Sex, Lies & Feminism by Peter Zohrab: Chapter 14: The Frontman Fallacy

CHAPTER 14
THE FRONTMAN FALLACY

What is Men's Rights About ?
Men's Rights is the ideology according to which men have intrinsic rights that are often denied them in contemporary Western culture -- indeed, according to this view, society does not usually recognize that men, as men, even have rights. Feminists in western countries have, over about 200 years (since Wollstonecraft), established as a given the thesis that society is male-dominated and oppresses women. This is the meta-issue that Men's Rights activists raise, as a logical (but not necessarily practical) precondition to the raising of various specific issues.

Men's Rights proponents consider that Feminists have argued for "equality" in respect of self-selected issues only, -- using ad hoc (and seldom explicit) definitions of "equality" that they developed themselves, rather than (for example) calling a conference of all interested parties for the purpose of clarifying the issues. It is argued that Feminists have not sought gender equality on issues such as child custody, the decision to abort one's unborn child, compulsory military service, unsegregated professional sports, law enforcement relating to domestic violence, funding for men's and women's groups, Men's Studies vs Women's Studies, ministries of Men's Affairs to complement ministries of Women's Affairs, and health research funding, etc..

Many Men's Rights activists also criticise Feminism for relying on a restricted view of political power, whereby a count of the relative numbers of men and women in important decision-making positions suffices to determine whether men or women are the more powerful. Men's Rights proponents point out that there are many other sorts of political power - e.g. control over the information and stereotypes that decision-makers rely on as the basis of their decisions. This information and these stereotypes, in the West, are largely under the control of Hollywood, the mass media, the education sector, and the bureaucracies - which are all strongly influenced by Feminist ideology, if not actually female-dominated.

The term "Masculism" (aka "Masculinism" or "Virism") may be used interchangeably with "Men's Rights", but conservatives in the Men's Rights scene often reserve the term "Masculism" for the liberal branch of the Men's Rights movement (as epitomised by ex-Feminist author Warren Farrell). Liberal Masculists (such as Farrell or Rod van Mechelen) take the position that Feminist aspirations to gender equality should be taken at face value, and men made equal to women in those areas where women are over-privileged. Conservatives (such as Richard Doyle, and religious individuals and organisations such as the Promise Keepers) would prefer to return to a traditional division of labour between the sexes.

The response of Feminists to the Men's Rights movement has not generally been to respond to Men's Rights at the ideological level. Rather, they have either ignored this movement, publicised new issues (e.g. eating disorders) where women might plausibly be shown to be disadvantaged, and/or tried to deny Men's Rights activists access to the media and publishers and influence in education systems and bureaucracies.

The Frontman Fallacy is the mistaken belief that people (men, specifically) in positions of authority in democratic systems use their power mainly to benefit the categories of people (the category of men, in particular) that they belong to. In western countries, male leaders are accessible only to a very small portion of their constituency (women's groups, among them) and they tend ignore appeals from men's groups.

In fact, we don't have to look any further than President Bill Clinton for a perfect example of a Frontman. He was so pro-Feminist that the main thing which prevented him from being impeached for perjury about his extra-marital affair with Monica Lewinsky was the organised support of the Feminist movement. The Feminists were grateful for his support on abortion, bringing homosexuals into the armed forces – in fact, his across-the-board support of all their causes. But, once Hilary Clinton had got her Senate seat and Bill Clinton had left the White House, the Feminists told their contacts in the media to stop supporting him, and the media then started to denigrate him, as they should have done long before.

For all its power, however, Feminism is basically a brain-dead ideology that achieved its remarkable victories through a combination of bullying, blatant lies, simple-minded distortions and emotional blackmail, rather than on the intellectual merits of its arguments. Kate Millett, for example, is a very important name in the intellectual history of modern Feminism, yet her reasoning is rife with errors:

“If one takes patriarchal government to be the institution whereby that half of the populace which is female is controlled by that half which is male, the principles of patriarchy appear to be twofold: male shall dominate female, elder male shall dominate younger.” (Kate Millett, 1972: Sexual Politics. London: Abacus. Page 25).

That is Millett's definition of patriarchy. Her crucial point is the notion of "control." What Millett means by this term is made clear as follows:

“(O)ur society ... is a patriarchy. The fact is evident at once if one recalls that the military, industry, technology, universities, science, political office, and finance – in short, every avenue of power within the society, including the coercive force of the police, is entirely in male hands.” (ibid, page 25).

It is a good rule of thumb that, if you want to look for the weaknesses in someone's argument, find sentences starting with words such as "evident," "evidently," "obvious," or "obviously." These flag the weak assumptions the writer/speaker needs to prop up with confident-sounding language. In this case, the weakness is the fact that there is a large number of males in these professions does not logically imply they are "controlling" women any more than they are controlling other men. Men may occupy many high-status positions, but they comprise the majority in very many low-status occupations, as well. More importantly, if the "coercive force of the police" is directed mainly at women, why do men constitute the overwhelming majority arrested by the police?

Feminists assume that male officials usually promote the interests of men over those of women, which is seldom the case. True, male officials may at times have been unaware of a female perspective on certain issues, but this was counterbalanced by paternalistic chivalry, which has led male officials to treat women more leniently than men. Nowadays, in Western societies, Feminist propaganda is the ruling ideology, and few male officials are unaware of Feminist positions on everything under the sun - whereas pro-male viewpoints are either derided or ignored. At the same time, male chivalry has hardly decreased, and Male Feminists are anti-male, so that women now have it both ways.

Female feminist officials, on the other hand, use their power almost exclusively to benefit females. For example, New Zealand Minister of Women's Affairs, Christine Fletcher, used her power to establish the position of Women's Health Officer in her Ministry. She did this without the slightest attempt to prove women have greater health needs than men, who certainly don't have any "Men's Health Officer." This sexist woman just felt "passionate" about the issue, and that was that!

Fact is, we can make a case that democratic countries are actually matriarchies, and male politicians are the paid servants of Feminists. The litmus test is whether the (mainly male) politicians enact legislation favouring men's interests more than women's interests. What we find is that during the last two hundred years western history is peppered with examples of mainly male governments enacting legislation benefiting women more than men. Since the late 18th Century, mainly male governments have enacted legislation giving women the vote, according women equal pay with men, liberalising abortion laws to permit mass-murder of infants, increasing penalties for rape, and so forth, all without protecting men's interests in family, mating rituals, work-place behaviours or educational institutions.

Vaginal politics
Most decision-makers in society's political institutions may be men, but they have done and do little for men and much for women. Why?

Male decision-makers are subject to pressure from individual women (friends, family members, etc.), as well as female pressure-groups. Feminism created the slogan, "the personal is political," thereby turning many a bedroom into a battleground, forcing men to choose between their marriage and their principles, between love and integrity, between wealth and poverty. Feminist policies also contributed much to the increase in two-income families. While employers' need for workers grew at about the same gradual pace it had always grown at, the supply of workers almost doubled over the span of a few years. Wages stagnated while profits grew and the male executives who prospered as a result have a vested interest in perpetuating the Feminist system and catering to Feminist sexism.

Here is an example of Male Feminist behaviour: at a regional meeting I attended of teacher union representatives, the chairman, who was the male partner of a high-profile Feminist teacher, started the meeting by telling us on which floors the toilets were, and saying, dead-pan, there were combination-locks on the women's toilets, but not the men's, because men were too stupid to operate combination locks! No one protested this blatantly sexist remark, but as he gazed across the room he received a glance of affirmation for his Uncle Tom-like behaviour from the women. Imagine the enraged reaction had he said women were too stupid to operate combination-locks.

How can they get away with such behavior? Where are the groups speaking on behalf of men? Women's pressure groups far outnumber men's. For example, as of December, 1999, a search at Alta Vista for "men's rights" produced 2,256 pages/results while searching for "women's rights" produced 39,527 pages/results – 17½ times as many. Evidence of just how much Feminists dominate gender-issues: men's voices in this area are virtually silenced by the overwhelming pressure Feminists bring to bear on male decision-makers. On this basis, one could almost suggest women have about 17½ times as much power as men in western societies.

There are various forms of power in Society:
1. the power of decision-makers, such as politicians, judges and juries;
2. the potential military and police power to apply armed force;
3. the power of the media to cover and package (or ignore) issues as they see fit;
4. the power of the educationalists to inculcate values they believe in;
5. the power of pressure-groups to influence the media, politicians and the bureaucracy;
6. the power of bureaucrats to interpret legislation and regulations, and discriminate against certain clients.

This last sort of power is also now largely in the hands of women: the December 1998 New Zealand Household Labour Force Survey, for example, shows men concentrated in employment categories involving working with objects, whereas women are concentrated in occupations dealing with members of the public. This pattern is likely to be the same all over the western world.

Men outnumber women in:
1. Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing by 107,300 to 49,900;
2. Manufacturing by 195,700 to 86,300;
3. Construction by 104,300 to 12,500, and
4. Transport, Storage, and Communication by 70,300 to 34,000.

On the other hand, women outnumber men in:
1. Education by 89,600 to 41,000, and
2. Health and Community Services by 98,400 to 23,100.

In Other categories ("Wholesale and Retail Trade, etc.", "Business and Financial Services," "Other Services", and "Not Specified"), men and women were present in roughly equal numbers. This gives women disproportionate power in administering and interpreting – on a daily basis – the rules and regulations affecting the lives of men, women and children. Whenever a man or boy comes into contact with a social worker, court psychologist, teacher, etc., that person will probably be a woman, or – even if not actually a woman – a member of a female-dominated profession with a hefty bias against men.

Misandry in the mainstream
Nowadays, Feminism is so mainstream that Mussolini's granddaughter, the leader of a Neo-Fascist party, described herself as a Feminist. However, 20th Century Feminism originally tacked itself onto the back of the Left in general, and Marxism in particular. This is the part of the political spectrum which loves to use the word "oppression."

Feminists rely heavily on the Frontman Fallacy. They point to the number of male decision-makers as evidence the political system favours men. This argument is extremely superficial and has flourished only because of the lack of intellect, objectivity and male input into Gender Studies. Hence, Women's Studies is really an ideology rather than an academic discipline.

Ideologies are akin to religion. Like religions, an ideology such as Feminism or Marxism is compatible with more or less any state of affairs in the real world. All theologians and ideologues worth their salt can explain virtually any apparent counterexample, if necessary, as being irrelevant to their beliefs, and therefore compatible with them. However, religions have an other-worldliness that gives them greater durability than ideologies. Political, economic and military failures tend to be blamed on governments and their ideologies more often than on religions. So ideologies come and go.

Marxism is no longer the force it used to be. Feminism has been around longer than Marxism, and is bound to be weakened by the virtual demise of Marxism because of the de facto alliance between the two (e.g., The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, Shulamith Firestone, 1971). Feminism started off as an underdog ideology, but has long since become firmly entrenched in the establishment. This is helping remove the blinders from all the men conned by their claims of oppression. In fact, I am quite pleased that New Zealand (at time of this writing) has a female Governor-General, a female Prime Minister, a female leader of the main opposition party, a female Chief Justice, and a female head of Telecom, the country's largest company, because it makes it harder for the Feminists to portray all women as victims of the "Patriarchy". As the Feminists consolidate their power, people will see them as the establishment. With that kind of status comes the glaring scrutiny they have avoided so far, and this cannot help but contribute to their eventual demise.


The comparison of women with oppressed minorities has generally been done in a completely unbalanced way. Their hunt for similarities between women and genuine minority groups has been more than a little biased. The obvious differences between women and genuinely oppressed minorities, on the other hand, have been determinedly overlooked. For example:

1.women are a numerical majority in most electorates;
2.they have a greater life-expectancy than men;
3.much more research is done into their diseases than male diseases;
4.Gynecology is a medical field in its own right, but specifically male diseases are hidden away in Urology; in most universities;
5.women have the vote but do not have to do military or alternative service in countries where men have to do this – e.g. Germany and the United States – nor are they drafted into the front line (even in Israel);
6.women are much more likely to get custody of children on separation and divorce;
7.many more men than women are in jail, even when women live unscathed on the proceeds of their male partners' crimes.

Feminists believe their own lies. So they almost never seek equality with men in areas where men are at a disadvantage compared to women – how many demonstrations have you heard of demanding that women be subject to the draft on the same basis as men? Certainly, many Feminists are ruthless in using their positions of power to advance their cause. Until this changes, is it really a good thing to promote even more women into positions of even greater power? As the "False Prophet" says:

There's no use in exalting the humble and the meek. They don't remain humble and meek once they're exalted.
(Martin Burke, the "False Prophet,"—formerly at: www.tribal.com/newtrib/inter3.htm)

Feminism is now so much part of the establishment in the West that it is hard for people – particularly those who have undergone a conventional university indoctucation – to imagine any alternative world-view. One of the few contexts in which such alternative world views can be glimpsed is the following description of the debate that preceded the setting up of an "Introduction to Feminist Theory" course at an American University in the early 1980s:

“About eight years ago, when I decided to develop at Williams College a course entitled "Introduction to Feminist Theory," several of my colleagues had two predominant and for the most part inconsistent reactions. One colleague branded the course "a political polemic." It turned out that he saw feminist theory as a monolithic ideology into which unsuspecting students would be indoctrinated. Another colleague criticised the course for almost the opposite reasons: He saw nothing theoretical about feminist theory at all. Echoing many early critics of feminist thought, he described it as a random mixture of complaints pointing out, but scarcely analyzing, the subjugation of women.” (Tong: Feminist Thought: a Comprehensive Introduction, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1989, p. 1)

Rosemarie Tong won the argument, and students at Williams College (as elsewhere) would hear little more of arguments against Feminism; instead, many semi-unsuspecting students were indeed indoctrinated into an ideology which, though not at all monolithic, was based on the axiom that women are oppressed, and was dedicated to the liberation of women from this supposed oppression.

There is some validity, also, to the criticism that Feminism is not so much a theory (or group of related theories) as an unsystematic collection of complaints (or "organised nagging").

“(T)he feminists' attack on males is also one of the strongest indictments of science and the scientific method that it is possible to make. On generous scientific grounds, it seems clear to me that the evidence which feminists such as Kate Millet and Ti-Grace Atkinson use to support their case is, on balance, irresponsible in its selection and ... narrowly and unfairly interpreted...” (Tiger: Male Dominance? Yes, Alas. A sexist Plot ? No, reprinted in Ruth (1980), p. 205).

The intellectual calibre of the arguments put forward by Feminists is usually very low, because they are not forced to defend themselves against organised, systematic criticisms from opposing schools of thought, as happens with most academic disciplines. The people who read what Feminists write are generally true believers already, and any academics who disagree are usually intimidated by fear of what Feminists can do to them or their careers if they voice their disagreement. So the closest analogy to a Department of Women's Studies is a Theological College.

Another reason for the poverty of the theoretical content of Feminist thought is that Feminism is, first and foremost, a political movement. Like Marxism, Feminism is more interested in changing the world than analysing it. So, in most cases, they don't just sit back and take a balanced and rational look at society. Rather, they do about as much rational analysis as they think they need to back up their political demands, or to formulate new ones.

A third reason for the theoretical poverty of Feminism is that it is about society, which means that Feminist theory can only be as developed as Sociology is as a whole. Many people will agree that Sociology is far from achieving the scientific status of a subject like Chemistry, for example.

Conclusion
Feminism is an intellectually substandard body of theory, and it will not survive any sustained academic attack once the Frontman Fallacy is recognised for what it is. What is most lacking now among male academics is the courage to criticize Feminism head-on. Until that changes, denunciations of Feminism will have to come principally from female academics and male non-academics.