(Akiit.com) The utility of feminism as we currently understand it as a weapon of the far left and the toll it has taken on our culture cannot be underestimated. Many readers will take it as given that women’s rights, like many civil rights issues, was co-opted by leftists decades ago; still, the sinister effects of this phenomenon tend to remain elusive. In many areas, feminism has affected our collective worldview in destructive ways that even astute observers of our sociopolitical dynamic have not recognized.
The impact feminism has had on our society goes far beyond issues of parity in the law and the workplace, areas in which nearly all Americans agree there have been extreme deficiencies throughout our history as a nation. Most of us are at least familiar with the suffragette movement of the mid-19th century, although I’d 
wager that few among average Americans are even aware that women did not gain the right to vote until the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on Aug. 18, 1920 – fairly recently in the general scheme of things.
More Americans have at least some knowledge of the resurgence of feminist activity during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, which gained even more momentum in the 1970s – and this is where the insidious aspects of modern feminism arise: As with the equity most Americans would argue was due certain ethnic minorities (for example), we seem to have an ongoing problem discerning between what is reasonable or fair, and what is capitulation against our better judgment to a pernicious agenda.
Like the aforementioned civil rights issues co-opted by the political left, feminism became a social engineering tool for the left, which characteristically exploited the sense of fairness and, sadly, the intellectual indolence of our population. While many women simply sought such things as fair pay and equal rights under the law during the 1970s, prominent feminists (who were actually far more political operatives than feminists per se) advocated for manifestly deleterious social change with regard to attitudes and behavior where women were concerned, and their relationships to men and their families.
Piggybacking on libertine notions born of the Sexual Revolution of the late 1960s, these changes included advancing such ideas as the right of women to be as promiscuous as certain misguided men, self-seeking ambition and taking on attributes that for thousands of years were considered to be masculine traits.
I know a gentleman who is a 40-ish, middle-class American entrepreneur. In his business, he has had the opportunity to travel extensively. During a phone conversation some years ago, he informed me that he does not date women from most Western nations, particularly the United States. His given rationale for this position is that he believes women in the West have been “ruined” by notions of feminism, and that even those women who ostensibly hold to traditional values have been insidiously corrupted by them. As many have argued in other areas of discussion, he points to the fact that the divorce rate amongst Christians in America is approximately the same as that of the general population.
While I’m not in the dating world, and doubt that I would hold to such a code if I were, being a longtime observer of our culture, to some extent I have to agree with this fellow. The human tendency for self-indulgence coupled with our assent to imprudent ideas (rooted in progressivism) in order to avoid offending anyone have led to a perversion of all gender roles – not only the traditional roles of men and women, but of gender itself, as we can readily see in the bizarre gender-bending political machinations of the day.
All of this was of course intended to foster a dysfunctional populace, which may be more readily controlled by progressive elites.
As a result, in the ensuing decades (since the 1960s), more women have become promiscuous bed-hoppers who then bemoan their inability to secure meaningful, long-term relationships. More of their children, whether in single or two-parent homes, have become neglected, confused, distracted neurotics. The rapacious, unethical female corporate executive has become as commonplace as the stereotypical rapacious, unethical male corporate executive of days past.
Unfortunately, obliging males in America have attempted to accede to the demands of their women and popular culture in trying to become “more like women,” as it were. While no one can object to efforts on the part of men to understand the needs and emotional dynamic of the women in their lives, as a result of this malignant social engineering, many men have become neglected, confused, distracted neurotics as well.
That said, I eschew the term “feminized” with regard to the process that has taken place pertaining to our nation because it carries the connotation of weakness. While this process has certainly weakened us as a nation, I believe the appellation itself has the potential to foster divisiveness among men and women – and this is a trap into which people across the political continuum risk falling. Considering the overall modus operandi of the political left to date, I can only surmise that this is also by design.
The cure? The best defense I can think of involves the adoption of critical thinking, an activity that has been all but outlawed in our society. As I said regarding the capitulation to liberal racialist orthodoxy in my book“Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal – America’s Racial Obsession,”people must make efforts toward an objective appraisal of gender politics. In so doing, they will inevitably come to the conclusion that these “new sensibilities” have been eminently harmful, and should be resisted as vigorously as we once resisted racial segregation.
Columnist; Erik Rush
Official website; http://www.erikrush.com/