The Androgyny Effect

Everywhere one turns there are examples of a forced equality where all unique distinctions and achievements of individuals are discarded. The recent bailouts, both of citizens and companies, is one case of the lack of differentiation between those individuals who were responsible and those who were self-serving, as the latter were rewarded and artificially elevated to a similar status of the former.

Not content that in America today there are equal opportunities for all, groups that declare they are disadvantaged are demanding equal outcomes. This misplaced emphasis on a superficial comparison of results clouds the correlation of contribution to consequences. Rather than looking at successful outcomes and tracing through the efforts that produced this, self-interested groups choose to focus on a demographic difference to cry discrimination.

Forced equality to make everyone equal in all ways is mutating us into an androgynous country where no one is distinguishable. This androgyny is the result of feminism, which sought to remove distinctions between males and females to create a gender-neutral culture, and then other groups emulated this pattern to move us toward an artificial egalitarian society.

The first feminists advocated for equal voting rights, and when this was achieved they sought equal education and economic prospects. But once women entered the workforce in large numbers their emphasis shifted from equal access to an outcome-based standard of salaries as a measurement of equality. The feminists equated differing dollar amounts with discrimination. The presence of men already in the workforce, and the subsequent seniority and skill they had achieved over time, was dismissed in favor of a salary-based comparison to validate effort rather than result. This started to destroy merit-based systems and compensation based upon individual achievement.

Personal accomplishment then began to be discouraged in the very place where the perception of males and females being androgynous began: our public schools. Feminists shrieked that the lower participation of girls in math and science was a sign of discrimination rather than a sign of disinterest. They encouraged the teachers unions to change the curriculum to boost the number of girls taking hard sciences, ignoring how these feminizing changes began to disenfranchise young men.

The motivation or natural interest that produced a higher participation of males in math and science became the impetus for the feminists to start altering fundamental systems such as education to ensure, even to the disregard of its impact upon males, an increase in the number of females in each academic area. This became the model for increasing the number of girls who compete in school sporting events. Rather than creating more opportunities for females who desired to be on an athletic team, feminists decreased the number of boys playing sports so the number of athletes would be equal for both sexes.

A quota system, while destructive in schools and places of work, has potentially catastrophic consequences for our national security when it is applied to our armed services. Even the last bastion of masculinity, our military, was not immune to the feminist assault upon unique identities.

The feminists have practically achieved their goal of a gender-neutral military. In 1992 a Presidential Commission on women in the military discovered that only 1 out of 100 female soldiers were capable of achieving the same physical fitness standards as 60 out of 100 male soldiers could. But because test scores were “gender-normed,” with the grade of “A” for a woman being the equivalent to a “D” for a man, females were prevented from failing. The same Commission heard evidence from top military officials that between 40 and 50 percent of enlisted women were not physically capable of performing their specific occupations. But servicewomen were promoted and advanced alongside the men regardless of their physical ability to do their job.

Feminists have gone beyond manipulating physical fitness scores to ignoring the misdeeds of women soldiers that should warrant some disciplinary action. Beginning in the Persian Gulf War, servicewomen who got pregnant in the war zone and were sent home were still awarded a badge for combat service, and allowed to have equal recognition with their brothers and sisters-in-arms who remained in combat during the duration of their deployment. This diminished the perseverance of soldiers who remained at war, and endangered the mission due to manpower shortages.

Once the mandatory equality of men and women were instilled in our armed services, the next step became an androgyny for all soldiers. Beginning in 2001 black berets, traditionally worn only by Army Rangers, one of the army’s most elite all-male units tasked with doing impossible missions with near-impossible odds, were issued to all soldiers as an attempt to make everyone feel equally important. The years of gallant effort it took to wear a black beret was something to aspire to, and distributing them to everyone in the Army reduced the value of the Ranger unit who deserve to be distinguished.

Gender-norming is not as apparent in professions where physical capabilities don’t underlie measures of performance and contribute to readiness. But in the military, and those in the public safety such as fire and police officers, the measure of physical capabilities of women which are being manipulated to ensure androgyny demonstrate how far radical feminists are willing to go to prove there exists no distinctions between men and women.

For the past fifty years, feminists never remained satisfied with equality but continue to demand special rights and a glorification of everything feminine with a suppression of men and masculinity. The classical feminism of the suffragettes is not recognizable in its modern form of forced androgyny through gender-norming.

Where emotion makes logic leaps, the product is rarely rational. The aggressive feminization of our schools, workplaces, and military has fractured our society into diverse entities all competing for special rights rather than the betterment of our country. The distinctions which make us valued as unique individuals are disappearing, and the result is a society that is less productive, less cohesive, and less capable of advancing.