The unexamined life is not worth living: The unexamined philosophy is not worth having — feminism has become that unexamined philosophy….
Feminism has become the hegemonic ideology in academia and much of the media. This isn’t even a good thing for feminism. Ideologies that go unchallenged, that do not face questioning voices to keep them honest, rot from the inside.
Take the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) where feminists are treated with deference and are seldom asked a challenging or probing question. They can get away with almost any hyperbolic claim. For example, at the start of the COVID lockdowns, a representative from the refuge movement was calling for more Government money. She argued that the reduction in referrals was evidence of an increase in domestic violence. That meant an increase in referrals was evidence of an increase in violence as was a reduction! The interviewer failed to pick up or probe this claim. A politician advancing such an argument would have been ‘pounced on’ and the claim properly examined.
Similarly, when Laura Bates published her book ‘Men Who Hate Women’ which is riddled with factual inaccuracies and exaggerated claims. None of the interviewers pressed her at all, none of her claims were examined and she got all the free publicity she needed. It was left to bloggers to pick apart her book. There was, for example, her supposedly brave and clandestine ‘infiltration’ of a Messages for Men conference. In fact, tickets were freely available on Eventbrite and the organisers sent complimentary tickets to the Guardian. She also neglected to mention that two of the organisers were female and that there were other female delegates (none of whom could remember seeing Laura there). Or take her claim to have infiltrated the incel movement. The only supporting evidence she provided was a well known quote from a website closed down 10 years prior to her period of supposed research. Reviewers and interviewers could have picked up on this, instead the coverage was fawning and lacking in curiosity.
The sloppiest academic research is guaranteed uncritical acceptance if it supports the feminist agenda. Take, for example, a recent report on the BBC website that 2/3rds of women out jogging face sexist abuse (here). The supposed research was carried out by ‘academics’ Dr Caroline Miles and Professor Rose Broad. The piece in the BBC carried no link to the study and their personal webpages made no mention of it. A little bit of digging revealed what any competent journalist could have uncovered, that the sample reporting abuse was recruited via ‘twitter’ and as such was unlikely to be presentative of the general population. Only about 8% of the UK population are active on Twitter and those that are, tend to polarise and are unlikely to be representative of the general population. To generalise from this sample to the wider population was sloppy scholarship. The study should not have survived scrutiny within their university department at the University of Manchester let alone make onto the BBC news. In more rigorous disciplines, voices within the department would have pointed out the shortcomings of the study.
The lack of scrutiny and oversight means that pretty much ‘anything goes’ withn in academic feminism. Take the work of Professor Emma Renold who in her own words has ‘widened the purview of what constitutes knowledge.’ This includes divining the forces of ‘molar patriarchy’ in Welsh valleys through the medium of interpretive dance here.
Iris Marion Young suggests that the lack of intentionality in girls’ movements relates to molar forces of patriarchy and in the valleys this is likely to be amplified by the history of masculine corporeal labour valued in mining communities.
Neither is this confined to female academics. Stephen Burrell, assistant professor in the sociology department at the University of Durham argued, without any supporting evidence, that the spread of COVID revealed how deeply macho stereotypes ran through society here. This claim was made early in the pandemic when we knew little about the epidemiology of COVID. There was no consultation with epidemiologists or other people who might have some knowledge of the subject. With the passage of time, none of Stephen Burrell’s claims have stood up to scrutiny. It was a toxic and divisive piece of writing that could only have been created in an ideological monoculture. For obvious reasons, the lack of scrutiny afforded to feminist claims is not a good thing for men. However, it is also proving disastrous for feminism. We all need to face scrutiny and scepticism to keep us honest. Currently, that is sorely lacking and feminism is rotting from the inside.
toxic feminism 