Michael Eriksson
A Swede in Germany
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Introduction

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 collects these writings (including some later additions and re-workings).

Note that:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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 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 may or may not go in that direction at a later time, but for now I focus on specific sub-areas that caught my thinking.


Side-note:

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 may 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.)