The destructiveness of the Feminist worldview
by Jane Instance
During my time in highschool, I regarded Karl Marx, co-author of “The Communist Manifesto” as a failed economic theorist whose grand idea of a Western revolution where the workers would seize control of the means of production somehow failed to come about. To my mind, Communism brought nothing but economic ruin to those countries behind the ‘iron curtain’ and to call someone a “Marxist” was to suggest that they were a passionate but misguided fanatic, with a possible penchant for little black hats and Mao Tse Tung pyjama shirts.
What I didn’t realise was that the Marxist cause had been taken on and revamped by a whole new group of theorists, otherwise known as Radical Feminists, and that Karl Marx’s social teachings were alive and well in universities and government departments throughout the West.
When we think of feminism as being about equal rights, opportunities and education for women, we severely underestimate its agenda. Like Marx and his fellow author, Engels, radical feminists believe that it is necessary to change the entire existing social structure.
Where Communism sought to give the means of production back to the working class, feminism seeks to give women sole power over the means of reproduction in the belief that this will free them from the ‘oppression’ of men. Its ultimate aim is complete sexual liberation, easy access to abortion, contraception, divorce and free child care, and the overthrow of the family.
The threat of the family
Strange as it may sound to those feminists who deplore the worship of ‘dead white males’, Friedrich Engels was among the first to outline this feminist agenda. In his book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, Engels wrote, “The modern individual family is founded on the open or concealed domestic slavery of the wife,” [p.65] and the married woman “differs from the ordinary courtesan in that she does not let out her body on piece-work as a wage worker, but sells it once and for all into slavery.” [p.63]
His solution to this “domestic slavery” was to take women away from the home and send them out into the workforce. In his words, “The first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society.” [p.66] Radical Feminists tend to agree with Engels. Feminist Jane Flax notes that the major feminist authors, Betty Friedan, Kate Millet, Shulamith Firestone, Juliet Mitchell, Gayle Rubin, Dorothy Dinnerstein and Nancy Chodorow, all see the family, and mothering in particular, as the main source of oppression for women.1
Their first solution was to force women into the workforce. Traditional single-income families now find it difficult to survive financially, while the government actively subsidises child-care and abortion. This type of government interference discourages full-time homemakers. Feminists are big on ‘choice’ except when it comes to stay-at-home mothers. Simone de Beauvoir, author of the feminist classic The Second Sex, acknowledges that women cannot be given a choice between work and home because, quite simply, “too many women would make the choice to stay at home and care for their children.”
Sexuality run riot
In the feminists’ eyes, such moves effectively freed women from the constraints of child-rearing. But they wanted more. Feminism’s primary goal is to neutralise the differences between the sexes by freeing women from the constraints of child-bearing as well. In her 1970’s book, The Dialectic of Sex, feminist writer, Shulamith Firestone, envisioned a world in which, “The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be replaced by artificial reproduction; children would be born to both sexes equally, or independently of either” [p.12]. At the time that seemed like mere wishful thinking, yet with today’s IVF, artificial insemination and the growing possibility of cloning, the feminist nightmare is frighteningly real.
The breakdown of the family brought with it a whole truckload of sexual perversions. If sex were no longer confined to heterosexual monogamous marriage, restrictions of age, marital status, and sexual orientation would no longer apply. In her book, Firestone actually calls for “unobstructed pansexuality” to replace the previous categories of hetero/homo/ and bi/sexuality. Her warped vision extends even to children. On page 59, she claims, “The incest taboo is now necessary only in order to preserve the family;” and that with the abolition of the family, “Adult/child and homosexual sex taboos would disappear, as well as nonsexual friendship… All close relationships would include the physical.”
At recent United Nations conferences like Cairo+5 and this year’s Beijing+5, radical feminists openly pushed for ‘reproductive rights’ for children as young as ten. This would include access to abortion and abortifacient/contraception. It sounds insane to even suggest such a thing, but here we have highly influential Western diplomats actively pushing for child-sex! To make it worse (if that’s possible), these ‘reproductive rights’ would be available without parental consent. If Australia signs any documents which contain these ideas, Australian parents may find themselves and their children in danger.
Not every feminist would agree with such extreme views. The fact that they do exist and that they are being promoted throughout universities, women’s lobby groups, and top level UN conferences is a major cause for concern. Growing public tolerance of sexual perversions like sodomy, pornography and even, in some circles, paedophilia, is evidence that radical feminism is seeping through to every level of society.
The demonisation of Patriarchy
One of the greatest proofs of feminism’s influence in the West is our unquestioning acceptance of their claim that “patriarchy is bad.” This assumption that father-headed families, and male-centred institutions (like armies and churches), are the source of all evil is heavily based on Marx’s idea of class opposition. Most people are aware of Marxism’s basic tenet that all history is the history of class struggle. Few, however, know that both Marx and Engels believed that “the first class oppression coincid[ed] with that of the female sex by the male.” [Engels, ibid, p.58] Unfortunately, most people fail to see these ideological roots and thus miss the false assumptions which underlie them.
Feminism defines patriarchy as men’s control over women’s labour. Feminist author, Heidi Hartman argues that the “elements of patriarchy as we currently experience them are: heterosexual marriage (and consequent homophobia), female childrearing and housework, women’s economic dependence on men (enforced by arrangements in the labour market), the state, and numerous institutions based on social relations among men.”2
What feminists fail to see is the flip-side of this patriarchal social system. Women who want to raise their children in economic security without having to join the workforce find their husbands’ protection and support extremely advantageous. A patriarchal system which encourages men to take responsibility and which promotes the protection of women and children is surely superior to a world of fatherless families where far too many single mums live below the poverty line.
The result for women?
Far from liberating women, permissive sexual mores, divorce, and family breakdown have led to a feminisation of poverty. In her paper, Feminism: The Six Frauds, Australian author, Babette Francis, points out that the state is now called upon “to support single parents, homeless teenagers and all those for whom intact families formerly provided an effective support system.”3
State intervention in family economics and politics is fundamental to Marxism. As control over everyday matters is removed from the hands of ordinary men and women, it becomes more and more vested in bureaucracies. Feminists who try to artificially alter the biological division of labour in the home also have to rely on government policies and state-run institutions like child-care to make up the shortfall.
I said earlier that I never took Marxism seriously. In my worldview, it was something so flawed that it didn’t require much refutation at all. Then I reached University, and met the new face of Marxism, and found it wasn’t as washed out and pathetic as I’d expected. It was huge and powerful and all over campus. The radical feminists have an agenda to push, and with state-funding behind them, students and families have a hard time ahead.

1. J.Flax, “The Family in Contemporary Feminist Thought: A Critical Review,” The Family in Political Thought , quoted in Dale O’Leary, The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality, Vital Issues Press, USA, 1997.
2. Heidi Hartman, “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism,” Women and Revolution, ed. Lydia Sargent, South End Press, USA, 1981
3. Babette Francis, “Feminism: The Six Frauds”, Quadrant Magazine, April 1987. (Home…)