"Feminism" means so many different things that it appears to mean very little. Its advocates constantly contradict each other and themselves. In casting off feminine reserve and modesty they seem to have learned intellectual shamelessness as well.

It appears, however, that nothing can be called feminism that is not radically antitraditional and antinatural. What feminists call "gender" -- the system of attitudes, expectations and customs that distinguishes men from women -- has always and everywhere been basic to human life. The detailed content of that system has varied somewhat but general outlines have been stable. The ties among a man, a woman, and their children have always been fundamental, and dependent for reliable functioning on a generally settled division of responsibility among the parties and therefore between the sexes. More specifically, all societies have been patriarchal, with men mainly responsible for public concerns and women for the care of small children and domestic matters. Always and everywhere men have predominated in positions of formal authority, although exercising no general right of domination.

The universality of these distinctions shows them to be rooted in biology and other permanent conditions of human life. Nonetheless, it is opposition to acceptance of gender as a principle of social order -- to what is called "sexism" -- that unifies the things called "feminism." Feminist goals are thus not in the least reformist. Feminism treats a fundamental principle of all human societies, sex-role differentiation, as essentially an arrangement by which some human beings oppress others. Its aim is thus to create a new kind of human being living in a new form of society based on new ties among men, women and children, reconstituted in accordance with abstract ideological demands.

For existing sexual and family ties, based on what seems natural and customary, feminism would substitute contractual relations, reliance on the state bureaucracy, or some presently unknowable principle. Experience gives no guidance for how to carry out the substitution, or indeed any reason for supposing it can be done. Feminism is therefore ideological and radical to the core; there can be no commonsense feminism, because doing what comes naturally gets a feminist nowhere. Whatever harsh things can be said about anarchism and communism can be said with yet more force about feminism, since the latter seeks to eliminate something that touches us far more deeply than private property or the state. Like the other two ideologies, feminism can be presented as a lofty ideal set up in opposition to a long history of dreadful injustice, but its practical implementation, especially by force of law, can only lead to catastrophe. Like anarchism it calls for categorical opposition to authority and hierarchy, and like communism for the unending radical reconstruction of all aspects of life, and consequently the absolute bureaucratization of society. Both principles are thoroughly destructive; the fact they utterly contradict each other does not help matters.

It is not surprising that feminists, who misconstrue so much, misconstrue the nature of the opposition to them. Since their position requires a comprehensive and minute system of ideological regimentation they assume antifeminists must also be aspiring tyrants. They thus recreate their opponents in their own image.

In fact, to be antifeminist is simply to accept that men and women differ and rely on each other to be different, and to view the differences as among the things constituting human life that should be reflected where appropriate in social attitudes and institutions. By feminist standards all societies have been thoroughly sexist. It follows that to be antifeminist is only to abandon the bigotry of a present-day ideology that sees traditional relations between the sexes as simply a matter of "domination" and "submission," and to accept the validity of the ways in which human beings have actually dealt with sex, children, family life and so on. Antifeminism is thus nothing more than the rejection of one of the narrow and destructive fantasies of a century in which such fantasies have been responsible for destruction and murder on an unprecedented scale. It is opening oneself to the reality of things.

The acceptance of the legitimacy and usefulness of sex roles is an exercise of ordinary good sense. What is in itself good sense may be quite radical from the point of view that is conventional in public at a particular time and place. Such is the state of antifeminism today; to reject feminist claims is to put oneself outside what is said to be the mainstream.

The success of feminism has owed a great deal to the astonishing absence of open opposition to it. That absence has had a variety of causes, including masculine cowardice, the difficulty of communication between the sexes, the extreme centralization of public life and discussion today, the power of the interests served by the destruction of all social relationships other than market and bureaucracy, the absolute triumph of liberal ideology in our public and intellectual life, and the difficulty that ideology has dealing with issues relating to family life because of its tendency to base human relations on either arm's-length bargaining or force.

The consequence of the victory of feminism has been disorder cascading from America throughout the world and from the most immediate personal relationships to high culture and international politics. Feminism has meant suspicion and hostility where mutual reliance is an absolute necessity. It has meant growing poverty and brutality in daily life, resulting in particular suffering for the weak. Its triumph has been part of the triumph of State and Market over all other social powers, the culmination of a trend that has been sweeping all before it for centuries and has long since become horrendously destructive. Feminism must therefore be opposed as a destructive fanaticism based on a gross and wilful misapprehension of human life.

In the end feminism cannot win because it makes stable and productive ordering of private life impossible for most people. It has done a great deal of damage, however, and will do more before it disappears. The more explicit, articulate and successful its opponents the more damage can be prevented. The media, the educational system, and even organized scholarship are vehicles and beneficiaries of bureaucratization and are therefore dominated by feminism. The Internet retains its independence and holds out hope that free discussion and resistance may still be possible and fruitful. Hence this page.