Dating from 1949, The Second Sex is still revered as “a foundational tract of contemporary feminism”, “the mothership of feminist philosophy”, and ranked foremost among “must-read” feminist books. But contemporary readers may be astounded to learn that, 76 years ago, author Simone de Beauvoir was prepared to declare a feminist victory:
Many women today, fortunate to have had all the privileges of the human being restored to them, can afford the luxury of impartiality: we even feel the necessity of it. We are no longer like our militant predecessors; we have more or less won the game; in the latest discussions on women’s status, the UN has not ceased to imperiously demand equality of the sexes, and indeed many of us have never felt our femaleness to be a difficulty or an obstacle…
Yet by 2002, 31% of women weren’t “satisfied with the treatment of women in society” according to a Gallup survey.
Today, most women (56%) aren’t satisfied.
After all the undeniable successes of feminism, how can it be that women are increasingly dissatisfied? To answer that question, we need to understand the nature of feminist objectives.
We must first understand that feminist policies rest on group rights rather than human rights. Group rights are controversial, so I will review those controversies. I will also point to a problem with group rights that isn’t generally appreciated – they aren’t tethered to a fixed reference like equality. And that will turn out to be the answer to the question just posed.
I’ve previously pointed out that feminism is “mobilized around women as a group”. Consequently, feminist initiatives grant privileges to women as a group but not to men.[1] For example:
· Women-only jobs are only available to women as a group.
· Favoured university entry is similarly available to all women collectively.
· Women’s Rights are rights that apply to women as a group but not to men.
In fact, all the privileges feminists seek for women are group rights and, as such, quite distinct from individual human rights. It is no overstatement to say that group rights are at the core of feminism.[2] But they have a controversial history.
The first controversy about group rights is whether they even exist. Philosophers including Kant, Hayek, Popper and Rand have argued that groups simply cannot have rights. Their reasoning typically being that only individual humans can possess moral standing, accountability and, thus, rights.
Traditionally, Christianity has opposed group rights for similar reasons – groups do not have a soul, moral agency or God-given rights.
Consequently, throughout history, it has been held that rights belong solely to individuals. That leaves feminism resting on a very shaky ethical base. But, even if we reject the philosophers’ reasoning (and you shouldn’t be too quick to do so), there are other problems with group rights.
In the 20th century, concerns about the dangers of group rights intensified – mainly because of the central place of group rights in Nazi ideology. One of the lessons was that group rights are inherently attractive to those who would attack human rights. For this and similar reasons, group rights are often associated with social control and individual rights with freedom.
But there is a more pressing problem - conflict between group rights and human rights. In western democracies, individuals make up the basic unit of society and their rights are sacrosanct. But, whenever a man is excluded from consideration for a women-only job, given lower benefits because of his gender or disadvantaged on university entry, his human rights are violated. Consequently, with the ascendancy of feminism and related ideologies, human rights violations have become endemic. As Nathanson and Young put it:
For affirmative action to be effective, the individual rights of men must be sacrificed in favour of the collective rights of women.
For human rights supporters, such attacks on the rights of individuals are deeply concerning. The famous political scientist Francis Fukuyama put it this way:
Liberal democracies have no choice but to take the side of individuals over groups if they are to remain true to their principles.
Yet feminism’s increasing commitment to group rights has made it increasingly hostile to individual rights and even to discussion of individuals. To quote feminist academic Anne Phillips:
The “individual” is a patriarchal category
and so
The individual has joined the list of suspect categories
The battle-lines are drawn. To the extent we allow feminist group rights, we violate human rights. And the most common violation of human rights is discrimination.
Human rights aren’t discriminatory for the simple reason that they apply to all individuals. In contrast, group rights create winners and losers based on group membership – the privileged in-group and the disadvantaged out-group. Thus, group rights are always divisive and generally discriminatory.[3]
And the converse is also true – the worst forms of discrimination are due to group rights. A moment’s thought reveals that codified discrimination doesn’t target individuals—it targets entire groups. And group rights are the mechanism that makes it possible.
In summary, group rights are inextricably bound to discrimination. And feminist group rights inevitably result in discrimination.
There is another problem with group rights – one that didn’t become clear until the rise of feminism. To highlight it, I’d like to jump back to the topic of Equality of Outcome and argue that it is more arbitrary than you might expect. We saw that to sustain an Equality of Outcome justification, there is a formal requirement to show that women start from lesser outcomes. In reality though, it’s almost always possible to find a measure that meets this requirement. As long as men make up half the population, there will be niches in which women have lesser outcomes. So, to justify discrimination, there is no need for lies or damned lies - curated statistics will do just fine. For instance, consider my earlier example about university entry. To justify discriminatory entry, feminists ignore the fact that women already constitute over 60% of undergraduates. Instead, feminists focus on niches (like IT and engineering) where women make up less than half.
In my previous blog I pointed out that there are two other common justifications for discrimination against men: women’s rights and retribution for past misdeeds. And these are, if anything, even more arbitrary. Both the existence of women’s rights and the existence of past misdeeds are simply assumed – no evidence is required. The result is that discrimination can simply be invoked at will.
It should be clear that it’s always possible to claim more group rights and thus justify more discrimination.[4]
The fundamental problem is that group rights aren’t tethered to a standard like equality. There is no end point at which women are recognised as “gender equal” to men – the construct doesn’t even exist. And, since discrimination against men isn’t acknowledged at all, there can be no point at which feminist policies will be recognised as going too far. Instead, as long as feminism exists, there will be a never-ending series of escalating demands. Quotas, women-only services and women-only seats in Parliament aren’t so much victories as stepping stones to the next demand.
Which leads us back to the beginning of this blog where I observed that, even as feminism has advanced, its objectives have receded. Now, I think we can easily trace this expansionism back to the central place of group rights in feminism. The process starts with division into groups, moves on to group rights and thence to systemic injustice.
So, what does set the limit? Once targets come untethered from a reference point like equality, the only limit is set by what is possible rather than what is right. And that is set by how far you can bring the public along. Policy is determined by a sort of popularity contest rather than by ethics. Lobbying is in the driver’s seat; fairness, justice and ethics are bound, gagged and stuffed in the trunk. For a clear example of the triumph of the feminist narrative over ethics, consider that 61% of men support discrimination against men despite it violating their human rights!
And history has shown us that once an ideology starts accumulating power and privilege, it’s easy to gather ever more and parlay this into expanding group rights. History shows us that other powerful us-vs-them ideologies followed exactly that trajectory. For instance South Africa started as a merely racist society which developed into the “petty apartheid” system and then to “grand apartheid” – all driven by continual increases in the group rights of whites. Reconquista Spain and the Nazi concept of Lebensraum (“living space”) provide similar examples. While feminism does not use state violence, it has followed the same historical pattern of ever-expanding group-based rights.
With the benefit of hindsight, it would be reckless not to condemn group rights.
So where does that leave us? The question of whether groups can have rights is debatable, but one thing is clear – if group rights are allowed, they must never override the rights of individuals. The conflict between group rights and human rights is too clear, the nexus between group rights and discrimination too strong, and the lobbying-fuelled expansion of group rights much too dangerous.
Over the last three blogs I’ve argued that feminist Gender Equality and other feminist initiatives are actually discrimination; that their justifications are flawed; and, in this blog, that the whole feminist enterprise is underpinned by group rights that are dangerously in error. And this is the most important and fundamental understanding – once we understand this, there is no need to debate feminist justifications. It doesn’t matter if the statistic is 43% or 93% since the fundamental basis, group rights, must be rejected.
In many respects, our society embarked on the feminist project for the best of reasons, but the result is increasingly divisive, unjust, and frequently inhumane. It is time to correct our mistakes and focus relentlessly on universal human rights rather than discrimination and group-based privileges. With goodwill and courage, we can do better than this.
[1] Feminists sometimes advocate for individual women but I won’t deal with such campaigns here.
[2] In 1995, political philosopher Will Kymlicka distinguished between group rights held collectively and what he termed “group-differentiated rights” which are held severally. Though influential, that distinction is not common in discussions of feminism or identity politics so I will use common terminology here.
[3] I say generally because there is a caveat. Some policies described as group rights (though more properly privileges) do little harm to the excluded and may have general support – eg disability rights or some indigenous rights. But, in most such cases, the privileged group is small, so that the cost to the out-group is also correspondingly small. That is definitely not the case with feminist group rights where the privileged group is half the population or more. Since my primary focus here is on feminist group rights, I won’t delve into such exceptional cases.
[4] In Cynical Theories, Pluckrose and Lindsay analyse this in detail and conclude:
The current analytical framework does not allow for the possibility of a situation in which gender power imbalances do not exist or one in which they disadvantage men.
Outstanding observations reasoned with clarity and objectivity. A few comments.
1. Already pointed out by Nigel below, " While feminism does not use state violence, it has followed..." . No. Group rights can only be imposed by state violence which, as you pointed out, stems from public sentiment. The woefully ignored phrase 'Carceral Feminism' is the coopting of judiciary and law enforcement by women's group rights.
2. "..consider that 61% of men support discrimination against men .." The reason that a majority of men overlook the human rights of men is ingroup competition intensified by the instincts to protect women. This is adaptive to the tribe in times of scarcity and war. However, with technology and material prosperity, the naturally higher female ingroup preference makes men dig their own grave. This is largely primal and maladaptive to men as a group.
3. "..mainly because of the central place of group rights in Nazi ideology..." . Not just. There's Communism - state enforced 'group rights' of workers against 'owners'. You mentioned Apartheid. Social justice - 'group rights' of any group that manages to gain public sympathy. You mention liberal democracies. Unfortunately, democracy is useless in this regard. It's the primacy of the constitution with a bill of rights that matters.
Interesting analysis which I haven't heard so explicitly expressed previously. It seems that Group Rights are also very much the basis of identity politics, DEI, etc., but did that follow on from feminism?