Carlos Morales, host of The Libertarian Atheist Podcast sat down with MK Lords to discuss how libertarianism has gone astray by getting mixed up with anti-feminism. It is a good discussion.
The Libertarian Guide to Feminism Part 1
CM: Hey everyone, this is Carlos Morales and this is The Libertarian Atheist Podcast. With us, as normal, is MK Lords. How are you doing today, MK?
MK: Doing great.
CM: So the topic that we want to talk about today is something that’s talked about a lot in the manosphere. Among feminists, among tumblr, among social justice boards. Among every single type of social media outlet out there right now. Which is essentially the topic of feminism and men’s rights advocacy and how they interplay with one another. And trying to decipher some of the more extreme and obtuse views on both sides to try and come up with a more nuances and palatable approach so that we’re not running on basically a vengeful platform towards any particular side. In order to do that, what we wanna do is present some ideas and where these people are coming from.
So when it comes to the men’s rights advocacy groups, we can talk about a few different things here, because they have what seems like rather valid points. From male responsibility to jail statistics, from victims of war to custody battles, and the blatant female siding when it comes to divorce court. It looks like men are getting the short stick when it comes to the topic of the patriarchal society. Tack on to this whenever you look at Mattress Girl Virginia Tech the Duke Lacrosse stuff. Apparently there’s a cascade of false rape allegations across america that is destroying man day after day. And this is the narrative being presented by Men’s Rights Advocacy group’s right now. According to them it isn’t about hating women it’s about simply trying to help out men by empowering them. But what I’ve kind of discovered, and it doesn’t take very long to figure this one out, is that a lot of what’s coming out of actually the MRA and the MGTOW people is a lot of blatant sexism and misogyny and victim blaming, a cascade of it really. The best way to see an analogy, this is similar whenever the Nazi’s and the anti-semetics would take a specific view of jews by saying they have a corrupt manipulative gene inside them which causes fraudulent banking and cultural marxism everything they can do to destroy the white race, similarly there’s MRA that are insinuating that there’s a genetic predisposition for women to be manipulative, vengeful, spiteful people. Its a bastardization of evolutionary psychology to justify blatantly misogynistic views.
[2:23]
So MK when you’ve been looking into some of these things what’s kinda going on in your mind whenever you’re looking at some of the more sexist and hateful views being brought on by, whether it be the men’s rights advocates or the brutalist libertarians or some of the people that seem to the lacking understanding of feminism as a whole? what are some common traits and where do you think this is coming from?
[2:45]
MK: Well I think a lot of people assume they know what feminism is and haven’t really looked into it. Especially if you’re familiar with the manosphere and that’s kind of your introduction to a lot of feminist theory, then you’re going to get a very slanted view of it. There is a lot of misogyny in the men’s rights movement and I’d guess when it comes to feminism and men’s rights I’ve always been of the mindset that i’m very pro human rights. I don’t see that why there can’t be a gender alliance to work on human rights and actually that’s how feminism started and feminism is an extremely broad topic what does bother me when it’s discussed by libertarians is they collectivize all feminists. Which you would think they would know better as libertarians not to collectivize people.
Feminism has several different schools of thought that are in conflict with each other actually. And unless you’ve looked at the history of it and really dived into it, then it’s not fair to say that oh all feminism is bad and it’s ruining the country and they’re all statists and they’re all evil. That’s not the case and it’s important to find terms to a lot of people jump ahead of the discussion with terms that are maybe incorrectly defined like patriarchy. And then generally when it comes to feminism you have to specify what school of thought you’re talking about. Because radical feminists, the ones that people associate with tumblr and things like that, are very very different from gender feminists, and equity feminists, or individual feminists or anarcho feminists. There’s so many different types and to collectivize them misses the broader point It’s really a disingenuous tactic to use when arguing about this. I’ve found that when talking with libertarians, they don’t really have a well rounded understanding of the history of feminism. We’ve both kind got aligned with anti feminists views.
CM: yeah
MK: and that was never my intention. I am very a libertarian and an anarchist actually. About a year ago or so I started critiquing some feminist theory. I identify as a feminists for most of my life and I kind of moved to individualist feminists view similar to Wendy MkElroy, for example, and libertarian feminism too. I was critiquing a lot of mainstream feminism, the stuff you kind of see in the news and the people who are trying to fight the political fight with feminism. So I don’t really side with that type of feminist. I don’t believe the answer is to reform these social inequalities through the state. But I am definitely not an anti feminist, nor do i want to be anywhere closely aligned with the men’s right’s movement.
[5:41]
CM: So it is fun though because everyone had that message to people when I was talking to regarding you know doing this particular show. I’ve gotten in arguments with people who labeled themselves feminists over the last year and a half. I wrote this article called, “Feminist Myths Debunked” and I did all this kind of stuff. So I started to get into this position similar to you or both. It’s interesting actually. I think both of us have been called feminists apologists and men’s rights advocates at the same time
MK: Yeah
[6:08]
CM: and I think whenever you’re thrown into both groups at the same time you’re probably in the right, correct? It’s kind of like whenever conservatives start calling you a liberal and liberals start calling you conservative. you end up split that nice little mixture of things. And for me it was more just trying to find some kind of clarity. So I would look to some of these MRA groups, especially when i was doing some of my family consultation stuff. So when i was looking for legal support and things like that. A lot of father’s rights group. I’d try to work with those and see kind of where they were coming from to try to get a better idea. And then what kept on happening was that I found myself almost having to justify the consistent misogyny that was occurring in these MRA forums and the MGTOW forums and everything else. I mean just blatant statements of just that women are manipulators. There’s was actually an article, and here’s the thing, I’m going to bring up a few different examples of MRA’s kind of being misogynist. Just so I can have some clarification some backing to the original statements I made. From there though, we’re going to define these sub sections of feminism because it’s important. Because in the same way, if we state than we’re an anarchist they immediately think that you’re going to throw a molotov cocktail at their face. Similarly you cannot create that kind of strawman for all these other categories. Because there’s anarcho-capitalism, and anarcho-communism, there is libertarian socialism, there’s all these different subsections and they have there own nuances and concepts.
I gotta bring up some of this MRA stuff because it’s bonkers! There’s a guy named Ferdinand Bardamu, who’s an MRA dude. He wrote a article called “The Necessity of Domestic Violence,” where he claims that women should be terrorized by their men. It’s the only thing that makes them behave better than chimps, and argues that women are evolutionarily predisposed to wanting to be hit. Though he does make sure to clarify that despite all this, “I don’t want to recommend hitting the girls in your rotation, mainly because the risks are too great. for every one girl who will pounce on your dick after a good back hand, there are three more that will dial 911 without a second thought. I got lucky, but unless you exclusively fuck single moms, cougars, and spinsters, you’ve likely had girls that have either tried to physically hurt you or bait you into hitting them.” And we could also bring up Karen Straughan, who I’ve had some positive interactions with in the past. She’s come out pretty big on the justifications of using violence against women, and blaming women for it on a constant basis. Then you have Paul Elam and his cascade of shit he’s just been calling activist for the last couple of years. There’s whole laundry list of other individuals who have basically been making a lot of claims that women in almost all these cases of domestic violence are basically asking for it in the same way a girl is asking for it when wearing a short skirt. They’re saying that there’s an initial initiation by the women in these particular situations that they’re asking for it. And that women have this predisposition to manipulate men and therefore men have to fight back, or men have to go completely their own way, and make a generalized idea that all women are innately evil.
So in order to kind of set this up though so we can get some definitions going, do you have kind of a definition that you can give me in regards to patriarchy that makes some sense? So that we can get some better clarity?
MK: Yes, so I think patriarchy. When it comes to defining terms i tend to go with the most obvious term, like the most commonly used way of describing something. So patriarchy is a society or community where men hold the positions of power in government. This is why I do think that we do live in an patriarchal government, for example in this country and most governments around the world are patriarchal. They are mostly made up of men. Those men are in the top part of the hierarchy of the power structure. Now where some MRA’S take issue with this term and some feminists have put forth this issue that since we live in patriarchal society all men benefit from that. And I will disagree with that. I don’t think that because we live in a society where men are at the top parts of the hierarchal structure that all men therefore benefit from that. I think class plays a role. I think there are definitely privileges when it comes to race and things like that. So not all men benefit from a patriarchal society.
CM and patriarchy…
MK: Nor does it disproportionately affect women.
CM: When we’re thinking about this topic of patriarchy, you brought up a really good point which is essentially that men are thinking that therefore because men are in power therefore men are always the ones that benefit. But actually a lot of it has to do with gender norms which is essentially the idea that women are supposed to be the caregiver in particular cases. So divorce court is a perfect example of this. Within the mindset of the patriarchal mindset is essentially that man is supposed to be providing the money and resources and the women is supposed to take care of the kids. Well guess what? That’s exactly how divorce court works. So that’s enacting traditional gender roles in these particular cases, omitting men from the situation. But it is a male it’s a kind of domination paradigm though traditional gender practices that is exacerbating that.
MK: So I think it’s interesting when it comes to patriarchy. Maybe a simple way to describe the problems of a patriarchal society would be that when a specific group has power they are going to have different preferences from the groups that may not have that power. So of course society going to start to resemble the preferences that they like and a lot of other people’s preferences, whether it’s women would be left out. For example we’ve progressed a lot as far as reproductive rights but we’re still way behind in a lot of ways in this country and across the world too. Women having access to safe reproductive health services is actually pretty limited in a lot of areas. I think this is a direct result of women not being in positions of power and not being able to advocate for their rights and advocate for things that they would prefer to have. You know when I talk about being in positions of power I also mean to a degree on a social level. it doesn’t necessarily mean like in government power. But obviously society is going to be shaped by the people who are in power in government because that’s where these laws and other things come from. That’s one way that patriarchy is directly against the interest of women for example.
[13:16]
CM: Yeah, and it’s certainly hurting them on that case repeatedly. So now that we’ve tried our best although people still yell at us for how we’ve defined patriarchy. What I want to get into is also the history of feminism as a whole.
So Christina Hoff Summers, who does define herself as a feminist, although has critiqued a lot of modern day feminism, has kind of separated some aspects of early feminism. And when I’m talking about early I’m talking mid 1700’s to late 1800’s. She separated it into maternal feminism as well as egalitarian feminism. Maternal feminism began in part with Frances Trollope, Elizabeth Glaser, and Hannah More in the early 1800’s. It was grabbed onto by the suffragists a bit later. They viewed their roles a mothers, grandmothers, and matriarchs in the family as not being antithetical to the freedom and liberation of women, but actually can help it. For these women there was no contradiction between the traditional role of women at home and participation in public life. Their actions in the public sphere were no more than an extension of their role in the private sphere. They projected their maternal role beyond the confines of their own family life. They felt as a sister and a mother they could introduce into politics a unique perspective that issued from the concrete realities of women’s lives, including the hardships brought by things like poverty, abuse, and alcoholism. They also set up a lot of charity boards, a lot of not-so-f’ed-up foster homes were set up in these places. And female progressives in the 1900’s were also drawn to this, especially those in the British aristocracy and the well to do. There was kind of a strong emphasis on gender roles.
Now separate from that but not completely separate was egalitarian feminism, which is Mary Wollstonecraft, who basically viewed that women and men are equal at an intellectual level, and it’s not a woman’s duty to raise kids or family, as in she didn’t have an obligation to do so. Both sides worked with one another positively. In fact there’s still early criticism in regards to early feminism, there was still racism involved, but guess what? Everyone was racist back then. that’s not a justification, just a statement. Both sides tried to dismantle the regulations set forth by the government promoted patriarchy. Both sides were used for instance for the abolishment against women being allowed to vote. So the suffragists used a lot of these. Both sides you ended up having pro government people and both sides pro libertarian individuals. Did that kind of get at least some of the early 1800’s stuff, would you like to add a little more to the first wave feminism?
[16:21]
MK: yeah, well first wave feminism is what feminists think of when they think of feminism. I do just want to back up to get a definition of feminism because I do think it needs to be broadly defined. I’m just going to use the wikipedia. I think this does a good summary: feminism is a range of movements and ideologies that share a common goal to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women.
From mary Wollstonecraft to Betty Friedan, a lot of these more first wave feminists were focused on legal rights. You know, getting the right to vote, being able to own your own property, being able to have a bank account, being able to get an education for yourself. A lot of people don’t realize that women weren’t allowed to get into places of higher education. Mary Shelley had to publish Frankenstein under Percy Shelley’s name because they would not publish a book written by a woman. Throughout history you’ve seen this. It has been very recent in the entire course of history that we’ve seen more of a move towards gender equality, and I think that’s important to keep in mind when people are criticizing feminism and some of the more radical government feminists or government activist feminists are pushing for today. That’s not really where feminism started and not necessarily what all feminists are trying to promote. So yeah, first wave feminism was more focused on the right to vote and basic property rights. Things that libertarians, I think, can really be on board with. There were even laws where men had total rights over the children in the relationship. You see family court now being slanted towards women but before women didn’t have legal rights over their own children. I guess what are some more of your thoughts on first wave…
[18:44]
CM: So here’s in regards to when ever people are discussing feminism now will bring up, well things are now better for women now than ever, yada, yada. Which is absolutely true. I think a lot of times though context gets lost. We have a good, as far as civilization, industrialization is concerned, the vast majority of history has been men being the ones in power so as soon as it gets slightly changed or in specific situations might be a little bit different you can’t immediately jump in and go, therefore women are in control now and everything that’s wrong with society is a result of women. When i’ve watched stuff in molyneux videos, where he states the root of evil and hatred has to do with the matriarchal lineages of awfulness and women are the biggest subjugators of pain to humanity there is an absolute lack tack and understanding there. It’s kind of like to bring up a reference to the anarchist thing again. If i bring up, oh well anarchism is now about that guy on Tumblr who saying we should burn down Dow Chemical, and then ignoring Murray Rothbard or Ludwig Von Mises then you’re ignoring the entire story and not getting the actual history in that particular situation.
[20:06]
MK: Right, right. So yes it’s very clear to anyone who understands history that men have been in control in these hierarchical structures forever, and in a lot of ways that’s because men are stronger and can take that power. There are physical differences between men and women and obviously stronger people are going to get higher up in the power structure unless something is done to address that. and this is where feminism comes out of basically.
[20:43]
CM: and so outside of those first starts there, then we get into some more interesting stuff when it comes to feminism including people like…
MK: Voltairine de Cleyre
CM: Voltairine de Cleyre, thank you very much. Since you can actually pronounce it why don’t you talk about some of the benefits and things that that particular individual, who I know Nick Ford loves, that they added to the conversation regarding feminism and individual rights.
MK: so Voltairine de Cleyre is very interesting. She was an individualist anarchist. Not all feminists were anarchists. In fact one could argue most of them were focused on political reform during this time. But she worked with other first wave feminists such as Victoria Woodhull and Elizabeth Clark Wollstonecraft, Elme to criminalize marital rape in the late 19th century and these efforts failed. Just for context when it comes to marital rape, it wasn’t fully made illegal in all 50 states until 1993. So when we talk about these evil feminists and their wacky ideas, it’s important to realize that marital rape, this idea that being raped by your husband, basically, is ok and legal and fine. it didn’t get fully criminalized until 1993. so that’s you know, we’ve made a lot of progress but that’s pretty shocking it wasn’t very long ago. 1993 isn’t very far back.
CM: Jesus Christ, yeah
[22:13]
MK: So this came from, so when you have patriarchal institutions a lot of people associate it with religion. So when you go back to the roots of this country, you know its puritanical roots, in a lot of ways. The Christian patriarchy, they were the ones who gained a lot of political power as well. So the marital rape stuff comes out of this idea that women, if you’re married to your husband you’re not allowed to turn him down for sex and this is a concept that they used that was referenced in the bible and I think some people very twisted, you know if you read the passage itself, it’s kind of big. But people have used passages in the bible to justify rape. They’ll say it’s not rape because the woman is married to him and you don’t have a right to say no if you’re married to someone. Which i think anyone, feminist or not, can realize is pretty fucked up. so their efforts actually failed in the 19th century. there were people who vehemently argued that marital rape was ok. Of course they didn’t call it marital rape, you know. Eventually the efforts of feminists we overturned this and called it what it was. Which is, you know, rape. Voltairine de Cleyre was very interesting. Another interesting feminist that i think a lot of libertarians can on board with is Emma Goldman. Now she was more of a socialist. She was a socialist anarchist, but she has really interesting ideas too. These people both were feminists but clashed with some of the political feminists in their day too. So for libertarians who say, oh well all feminists are statists, that’s actually not the case. Again there has to be nuance here if you go back far enough. Especially in first wave feminism you did see individualist feminist or anarchist feminist, who said it’s not enough we overthrow these patriarchal institutions on a social level but also on a state level, and maybe we can’t use the mechanics of the state to do that.
CM: So when did it go from the first wave to the second wave feminism, when was that transfer and what did that mean for the philosophy has a whole?
[24:50]
MK: First wave feminism basically ended with the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote. That’s generally seen as the end of first wave feminism. Afterwards there was still a lot of work to be done. Just because women had the right to vote didn’t mean we were equal. It didn’t mean actually mean that we had any political power or influence. There was still a lot of social norms that were being enforced in the way of gender roles on the social level. So second wave feminism comes around, and this is where you see a lot of divergence of thought. This is where you see a lot of different opinions coming out and it’s really interesting. This started in the early 1960’s.
Whereas first wave feminism focused on suffrage and overturning a lot of the legal obstacles, second wave feminism wanted to talk a lot more about sexuality reproductive rights, inequalities within the family structure even. There’s was the legal fight too, but they were focused on these social inequalities. They wanted to focus on domestic violence and the marital rape issues too that still that hadn’t been overturned by the first wave feminists. Some of the things that you see in second wave feminism, a lot of people tried to pass the equal rights amendment which would have been a constitutional amendment granting women equal rights. I’m kind of, when it comes to, again I’m an anarchist, so it’s one of those amendments. How does an amendment guaranteed equal rights? I don’t know that you can write something on a paper and all of the sudden people have equal rights. I think you’re still going to have social inequalities with that. So just because you’re focusing on getting an amendment passed doesn’t mean we have equal rights. It never ended up passing, but honestly I don’t know that it would have been all that great for feminism or for equal rights in general, in the same way that having a black president doesn’t mean that racism has disappeared.
CM: It can end up undermining, it’s kind of like the civil rights act, where it’s like well now, we all have rights and therefore the whole black issue is done, right? Or now we have a black president, now racism is over. And all these problems are over and that’s the issue when it comes to government especially how history textbooks are written. Essentially there’s a social problem that exists because of man’s innate evil and government comes in on a white horse fixes the situation, names a law after fixing the situation, and then everything is fine. That’s been part of the catastrophe that has been the issue when feminism has been mixed with government or anyone’s mix with government is that it taints it completely. Even in this short conversation we’ve already had right now it is abundantly clear that to make the statement that feminism is socialism with panties is quite incorrect when it comes to trying to understand feminism as a whole.
[28:24]
MK: yeah, in second wave feminism this is where you saw an alliance with the civil rights movement for example. Feminists were very closely aligned with other social movements and the anti war movement for example. I’ve heard some libertarians say oh well, the cia was funding miss magazine and the CIA was funding some feminist organizations, and there may have been some government money going toward these organizations. But if you actually looked at the history, the FBI, on the other hand, was infiltrating these organizations as well as the civil rights movement and antiwar movement. So government clearly saw these people as a threat and feminism isn’t some government conspiracy to take away men’s rights whatsoever. It was taken very seriously by government agencies. so much to the point where these organizations were infiltrated. That’s something to consider, again we’re looking at some of the historical battles that feminists have fought, especially in regards to the state and power differentials.
CM: It’s an interesting point actually whenever we start government subsidization, cia subsidization, in these different cases. Because the more you look into documentation, you’ll find that every single movement over the last, say, hundred years has in some way been subsidized by the government and has also been fought by the government at the same time. Reason being, the government has a shit-ton of money and they like to stretch their limbs into every single aspect of everything that’s going on. to state that an entire movement is fraudulent because some government money got involved in it is to state that every single movement throughout the last hundred years has therefore been fraudulent, including whomever is talking at that particular time. I’ve seen individuals like the guys from Nozick Media trying to knock Terence McKenna because he may have got some government money at some point, and therefore the entire psychedelic revolution was a CIA MKUltra plan. They’ve made similar claims in regards to feminism. I think this is a really absurd way of trying to understand the way in which people think of these things now, and the real positive influence that feminism, including second wave feminism, has had on the way we think of individual rights now and humanitarian rights right now.
[31:00]
MK: It’s a fallacious argument. I want to go over some of the highlights in second wave feminism, where they were focused on things like reproductive health and domestic violence. So in 1964, Haven House, the first modern women shelter, opened in California. So this is a good thing. Before it was very hard for women to get help and it still is. Domestic violence is still very misunderstood. A lot of women don’t want to speak out about it b/c they want to protect their partner. It’s still a problem, I think it’s still very underreported even more so then. Also there was more of a general societal acceptance that hitting your woman was ok, to keep her in line.
Again, like a lot of the stuff that the men’s rights movement say about woman’s nature has been being said about woman’s nature for hundreds of years. This isn’t anything new, oh they’re disobedient, and they have to beaten. You could even trace this back to the bible in some ways and some of what’s said in there when it comes to husbands and wives and obedience. A lot of it has its roots there. Another thing that happened in 1965 was the US supreme court case Griswold v. Connecticut struck down the only remaining state law banning the use of contraceptives by married couples. This was something that existed. Contraceptives were banned by individual states. I know libertarians typically argue, well you know federal state, you know federal government vs state’s rights, Things like that. I don’t like that argument because you’re not free living in an oppressive smaller version of a state where you’re not allowed to use contraceptives so that you can’t get pregnant.
Having control over your reproductive system is incredibly empowering because children are very very expensive. and you lose autonomy when you’re forced to have a child. I think some of the figures are saying $250,000 to have a child, but it’s so much more than that, you’re losing your physical autonomy. Typically women are the ones stuck with the child. It’s much easier for the man to get out of that situation if he so chooses. Of course there a such things as child support. The state will force you to pay that. But typically if a woman gets pregnant against her will and she doesn’t have access to services that could prevent that she’s basically stuck with this situation that can be economically debilitating, it can be physically debilitating. you can still die in childbirth. There are all these things that go along with that if you don’t have the freedom to choose whether or not you want to have children then you’re not really free as a woman. And it took until 1965 to get to this point where people were saying you can’t ban someone from using contraceptives. That’s crazy, again 1965 was fairly recent.
[34:12]
CM: Yeah,, you’ve brought up the atheist aspect of this show, but it’s also the religious aspect of the state as a whole. Which is that so much of this anti woman mentality has been propagated by religious scripture since religious scripture has existed. The bible clearly states that the woman is the property of the man. If you look at the old testament it explains how if a man rapes a woman, then he owes the father a certain amount of money and that he has to marry her. That’s not exactly positive when it comes to relationships between individuals. You have apostle Paul in the New Testament stating women are essentially subject of men and it’s ok if they’re abused because they have to be kept in line. They’re not allowed to speak within church. All of this stuff is just calssic puritanical billshit, and it blows my mind that right now we’ve gotten to the situation where there are the paleo-conservatives libertarians who are stating they are fighting for free speech and anti pc mentality by propagating old school misogyny religious domineering forces and just violence against women as a whole by stating well guess what, at least i’m not one of those pussy social justice warriors. Which is exactly what I know I’ll be called for even making a positive case for feminism whatsoever.
[35:54]
MK: Which is kind of a ridiculous insult if you think about it. I mean none of those things necessarily sound that bad.
CM: Well it’s kind of like how people now are for Donald Trump. They say anyone who’s not for Donald Trump is some progressive leftist white knight. God! I hate the term white knight. Can we just get rid of the word white knight? I don’t know what it means half the time. You could just use the word they’re pandering in an illegitimate manner to get laid. If that’s what you mean by white knight then I understand it. But if it simply someone who states, I really don’t like it when you’re a misogynist dickhead, well then it’s not so bad.
MK: I’ve used it as a joke before too, but I’ve backed away from using the term because of the idiots who use it so frequently.
CM: People repeating concepts without defining their terms and leads to an infinite loop of shame and hatred that helps exacerbate the power of a few amount of people and makes a smaller amount feel empowered while disenfranchising and splintering off an entire section of the populations called women from this thing we call prosperity and voluntary exchange of good in the future. So how are supposed to decide to get there if we demonize any movement which has helped propel over 50% of the population to a point where at least they’re allowed to be in a relationship where it’s not ok to rape them? where it’s ok for the to actually buy property? where it’s ok for them to actually have a job? or be able to control their own body? and by labeling people who are for that social justice warriors is just kind of an absurd notion. God knows I’ve been in the position before where I’ve called on people being too leftist. I’m atoning for some of those sins now by helping produce this content here. but… go ahead.
[37:48]
MK: So second wave feminism is really important to understanding the misconceptions libertarians have about feminism. Again when they’re talking about feminism and they don’t really understand the history of it in the same way that a lot of people who generally identify as feminists generally think of themselves as first wave feminism. A lot of libertarians will miscategorize feminism as all of the bad parts of some very tiny vocal minority of second wave feminism. To balance things out this is where some of the bad feminist stereotypes come from is from second wave feminism. One of the people who’s very often referenced who had a very small role in feminism but is often referenced as an evil feminist is a person named Valerie Solanas, who wrote the SCUM Manifesto, and SCUM is short for society for cutting up men. This is a person who was very likely mentally ill in some ways. she tried to kill Andy Warhol at one point. She a very unstable person. and this is also where you saw sex negative feminism getting a foothold. So Valerie Solanas, she identified herself as a feminist very strongly she wrote this SCUM Manifesto, and it’s terrible, you know, advocating violence against people is just wrong. She tried to backtrack and say it was satire later and it turns out it really wasn’t. She really wanted to advocate violence against men.
Andrea Dworkin is another, she’s really prominent. she was much more vocal and prominent sex negative feminist who wanted to ban pornography because she viewed all pornography as exploiting women. similar to how some people, it’s the same sex negative feminism you see today when it comes to trying to rescue people from sex work for example. that all sex work is exploitative. that’s obviously not true. I would align more with the sex positive view of feminism which says women choose the occupations they choose. Maybe women choose to be in pornograpy because they find that empowering. Who am I to say really? I’m an individualist so if people find that kind of work empowering they should be allowed to do it. They don’t need to be rescued from it because they’re too delicate to realize what they’re getting themselves into. Women are smart and capable of understanding risks just like men are. This is where you see more radical viewpoints that have become stereotyped. I think it’s important to note that when it comes to people like Andrea Dworkin and Valerie Solanas, these were unstable people. They may have had some say at the time but they’re not generally taken seriously. None of their ideas are taken very seriously at all today. There were some legal successes but you haven’t seen those carried over today. Especially with something like the internet I mean any kind of law prohibiting pornography has been superseded by the internet.
CM: The thing about the sex negative feminism is that it’s such an easy target to use whenever categorizing feminism as a whole. It’s just like with occupy wall street where for the most part it wasn’t people trying to throwing bricks inside of buildings, but you have two or three who did it and therefore classifying all of these individuals as being those types of people. It’s the perfect man created of straw that you can light on fire because without that strawman then you’d actually have to talk and try to come up with some goals and solutions to the problems and legitimate issues they were bringing up at the time.
[42:03]
MK: Yeah, another legitimate thing. So in 1969 when California was the first state to adopt a no-fault divorce law, which means you could divorce by mutual consent. They also passed a law regarding the equal division of common property. Whereas before these things were unequal, even earlier on it was much harder for a woman to get a divorce. If you’re in an abusive relationship and you need to get out of there you didn’t have that right basically. Again this can be traced back to some of the puritanical beliefs about marriage and divorce.
CM: Yeah, and when it comes to domestic violence thing. i just want to bring up something real quick. I was listening to a few of these men’s rights people and they were saying that the vast majority of these domestic violence, women were the one’s initiating them. These people don’t seem to understand statistics or where the stats come from or how questioning works. Most victims of child abuse state that the reason they were hit was because they were bad and that they deserved it. Many women in these domestic violence situations have a form of Stockholm Syndrome, or they start to believe that this person cares about them by using force against them. and therefore they will state that they were the initiators of these particular cases of abuse. That does not justify domestic violence. That states that the relationship itself is a very harmful one. And to then rationalize it in that way is just so antithetical to any loving or caring or empathetic ideal whatsoever. It’s really fucked up! That’s the only way I can classify it, and when I hear women talk about this and yell about it I just get pissed. Because it’s such a lack of understanding context too.
MK: Well the biggest problem is these statistics are coming from police dept who are antihuman generally speaking, but when it comes to cases of abuse and especially rape, there’s a lot of sexism involved in that hierarchy still. There’s a lot of racism involved. I mean we’re expecting the cops to be report this correctly and not asking weird leading questions, or some of these other things. We need to look at the sources of these statistics. Where are they coming from. If they are coming from police departments or something then you know I would be highly skeptical.
CM: A lot of those stats they brings up to are just bullshit stats. I’ll bring up one. I remember Stefan Molyneux and a few other guys bringing up this statistic that the Air Force did this study where they showed that something like 60-70% of all the rape allegations were false. Do you know how they proved that case? They asked the woman if she had had any alcohol within the last 24 hours. If she had alcohol in the last 24 hours therefore it was a false rape allegation.
MK: Oh wow
CM: And then you push that shit forward. just how they put those statistics forward, it’s like how are you not seeing the problems with these? I mean there are problems on both sides when it comes to the accumulation of these statistics. Kind of like the 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 depending on whatever variable you look at. Maybe it’s 1 in 10 maybe it’s 1 in 8. we legitimately do not very good information on either side. But
MK: But there’s too much rape.
CM: There’s too much rape! Exactly, like, there’s too much fucking rape!
MK: Yeah…
CM: And to then go more men are raped than women, men are generally the ones doing that rape too. And that still doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. I mean it’s bad on both cases. It’s not helpful.
MK: It’s not an argument to say that when someone responds that rape is underreported, it’s not an argument to say oh well people falsely accused of rape too. First of all whatever statistics you go by false rape allegations are so so tiny compared to the amount of rape that’s not reported. And it’s not reported for lots of reasons. It’s a humiliating experience if you are raped and you have to report it to the police. there’s no guarantee of justice. I mean there’s been lots of incidences of mishandling rape kits and things like that. But that’s not an argument to counter balance that. No one should be falsely accusing people of rape. I think it legitimately undermines the ability of rape victims to report and to get help. But to pretend like it’s an epidemic is just completely and entirely dishonest.
CM: Yeah, and then they bring up these college cases where, yes there’s been some false rape allegations in college cases. But they’re acting as if in a lot of these cases it’s on the side of women. If you go ahead a look at how the colleges are being told now by the state how to handle rape, I mean it’s absurd. You have colleges, which don’t have real investigators there. You have university staff who are stating in certain cases, yes they’re always siding with the female. Well ok any kind of allegation of rape this person just ends up getting kicked off campus. Well then you have another huge amount of these college cases as well where, for instance, there one case where they told the woman she had to explain in detail how she could have been anally raped without lube. right? And this was a university professor telling her to do that. Rigth? So it’s fucked on both sides.
[48:23]
MK: Well when it comes to rape too another argument I’ve heard from the mra people is well what about prison rape and all these men raped in prison? Yeah, who’s doing the raping? I mean like there’s…
CM: well let’s stop sticking 85% of people in jails right now are there for victimless crimes anyway.
MK: Yeah, that’s a great point too. When it comes to rape and the violence between men and women, no one should be raping anyone but there’s one gender that’s disproportionately doing most of the raping. I think this is where the feminists have a point. That’s not to say that all men are rapists. I think this idea is something that is pushed by some of the more academic, if you want to call it, professor type feminists that oh we need to teach men not to rape. I think that most men already know this. Rape is a deviant behavior that is not commonly practiced throughout many societies. Especially in this country I don’t think we live in a culture that condones rape for instance. This is where I diverge from some feminists as far as rape culture. I don’t believe we live in a place where rape is condoned. I think it’s universally abhorred. There are very few rapists and the chances of being raped are lower, but it is still a threat and regardless of the statistics you go by there’s just too much rape going on.
CM: Yeah, no kidding. It doesn’t matter which stat you’re looking at, I did an entire presentation on how I don’t view rape culture as being this huge part of society where everyone’s constantly getting objectified and that men are these inherently bad people, because I’m against the whole idea of original sin as a whole. So many groups try to use original sin. What I mean by that is that there’s some evolutionary type something in your brain, some meme, that causes you to be this despicable human being. MRA’s use it whenever they classify females in general. and then you have radical feminists then say the same thing about men. I just get really bothered whenever they start uttering these stats in regards to domestic violence, in these particular cases. They’re making such a shit show out of the whole situation and are just going back into the situation again where they’re trying to sell libertarianism from a point of cynicism, from a hate filled point, from an intolerant angle, rather than one out of peace and beauty. And honestly the culture and the state are really just a figment of our imagination. They’re something that exist, but it’s really mostly in our minds. Then the culture and the state, the way we think about the state, has to shift. So if the ancapistan libertarian world we want is based of of basically hating a specific gender thinking that they’re manipulator, thinking that we need traditional family values which undermine everyone. Well then the statist, the ancapistan libertarian wonderland isn’t one I’d want to live in anyway. it’s not something to try and achieve, if what we’re trying to achieve is just another fucked up society.
MK: That’s right.
CM: You know what on that note, we’re actually like an hour twenty in, so what I want to do is we’re going to go ahead and go into the other stages of feminism we’re going to talk a bit more about MRA’s MGTOW. Try to bring a little more clarity and understand these particular cases. we’ve done first and second wave so we’ll get into more of the history of everything else. I’m guessing we’re going to do a three part libertarian guide to feminism and MRA’s that I think is sorely needed within the communication of this. So of course… http://www.libertarian-atheist.com and you can find MK Lords you can just type her in on google because god knows there not a lot of other people named MK Lords. So thank you very much for being on again MK
MK: thanks for having me. it’s been a great discussion.
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