Feminism is an ideology which calls people, especially women, to fight for the abstract concept of "women's rights" and claims to defend women's interests. The problem with it as with other similar ideologies is that feminism presupposes that all women on planet Earth have interests and problems identical to each other. It seeks to transcend class, ethnicity and national borders and unite all the women into one common movement, which is illustrated by such examples as, for instance, TV commercials trying to raise money so that some woman in a third world country could get an education.
The truth is that most normal people are more interested in the welfare of their pet hamster than in life of some unknown woman ten thousand miles away and only hypocrites pretend otherwise. However, even within the national boundaries, feminism makes little sense. Take, for instance, the topic of unwed motherhood, which was discussed in the previous thread.
It may be in the interests of a single mother (and her immediate family who are thus made free from all financial obligations) that she gets a monthly welfare check sponsored by the taxpayer, but it's against the interests of a married mother whose husband pays a lot of taxes to support illegitimate offspring of other men. The married mother is thus forced to share resources which would otherwise benefit her own children.
One of the premises of early feminism was taking away the stigma of being born outside of marriage and giving such children equal inheritance rights, which would seem noble on the surface and certainly it strengthened the position of unwed mothers. However, few people realise that it was also an attack on the position of the married woman and her lawful children. A wealthy man could have only one wife but many mistresses and then disinherit his lawfully born children which was an attack on the rights of his wife and the whole institution of marriage. It's not a coincidence that the movement to make divorce easier started gaining grounds around the same time.
When we move to another of modern feminism tenets, we see the same picture. Equal pay for equal work certainly benefits women, but not all the women. Married women, especially in one income families
and their children, benefit from higher wages for men, while single professional women lose.
To make matters more complicated, feminism pits working mothers against SAHM mothers by promoting state-sponsored daycare and attacking the tax cuts for traditional families. We nowadays are in a situation when a family which sacrifices a lot financially to allow the mother to stay home is further punished by higher taxes while a two-income family which is often per definition wealthier, is further rewarded by daycare subsidies.
From the very beginning, modern feminism was about attacking the rights of married women and the traditional Western family model in general. Yet, the adherents of this movement are pretending to speak from the name of all women and promote the mythical "sisterhood" which, if you think seriously of it, is utter nonsense. Why should some strange woman have a sisterly claim on you above those of your own male family members, such as fathers, sons, husbands and brothers. Does it even make sense?
Since feminists are doing their best to lobby on behalf of themselves, traditional women should unite and start doing the same. When you realise that "sisterhood" is just as mythical as a unicorn, it makes putting things into perspective a lot easier.
