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ISBN: 9781999271008
No one understands the academic sources and the devastating legal and social impacts of radical feminism better than Philip Carl Salzman, whose insights and marshalling of evidence make for a must-read expose.
Janice Fiamengo, Professor, University of Ottawa, and author of Sons of Feminism: Men Have their Say.
As a scientist, an egalitarian father of sons, and a grandson of Indian freedom fighters, I was very interested in the writings of Prof Salzman. I have been asking the same questions raised by Salzman since my own boyhood, interested in principles and equality and science. Salzman addresses the issues which are clearly troubling Humanity, with a deep insight and lucidity that I find peerless. He is among the last of the Great Scholars, who have since been decimated by ideologues and activists. We avoid listening to his classical ideas and intellectual methods at our peril. I endorse him to everyone from scientists to my own teenage sons.
Patanjali Kambhampati, Associate Professor of Chemistry, McGill University
Philip Carl Salzman is a fearless free-thinking academic whose writings engage, stimulate and provoke. His questioning of received wisdoms is based on deep engagement with the social science literature and should be required readings for students, professors and all people concerned about the welfare of men and boys.
Robert Edward Whitley, Ph.D., Department of Psychiatry, McGill University
This volume of essays by a renowned anthropologist is a thoughtful and provocative contribution to the increasingly heated gender-wars battle. Dr. Salzman pulls no punches and makes no exaggerations when he uses the term “toxic feminism” to describe the ideological and political transformation of traditional feminism based on the morally legitimate effort of generations of women to achieve greater equality of opportunity between the sexes in competing for educational, employment, income, status, and other valued resources. Using an abundance of evidence, he carefully describes the emergence over the past few decades of extreme, toxic, and unscientific efforts to ethically and legally enforce gender equivalence, if not female superiority, in outcomes in each of these areas premised on the false assumption that all lifestyle and life-chance disparities between males and females are prima facie evidence of deliberate discrimination against women.
Hymie Rubenstein, retired Professor of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba
Philip Carl Salzman is a courageous Canadian intellectual. He defends rationality and logic against the pervaders of post-modern nonsense. In Feminism and Injustice, Professor Salzman takes on radical feminism, pointing out where it is wrong and where it is self-serving. Consider the titles of two chapters, “Feminist Lynching” and “The Toxic Mission to Reengineer Men,” and tell me you don’t want to read it. Feminism and Injustice will open your mind to what is happening in Canada and the U.S.
Rodney A. Clifton, Fil. Dr., Professor Emeritus, University of Manitoba
In these incisive essays, Professor Salzman investigates and analyzes contemporary feminism and what has become #MeToo politics, holding their claimants to the standards of equality before the law and true gender equity. Not to be intimidated by sloganeering, the hashtag hive mind, or the histrionics of the fashionable herd, this intrepid explorer deals with the most sensitive and explosive topics with poise and equanimity, always pointing to human rights as the beacon for behavior and jurisprudence.
Michael Rectenwald, former NYU professor and author of Springtime for Snowflakes and Google Archipelago.
Feminism and Injustice
Philip Carl Salzman, Ph.D. (Chicago)
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, McGill University
Senior Fellow, Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Contents
Introduction
Chapter One: Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right: How Not to Bring about Social Justice
Chapter Two: Toxic Feminism
Chapter Three: Feminist Lynchings
Chapter Four: Should We Believe Whatever a Woman Says About Sexual Assault?
Chapter Five: Should False Accusations Be Punished?
Chapter Six: Rape Culture on Campus
Chapter Seven: The Campus Rape Culture That Never Was
Chapter Eight: The Toxic Mission to Reengineer Men
Chapter Nine: Is Feminism Hate Speech?
Chapter Ten: Tonic Masculinity
Chapter Eleven: Feminists Assault Science
Chapter Twelve: Should Christine Blasey Ford go to jail?
Chapter Thirteen: In Praise of Dead White Men
Chapter Fourteen: Boys Without Dads: Feminism’s Collateral Damage
Chapter Fifteen: Why Men Are Falling Behind in Schools
Chapter Sixteen: Feminism and Transgenderism
Chapter Seventeen: Are White Men Personae Non Gratae?
Sources
Author Biography
Feminism is the transformative ideology and social movement of the latter half of the 20th century and the first half of the 21st century. In its ambition and success, it can be likened to the fascist and communist ideology and movements that transformed countries in Europe and around the world in the first half of the 20th century. In contrast to those movements, which in many countries, such as the USSR, Cambodia, and Cuba, through over-ambition and over- extension, destroyed themselves, while continuing strong in a few, feminism has entirely succeeded in transforming the West, including America, Europe, and the Anglosphere.
Like other such social movements, feminist ideology offers a value goal that is widely attractive: equality, in this case equality between men and women. It made the case that for most history, women had been subjugated to male “patriarchy,” subordinated, suppressed, and victimized. Feminism, it said, was going to right this wrong and advance the universal value of equality. The reality has turned out to be rather different: feminism in practice has become an attempt to benefit females at the expense of males. “Equality” is demanded for females, but never for males.
Feminists have advocated for females to be awarded the monopoly on judicial truth: “Believe women.” They have demanded that females have the monopoly on rights to children by successfully opposing joint custody by mothers and fathers. Of course, feminists have excluded males by denying fathers any say in the fate of their unborn children. Feminists also claim monopoly on higher truth by denying science, such as that sex differences are determined largely by biology. Feminists claim that sex roles are entirely “socially constructed.” They have their “own feminist truth,” whatever scientists say. In fact, feminists wish to impose a new “feminist science,” which will be based not on evidence but on “social justice.”
While feminists have made positive contributions to society, such as encouraging women to develop their capabilities to the fullest, including participation in the workforce, the deleterious effects of the feminist revolution for our most basic institutions have been massive. For example, the feminist vilification of “toxic males,” and the view that “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” has resulted in the undermining and destruction of marriage, family, procreation, and child rearing. While the positive effects of feminism are broadly appreciated and recognized, its negative results have not been.
In regard to reproduction, Feminists appear to value above all responsibility-free and consequence-free sexual relations, and in consequence demand an unlimited ability to kill their unborn babies, although the practice was supposed to be “rare.” Between 1970 and 2015, there were 45.7 million legal abortions in the United States, and thus 45.7 million babies were denied to the American population. In 2017, the American birthrate was 1.72, far below the replacement rate of 2.1.
In regard to marriage, only a few more than half of all Americans marry, and they do so at a later age, five years later, in their late twenties, compared to 1970. In spite of the greater maturity of married partners, half of all marriages end in divorce. To what extent does feminist ideology contribute to unreasonable demands and unwillingness to compromise in marriage?
In childrearing, some 30% of American children are raised in one parent homes, a pattern characterized by relative poverty, poor educational results, crime, and incarceration. Fully 70% of African American children are raised in one parent homes, usually a female parent, with the deleterious consequences for the children, especially male children, which have been well-researched and documented. All of these changes are unintended consequences of feminism and its influence on women’s attitudes, public culture, and laws, although this is never mentioned in mainstream accounts.
The chapters that follow, which are based on articles I have published in the last years, address various aspects of feminism and the consequences of female supremacism. Feminism is now a dominant ideology in America and the West, and is the source of many injustices in our allegedly enlightened societies. It is my hope that, recognizing the negative consequences of feminism, we will return to the values of individual integrity and universal equality, individual merit and objective science, that have been unduly undermined by feminism.
The early Greek version of the Hippocratic Oath included the following commitment: “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing.” A Latin version states, “I will utterly reject harm and mischief.” A later version is from the Hippocratic school: “Practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient.” Thus comes our sense that “do no harm” is a basic principle of medicine.
In dealing with social relations, we teach our children a similar lesson: Two wrongs do not make a right. If you are done an injury, do not multiply the harm by doing an injury back. This a rejection of the law of talion: “Lex talionis—the principle or law of retaliation that a punishment inflicted should correspond in degree and kind to the offense of the wrongdoer, as an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth; retributive justice.” Lex talionis is the law of tribal societies based on balanced opposition among groups, potential retribution being the main form of deterrence against attack. What worked in tribal societies does not work in complex civil societies, particularly in liberal democracies. Civil societies require civility; replying to injury by injuring back is a violation of civility, lowering all parties to uncivil behaviour. We say: do not lower yourself to the level of the one who injured you. Two wrongs do not make a right; two wrongs double the initial harm. We urge: be the bigger person who is strong enough not to retaliate. We teach: be civil, and if others are not, that is on them, not on you. We plead: be civil; do no harm.
The principle “do no harm” is in our time being violated by those who claim to be champions of “social justice.” These activists, many of whom would identify themselves as “progressives,” strive to advance the interests of those who they claim are victims of oppression, and they strive to constrain those who they deem to be oppressors. Identification of victims and oppressors is not, however, on an individual basis. Rather, progressives see people divided according to categories of gender, sexual preference, race, religion, class, ability/disability, ethnicity, etc. Certain genders, sexual preferences, races, religions, classes, etc., such as women, gays, blacks, Muslims, workers, natives, and disabled, are victims, and certain others, such as males, heterosexuals, whites, Christians, middle and upper classes, and able bodied, are seen as oppressors. Now there is no doubt that in the past many people have been oppressed, have suffered, and have failed to reach their potentials, among them many women, blacks, homosexuals, workers, and natives. I find it easy to be sympathetic with such people, because I come from a community that has historically suffered enslavement, forced displacement, discrimination, pogroms, and attempted genocide.
The solution to oppression for “progressive” advocates of “social justice” is to provide advantages for members of oppressed categories, and to disadvantage members of oppressor categories. However, the problem with privileged access and special benefits for some is that it victimizes those in other categories who received reduced access and a reduction in benefits. For example,
The de facto discrimination [in elite university admissions] against Asian and Asian-American students is spectacular, undeniable, and shameful. They are in effect subjected to the same quota system that the Ivy League once used to keep down its Jewish population — the “bamboo ceiling,” some call it. Asian-American groups pursuing litigation against these policies have demonstrated that students of Asian background on average have to score 140 points above white students to have similar chances of college admission — and 270 points higher than Hispanic students, and 450 points higher than black students. The “Asian penalty” is especially heavy in places such as California’s prestigious state universities.
Excluding members of “oppressor” categories, while encouraging members of “oppressed” categories is the basic, “progressive” strategy. A recent example is the announcement of research grants for social justice journalism at Brandeis University, for which only females and people of colour are eligible. White males, from the paradigmatic “oppressor” category, are excluded. Presumably that would include also Jews, who, as everyone knows, have never suffered any oppression. On the other hand, I suspect that Hispanics, who are considered white by the U.S. Census, would be considered people of colour by the Brandeis bureaucrats.
The reverse racism and reverse sexism and reverse ethnic, class, and sexual orientation discrimination that characterizes illiberal “progressive” measures such as “affirmative action” try to right a wrong by committing another wrong. Progressives seem to believe that two wrongs do make a right. But in fact harm is done to many individuals who happen to fall into alleged “oppressor” categories, whatever their personal characteristics, social relations, and political commitments. Contemporary anthropologists have rejected essentialism, the idea that members of a cultural category all have the same essential characteristics. But progressive social justice advocates reduce everyone from being unique individuals to being no more than members of gender, racial, ethnic, and sexual categories.
Anomalies abound: For example, blacks and Hispanics from well-to-do middle class and wealthy families are favoured over whites from poor working class families and one parent families. Jews, once blocked or greatly restricted from entering elite universities, as they were excluded from many neighbourhoods and social organizations, are now deemed by progressive social justice warriors, some themselves Jewish, to be members of the white oppressor class, and not to count as a minority targeted throughout history. In Canada, “affirmative action” is seen in favouring members of First Nations for university places and posts. This is not a benign action which does no harm. Rather it excludes, not only the bad colonial Euro-Canadians, but also Canadian visible minorities from East Asia, South Asia, the Pacific, Africa, Australia, and elsewhere, who are disadvantaged by this “corrective” reverse racism. Measures advocated by “progressive” advocates do harm to many individuals simply because of the categories that have been imposed on them. Some advocates glory in every strike landed against individuals in disfavoured categories. This may be vengeance, but it is not justice.
“Justice” is not a transparent concept. It has been the subject of inquiry and debate throughout the history of philosophy. This is not the place to rehearse the history of philosophy or even contemporary philosophers. But it is useful here to make a distinction between the progressive and liberal perspectives. While progressives focus on categories and collectivities, favour statist government impositions, and aim for equality of results between categories and groups, people who take a classical liberal point of view focus on individuals rather than categories and groups, aim for equality of opportunity, and prefer collaborative arrangements among free individuals rather than state imposed measures. For such a liberal, victimizing members of disfavoured categories is an injustice. The liberal view is that all individuals should be treated fairly, with equal opportunity. No disadvantage should be visited upon any individual because of a category imposed on that individual by others. The criterion for success should be meritorious performance, not the category in which others have placed you. Liberals therefore approve of musicians auditioning by playing behind a curtain, so that only their performance counts. Some liberal professors, including this author, grade student papers blind, without knowing which student wrote it, the papers being identified by student numbers rather than names. True liberals insist that justice is equal fairness to all individuals, irrespective of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, or sexual preference. All societal institutions should treat individuals as individuals with no distinction based upon category labels.
There are other rationales for illiberal policies that favour individuals in some categories and punish individuals from other categories. A prominent one is “diversity.” In fact, the United States Supreme Court ruled that reverse racial discrimination is a justifiable consideration in a holistic consideration of university admissions in order to enhance diversity, but not to correct past wrongs. The result of discrimination to advance diversity is the same as to aid the oppressed: people of some categories benefit from special consideration, while people of other categories are disadvantaged by exclusion. Furthermore, discrimination to advance diversity has the same flaws as discrimination to aid the oppressed: individuals are not treated as unique persons, but as members of categories defined by their biological plumbing, or skin colour, or ethnic, class, or religious affiliation. Members of each category are seen as essentially alike, and markedly different from members of other categories. Such reductionism has long been rejected by serious social scientists, and by pretty much any thinking person. The response to the “wrong” of category homogeneity is the wrong of category discrimination, which cannot be considered justice in any liberal sense.
Top down social engineering is difficult, which is why liberals are often sceptical of planned transformations and oppose the particular policies to implement them. Those who are committed to social change should take an example from the medical profession, and profess to “do no harm.” We have seen too many wrongs implemented to correct previous wrongs. Asserting “social justice” does not justify injustice to individual people.
Feminism began as a challenge to male domination and female subordination. It could have become a champion of equality and the dignity of individual human beings. Unfortunately, contemporary feminism is not a liberation from sexism. It is true that feminism rejects anti-female sexism. But in place of anti-female sexism, it does not advocate gender-blind standards; it does not advocate treating individuals as complex human beings; it does not reject reducing people to their sex/gender. On the contrary, feminism, as indicated by its name, is a movement that sees people as defined by their gender, and lobbies for the interests of females. In short, feminism does not reject sexism, but advocates anti-male sexism.
In complement to feminisms framing of females as oppressed by males, while having their qualities of strength and intelligence underrated by men, men are framed as arrogant and insensitive, oppressive, and brutal. The systematic vilification and demonization of males is part of the feminist strategy of raising women by lowering men, by convincing people that women are good and men are bad. Note that this is simply a reversal of anti-female sexism into anti-male sexism. All males, whatever their individual qualities, are reduced to a common set of evil characteristics, while all females are celebrated as sensitive, smart, and strong.
Female victimhood is described in many feminist works. Here is one well known example, as seen through the eyes of the female protagonist in a short story, “Ancient Rome”:
I snuck Reviving Ophelia