When feminism went bad, there were people saying that people should remain a part of it because prior to that feminism has done right things.
This is like Putin saying that people should support his war in Ukraine because in the past he has been a decent leader.
For a long time feminism was a good cause. It fought for right things – women’s right to a safe life inside the home and a fulfilling life outside the home. Then it went bad and started telling women that they can’t be beautiful, that they can’t be kind and that they can’t have loving relationships with men. This resulted in many people who otherwise would have been part of feminism rejecting feminism. And I have been one of these people.
I have a teenage daughter. I most certainly don’t want her to wind up a punching bag for some jerk. But neither do I want her to be abused by feminists for being kind and pretty. Neither situation would be right. And I will inform her about both dangers so that she can avoid either experience.
For as long as there are men who choose to be jerks, there will be a need for one or another form of feminism. I want the form of feminism being practiced to be the right kind. It should fight for the woman’s right to a safe life inside the home and a fulfilling life outside the home. On other issues, it needs to move away from its errors. In particular it needs to stop teaching women to be horrible people. Women gain nothing from that and lose the sympathy of both men and other women.
One situation instructive to American feminists is the situation in Sweden. In Sweden feminism is more advanced than it is in America; but women are not under pressure to be ugly and mean. The Swedish women are very beautiful, and they are also kind and friendly. They get more respect than American women. Which means that American feminists have a lot to learn from them.
So we have American feminists teaching their followers to be horrible people. And – surprise surprise – what happens but that American men are looking outside of America to places like Russia for marital partners. This makes sense on both sides. The American man stands to get treated much better by a Russian woman than by an American feminist, and the Russian woman stands to be treated much better by an American man than by a Russian man. This results in better people having better relationships. And it also results in an incentive on the offending gender in each society to improve their treatment of the other gender, or else see the other gender leave in large numbers to be with people who are willing to be good to them.
There is good feminism and there is bad feminism. The Swedish version of feminism is much better than the American version. Anything human can go right and anything human can go wrong. It does not make sense to either support or oppose all of feminism. It makes sense to support what feminism is right about and oppose what it is wrong about.
When a movement goes wrong, it discredits even the things that it has been right about. Abuses of feminism have discredited feminism as such. So now there are men who keep claiming that Western misogynists have been right all along and that women are evil and should be battered. This did not need to have happened. This happened because feminism went wrong.
Choosing whether or not to side with a movement is a matter of freedom of conscience. A conscientious man supports what the movement is right about and confronts what it is wrong about. I don’t need to support wrongs in feminism to be in favor of women’s rights. I support what’s right in feminism and confront what’s wrong in feminism. And I hope that other people make the same choice.