Jonathan and Richard discuss the many "Waves" of Feminism, from the Suffragettes to Margaret Sanger to postmodern theorists of gender and pornography. They also examine feminism's effect on men, and whether the world needs another hero.

I have often pondered how it impacted the average Gen-Xer to hit puberty at the very moment when the AIDS epidemic became a ubiquitous media sensation.

I do know how this ironic sequential syncronicity affected me personally, though I am in no sense a paradigmatic “X-Man.” In my adolescent mind, as a teenager in the '80s, sex and certain death came to be inextricably intertwined in ways they had never before been associated in human history. To have sexual intercourse was to make oneself vulnerable to a dread plague that viciously ate away at your insides until you perished in horrific pain. You didn’t get better, and there was no cure.

Due to this grim set of circumstances, sexual abstinence assumed an allure for me that wasn’t merely motivated by a concern for physical health and well-being, but by plainly psychic considerations as well. For as much as we were always sternly lectured by our betters not to view the HIV virus as karmic retribution for moral misdeeds—i.e., the result of junkies, sexual perverts, and other “unclean” people reaping what they sowed as a result of their lifestyle choices—it was nevertheless hard to avoid drawing such primal inferences when one glimpsed the wasted-away visage and corpse-like form of some poor bastard enduring the final stages of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Of course, this reaction was severely overblown on my part. Not because AIDS wasn’t a terrible disease—it was, and it still is. But most of the noise we heard concerning HIV wasn’t so much concerned with encouraging compassion for its victims, but rather with politicizing their misery in order to agitate for social change. To this end, it became necessary for radical organizations like ACT UP to send out strident and often contradictory messages in an effort to “educate”— which is to say, indoctrinate—Middle Americans inclined towards more conservative sexual morays. “AIDS is not a gay disease,” the ACT UPers would loudly insist, while simultaneously attacking those who feared the possibility of transmission as latent “homophobes,” an implicit admission that homosexual contact did indeed correlate with incidences of HIV-positivity. And while widespread terror of contracting the virus was derided by activist-types as a loathsome byproduct of the hoi palloi’s shameful “ignorance,” these same activists weren’t above exploiting the common man’s supposedly unfounded fear in an effort to promote “safe sex,” that is, contraception, another brave new innovation of the post-1960s age which had always previously been regarded as a low and disreputable practice. 

Last year I wrote that women are natural allies of the (alternative) Right. The recent debate on the presence and role of women in the movement merits revisiting and elaborating on some the arguments advanced in support of my thesis, as well as exploring a possible way forward in the face of existing conditions. I contend that women have an interest in ensuring the success of the Right and that it is in the interest of the Right not to limit itself to being a White male rights advocacy movement—our movement is about saving the entire race from extinction, not one particular half of it.

What This is Not About

I am not here to posit women’s equivalence to men; I regard the sexes as non-equivalent, by which I mean they are not interchangeable: men and women have strengths and weaknesses unique to their sex. I am not here to campaign for equality of representation; I regard men and women as having distinct, if complementary, roles, but this does not necessarily mean that equal numbers will indicate success in our particular enterprise—functionally, the optimal balance may well be achieved asymmetrically. I am not here to talk about injustices committed by one sex against the other, or to blame one sex for the misfortunes of all; the war of the sexes is an enemy construct and a distraction in the struggle for racial survival. Finally, I am not here to tell women what they ought or ought not to be doing; it is surreal that we talk about women, going right over their heads, without them being part of the conversation—women who care about about the survival of the White race can decide for themselves what or who they want to be and how they get involved. 

Women in the West 

In Western European cultures, women have traditionally enjoyed high social status and freedom in relation to non-Western cultures, despite well-defined gender roles. This is reflected not only in social organisation, but goes right back to mythology.

In the Norse tradition, Freyja is the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility, but also gold, seid, war, and death. She is a member of the Vanir, a group of gods associated with fertility, wisdom, and precognition. She rules over Folkvangr, destination upon death of half of those who die in combat (the other half goes to Valhalla). Frigg appears primarily as wife and mother, but she is also the queen of Asgard, has the power of prophecy, and is the only one, other than Odin, permitted to sit on Hlidskjaft and see into all worlds. Her companion, Eir, is associated with medical skill. She is also a valkyrie. Valkyries decide who dies in battle. Of those who do not die in battle, a portion is received by Hel, who rules over a homonymous realm, located in Nifelheim. In the Prose Edda she rules over vast mansions and her underworld servants. In the attempted resurrection of Baldr she plays a key role. Gná runs errands for Frigg in other worlds, and rides a flying, sea-treading horse, Hófvarpnir. Vár is associated with oaths and agreements; Vör with wisdom; Skadi with bowhunting, skiing, winter, and mountains.

In Celtic mythology, Morrigan is a goddess of fertility, but also of battle and slaughter, strife, land, and wealth. Morrigan is a triple goddess, of which Macha, is part; Macha is goddess of battle and sovereignty. Epona is also a horse goddess, and embodies the notion of horse power, or horsemanship. Horses were a symbol of power, an instrument of Indo-European expansion, vital for the success and protection of the tribe. Mother goddesses are a recurrent element in Celtic mythology. In the Welsh tradition Dôn, Rhiannon, and Modron are mother figures, as are Danu, Boand, Macha, and Ernmas in the Irish tradition. For the Celts, however, their role and symbolism was never limited solely to motherhood, and in tales bearing children is only mentioned in passing.

In Greek mythology Athena is the goddess of wisdom, civilization, warfare, strategy, strength, female arts, crafts, skill, and justice. Shrewd companion of heroes she is also the goddess of heroic endeavour. Athena’s mother was the Titaness Metis, Zeus’ first spouse and his equal, and the goddess of war and wisdom. Artemis was the goddess of childbirth, virginity, and young women, but she is also the goddess of the wilderness, of wild animals, and the hunt. She is depicted carrying bow and arrows. Rhead, Titaness and daughter of Uranus (the sky) and Gaia (the earth), was known as ‘the mother of gods’. In the Golden Age, she and Cronos, her husband, were Queen and King of the gods, respectively.

In pre-Christian Northern Europe women were revered. In Germania, for example, Tacitus writes:

A specially powerful incitement to valor is that the squadrons and divisions are not made up at random by the mustering of chance-comers, but are each composed of men of one family or clan. Close by them, too, are their nearest and dearest, so that they can hear the shrieks of their women-folk and the wailing of their children. These are the witnesses whom each man reverences most highly, whose praise he most desires.

Also that

[I]t stands on record that armies already wavering and on the point of collapse have been rallied by the women, pleading heroically with their men, thrusting forward their bared bosoms, and making them realize the imminent prospect of enslavement -- a fate which the Germans fear more desperately for their women than for themselves.

And that Germans

Believe[d] that there resides in women an element of holiness and a gift of prophecy; and so they d[id] not scorn to ask their advice, or lightly disregard[ed] their replies.

And with regard to relations between men and women among Germans:

Their marriage code is strict, and no feature of their morality deserves higher praise. They are almost unique among barbarians in being content with one wife apiece . . . The dowry is brought by husband to wife, not by wife to husband. Parents and kinsmen attend and approve the gifts—not gifts chosen to please a woman's fancy or gaily deck a young bride, but oxen, a horse with its bridle, or a shield, spear and sword. . . . The woman must not think that she is excluded from aspirations to manly virtues or exempt from the hazards of warfare. That is why she is reminded, in the very ceremonies which bless her marriage at the outset, that she enters her husband's home to be the partner of his toils and perils, that both in peace and war she is to share his sufferings and adventures. That is the meaning of the team of oxen, the horse ready for its rider, and the gift of arms.

Of course, this did not mean the role of German women as women was not well defined; but the their role was key and implied responsibilities, not subordination:

On these terms she must live her life and bear her children. She is receiving something that she must hand over intact and undepreciated to her children, something for her sons’ wives to receive in their turn and pass on to her grandchildren.

The traditional view of women in Europe, thus, is of their having distinct and complementary roles, which are not necessarily equivalent, but which are certainly both important and do not equate authority with oppression, strength with brutality, maternal instinct with weakness, or devotion with humiliation.

The movement to restrict and subordinate women in Europe and its outposts comes from Christianity. 1 Timothy 2:8-12, Ephesians 5:22-24, and 1 Corinthians 11:3-9 and 14:34,35, prescribe silence and submission of women to their husbands—‘the husband is the head of the wife’. These prescriptions originated with Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee before his conversion, born in what now is Turkey. Therefore, they have an Eastern, not a European, genesis. Derivative ecclesiastical restrictions, from the Patristic Age onwards, however, involved the role and behaviour of women in church, not in civil society (although John Knox denied the right of women to rule in this sphere too). This held until the XXth century, when liberal movements within and without the Church sought feminist reforms. (In paganism, women priestesses remained common, which may have been another motivation for the branding by the church of women priestesses as an evil practice.)

The passage of time made conservative within the religion a policy that originated in the East; and thus the effort to abrogate it, because driven by movements of the political Left associated with prominent Jewish intellectuals, made it a sign of subversion. It needed not have occurred this way; the reform could have come from an indigenous movement aimed at purifying the religion of alien elements and correcting the accumulated errors of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. In Germany during the XIXth century, writers like the Prussian Conservative Biblical scholar Paul de Lagarde—an important influence on Nietzsche and subsequently on Alfred Rosenberg—sought to reformulate Christianity along these lines (see Positive Christianity).

In any event, where the status of women is dictated by religion, this is a personal matter for the adherent, not a political matter of racial preservation. And irrespective of any superficial parallels with Leftism in its campaign against conservative Christians, the fact remains that women in the West, particularly in Northern Europe, have traditionally enjoyed a higher status than the women of the East and of the South. It follows from this that the alternative Right can legitimately present itself as women’s friend while following tradition. This would be called archeofuturism.

Women After the West

Even the most conservative Christian sects can hardly compare in their proscriptions against women with those imposed by their analogues in Islam.

As Europe is colonised by Islam, it is worth considering that even without the extremity of Wahhabism, Islamic societies today restrict women far more than Western societies.

In a Muslim-dominated Europe, women can expect to see an end to the freedom, mobility, and status they enjoy in the West today. Sex segregation, oppressive dress codes, marital bondage, civic exclusions, and even public erasure, not to mention the abuse and the violence (public and domestic) such a climate engenders, would become far more common, and enjoy not only the force of law but also divine sanction.

Much of the immigration coming into Europe is from Africa and Asia. In places like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Afghanistan, women are frequently subjected to acid attacks as a response to refused sexual advances, rejected proposals of marriage, and denied demands for dowry. Land and inter-family disputes are also a cause. In Bangladesh they are also a form of domestic violence.

Female genital mutilation is practiced in parts of South East Asia, the Near East, and Northeast Africa. In its most extreme form it involves total removal by cutting of the clitoris and both labia and the near sealing of the vaginal entry. Reasons vary, although in some societies the reasons have been forgotten altogether.

A result of the progressive replacement of Europeans by Asian and African immigrants has been the occurrence of these extreme forms of violence against White women in the West. White women’s beauty has already been targeted by acid attacks in Britain. As the process of demographic replacement advances, such practices will also become more common, and Western women, particularly those exposed to or marrying non-Westerners, will be at greater risk.

Another consequence of immigration, particularly from sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, is greater violence in general, corruption, and diminished efficiency, resulting in a dangerous, unstable, and unreliable society, a topic about which Jared Taylor has written extensively and which I need not go into detail here. 

Western societies are much safer, wealthier, and better run than most non-Western societies, and thus provide a better environment for children to grow up in. Many non-Westerners migrate to the West attracted by these features.

However, along with them come many whose relationship to the West is instrumental, and, having no especial attachment to its culture, seek to conquer it and change it, somehow imagining that prosperity will survive the removal of its underlying conditions. Establishment politicians are objectively complicit with this process through their belief in the miracle of integration.

If a movement seeks to preserve the Western character of Western societies, then in theory it is in Western women’s interest to support that movement.

Women of the Right

As has been pointed out before, women possess natural skills and abilities that are either unique, or occur more frequently and / or to a higher degree in their sex. Women are far more than nurturers: they are especially proficient at networking, community building, consensus building, multi-tasking, and moral and logistical support provision. These are all essential in any movement involving community outreach and where user-friendly, low-key, non-threatening forms of recruitment are advisable. What is more, women possess the ability to attract potentially twice the number of recruits, because they can attract other women as well as men. Typically, as the history of White Nationalism has proven beyond any doubt, men will attract more men, but not an equal or even a significant number of women. Women can create a much broader comfort zone around hardcore political activism through organising a wide range of community, human, and support-oriented activities: there is a reason why women who work are over-represented in human resources departments within the private and public corporate sector.

Barriers to Involvement

Modern Western culture is steeped in feminism. Feminist historiography presents the pre-feminist (Christian) era as a time of subordination, oppression, and low status for women; and feminism as a movement of liberation. Therefore, any anti-feminist movement, particularly one of a conservative Christian character, will be seen as threatening a return to ‘the bad old days’. Barrier number one is that our movement, backed by many conservative Christians, defines itself negatively as an anti-feminist movement.

Evolutionary psychologists argue that women tend to be attracted to high-status males, as these are likely more able to provide resources and a safer environment for children. The present system is defined by an anti-nationalist, anti-racist, anti-hierarchical ideology, which predictably exalts its proponents and denigrates dissidents. Barrier number two is that our movement has yet to develop independence from the present system, which results either in timidity or ostracism, and therefore in ineffectiveness or exclusion and low status.

Compounding this effect is the gravitating of marginal types to marginal movements, where they think they will find validation and legitimacy. Those who are marginalised may be so because of their non-conforming beliefs, but some may also be so because they are somehow defective, thus adding an influx of undesirable types alongside that of genuine ideological dissidents. The dominant ideology exploits this by equating dissidence with defectiveness. Barrier number three is that, the dominant ideology, because it is dominant, can perpetuate its negative stereotypes, thus discouraging dissidence, especially among the talented and ambitious.

A consequence is that 'women look for winners' elsewhere.

Higher levels of aggression, autonomy, and propensity for risk-taking in males may account for the predominantly male character of our movement. This means that defectives will also most likely be male. Said defectives poison the discourse through their cathartic (and often anonymous) expressions of bitterness toward women, which results not from feminism but from their own inability to attract and hold on to women. Barrier number four is that an obnoxious minority has made gender discourse within our movement pathological.

Some Fallacies and Counter-Arguments

The desire for greater involvement of women in our movement does not mean necessarily a desire for leadership by women. To my knowledge, no such desire has been expressed.

Neither does it imply a dilution or a softening of our message: strength, confidence, conviction, and valour will draw more admirers than wet liberalism.

Conversely, where a desire for female involvement exists, it is not solely men’s responsibility: there are some who will need to rid themselves of their negativity (because it perpetuates feminist dynamics and confirms the feminist narrative), and some who will need to be got rid of altogether (because they are defective), but the organising of women-friendly activities is the responsibility of the women who care about the preservation of the race, not that of men. Men have their own spheres of activity, which necessitate male traits. Women-friendly activities can be organised, and would be better organised, entirely without male intervention, so there is nothing stopping women from getting involved and making unique contributions if this is their wish.

Stating that women are natural allies of the alternative Right is not the same as saying that obtaining their visible support will lead to the Right entering the mainstream. The Right will never enter the mainstream within the current system, as the latter is defined against the Right. Conversely, the fact that the Right cannot enter the mainstream within the current system does not mean it cannot become the mainstream if it is developed as a credible alternative to a discredited system. The visible support of women can help in this process, for it would have the same social effect a woman has on how a man is perceived by others: if a man’s ability to attract women of high quality signals that man’s elegibility, then a movement able to attract women of high quality signals that movement’s credibility. If 'women pick winners', as has been stated, then visible female support indicates a movement with a winning strategy.

Critics of Jews regard feminism as a Jewish plot designed to weaken Western society by dividing the sexes and fomenting conflict between them. They call this ‘Judeo-Feminism’. If this is true, then the war of the sexes that results from feminism and the reaction against it helps the Jewish plot, and bitter reactions against women because of real or perceived feminism are as destructive as bitter reactions against men because of real or perceived chauvinism. The irony is thus that those who antagonise women generally because of assumed feminism, are servants of this ‘Judeo-Feminism’, not its conquerors; and in this sense they are objectively not much different from misandristic feminists. The way to overcome this is to demonstrate how feminism has failed to live up to its promises, how it has traded one form of servitude for another, how it has traded one form of unhappiness for another, how it is in fact anti-woman, and how it is inferior as a narrative to one that promulgates harmonious partnership between the sexes.

Conservatives and traditionalists are inherently nostalgic, and traditionalists in particular have a cyclical, non-progressive view of history, which for them begins with a golden age and goes through various degenerative stages until it reaches the point of total dissolution and chaos. An alternative is the organic view of history, proposed by Spengler and adopted by Yockey, where a culture / civilisation, and therefore its history, follows a natural cycle for birth, growth, maturity, senility, and death. In both cases the cycle is recurrent, so the end of once cycle also marks the beginning of the next. Unfortunately, this cyclic recurrence is often forgotten by many outside the cyclical tradition, who typically think in terms of fall and redemption, sin and salvation, and thus seek to reverse the advancing cycle to institute some form or return or restoration, rather than devise strategies for surviving the end and making it through to the new beginning. Those who yearn for a return to the America of the 1950s, the Germany of 1933, or the Britain of 1900, suffer from a limited view: the conditions that led to these stages will never return. The cycle moves forward, on to the next stage of development, with or without our approval.

In terms of the relationship between men and women, it is pointless to seek a return to a point in the past; the same way that it will be pointless for the liberals in the future to look at our era and hope for a return to their golden age, once it has passed.

And it will pass.

A Way Forward

Women both comprise half of the race and are indispensable for its continuity. Moreover, women are a measure of the health of any movement. Therefore, any movement that seeks to preserve the race cannot credibly ignore them. Even though it is up to women who care about the aims of the movement to organise themselves and contribute with activities suitable to their interests and strengths (no matter what they are), barriers to their participation must be eliminated. This begins by shedding the reactive misogyny engendered by feminism, reclaiming from the latter the high status and freedom accorded to women by traditional Western European culture and society, taking intelligent women’s advise seriously, ridiculing the war of the sexes, marginalising defectives, rejecting conservatism, and making a clear distinction between personal religious choices and racial preservation.

It must be stressed also that women are not merely baby factories, cooks, cleaners, or gold watches to be shown off any more than they are just labour or wallets that exist purely to fund the system.

Essential for success is accepting that the current system is designed to prevent our ideas from entering the mainstream; the system’s continued existence depends on it. Rather than attempt to make our ideas acceptable to the mainstream, we should seek to make the mainstream unacceptable to everybody, and present ourselves as a credible alternative to a discredited system. Women are important because we are not engaged in a debate; we are engaged in a contest of beauty and strength. Logic, arguments, and rational self-interest are but accessories; the main instruments are emotion, desire, and vanity. This is why it is essential that we begin by looking like we qualify to take part in the contest.

With the correct attitude, tactics, and strategy this is relatively inexpensive to achieve: consider that interpersonal hierarchies are seldom established by brute force, the same way that the sexual domination of women by elite males is rarely if ever achieved through violence; they are established or achieved by posture, manner of speech, and physical appearance. The practical use of power occurs only occasionally; often the mere suggestion of it is enough. The war of ideologies is largely a process of seduction, not one of rational persuasion. The enemy never seeks to convince with arguments—in fact they do not even debate their opponents on the Right; on the contrary, they insult and caricature, hoping that people— especially women—will stay away.

It makes perfect sense: beauty is elitist; ugliness egalitarian. A beautiful White woman represents the apex of human physical beauty, attractiveness, and desirability. This is recognised even by non-White males. Indeed, for many Black males a White woman, particularly if of Nordic ancestry, is a status symbol. Is it any surprise, then, that the enemy would rather they be alienated from a movement that seeks to exalt and perpetuate them? That the enemy uglifies them with feminism? That the enemy destroys them at gene level by encouraging non-reproductivity and miscegenation?

And when it comes right down to its most fundamental, is not our struggle in some way or another ultimately about White women?

Based on the feedback to date on Jaenelle Antas's and Matt Parrott's articles, the topic of women in “the movement” is pregnant with interest. I myself found much to agree with—and room for criticism.

I will quickly address a criticism towards Mr. Parrott's article before moving on. I reject his thesis that women have been somehow the silent heroes of our culture by the guileful manner in which they have maintained segregation within society during the tumult and physical dislocation of the last 60-odd years. I'm not going to engage in some kind of tit-for-tat, who-did-what-to-whom argument, in the completely fabricated "War of the Sexes" that has caused so much irreparable harm to our society. The stake should be driven through the heart of this beast—and now. But it needs to be pointed out that much of the social engineering that encouraged “White Flight” was made at the behest and with the wholesale approval of women—whose ideological tendencies are evident enough in any election cycle.

I think a good deal of white flight was actually not—as many would suggest—a pattern of scared Whites running from Blacks. Rather, there was a legitimate “American Dream” that emerged in the 1950's... with the automobile, cheap gas, a booming economy, and all these soldier boys back home. The idea of having a piece of the countryside—a back-yard to call your own—BBQ'ing with the neighbors, etc.—the typical home in the 'burbs. This was all part of the dream. That it allowed one to get away from the “inner city” problems (to be euphemistic) was a convenient accident. Woman's non-confrontational nature and willingness to live an open lie (i.e., explicitly promoting integration—while living segregation) encouraged her to contribute to the development of and make use of proxies for race, etc.

To suggest men were absent is to ignore the realities that a) men were typically making this facade financially possible; b) were often unable to be more overt in their opposition due to their financial vulnerability (e.g., risk of losing a job in corporate America due to association with politically-unacceptable beliefs); and c) were and remain constantly on the defensive—as the policies (often supported explicitly by their own wives, sisters, and mothers) were expressly intended to disenfranchise THEM.

The following is an installment in AltRight's ongoing series “So This Is How It Ends” (STIHIE), which chronicles instances of decadence so advanced that one can only conclude and hope that we are living in a terminal stage of Western civilization.

Much as with publicly burning Korans, no, dressing like a slut does not justify violence to one's person. That said, what I find most remarkable about these women is how angry they get by the mere suggestion that their actions might have consequences. 

One can be sure that the policeman who warned against dressing skanky has been put through the sensitivity-training ringer. If he were more honest, he might have instead suggested that the women avoid looking slutty around the Diversity that Canada and the City of Toronto have been assiduously importing over the past quarter century. Though saying such a thing might have brought everyone, including the officer himself, a little too close to a recognition of the contradictions of contemporary liberalism. 

During the 2010 HL Mencken conference, Richard Spencer expressed his doubts that Republicans would ever be able to capture the White vote because White women will continue to be swayed by what is fashionable. I assume he was speaking in terms of social influence, but there might also be a biological component to support his position—not enough White women are having babies.

In Annie Paul’s book Origins, she discusses the work of UCLA anthropologist Dan Fessler whose “research suggests that while pregnant, women become more xenophobic: more distrustful of strangers and more favorable disposed toward members of their own group.”

Fessler acknowledges that pregnant women feel more vulnerable precisely because they are more vulnerable, but he explains the ethnocentric result with a politically correct argument:

The reasons we experience these reactions today is that the response protected our ancestors…These emotions allowed our forbears to survive long enough to produce offspring, who in turn passed the same sensitivities on to us. We often respond to today’s world with yesterday’s adaptations.

In other words, biologically induced feelings of in-group loyalty are antiquated and no longer serve any real purpose. This conclusion is unsurprising from a contemporary anthropologist, but Fessler’s research is revealing. If pregnant women are more likely to have elevated levels of in-group consciousness, then it makes sense why so many White women are persuaded to vote for what is fashionable—they are not having babies. The vulnerability of pregnancy might open their eyes, if only for a brief period of time, to the out-group threat of leftwing political candidates who prioritize minority interests. Unfortunately, ethnocentrism among white women will continue to decrease as we further progress into the Anti-Fertilization Age of career women, Facebook singles, and feminist lesbians.

I’m all in favor of women staying in shape… but am I the only one who finds the six packs on display at this year’s Miss America pageant to be a major bonerkiller?  When exactly did the bulimic jazzercise instructor become a symbol of beauty?

This girl won. She reportedly squatted 350 in the talent competition. 

 I don't got jungle fever.

This one looks like my ski instructor, Walt.  (In case the name didn’t give it away, Walt is a man.)

(More images can be found at HuffPost.)

Here’s an archival photo from the 1950 pageant that proves that at one point in American history, young girls didn’t aspire to look like dykes.

A few months back, Entertainment Weekly published a feminist screed, 'The Social Network's Woman Problem'. In it, columnist Jennifer Armstrong, reviewing The Social Network, concedes that women generally aren't interested in computer science and that they don't feature prominently in the true-life story that inspired the movie. While she grudgingly admits that it wouldn't be appropriate to lie about events, she sniffs that, "[I]f this were fiction, the snubs would be inexcusable."

How refreshing! Here we have an admission that the female computer gurus are largely fictional, but that writers have a moral obligation to depict an inverted world that corroborates egalitarian gender fantasies. It would be inexcusable for gender egalitarians to suggest that males are the primary drivers of technological innovation.

Ironically, Larry Summers, the same former Harvard President who shooed the Winklevoss twins out his office in the movie would probably shoo Armstrong out as well. Back in 2005 he ignited a firestorm of feminist outrage with his frank attribution of the “underrepresentation” of women in science and engineering to “upbringing, genetics and time spent on child-rearing.”

And how did the Ivy League audience respond to the suggestion that gender differences in academic and professional outcomes owed to something other than victimization and systemic White male bigotry?

"I felt I was going to be sick," said Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who listened to part of Summers's speech Friday at a session on the progress of women in academia organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass. She walked out in what she described as a physical sense of disgust.

"My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow," she said. "I was extremely upset." 

One lady in attendance angrily declared that, "That's the kind of insidious, destructive, un-thought-through attitude that causes a lot of harm. It's one thing for an ordinary person to shoot his mouth off like that, but quite another for a top educational leader."

Note the parallel with Armstrong’s position: that there's an empirical world of ordinary people who accept gender realities, and an intellectual one that must uphold a standard of reality denial.

Summers' remarks were correct: While there are always exceptions, women are on the whole less naturally gifted than men in science and technology. This is not to say that on the whole they are inferior to men; they simply tend to excel in different areas. The paradox underlying contemporary feminism is that feminists esteem traditional male roles more than traditional female ones, eager to achieve female equality at wage slavery, computer programming, and athleticism, while contemptuous of their natural areas of excellence, such as sociability, multitasking, organising, and holding a family together in times of crisis. Are the latter not important too?

We only need to watch the role that women play in this movie, how they are treated, to see what feminism has accomplished in the last 50 years. Zuckerberg and pals publicly humiliate them, liken them to farm animals, and use them as disposable sex toys. Armstrong describes these depictions of women as "50s-level sexist", but women in the 50s didn't act like the women in The Social Network, and neither were they treated like the women in that film. Their behavior and treatment in the movie is fully contemporary.

She and countless other feminists prefer to reside in fiction. The current degree to which women are "empowered" is unsustainable. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that their pensions and 401k plans will be raided or devalued in the coming decades, leaving them at the mercy of the families and community networks their careers left them too busy to create.

 The illusions they cling to are comfortable, while reality is anything but: They're not sexually liberating themselves—they're forfeiting the leverage nature gave them in the battle of the sexes to a subset of slick pick-up artists. Their barren wombs are not about "family planning", they're about not planning to have a family. Their careers are not making them independent, dependence is simply being transferred from husbands and fathers to Big Brother. That's well and good for their personal interests as long as the economy is strong, the government is solvent, and the pensions are well-funded. But are those safe bets?

Women around the world already envied their Western counterparts’ unusual freedom and autonomy well before feminism screamed for more. The greater freedom and autonomy traditionally enjoyed by Western women makes our society very attractive, but the current social model isn't sustainable. Like the mythical Icarus, feminists have been tempted to push the limits to breaking point and are setting all women up for a devastating fall. Feminists aren't the only ones in the West casting aside tradition in favor of illusory short-term gains, but of all the groups doing so, they have the most to lose in the long run. The continuing population replacement in the West by non-White Third World immigrants suggest that the White and Western cultural context that feminism depends on will give way to a Third Worldish social model that will rob women of their freedom... among much else.

Tradition isn’t regression and it doesn't mean a repetition of past excesses and injustices. It means working toward balancing the need for individual expression with the need to play a role in something greater than the self: in the family, the community, and the nation. It means having the humility to know your weaknesses and the wisdom to play on your strengths. We don't need fantasies about women developing virtual social network applications. We need women developing real-world families and community networks. That's the real social network problem.

The American armed forces are becoming a sick joke.

No better is this expressed than in the Army’s selection of “Sergeant” Sherri Gallagher as its Soldier of the Year in this year’s Best Warrior Competition. The Army’s glowing coverage of this historic event can been seen here:

As Debbie Schlussel points out, Sherii-With-Two-Is is an Affirmative Action champion if there ever was one. She is 5’4,” petite, and looks like she’s 14 years old in her official photos. She would, no doubt, succumb quickly to an actual (male) warrior in a starring contest.

But the undeserved quality of the award is only the beginning.

The idea of putting females in combat—or promoting them as “warriors”— is such an affront to the tradition of chivalry and deference (not only in the West) that it astounds me that Red America still holds the armed forces in such esteem.

And the Sherri Gallagher case isn’t just sickening—it’s a joke.

In her interview, Gallagher talks about how “fun” and “exciting” the Best Warrior competition is. She evinces the giddiness of someone who knows she’ll likely never have to bleed or die on the battlefield. In Iraq and Afghanistan, women make up 2.4 percent of casualties, though they comprise 16 percent of the fighting force. The Army is not quite perverted or stupid enough to begin sending young ladies out on missions to kick down doors and defuse IEDs—“soldiers” who would, no doubt, begin shrieking at the sign of blood as well as periodically have to take time off from warring due to the natural cycles of womanhood.

No feminist has yet protested this conspicuous under-representation in injury and death. And if women actually did start dying at the same rate as men, we’d, no doubt, hear howls from the Left about the “exploitation” of women by chauvinist generals.

Women warriors don’t simply weaken the ideals of chivalry and manhood—which, no doubt, still stir in the hearts and minds of many male soldiers—but, indeed, turn them into liabilities. One could easily imagine a man endangering a mission or the lives of his platoon by foolishly/heroically attempting to save a woman imperiled on the battlefield in order to prevent her from falling into the hands of the enemy.

Writing of the execution of Marie Antoinette, Edmund Burke cried, “I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.” Burke feared chivalry might have died with the ancien régime… Whatever the case, when warriors become genderless state employees, any evocation of the Old Ways falls on deaf ears.

A correspondent recently complained about the tendency of generic conservatives to adopt "Islam oppresses women" as a major reason for opposing Muslim assertiveness and expansion. Doesn't that approach (he asked) play into a feminist analysis of society, and end by supporting feminist solutions generally? And as a factual matter, can it really be true that Muslim society is fundamentally a system whereby men oppress women? Doesn't it have other more basic problems, and wouldn't there be more give and take on that particular point?

I'm sympathetic with such concerns. The "Muslims oppress women" theme tends to merge opposition to violent jihad and the spread of Islam in the West into a general crusade for global liberation understood in a left/liberal sense. It easily turns into "religion oppresses women" and "tradition oppresses women" unless there's a focus on the specific nature of Islam, which there never is.

More basically, though, the Muslim treatment of women is their problem. Why should we get involved in their problems, when we've got our own and can't do much about theirs anyway? I'd prefer "Muslims engage in terrorism" and "Muslims are anti-Western" as themes, where "Western" refers to something more specific and complex than universal principles of freedom, equality, and scientific rationalism. I suppose "we don't want to be Muslim" should be part of the mix, and the position of women is part of that, but it's not as if relations between the sexes are in great shape in the West, so it's odd to put it first and foremost.

We do need to know what we're dealing with, so we should discuss the merits. On that point I'd say women are unquestionably at a disadvantage in Islam. Men can have several wives, and they can divorce at will. So the bond between man and woman is weaker and less balanced, and there is less mutual trust and more use of force than in traditional Western society.

Principles like that have some effect on day-to-day life, and a big effect on the likelihood of the kind of extreme situation that makes the news. So there are a lot more honor killings and stonings for adultery in Muslim societies, just as there are more babies who get their skulls punctured and brains sucked out in liberal societies.

General principles don't determine everything though, and in any event there are also general Islamic principles requiring fair treatment and whatnot. On the whole, people are people, life is mostly particular events, domestic ill-feeling is no fun, and women know how to get their way even if men are supposedly in charge. So I don't think the "generalized system of sexist abuse" theory holds water. How could such a system be maintained in household after household century after century over whole continents? Why would so many people go to such an effort?

I know something about life among at least some Muslims, since I spent a couple of years before all the unpleasantness began as a Peace Corps math teacher at a government boarding school in a small village in Afghanistan.

(The school where I taught, in Helmand Province, has since become Forward Operations Base Delhi. You can see a row of classrooms I taught in at around 1:40 in this video.)

There weren't many polygamous marriages where I was, and a lot of them had to do with special situations (your brother dies so you've got a second wife all of a sudden). And there were few or no divorces. There really can't be: at the crudest level, bride price might be 5 years salary for a schoolteacher, and the woman's family isn't going to be pleased if you toss her aside, so basically you make a go of what you've got.

It was hard for a single foreign man to observe family relations directly, but you could pick up this and that. Girls went around freely in public until they were 12 or so, and fathers seemed no less attached to them than to boys. There was one teacher--a very intelligent man who had studied in America and spoke excellent English--who notoriously beat his wife, and people looked down on that. There was another who was reputedly a great lover, and the women would giggle and tell stories behind the scenes.

Mostly the bits and pieces I heard about sounded like normal domestic life--A's wife had worry B about the children, C's wife wanted some sort of fancy cloth so he picked it up for her, etc. The most respected of the teachers, who everyone called "Father," had a much younger wife people called "Mother" who went around without a veil and did what she wanted. She was a very spirited woman, and nobody messed with her.

So far as I could tell, a lot of the differences had to do with the nature of the society rather than Islam as such. The two are connected, but it's complicated. Maybe it's something of a chicken-and-egg problem--Islam catches on in societies to which it's adapted. Or maybe the nature of the pre-Islamic society makes a big difference in how Islam turns out. Others will have to say.

The women didn't have much public presence where I was, but that didn't mean what people here would expect. There's less public life in Muslim countries. The classic Middle Eastern city was a bazaar and some palaces, mosques, and barracks in the public sphere, and also walled quarters where people lived among their own and ran their own affairs.

The family was generally a unit of production as well as consumption, so the idea of "career" was mostly irrelevant. That's still largely true, by the way. Career depends on large formal organizations, and such things don't work well in the radically divided societies you find in the Middle East and Central Asia. People are mostly farmers, artisans, or shopkeepers, and the ideal is having enough to live on so you can sit at home drinking tea.

I remember a guy in Kashmir (another Muslim region) asking me--very tentatively, he didn't want to seem like a fool who takes everything he hears seriously--whether it was true that in the West people didn't think it was enough to have money to live on and hang with their friends but also wanted to work as a positive good thing.

So the basic idea has always been that everything's behind walls, with extended families living together in compounds, and outsiders only admitted to the relatively small public areas. Behind the scenes, which is where everything took place, the women were much freer and certainly part of what was going on. There was also lots of to and fro through back doors into other compounds. The images of imprisonment you get in the West aren't at all accurate.

I suppose another influence leading to the absence of women from public life was the possibility of abduction. It's expensive to get a wife, so why not steal one? That can be a real possibility in a radically divided society without much public order in which everything takes place in walled quarters and compounds and there's more emphasis on arbitrary fortune than free choice anyway. That's not the sort of thing that's a big current issue, but I think it had a role in how the system developed and the possibility still has an influence somewhere in the background.

A problem with the whole picture is that the way of life doesn't transplant to all settings. It doesn't work at all in a bureaucratic and industrial society in which people live in small apartments in large buildings and make their livings as operatives and functionaries in big organizations. So traditional Muslims in the West have problems and modernization runs into problems in Muslim countries. I have no doubt that one result is increased conflict and violence.

Whether the Muslims will be able to pick and choose among aspects of modernity and come up with something that works for them I don't know. If they want to convert to Catholicism I'd be glad to send them a catechism or even explain why it's a good idea, but if they want to do their Islamic thing I can't help them.

Converting them to liberalism--by force or any other way--doesn't seem to be the answer. We in the West have our own problems, and we're in no position to straighten other people out. Let the Muslims have a go at it where they run things and let's leave each other alone. Each should mind his own business, barring extraordinary circumstances, and maintain boundaries for the sake of peace.