Have you ever stopped and evaluated the effect of the women's movement?

Question

On balance and for society in general, has feminism brought more happiness into the world or more misery?

More love or more hate?

More freedom or more oppression?

Answer 1

I have, and as far as I can see the benefits far outweigh the costs. In terms of happiness and freedom, anyway, I don't think feminism has affected love strongly one way or another. I guess you can say women are more likely to marry for love than sercurity/money now though.

Answer 2

Actually, I just read in Newsweek that we're at a 35-year-high in terms of peaceful, positive existence on the globe. I believe that coincides with the second-wave feminist movement's start.

"It is the result of a series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years, trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity."

Answer 3

Once, but she woke up half way through.

Answer 4

Hey listen <draws up a chair sits down> let me put it to you this way; logically Feminism is only a word; a word that can do no more than what is accepted.  We are the ones who are either miserable or happy.

We are the ones who either love or hate.

We are the ones who define what freedom means and what oppression means.  All of these things come from us.  For example I choose to be happy as opposed to miserable.  I choose to love over hate; to make it more precise I choose to love Mangoes and hate oranges.  I choose to find freedom in a situation that you may find depressing.  For example I've chosen to no longer cover; relishing in the freedom that I have made a decision; what may come I will stick to it; were I to opt for "oppression" I would continue to cover and do something I didn't believe in, such a thought is so oppressing.

Answer 5

As an older person, I secretely wait impatiently but with great passion for this wonderful wave of computer science to start producing for all eyes modelings of the organic waves and weavings through history of our human social consciousness.  In those flowing trends and evolutions and revolutions amazing patterns will appear and we'll begin to perceive ourselves, as a social consciousness, more lucidly.  I've had a peek at some of those "time-lapsed ballets" of social events.  And, clearly, for all to see even without computer modeling, is the humanistic rise above domination.

Societies and civilizations rise and fall.  People come and go.  We make art and write about ourselves.  We create gods and Mickey Mouse.  Then, it all falls again to rise again.  But, what remains throughout history, is the flow and weaving of the social consciousness, eternally passed down each generation of our growing compendium of knowledge and conscience above ignorance and brutality.  It seems clearly to me that whatever existence is all about for humans, we arrive, have an opportunity during life to make a contribution to the social consciousness in art or effort or illumination, and then we go.  I believe that whatever existence is all about for humans is not so much about us as much as about the social consciousness, which NEVER goes away, has been a constant, ever-flowing connected construct or river throughout our species entire time, this compendium of knowledge and conscience.

When humans were still monkies and unable to alter and manipulate the environment to suit their needs, which is what determines a "human" in our primate early history, they CHANGED somehow as a lifeform, somehow that made our species completely smarter, different and dominate over all other billions of other lifeforms there have been.  That change was the emergence of the human social consciousness.  Religion calls it "soul".  Philosophers call it "awareness".  Anthropologists call it "culture".  

So, there we were, tooling along as monkies with our own true consciousnesses when we began to do something DIFFERENT that sparked the birth of the social consciousness which then began flowing through time as a constant construct and made our species completely different and dominate over all other billions of other lifeforms there have been.  What did we do differently that sparked all that?  

We started to share, be nicer to each other in larger and larger groupings, showed mercy, began nursing the sick and wounded, began working together on common goals, stopped plundering each other like . . .well, monkies, and began caring for more of "the all of us" than just ourselves and immediate family.  Those are the behaviors that make us different from "animals".  The social consciousness whirled up out of that and each new generation of individual consciousnesses whirls awhile with that river.  What made our species "completely different and dominate over all other billions of other lifeforms" was HUMANISM, the fundamental natural TRUTH that all humans have feelings and rights and that it is good for all of us to care about each other.  That was it.  That's was changed us from monkies to humans, not muscles, not logic, not, nuclear bombs, might-is-right, dog-eat-dog, bloodlust, greed, power, or delusions of gondal superiority.  This species rise, which has quite obviously supremely passed Nature's "survival-of-the-fittest" test , is based not on the "glory" of war and domination and violence and brutal strength and savagery and slavery.  It's based on humanism.  And, no matter how many times people get beaten down, their libraries and books burned, no matter how dark the age or where on the world, humanism lives on in our social consciousness as a major eternal rising theme, culminating in democracy.

What happened with the social consciousness after democracies rose, was it lost it's already-too-meager female voice in the cultural institution of government.  Up until the rise of democracy, government was monarchy and every court had female royalty held in high esteem.  Their voices and opinions were heard and frequently heeded by men in their families.  Monarcies were FAMILIES, including females.  

With democracy, women were utterly and literally locked out of government, no women allowed in parliment or congress or senate.  After that, the world lost it's mind over the following years, culminating in this:

http://www.schneiderism.com/wp-content/u...

I mean, how exactly does the social consciousness in a land like Germany reach a pinnacle of utter exquisite splendor to produce the music of a man like Beethoven (1770-1827) and within mere generations descend and follow a monster like Hitler (1889-1945)?  Could it possibly be that in those years, all over the world, governments became parlimentary and began locking women out?

Never in the history of our species has the social consciousness gone as morbid as has ours since then, except maybe during freaked-out blood-sucking Central and South American human sacrifice temple worshipper cultures.  Both U.S. presidents responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki knew exactly what those bombs would do.  The bomb had been tested.  Between n**i concentration camps, seeing news images of babies held up in the air on bayonets and Hiroshima, clearly the social consciousness and humanism took a hit of some kind.  In all scholarly veracity, all that I can point to, yet, for what that "hit" could have been in so many different cultures is this common lock-out of female voices from governments when we transitioned into democracies all over the world.  Feminism is imperative not only from the standpoint of our immediate crisis of social consciousness, but is also what nature wants for our species to survive, our humanism, our refusal to live with brutal domination, monkies or monsters.

Answer 6

At least in my country, we are starting with policies on women's favor, so I barely see effects of our fight.

Answer 7

my grandmother gets all giggly over the chances in life i have had that she never dreamed of.

Often talks about what she would do if she was young living in our time.

...........the women of the past sure seem to think that women have it better today

Answer 8

The world of women was always in misery which is why this movement even happened; people blame women for changes that have redefined our culture but with men their enemies rather than their partners and protectors are they not the ones who brought the changes on to themselves?

You cannot deny it has brought women more Freedom; Did it bring freedom for men or oppression? that's the real question.

Answer 9

Education is enlightenment, knowledge is power and freedom is opportunity.  Women's equality have liberated women and allowed both men and women to evolve as a species and learn from each other, more about the world.

I'm going to have to go with more happiness, more love, more freedom and more bliss!!!

Answer 10

Yes I have evaluated it, and I wasn't pleased with what I found out. And I see more negatives than positives sadly.

Women never see the bad side of it, and personally, I don't blame them for it, because it has brought a lot of freedoms and benefits for them. But at what cost?

Laws like VAWA, sexist divorce judges, men having absolutely NO reproductive rights whatsoever (of which abortion is a subset), thereby disregarding and outright rejecting any value for the sperm among a whole host of other things like phony femstats like 1 in 4 and the wage gap, half-baked propaganda taught as 'education' in Women's Studies (and teachers doing the same in school. Yes, this does happen. The fact that I haven't been in a WS classroom means nothing, because I know someone who has. I don't need to burn my hand to know fire hurts), feminists man-bashing and getting away with it (actually they're cheered, and men getting slapped by women is something people laugh at), feminacentrism in the media (When 41 children died in a bus accident in Gujarat, the Times of India focussed on 15 dead girls. 26 boys apparently do not matter. The Washington Post has been guilty of that many times, and so has some UK newspaper a few days ago)...

I could go on, but you get the idea. Men are at a huge, huge disadvantage due to feminism. With all its good intentions (maybe those intentions were a mask all along), feminism has become just another blot in the history of human rights, because it focuses only on women, yet it has the nerve to claim it's for equality depite all the things I've listed.

It has also caused women to become all the bad stereotypes of men. Yes, the same traits women had fun dissing for decades: drunk, violent and polygamous.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/health...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7401996.st...

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To answer the parts in your details:

1) More happiness? Well, according to a link you posted (http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/betseys/pap... ), women were much happier pre-feminism than they are now. And why not? If you were a 'real woman' only if you competed with men as if they were your enemies, dominated them, refused to listen to them or their emotions and act as if you're all that mattered, of course women won't be happier because most of them don't like that.

And with all the hate and misandrist propaganda, I won't dare to speak of happiness for men.

2) More hate definitely. It is the radicalism in particular which has led to so many anti-feminist sentiments that tend to misogyny. And women don't like feminism all that much nowadays either, because while promoting 'choice for women', feminists contradicted themselves by saying the choice to remain traditionalist is 'wrong'. It is risky, I admit, but not 'wrong'. Let them do what they want with their lives. Who are feminists to tell them what to do?

And it's scary that what I've seen of schoolgirls is teenage angst and anti-male sentiments among them. Is hating and beating men down the only way to get rights for women? This isn't a fight for equality, it's revenge-discrimination

3) Both. Freedom (without adequate responsibility, I'm forced to add) for women and loads of oppression (and burden of more responsibility) for men.

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But one must wonder why nothing has been said or done about this. Nobody says anything because nobody is willing to listen. Can you name one pro-male senator? One pro-male leader of today? None. The leaders are males, that's it. The feminists pull the strings, and they will make your life h**l if you doubt them, no matter who you are.

http://nzmera.orcon.net.nz/femqotes.html

http://www.ukmm.org.uk/issues/suppressio...

Answer 11

I think the women's movement itself has had a generally positive effect. But some people have used it to an unfair advantage, which makes it look worse.

Answer 12

Yes.  every time I vote.  Thank you feminists!

Answer 13

Yes.

Answer 14

Feminism is oppression which created misery which created hate.

Answer 15

If buy you mean her movement in one of her sweet little summer dresses yes.

If you mean "I am woman hear me roar" then no.

Thumbs down if you wish, but I'm just being honest (and slightly objectifying -- which ironically is me being honest)

Answer 16

going by the psychos on here, it is f*cked up!!!

Answer 17

Yep.  That's why I'll never support it.   The "women's movement" only want what's best for women not what's right or what's fair.

Looking at what they've done in the West and other countries should be more than evident enough.  Fighting for laws that discriminated against men(VAWA in the US and DV law in India),spewing out bias studies, placing quotas in various job, expecting equal outcome, writing various anti-male literature etc..etc..

Answer 18

I don't see that women are happier, as they seem to be whining about not being able to make ends meet when chanting for Hillary. Men certainly aren't happier, as the women we grew up expecting no longer exist. Its really difficult to get behind a movement of people who vote based on their fear of losing the right to terminate their babies. Its truly a MADHOUSE!

Answer 19

I agree with Untamed Rose. The older women I have talked to in the last few years have all expressed excitement and positivity for the opportunities that women have these days. My grandad was also extremely happy that I had the chance to travel by myself and go to university. On a personal level, I could not imagine being happy having to marry someone to support me throughout life. I have the freedom to have a relationship with someone I love, not because I need them but because I want to be with them. I don't see how you can even ask if feminism has brought more freedom or not. How can opening up the world to 50% of the population be classed oppression?

Answer 20

I give no thought to such an irrelevant subject.