"My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared." - P. J. Plauger, Computer Language, March 1983

***

"According to a February 1992 poll conducted by Time/CNN, 63 percent of women do not consider themselves to be feminists. Over the last decade, a rift has grown between feminists and the mainstream of women. Millions of women are defining their lives in nonfeminist terms and are choosing to pursue the satisfactions of domestic life rather than those of a career. Even successful business women shy away from the term "feminist".

Contemporary feminist literature—from Susan Faludi's scholarly Backlash to Gloria Steinem’s more personal autobiography—has attempted to explain why feminism is being marginalized by women. Some of these explanations have come close to condemning any woman who diverges from the feminist agenda. Consider, for example, the issue of pornography. In the anthology Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism, the editor Dorchen Leidholdt claims that fellow feminists who say that women in the porn industry have chosen to be there are spreading "a felicitous lie". Contributor Andrea Dworkin states that feminists who defend pornography—even purely on the basis of free speech—are guilty of running a "sex protection racket". She maintains that no one making such a defense can be a feminist. Contributor Wendy Stock accuses pro- porn feminists of identifying with their oppressors "much like ... concentration camp prisoners with their jailers."

In feminist circles it has become popular to claim that the movement is actually not on the decline but is merely experiencing a backlash. Indeed, feminists argue that this backlash is a sign of feminism’s great strength, since the powers that be obviously feel threatened enough to retaliate. There may be some truth to this, but the theory—at least, as it is presented—is not provable. And feminism does itself no favor by refusing to deal straight-out with criticism.

One of the reasons so many women no longer consider themselves feminists is that the movement has dramatically changed over the last two decades. It no longer provides an ideologically comfortable home for many women who would otherwise call themselves feminists...

A new ideology has come to the forefront. Modern feminism has always drawn heavily upon the ideology of the left, even down to the terms it uses (e.g., exploitation, gender/class oppression). But the political slant of the mainstream of '60s feminism was liberal. Radical, or gender, feminism was in the political background of the movement.

During the '70s, while mainstream feminists pursued the ERA and secured abortion rights, gender feminists were hammering out a new ideology that comprehensively addressed the condition of women. Gender feminists concluded that all of the ills afflicting women—from date rape to the wage gap, from pornography to sexual harassment—have a common cause. They all flow from patriarchy, especially as it is expressed through the white-male system of capitalism. Gender theorist Adrienne Rich defines patriarchy as

the power of the fathers: a familial—social, ideological, political system in which men—by force, direct pressure, or through ritual, tradition, law, and language, customs, etiquette, education, and the division of labor [and] in which the female is everywhere subsumed under the male."

Wth the foundations of ideology carefully laid, gender feminism emerged from the background and moved into the forefront of the movement. As its theories have trickled down and been applied to specific issues, the face of feminism began to alter. It has now changed almost beyond recognition. It has gone from liberalism to political correctness, from a demand for equality to a cry for privilege.

Consider how the movement’s attitude toward men has changed. in the '60s and '70s feminists blasted men for viewing women as sex objects and domestic slaves. Men were admonished to show more sensitivity and to share equally in activities such as parenting. They were handed dish towels and pointedly advised to do their share of housework. The quintessential liberal, Alan Alda, appeared on the cover of women’s magazines as the ideal news man: caring, supportive, and a tad androgynous.

By the ‘80s and ‘90s gender feminists had redefined the movement’s view of the opposite sex. Men, as a class, were no longer considered reformable. Andrea Dworkin pronounced all men to be rapists. Catharine MacKinnon said that marriage, rape, and prostitution are indistinguishable from each other. Kate Millctt called for the end of the family unit. A hot anger toward men seems to have turned into a cold hatred.

In the ‘60s and ‘70s liberal feminists had embraced sexual liberation. Women had been chafing at the sexual restrictions of the 1950s with dictates that included: no intercourse before marriage, no children out of wedlock, and, certainly, no lesbianism. With sexual liberation, women blossomed. They attended classes on how to masturbate and achieve orgasms; their curiosity led them to consume pornography in increasing numbers; they obtained access to abortion on demand; birth control became widely available; couples lived together openly; lesbians marched arm in arm down the streets; and single motherhood became an acceptable option.

In the ‘80s and ‘90s gender feminists defined pornography, in and of itself, as an act of violence against all women. Prostitution became an act of capitalist exploitation. The new reproductive technologies, such as in vitro fertilization, were attacked as medicalized violence on the bodies of women. Open discussions of sex faltered.

In the ‘60s and '70s women had banged on the doors of business and demanded to be admitted on an equal footing with men. They wanted to be judged solely on the basis of their merits. In the ‘80s and ‘90s gender feminists have explicitly rejected equality and clamored for privilege, demanding access to jobs on the basis of gender and on the grounds of having been discriminated against for centuries. A call for reform has become a cry for revolution.

And somewhere along the line the rebellious joy has drained out of the feminist movement. Instead of celebrating the pleasures of sex, women are now barraged only by its perils: rape, domestic violence, harassment. Instead of discussing how to make marriages into equal partnerships, marriage itself is defined as oppression, and there are endless tragic tales of domestic violence and incest. Helen Reddy’s song "I Am Woman... Watch Me Grow" had been the anthem of liberal feminists because it celebrated thc power and determination of women. Now, however, women are defined as victims of oppression. Gone is the emphasis on independence and spunk. Founding feminist Betty Friedan has pleaded for feminism to

transcend sexual politics and anger against men to express a new vision of family and community. We must go from wallowing in the victim’s state to mobilizing the new power of women and men for a larger political agenda on the priorities of life. We’re at a dangerous time.

A certain go-to-hell spirit has been replaced by a life-is-hell attitude, and with it a strange new puritanism has gripped the feminist movement. Aberrant sexual views, such as the enjoyment of or indifference to pornography, will not be tolerated. The repressive attitudes have emanated from the left wing of the movement, which has had an influence far out of proportion to the actual number of gender feminists occupying that end of the spectrum. Their influence has been augmented by another relatively new force on the political scene: the political correctness movement.

Gender feminism has joined hands with political correctness—a movement that condemns the panorama of western civilization as sexist and racist: the product of "dead white males". Those who are politically correct champion categories of people who have been historically victimized by white males. In other words, women and minorities.

Gender feminists demand that to redress the past injustice against women present-day white males become sexually correct. Sexual correctness is an all-embracing theory dictating how husbands should treat wives, what comments strangers on the street may make to women passing by, how much employers should pay female workers, what subjects coworkers may discuss, and how women may use their own bodies (e.g., not
posing for pornographic pictures)

In the personal realm sexual correctness has redefined, collectivized, and politicized the crime of rape. it is no longer a crime between individuals. It is a political act that men, as a class, commit against women, as a class. In the business world, it has sparked laws against sexual harassment. In essence, the First Amendment no longer applies to the workplace...

On a more individual level, men are afraid to pay female coworkers a compliment lest it be called harassment, and they mutter to each other that promotions are now a matter of gender, not merit. The myth of sleeping one’s way to the top has been replaced with the unpleasant possibility of suing one’s way into that position.

As political correctness has grown in influence, there has been an increase in the resentment directed by men against women. This is inevitable. Any movement that condemns a whole class of people, such as white males, as oppressors with no reference to the obvious fairness and compassion of so many individuals within that class, is almost certain to produce hostility. And, indeed, the goal of gender feminism is nothing short of violent conflict. Revolution requires such methods. Sexual correctness can only exacerbate hostility toward women and so increase the injustice they suffer. in his book Illiberal Education, Dinesh D’Souza makes the sad comment that this hostility is "prejudice, not from ignorance, but from experience."...

To paraphrase a popular slogan of the ‘70s: “the personal became political.” Complex connections were drawn between everyday personal encounters and the brutalization of women through rape and assault. British feminists began complaining about the tendency of British men to call them “love.” American feminists decried the Southern habit of calling women “honey.” The reasoning behind the uproar was that such men, through these small, relatively inoffensive acts, contribute to a social and sexual environment that makes rape not only possible, but politically inevitable...

Gender feminists dismiss such women as "unawakened". In her article, P.C. or B.S.?, Meredith McGhan describes the response that a sexually correct professor offered to the liberal feminist Christina Hoff Sommers, who objected to such a cavalier dismissal of women’s self-perception:

Sommers pointed out that many women did not feel oppressed in their chosen roles as wife and mother, and that some even enjoyed wearing makeup and fashionable clothing. Thanks a lot, Christina, (the professor later said, rolling his eyes, implying that Sommers had done a real disservice to women everywhere.

Anyone with intellectual honesty must credit empirical evidence and the demonstrated preferences of hundreds of millions of women. Anyone with objectivity must admit that marriage exists because it offers many women something they want. That is why they choose it.

A key to the amazing facility with which gender feminists dismiss such evidence lies in what has been called “feminist methodology”. This is a revolutionary new approach to research. Because logic and the scientific method are considered to be traditional white male methods gender feminists reject them as oppressive. They evolve their own oppression-free methodology. In a recent issue of American Scholar, Margarita Levin explained how even physical laws are being rejected as “masculine.” Ms. Levin writes:

[Feminist scientists] see male dominance at work in, for instance, the "master molecule" theory of DNA functioning; in the notion of forces acting on” objects; in the description of evolution as the result of a "struggle" to survive; in the view that scarcity of resources results in "competition" between animals.

Ms. Levin reveals the underlying theme of the new feminist methodology: “in short in any theory positing what they deem destructive, violent, unidirectional, or hierarchical.... The idea of dominance is directly linked to the notion of scientific objectivity.”

Feminist methodology stresses the importance of women’s personal experiences. For example, interviewing women is called “the politics of experience,” and it is a mainstay of feminist research. The personal approach has a myriad of problems—over and above a total lack of objectivity. For one thing, gender feminists interview and credit only those women who have been victimized and who consider themselves to be oppressed by men. The experiences of women who have not been abused or who consider most men to be fellow travelers are entirely ignored. The antipornography crusader Catharinc MacKinnon, for example, refuses to debate or publicly discuss pornography with women who disagree with her stand. She has ignored repeated calls from Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU, to have an open forum.

Equally, there have been few attempts to do serious research on men, who constitute fully one half of the perceived problem. Indeed, gender feminists adamantly refuse to credit the voices of men. It is difficult to understand how a balanced picture could emerge from such flawed research.

Perhaps the most blatant example of poor methodology comes as part and parcel of a relatively new issue within feminism: that of suppressed memories. These are memories that are said to be so painful that they have been repressed and only come to the surface years later. The phenomenon is called Recovered Memory Syndrome. Typically, the content of these memories revolves around incest, childhood molestation, or rape. Feminists insist that repressed memories should be treated as “facts.” Indeed, such “evidence” is now being used in lawsuits...

Gender feminists often back up their arguments with a statement akin to "many studies have proven". References and contexts are generally absent. At other times, the flaws in sympathetic research work are simply ignored.

For example, Menachem Amir’s interesting study, Patterns in Forcible Rape (1971), is often quoted by gender feminists as being "definitive". It supports their view of what rape is. In fact, Amir’s study has been the target of considerable criticism outside of the feminist community... Amir based his research on police records, which had many gaps in them. And nowhere did he make it clear that police data must be viewed and used with great caution: police records are compiled for a totally different purpose than sociology. The data has not benefited from any of the screening or safeguards that would accompany a valid study. Nor did Amir include information on reported rapes that had been dismissed by the police. These are reports that failed to convince the police that a crime had occurred or that a conviction could be obtained. Perhaps the report was made by a victim whom the poiice refused to take seriously—a prostitute or a drug addict, for example.

Yet, in Against Our Will, Susan Brownmiller’s criticisms of Amir’s study seem limited to comments about how “annoyingly obtuse [it was] about the culturally conditioned behavior of women in situations involving force. In other words, it did not go far enough in the direction she favors. She quotes Amir’s study extensively as proof of many facts that support her theory...

Feminist research is so new that it should be exploding in all directions; instead, it is calcifying into dogma. Gender feminists insist that they have the definitive and only answer. By viciously attacking those who question their data or conclusions, gender feminists do women a grave disservice. They stifle discussion, they discourage the emergence of truth.

Bad data and bad research can only produce more myths about subjects such as rape and domestic violence. Misusing studies and statistics, however, is not unique to gender feminism. What is unique is the extent to which their methodology explicitly abandons objectivity in preference for subjectivity. Objectivity is abandoned in the name of ideology. The specific ideology adopted by these sexually correct women is quasi—Marxist: they consider patriarchy, as expressed through capitalism, to be the primary means by which white male society oppresses women.

At some point, a gender feminist with any honesty must confront a moral dilemma. What about women who do not interpret their experiences in the same ideological terms as she does? What of the women who look at the same society and interpret it differently? Should gender feminists take a lesson from white males and impose their own reality upon "erring" women? Should they apply their gender theories like a politically correct grid over the protests of unawakened women? If so, what happens to the oft stated ideal of valuing the experiences of women?

To phrase the question differently: when the experiences of real women conflict with gender feminist theory, which one wins out? The answer is clear. Gender feminists dismiss inconvenient real-world experiences and people. They do not credit, for example, the voices of prostitutes in COYOTE, who are outspoken in defense of their occupation. They do not respect the experiences of women in the porn industry, who argue in favor of graphic sexual expression. Gender feminists simply ignore women who do not view patriarchy as a source of oppression. Such women are said to be misinterpreting their own lives. They desperately need to be politically awakened because have been brainwashed by the world of men.

To dismiss so cavalierly the voices of women who dissent is a slap in the face of every woman. To present a view of women as weak-willed and feeble-minded in the face of patriarchy is an insult to our sex. It is patronizing and disrespectful; it is a form of mental abuse. No wonder feminists are often despised by sex workers. But what specifically is the ideology that leads gender feminists to dismiss the voices of sexually incorrect women?"

- Sexual Correctness: The Gender-Feminist Attack on Women, Wendy McEfroy (2001)