example, has a divorce rate of close to 50 percent (and may be in need of a EU bailout), but is not remotely the hotbed of feminism that is the U.S., and U.K. Elsewhere, divorce rates and abortions are high all over Eastern Europe, but a relative of mine just returned from Ukraine, and reported he had encountered none of the overt hostility toward men found in his own country.

Which brings me to the second prompt: When the day arrives that English and American men find they lack the resources to turn a screw and put up a shelf, that is the day they will find the notion of defending their borders too much of a burden. It is this female mindset that has made America’s “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” the inevitability it is. And why the residents of the UK, while on the one hand bemoaning the extinction of their native wild flowers, do not have the will power to expel the immigrants in their midst, who have made the island as jammed packed as it is.

I’ve been to Africa eight times now, and can report that much like their Arab brethren to the north, the Africans are outproducing us “white folk” by about three to one (despite the AIDS epidemic). Through my friendships with various Africans, I have learned of their deep-seated contempt (not hatred) for the men of America and the UK. At one tourist spot in Kenya my wife and I became embroiled in an argument over my purchase of some safari “brik-a-bak.” Because of the type of people I was surrounded by, I could not relent and the argument grew hotter, noisier and ever more strident. Finally my wife broke and left for the vehicle. The men of the canteen reacted with slapping high fives, treated me as some sort of conquering hero, all the while offering me more wares for purchase. The women looked on with what can best be described as both amusement and bemusement.

The people of the hot portions of this planet do not own much in the way of lodgings or belongings. But the men do possess that most important quality among members of the human race–pride in their manliness. Which is why within 50 years–unless by some miracle the people of Southern and Eastern Europe begin reproducing– there will be no Western Civilization.

Laura writes:

The attitudes may not be as stridently feminist in many parts of the world as they are in the United States and Britain, but feminism is a global phenomenon, as declining birthrates and increased divorce rates around the world suggest.

I think you are right though that this is the epicenter of it all.

                                                                                            — Comments —

Jesse Powell writes:

I’ve done some research on the subject of family breakdown around the world, not so much on feminism as a political movement per se but looking at social indicators such as divorce and children living with only one parent and the number of women in the work force. 

Political feminism tends to show up universally regardless of race or cultural history or income level once the level of family breakdown reaches a certain level. To use the example of Haiti, in the early 1980s there was very little street crime in Haiti; Haitian family life was sufficient to maintain social order in spite of all the economic and political problems in the country. By the late 1980s there started to be large numbers of street children in the capital and in the 1990s feminism as a political movement took off. 

Feminism most definitely is not limited to English speaking countries; comparing the English speaking countries to the other countries of Western Europe one finds no disadvantage in family life among the English speaking countries. 

When looking at the issue of family breakdown internationally I like to put things into four categories based on the level of family breakdown that has occurred; very-low, low, medium, and high. About half of the world’s population lives in countries with a very-low level of family breakdown, China and India being the most important countries in this category, and about a sixth of the world’s people live in each of the three more severe categories of family breakdown. The United States, the other English speaking countries, and Western Europe fall into the “high” category; Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union typically fall under the “medium” category, in the “low” category are many of the middle income developing countries and much of Africa. Africa as a continent however is not monolithic in terms of its level of family breakdown; North Africa is in the “very low” category, the Northern and Western part of Sub-Saharan Africa tends to be in the “low” category, Eastern and Southern Africa tend more towards the “middle” category and the country of South Africa itself may qualify as being in a category of its own, suffering from a “very-high” level of family breakdown. 

Most of the countries with a “very-low” level of family breakdown fall along a contiguous path; starting with China including Vietnam, going West including Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, continuing west into the Middle East including Iran and Turkey (excluding Saudi Arabia), and then finally including the countries of North Africa. Looking at those of European ancestry, with white skin, the countries of Greece and Israel have the lowest level of family breakdown, in the “low” category. Greece used to be part of the Ottoman Empire, and Israel might be benefiting from a strong attachment to Judaism and it’s location in the Middle East. The peoples of Eastern Europe and Russia, in the former communist countries, are in the “medium” category. Those of European ancestry in Western Europe, North America, South America, and in the country of South Africa fall into the “high” category of family breakdown. Interestingly, looking at the countries south of the United States, there is a great variety in level of family breakdown; Brazil is in the “very-low” category, Mexico and Peru are in the “low” category, Colombia and Venezuela are in the “medium” category, and Argentina and Chile are in the “high” category.

Looking at the history of family breakdown in the United States, it started in about 1850. From 1850 to 1960 the United States remained in the “very-low” category of family breakdown. The “very-low” category is the most stable and lasts the longest. 1960 was the transition year when America entered into the “low” category and the speed of family breakdown accelerated. 1970 is about when modern political feminism took hold. This is typical, modern political feminism tends to take hold in a country about 10 years after the transition between the “very-low” and “low” levels of family breakdown, about mid-way through the “low” era of family breakdown. America entered into the “medium” level of family breakdown in about 1985 and America entered into the “high” category just recently, in the year 2010. It takes about one generation, about 25 years, for a nation to progress from one category to the next once it has left the “very-low” level of family breakdown and its speed of family breakdown starts to accelerate. 

This is a description of how the situation of family breakdown looks internationally. The most important question is, at what stage does a society revolt against feminism, revolt against the process of family breakdown? In the United States at least, the process of revolt against feminism has already begun as is shown by the increasing popularity of the patriarchal family model within the Christian church and the very presence of this website! I am hopeful that serious and effective rebellion against feminism will start to take hold once the level of family breakdown reaches the “very-high” level, and that from that point forward family breakdown will recede as patriarchal values reassert themselves and become dominant in the society. 

As for making predictions, I think it is very unlikely that Western Civilization will disappear due to feminism and family breakdown and low birth-rates. Feminism is a pathology and an aberration, it is not the “natural state of being”. In order for feminism to destroy Western Civilization it would have to be a stable presence over an extended period of time and it shows no evidence of being such a phenomenon. Furthermore, Western Civilization doesn’t show any evidence of being more vulnerable to feminism than other cultures; sure the countries of the West have more serious problems with family breakdown at the moment but this is not due to “Western Civilization” that I can tell; it is because Western Civilization urbanized and became rich first.

[Added Dec. 5, 2010]

Chris responds to Jesse:

It is best to take the points you made in last weeks communication, regarding feminism, in the order they were presented:

 While low birth rates and high incidence of divorce are symptoms, and indeed the results of feminism, for almost a century now France has lived by these symptoms. But there were no government institutions of any substance foisting these issues on the people. Indeed, much of the phenomena was brought on by the men themselves, whose object in life was no longer the building of a better France for their children. Rather, their collective decision to simply indulge in immediate pleasures (think Roissy). 

With regards Haiti, and the rise of feminism there. If feminism rules Haiti like it does the United States (which I somehow doubt), it was only a reaction to centuries of indolence on the part of that island’s men folk. Feminism, as it exists there, was a result of men willfully abandoning their families, an evil as great as that now being visited upon the U.S by NOW, and similar types.

Three years ago I visited South Africa. Unhappily, since the end of apartheid it has developed into perhaps the most dangerous country in the world–for women in particular. That country might be placed in the same social category as Haiti. 

With regards to non English speaking European nations: my admitted limited research on the matter suggests there is little in the way of active dislike or contempt for men that exists in America. In the Netherlands for example, the government has had a very difficult time persuading its women to “man up.” The women there are not interested in shouldering the demands of the government and corporate world, and will tell you so.

The UK: only yesterday in Thinking Housewife did I read that the government now intends to ration jobs there by gender and race. The U.S. has been involved with this very primitive practice since the late 1970s, both in the corporate and government sectors. As events have proven, discrimination against better qualified white men has grave consequences–a big reason why large segments of the US government, such as the Forest Service and FEMA, have quite literally “seized up.”

The countries of Western Europe, and even Southern and Eastern Europe may indeed have their counterparts to NOW, the NAACP, the ACLU and American Bar Association, but they are not the ambitious, well financed, well connected, man hating units that have left behind such social carnage on this side of the Atlantic.

The paragraphs on family breakdown internationally are interesting. But they do not refute the fact that the masculine countries of the East, Middle East and Africa are winning the demographic war by an overwhelming margin. Unhappily, with the exception of North-east Asia, these have never been creative, inventive countries ( see Charles Murray, Human Accomplishment). It is of some irony that the medicines developed by Europeans have enabled the populations of these nations to grow at such a breath taking pace.

The tracing of family breakdown rates in the US was also interesting. For me, the ideal social period was when I was a child during the 1950s. For the world, I believe the nineteenth century was far and away the best epoch ever. But it was also during this time that the ever inquisitive, ever reflecting men of the West, inadvertently sowed the seeds of the Twentieth Century’s great terrors, and its own demographic destruction by the middle of the Twenty First.

I would very much like to share your optimism. But I know of no effort by conservatives in Congress, or in the churches to repeal Title IX. There is no one within the Republican Party who is speaking up with regards to the dearth of men teaching in our schools. No one within the recent Tea Party phenomena expressed any interest in eliminating the blatantly unconstitutional sections of the Violence Against Women Act. No state legislature I know of is planning to reform “no-fault divorce.”

It is of great interest to read websites such as The Thinking Housewife, Steve Sailer, Lawrence Auster, Randall Parker, etc., but they do not command the readership of such mainstream sites as Power Line, Hot Air, No Left Turns, and Hugh Hewitt, which all evade important social issues.

And regards talk radio: way back during the first Bush Administration, Rush Limbaugh was fond of ridiculing the feminists and their agenda. But somewhere since along the way he has lost his gonads. Which brings us to Mike Medved, Laars Larson, Neil Boortz, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingram. Where do they stand on Title IX, repeal of VAW, reforming no-fault divorce, and increasing the number of male teachers in school?  Nowhere!

Jesse Powell writes:

Responding to Chris’s comments, the optimism that I possess is that feminism is very unlikely to lead to the destruction of Western civilization, an extreme outcome, and that the process of reversing feminism has already begun and will only get stronger going forward. This is not to say that I believe feminism is on the wane or currently in decline; to the contrary it is quite clear to me that feminism is currently in the ascendancy. I want to emphasize that there is no contradiction in saying that on the one hand patriarchy is in the ascendancy and on the other hand feminism is in the ascendancy; both patriarchy and feminism are in the ascendancy at the same time currently. 

To try to explain what I mean when I say this below I reproduce the table that was included in my comment in this entry: 

In the above table, “Sick” corresponds to feminism and “Healthy” corresponds to patriarchy. “Legacy” refers to the patriarchy of the past that is still positively influencing society. You will notice in the table that “Sick” meaning feminism grows continuously and that “Healthy” meaning the small but growing patriarchy movement also grows continuously, this is what I mean when I say that feminism and patriarchy are both growing at the same time. If you look at the last column labeled “Functionality” you will see that it starts out at 69.0%, representing the dysfunction that exists today, and then declines continuously to a low of 42.7% at Time Unit 5 (representing 25 years from now as each time unit represents 5 years), and then after that increases continuously at an accelerating pace going towards 100%. So, looking at the above mathematical model of how society might develop in the future you can say that I am pessimistic because I think things will get worse for the next 25 years but you can also say that I am optimistic because I think after this period of decline society will rebound as the patriarchal movement by then will have enough strength to roll back feminism; at first slowly but then later at galloping speed. 

The point of activism is to increase the speed of growth of the “Healthy” category in the table above; the faster the “Healthy” category grows the better off society will be. I will add, in the above table I am assuming the “Healthy” category triples every 5 years; this translates to growing 25% per year, 4 times as quickly as the “Sick” or feminism category is shown growing.

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