*Feminism IS Population Control*

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Who are these women? What was the key demographic? National, international? What are the factors?

Not that they as individuals did, but that they as individuals expressed a macrosystem "awareness of" and response to the changing circumstances, almost as soon as industrialisation and technology began to cause a major/sustained upswing in population growth.

I don't think that they knew ( consciously ) that the ideas that they were formulating were related to that set of data, just that suddenly it seemed very important to give women control over their own bodies, with a combination of measures which included the freedom to live alone, ( without incurring censure/ostracism ), birth control, and laws to prevent husbands imposing sex on their wives against their will, among others.

I am suggesting that whereas other animals react directly to physical environments/situations, ( with their bodies ), humans react with thoughts/concepts/ideas, and that feminism was/is the way humans/the species began to address the population problem. "Unconsciously".


The statistics show that, ( disease and wars, and other factors, being equal ), population growth rates drop after the introduction of feminist policies/women's rights. Birth rates did not drop before that, except in times of war or particularly virulent outbreaks of disease.


It is feminism which promoted and encouraged birth control, and made it possible for women to practice it in such huge numbers, to such a huge extent. Before feminism taught contraception and family planning most married women were more or less obliged to have children year after year. And before feminist analysis and protest women were more or less obliged to marry if they did not want to live with their parents their whole lives.


Did you see the birth statistics that I quoted at the top of page 2? In both India and Kenya the number of births per woman has dropped since feminist policies were adopted even to a small degree. Feminism teaches women to take control of their own bodies, to use contraception, etc, and it has already had an effect, even if it is still lagging behind that of the developed/industrialised world.

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Apparently there is a strong inverse correlation between fertility rates/"births per woman" and female literacy, that is to say, as female literacy increases in any country fertility rates fall proportionately.

And female literacy is the result of feminist policy/women's rights.
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What nonsense. It might not be apparent to you, but females are more empowered in societies influenced by feminism, than they are in societies not so influenced. Coincidence? I doubt it.


No it does not.

I cannot agree that such persons are feminists, whatever they call themselves.
I actually know one chauvinist female, and she is adamant that she is not a feminist. She believes women should be in charge, but society should be shaped so this is less than apparent to males, because like children, men (in her opinion) need their ego and self-esteem to be fostered and encouraged. She believes women do and should work harder than men, and sees males as the rightful recipients of female coddling and concern. In her view it is unfair to unsettle men's notion of superiority because to her view, just like children, men have very fragile self-esteem.
Personally, I think if this reflects her experience, she might be best served by looking at the kind of man she chooses to voluntarily associate with.

I cannot stand misnomers like 'reverse sexism', 'reverse racism', etc. There is nothing reverse about sexism. Reverse sexism would be to go in the opposite direction of sexism, not to be sexist against some group that it is not traditional to be sexist against.
It would be more accurate to call sexism against men, untraditional sexism, but most accurate to simply call it sexism.

As a feminist, the closest I have gotten physically to any man in the last decade, is when having sexual intercourse with my partner. It's not that I've not had other offers, I just have no interest in taking up offers of sexual engagement other than those of my partner.

No more so than industrialization, and capitalism, and technological advances, and changing attitudes and social structures as pertains to religion. No one of these things can be separated out as causal, because they are mutually influencing co-factors.

In both these places there have been 'developed world tries to solve problems of non-developed world' type initiatives premised on the need to constrain population growth. Perhaps sending people out to educate folk on birth control and the desirability of constraining population growth might be a more direct cause than mere feminism. I'm not convinced feminism is substantially more advanced in India than in China, such that is explains the difference in population growth between the two.


Most of this effect only occurs after the advent of reliable and easily accessable birth control. One easy to point to explanation for increased literacy effecting population growth is the increase in knowledge that often accompanies literacy. More people know about and understand birth control, in the instance of increased female literacy, more specifically those most likely to exercise the knowledge being literate, is likely to lead to increased usage.

A less obvious reason is that in many societies one's retirement package is one's off-spring. With women being literate in addition to increases in male literacy, more sophisticated savings plans become plausible and less people rely on reproduction as their primary source of old-age subsistence.

False dilemma.


Screw that. This is contrary to your immediately proceeding comment that women should be respected in their natural role. My natural role is not a submissive one. So which is it? Respect for the natural role of this woman, or female submission?


Clothing through the ages is clearly not a special interest of yours. Men have worn (and continue to wear) dresses and skirt type articles of clothing in societies much more patriarchal than modern Anglo Western societies. In some of the most patriarchal societies known, men in authority routinely wear dresses. Did you not know that Catholic priestly robes are simply dresses that have remained traditional garb for those in this role?

Evidently, the known society that most closely resembles an actual matriarchy, is the Moso (of China). The men traditionally wear trousers in this society. Men have very little do with children. If and when males support children, it is the children of their sister that they assist.

Evidently, men actively participate in nurturing their young in many societies/cultures, including patriarchal ones. The Anglo-Western way is not a general bench mark for anything other than the Anglo-Western way.


Obviously, ancient Greek sexuality is not an area of special interest to you either. Or have you discovered (but failed to publish) evidence of rampant feminism in ancient classical Greek societies?

It seems safe to assume you are unfamiliar with ritualized homosexuality in PNG highland societies, which are all evidently strongly sex-stratified, and far from feminist.


And now you are contradicting yourself again. How can we cultivate both sides and respect both sides, while simultaneously requiring females to be submissive to males, regardless of the 'natural role' of individuals? Your notion of respect for both sides seems to be that if females will submit, men will appreciate this. Why not the alternative? Males submit and females will respect and appreciate this (and them) while we tinker to hopefully one day get around to having a plan for cultivating both sides?

Feminism is well over 50 years old. It had achieved significant changes by the time the sixties rolled around.
In looking at events of the 60's (and feminist advances are only one area where civil liberties made advances) consider the impact of the proceeding world war. Once and for all, it was proven that women could keep house, keep society running, and even contribute to a war effort, all in the absence of able bodied men. I doubt much could hold the feminist advance back after that. Especially since capitalists now had evidence of a work force that could do the work of men, but need not (at that time) be paid so much. With females in the workforce, equality is desirable, because otherwise, women can be paid less, and then why would any profit-driven capitalist hire any man if a woman could do the job equally or (given the extent of pay differential at that time) even less than equally within the margin of the lesser cost of hiring women?


I suspect that a group that needs submission from another group to feel ok is the one with something to prove and more fragile egos if that group is to compared to one that merely wants equality.
Why do you need females to be submissive?

You really should consider history as something to look into. I cannot believe there are people who do not understand that modern consumerism is a direct result of industrialization. Of course modern consumerism is not the first consumerism to exist. Consumerism can be found in ancient cultures as well, including those where feminism never existed. But then, you would not be the first person who refused to let inconvenient little things like facts and reality get in the way of their beliefs.


Men have played different roles to other men, and women have played different roles to other women throughout human evolution. From this you conclude there is some sex-based natural role for male and some other for females? That makes no sense but nonsense to me.


Wow, that must explain the often excessive extent of competition and hostility between the sexes in societies early Anglo-Western colonial types liked to describe as primitive. Or does it?
In a recent example, a sex-stratified society produced a form of gendercide, with females killing all males born into two villages for about a decade or so.
Really? Does this interesting tip-bit figure into your conclusion that men should be respected and submitted to?


Er, no. This is only true of pan troglodyte. For pan paniscus, the ultimate alpha is always a female. The dominant male of the group is the alpha male by virtue of the alpha female, and is her favored son. Evidently, of the two, although we are equally genetically related to both, pan paniscus resembles us most closely in terms of sexual behavior.


Firstly, if there was not feminism in ancient Greece, but a lack of competition, then how is the lack of gender-competition you call for, not the cause of homosexuality and the presence in the form of feminism the cure thereof? You are contradicting yourself again.
Secondly, females were inferior socially and politically to males in ancient Greece. Females were often not even allowed to be citizens.
Further, the strong evidence available to us at this time, is that male-male love was preferred as an ideal well above male to female love.

As to your following comments, it would seem that if feminism is responsible for homosexuality, then it is some kind of cure for neurosis and war. What is bad about that?


I suspect this 'esteem' was of a similar quality to the 'esteem' you believe women ought to receive if only they will submit to men. I can live without such 'esteem'.


Of course, this is why the all-mighty powerful among them was the male god Zeus. It also explains why the Goddesses were portrayed as happy to start a war if it got them a golden apple and the coveted title of 'Ms Goddess' in the Goddess beauty pageant. And never mind that what's good enough for the gods might be viewed differently in the realm of mortals.
The Catholic church holds Jesus's mother Mary in great esteem. None of which causes females to be viewed as equal or causes them to be treated as equal, or respected as of equal worth within Catholic doctrine.


I doubt there is a supernatural explanation, so it necessarily must be natural. Unless by unnatural you mean you personally disdain it. You might have disdain towards women who exert power. Others can respect such women. Do not expect society to shape itself around your prejudices and you'll probably be less disappointed with how things work out.

So if I do as you wish, and submit myself to males, I will develop a neurosis, yet you still think it is possible to respect me while requiring that I submit against my natural inclinations at the cost of becoming neurotic? That's not consistent with any understanding I have of respect.

ACtually it's empowering them so they have the same rights and choices as men.

Until feminist theorists began to question the system which required women to live with a man such ideas did not exist. They were genuinely revolutionary ideas. The idea that women should be able to live alone, or that they would even want to, is a feminist one. The idea that women should not have babies every year so long as their health allowed for it, was a feminist one. When feminist thinkers began expressing these ideas society found them preposterous, outrageous, and unlikely. Feminist thought/analysis involved breaking through thousands of years of a particular mindset/conditioning.

I am not suggesting that the feminist movement was independent of the changes in society. On the contrary my point is that it was closely connected to them, but that the nature of these new ideas was directed by a subliminal drive to reduce population growth, ( in an "organic" reaction to the early effects on population of industrialisation etc ), and that it was/is oddly effective considering that it did not address the population issue openly/directly, ( as the eugenics movement tried and failed to do ), but instead achieved this end by altering the structure of society so that women would simply end up having fewer children.


What do you mean?


To begin with you say that "much of this effect " comes "after" birth control, and then you say that increased usage of birth control comes after increased literacy. Which one do you mean?

Feminist policies/the adoption of women's rights, ( the right to more, or just some, education for girls, for instance ), increases female literacy, which promotes greater use of birth control/family planning.

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Industrialization, capitalism, technological advances and changing attitudes and societal structures as they pertain to religion were not 'caused' by feminism.
None of which caused the industrial revolution or the religious reformation/schism triggered by Martin Luthar.

You are suggesting feminism is causal of particular changes, and has some subliminal drive to reduce population growth. I cannot see how such a notion could ever be proven, and I strongly doubt it accurately reflects or represents reality.


You referred to China as somewhere that has not experienced this decrease in population growth and India somewhere that has. If your theory is true in some way, then the disparity will be explainable in terms of a disparity in the extent of the spread of feminism.
Yes, birth control need to exist before it can be used. I'm confused as to what you do not understand here. When accessible birth control exists in a society that experiences an increase in literacy, it is highly likely there will be an increase in the use of birth control, and indeed other readily available medical services.

Industrialization and the world-money bank does the same thing. So we could as easily point to industrialization or capitalism as the cause of these things, we could go further back and cite changes in religious attitudes and structures as themselves having a role in the advent of industrialization and capitalism, and all three as more causal of feminism than feminism is of the three. It makes less sense to pick out feminism as some mysterious subliminal attempt to achieve population decreases, than it does to pick out things causal of feminism as the same, and then why not go back to things that caused those things?

I do not see anything about feminism that suggests it is a cause of population decreases rather than an effect of wider causes which themselves are more causal of the population decreases you refer to.

That's what feminists seems to be telling us, communicating in subtext.

Feminist theory also seems to say, "The educated woman sees family life for the thankless ordeal it really is, while her less-educated counterparts desire children and family only because they don't know any better."

I take offence to that because it makes my own mother seem like some kind of a ninny or empty-headed fool, which she is not. She's educated, a retired schoolteacher. There is a lot about feminism I don't like. Gender equality is maybe not 100% achievable, given the simple biological and anatomical differences between men and women. Gender harmony is a more realistic ideal, if you ask me. Men and women aren't the same. We can live in greater harmony, but we shouldn't be made equal.

Feminism is a body of ideas/propositions which argue that women should have equal rights to men, particularly the right to live alone, to use birth control, and to education. Capitalism does not do this. Industrialisation does not do this. Attributing women's rights to either capitalism or industrialisation, rather than to feminism, makes no sense whatsoever.


I think it is an example of how we are part of an intelligent system, which "works in mysterious ways".


I don't remember referring to China. India's pop. growth rate has dropped since literacy rates went up after girls were allowed/encouraged to go to school, something which is a direct result of the women's rights movement.


Birth control is no use whatsoever if noone uses it. Birth control methods were developed as a result of feminist campaigning, not capitalism or industrialisation. To begin with women used the old methods, durex, ( pig intestine, not exactly high tech ), vinegar and natural sponges, and rhythm methods, which although unreliable were still far better than the "nothing at all" that is what most women had been allowed to use before feminism fought for their right to choose when they had children.


No, they don't, or wouldn't if feminism had not already persuaded people that women should have the same rights as men.

Girls started going to school when industrialists paid for schools to put children in while their parents worked in the factories, but the reason why they did so is because of pressure from proto-feminist/women's "welfare" campaigners protesting against the appalling conditions of work ( for women and children ) in those factories.

I totally agree that could ultimately trace back the causes to the neolithic or the dawn of time, but seeing as feminism is the generally accepted word for the movement which fought for women's right to plan child bearing, to education, and to live alone without male guardianship, etc, I think it is reasonable to ascribe reduction in population growth rates, ( a very good thing ), to feminism.

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Last edited by ouinon on 17 Dec 2008, 1:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Feminism is glorified spinsterhood. It's the spinster mentality, exalted.

And that I find repugnant.

It really is not surprising that so many men have found feminism repugnant; it has wiped out a system in which most men were pretty sure of being allocated a woman for life.

It is as if the female of the human species suddenly started saying "no", at least some of the time; so many at the same time that it is like a species response.
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'Seems to' does it? Which theory is this? Feminist theory or the theory of someone who identifies themselves as a feminist, or just something you've made up?

The theory of feminism, the one true universal theory that any feminist by definition meets is that women are of equal worth and should have equal rights and status as men. I do not see that such view insults your mother, and frankly if you've a problem with such a view, that's not a position I can have any respect for.

Is ethnic equality also unachievable, you know given the simple biological and anatomical differences between various populations?

Why do you think harmony is realistic in context of inequality? And if not equal, then who is to be in the inferior position/status? Flip a coin perhaps to decide, or is there an implicit assumption in your reasoning (that influences your view) that is will not be your sex in the inferior position? If is equality or female dominance of society, are you happy enough to go along with the latter harmoniously?

Obviously.

I do not like this plan, but if you feel strongly enough, I cannot stop you initiating a campaign to make females the dominant sex.

Is that a good thing? I mean, isn't having companionship better than being alone and frigid? Just to spite the world? No, that's a very sad existence. Feminism is destroying all the good. It killed chivalry, and when chivalry died, the world really took a dive.

And now it is politically incorrect just to be male.

Thanks for nothing.