The Case Against Reform
What makes feminism dangerous?
In the 1970s and 1980s, psychologist Henri Tajfel and colleagues performed experiments in which they assigned subjects to groups – in reality randomly, though subjects were told they had been assigned based on trivial criteria such as whether they had guessed too high or too low in a guessing game. Members weren’t even slightly connected - they didn’t know each other and couldn’t cooperate, communicate or share rewards. Tajfel called them Minimal Groups. Even so, group members would allocate more money or points to their in-group than their out-group – even though they had never seen or spoken to them. No history, no camaraderie, just instant tribalism.
To explain this extraordinary result, Tajfel, along with John Turner, later developed Social Identity Theory which holds that the simple act of being placed in a group leads to prejudice and discrimination against the out-group. Robert Trivers explains:
Few distinctions bring quicker and more immediate psychological responses in our species than in-group and out-group … The words “us” and “them” have strong unconscious effects on our thinking.
If you have any illusions about the innate goodness of people, this should be profoundly unsettling. But it is key to understanding why feminism has moved seamlessly from caring about women as a group to prejudice and discrimination against men. In this essay, I’ll survey lessons from social psychology that explain why feminism has become so damaging.[i]
Competition and Threat
Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory tells us to expect stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination from feminism. But, for things to become even more damaging, additional factors are usually present – factors like competition.
The Robbers Cave Study is one of the most influential experiments in social psychology. It was conducted by Muzafer Sherif and colleagues over three weeks in 1954 at a large holiday camp in Robbers Cave State Park. They divided 22 children into two groups (the Eagles and the Rattlers) and placed them in competitive situations some of which were stage managed to increase tension. The result was hostility, prejudice and, ultimately, aggression including name-calling, vandalism and violence. The hostility became so intense that the researchers had to intervene and end the experiment to prevent further escalation and potential harm.
The Robbers Cave experiment laid the foundation for Realistic Conflict Theory, which says that group competition - especially over scarce resources - leads to prejudice, discrimination and aggression. The stakes don’t have to be valuable - social competition for status and self-esteem are enough.
If you’ve read my earlier essays, you will understand that competition and conflict are fundamental to feminism’s view of the relationship between the sexes.[ii] One disturbing symptom is the fact that the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index scores men dying earlier as a “win” for women. We see the same assumptions of competition and conflict in feminist concepts like the gender pay gap, the gender asset gap, the gender STEM gap, the gender emoji gap and, especially, the gender thermostat gap. (It’s due to thermal sexism.) The predictable result is prejudice, because of perceived conflict, and discrimination aimed at advantaging the in-group.
But not all threats are tangible or realistic. Later researchers found that purely symbolic ones can also trigger prejudice and discrimination – a theory known as Integrated Threat Theory. They also discovered that there is a feedback loop: perceived threats generate prejudice that makes the in-group feel even more threatened.
Feminism is based on beliefs of “the patriarchy”, “toxic masculinity” and a narrative of victimhood - quintessential examples of symbolic threats. And research has found that symbolic threats like these are much more potent than realistic threats in poisoning women’s attitudes to men. As well, the anger towards men that is fundamental to feminism adds to anti-male prejudice which, in turn, adds to the perceived threat.
And the harm may not stop at prejudice and discrimination. Threats have been linked with dehumanization by Daniel Bar-Tel, and with moral exclusion by Susan Opotow and Ervin Staub.
So groups that perceive threat or conflict are likely to respond negatively – even aggressively. But, if the conflict moves to the political arena, things can degenerate even further.
Political Ideology
Feminism is, by definition, a political ideology centred on a group, and the evidence shows that’s a recipe for trouble.
Political ideologies strongly influence how threats are interpreted: people view events through partisan worldviews that magnify perceived threats from the out-group. Political rhetoric can intensify the perceived threats enough to lead to violence. Ideologies can provide moral justification for conflict that non-political groups lack. In essence, political ideologies can turn aggression into altruism in the minds of extremists.
The result is more polarisation, prejudice and discrimination. More worryingly still, politicised groups frequently exclude the out-group from their moral universe – exactly as feminism does.
Moreover, when inter-group tensions move into the political arena, this creates new areas of threat - political power and status become key “resources” for groups to compete over, further intensifying conflict. And the converse is also true - as well as politics worsening conflict between groups, tensions between groups make for ugly politics. The tendency of politicised groups to amplify their shared beliefs, strive for distinctiveness and move to more extreme positions only adds fuel to the fire.
The final danger with fusing a group with a political ideology is that it can grant the group power to wreak their prejudice, discrimination and moral exclusion on society at large – exactly as we see with feminism.
Identity Groups
So, fusing a group with a political ideology creates a dangerous cocktail. But when the group in question is especially significant, the risks multiply. The most damaging ideologies of the past have been based on race, ethnicity or religion - all very potent identities. Feminism builds upon a different identity but one that is at least as strong.
Studies show that, compared with other groups, identity groups are more prone to feelings of hostility, deprivation and prejudice. They are also more sensitive to threats and more given to antisocial actions, segregation and discrimination, including in-group privilege.
The stronger group bonding of identity groups results in radicalism and increased support for aggression against the out-group. The combination with politics is so volatile that one study found the combination to be the only trigger for violent collective action.
So, with feminism, we have an ideology based on a powerful group identity. Like racist ideologies, its group is impermeable – meaning it’s difficult to move between in-group and out-group – a known danger sign. (See 1, 2.) But feminism is made even more potent by the unique strength of female bonding.
Not for nothing do feminists refer to themselves collectively as “the sisterhood”. The strength of female bonding may be feminism’s secret weapon - underestimated even by women. As one team of researchers put it: “Women like women more than men like men”. Across a series of experiments, one study found that women’s in-group bias averages 4.5 times stronger than men’s. That bias was also far broader – for example, women associate positive words, such as good and happy with their in-group. They connect more with other women in social networks and in teams. But they display greater malevolence towards their out-group, men.
This unusually strong in-group bonding does more than create cohesion — it also discourages dissent and reinforces shared narratives. That makes feminism especially resistant to internal challenge or criticism which entrenches prejudices and blocks reform.
In summary, feminism rests on an in-group vs out-group division of great potency – looming larger in many ways than race, ethnicity or religion. Then it is further strengthened by the power of female bonding which only increases the dangers.
And there’s still one more factor to consider.
Us vs Them
Clearly, feminism is an Us vs Them ideology. As such, it invites comparison with Us vs Them ideologies of the past.
Such a comparison highlights two things. First, previous Us vs Them ideologies have been responsible for some of the most tragic events in history. Second, feminism differs from them mainly in that while they were typically based upon race, ethnicity or religion, feminism, uniquely, is based upon sex. The previous section argued that sex is at least as powerful as other identities in separating an in-group and an out-group. But feminism also has a source of power that isn’t available to other Us vs Them ideologies – pro-female bias.
One of the most remarkable facts in gender politics is that 61% of men support discrimination against men. Think about that. It’s like chickens supporting KFC!
And pro-female bias appears to start from the cradle. Did you know that babies can distinguish male and female faces and even newborns prefer female faces? And that the same bias continues into adulthood?
Of course, the bias extends beyond just facial preferences. Alice Eagly, arguably the leading researcher in the field, spent years collecting and processing huge datasets to investigate attitudes. She summed up what she found: “Women are Wonderful”. That label captured a striking and consistent pattern: while the bias was strongest among women, it was shared by men and extended across many domains.
Other researchers have confirmed the same bias and shown that it dwarfs racial, class or age biases: “Overall, the largest and most consistent evaluative bias was pro-women/anti-men bias”. And Eagly found that people don’t just hold these attitudes, they act on them: “men helped more than women and women received more help than men”.
There is now considerable evidence that these biases spill into gender politics:
When trade-offs result in one sex bearing a cost, people prefer that men pay.
Both men and women are biased towards believing in the superiority of women.
Supporters of gender equality are more likely to falsely infer discrimination against women.
Equality of outcomes arguments are more likely to be accepted if it is females who benefit.
People are more concerned by lesser outcomes for women than for men.
Both sexes, but especially women, oppose pro-male double standards but endorse some pro-female ones.
Males are more harshly judged than females.
Pro-female cognitive distortion is widespread in western cultures and results in masculinity being linked to privilege and perpetration, whereas females are associated with celebration and victimhood – findings backed up in other research.
Numerous studies have shown that both sexes care more about harm to women than to men.
In short, feminism starts with a huge advantage in appeal over past Us vs Them ideologies. So much so that it attracts considerable support even from its out-group.
Conclusion
In previous essays, I argued that feminism is dangerous and destructive. Hopefully you can now understand how that has come about. From the outset, feminism mobilised around a group — so it should be no surprise that it framed its cause as a conflict, and its out-group as a threat. From that beginning, the result could only be a politicised, identity-based, Us vs Them ideology – and a uniquely powerful one.
My central point is that feminism’s destructiveness isn’t the result of a wrong turn, it was inevitable – baked into its DNA. Feminism was always going to be as it is and will never be anything else – least of all the positive force it pretends to be.
Feminism cannot be reformed, only condemned.
What draws people to feminism? How can feminists reconcile themselves with the reality of prejudice, discrimination and dehumanisation? I believe my next essay will answer these questions and break new ground in the process. Please subscribe to be notified when it is published.
[i] If you have doubts about the destructiveness of feminism, please read my earlier essays on the danger of feminism and its moral exclusion.
[ii] In recent times, feminism has restated its basis for polarisation as gender rather than sex. The distinction isn’t relevant to my purposes so I will use the term “sex” for both.
I've long suspected that feminism's problems stem from its focus on women as a group & their conflict with men. But it’s another thing entirely to see it proven with such scholarship.
Thank you & please keep up the good work.
Excellent essay. Thanks very much for connecting the research to help understand the potent negativity of feminism. It has always puzzled me how women, who under normal circumstances seem loving and compassionate, totally lose that aspect of themselves when swallowing the feminist hate.
Gynocentrism runs silent and it runs deep. People are simply unaware.