Oppression of Women
By Rod Van Mechelen
Oppression proceeds exclusively from objective conditions.
-- Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty
The conspiracy against women
1992 Bellevue, Wash. - Fundamental to pop-feminist dogma is the notion that there is an anti-female conspiracy among men. A conspiracy of sexual pleasure to dominate women. (Feminism Unmodified , Catharine A. MacKinnon, pp 6 - 7) But most women in our culture prefer the "traditional" role of their gender. (Reay Tannahill notes, in Sex in History , p 389, that the American pioneer women "fought all the way to retain their purely feminine roles," and looked forward to the day when they could leave all the "men's work" to men.) If any have oppressed American women, it has been women: "Susan B. Anthony, after 50 years of campaigning for women's rights, admitted resignedly in 1902 that women in general were more conservative than men." (Sex in History, Reay Tannahill, p 390)
What's more, while pop-feminists complain that men denied "them" the vote generations years ago, the truth is that suffrage was denied in the United States not on the grounds of male opposition to women's rights, but in defense of men's rights: "Men who had no particular objection to woman suffrage, as such, had the greatest possible objection to the scrutiny of their own manners, morals, and habits that the temperance-suffrage ladies promised as a sequel. The liquor interests, too, swore that if women were given the vote prohibition would result. And they proved to be right." (Sex in History, Reay Tannahill, p 400)
Sisters are doing it to themselves
The "oppression" of American women is not something men do, but something women choose. If American women are oppressed, it's by choice. Their choice: "In the last analysis, millions of able women in this free land chose, themselves, not to use the door education could have opened for them. The choice -- and the responsibility -- for the race back home was finally their own." (The Feminine Mystique , Betty Friedan, p 173)
Most women prefer the protected role of housewife to the equal rights and responsibilities offered by feminism. They prefer the special status accorded them under "male supremacy." But politicians, the press, and all politically correct thinking citizens believe men oppress women. This combination of women making traditional choices while stigmatizing masculinity oppresses men.
Regards
Rod Van Mechelen
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