Towards the end of November/beginning of December 2009, I spent considerable time reading up on Feminism, “gender issues”, and similar. This naturally lead to me writing on various sub-issues. This category was originally created to replace a single giant page that gathered these writings and much of this category can be broadly seen as the result of this split and some additions that took place at a somewhat similar time. This introduction deals with these early texts and originally was part of that single page. (For more on the overall category, see the category description, which was not part of that page.)
Note that:
Many of the texts were written at a time when I was angry/depressed/disgusted/whatnot by something that I had just read, and that this has had some negative effects on the texts, e.g. that many statements are over-generalizations.
Many of the discussions center on issues that are either only indirectly related to Feminism or exist as valid topics even outside of a discussion of Feminism—even these, however, will be issues where Feminists tend to have strong opinions.
This is a far from complete discussion of the topic; in particular, it focuses mostly on my own thoughts, not on the ready-made thoughts that I encountered (I recommend reading some of the linked material for a more rounded and complete view). In particular, this is not an attempt to analyze Feminism as e.g. a pseudo-Marxist ideology or a sociopathy (thoughts that can be found in other sources), nor an attempt to give a historical overview or an explanation of the phenomenon (ditto)—I might or might not go in that direction at a later time, but for now I focus on specific sub-areas that caught my thinking.
(2025) Due to the circumstances of writing there are and were an unusual number of language errors. Sometimes, these have been fixed after publication, but many others remain. There is also some inconsistency in language conventions, both in my original use and through later edits, e.g. in that I originally wrote these texts when preferring an “f” spelling of “[Ff]eminism” and its variations, while I, over the following years, switched to an “F” spelling. Occurrences of the “F” spellings are usually a sign that the page has been edited (long) after publication. (Barring those cases, of course, where “Feminism” occurs at the beginning of a sentence or would otherwise be capitalised even with an “f” convention.)
However, I have only rarely updated texts in light of later insights, later events and developments, or changes in takes, and chances are that an occurrence of “Feminism” only points to language corrections. For more on this see some later texts, be it on this website or on my old Wordpress blog.
As a big-picture claim about “later events and developments”, however, things have grown worse since the original publication (much unlike my hopes in the below side-note). This both with regard to Feminism (and related issues) and the wave of wokeness that has grown increasingly problematic during this time, where Feminist methods, attitudes, and whatnots have been extended to other groups on a very large scale.
Let it be stated up-front: The situation is far worse than I imagined. Certainly, I was well-aware of the propaganda and political problems in Sweden, and had heard much of similar problems in the US (including some horror stories about men being destroyed in divorces or by false rape-allegations). However, what I have read in the last few weeks is of such character that I do not know whether to be afraid, angry, or disgusted. To make matters worse, the problems are present on a much greater scale globally than I would have assumed: That e.g. Spain and India have gravely misandrist domestic-violence laws came as a complete surprise to me—if at all, I would have expected the opposite problem. (That women get the short end of the stick in some “old fashioned” countries must not be denied.)
Even assuming that only a quarter of what I have read is true and representative to the degree proposed, we could be heading into dire straits indeed—and countless direct and indirect victims have already been collected.
The hope: With enough publicity and enough anxiety about the problems, we might see a similar turn-around as with the environment—even be that decades long battle far from won. Indeed, my subjective impression was that the tide is already turning in the public perception of men, women, Feminism, and so on; unfortunately, the situation in media and politics seems to still be worsening. (Of course, a secondary danger is that e.g. the MRA movement is eventually perverted in a manner similar to the environmental movements or, indeed, Feminism it self.)