The Pendulum Effect

I have been asked to contribute a regular segment to a new podcast “the pendulum effect”. I’ve linked to it on the left so please check it out. I think you’re going to like it. The latest episode has an interview with none other than Warren Farrell himself.

The pieces that I will be contributing to the podcast will be focused mainly on gender related news items. I will also be recoding these segments as videos and putting them onto YouTube. This particular video is featured in the show, but it is something I have always wanted to address and what a fortuitous situation to finally do so.

I would like describe what I understand the term “the pendulum effect” to mean. I myself have used this analogy in the past and it about time I expand on what I believe it to mean. I have broken down the pendulum effect into chronological stages and I have cited feminism as an illustration of the effect, even though it could be applied to other civil rights issues such as black rights and homosexual rights.

1. Step 1: A civil rights need is born

   For complex historical reasons beyond the scope of this article, a civil rights need is identified on behalf of a group. The pendulum effect is viewed as bipolarity between two groups. With the group on the left deemed as being the oppressed group and the group in the right as being the oppressors. The relationship may be between women and men, blacks and whites or homosexuals and heterosexuals.

2. Step 2: The legitimate phase of the movement

   The oppressed group does indeed suffer from legitimate grievances. They become aware of the need to change their standing and push the pendulum of equal rights with their actions, to correct these grievances and to improve their image in the zeitgeist.

   They face some resistance from either side, but they also face a lot of support from the oppressor side, who truly emphasises with their plight. This is the legitimate stage of the movement as the oppressed side gains the rights that they clearly should have. Luminaries of the men’s right movement such as Glenn Sacks and Warren Farrell freely admit that there are genuine gains that feminism has achieved, things such as legislation that codifies the right to equal pay such as the equal pay act of 1963 in the U.S. and 1970 in the U.K., the right to own property and to object to genuinely misogynistic attitudes as can be seen in the old style advertisements and public service announcements. I agree with this attitude personally. There is no such thing as a civil rights movement that has done no good. This is the legitimate and honourable stage of the movement. The pendulum is even.

3. Step 3: The illegitimate phase of the movement

   The transition between this step and the last is hard to identify as the oppressed group transitions from generally doing good to doing bad. The oppressed group now has a respected and powerful lobby acting on its behalf that can affect the law, at this point no reasonable person could describe the group as being “oppressed” anymore, but the movement has turned into an industry of grievance mining, looking under every rock for signs of oppression and slights.

   It is important to emphasise the members of the group are not lying to keep up the appearance if being oppressed, they truly believe it, but they are in too deep and lack the ability to holistically view the progress that their group has made, to take “yes” for an answer. The “oppressions” that their group supposedly suffers become more and more academic and created out of whole cloth. The goals of the group come more from the radical activist members, who mostly reside in academia. Issues that they choose to fight for include things such as redefining language, redefining history, redefining their definition of oppression and re-characterising the successes of the movement into further examples of oppression.

   A prime example of manufacturing problems is to me, one of the most reprehensible aspects of modern feminism. This is where feminism has achieved a world where women have no less opportunity than men, can take any degree they want to and choose their own career. And then when women do not flock to careers that feminists want them to, they cites this as proof of work that still needs to be done for women’s rights. I think that women who feel empowered to enter the fields they want to enter means that the work of women’s rights is mostly done. To spin the liberation of women into an attempt to further victimise them is a disgusting act that is to spit in the eye of the good achievements that feminism has made.

   The worst effect of this illegitimate phase of the movement is to brainwash the younger members of the group into hating men. The feminists have already refined history and distorted the facts to where, as a feminist said in an email to me, half of women are raped and the fraction of feminist haters dwindles in comparison to the number of men who hate women. Yeah, we sure are terrible.

   None of this has any relation to the truth but what is to be the expected outcome if a young woman is told that men as such beasts? I’ll tell you the outcome because I saw it firsthand when I graduated in 2005. The young women I went to university with were angry, they were petulant and a hostile and felt the need to partake in constant belittling comments and man bashing. With an angry youth, the road is paved to the next step.

4. Step 4: The oppression of the oppressors

   The discourse has become one sided. The feminists are seen as the authorities in the problem of equality as the status quo is viewed as being sexist and thus un-needing of representation. The feminists are now running a dictatorship of opinion and with a background noise of resentment and manufactured oppressions they start to act in a very hypocritical way. The true idea of equality has been lost, they have a new definition of the word. Equality of outcome. Sameness.

   Departments of women’s health spring up, ministers for women are appointed and special programs for women are created. All of these are designed to help a beleaguered minority get the leg up they apparently need. With a population of hostile women some truly horrendous laws are passed, men’s achievements are deemed to be on the back of women. If girls are underachieving in school then they are being underserved whereas if the girls are overachieving then this is a sign of their natural superiority and empowerment. There exists no compassion for the suffering of males, many feminists will come straight out and tell you tough shit – they’ve been oppressing us for so long that it’s our turn now.

   Witness the most obscene situation. The generation of women who have never had it so good being the most aggrieved and punishing the generation of men who have oppressed them the lease and want to commiserate the most. The pendulum is well and truly on the other side now.

5. Step 5: The backlash

   The so called oppressors are now the oppressed and the cat’s out of the bag. Men are hit hard, their children are taken away whilst they are treated like criminals and are told when they can see them. They die younger, have to retire later, get shafted in divorce, suffer harsher sentences, are lagging in school, graduate less and are assaulted everyday by man bashing.

   They can be sentenced to 18 years as a serf if a woman steals their sperm, they have no choice about being a parent, less is spend on their health concerns, they spend more on insurance, they can get passed over in lieu of a less qualified female at work and every morning on the tube ride to work they get tut-tutted at by adverts as being a bunch of boozing wife beating misogynistic rapists.

   Then they have to listen to some snarky little co-worker tell them that.. “It’s a man’s world!”.

   It’s enough to make a fellow turn to drink. More and more guys mutter heretical thoughts at the pub. When in the company of men I get favourable reactions to my material. Organised groups like fathers for justice start up and men start voicing their opinions on youtube and through podcasts like this one.

   The reaction of the feminists? In one word, hysterical. They cannot react with ideas because their belief system has long been a barren intellectual wasteland populated with unproven hypotheses, conspiracy theories and falsehoods. So they react with shaming tactics, calling us “women haters” and claiming that we want to “turn back the clock” on women’s rights. Well, I don’t want to turn back the clock, but I certainly want to push back on that pendulum.

What remains beyond the backlash step remains to be seen, people who are fighting back against the ideas of feminism might instigate a whole new pendulum effect in the opposite direction. Perhaps we are doomed to endlessly push back and forth in perpetuity. I certainly hope not. Allow me to tell you what I hope the effect of the backlash against feminism will be.

We all know that a political system in which only one side is represented is not a good thing. If one side has complete control to implement their ideas then history tells us that we can end up in a horrific situation. There are two sexes and so far we’ve been letting feminism represent all issues pertaining to gender by itself. What I want to see in the future is a two party system where both sides are represented by movements that actually represent its members. I don’t pretend that I understand a woman’s point of view I am a man not a woman, let the feminists speak for themselves and men’s rights activists speak for ourselves. This two party system will also keep the other side honest, feminism has grown sloppy and overly academic in the face of no opposition so let us shine the light of scrutiny onto feminist ideas and let the ones that don’t stand to reason scuttle from sight.