Ok, so I don’t want to alarm you or anything but one of those Men’s Rights Activists they have so many of over on Reddit has some genuine concerns about western civilization, specifically with regard to its possible imminent collapse, due to feminists being so damn feministy and making men so mad — totally justifiably, bros! — that they’re going to stop wanting to have babies with ladies any more, thus leading to the end of civilization, as referred to earlier in this sentence.
Well, shoot, I think that might have been his whole argument right there, but let’s take a look at his post anyway, which he has helpfully if ungrammatically titled “Genuine concern that due to the actions of 3rd wave feminists and the rise of MGTOW The western world is reaching a point of possible collapse.”
Oh, and if you’re wondering about the viking beard thing, I looked at some of his older comments and he seems to like talking about his beard, so I thought I would mention it.
So let’s move right along and get into the meat of Mr. BlightedArrow91’s warning re. that impending end of civilization thing.
Mr. BlightedArrow91 starts off his post, which as you may recall was entitled “”Genuine concern that due to the actions of 3rd wave feminists and the rise of MGTOW The western world is reaching a point of possible collapse” by noting that he’s worried “that the actions of feminists and SJW’s … will lead to the decline of western civilization.”
Ok, so like the first thing you need to sustain a civilization is babies. Specifically, 2.1 babies per family. But alas, feminists hate babies! And so, due to
the lack of and attack on new families and the family lifestyle, and several other factors caused and perpetuated by feminists as a whole, I’m genuinely worried that western civilization will be dead within the next 30-100 years.
Ok, so to sum up what we’ve learned so far: feminists hate babies and, wait, what was the other thing? Oh yeah, this dude is apparently worried about western civilization, with regard to the whole “possible collapse” thing. I think he might have mentioned that a couple of times.
Now bear with me, I know this sounds a little crazy at first, but let’s take a look at a few of the finer details here, Over the last 20 years there has been two major surges of sjw and third wave feminist culture, it’s been there the whole time, it was just much bigger during the 90’s, and now.
Ok, twenty years, two big surges of feminism.
During both surges the birthrate and marriage rate of the western world has dropped significantly.
Uh oh!
With the current justifiable rise and increase of MGTOW and the ever increasing craziness, aggression, and regressive nature of third-wave feminists,and the needed TFR(total fertility rate) of 2.1 annually, This number of decreased births and decreased marriages will grow and grow.
Ok, look, you just have to get used to the fact that this dude doesn’t really understand when to capitalize words. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, oh no!
If that number does grow, the likelihood of a TFR and subsequent population replacement level decline will be inevitable, which will eventually lead to the fall of western civilization.
In other words, there’s going to be a baby shortage. I don’t want to cause a panic or anything, but you may need to start hoarding babies.
Luckily, they’re generally pretty small, if noisy and a bit smelly.
Now, obviously — obviously! –feminism can’t last forever. I mean, even a viking-bearded manbaby who can’t capitalize words correctly can see that.
Now don’t get me wrong, I do understand that the SJW and third-wave feminist cultures will die down eventually, but will the backlashes created from both movements be let go of, and will we not see another resurgence of them in the near future afterward?
I don’t actually understand the question, so let’s just say “maybe?”
Now that MRA’s actually are making headway and will eventually show the average male exactly how stacked society is against them are we going to see an even larger rise of MGTOW and men just saying fuck it?
I guess maybe yes? I mean, the standard reaction most dudes have when they hear about or run into MGTOWs is “I want to be more like these bitter manbabies who spend their entire lives complaining about the women they supposedly totally don’t need and that means you too mom, I hear you out there in the hall!”
I mean, it’s not like most dudes hear about MGTOW and say, what the hell is wrong with these sad, angry doofuses?
Anyway, Mr. BlightedArrow91 isn’t done talking yet.
Going by the fact that two PC culture and SJW surges have happened both in 1991-2000, and 2011-present, is it not possible to surmise that by 2031 we will see another rise of both?
Wait what? I’m going to go with “maybe” again.
I fear, that if the future follows the past 20 years history of whining over trivialities,lies,and myths, and the constant demonizing of men, we will see this pattern continue, and we will see a large population decline from men refusing to mate, which could possibly lead to the same happening from the opposite gender, and if this does happen, we very well may be on the beginning trail of the end of the west.
Wait, is this just the first paragraph again?
Are we in some kind of weird Groundhog Day time loop, but instead of gallivanting around Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania and rescuing kids who fall out of trees and learning how to ice sculpt and play the piano and basically get in touch with our own soul, we have to read half-baked MRA manifestos over and over again until our brains fall out?
I’m going to go with “maybe” again.
Wow. So much elaborate and rickety rhetoric, you could almost miss that his real problem is not getting laid because of all those darned feminists.
If you want to speculate about Anita Sarkeesian’s ideological commitments you would do well to read her Master’s thesis. That’s probably the best source you’ll find to tie her to 2nd-wave feminism. (Well, it’s probably also the best source to tie her to 3rd-wave feminism if you want to go that way)
I should note that although I’ve seen claims that she published her thesis on Feminist Frequency at one time, it doesn’t appear to be there now, and seems to be hosted and circulated exclusively by her detractors. I have had some moral qualms wondering if it’s something I ought to be accessing and if you feel uncomfortable reading it for that reason I’d certainly respect your position.
EDIT: RationalWiki’s largely pro-Sarkeesian Sarkeesian article has a partial summary if you want to get an idea of the content with less sense of intrusion.
EDIT: Mulvey and Bell Hooks seem to be the most important sources in her paper.
I suspect that this kind of man would not appreciate the babies I had anyway – white, male, able bodied babies, but raised by a lesbian and feminist mother and no father! I expect I have ruined my sons for the world that Blighted pines for. Hey ho, LOL!
Our fourteen year old asked about immigration over dinner the other night. I explained that the US birthrate is below replacement level, so we need immigration to maintain our population. It also siphons off the dissatisfied residents of other countries, making their societies slightly more stable.
It seemed to make sense to him. But then, he has a more thoughtful outlook on things than the OP.
EJ,
On an unrelated note, can you link me to your blog post about the potential for a men’s movement again? I read it back when you wrote it but never acknowledged or responded to it and I now have something to say on the matter.
@Orion:
Here you go.
Sarkeesian in the dimension of her work in pop-culture analysis, to me comes off as 3rd wave, when discussing the sexualisation of female characters in games, she also pointed out that an interlocking racial element also entered the mix due to a racist tradition of exotification (especially for women of African ancestry)
The video titled “Not Your Exotic Fantasy” I predict is the episode where she delves into that idea fully in TvW second season.
A more 2nd wave approach most likely would have been a “white feminist” one, and wouldn’t recognise that women were not a single class. In her video about Jade from beyond good and evil she even noted the working class background of the protagonist, that entailed a different set of problems from a woman from a class where money was abstract (Lara croft is counter-example, as someone who has all the money in the world)
Her work doesn’t place women as a monolith class where all issues are equally felt by all individual women, thus I can’t see her as being 1/2 wave, her recognition of the unique outcomes reflecting different social backgrounds like class/money or ethnicity, IMO is a 3rd wave thing to do.
@Fashionista: oops, you’re right there! Although “phasing” would be an interesting response, it would also be somewhat surreal.
Anti-feminists love to dredge up quotes and misquotes from 2nd wavers to prove we’re man haters, but then they’ll turn around and say third wavers are terrible, unlike earlier feminists who were fighting real oppression. Zombie Dworkin and Solanas are suddenly forgotten.
I really want to know what the “other factors” are, because things would have to get pretty fucking dire for “western civilization” (I assume he means the USA and/or Canada) to die off in 30 years. The current TFR in the USA (1.88) is the same as it was in 1973, and has held roughly level since then (1.77 low, 2.12 high).
@guest
That one stood out to me too; love it. On top of the weird “the shrinking will continue to grow” factor, what the heck is a decreased birth?
@WWTH
That’s only part of it; the big causes of reduced birthrate are always a)education, economic empowerment, and reproductive choice for women, and b)industrialization + child labor laws
This guys is really giving of a “I’m really racist, but I don’t want others to know about it” vibe. Maybe it’s the dog-whistle phrase of worrying about “birthrates” when talking about “western civilization”, which is something you’d see in the quiverfull movement. Maybe it’s the ethnocentrism of implying “western civilization” is superior to those “other” civilizations. And something I find weird is that he might not even notice it himself.
Today in antifeminist arguments that predate World War One…
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants
It’s either the depletion of resources or the sudden appearance of the Sea Peoples. They’ll show up one day on the coast, ravage your nation then disappear back into the ocean. This is why I sleep with a gun under my pillow.
But Dreadnought, don’t you know that the Sea Peoples have worked out how to use iron? Our bronze guns are useless against them!
Jeez. As much as it physically pains me, buried way underneath this guy’s bigotry and stupidity, there’s a good point. Or at least a point worth discussing.
The thing is, we already have a few good examples of civilizations that’s population is currently slowing/shrinking: Japan and Germany. Now, Germany, as a member of the EU, has a fairly robust immigration policy (if you already live in an EU country, at least), so they’re probably going to be okay, long term.
But Japan is the opposite. Becoming a citizen of Japan is hard. Becoming a Permanent Resident even harder. And its showing in their sluggish economic growth: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/07/japans-birth-rate-problem-is-way-worse-than-anyone-imagined/ .
This is, of course, not to prop up this guys MTGOW bs. He’s full of it. In fact, I’ve heard it argued that the reason for Japan’s crisis is their incredibly sexist society [http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/letters/japanese-sexism-and-the-ideal-woman].
Immigration is a fine solution, although explaining that to current conservatives should be fun. Still, Viking-Beard is a good example of how much MRA’s suck. Because often, under the BS mountain that is their arguments, there is a nugget of truth.
So. I get tired of saying this to every “low birthrates will doom white I mean western civilization!” person. But, fertility rates correlate inversely with per capita GDP. People move to cities and stop working on farms, so children are less valuable as a source of labor. Per capita GDP also usually entails more options for women and girls other than “get married at 14 and have a bunch of kids,” so they tend to pursue careers and put off having children. In that sense, he’s sort of right that feminism lowers fertility. But, the sort of feminism that does that is the basic “women should have basic rights and agency,” not the “video game butts are sexist” kind that he’s railing against. In order to have an effect of fertility, you’d have to (e.g.) bar girls from going to school. If that’s what he’s advocating, I’d like to hear him say it. Needless to say, MGTOW have as negligible an impact on fertility rates as the NoFap movement has on porn consumption.
Anyway, as magnesium and others have pointed out, lower fertility is a good thing because holy shit we have too many people. The only real danger is demographic collapse–not having enough young working people to support retirees. This is a problem we can deal with, especially if we were to move away from the “infinite growth” model of economic development. We can also let in young, fertile, hardworking immigrants to support us in our dotage. This is what the US has done, and it’s why we’ll out grow China in the long run. Of course, since immigrants and their children have their income and opportunities raised, their fertility falls to the level of their new home quickly, so fears of “they’re going to breed us out” are bullshit.
I also get tired of pointing this out to Malthusian environmentalists who seem to want impose a one child policy or something (I have a MA in environmental philosophy, this issue is a distraction). There was also a famous article by Garrett Hardin, Living in a Lifeboat, that argued that rich nations ought to let famine victims starve so that poor nations would fall back to their “carrying capacity,” which is awful bullshit for the same reason. If you want less people, lifting people out of poverty should be your focus.
Did the phrase “family lifestyle” stand out to anyone else? I did not know this was a “lifestyle”.
Also, how many MGTOWs are there really? He makes this sound like some snowball rolling downhill gathering steam and getting bigger.
It’s hard for me to worry about this when I know so many people who have had kids in the past ten years and more who are pregnant now. Heck, in the past three months, three women I knew had babies – white babies* if anyone’s interested, although one is in a lesbian couple so maybe that doesn’t count for the OP?
*racism on purpose because the OP seems obsessed with that. Really, I know all kinds of people gay and straight, in mixed or not couples, having babies, adopting babies, with small children, so there are still lots of babies basically. I’m on the page that we have too many darn people on the planet.
None that I know of, but in fairness, there haven’t been a lot of historical civilizations based on the giant Ponzi scheme that is capitalism. I can theoretically imagine a capitalist system collapsing when it turns out people can’t keep consuming more and more products every year for eternity. But IANAE. Any actual economists want to weigh in?
I’m guessing the derogatory use of “3rd wawer” originated with some particular 2nd wawers who had a regressive axe to grind.
Then it was picked up by pseudofeminists, to use as a random distinguishing label for “those feminists” who actually complain about gender inequality.
Then it was picked up as a snarl world by random antifeminists who wouldn’t even care to know if there’s a difference between radfems, whatever wawers and zombie Andrea Dworkin.
@Arctic Ape
I see a lot of antifeminists conflating 3rd wave with “tumblr feminism”; they know that it’s the most recent wave, thus any “current” (read: straw) feminism that they hear about must be 3rd wave.
I wouldn’t say that. She’s been criticized for seeming a bit sex-negative as well as some problematic phrasing with regard to sex work, both of which are associated with 2nd wave feminism. The other main critique I’ve seen of her is that she takes her pacifism to an untenable extreme.
On the other hand, judging from what I’ve read of interviews she’s given, she’s fully on board with 3rd wave concepts like intersectionality and so on. And I mean, the entire premise of Tropes vs. Women is that we need to change attitudes now that the bulk of explicitly misogynist laws and policies are off the books. That’s pretty much 3rd wave feminism in a nutshell.
@Jamesworkshop,
I think it depends on what you consider the most salient distinctions between 2nd and 3rd wave. She’s definitely not an unreconstructed fossil from the 1980s. She talks about race, orientation, and trans representation. She’s a pop culture media critic. There were media critics in the 2nd wave, of course, but her focus on mobilizing people to make feminist art and her optimism about the value of progressive entertainment feels more P!nk than Dworkin.
I don’t know what EJ specifically identified as 2nd-wavey about her. For me, I think of her as second-wave because she doesn’t fit in with 3rd-wave feminism as it was described to me on liberal feminist blogs in 2005. I first encountered the term when Amanda Marcotte and Jessica Valenti called themselves 3rd-wave. They set my archetype of a 3rd-waver and Anita is very different from them.
Thank you, sevenofmine, Jamesworkshop, Orion, magnesium and lightcastle for weighing in on the matter. My understanding of academic feminism isn’t particularly deep, which is why I’m treading very carefully here and and would like to learn more.
I had thought of Sarkeesian (of whom I am an immense fan and who is enormously influential in my own feminist development) as being more second-wave than third wave predominantly because of her attitude to sex work and to violence (as sevenofmine points out) and to the way that she casts genders as monoliths rather than as fuzzy groups. However, this is by no means a learned analysis.