Tuesday, August 24, 2010

World Without Men

A 1950's sci-fi novel explores the consequences of feminism and social engineering.
The blurb on the thirty-five cent Ace paperback likens Charles Eric Maine’s 1958 novel World without Men to George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’sBrave New World.  Ordinarily – and in consideration of the genre and the lurid cover – one would regard such a comparison skeptically.  Nevertheless, while not rising to the artistic level of the Orwell and Huxley masterpieces, World without Men merits being rescued from the large catalogue of 1950s paperback throwaways, not least because of Maine’s vision of an ideological dystopia is based on criticism, not of socialism or communism per se nor of technocracy per se, but rather of feminism.  Maine saw in the nascent feminism of his day (the immediate postwar period) a dehumanizing and destructive force, tending towards totalitarianism, which had the potential to deform society in radical, unnatural ways.  Maine grasped that feminism – the dogmatic delusion that women are morally and intellectually superior to men – derived its fundamental premises from hatred of, not respect for, the natural order; he grasped also that feminism entailed a fantastic rebellion against sexual dimorphism, which therefore also entailed a total rejection of inherited morality.

In World without Men, Maine asserts that the encouragement of sexual hedonism, the spread of pornography into the mainstream of public culture, and the proscription of masculinity are inevitable consequences of the feminist program, once established. The fifty years since the novel’s publication – as a thirty-five cent paperback – have vindicated Maine’s notable prescience as a social commentator.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Actions have consequences.

Two world wars radicalized many a domestic mater victrix. I see it in my own family of origin, and my husbands reaching back to our grandmothers experience of fending for themselves when a whole swathe of men were moved down as cannon fodder - a World without Men was created by men, for men and of men (and women) who have a very warped sense of what conditions are necessary for peace and flourishing. Mid century I've learned the errors of my ways, but you'd be surprised how many disagreements I get into with my mother-in-law (a WWII vet) and my mother (a rationing-baby) about it!

War is evil, that it leaves evil in its wake is hardly surprising. Frenchman Bastiat taught the "broken window fallacy" over a century ago, but too many in the male bastions of society (the law, the financial services industry and the military) still haven't learned that earning a living from destruction is contrary to the natural law! You don't create wealth by breaking things...! We can't flourish as human beings by behaving inhumanely..!

I still call myself a feminist: of the natural law variety, one who defends inate femininity as crucial to the ecology of a "planet parenthood" of souls yearning for the eternal home. Masculinists have a lot to answer for, a dearth of male bodies sitting in church pews on Sundays for example (manly men don't do religion...)