LKM Answers The Feminists

For better or worse, the nuclear family is the basic structural unit of every society and nation on earth. Even societies which recognize the legitimacy of such extended family forms as clans and tribes, still require nuclear families as the irreducible unit to comprise them. No human generational continuity with such organization is possible without joint sexual activity of one man and one woman.

Feminists say child-bearing is slavery, and marriage is therefore male chauvinist oppression of women. They call for the complete destruction of the marriage institution as a major step towards their freedom. Let us be sufficiently politically-incorrect to follow this road, and see, to where it eventually leads.

With nobody alive today having children, the earth would become completely de-populated in about one century, as people die without leaving any progeny. Shrinkage of the population on such a drastic scale would bring on excruciatingly painful economic adjustments, as the economy shrinks concommitantly with the population. This may make the environmentalists very happy in the short run, as the earth returns to a pristine state of wilderness existence. But they, too, would eventually find their own lives severely impacted by extreme economic reversals. Economic growth with population shrinkage is completely incongruous.

With the crashing of the marriage institution would also come the loss of all private property. The identification of all property as being private necessarily involves legal association of the property with a family name, to distinguish its unique personal ownership from all other possibilities of possession arrangement.

Karl Marx advocated destruction of the family for this reason, saying private property ownership makes a virtue out of greed. But the feminists, without private property ownership of their own, will likewise have no power base from which to rule the rest of society as they wish. So, the abolition of the private family in favor of some form of government-administered communal existence would render the rise of feminism as a form of special socio-economic priviledge highly unlikely to occur.

Feminists say if only maledom did not exist, their lives would be immeasurably happier. But women still have economic and socio-political conflicts among themselves which would not immediately and automatically disappear with the total demise of maledom.

What about gender role reversals, as some more moderate feminists advocate? Some men are gradually agreeing to such accomodations, and this writer has frequently wondered, what America would look like with all levers of government power and authority monopolized by the distaff side. It is indeed an intriguing question. But women would need to accept concommitant increase of responsibility with their expansion of political power. As their preoccupation with careers trumps traditional marriage and family life, they would rule over a populace faced with the severe economic consequences of dire population shrinkage. Planning accordingly would be an especially monumental task for an all-female government, with the institution of the family gone, and all private property with it.

It is often said that politics makes strange bed-fellows. In this case, the feminists, in their quest for total sexual freedom, have a staunch ally in pornography-king Larry Flynt and his ideological "progeny". They may both agree to the proposition of free sex for any consenting adults anywhere and any time. But finally, the feminists should be warned that this one objective is all the two camps share in common, and in the purveyors of pornography, they are likely to face mortal foes otherwise.

-Lawrence K. Marsh