A feature of wisdom is foresight — you can connect dots, gauge trajectories, and see where ideas will lead over time. Here are a couple of examples of men who saw where feminism would lead 100+ years ahead of our day.
First, Southern Presbyterian theologian R. L. Dabney, who deal with feminism in its nascent form in the late 19th century. In 1871, he explained how feminism would femininze men and masculinize women, killing sexual polarity and thus sexual attraction:
“This suggests a third consequence, which some of the advocates of the movement even already are bold enough to foreshadow. “Women’s Rights” mean the abolition of all permanent marriage ties. We are told that Mrs. Cady Stanton avowed this result, proclaiming it at the invitation of the Young Men’s Christian Association of New York. She holds that woman’s bondage is not truly dissolved until the marriage bond is annulled. She is thoroughly consistent. Some hoodwinked advocates of her revolution may be blind to the sequence; but it is inevitable. It must follow by this cause, if for no other, that the unsexed politicating woman can never inspire in man that true affection on which marriage should be founded. Men will doubtless be still sensual; but it is simply impossible that they can desire them for the pure and sacred sphere of the wife. Let every woman ask herself: will she choose for the lord of her affections an unsexed effeminate man? No more can man be drawn to the masculine woman. The mutual attraction of the two complementary halves is gone forever. The abolition of marriage would follow again by another cause. The divergent interests and the rival independence of the two equal wills would be irreconcilable with domestic government, or union, or peace. Shall the children of this monstrous no-union be held responsible to two variant co-ordinate and supreme wills at once? Heaven pity the children! Shall the two parties to this perpetual co-partnership have neither the power to secure the performance of the mutual duties nor to dissolve it? It is a self-contradiction, an impossible absurdity. Such a co-partnership of equals with independent interests must be separable at will, as all other such co-partnerships are. The only relation between the sexes which will remain will be a cohabitation continuing so long as the convenience or caprice of both parties may suggest; and this, with most, will amount to a vagrant concubinage.” (emphasis mine)
Dabney was right that feminism would subvert marriage. Collapsing marriage rates in our day vindicate his predictions. While he didn’t use the language of identity politics, obviously, he was getting at the division identity politics, especially sexual identity politics, would bring into society. He even nailed the cohabition issue.
Dabney explained how the suffrage movement was it existed at that time was based on an anti-Christian, anti-creational ideology, rooted in the radicalism of the French Revolution and Jacobinist/egalitarian views. In 1888, he wrote:
“If the Jacobin theory be true, then woman must be allowed access to every male avocation, including government, and war if she wishes it, to suffrage, to every political office, to as absolute freedom from her husband in the marriage relation as she enjoyed before her union to him, and to as absolute control of her own property and earnings as that claimed by the single gentleman, as against her own husband.”
Dabney predicted that feminism would eventually result in the abhorrent practice of female soldiers. He was right. He saw that if sexual differwntiation was denied, women would press themselves into every area of life, including those Scripture clearly forbids, like the military.
He had already expressed concerns about this more briefly in his 1867 work “A Defense of Virginia:”
“When America has had a generation of women who were politicians, instead of mothers, how fundamental must be the destruction of society, and how distant and difficult must be the remedy!”
He was right again — feminism would lead women to abandon motherhood. He addresses this again elsewhere:
“When the family shall no longer have a head, and the great foundation for the subordination in children in the mother’s example is gone; when the mother shall have found another sphere than her home for her energies; when she shall have exchanged the sweet charities of domestic love and sympathy for the fierce passions of the hustings; when families shall be disrupted at the caprice of either party, and the children scattered as foundlings from their hearthstone,–it requires no wisdom to see that a race of sons will be reared nearer akin to devils than to men.”
Dabney could not have been more accurate in pointing to where feminism would lead. Once the patriarchy is smashed, and men no longer function as heads of their homes, the mother’s authority would no longer have the masculine backup and support it needed. Once women move out of the domestic sphere to spend their energies elsewhere, the home will lose her feminine touch — “the sweet charities of domestic love and sympathy” will be replaced by “the fierce passions of the hustlings,” as seen in today’s masculinized boss babes and ambitious career-focused women. Dabney even saw no fault divorce on the horizon — the family would be disrupted by the “caprice of either party.” Of course, all of this would be disastrous for children. With the divine order and design for the home broken, children would not the discipline and love they need to mature.
A generation later, in 1924, inventor Nikola Tesal explained where feminism would lead. I’ll intersperse some commentary into the lengthy quotation:
“I had always thought of woman as possessing those delicate qualities of mind and soul that made her in her respects far superior to man. I had put her on a lofty pedestal, figuratively speaking, and ranked her in certain important attributes considerably higher than man. I worshipped at the feet of the creature I had raised to this height, and, like every true worshiper, I felt myself unworthy of the object of my worship.”
Tesla had pedestalized women, as many men do. He was something of a simp, a man who could never beleive he’d be worthy of a woman’s attention and affection. But note it was traditional, feminine women he had exalted; those women were disappearing, as he goes on to explain:
“But all this was in the past. Now the soft voiced gentle woman of my reverent worship has all but vanished. In her place has come the woman who thinks that her chief success in life lies on making herself as much as possible like man – in dress, voice, and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind. The world has experience many tragedies, but to my mind the greatest tragedy of all is the present economic condition wherein women strive against men, and in many cases actually succeed in usurping their places in the professions and in industry. This growing tendency of women to overshadow the masculine is a sign of a deteriorating civilization.”
Tesla could see, long before many others, exactly what feminism was doing to women. By trying to pattern their lives after the masculine model, they were losing their femininity. As Tesla sadly notes, this is a tragedy. But the tragedy of feminism is not limited to its impact on women. It will also change men:
“Practically all the great achievements of man until now have been inspired by his love and devotion to woman. Man has aspired to great things because some woman believed in him, because he wished to command her admiration and respect. For these reasons he has fought for her and risked his life and his all for her time and time again.”
As the Apostle Paul says, women is the glory of man. Feminine glory always inspired men to achieve great things. Civilization is built by men with families to feed, as the saying goes — but it is also built by men who want to impress, protect, and provide specifically for women because men are inspired by their beauty and their glory. It was the beauty of Helen that launched a thousand ships. A man will gladly and without hesitation lay down his life for a femininie woman.
“Perhaps the male in society is useless. I am frank to admit that I don’t know. If women are beginning to feel this way about it – and there is striking evidence at hand that they do – then we are entering upon the cruelest period of the world’s history.”
In today’s world, this is precisely why so many men have dropped out of society. They are not seeking to marry. They are not seeking to maximize their potential in the workplace. They are unmotivated and lacking in ambition when it comes to school. The world has communicaqted to men that it does not need their masculinity — that their masculinity is toxic — so why bother doing the traditional masculine roles, if they are despised rather than honored? While I would give men a different way of approaching this problem, Tela was right to anticipate the MGTOW movement about 100 years before it actually arose.
“Our civilization will sink to a state like that which is found among the bees, ants, and other insects – a state wherein the male is ruthlessly killed off. In this matriarchal empire which will be established, the female rules. As the female predominates, the males are at her mercy. The male is considered important only as a factor in the general scheme of the continuity of life.
The tendency of women to push aside man, supplanting the old spirit of cooperation with him in all the affairs of life, is very disappointing to me.”
Tesla saw it long before most others — feminism would kill the complementarity and cooperation of the sexes that makes civilization work. This is the existential threat to our way of life today. If men and women do not come together and for stable families, we have no future.
To get a sense of how much things have changted, consider this: Tesla’s article was published in mainstream outlets in 1924. There’s no way it would get published in similar periodicals today.
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