THE ANTI-FEMINIST IMPULSE

STEPHEN HEATH RINEHART, Purdue University

Abstract

This study examines the literature written in opposition to the contemporary feminist movement. Anti-feminist literature is prevalent as well as diverse, but it has not generally been taken seriously, nor have any feminist thinkers analyzed it with proper care. The study therefore attempts to organize a group of contemporary social and political commentators who have either explicitly or implicitly attacked feminist ideology as it has evolved over the past twenty years. In the process, the study contrasts the central arguments and values of both feminism and anti-feminism. For the most part, the study allows the anti-feminist thinkers to shape the parameters of the dispute. This is not done to free anti-feminism from responsible criticism, but rather to permit the exploration of a reaction as it reacts. But anti-feminist thought is more than a mere reaction. For it also shares common assumptions with many contemporary political movements, yet it can be generalized as a relatively typical response to an ideology of liberation. Feminism is unique in many ways. It touches unavoidable issues as potentially explosive as human sexuality and the nature of male-female interaction. While it closely resembles many other liberation movements, it is also significantly different. For women as an oppressed group make up one half of the world's population; they continue to serve a vital biological function; and they live in purportedly intimate relations with their oppressors. These factors, coupled with the primordial nature of sex as a fact of consequence, make the feminist movement of considerable social and political importance. So, too, is the broad-based reaction against it, even though it is often, as a body of ideas, vague and inchoate. The study will therefore attempt to analyze and clarify the impulses which give motive to anti-feminist thought, and to reveal where possible the extent to which anti-feminist criticisms uncover--overtly, by accident, or by implication--difficulties which feminism may need to understand, reflect upon, and overcome.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Social research

COinS