10 Similarities Between Conservatives and Radical Feminists

10 Similarities Between Conservatives and Radical Feminists

the-horseshoe-theory:

The Horseshoe Theory states simply that, as you get more and more extreme with respect to a political view (ex: more and more left-wing), you “horseshoe” back around and your actions become similar to that of your philosophical opposite (ex: begin acting more right-wing). Generalizations of common beliefs between radfems and conservatives.

  1. Generally tend to be middle class+ and white.

  2. They believe women have no sexual agency — conservatives believe the man should make the decisions, and radical feminists believe that the patriarchy makes women straight, and they couldn’t possibly like having sex with men.

  3. Furthermore, both oppose any amount of kink and claim BDSM is harmful.

  4. Both believe in compulsory sexuality — conservatives believe everyone should be straight, and radfems believe all women should be gay.

  5. Both believe that anyone who doesn’t agree with them on topics regarding rape are lying about it happening and should have vulgar acts done to them.

  6. Both groups are racist as hell, and often resort to the “I have a black friend!” excuse. Both will vehemently deny being racist, too. Conservatives will talk about how the Republican party is the party of Lincoln, and radical feminists will talk about how the first radical feminists were black.

  7. Both hate trans* people with a burning passion and think they’re a fake man/woman who is trying to “invade” or take over.

  8. Both think porn is evil and a scourge on society.

  9. Both believe consent doesn’t exist and that, even if two adults consent, a sexual act can be immoral and harmful to other parties.

  10. Both hate, hate, hate, hate gay men. Conservatives view them…well, we know how they view them. Radical feminists believe they are…

Sadly, there is a lot of truth to this. Radical feminists are frankly insane, and much of the feminist movement has been taken over by radfems. Many feminist heroes and icons are or were radfems. Many of these icons also strike me as possibly being mentally ill in some way. Let us go through the charges. 1. True. 2. Pretty much true. At the very least radfems say that women are going to be a lot more fulfilled having sex with women than having sex with men due to inherent differences and power differentials existing between men and women. Other than that, they all believe that there are not enough lesbians, and we really need to increase the number of lesbians. The A number of others are deliberately raising their kids alone without fathers. Quite a few of them state that they hate raising their boys, and if they had their way, they would only raise girls. Some radfems have advocated that mothers kill their sons. Others adopt political lesbianism and lesbian separatism. The hatred for men (misandry) is extremely high among radfems, and in general, they do not believe that there are any good men at all. Nevertheless, quite a few radfems have boyfriends or husbands. 3. True, and I hate to say it, but the radfems may actually be onto something here. More on this later. 4. I went over radfems’ beliefs about lesbianism earlier. In fact, quite a few radfems actually believe that all women should be lesbians. 5. Radfems are pretty insane on the subject of rape. Rape paranoia is epidemic among radfems and is a continual redefining of the definition of rape downwards more and more away from the traditional legal definition and into some very murky area. Radfems to not have a high opinion of their critics – the general attitude is, “Go to Hell!” 6. Conservatives are racist. Well, most of them are anyway. I think there are a few conservatives who are not all that racist. At least they seem to be able to have Black friends or lovers without problems. The charge seems false against radfems; they are radical antiracists. 7. I do not know about this one, but I think there is some truth to it. Some of them say that transsexualism is harmful to women because radfems have a mission to get rid of gender. The other belief mentioned – that radfems believe that some transwomen are men invading women’s space, or that transmen are no longer women and should be thrown out of, say, women’s colleges, are widespread. Now whether they hate them like conservatives do, I am not sure. 8. This is absolutely true, at least of radfems. They want to wipe porn and prostitution off the face of the Earth. 9. This is absolutely true, at least of radfems, who have an utterly insane notion of consent, often saying that there is no such thing. 10. True about conservatives, not sure what they are getting at with regard to radfems. I always thought radfems were gay male-friendly. The truth is that radical feminism is an insane ideology and most of the women in it are in my opinion mentally ill in some way or another. I have known some men who got into radical feminism, and their behavior was pretty ridiculous and pathetic, not to mention wimpy to the extreme. No sane male, even a liberal or Leftist man, should support this lunatic, ferociously antimale or misandrist ideology. Any male who does is essentially a gender traitor who has gone over to the enemy. Radfems often counterpoint the feminists that they hate as what they call liberal feminists or libfems. Libfems are often described as sex-positive and have believe that prostitution should be legal and females in porn should be supported. Both occupations may be fulfilling and liberating. Libfems also often support BD/SM. I believe that liberal feminism is something that a lot of us men, even masculinists, members of the Manosphere or liberal and progressive men, could get behind. What’s wrong with liberation, after all? Isn’t liberation what the Left is all about? Sane males can reasonably say that they support liberal feminism while staunchly opposing radical feminism. That seems a lot better than out and out feminist-hating, which feels reactionary.

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0 thoughts on “10 Similarities Between Conservatives and Radical Feminists”

  1. Thanks again for an interesting topic and article, Robert.
    I think that radfems have not come to their often quasi-conservative views of sexuality by thinking their feminist theories logically to the end and coming to similar results coincidentally, but rather that they wanted to see a conservative result for whatever reason and then tried to justify it with their theories. This is also why most radfem theories are not well thought-through and somewhat illogical.
    About the rape paranoia: a political/societal movement which is so biased against men will automatically attract more than average numbers of women who had such bad experiences with men that they are ready to spend a lot of time and energy in the radfem movement, and the worse the experiences were, the more energy they are ready to spend, so that statistically, the most traumatized and angry ones ended up having a tremendous influence in the radfem scene and published the most. Hence the predominance of rape hysteria in the radfem movement.
    Otherwise, I’m not quite sure if all radfems have a mental problem. Radfem ideologies, groups and scenes have the same characteristics as other extremist movements, totalitarian organizations and cults. I read the following book about it which I think nails totalist movements well and I can recommend it:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_Reform_and_the_Psychology_of_Totalism
    Totalist groups are attractive to quite a number of people, not all of them being mentally ill. In some cases it’s just that they enjoy flattering themselves feeling superior as the enlightened elite who know all better, enjoy making friends with new people, have fun spending much time with them and feel like a family all together against the evil rest of the world, which also gives importance and drama to their life. Quite immature once you’re past 25 years old, but not necessarily mentally ill.
    > 10. True about conservatives, not sure what they are getting at with regard to radfems. I always thought radfems were gay male-friendly.
    Radfems have a (male) gay-bashing tradition, I’ve found a little article here which explains it a bit and can serve as a help for googling other articles on that topic:
    http://www.avoiceformen.com/sexual-politics/m-g-t-o-w/feminist-gay-bashing/
    Other than in the USA, where there are various famous feminists, in Germany, for decades, the media coverage of feminism has been limited to basically only ONE feminist: a radfem called Alice Schwarzer, publisher of the EMMA magazine. Mind you, in her “PorNO” campaign in the eighties, she said that male gay pornography is inherently sexist and humiliating for women. Her rationale was that during a sex act etc. involving at least one male, there is always a power imbalance and the dominant person therefore always adopts the male role whereas the passive one always adopts the female role, thereby reinforcing patriarchy.
    In this context, it is irrelevant who of both acts in a more feminine or masculine way, so even if a drag queen fucks a leather guy, the drag queen adopts the male role and the leather guy the female role –> patriarchy! Yes, that’s feminist logic at its best.
    And I think there’s also some subliminal gay bashing going on there. At least to the point that she can’t wrap her mind around the fact that some guys just like guys and not women and are not interested in oppressing women, so she has to ideologically squeeze the women-as-victims in there even if they don’t belong there. I don’t know how to explain better.
    More about the PorNO campaign here (in German):
    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/PorNO-Kampagne
    Schwarzer also said that SM suppresses women no matter if the couple doing it is male-male, male-female or female-female and who tops and who bottoms, because it’s an imbalance of power and imbalances of power can under no circumstance mean anything else than patriarchy.
    Radfems make my brain hurt.

    1. There is pressure on a lot of liberal and leftwing men to go along with feminism in its totality, which logically means that we have to go along with radical feminism. Liberals don’t seem to be into it too much, but on the Left it is pretty much mandatory. If you are against it, you are a feminist-hating man, basically a sexist pig, a misogynist, and furthermore, you are not on the Left anymore and they throw you out calling you a rightwinger.
      This movement strikes me as insane, and as you say it looks like a cult or a totalitarian organization.
      I have a hard time understanding why leftwing men should go along with such an obviously bonkers, cult-like, totalitarian and especially man-hating movement. I am a man, so I should hate men? I should hate myself?
      Furthermore, I have known some men who got into radical feminism and frankly, they are very pathetic men. Pretty wimpy too. They won’t stand up to their women. With one guy his gf would scream and yell at him and cry for ~3 hours, and he would not do anything about it. Not too far into that, I would probably be saying, “Shut the fuck up, bitch!” Which I guess makes me a reactionary. But honestly, that is the only reasonable to deal with a crazy, out of control woman. You have to be a hard-nosed bastard to them and call them on their crap and not let them get away with it.
      It is hard to see how female-female BDSM is specifically misogynistic, although obviously one party is being hurt because that is part of the game.
      And how male-male BDSM harms women is truly beyond me. It seems to me that it has nothing whatsoever to do with women at all.
      And when a woman dominatrix doms a male submissive, no matter how hard or soft, how is this harmful to women? Do these idiots know that many female Doms are into female superiority and male inferiority as part of their domming males game?
      How saying females are superior and males are inferior and then humiliating males along those lines is misogynistic or harmful to women is beyond me. It seems more like Female Supremacism, female sexism, and misandry if anything.

      1. >>>There is pressure on a lot of liberal and leftwing men to go along with feminism in its totality, which logically means that we have to go along with radical feminism. Liberals don’t seem to be into it too much, but on the Left it is pretty much mandatory. If you are against it, you are a feminist-hating man, basically a sexist pig, a misogynist, and furthermore, you are not the Left anymore and they throw you out calling you a rightwinger.
        Same here in Germany and other European countries, especially in social-democratic and leftist parties and movements, and in the media. Sucks a lot for several reasons:
        1. The pressure is not only on swallowing the complete basic radfem ideology but also on supporting specific policies and measures, so even if you are a radfem but are against a certain policy for a completely different reason, you’re considered antifeminist. Currently, this concerns female quota for leading positions in companies and parties, digging out unknown women and even wifes of … for new street names, compulsory Gender Study seminaries even for engineering students, officially sanctioned preference for women for certain jobs paid by the state, and fucking up German language in any way they can to make it more gender-something, but I think it will not stop there.
        2. It’s an ideology which has immunized itself against criticism in various ways.
        3. Though this is not the aim of radfeminism, it has the effect that self-proclaimed leftists, once they readily swallow these dogmas, might end up swallowing other bullshit. E. g. it goes against equal rights, but once you get the traditional political movements who always favored equal rights to believe that sexist policies lead to equal rights or that it is okay to pass antidemocratic laws for the sake of this ideology resp. “equal rights” (this has been tried and done already), you get them used to deprioritize the most basic requirements for freedom and democracy, and they might end up not defending what they need in order to survive as political movements. So if another, more evil ideology follows for the sake of whatever-sounds-nice, this might have extreme consequences.
        4. Worst of all: It deprioritizes class, workers’ rights and wages etc., the traditional spheres of leftist movements. With radfem policies and its extensions (affirmative action etc.), you might even end up with almost a kind of Manchester capitalism with a caste system where your personal performance and merits don’t count so much any more, and where companies and politicians might praise themselves about how great, fair and just the society has become – because people of all orientations, genders, colors etc. are equally represented and paid and are not allowed to discriminate against each other. And nobody gives a shit that they are working their asses off 14 hours a day in awful conditions for a minimum wage, while the shareholders, bosses etc. live like kings. It’s horrifying to see leftist movements turn more and more a blind eye to this problem and to see workers rights etc. go down the gutter because.
        All this taken together, and seeing how right extremist and right radical movements are on the rise in Europe, I am afraid that the leftist movements are of no good use as a counterpoint any more, because the majority of the general population is not interested into radfem and affirmative action stuff or even opposed to it and the Left spends so much energy on it like if we didn’t have any other problem inmidst of the economy crisis. Many of our European right extremist and right radical parties are nationalistic and socialistic or social-democratic (though not necessarily neo-Nazi in the strict sense of the word).
        So if you want a more egalitarian society instead of excessive capitalism for the future, you cannot rely on the leftist and liberal parties and this leaves you with the right-wing parties. Same goes if you are somewhat nervous about Islam and Islamism and want to limit immigration from muslim countries because you love freedom, equal rights, democracy and stuff and don’t want to end up in a European Iran – the Left will shun you for this and call you a racist. And same goes if you think that Europe should better remain several countries instead of merging due to different mentalities and economic set-up, as social democracies and social systems tend to work better in smaller and more homogenous country.
        So for the future, I wander what will happen politically in Europe. I cannot speak for each single country, but what I have delineated is what we are dealing with currently, and if the leftist movements and parties keep stuck in their radfem and affirmative action prioritization, some countries might become right-wing, fascist or national-socialist in the next years. So yeah, good job, leftists.
        ______________________
        Anecdote:
        In the past two or three years, a new somewhat promising German party, the Piratenpartei, has even been basically killed by feminism. Or, to be more precise, the party had its problems and it was not clear whether it would stabilize and take more shape or whether it would die; basically they were part liberals with emphasis on civil rights in the more classical sense, and part social-democrats (the established parties for these political positions have lost their trustworthiness in the past 5 / 15 years). Could have become something nice and neat.
        Then, left extremists and especially radfems came into the party, made lots of noise and especially somehow could not stand the fact that this party did not have a compulsory female quota for leading positions and had had mostly male members (the party had emerged from a very focused movement among IT nerds who wanted more data protection rights etc. and then expanded its program when other movements joined – hence the emphasis on civil rights, the refusal of female quota cause they only make sense if you believe certain unproven premises, and all those male nerds in the party though they also had women in leading positions without ever needing a quota). This silly debate sucked away energy and nerves in the party for a long long time. It was not the only problem of the party, but contributed to the party’s decline, which gets almost no votes any more.
        _______________________
        Oh, and you talked about radfem guys. I’m a gay male and I had one of these as an affair, almost 20 years ago. Couldn’t stand him too long, this mental self-flagellation of his and his anger at my “lack of awareness” when he came up with the subject, that was just plain weird.

        1. Oh I did not know you were gay. Well, welcome to the blog, my gay brother. This blog officially supports most of the major gay rights political causes, and I am even on the mailing list of some gay rights groups and I participate in their campaigns, nevertheless, I haven’t had the most wonderful time with gay men, so I am a bit wary of them in general. Also I am willing to tell the truth about gay men and even lesbians and the way that they live their lives, their lifestyles, and maybe what causes these orientations.
          I work as a counselor and I have worked with some gay guys. I had one 15 year old boy who was wrestling with his orientation – I am excellent at figuring out male sexual orientation (have not dealt with females much) and I quickly figured out that he was surely gay. I also told him that at age 15, this was set in stone and he would have a gay orientation for the rest of his life, and he needed to accept it and try to live a happy life.
          Nevertheless I do get called homophobe a lot, but I think it is unfair. I will criticize gay men and gay male culture when I feel like it, but I will always support their equal rights. Especially I think true biological gay males should be supported 100% in their orientation as I figure they can’t help it and didn’t choose it and there is no way to change them. I am not so wild about male homosexuality by choice or opportunism – in fact, I dislike it.

      2. >>> And when a woman dominatrix doms a male submissive, no matter how hard or soft, how is this harmful to women? Do these idiots know that many female Doms are into female superiority and male inferiority as part of their domming males game?
        The Alice Schwarzer logic here goes like this: in those scenarios, the woman is objectified as the dominant part and only serves as a projection of the male’s wishes. Hence, BDSM scenes with a female dominant part suppress women. And BDSM scenes with a male dominant part suppress women. And women-only BDSM scenes suppress women. And men-only BDSM scenes suppress women.
        If you don’t adhere to this view. you are a chauvinist pig. 😉

        1. I don’t disagree with your comments.
          Except that conservatives are very common, and radical feminists….not so much.
          I know lots of conservatives, and lots of women who would call themselves feminists, but don’t share very many (if any) of the views you’ve described.
          I’m not sure I’ve actually come across anyone personally who believes the views you’ve described as radical feminists.
          I’m sure there are women like that, but they certainly don’t make up anything close to the percentage of the population that conservatives do.
          Which makes the comparison kinda pointless.
          Unless you are trying to say that conservatives are as batshit crazy as radical feminists….

          1. Sure many women call themselves feminists and do not think like this, but if you go to feminist websites, or check out feminist organizations or Women’s Studies Programs at universities, you will find that radfem views are extremely common amongst the groups.

      3. This is what indian idiots who troll on these forums are doing, there have several incidents since Narendra modi was elected
        Many indians are raping Muslim women and beating muslim taxi drivers and auto drivers, just to feel good
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO9bwU-79ng&feature=youtu.be
        Like i have said many times, the levels of insecurity and self delusion in indian society will create a greatest humanitarian disaster in coming decades
        If there any nation which needs to be balkanized ,its india,not just that if any group which needs to curled down and arrested its RSS and Hindutva groups
        Sadly many American NGO’s are Helping RSS groups inside india
        http://www.outlookindia.com/article/IDRF-and-the-American-Funding-of-Hindutva/217964
        http://contrarianworld.blogspot.be/2014/03/hindutva-bigotry-in-america.html

    2. Forgot to wrote about WHY radfems share many views about sex with conservatives:
      1. Already wrote about why in my opinion there’s quite a lot of women with traumatizing sexual experiences in the radfem movement, and that these tend to be the most active and vocal ones. Also, women with traumatic sex experience in my experience often tend to either become slutty or very reserved sexually, for the latter ones those strict conservative attitudes towards sex might fit their needs and fears better than liberal attitudes. Moreover, if everybody were prudish and reserved about sex, they would blend in better with society so it seems like a wish that everybody else adapts to them – turned into a paternalizing ideology.
      2. If you look at the radfem movement of the 60ies – 70ies, many of the women in that scene in the USA came from a white middle-class background (and in Germany, from a middle-class background, we don’t emphasize here when people are white cause most are). So they somehow brought conservative middle-class values into the radfem movement. Also I suppose that it was easier for the sexually conservative radfem movement to survive up to now because it was the redsmurf among all those new political movements of that time, the other ones were more about equal rights, sexual liberation, progressive stuff etc. and they could not just “swallow” the radfem movement.
      However, radfem ideologies became somewhat accepted among leftist movements and scenes and even mistaken for just another blend of leftism (“radfem=feminism=equal rights”), and therefore radfeminism still has this leftist “flair” without being leftist at all and managed to creep far into leftist movements.

  2. Pretty much all political fanatics are against fun. I mean, I can understand racial pride, environmental concern, health concern, or feminism up to a point. However, these people want to shove a certain agenda down your throat. Also, the causes they back, despite all their enthusiasm, never make a difference. For instance, I believe in recycling. However, I know a lot of the Earth can’t be saved, maybe most of it.

  3. Robert, that’s fine by me.
    I come from a leftist background and had to abandon leftist movements because I could not stand any more that you are requested to adopt a specific opinion on a gazillion different topics to be considered leftist, and that you are considered right-wing, fascist etc. if you disagree on even one single topic. The pressure of conformity and of adherence to dogma in these movements is almost as high as in a cult. So I’m happy whenever I see other leftist “heretics” / free-thinkers. So no problem for me if certain gay behaviors, gays and/or the gay scene (which is a bad scene anyway) seem dubious to you, I prefer different opinions being expressed than suppressed and I don’t think you’ll treat me bad or anything.

  4. very thought provoking post and conversation. not got much to contribute but what springs to mind is about a decade ago at university women in my english lit class talking to each other and one commenting “I tried womens studies but they kept on marking me down when I didn’t agree with their opinions”. that chance overheard comment has really stuck with me and says a lot about the movement i think.

  5. Some parts of the world need feminism, like India. Many parts of the world actually need 60s era liberation movements, for example Asia, where white worship (at the expense of blacks and others) reigns supreme. The US, on the other hand, is pretty tolerant in most places, and if some places are too redneck, then you can easily move somewhere else.

  6. Not sure what to think about that boy abortion part, it would lead to woman outnumbering man and i kinda like this idea.

  7. Radfems and right-wingers are essentially moral dictators who try to whip up support for their totalitarian ideas by generating moral panics. Right wingers try to whip up moral panic against gays by conflating it with pedophilia and against abortion by conflating it with infanticide. Radfems try to whip up moral panic against male sexuality by conflating it with rape. Both try to whip up moral panic against pornography and prostitution by conflating them with rape and human trafficking.
    The sad thing is, radfems have gained a lot of influence beyond their actual numbers by manipulating liberal feminists and forming tactical alliances with right wingers (the porno wars and the “sex trafficking” hysteria, for example).

  8. Do I get a connection of domineering men & sexually frustrated women here? Both seek power over their own sexuality.

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