Liberating the Infems

Under pressure from The Sisterhood, Groupthink and a bully gang mentality, many young women espouse feminism, but not voluntarily.

The pressure on young women to embrace feminism can be enormous.

The pressure to stay can be even worse.

It starts with false promises of womanly power. While there is no universally accepted catechism of feminism composed in Latin and engraved in stone, the voluminous and sprawling vernacular of feminism includes babble like this, found on a woman’s office bulletin board in Washington DC in 1997.

The Rules

• The female always makes The Rules.
• The Rules are subject to change at any time without prior notification.
• No male can possibly know all The Rules.
• If the female suspects the male knows all The Rules, she must immediately change some or all of The Rules.
• The female is NEVER wrong.
• If the female is wrong, it is due to a misunderstanding which was a direct result of something the male did or said wrong.
• The male must apologize immediately for causing said misunderstanding.
• The female may change her mind at any time.
• The male must never change his mind without the express written consent of the female.
• The female has every right to be angry or upset at any time.
• The male must remain calm at all times unless the female wants him to be angry and/or upset.
• The female must under no circumstances let the male know whether or not she wants him to be angry and/or upset.

Understandably, any young woman might find that list of provisions to be quite enticing.

“Wow! I’d like to live where those rules are strictly enforced! LOL.”

The Sisterhood

Then there is the exciting imagery of The Sisterhood to urge a naif to join the team and Be All She Can Be.

“Of course I want as much of that as I can get. It’s all about love as only females can do it. It’s such a special feeling!”

A feminist indoctrinator made feminism’s promises a little more specific in The Wall Street Journal on May 9, 1997. “The Sisterhood,” she boasted with full-force feminist bravado, “dictates that in the battle between the sexes, women friends stick by each other. Men know that when the Sisterhood unites, there will be no peace until they’ve given up, given in or apologized and promised never to do it again.”

Wow! That’s great, too. Even if what I do is completely wrong I’ll have an army of Sisters behind me forcing a man to apologize for anything I don’t like! I’ll be like a Queen! Where do I sign up?

Notice there is no consideration whatsoever to the correctness or incorrectness, to the justice or the injustice of the man and woman involved. The only criterion for which person the Sisterhood will be called upon to support is the sex of the people involved. Judging people exclusively by their sex was called sexism in the early days of feminism.

But that was much less fun.

Fire and Brimstone

And then the recruits hear from none other than Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State. She let it be known that “There is a special place in Hell for women who don’t support other women.”

Well, if it worked for her and she became Secretary of State, it must be pretty good advice! Maybe I can ride this feminism thing all the way to the White House!

With no scrutiny or accountability feminism runs to extremes.

Yes, it’s true, isn’t it? We really are just about perfect!

And the opposite extreme.

After a while, the indoctrination takes a nasty but inevitable turn from being about how great women are to how horrible men are:

It’s horrible isn’t it? What we have to put up with! Why can’t men just be like we are? The world would be so much better!

Groupthink

Now we’re at the stage in which feminism wraps the novice in Groupthink. Women are the In-group; men are out.

Here are the common symptoms of Groupthink.¹

• Members of the in-group discount conflicting information and do not examine the validity of their assumptions and stereotypes about the out-group.
• Members of the in-group believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore assume automatically that they have no problem with ethics or morality.
• Negative stereotypes of the out-group make the out-group’s needs seem unworthy of attention.
• The majority view of the in-group is automatically and often wrongly assumed to be unanimous.
• Dissenting members of the in-group are pressured to express no doubts or disagreements about the in-group’s views.

Irving L. Janis, the psychologist who first studied Groupthink, put it like this:

“The more amiability and esprit de corps among the members of a policy-making in-group, the greater is the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions directed against out-groups.”²

It’s worth noting that a later study found that women exhibit 4.5 times as much in-group bias as men do.³

Dehumanization

Groupthink’s dehumanization of men might look something like this.

Implicit Bias

Feminists pretend to be progressive and inclusive and deeply concerned about implicit bias. But, in fact, they traffic in it. They harvest it, process it, package it, market it and profit from it. They sell it to the newbies, like catnip. Except they call it Truth.

It’s almost too easy for professional feminists to run that racket. Societal negativity about men is rampant. A 2023 study found that the deepest and most abiding negative implicit bias of all is gender bias — not racial bias, not ethnic bias, not any other kind of bias — bias against males.⁴

This brief segment from the TV comedy “Roseanne,” got a rise out of the laugh track. But it’s really not funny, though it does make the point.

Play the video. Running time 1:25.

And that’s why we see so much of this: “Twenty-seven Reasons Why I Broke Up With Yet Another Jerk and I, Myself, Am Totally Blameless.”

We see, hear and read endless screeds written by card-carrying feminists about the many shortcomings of men and how those male failings were the direct and entire cause of relationship breakdown.

They all seem a bit like the Shakespeare character about whom it was said, “She doth protest too much.” These tiresome laments smack of sour grapes. They hide a lot of pain.

Emotional Intelligence to the Rescue

Most women want healthy relationships with men, romantic or otherwise, one way or another. Our feminist friend grew up on re-runs of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and sometimes a little emotional intelligence seeps back into her cognitions and begins to dissolve the Sisterhood/Groupthink/Gang Oath mind meld. Emotional intelligence reminds her that self-reflection should come before blame, that humility and empathy can help us understand why other people think and act as they do, that maybe — just maybe — she could take a teeny tiny little bit of responsibility too.

But how can she? What would the Wall Street Journal Boot Camp Drill Sergeant mentioned above say? “You apologized to him? Women in the Sisterhood don’t apologize to men! Never ever!”

And then the last bullet point about Groupthink kicks into action to secure the wavering feminist’s feminist fidelity:

• Dissenting members of the in-group are pressured to express no doubts or disagreements about the in-group’s views.

“What do you mean ‘men aren’t scum’? That’s crazy. Nobody thinks that! You’re the only one. You are not a strong, powerful, independent woman!”

“Au contraire!,” she retorts. “I’m not the one who needs all these pillars of feminism holding me up. I’m standing on my own because I am a strong, powerful and independent woman!”

So now she’s a traitor, she has voiced thoughts that are “concerning,” she’s ignored the Rules, she’s broken her blood oath to the gang.

She worries she’s being stupid and gullible and that her man is controlling and manipulating her to say that it might have been a teeny tiny little bit her fault too.

She wrestles with what to do. There are things she truly likes about feminism — real feminism, true feminism — and she wants to be part of it voluntarily, with eyes wide open.

Quietly, she resigns from the kick-ass, macho-bitchy fighting forces, the hubris of the Sisterhood, the intellectual laziness of Groupthink, the evil fun of the bully gang.

She signs up, with full volition, for the revival of an initiative called Good Will Toward Men that was canceled by The Sisterhood in 1994. The new version adds “and Boys” to its title and its purview. It doesn’t promise her she can do whatever she wants and call it feminist, and she knows she won’t be a Queen or always get her way. Still, it holds out hope for what feminism was supposed to be. It promises her a sense of integrity and feeling good about herself as a strong, independent, powerful woman.

Her real self.

To see a former feminist discussing her experience with feminist Groupthink, watch this video. Running time: 14:47.

If Good Will Toward Men and Boys sounds good to you, please see…

References

1. Janis, Irving L. “Groupthink.” Psychology Today, November, 1971, 43–46, 74–76.
2. Janis, I. L. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes. Boston, Houghton Mifflin. p. 13.
3. Rudman, L. A. and S. A. Goodwin (2004). “Gender differences in automatic in-group bias: Why do women like women more than men like men?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87(4): 494– 509.
4. Connor P, Weeks M, Glaser J, Chen S, Keltner D. Intersectional implicit bias: Evidence for asymmetrically compounding bias and the predominance of target gender. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2023 Jan;124(1):22–48.

I am serializing my 1994 book Good Will Toward Men for paid members on Medium. It’s a collection of interviews with twenty-two women about making gender equality a two-way street. Check out the chapter list.