James Burnham attributed the self-annihilation of the West to its adoption of Liberalism. He would not say it was the cause of the West’s contractions, but rather that it was the worldview preventing it from recognizing that it was contracting. Liberalism is squishy, like a jellyfish; its ambivalence causes it to always give ground to its Marxist and free-riding enemies. If this is so, then as air is to fire, so too is Feminism to Liberalism.
Feminism essentially is a form of Marxism; specifically, it is a form of gender-centric Marxism. It seeks to overturn the social paradigms that oppress Women by raising the consciousness of Women oppressed by those paradigms. In this way, for its adherents’ gain, it willfully undermines the established order of a society to bring forth its vision of the future. One way that Women and feminists can achieve this, in the eyes of the more radical feminists, is by dropping out of society and resisting any participation with Men.
In a recent post by The Cut, this ‘Women Going Their Own Way’ (WGTOW) movement was explored from a Korean perspective. The piece, at the very beginning, argues that the bad things that happen(ed) in the lives of Women are not their fault. Instead, the patriarchy is responsible for their problems. This has led women in Korea to join the “4B” movement, wherein women refuse heterosexual marriage, childbirth, dating, and heterosexual relationships. It is a form of ideological praxis. These women even go so far as to avoid associating with male friends.
In the view of these 4B women, Korean men “are essentially beyond redemption.” They believe that Korean culture is systematically irreparable. For these feminists, the Korean culture oppresses women; it is the men who established this culture, and the only way to overcome it is to stop associating with its creators and their oppressors: men. Many of these women are students, as “three-fourths” of women are enrolled in college or university. Only one-third of men are in the same position. Thus, in Korea, to partner with a man as a woman means potentially giving up your occupational track, resigning yourself to domestic duties, and abandoning your career. Many women see this as a problem. To them, it is unfair.
Some of these women are working two to three jobs to stay afloat, living together as groups, and cohabitating with cockroaches. These women also face social antagonism. Men mock them; they are very identifiable; they have short hair and wear baggy or “wide” clothing. In some sense, they try to look like men. Some of these women see Korea as a kind of “Hell.” They see their circumstances not as a product of their choosing but as a result of Korea’s patriarchal and oppressive culture.
What the article fails to acknowledge is that some of the conditions of these women are not the result of a culture that has manifested from existential conditions, but rather essential conditions. However, of course, they wouldn’t acknowledge this. As Burnham noted, rarely if ever does Liberalism or liberals recognize the essential conditions of Man. Regardless, the nature of men and women is different. Biologically, men and women are not the same. David Buss has covered this matter substantially, but it bears repeating: on average, women are hypergamous and aim upward. In Korea, if women have had more career and educational opportunities than men, as has been the case in the United States for a while now, then men will likely have fewer relationship opportunities than women. Still, women will have fewer potential partners, as well. This may make men feel resentful, and it will decrease the replacement rate of the native, homogenous Korean population. Biologically speaking, this is a ticking time bomb for Korea.
This bears similarity to the Greek play by Aristophanes, Lysistrata. In Lysistrata, the titular character for which the play is named plans on ending the war between the Athenians and the Spartans by getting the women of Athens to stop having sex with the men and by taking over the Acropolis; the seat of Athens’ economic power. She subverts their sexual nature and uses it as a tool to manipulate men. This causes conflict between the women of Athens and the old men while the younger men are away at war with the Spartans. In the end, Lysistrata’s plan works after she deprives the Athenian and Spartan men of sex. Their households are eventually in such disrepair that they acquiesce and make peace with each other. Lysistrata, and the rest of the women in the play, do not gain any genuine political power for themselves, but they do demonstrate their power as leaders of the household and their capacity to make peace.
Although the situation in Korea is far less comical, the similarities between Lysistrata and the Koreans should be evident. Korean women, through a Marxist lens (Feminism), feel oppressed. They are taking oaths of chastity, which they are not bound to keep and sometimes do not, to force the Koreans to reconcile with their allegedly patriarchal and abusive culture. However, unlike the Athenian and Spartan women, their vow of chastity is not for the preservation of their society or to bring peace to it. Instead, it is intended to deconstruct their society. It is praxis, after all, and as a practice, it is rooted in an ideology that sees its circumstances as unbearably oppressive. The Korean men, who genuinely appear to be acquiring fewer opportunities than their forebearers, want Korean women to return to their domestic life. However, the Korean women, unlike Aristophanes’ Athenian and Spartan women, do not wish to return to their domestic life; they do not see the true power of such circumstances. Instead, they wish to continue their careers. In Lysistrata, an accord was reached and peace between the sexes was re-established; in South Korea, there seems to be no room for peace. Two cars are headed toward each other in a game of chicken and neither appears willing to swerve away in this literal battle of the sexes.
In the West, this seemingly irreparable situation is being egged on by SINKs, Femcels, or WGTOWs. Here, we can begin to see the nature of these kinds of women.
This Twitter user seeks to use “trolling, mockery, and abusive language,” to counter any dissent of the 4B movement or its like. For years, especially since Gamergate, online platforms have undergone censorship regimes with the explicit aim of silencing purveyors of online ‘harassment’ and bullying; two very loosely defined terms. From this user's perspective, instead of using the powers already afforded to her by the majority of social media platforms, she hopes to harass, mock, and troll men. And I’m sure, because she’s oppressed, she’s more likely to be silenced than any man who trolls, mocks, or uses abusive language online against feminists, 4B members, or women generally, which is why she advocates for engaging in such behavior so confidently.
Of course, she was met with very little reproach, if any
According to this user, abusive language (which they know is abusive), trolling, and mockery are “the only way” to make things better for women. You see, if women want things to be better (this user suggests), they must abuse, troll, and mock men. And, if they abuse, troll, and mock men, things will get better for women. If and only if women abuse, mock, and troll men will things get better for women. According to this user, things getting better for women literally means abusing men. And, apparently, fifty-seven Twitter users agree with her.
Another user responds in support of the 4B movement: She won’t do the “socialization dance.” Unlike the red-crowned crane (Grus japonesis) of Japan, an endangered and dying species, she won’t dance. Unfortunately, if this is the way of Homo Sapiens, perhaps the red-crowned crane stands a better chance of survival.
The Koreans, some Twitter users commented, if their population falls drastically and they are no longer able to preserve their infrastructure, could be threatened by North Korea or even China. Their solution: import other people from South-East Asia. Because, as everyone knows, there are no cultural or ethnic differences worth preserving anywhere: we’re all just humans, bro.
This user highlights how there are more “single women successfully supporting themselves and their families than at any other point in history.” While this may have some validity, the phrase “supporting themselves” may be stretching the reality quite drastically. Many of these women, if they have had children, are not “supporting themselves” and heavily rely on State and Government support. Funnily enough, most of the infrastructure that these women use to get that support is, and was, created and maintained by Men.
Still, perhaps it's best to take these users’ viewpoints with a grain of salt. While I will remain ambiguous about abortion, in this post, Dr. Jennifer Roberts suggests that there are no laws that “hold men accountable for raping and murdering other living humans on a regular basis.” Zilch, nada, zero laws that hold men accountable for these two crimes, especially “on a regular basis [italics added].”
What’s fascinating is that many of these users also appear to be Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists or TERFs. On one hand, these women recognize that there are differences between the two sexes, while on the other, they think those differences simply do not spill over into how social structures and roles are defined. Genuinely, these women see their circumstances as some conspiracy by men to oppress women for the benefit of those men. Throughout the world, in places like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, America, Mexico, and the U.K., this is a common narrative. Yet, if there are biological differences between men and women, there likely will be patterns to the kinds of behavior men and women engage in. Because this gender-specific behavior is a phenotype and thus can be the target of selection, certain sex-associated behaviors will occur more frequently throughout all human societies than others. These behaviors, one could say, frequently present themselves because they help to maintain the stability or equilibrium of those societies and ensure the group’s fitness. I.e., a group that does not engage in these patterns of sex-defined behavior is more likely to lose the game of group selection than a group that does. However, because this doesn’t preserve the power of these women, these TERFs, and because it disproves their narrative of a male conspiracy to keep them oppressed, ultimately, because it undermines their B.S. tale that’s garnered them social power and status, they ignore it.
Obviously, this isn’t only true for women; it’s also true for men. In times of war, men are often the first to be conscripted by the nation, State, or government, to put their lives on the line for the good of their country. You see, the conspiracy by men, to benefit men, requires them to sacrifice themselves for their nation. Of course, feminists have a solution to this problem, just as Lysistrata had a solution in Aristophanes’ play: hand them power. The feminist sees war as a product of patriarchal systems. It is a problem that can be rectified with the right knowledge and progressive policies. If you give the feminists power, because they have the right knowledge and know-how, they’ll create peace, there’ll be no more war; the feminists will form a post-war, anti-war utopia! Oh, you don’t believe them? Well, that’s because real Comm— Feminism has never been tried!
These two worldviews, that there are essential differences between the sexes caused by natural and sexual selection and that gender roles are not a target of natural, sexual, and group selection that help to maintain the stability of a society, cannot both hold. Either the first has to be forfeited for the second or the second for the first. In other words, either a woman can be whatever she wants to be through her capacity to reason or there are social limitations on who she should be because of her biological characteristics. These biological characteristics can be a relevant consideration for a nation. Thus, if a nation wishes to survive, it may enforce gender roles on its members. Under such conditions, a woman may not be whatever she wants to be and could have a responsibility to the society that produced her. Either women accept this or they permit men to be whatever they want to be. If a man cannot be whatever he wants to be, his gender role and responsibilities are limited by his biological characteristics; the nation he is a member of can define his role and duties. Inevitably, feminists will and should be forced to resolve this contradiction. It’s an effective wedge.
At the beginning of this piece, I claimed that air is to fire as Feminism is to Liberalism. The core problem with Liberalism is that it is a frame that effectively always loses in dialectic games. It is absolutely relativistic. With respect to these women, it is no different. From a liberalist perspective, looking at the circumstances of women in South Korea, we might say that they have a point. They’re being oppressed by a patriarchal society that just isn’t progressive enough to survive the 21st Century. As long as South Korea holds or is beholden to the liberalist framework, it may regard its demographic collapse and the replacement of its people as “progressive” or forward-thinking. The liberalist framework champions harm reduction and individualism, which is why the “plight” of South Korean women needs to be resolved and South Korea needs to move forward as a nation. Of course, if they do this, given the falling birth rates and the potential takeover by North Korea or China, this will be the death knell for South Korea.
However, the liberals cannot regard the death of South Korea as a bad thing, they cannot even acknowledge that Liberal progress will result in the annihilation of South Korea as a nation. The destruction of Korea as a nation, the replacement of its people with others, will mean more freedom for more people, the liberal says. Or, even worse, the South Koreans should replace themselves with foreigners if they’re not having children. Of course, when you have North Korea and China at your door, is it truly more freedom for more people? Or, what good is an ideology if it forces you to regard the annihilation of your people as a good thing? As the Liberal, South Korean project crumbles before the likes of North Korea and China, they will naturally take their turns picking at its corpse. This is precisely what Burnham identified: the Marxists always found a way, especially during the McCarthy period, to subvert the liberal project. This is why he thought of himself as an anti-anti-McCarthyist. This is also why he recognized the contractions of the West since it adopted Liberalism as its core philosophy; it was always giving ground to its enemies.
Feminism adds fuel to the fire that is Liberalism, whose existential substrate seems to be a lack of will. It attacks the foundations of a society, attributing a pervading spirit to that society that feminists claim oppresses and abuses the women of that society. It then makes the demand that the corrupted society needs to reform itself; it must capitulate to the demands of those few women who are feminists if it wants to survive. If it refuses, that society can be cast as a bully, opening itself up to an onslaught of foreign interference for its harmful actions. If it contains the feminists but keeps its power, it swims that much further Left. If it capitulates entirely, it destroys itself. While this seems to be the end-state of Liberalism, with Feminism and its ability to capture and make use of the feminine form to persuade and seduce men into doing its bidding (as Lysistrata did in Aristophanes’ play with Myrrhine, Lampito, and Ismenia), institutional capture by Marxist parasites (that’s a descriptive term, not an ad hominem) happens that much more quickly. If they do not do their bidding, they fail to gain access to the women that they need to preserve their culture, or in the case of Lysistrata, their home life. With this kind of catch-twenty-two, the liberal society crumbles before the Feminist-Marxists much more rapidly than it would have otherwise.
In the end, these kinds of women genuinely cannot be seen as members of the society to which they belong. They need to be seen as the subversives they are. South Korea would be wise to limit the power of these women institutionally and culturally. If it is tentative about doing so, it should recall the words of Niccolò Machiavelli, a favorite of mine as a descendant of Northern Italians:
“It is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
