The True Meaning of Feminism

What is the true meaning of feminism? True feminism is not the caricature being pandered by the media and the women who have seized the limelight. We need to set the record straight.

First of all, true feminism embraces all women. It is not the product of one political ideology. It embraces conservative and libertarian women as well as liberals and socialists. It has political connotations, but not the ones that are being promoted.

True feminism embraces all women. It is not the exclusive property of white middle-to-upperclass women in the United States, who dictate to the rest of the world what it means to be a woman. Rather, it fights for the right of women not to be compelled to submit to cruelty on the part of their husbands or male relatives. It fights for the right of women not to be compelled to cover their bodies with black clothing in a desert climate. It fights for the right of women not to submit to genital mutilation. And it fights for the right of women to experience peace and tranquillity in the home, and a place in society.

True feminism recognizes that we are by nature beings of peace. Why do women have difficulty asserting their rights in the first place? It is because we are so deeply entrenched in the spirit of peace, as part of our essential nature, that we would rather submit than cause a ruckus. It is because we are all too easily convinced that because we are not as physically strong or aggressive as men, we are somehow second-class, and that we deserve whatever treatment we receive. True feminism recognizes that women are vulnerable to abusive relationships and that we have a responsibility to protect our sisters from such relationships. True feminism recognizes that we must fight for the well-being of children, and that a war zone in the home is just as detrimental to them as a war zone in the nation. True feminism recognizes that peace is bought with a price, and that we must be prepared to embrace conflict to secure it. True feminism teaches women how to wage the effective forms of conflict. True feminism recognizes that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

True feminism embraces all people. It does not condemn men for not being female. It does not seek their political disenfranchisement on questions of intimate interest to women. But it does require that men raise above their baser nature and reserve their aggressiveness for the defense of the home and the nation. And it requires that women demand this of them. And it does require that men recognize a woman's unique nature and cease the demands to remold women into models of sexual masculinity. It seeks to help men understand what female sexuality is all about. Female sexuality is not about a casual liaison in which a man is allowed to use a woman's body for the depository of wild oats. Female sexuality runs deep like a river. Our sexuality extends beyond the expression of pleasurable bodily sensations. It extends to the expression of nurturance and the interaction between mother and child. Our ability to form a dyad between ourselves and our children is fundamental to who we are. It recognizes that the relationship where one human being holds another entirely in her embrace within her body is unique and something to be prized, not destroyed. True feminism is strong. It does not pander to the weakness of a lament that says, "Yes, abortion strikes at our inner core, but we have no choice, and we need it." True feminism resists the destruction of our inner core. True feminism fights back. True feminism recognizes that abortion is a mechanical and emotional insult: a rape with cold instruments of death or with powerful chemical poisons. True feminism rebels against abortion. And true feminism recognizes a man's right to defend his children and does not seek to silence him in the political arena when he seeks to defend his children in the legislature or the courtroom. And true feminism recognizes that men have a right to defend all children everywhere from abortion, as well as a duty, and that this is part of the essence of manhood.

True feminism teaches women how to give birth and how to raise their children. It shows us that the dyadic relationship between a woman and her child never ends. It demands that children respect their mothers. It demands that society respect motherhood. It demands that society be compelled to refrain from inserting itself into that dyadic relationship at all stages of motherhood. True feminism supports natural childbirth as a natural right, in the home if possible, but certainly away from the technology of a modern hospital intruding on the birthing experience. It supports the right of the mother to keep her child by her side at all times after the birth, and to defend her child from the technology of the modern hospital. It seeks to place the premature infant in an environment that is not merely technological, but nurturing, and that places the nurturing aspect first and foremost. It seeks to reform the hospital so that the premature infant, like her older siblings, is by her mother's side at all times.

True feminism teaches us that we have both the responsibility and the right to educate our own children. This is a paramount duty that belongs to both the mother and the father. The feminist recognizes that a society that mandates that children be taken from the parental den and thrown into the wild before their eyes are even open is the enemy of children. The feminist rebels against the involuntary intermittent incarceration of children for the crime of being young, in places we euphemistically call "schools." The feminist seeks to educate mothers and fathers so that they are able to educate their children. The feminist seeks to give women permission to have and use their intellect, and to develop it to its fullest capacity. The feminist seeks to compel society to recognize the intellect of women and to value it. The feminist seeks to reform society such that it recognizes that the intellect of mothers is essential to the well-being of the nation.

True feminism teaches us that women are not slaves to a house. We have a life of our own. We have needs of our own. If we are to exercise our intellect, we must feed it. We cannot do this by being incarcerated in four walls doing menial tasks to please House Beautiful all day. We must have free access to the educational and artistic resources of the community. We must have industry reformed such that mothers can participate fully with their children by their side. But true feminism recognizes that we have abandoned our responsibility to our children. When a child is allowed to grow up undisciplined, the child then gets blamed for her unacceptable behavior. This is unconscionable. No child should be incarcerated in a home or a school because she does not know how to act civilized! Children are unaware of the slavery into which they are being sold. They are also unaware that wisdom is important, and that they should seek wisdom from those who have it. Their peers do not. True feminism recognizes that the problem of child violence arises because children have no families, and they seek the love of the family in all the wrong places. It arises when we allow children to form associations in which the Lord of the Flies will be in charge, and where children look up to the ignorant and the foolish who use violence to maintain their position of leadership. And it arises when we embrace the idea that using drugs is a victimless crime. True feminism recognizes that no woman, and no child, is an island, but that when we allow a person who claims to be an adult to poison his body with drugs in plain sight of children, the bell tolls for us and our children, and the bell tolls for civilization. True feminism recognizes that there are values that are infinitely more important than self-indulgence. If we as women will embrace our responsibility to tame the young, and to help them become decent human beings, then we have it within our grasp to achieve an integral place in society and the marketplace, because we and our children will be welcomed everywhere. True feminism seeks to bring about a world in which people of all ages and both sexes embrace full responsibility for their actions.

True feminism teaches us that women are not slaves to men. Our bodies are our most precious material possession. We will only have one body. We deserve to have that body respected by men. This means that rape is unacceptable. Assault is unacceptable. And submitting to playboys is unacceptable. We have a right to a permanent commitment on the part of a man before even being approached to submit to a sexual liaison. We have a right to be free of the fraud of a so-called "permanent" commitment that doesn't involve a marriage until death parts. We have a right to be free of the fraud of men who feed us sweet honeyed words of love to get us into bed while boasting of our exploits in the locker room behind our backs. We have a right to be free of men who want us to masturbate their member with our bodies because it gives them pleasure and because they can defraud us into doing it. We have a right to be free of men who refuse to recognize who we are as sexual beings. And we have a right to be free of the myth that there is such a thing as free sex. Our emotions are also a most precious possession. We have a right to be free of emotional mind games being played by more aggressive and more devious men. We have a right to peace and tranquillity in the home, free from both physical and emotional abuse. We have a right to a fortress of peace in which to raise our children. And we have a right to be free of the mind control that is used on women to convince them that they do not deserve peace in their homes. True feminism teaches us that it is disrespectful to men to allow them to use their baser nature against us, and it is disrespectful to men not to expect them to respect us. True feminism teaches young women how to recognize a self-centered man before we become emotionally entangled with him, and how to stand up to such a man when he attempts to manipulate or force us into accepting him. True feminism reforms society so that women do not seek liaisons with self-centered men in order to achieve financial security. True feminism reforms society so that men do not tolerate the men who rape and pillage a woman's body and emotions and use women for sexual gratification or household slaves.

True feminism teaches us that women are not slaves to the government. We have a right to retain the fruits of our labor. We have a right to recognize that heavy taxation is an insult to our right to possess what truly belongs to us, what we earned with the efforts of our bodies and minds, and the sweat of our brow. We have a duty to teach women that it is slavery to be compelled to work outside the home because the tax burden on the family is too high for a single income. We have a right to be free of the mind control games that convince us that government handouts are free. We have a right to be told that when government hands out money, it must first reach into our pockets, take it out of our wallets, and run it through a sieve, so that it can give a little of it back. True feminism recognizes that it is an affront to our dignity to be put into an economic position where we have to beg for government money and endure the humiliation of the bureaucracy that goes with it. True feminism rejects the idea that women need the government and that it is somehow noble to steal by proxy from others who worked hard to produce real wealth. For that is what government "entitlements" truly are. The government steals money from the productive by force and then redistributes to people who for one reason or another are not producing real wealth. True feminism teaches women that we have a duty to help other women to become economically independent, and to provide networks of volunteer organizations to bring this about. We also have a duty to use our creativity to determine the most efficient ways to help women to become economically independent. Our primary goal should be to bring about this independence as quickly and efficiently as possible. True feminism recognizes that it is antifeminist to reject the male chauvinist in the bedroom only to embrace the male chauvinist on Capitol Hill. Our futures should not be sold to men with political ambition who are willing to promise to aid and abet our stealing by proxy in order to buy votes. And true feminism recognizes that there is no shame in forming an equal partnership with a man who is willing to respect a woman and to give her personal autonomy and peace in the home such that they can decide together what will be the wisest course to help a woman to be economically independent from all others, but to be able to nurture the dyadic relationship with the children to the fullest extent necessary and desirable. True feminism means stopping all the economic lies about the issue of wealth and financial independence, and stopping all the thefts of our property in the name of humanitarianism.

True socialism is voluntary. It comes about when people voluntarily band together for the common good of all. True socialism does not force itself upon the unwilling. True socialism does not rob and plunder, and does not promote the development of political power that would allow the government to plunder the people. True socialism is a grassroots movement that comes from the people; not from the powerful. True socialism does not win through violence and revolution. It wins by persuading minds unfettered by propaganda and not by brute force and big brotherism. If the people who live on The Farm in Tennessee can embrace and enact true socialism without bludgeoning others into submission, then all true socialists can bring about a socialist society to their liking without politically enslaving those who disagree. As the economic collapse of the Soviet empire has so ably shown us, there will be no lasting and permanent reformation into a socialist society by brute force and by compelling the dissident to submit. True socialism trusts the individual to bring about socialism voluntarily. It practices what it preaches. If socialism is inevitable, it will happen. No one need use maiming and killing, or bludgeoning the unwilling into economic submission. True socialism embraces freedom for the individual either to reject or to embrace true socialism. True socialism is willing to surrender to the forces of nature and society, and to win because it is true, and not because it can enslave. And true feminism embraces true socialism.

True liberalism finds ways to help those in need without disenfranchizing and plundering the productive. True liberalism recognizes that charity begins in the heart, and that we cannot enslave the heart in the name of liberalism. True liberalism seeks to put the responsibilty of helping the needy squarely on those who embrace it, as a personal responsibility, rather than seeking to compel others to help on their terms. True liberalism recognizes the bankruptcy of the concept that we should do as you say, not as you do. True liberalism doesn't allow the rich and politically powerful to dictate how the little person helps his fellow man. True liberalism creates a social climate where the rich and politically powerful consider it unacceptable to fund "charities" that destroy other cultures, their economic futures, and their unborn children. True liberalism respects other cultures and other ways. True liberalism respects the politically disenfranchised and the third world enough to leave them alone. It recognizes that societal change must come from within. It recognizes that the most humanitarian way to curb population growth is to increase the standard of living of the people. True liberalism embraces the unity of the family and creates social structures that support the unity of the family. True liberalism does not plunder the family to provide for those in need. True liberalism recognizes that only if we allow the strong to remain strong, and do not browbeat and plunder them, can we reduce the need of the weak. True liberalism lifts up the needy; it does not tear down those emerging from need. True liberalism allows people to chart their own course and does not dictate through political institutions. It does not seek to impose a white man's solution on the African-American community, and it doesn't allow the media to shun a black man running for president because of his political views. True liberalism recognizes all rights, not just the favorites of the political liberals. True liberalism recognizes not only the rights of racial minorities but the rights of those who are not in the racial minority. It recognizes not only the rights of people with minority sexual orientation, but also the rights of those who reject the behavior of those who are of minority sexual orientation. True liberalism gives a safety valve for dissenters. It does not bludgeon dissenters with laws and court orders forcing them to integrate, submit to forced busing, or associate with people engaging in behavior they do not accept. True liberalism gets out of the way when people voluntarily integrate their families racially, either through marriage or adoption. True liberalism recognizes that such voluntary action is a revolution, which will remold society permanently, and cause all of us to become colorblind in the long run. True liberalism recognizes that you cannot legislate a change of heart against those who are a different shade. True liberalism recognizes that bludgeoning people with laws and court orders only creates hate, and that such a solution is responsible for the social climate that gives rise to racial supremacy organizations.

True liberalism gives us enough space to be ourselves and to be strong in ourselves. True liberalism seeks to give everyone the privilege of enjoying that space and that strength. True liberalism does not pit us against each other either economically or politically, but seeks rather to allow each of us to chart our own course, unfettered by the political agendas of the powerful and the greedy. True liberalism embraces our commonality and does not seek to fragment society into political ideologies as each of us is compelled to defend her own turf. True liberalism has room enough for all political philosophies, but recognizes that compelling people to submit to an alien political philosophy is slavery. True liberalism seeks to free people from political slavery. True liberalism seeks to use persuasion of minds unfettered by propaganda to win hearts to its viewpoint. True feminism embraces true liberalism.

True feminism values the land. We are material beings. We require food, clothing, and shelter. We have the capacity to produce the wealth necessary to supply those needs. But those needs can only be satisfied with material goods that originally come from the land. We need to recognize that we are not wraiths that can be divorced from the land. Our well-being is tied to the land, and our security depends on our being able to attach ourselves to the land. Regardless of how the family income is produced, we still require this attachment. Much of the pressure to accept the myth of overpopulation comes from the fact that we have had our roots to the land severed. We find ourselves ensconced in little boxes where the neighbors intrude on our personal space for the duration of the time we spend at home. Tempers flare. Violence abounds. Our homes are no longer places of refuge. We have no sense of being able to go within ourselves to nurture our core of peace and tranquillity. We never know when the radio next door will blare out and disrupt our sense of well-being, and we are foolish enough to believe that the antidote is to turn our own radios on loud enough to destroy our hearing. Our ancestors fought for the right to own the land on which they lived. They compelled the king to recognize their right of absolute ownership of the land, commonly known as allodial or fee simple title. We have sold that birthright for a mess of pottage. We willingly accept taxation of the land, failing to recognize that when the land is taxed, we don't own the land; the government does. Why else would we acquiesce when land is taken without compensation because the taxes aren't paid, or when the land is regulated with zoning and building codes? Our families are fragmented because our roots to the land have been severed. Children know that they will never receive an inheritance of land. We thrust our young people out into the world with all their material needs unsatisfied, and then we wonder why young people are torn between parenthood and financial security. Children are forced, like migrant workers, to go where the jobs are, and they move far away, and the family is fragmented. Then when there is a need, children do not turn to the family; they turn to the government. Society has become so fragmented that we accept it as a matter of course that children will rebel against the wisdom of the elders, and chart their own course. We somehow find it noble to require children to reinvent the wheel, to have to discover through trial and error, emotional hardship, and genuine deprivation, wise ways of living. We allow children to flounder in this reinvention until they have children of their own, who then find themselves in unstable situations from which they can take no nurturance. By the time a young person has developed wisdom, she is far too old to pass it on to the infants, and she will no longer be respected nor will her counsel be sought. And when a woman who has destroyed the fruit of her womb grows old, rather than respecting her for her wisdom, we seek a way to unburden ourselves. Women are the primary victims of euthanasia. If we truly respected the wisdom of the matriarchs of our society, then women would reject abortion. We have seen what it does to our sisters. Why would we abandon other women to it? And why should we bankrupt our futures by destroying our young, in the false notion that we will always be able-bodied?

We can only restore true feminism if we value the land. We must take the land back from the government and give it to the people who live on it, and who produced the wealth to purchase it. We must learn ways to protect the land from pollution that doesn't embrace government control and government ownership of the land. We must learn ways to defend our land's pristine beauty without destroying our connection to the land. We must recognize that much of the environmentalist movement's agenda includes severing our roots to the land and exercising power-mongering over it. We must recognize that the best protectors of the land are the owners who live on it, who want a beautiful and pristine place to live. We must give people the right to protect their own land from pollution, and we must give ourselves the means. We must create social structures that will allow us to protect our own land and its ecology. And we must recognize the right of others to do the same with their land. If you want to preserve a piece of wilderness, buy it! Don't demand that the government destroy allodial title and steal the land by proxy through regulation that has no understanding of the ecology of each parcel. We must value the land, and we must maintain our roots. If we are free to share our land with our children, and pass it on in a tax-free transaction, then we can maintain our roots, and help guard our children and our families from destruction. True feminism needs to re-examine our ways of living, and to recognize how we have abdicated our responsibility to protect our roots.

The feminist movement has become isolationist. It is all about getting ours, and our sisters be hanged. We claw our way up through industry to become financially independent, and we don't even recognize that we need to tame ourselves even as men must be tamed. I have searched in vain for a role model. I have searched in vain for a woman who knows how to wield power humanely. I have searched in vain for a woman who can use her intellect to be a proper manager of employees, without using emotional mind games and irrational behavior to control them. I have watched as women become totally insane in the workplace, and terrorized everyone around them. I have watched women lie and steal, sometimes through the assistance of the courts, from others in the workplace. I have watched women covet the wealth of others, and scheme and connive to take what doesn't belong to them through litigation. Why don't we label this behavior shameful? Why aren't we teaching each other how to manage employees in such a fashion that the jokes about the female boss no longer ring true? Why aren't we demanding that men in the workplace respect us and our authority enough so that we don't find ourselves yielding to our baser impulses out of frustration? And why are we so stingy that we won't help each other to rise in emotional and material prosperity instead of expecting a woman to turn on herself when she becomes pregnant, or abandoning her to the shame of the government bureaucracy and the moral turpitude of stealing by proxy? And why aren't we forming communities to nurture each other and our young, especially when a woman is unfortunate enough to have a child outside the bonds of marriage? And why are we standing by while men abuse their wives? And why are we not teaching each other martial arts so that a woman can defend her honor and her children? And why would we abandon our sisters to abortion?

Why indeed? Do we not see the schizophrenia in the idea that abortion is an insult to our inner being, but that we have to make it available because women are too weak to make a place for themselves in the sun unless they are allowed legally to embrace violence against their children? Who came up with this idea that our unborn children are our enemies in the first place? Who devised this concept that to be true to ourselves, we must attack our own sexuality, our own bodies? Who gave us a false sense of pride in self-immolation, in suicide by proxy? Who is stupid enough not to recognize abortion for the lie that it is? Who is stupid enough to let the feminist movement be manipulated by people with an agenda, people like the zero population growth movement, for instance? Why did we allow people with an agenda to induce us to distort and warp true feminism in the minds of the public?

True feminism embraces all people. It embraces the young and the elderly; it embraces all unborn children. It embraces all disabled people. It seeks ways to enhance the dignity, self-respect, and self-sufficiency of the disabled. It does not abandon the disabled to the shame of stealing by proxy and having to deal with dehumanizing bureaucracies. True feminism embraces other cultures and other ways of living. It does not seek to impose our idea of society on women in the third world. It does not seek to remake them in our image. It does not abandon women in the third world to the population-controllers. It does not enhance the efforts of greedy industrialists to enact laws that allow us to plunder the resources of the third world. It seeks, rather, to pay a fair price for the wealth of those nations, in natural resources, people, and productivity. It does not enrich ourselves at the expense of slavery of those we cannot see. True feminism seeks ways to help the children of the third world to be healthy, to receive an education, and to have a decent life. True feminism does not embrace stealing by proxy from ourselves to bring this about, but embraces voluntary action that allows personal contact between ourselves and the people we are helping, whether it be by lifting up a neighbor, or by writing and exchanging photographs with a needy child in a faraway land. True feminism respects others, and their right to self-determination, unfettered by international agencies that impose the agendas of wealthy nations on the rest of the world.

True feminism recognizes that we are spiritual beings. It recognizes that we have a right to embrace religious truth. It recognizes that we have a right to develop our intellect so that we can evaluate the truth-claims of religious ideas. It recognizes that we have both a right and a duty to seek truth. It recognizes that we must be free of cultic mind control, and that truth is an imperative that shuns the very idea of adopting a religious idea because it makes us feel good, or we find it emotionally appealing. True feminism recognizes that we don't need to remake the language to remove the sexism from truth. True feminism does not require us to abandon a search for truth because we somehow feel like second-class beings if we don't remake God in our image. True feminism takes pride in the search for truth, and in developing the intellectual capacity to recognize it when we find it. It takes pride in being able to evaluate truth-claims and recognize and reject the nonsense. True feminism seeks not to stifle our wonder at observing the universe, and seeks not to belittle the Being that created it. True feminism doesn't yield to the sexism of Darwinism, whether scientific or social. Darwin himself was a sexist, and Darwinism, through its teaching of survival of the fittest, embraces physical aggresiveness and dehumanization of people with skin of a different shade. Darwinism teaches us that aggressiveness is the highest value, and promotes a mindset that prevents us from asserting our right to peace and tranquillity in our lives. It promotes a mindset that the mighty take the property of the little person and use it to build a base of political power. Darwinism belittles the universe and the Being Who created it. True feminism sees through the lies and seeks instead to learn the truth of the universe. True feminism embraces our sense of wonder, and repudiates scientific houses of cards. True feminism embraces the free inquiry of science, unfettered by the political agendas of the establishment. True feminism would allow Galileo to prove that the earth is not the physical center of the universe, and true feminism would allow modern-day Galileos to challenge scientific dogma without placing their careers in jeopardy. In short, true feminism is about truth: scientific, social, and spiritual.

And so I call for a revolution. It must begin in our hearts and minds. We must rethink modern-day "feminism." We must be free to start without presuppositions and reconstruct ourselves in our own image. We must challenge women who seize political power to promote their own agendas, that gave us abortion-on-demand instead of equality, and we must demand the right to form our own philosophies unfettered by powerful women who have sold out to a male agenda. We must reject the leadership of women who have alienated themselves from their own bodies and call on us to do the same. I call for a revolution. And let it begin with me.

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