Against the Great Reset: 'The Great Reset, Feminist-Style'

Today the Pipeline presents the last of our excerpts from some of the essays contained in Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order, to be published on October 18 by Bombardier Books and distributed by Simon and Schuster, and available now for pre-order at the links.

Part IV: THE PERSONAL

Excerpt from "The Great Reset, Feminist-Style" by Janice Fiamengo

Introduction: Equity for Women

What would a Great Reset mean for women and girls—and the men who love them? In COVID-19: The Great Reset (2020), WEF founder Klaus Schwab and his coauthor Thierry Malleret do not address the status of women at length. But they do refer, on the very first page, to the search for social justice, stating that a positive consequence of Covid-19 has been its exposure of the “fault lines of the world” and its galvanization of the will to redress them.

By far the most destabilizing fault line in the western world is the one that feminism has opened between men and women. It is set to widen even further if Reset proponents have their way. In its institutional forms, feminism is a radical ideology alleging that women are oppressed in a patriarchal order created and maintained for male benefit through institutions such as the traditional family. Developed in the North American universities of the 1970s and 1980s, feminism’s assertions about male control of women have spread far into the wider society as feminist students graduated into careers in teaching, journalism, law, social work, public relations, and business. Though often claiming to seek equality between the sexes (itself a dubious, oft-unrealizable goal), feminists regularly call for special privileges for women and corresponding restrictions for men.

Feminism shares with the Schwabian Reset a utopian vision of a reimagined world in which the historically disempowered will be compensated and protected by enlightened leaders who will manage all aspects of our social, economic, and domestic lives. In this transformed world, a never-before-achievable righting of injustice will become possible as the enemies of fairness and of the common good—the selfish, the competitive, the predatory, and the retrograde—will be once and for all neutralized by government fiat.

Discussions of post-Covid she-covery (recovery with a female face) focused mainly on four feminist Reset blueprints: 1) liberating women from the unfair burdens of family life; 2) empowering women to close wage and employment gaps; 3) mandating leadership roles for women, especially in politics, business, and academia; and 4) advancing the sexual agenda of the #MeToo movement. All, as will be shown, are underpinned by profoundly antimale assumptions and contempt for established social and legal norms. Whether any of these blueprints will make women happier is a highly doubtful proposition: bitter and resentful women, rather than contented ones, are precisely what Reset discussions and policies are designed to create.

Background: Covid-19 and Inordinate Female Suffering

A canard about Covid-19 peddled by Schwab and Malleret was that the virus exposed and exacerbated social divides, hurting those who were already vulnerable. In reality, as the authors well know, it was not Covid itself, which in their estimation was not “a new existential threat,” so much as the draconian policies of governments and health officials, amplified by media-induced terror and compliance, that shaped social divides.

Government lockdowns and masking/distancing policies, often brutally and unequally enforced, created Covid winners and losers by determining which businesses could open, whether and how many family members could gather, and whether children could attend school or play together. Social elites working in government, media, academia, and the corporate world, their paycheques and lifestyles largely intact, demonized as “Covidiots” anyone who defied or even
questioned public health orders, sometimes encouraging readers to report those who broke any of the arcane rules (unless, of course, the rule-breakers were Black Lives Matter protesters, in which case even e prime minister of Canada knelt with them in solidarity).

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Along with daily counts of “cases,” hospitalizations, and deaths, the media offered a steady barrage of stories designed to highlight Covid heroes and Covid villains, channeling sympathy toward those deemed to be legitimately suffering or bravely assisting, and encouraging contempt for alleged conspiracy theorists or “Far Right” adherents (mainly white men) who posed a danger. Here, the familiar polarities of ideological feminism came into play: women were typically presented as the innocent victims of a male-dominated society’s injustices—that is, when they weren’t outstanding leaders keeping the virus at bay or valiant frontline nurses caring for the sick.

In the earliest days of Covid, medical data showed that men were more likely than women to die from the virus or to experience the most severe forms of illness, accounting for about 80 percent of acute care admissions and up to 70 percent of the dead. Yet even as these staggering reports hit the headlines, media accounts were busy framing the pandemic as a women’s issue.

By March 8, 2020, when the effects of the virus were being felt in Europe but had not yet hit North America, the emphasis on female suffering had already been established. The BBC World Service informed readers that “Across Asia, it is women who are being disproportionately affected.” A humanitarian advisor to the U.N., Maria Holtsberg, was quoted saying that “Crisis always exacerbates gender inequality.” According to the article, women were bearing the brunt of the pandemic not only as primary caregivers for their children, forced to stay home when schools closed (with no mention of the breadwinner husbands continuing their work and thus at presumably greater risk of infection) but also—and somewhat contradictorily—as the majority of workers on the “front lines.” The article detailed horrific working conditions of nurses in China and elsewhere in which nurses were forced to have their heads shaved and denied washroom breaks while working overtime. Women were also vulnerable, according to the article, as migrant workers with few rights, and in retail and informal sectors of the economy hard-hit by store closures.

The mantra that would be repeated in countless later articles was thus established: as stated by Mohammad Naciri, regional director of U.N. Women Asia, “Women are playing an indispensable role in the fight against the outbreak,” and must be at the forefront of all efforts to deal with it. Vulnerable male migrant workers, low-income shopkeepers, and men on other types of front lines—particularly long-haul truckers attempting to maintain supply chains even as much-needed rest stops, washrooms, and food outlets closed—were not mentioned. Essential service providers who were male— ambulance responders, restoration and clean-up crews, police officers, delivery drivers, all-night convenience store clerks, bus and train operators—were made invisible.

As the Covid situation worsened in Europe and spread to North America over the following weeks, the same ideas were amplified, with many commentators focusing on favored first-world feminist themes such as women’s greater emotional and caregiving burdens. Helen Lewis’s “The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism” declared that “Across the world, women’s independence will be a silent victim of the pandemic,” while Lucia Graves in “Women’s Domestic Burden Just Got Heavier with the Coronavirus” predicted that women’s unfair allocation of housework would be increased. Many commentators asserted that women and girls were, as always, doing the majority of caring for elderly or ill family members and, already economically more vulnerable than men, would see their earnings potential permanently impacted by layoffs.

Some of the claims were dramatic, others strikingly trivial. Heather Barr, the interim codirector of the Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, reported with somber emphasis that many now-unemployed women “faced losing their homes in countries from South Africa to the U.K.” and that even simply “maintaining access to water and utilities was a struggle for many, including in the United States.” Men, it seemed, never lost their homes or lacked the necessities of life (though men actually account for the vast majority of the homeless in western nations)...

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'Eco-Feminists' vs. 'Toxic' Reality

“If civilization had been left in female hands,” wrote Camilla Paglia in her 1990 book Sexual Personae, “we would still be living in grass huts.”

Feminists have often retorted that patriarchal societies prevented women from exercising their artistic, scientific, and technological gifts—and that women’s true capabilities in these areas are still not fully known because of ongoing sexism. Lately, however, at least one group of feminist critics—namely the proponents of eco-feminism, who see the exploitation of women and of the environment as linked issues—not only seem to agree with Paglia, but go so far as to suggest that living in grass huts would be far preferable to controlling and dominating nature in the way that men have done.

That’s the idea expressed in the almost-parodically titled “Boys and their toys: how overt masculinity dominates Australia’s relationship with water,” by Anna Kosovac, PhD. Published in the popular academic journal The Conversation, the article was written by a University of Melbourne academic who holds a prestigious Research Chair in Water Policy.

Back to the future?

Writing from her air-conditioned room in an ivory tower designed, built, and maintained by men, intersectional feminist Kosovac believes that the days of exerting control over nature through dams, water pipelines, and sewer networks are largely over: the time has come, she writes almost mystically, “to reassess the old methods and explore new ways in our relationship with water.” In her view, masculine over-reliance on “technological and infrastructure ‘fixes’” is preventing Australians from “work[ing] in tandem with the environment” to address the country’s water needs.

Although Kosovac states at the article’s outset that she spent nine years working as a civil engineer in water management, she has almost nothing good to say about the field as it currently operates, aside from the grudging admission that “there’s nothing inherently wrong with using technology to solve water issues.” But in Kosovac’s masculine-averse perspective, the male technocratic mind is far too rigid and exclusionary. It assumes that serious sustainability problems can be solved with “gadgets,” as she calls them, such as smart meters and other data-collecting technologies, and it will not give fair consideration to other (eco-feminist and Indigenous spiritual) perspectives.

Kosovac alleges that Australia is suffering both politically and ecologically from “toxic masculinity.” This is a now-standard feminist phrase striking for its bigotry and intellectual incoherence. At times this “dominant masculinity” seems indistinguishable from men themselves; at other times it is a specific attitude toward power, the exercise of control over nature and less powerful “others,” that is manifested by particular white, heterosexual men. The author speaks with satisfaction of the recent “fury of women” at the “toxic masculine culture of Parliament House” while neglecting to mention that women comprise 31% of the House of Representatives and a whopping 53% of the Senate. Closer to home, she complains that “in the area of water supply, sewage, and drainage services, only 19.8% of the workforce comprises people who identify as women.” Here is a patriarchal plot, one presumes, to keep women out of the sewers they would otherwise have been clamoring to enter.

Girl power, One Million Years BC.

Kosovac cautions, nonetheless, that simply creating a more “diverse” water industry workforce made up of women, the Indigenous, and LGBTQI will not necessarily change “male-dominated decision making” and false faith in technology. That is what must change, according to Kosovac, though she never tells readers precisely what non-masculine, non-technological water management would look like.

It is quite stunning to read Kosovac’s glib dismissal of the male-led efforts that have made drought-prone Australia, the driest continent in the world, not only habitable for millions of people but one of the most prosperous and self-sustaining nations on earth. Missing from her sneering screed is any acknowledgement of Australia’s enormous achievements in water management, including seawater de-salination, which plays an increasing role in supplying water to many of Australia’s largest cities, or in the use of reclaimed wastewater for agricultural irrigation and other needs.

One of Kosovac’s primary criticisms of Australian technology is the failure to engage the community or to care about ordinary people’s views and preferences (she cites one example in which residents of Toowoomba rejected recycled wastewater for drinking in a referendum that “divided the county”—apparently feminist policies are never divisive). The Australian situation is, in fact, far more complex than Kosovac’s article suggests. The Water Reform Agenda, adopted in 1994, established the principle of public consultation and emphasized the right of communities to participate in the development of water supply policies. Robust measures to encourage rainwater harvesting, greywater use, and many other conservation efforts with wide public support have been in effect for years and are a testimony to the multi-pronged, community-based approach pioneered in Australia.

While indulging in harsh criticism of the conservation and management practices currently employed in her country, Kosovac’s article is notably thin on solutions. It is time for a new way of doing things, she tells us repeatedly. But what is it? She is in favor, it seems, of a “humble” approach that rejects the exertion of “control,” telling readers, with familiar academic vagueness, that “a different approach would incorporate valuable knowledge in the social sciences, such as recognizing the politics and social issues at play in how we manage water.” This is theoretical gibberish, and means little more than that under the influence of eco-feminist critics like Kosovac and her cadre of utopia-envisioning colleagues, water policy will be subject to a cultural Marxist analysis to identify oppressor groups (white male engineers, mostly, and those who support them) and oppressed groups (ethnic and gender minorities); such analysis will always castigate the oppressors and call for greater involvement of the marginalized.

Water, water, not quite everywhere.

True to form, Kosovac advocates “working closely with traditional owners to incorporate Indigenous understandings of water.” As an example of this approach, Kosovac refers with evident approval to a piece of 2017 legislation passed in New Zealand “that recognized the Whanganui River catchment as a legal person. The reform formally acknowledged the special relationship local Maori have with the river.”

It may be that despite her eco-feminist ideological commitments, Kosovac is struck near-speechless by this legislation, for she concludes her article soon thereafter without enlightening readers about how a governmental act of personification will help to address water management. Her only other specific suggestion involves “moving to community decision making models or even programs to increase youth involvement in water management.” Asking teenagers for input about water use may well yield some novel suggestions, but it’s difficult to conclude they will responsibly revolutionize water policy.

Kosovac proclaims her support for “giving up some control.” I suspect, however, that her faith in youth and community consultation, and even in Indigenous spiritual beliefs, will last only so long as potable water flows abundantly from her tap and the toilet flushes on command. The much-derided “toys” of the “boys” may well represent a masculine orientation that it is now fashionable to condemn, but that masculine way of dealing with our environment has inarguably kept the sewage and water systems functional, thus making all our lives immeasurably better. The simple fact is that exerting control over water is indistinguishable from civilization itself. When it comes to complex technological systems, I’ll take the boys with their toys over the girls clutching their pearls any day of the week.

Canada’s Economic 'Great Reset,' Feminist-Style

Many western governments are promising to “build back better” from Covid-19 through heavy spending on green energy, equality, and Third World relief. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in a September address to the United Nations, echoed his friend Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, in calling Covid-19 “an opportunity for a reset” in the global effort to “reimagine economic systems.” Critics have warned that such re-imagining will require a grossly expanded state, onerous restrictions on freedom, and punitive taxation—but hey, it’s all in a virtuous cause.

To further demonstrate its good intentions, the Canadian government has added an emphasis on “feminist economic recovery,” promising to focus on women, and especially Indigenous, low-income, and immigrant women, for taxpayer funded programs, grants, and initiatives. That these are based on faulty premises and constitute an outrageous admission of sexist bias seems to have had little impact on their general popularity.

The Trudeau Liberals’ September 23 Throne Speech was carefully scripted to highlight women as uniquely hurt by Covid-19, uniquely deserving of reward for courageous service, and uniquely vulnerable to economic and social hardship in general. Governor-General Julie Payette used distinctly feminist rhetoric to describe the economic recession caused by Covid-related policies as a she-cession, and stated evidence-free that women “have been hit hardest by Covid-19.”

Covid-19 hates the energy industry for hating women.

The stark fact is that with regard to death and serious illness, Covid has hit men harder than women, both in Canada and around the world. A scientific study in the journal Nature found that out of 3,111,714 reported global cases, male patients had almost three times the odds of requiring intensive care in hospital. Sadly, men have also died at a significantly higher rate than women.

Such inconvenient facts are conspicuously absent from Payette’s feminist-compliant throne speech, which instead pinpointed women’s allegedly greater sacrifice for the common good, celebrating the many women who have “bravely served on the frontlines of this crisis” or have “shoulder[ed] the burden of unpaid care work at home.” Nothing is said in the speech about men’s particular service or sacrifices.

The Speech from the Throne included the typical rallying cry of feminists, who have been warning since last March that the “hard-won” rights of women are under threat as never before. Undaunted by mixed metaphor, the speech pledges that “We must not let the legacy of the pandemic be one of rolling back the clock [sic] on women’s participation in the workforce, nor one of backtracking on the social and political gains women and allies have fought so hard to secure.” The government promises “an Action Plan for Women in the Economy to help more women get back into the workforce and to ensure a feminist, intersectional response to this pandemic and recovery.”

While it remains to be seen what precise forms a “feminist, intersectional” reset will take, the general idea is clear. Women must be the main focus. The Canadian Women’s Organization advises that “Recovery plans must centre women’s economic well-being and the experiences of diverse and marginalized communities of women” through increased spending on long-term care, childcare, and “gender-based” (i.e. for women only) violence services.

Moreover, according to the authors of A Feminist Economic Recovery Plan for Canada, government should mandate special training and funding for female businesses owners (as well as “racialized people, persons with disabilities, Indigenous people, and immigrants”). It should “create minimum set-asides in public procurement spending (e.g., 15 percent) towards businesses led by women” and should “direct funding to businesses in women’s majority sectors.” White men suffering economic hardship may be shocked to realize that they are explicitly excluded from such reset initiatives.

Even if it were true that women as a group have shouldered the heaviest burden of Covid and have been most economically and socially harmed by lockdown and other measures, it would not stand to reason that baldly discriminatory measures should be taken to advantage women over (white) men. All Canadians who are experiencing economic hardship, regardless of sex or race, should be able to access stimulus monies and financial aid.

Moreover, it is not at all clear that women have been hardest hit (or have made the greatest contribution). More men than women are small business owners in Canada, and small-business owners have been cruelly harmed by onerous regulations and forced closures. The safest spheres of employment in the public sector tend to be female-dominated (at 71 percent female, according to StatsCan).

Beware the "she-cession."

Indeed, the very figures and estimates selected by the government for its Fall Economic Statement 2020 give the lie to its ‘women are most deserving’ motif. Throughout the Economic Statement, one can find various “Gender Equality and Diversity” items, framed by a rectangular border to stand out from the rest of the document. Presumably these exist to highlight the government’s special concern for women and to foreground the work being done on their behalf. But what many of these statements highlight is the government’s studious disregard for the economic suffering of men, and the many women who have secured well-paid jobs in a public sector largely insulated from Covid. The first of these Gender observations tells us:

In February 2020, women accounted for 75 per cent of employment in elementary and secondary schools that were suddenly closed and have since re-opened during the pandemic. According to the 2016 Census, visible minorities were underrepresented in elementary and secondary schools relative to their share of all wage earners (12 per cent versus 21 per cent). Immigrants were also underrepresented (15 per cent) compared to their overall employment share (24 per cent).

Here is clear evidence of the curious tensions and omissions determined by the feminist intersectional approach. On the one hand, the first sentence appears to take up the ‘women are hardest hit’ narrative by focusing on the large number of female teachers who experienced the sudden closing of their schools. What a shock for them, the message seems to be; in fact, of course, the shock has been largely confined to the perceived (and in the main marginal) health threat. Teachers’ pay cheques never stopped rolling in, a fact that placed these female workers in a far more secure position than the workers whose suspended employment also included the cutting off of all pay, benefits, and future prospects.

On the other hand, the next sentence changes tack by suggesting that there is something wrong—likely a ‘systemic’ injustice—in Education hiring given that “visible minorities” and “immigrants” are under-represented in education in relation to their overall presence in the workforce. Racism must be the cause, denying visible minorities and immigrants the opportunity to be teachers.

Putting aside the fact that there might be good reasons why immigrants, in particular, might not be well represented in the profession of teaching—perhaps because they immigrated too late to attend university to acquire a teaching degree—the obvious omission in the analysis is the minority presence (at 25 percent) of men as a group. Teaching is a well-paid, secure profession with many benefits. If gender and racial equality are government goals, why is the paucity of male teachers not mentioned here? Men could be forgiven for concluding that gender inequality is only a problem worth mentioning by the Canadian government if it can be seen to disadvantage women. In the next box, we learn:

In October 2020, women represented 57 per cent of biologists and related scientists, which includes such occupations as virologist, microbiologist, and immunologist, among others. Women also represented 61 per cent of biological technologists and technicians, up from 51 per cent in February 2020, reflecting strong employment growth in this occupation, likely related to testing activity.

Presumably this fact of female over-representation in biology-related fields is presented as a “win” for women, something that government boasts about and that readers of the report are expected to applaud. It is difficult to see what it has to do with justice or “gender equality,” unless—as has long been suspected by non-feminists—feminism is actually about female supremacism rather than equality, and will applaud any evidence of female advantage. At the very least, the box fails to demonstrate women’s greater suffering under Covid-19.

Other highlighted statements push the ‘women most affected’ theme more vigorously, emphasizing that female workers are “overrepresented in many frontline settings, including hospitals and long-term care homes.” The clear implication is that such work deserves recognition and recompense. Men’s contributions “on the frontlines” are never likewise highlighted, though men have also been risking themselves and contributing to public safety in their (majority male) work as police officers, paramedics, long-haul truckers, janitors, and delivery drivers.

In general, men have always held down—and continue to do—the most dangerous jobs in our societies, making up more than 90 per cent of those who are seriously wounded or killed on the job. Perilous work in necessary occupations, including commercial fishing, logging, roofing, and construction—unglamorous, poorly paid, often insecure, and almost entirely unheralded—is still almost exclusively male despite 50 years of feminist activism around so-called employment equity. The implication in the government’s economic report that only women suffer and only women deserve public recognition for their work is egregiously dishonest and serves no good purpose.

In the end, most men don’t care about such things. They’re happy enough to see women’s caregiving work celebrated, and they don’t expect thanks for their own labor, whether dangerous or not. No matter. The inequality in emphasis of the government’s economic update, and the determination to channel men’s tax dollars into services and programs exclusively to benefit women and some racial minorities is a serious injustice, whether men perceive it as such or not. Moreover, it constitutes a profound threat to our future social order. Any society that consistently under-values, over-taxes, and under-employs its men will not be a prosperous society in the long term.

The Trudeau government’s emphasis on a feminist-style “reset” assumes that most government spending should focus on women (and ignore men) under the banner of “gender equality” even when the facts on the ground show many areas in which men are experiencing economic disadvantage. Such bias contributes to unnecessary polarization between men and women at a time of national crisis, and diverts funds that could be helping all Canadians to wasteful (and often vicious) feminist organizations. For how much longer will Canadians tolerate such shameful bigotry?

Anatomy of a Covid Panic

About 1.8 million people live in the state of South Australia (SA). Approximately thirty-eight people on average die each day. Since the start of the ‘pandemic’ in January, four elderly people have died of the virus. Not 4,000 you understand, just four. Of course, as commentators seem obliged to say these days, every death is a tragedy. Unlike those those former days, if you can still recall them, before Covid, when ailing old people dying didn't make the headlines.

All told, SA has had only 562 reported cases of Covid. As at end November, not one Covid patient was in hospital. However, a cluster of seventeen cases (i.e., positive tests, not sicknesses) centering around one family recently arose. The source was a security guard at a hotel where the government keeps those arriving from overseas quarantined for two weeks.

As expected, the government panicked, as per the new-normal, as did the governments of surrounding states, which immediately reinstated bans on travel to and from SA. But, you ain’t seen nothing yet. All unbeknown to the powers that be, a common or garden take-away pizza box was lurking in the wings.

The security guard in question also worked in a pizza bar. And someone, a Spanish chap on a temporary working visa, who’d bought a pizza tested positive. Well, as you wouldn’t be able to imagine if you are level-headed, all hell broke loose.

Nicola Spurrier, the chief health officer in SA, who I can only guess is prone to female impetuosity, assumed that a new virulent strain of Covid was afoot; catchable in very quick time from the surface of a pizza box; and emerging uniquely in an otherwise unremarkable suburb of Adelaide. The premier Steven Marshall, whose IQ has not been made public, immediately announced that he would close down his entire state for six days. And by closing down, he meant everything.

And all this over a pizza box.

Then, lo and behold, the Spanish chap admitted that he also worked in the pizza bar alongside the security guard. Mystery solved. The same old virus after all. Premier backtracks while loudly blaming the Spaniard for not being forthcoming. But, hold on, has the mystery been solved? Evidently not. Police in SA reported that they had put thirty-six detectives on the job, were examining video footage and had seized mobile phones and laptops. I can only suspect, they suspect, the hand of Vladimir Putin at work.

Am I kidding? Sadly, no. Reason, level-headedness, objectivity, common sense, call it what you will, is out of fashion. What happened is now yesterday's news. However, best not to let it pass so easily. It speaks to a general malaise at the heart of modern-day society, which will continue to play out. I will return later to this malaise and controversially suggest one possible contributing cause. Before that, two more examples.

Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison thought it was okay to besmirch Australia’s reputation by broadcasting to the world the “brutal truths” that numbers of unnamed Australian soldiers had committed war crimes in Afghanistan; and by apologising and offering compensation ahead of any due process. Of course, the untested allegations are concerning but they call for a reasoned response, not national self-flagellation and virtue signalling. Unsurprisingly, China and Russia, those paragons of human rights, have already made hay.

It is instructive that the basis for the inquiry into the behaviour of Australia’s elite special forces stemmed from a report of a female sociologist commissioned to examine their culture. I bet she found lots of toxic masculinity. As the feminisation of the defence forces moves apace, I find Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men (“You can’t handle the truth”) increasingly more appealing than Lieutenant Kaffee - though maybe I’m not supposed to.

Notice something about both examples thus far. A generalised passivity afflicts the responses of the two political leaders and those advising them. Events call the tune and they follow compliantly. Furthermore, epidemiologists, the political class and the petticoat top-brass who head Australia’s defence forces form only a subset of those so afflicted. It is rampant across all walks of life; including, disconcertingly, the legal system.

Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric, Cardinal George Pell, was jailed in March 2019, spending 400 days incarcerated for crimes he could not possibly have committed. But the ABC and its Madame Defarge, Louise Milligan, said he did it and therefore it must be true. A jury and an appeal court compliantly found him guilty. Thankfully, the High Court retained its collective senses and by seven to nothing set him free. But what the heck is going on?

Let me be uncharacteristically brave. A feminine temperament has been characterised in the sociology literature as being, in part, passive and cooperative; and, correspondingly, the masculine as being aggressive and competitive. Men and women have both temperaments to varying degrees. Both are necessary. Neither one should predominate in society in normal circumstances. I suggest that within the space of one or two generations western societies have become lopsidedly feminine; more inclined to be passive and cooperative, less inclined to be aggressive and competitive. Hence the malaise to which I previously referred. Take climate change as a further example.

Equality.

Is it any accident that the public face of alarmism became a teenage girl? I think not. Think about the proposed solutions. Both are intrinsically passive, relying on external elements, the wind and sun, to solve the perceived problem. Calls are made for cooperative global action. Look at a counter example, one of the few in the west: ‘America first’. That is an aggressive and competitive (temperamentally masculine) sentiment. That’s Trump’s America. That’s not Morrison’s Australia.

Australia accounts for only 1.3 percent of world emissions of CO2. China, India and other developing nations are adding more each year to their emissions than our total. Yet where does that lead those who see Australia as being in cooperative kinship with parties to the Paris climate accord. Illogically, into blaming the government for the widespread bushfires in 2019/20. Apparently, it is not doing nearly enough to combat "climate change."

Masculine-inclined heads are prone to exploding on hearing this. And, more stressful still, so many people in the street who look normal have mentally re-gendered. After all, in the last general election, they easily voted out the archetypal manly former prime minister Tony Abbot, putting Ms Zali Steggall, a green airhead, in his place. Says it all.

How Feminism Distorts Environmental Science

Over the past few years, we’ve heard a great deal about women in environmental science, and about the need to get more women into environmental science, with the clear implication that women bring something to research and policy on the environment that men don’t bring.

We’ve been informed of “5 Women Environmental Leaders You Should Know” and invited to “Meet 4 Inspirational Women Working in Environmental Science Today.” Articles that profile such scientists abound, almost always including a discussion of the (allegedly unique) “challenges” the women faced in a male-dominated field, with exhortations about how such challenges can be overcome, almost always through state and global initiatives that benefit women by providing them with money and opportunities not available to their male colleagues.

The alleged distinctiveness of women’s scientific perspective is a never-challenged assumption in many policy documents and political proclamations. An article outlining why “[w]e need to build more networks of women in science” predictably informs readers that women are “far more nuanced in [their] approach to just about anything, including science,” which is why “environmental science can only become stronger if we have more women in research, because [women] often bring the human angle into the science.” The male angle, apparently, is somewhat less than human. Keystone Environmental, a Canadian company that helps businesses comply with environmental regulations, echoes the mantra, saying that “there is a need for more women and girls” in the field.

Getting the female perspective.

World agencies and organizations are responding to such unabashedly partisan (and evidence-lite) claims with initiatives to promote opportunities for women. The United Nations has declared February 11 to be International Day of Women and Girls in Science; and its 2019 theme made the point even sharper: “Investment in Women and Girls in Science for Inclusive Green Growth.” The website admits that despite committed effort in “inspiring and engaging women and girls in science,” they “continue to be excluded from participating fully.” They offer little to corroborate this claim, but we are assured that “long-standing biases and gender stereotypes are steering girls and women away from science-related fields.” The idea that women might be somewhat less interested than men in certain types of scientific study, including some areas of environmental science, is never considered.

Citing the principle that “[w]e cannot afford to deprive ourselves of the talents of half of humanity,” UNESCO funds lavish awards for female scientists around the world. Its webpage reveals that “Since its creation in 1998, the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Programme has distinguished 112 eminent women at the height of their scientific careers and supported more than 3,300 promising young women scientists from over 110 countries.” Participating nations have followed suit with state-funded programs, scholarship, and grants. Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council outlines a variety of monetary and other incentives designed to “increase the participation of women in science and engineering, and to provide role models.”

Beyond the feel-good hoopla, these costly female-only programs are based on a set of untested assumptions about women and the environment that are as bigoted and misguided as they are widely accepted, if sometimes unconsciously. For decades, radical feminist ideologues have claimed that both women and nature are oppressed and have been made to serve men’s needs. Men’s sacrifices and good-faith efforts to build societies in which women and children could flourish are never acknowledged. Although not all female scientists are feminist ideologues, a great many have been influenced by feminist doctrine.

A specific branch of feminist theory called ecofeminism alleges that only the full liberation of women from male control can likewise liberate and “save” the environment. According to this theory, the idea of the natural world as a resource to be exploited for human benefit partakes of the same worldview that sees women as the property of men to be exploited for male pleasure.

Ecofeminists such as Carolyn Merchant, Mary Daly, and Vandana Shiva observe that nature in western culture is frequently represented as an untamed female entity, requiring male control. They claim that western men have tended to impose hierarchical structures to bind the feminine in all its forms and deny the interconnections between human and non-human nature through actions, resulting in horrific environmental damage.

Women, on the other hand, have a different (and, from their perspective, superior) appreciation of the intimate connections between all living things, partly because of their sensitive, nurturing natures and their role as child bearers. French feminist theorist Francoise d’Eaubonne, for one, insisted that women would create a much-needed ecological revolution to bring about justice for all marginalized and exploited beings.

Inherently male and rapacious?

Such feminist perspectives are at their root confessedly anti-male, anti-western, anti-industrial, and anti-capitalist. At their most radical, they reject all exploration, development, and utilization of the earth for the purposes of energy and wealth creation. Activities such as drilling, mining, extraction, and the construction of pipelines are seen as inherently male and rapacious. Some feminists even reject what they refer to as “western science,” which they claim is merely a projection of the flawed masculine way of perceiving nature. Though most feminist scientists and scientific agencies do not express such an extreme position, many of them actively seek to minimize the achievements of male scientists in favor of female, place women in visible positions of leadership mainly because of their sex, and transfer resources and authority to women on the assumption that women care more about children, and thus the future, and therefore make more compassionate stewards of the environment.

In a recent example of such a female-centric view, CNN reported on an all-female crew that is “sailing the world” to research plastic pollution in sea water. The clear implication of the story was that women who exclude men from their research expeditions deserve public admiration and applause for their daring. I found it impossible to imagine men posturing and patting themselves on the back for doing anything as men, and expecting praise for it. “The days feel longer at sea. You really have an opportunity to connect with nature,” claims an enthusiastic female voice at the video clip’s opening. Soon we see the smiling face of a young woman, Emily Penn, the co-founder of Exxpedition (note the reference to women’s two X chromosomes), a series of all-women teams sailing the world to study plastics and toxins. Here we have a made-for-United Nations feminist fantasy.

Why are men excluded from these crews, and how is such exclusion a laudable scientific development? It’s never made clear, but it is suggested that women have a deeper passion for the environment and, relatedly, that women are more seriously impacted by ocean pollution, especially by the micro-plastics under study. These plastics, we learn, break down in the ocean, bind with toxic chemicals, and are ultimately ingested by human beings, where they mimic the body’s hormones and interrupt its chemical messages. “I realized that being a woman, having those chemicals inside my body during pregnancy would be really bad news,” Penn asserts, explaining why she came to see ocean plastics as a “female-centered” issue.

Are men not affected by the chemical-plastic stew? Are their bodies invulnerable to endocrine disruption and its implications for reproductive health? Penn doesn’t say, and doesn’t seem to care. In this case and elsewhere, the frequently heard claim that women are more empathetic and bring a human perspective to science seems to apply only to issues affecting women. Where men are concerned, feminist compassion quickly runs dry.

The story, furthermore, implies that Penn and her fellow female researchers are breaking new ground in analyzing this problem. No mention is made of the very significant work already being done by male scientists not only in highlighting the issue but actually seeking to solve it. We hear nothing, for instance, of Boyan Slat, the Dutch inventor who, at age 18 in 2013, founded The Ocean Cleanup, a non-profit foundation involving some 90 engineers, researchers, scientists and computational modelers who have developed systems to remove plastic from the world’s oceans before it breaks down into micro-plastics.

It’s hard to imagine young Boyan making a self-satisfied show of his maleness, deliberately choosing an all-male crew, or claiming that he is interested in plastics because they disproportionately affect the male sex. It would be bizarre if he did. So why is the inverse claim—that women should and do care particularly about women—seen as admirable? In my opinion, it is evidence of a deplorable narcissism.

There is nothing wrong with encouraging women, at least those with the necessary talent and dedication, to seek out careers in environmental science. But a preoccupation with women’s allegedly greater care for our world distorts our understanding of the real (and fake) environmental challenges we face; and the frequently-heard claim that we need to access all the world’s available talent is belied by the focus on women only (how many talented young men will thereby be neglected?).

Even more seriously, the idea that there is something wrong with male perspectives and “western” science is alarmingly regressive, grounded in female supremacist fantasies and long-standing anti-male resentment. These feminist biases are unscientific to the core, and their impact on environmental research and policy are likely to be wasteful and counter-productive, if not downright disastrous, in the long term.

Want to Stop Climate Change? Kill Yourself!

We know that the media-enforced hoax of "climate change" is driving our children crazy. Impressionable young noodles have been stuffed with the notion that unless we make nice with Mother Gaia, even Greta Thunberg herself will vanish from the face of the earth within just a few years. Whether we burst into flames as the planet heats to the temperature of a thousand suns or drown in the rising seas while being devoured by vengeful sharks we're doomed, doomed, doomed.

The physical impact of the climate crisis is impossible to ignore, but experts are becoming increasingly concerned about another, less obvious consequence of the escalating emergency – the strain it is putting on people’s mental wellbeing, especially the young.

Until two years ago Dr Patrick Kennedy-Williams, a clinical psychologist from Oxford, had spent his career treating common mental health difficulties including anxiety, depression and trauma. Then something new started to happen. Climate scientists and researchers working in Oxford began to approach him asking for help... “What I was most surprised by is how young the awareness and anxiety starts. My own daughter was just six when she came to me and said: ‘Daddy, are we winning the war against climate change?’

Well, kiddies, fret no more. There's a surefire way to whip climate change: cultural annihilation!

A Cambridge academic has proposed a radical new way to solve climate change – letting humanity become extinct. Patricia MacCormack, a professor of continental philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University, has just released her new book The Ahuman Manifesto. The book argues that due to the damage done to other living creatures on Earth, we should start gradually phasing out reproduction. But rather than offering a bleak look at the future of humanity, it has generated discussion due to its joyful and optimistic tone, as it sets out a positive view for the future of Earth - without mankind.

What could be more optimistic than suicide?

“I arrived at this idea from a couple of directions. I was introduced to philosophy due to my interest in feminism and queer theory, so reproductive rights have long been an interest to me – this led me to learn more about animal rights, which is when I became vegan... humanity has caused mass problems and one of them is creating this hierarchical world where white, male, heterosexual and able-bodied people are succeeding, and people of different races, genders, sexualities and those with disabilities are struggling to get that.

“The book also argues that we need to dismantle religion, and other overriding powers like the church of capitalism or the cult of self, as it makes people act upon enforced rules rather than respond thoughtfully to the situations in front of them.”

So the next time you're tempted to swallow the myth of "man-made climate change" that's going to kill us all, remember that the queer-theory atheist feminist vegans want you dead anyway, so why bother to indulge their lunacy? Them first -- the rest of us are happy to take our chances, just as mankind has been doing for thousands of years and will continue to do so for thousands more.