Culture

Why Modern Feminism Wants To Get Rid Of The Family

Isn’t it interesting how, for a group that claims to champion women’s causes, feminism seems to consistently denigrate the idea of the traditional family? This article will help explain why the feminist movement wants to abolish the institution of the family.

By S.G. Cheah5 min read
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Shutterstock/Bruce Stanfield

When I first stumbled upon this Vice article titled “We Can't Have a Feminist Future Without Abolishing the Family,” I thought this was just another story about a lunatic, fringe, radical feminist. Vice is, after all, struggling to keep its lights on, so naturally they would resort to sensationalist click-bait type of stories in order to bolster their readership. Nothing sounds more outrageous than a feature story on a feminist thinker who calls for the abolishment of families, as well as the right to abortion (specifically as the justifiable killing of babies).

Wait, what?

As I dug deeper into that story, I came across feminist thinker Sophie Lewis’s radical defense of the right to abortion from the position of actually viewing it as a justifiable act of killing a human life. Pretty much like Communist China’s justification of forced abortion as they implemented their one-child policy.

My Own Marxist History

When I tell people how the ideology of feminism is strongly rooted in Marxism, I’m often dismissed as being ignorantly sensationalist at best and maliciously slanderous at worst. So what qualifies me to make this claim? Well, for one, I was raised a Communist by my father.

My father wasn’t one of those armchair philosophers who were Communist sympathizers because they took an introductory course on Marxist ideas in college or picked up Marx and Engels to seem cool among their intellectual friends. Rather, his family was part of the Chinese Communist resistance against Imperial Japan during the Japanese Occupation of British Malaya.

I was raised a Communist by my father.

Thankfully, my mother wasn’t into Communism and raised me religiously Buddhist and culturally Christian, so I wasn’t completely brainwashed. In fact, she hates it whenever I tell people how my dad was a Communist because it was thoroughly understood that Communism equals murderous terrorism in Malaysia.

I still remember my earliest conversation about Communism with my father. I was about 7-years-old, and, while dropping me off at school, he “educated” me about how unfair it was that the world is filled with some people who had more money than others. It was unfair to be rich when there were still others who were poor.

The world would be more just under Communism because then everyone would be equal. I agreed with him, because I hated it when my parents split a candy bar and my sister received a larger piece than I did. Since dropping me off at school every morning was the only time alone I had with him, I suppose my father’s idea of father-daughter bonding entailed him teaching me about Marxism.

All this to say – I had been reading Marx and Mao long before the current wave of Millennial feminists did the same in their first sympathetic course on Marxism in their heavily left-leaning colleges. And because of that, I can recognize a Marxist when I see one – and I see Marxist Communism sprawled everywhere in modern feminism.

Modern Feminism’s Roots in Marxism

When I saw the absolutely revolting video of Sophie Lewis defending abortion as a form of “justified killing,” I immediately remembered the forced abortions carried out in Red China under Mao’s one-child policy. It was horrifying to hear a woman describing the process of pregnancy as “a fetus dealing out violence to the gestator (the mother).”

It was horrifying to hear a woman describing the process of pregnancy as “a fetus dealing out violence to the gestator (the mother).”

And yet, at the same time, it’s unsurprising to me that Lewis would think like this because her position conforms to Marxist thought. Her use of the phrase "violence against women" is in part to appeal to people's emotions, but the other part is historically steeped in Marxist-Leninist ideologies – namely the Marxist Dialectical Materialism.

I won't bore or confuse you with the details about Dialectical Materialism since it was bad enough that I had to write a paper about it for a college class (and trust me, you have better things to do with your life than to waste it on learning about Marxist dialectics), but suffice to say, the dialectic process has to do with the disintegration and reorganization of the status quo. Marxists believe that conflict is necessary for society to progress because society moves and changes according to conflicts between opposing forces.

In that video, Lewis goes on to say, “I see the forms of making and unmaking each other as continuous processes.” Yup. That’s the Marxist theory of dialectical and historical materialism right there. She was basically quoting Friedrich Engels, who helped to develop Marxist theory. Engels himself said, "For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away, of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher."

Why the Nuclear Family Is the Feminist Public Enemy No. 1

Feminist theory states that the patriarchy is the reigning status quo of society. Therefore, to move towards a superior form of society, a revolution is necessary because women have to rise up and overthrow the patriarchy.

Keep that thought in mind, and you will understand why the lunatic fringe of the radical feminist movement truly believe that they’re victims of the patriarchal oppression of the cis-gendered, straight, white male.

This is why leading feminist thinker Jessica Valenti said, "Feminism is a structural analysis of a world that oppresses women, an ideology based on the notion that patriarchy exists and that it needs to end.” The only way to eliminate female oppression, feminists believe, is to change men and society, essentially disintegrating and reorganizing society in order to completely transform it.

To completely transform society, feminism tends to denigrate the traditional family and suggest that it is an outdated way of life.

To accomplish this transformation of society, feminism tends to denigrate the traditional family and suggest that it’s an outdated way of life. It’s why they hate the idea of the housewife and why they hate the women who choose to lead a life of domesticity. Vladimir Lenin himself promoted this same attitude, saying, “We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work.”

“All will have to work.” Gee, where have I heard this recently? Oh yeah, a feminist who advocated that it should be illegal for women to be stay-at-home moms. Time and time again, women are shamed for choosing to excuse themselves from the workforce because they are financially supported by their husbands. Notice how the same shame isn’t inflicted on women who are financially dependent on the government or on sugar daddies.

The Family as the First Line of Defense against Tyranny

Historically, the institution of marriage arose as a safeguard to the family. The basic family structure is what one would expect to provide the necessary support for a person to build a life that is independent from the interference of outsiders. A husband and wife will decide how to live their lives and how they will raise their children.

Whether a person is fortunate enough to have been born into a loving family, or if they have to build one around them which includes non-blood relationships, it’s a valuable part of life to have a family to love, as well as depend on in times of hardship. The other (inferior) alternative is to be dependent on the state for this need.

When you favor a worldview that tends to dissolve the stability of the traditional family, there is going to be enough social breakdown that will call for more government intervention in a person’s personal life. Strong stable families will prevent the rise of socialism/Marxism because when a person has a strong support system behind them in the form of their family, they need not seek the help of the state.

When a person has a strong support system behind them in the form of their family, they need not seek the help of the state.

As Ronald Reagan once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." For example, feminists want the state to help provide daycare so that mothers can leave the home and enter the workforce.

What they don’t tell you is how this would provide the government with means of gaining access to the children so they can be molded to fit the state’s goals – just like the public schools. A stable and functional family understands how it’s parents who should be responsible for raising their children. Not the government. Not society. This way of life is at odds with Radical Feminism, a.k.a. bootleg Marxism.

Closing Thoughts

Radical Feminism is basically bootleg Marxism. But radical feminists are too chicken to go all out and advocate fully for Communism (like the Bernie Bros). Rather they depend on the support of unsuspecting women to back them up as they underhandedly push their insidious agenda.

At least Mao Zedong tried to openly eliminate the concept of gender during China’s Cultural Revolution. To Mao, there was no difference between the man and the woman. Gender is “a social construct.” The radical feminist shares this belief and wants to achieve the same genderless outcome as Mao. However, the feminist is employing their societal transformation discreetly, like a crooked conman stealing your money quietly through fraud (oh sorry, I didn’t mean to use sexist language, I meant ‘conwoman’). And they’re doing so by working to destroy the family unit.