History Even 109 years ago, feminists were insane

[DarthOne]

Some facts:

• "Women and children first" was not a rule, neither a law. It was exactly what it was - a chivalric notion that the most vulnerable should be aided first. Colonel Archibald Gracie, who went down with the ship but barely survived by clinging to a capsized lifeboat (and, unfortunately, died mere months later from the injuries he suffered), testified about unmatched courage and duty of gentlemen who tirelessly aided women and children into the lifeboats and outright refused to take their place. On the other hand, some men had sneaked and fought their way into the lifeboats or were even boarded regularly, together with women and children (another proof it wasn't a rule, as each officer had a different opinion on the matter), so to take away the chivalry of those brave souls who perished and state there was "nothing special about it" is a disgusting insult.
  
  
• Sylvia Pankhurst was, surprise, surprise - an outspoken communist.
  
  
• Even in 1912, feminists had the capabilities to perform extraordinary mental gymnastics and claim that, in the case of men sacrificing so women can live - women were as equally affected.
  
  
• It may look strange to us now, but back in the 1910s more than 90% of women were actually against the suffrage (the right to vote). Most of them weren't interested in politics at all and feared that encouraging young girls to pursue a career instead of being housewives will end the "true womanhood". The men who were against the right of women to vote asserted that women are easily swayed and would vote irrationally. (Anyone got that graph that shows how if women weren't allowed to vote, democrats would not have won a single presidential election the last 60+ years? )

Feminism was always societal cancer. It is based entirely around a Marxist mindset of Conflict Theory. People claiming that there were 'waves' of the movement and that the earlier ones were better than the latter ones are simply not paying proper attention to what it was from the very beginning. They were always radicals and always misguided. Their goals have shifted, but the insanity is still ever-present.

Somethings never change....

 

[Captain X]

Yeah, they had some nutters. There's also that whole white feather thing among the British, where they were going around and trying to shame even boys as young as 14 into joining the army to go fight in the trenches. Pretty disgusting. I still believe women should have equal rights to men, though. Where I differ is that I think we ought to have the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities, whereas feminists just want the privileges, and to have more of them than men.

 

[DarthOne]

Yeah, they had some nutters. There's also that whole white feather thing among the British, where they were going around and trying to shame even boys as young as 14 into joining the army to go fight in the trenches. Pretty disgusting. I still believe women should have equal rights to men, though. Where I differ is that I think we ought to have the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities, whereas feminists just want the privileges, and to have more of them than men.

I once thought the same as well.

Problem is that just doesn't seem to happen in reality. Far, far too many women might say they want that but give it to them and they balk or flip out. Never mind the fact that you're going up against thousands of years worth of societal rules and possibly evolutionary ones between men and women.

What I'm trying to get is that it feels like more trouble than it's worth doing and might in fact be impossible to do.

 

[Captain X]

Problem is that just doesn't seem to happen in reality. Far, far too many women might say they want that but give them what they claim they want and they balk or flip out.

Just the crazy feminist ones. And in any case, it may not be what they want, but it's certainly what I would give them.

 

[DarthOne]

Just the crazy feminist ones. And in any case, it may not be what they want, but it's certainly what I would give them.

You might, but it;'s the rest of society that I'm worried about.

 

[JagerIV]

Society is always going to treat men and woman differently, because they are different. Thus, to the degree Feminism is based on Marxist blank slatism and a desire for equity, its always going to be crazy, like any ideology so completely disconnected from basic, self evident facts of life.

 

[ShieldWife]

Feminists have always been hypocrites. Even from the earliest days, they wanted to either gain male privileges without gaining male responsibilities or they wanted to eliminate female responsibilities without eliminating those female privileges.

The fact that the ideology of early feminists sounds reasonable to so many self described conservatives is a testament to how thoroughly we’ve all been indoctrinated and have come to internalize leftist values. The agenda of the suffragettes and other contemporary feminists leads us to where we are today which will be eventual societal collapse.

 

[Aldarion]

Yeah, they had some nutters. There's also that whole white feather thing among the British, where they were going around and trying to shame even boys as young as 14 into joining the army to go fight in the trenches. Pretty disgusting. I still believe women should have equal rights to men, though. Where I differ is that I think we ought to have the same rights, privileges, and responsibilities, whereas feminists just want the privileges, and to have more of them than men.

Nah. The moment you start introducing equality in one aspect, the moment you set up equality as a value (much less a fundamental value), you set the stage for the coming of Marxism and Communism. Conditions for the Marxism were created when people bought the whole "monarchy caused World War I" and "democracy is better than monarchy" bullshit. And from the World War I - industrial warfare, the myth of evil monarchy, etc. - came the Communism, feminism, socialism etc.

 

[Captain X]

 

[ShieldWife]

Equality is an inherently destructive idea, in large part because it’s based on total fantasy. People aren’t equal, not in any tangible way, and any agenda with the goal of achieving equality between people that aren’t equal is going to result in failure and resentment.

If certain people in a society are being oppressed or if they need some important thing that they are lacking, then sure, we can work on ending that oppression or getting them the necessary resource that they need. That is different from wanting equality. If people are starving, the problem is the starvation, not that other people have more food. If people are enslaved, the problem is the slavery, not that other people are free. Once you bring “equality” into the discussion then it’s no longer about some objective need or problem, it’s that some other group has some perceived advantage that your group doesn’t and that is inherently divisive.

Starving people can be revised with food, in fact in the modern West that has happened, hunger has been eliminated. But inequality can’t be eliminated, because people can lead point to someone else and say that this other person has something that they don’t, even if that supposedly “privileged” person earned it.

 

[Morphic Tide]

People aren’t equal, not in any tangible way, and any agenda with the goal of achieving equality between people that aren’t equal is going to result in failure and resentment.

The key thing that needs recognized is that equality as a value was originally specifically equality of opportunity, letting the innate differences shake out and the best rise to deserved station, without interference of valuing heritage or race or even whether they are male or female.

We see this be remarkably close to true in practice with the interesting result that the closer to equal opportunity a country gets, the more disparate the outcomes trend towards, accelerating with oligarchic inheritances but holding true for the overwhelming majority by pure and simple difference of choice.

Nobody forces women to take caretaking jobs, that is simply a choice they are far more likely to make. One that pays poorly. Just as men are far more likely to sacrifice every shred of personal life for the corporation, and thereby rise to the top of it. When you manage to find a women who works like that, she'll be payed slightly more.

The scientific basis of this is, bluntly, that inherent variance is not remotely strong enough in humans to dismiss people out of hand based on any inherent quality but the furthest extremes, the environmental factors are too much of an influence. You need rarities like fetal alcohol syndrome, outright missing limbs, or being a Pygmy for it to make any sense.

All the issues have arisen from the French Revolution nutters and their successors deciding equality of outcome was something to pursue, which is the non-starter you're mentioning. One cannot equalize outcomes because different jobs have different values. A factory builder is generating far more value per hour than the person who operates that factory.

And when you strip away any personal gain from being the high-value builder or coordinator, then you run into horrifying issues because you very quickly start to run out of these people who set up the shit for the masses to work.

 

[Captain X]

Equality is an inherently destructive idea, in large part because it’s based on total fantasy. People aren’t equal, not in any tangible way, and any agenda with the goal of achieving equality between people that aren’t equal is going to result in failure and resentment.

Don't comflate the idea of being treated equally under the law with the delusion that all people are literally equal (or should be made to be). That is a delusion of the leftists.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Don't comflate the idea of being treated equally under the law with the delusion that all people are literally equal (or should be made to be). That is a delusion of the leftists.

This too, equality under the law actually originated as a very blunt matter of stripping hereditary aristocrats of immunity to a lot of punishments purely by their station of birth. Quite particularly with the nobles despising the royalty having more of this privilege allowing for a lot of assholery, then the peasants managing to press it to extend the rest of the way.

 

[Aldarion]

Don't comflate the idea of being treated equally under the law with the delusion that all people are literally equal (or should be made to be). That is a delusion of the leftists.

But one almost inevitably leads to the other, I'm afraid. Or at least that is how it has usually been through the history.

 

[S'task]

But one almost inevitably leads to the other, I'm afraid. Or at least that is how it has usually been through the history.

That's literal Whig history theory, or if you would Progressive History, the idea that "the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice".

There's been exactly one civilization that has adopted the idea of equality under the law in a broad sense, and while in that broad civilization we have seen that progression, that does not mean that progression is inevitable. We do not have a sufficiency sample size to prove that, and frankly, the sharp intellectual disagreements over equality through the last 200 years seem to me to indicate that such a path is not inevitable.

Remember, in our timeline we literally have had a major state actor purposefully infiltrate and subvert of the institutions and academy of the biggest proponent of equality before the law to shift it's ideological stance. If the USSR never existed, or if any number of other things had not panned out the way it had in the late 19th and early 20th century, the ideals of communism may never have taken root in the western academy as much as they did. To say that equality before the law (which is merely an extension of the idea of Equality before God) inevitably leads to the idea of equality of outcome seems to me to be, at best, a stretch.

 

[Aldarion]

That's literal Whig history theory, or if you would Progressive History, the idea that "the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice".

Personally, I subscribe to Tolkien's idea of the Long Defeat... no matter what you do, destruction is inevitable. Which is actually exactly the same as the Whig theory, except pessimistic.

In other words, the arc of history is long but it bends towards destruction.

 

[Captain X]

But one almost inevitably leads to the other, I'm afraid. Or at least that is how it has usually been through the history.

History has shown no such thing.

 

[Aldarion]

History has shown no such thing.

Look at the West... also, French Revolution started with the idea of equality under the law, and ended up with a bloodbath. Communism started out with the idea of equality (though equality in general), and ended up with a bloodbath. And even so, equality under the law has not been achieved. Nor has any other type of equality, nor it ever will be.

 

[Captain X]

Look at the West...

Yeah, what we are seeing is the undermining of those principals by an outside force which is very much against them themselves. It's idiocy to then turn around and suggest that believing in equality leads to oppression, so why not just give you particular version of oppression a go? This is literally that meme of an idiot putting a stick through the spokes of the bike they are riding and then blaming something else for their crash.

also, French Revolution started with the idea of equality under the law, and ended up with a bloodbath. Communism started out with the idea of equality (though equality in general), and ended up with a bloodbath. And even so, equality under the law has not been achieved. Nor has any other type of equality, nor it ever will be.

That's fatalistic nonsense.

 

[Aldarion]

That's fatalistic nonsense.

It is the fact.

Yeah, what we are seeing is the undermining of those principals by an outside force which is very much against them themselves. It's idiocy to then turn around and suggest that believing in equality leads to oppression, so why not just give you particular version of oppression a go? This is literally that meme of an idiot putting a stick through the spokes of the bike they are riding and then blaming something else for their crash.

Hardly an outside force. Marxism originated in Germany, and it has thoroughly infiltrated the entire West. Marxists have not come from the Soviet Union, they existed in the West since 19th century.

Equality under the law is a good idea, I can agree with that. But fact is, West was the only historical civilization which attempted to implement the equality under the law, and it is the civilization which gave birth to idea of "equality, period". I can hardly agree that the two are somehow unrelated.

And if you look at premodern monarchies or even just Austria-Hungary, it is obvious that lack of belief into equality does not "automatically lead to oppression". First, ideologies which promote equality are generally the most oppressive, especially once they start sliding down the slippery slope. Even just democracy itself is tyrannical, precisely because ideal of equality means that political units of the state are individuals as opposed to e.g. cities and provinces. Which leads to centralization and, thus, tyranny. I rather prefer the notion of Pater Patriae - historically, it has produced much better results as far as individual and political freedom goes. Second, equality has never been achieved in practice. Rulers are always exempt from rules, that is as true today as it has been thousand years ago - if anything, it is far more true today. So the whole idea of equality before the law never achieved its goal, nor can said goal ever be achieved. The only thing it achieved was to open the doors to other, destructive, ideas of equality.