Customer Reviews

Why Women and Power Don't Mix

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This book opens with a bombshell: "Prior to this generation, in every society ever known, the power of women has been strictly limited, which is why societies have prospered. If or when a society failed to do this adequately, it simply ceased to exist." The author then proceeds to thoroughly support this contention.

Though by now debunking claims that sex differences are "socially constructed" and of ancient matriarchal civilizations should be redundant, there are still people promoting these claims and McDermott does not shirk the task of discrediting them yet again, in addition to covering fresher material.

McDermott reveals the truth to the old chestnut about men earning more for the same work, a truth that the feminist propaganda machine has wiped out: before the 60's, married men were paid more than single men (or women) because they had to support a wife and children. That is to say, before feminism "liberated" women, men were *legally obligated* to financially support their wives and children. Single men didn't even object to the higher salaries their married colleagues received because they knew perfectly well that the money was going to braces, tuition, and food and clothing for three or more people.

McDermott also chronicles how it is feminism that has destroyed civility in society. When men argue with each other, they know that the argument has the potential to escalate into violence, and because of this there are lines they traditionally do not cross. When feminists argue with men, they know that the very chivalry they decry makes them safe from such assault, so they feel free to say the most vicious (and irrational) things that enter their heads. (Indeed, it was only by capitalizing on this male reluctance to fight with women that feminism ever got anywhere.) Women have always, by necessity, had a better instinct for psychological manipulation and for knowing how to really damage someone with words, and today there are no restraints on them from doing so. "Men," McDermott points out, "are usually less apt to 'mess' with a woman's head. Men are well aware that emotional attacks on their partners' self-esteem will hurt women more than they understand (or intend), and will adversely affect future relations, sexual and otherwise." Thinking about my friendships and romantic relationships with both men and women, I can clearly see that he is right: women are much more psychologically cruel than men. Even the "bitchiest" male friend I ever had (who is no longer my friend, and who, by the way, grew up without a father) was gentle compared to a large percentage of the women who have passed through my life, leaving devastation in their wake.

He also, by the way, has the courage to point out that "women have never been stereotyped as the more rational sex" and speculates that feminine irrationality is at the base of feminist irrationality.

McDermott extensively discusses the effect of feminism on men. He explores the masculine need for competition and status, needs that women do not have to anything like the same extent. Then he shows that while women can certainly attain status by competing with men, men can only lose status by competing with women, and so they are disinclined to bother doing so. This means that the more women enter a particular hierarchy, the more men will leave it. Norway's government has become so feminized that men are remaining in the private sector instead, leaving women to govern the nation. As women invade more and more areas of life, men are forced to either build their own enterprises or else enter a life of crime, since criminals are indifferent to sex discrimination regulations. Obviously, leaving capable men with few arenas for status other than crime is a highly dangerous strategy, and no doubt has more than a little to do with the skyrocketing crime rate since Women's Lib began.

In the 70's, when women first really moved into the workplace on allegedly equal footing with men, they quickly found that they simply could not compete with aggressive, strategically-thinking men. Feminism's next move, therefore, was to feminize men so that women could compete with them.

In addition, the more women there are in an institution, the less public trust it has. Consider that women completely dominate America's least-trusted institution today, our schools. McDermott doesn't mention this detail, but the widespread speculation about why Japan's schools are so much better than those of America or Europe carefully ignores one glaring fact: 80% of Japanese schoolteachers are men.

Men and women both need self-esteem, but their methods and motives are very different. Since men don't give birth, they turned to work and creation to justify their existence. This makes it all the more destructive to men when women insist upon competing with men and robbing them of the chance for real status. This, by the way, is also why men have largely abandoned the courtesy they showed to women before feminism and become harassers. At an instinctive level, they are trying to drive women out of their contests.

Traditional roles and obligations are essential to a free society: "Absent [honor], only a virtual police state will be able to deal with men and women who haven't the inner honor to control themselves."

In dealing with the promiscuity feminism has promoted, he not only points out the more obvious troubles, but also shows why the excessive adolescent sexual awareness we have forced on our young people is psychological harmful to them. He also notes, "Despite their claims to the contrary, the principles of feminism are the principles of dependency - dependency on society at large, to avoid dependency upon family."

McDermott documents the harmful effect of day care on children and insists that just as men cannot be excused from the responsibilities of providing and protecting (as in the military), women cannot be excused from the responsibilities of looking after their children.

He finishes with a few practical measures men can take to begin to reverse the destructive effect feminism has had upon society. "If a significant percentage of men would put their foot down as a unified group, the blight known as feminism would end." I can only hope that American men will do this before Islamofascists carry out their plan to install a new and infinitely more oppressive form of patriarchy. Unfortunately, feminism has rendered our defense against this malignant Islamic patriarchy negligible. When American women are compelled to wear chadors and publicly executed for speaking to a man other than a relative, they can thank feminism.

"In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them."
~ Mary Jo Bane; assistant professor of education at Wellesley College and director of the Center for Research on Women

"The most merciful thing a large family can do for one of its infant members is to kill it."
~ Margaret Sanger; founder of Planned Parenthood

"What we are saying is that abortion becomes one of the choices, and the (woman) has the right to choose whatever it is that is best that they need as necessary and best for them in the situation for which they find themselves, be it abortion, to keep, to adopt, to sell, to leave in a dumpster, to put on your porch, whatever; it's the person's right to choose."
~ Esther Langston; professor of social work at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

"Infanticide is not a great wrong. I do not want to be construed as condemning women who, under certain circumstances, quietly put their infants to death."
~ Beverly Harrison; professor of Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary

"We have yet to beat our drums for birth control in the way we beat them for polio vaccine, we are still unable to put babies in the class of dangerous epidemics, even though this is the exact truth,"
~ Mary S. Calderone, M.D.; head of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) and former president and medical director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America

"No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Women should not have the choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one."
~ Simone de Beauvoir; existentialist philosopher and author of 'The Second Sex'

"The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be indentified as a lesbian to be fully feminist."
~ The National Organization for Women (N.O.W.)

I opened this review with these disturbing quotations found in 'WHY WOMEN AND POWER DON'T MIX' in order to make you see very clearly from the get-go that in Feminism, what we are dealing with is an extremist agenda being promoted by severely demented individuals who have indoctrinated and continue to indoctrinate the masses from highly esteemed and influential positions. We must take the author with the utmost seriousness when he warns: "To underestimate the power of the movement, or to ignore it, is to put our future in great danger. The movement, which virtually owns our educational and mass media systems, cannot be permitted to continue manipulating its followers, our society, and our leaders as it presently does without fear of repudiation, because our entire society is rapidly degenerating toward social ruin as a result of following the movement's manifesto...Do men need to unite to fight feminism? Yes, they do. Should reasonable, thinking women, who value their femininity, unite with men? Yes, they should."

There may be more current antifeminism books available, and there may be more entertaining antifeminism books available, but if there is a more comprehensive and well-researched antifeminism book available than 'WHY WOMEN AND POWER DON'T MIX' by J.P. McDermott, then I am completely unaware of it.

In his 1996 book, 'WHY WOMEN AND POWER DON'T MIX' (a title regrettably sure to scare off many women who owe it to themselves to study it), McDermott - with a keen ability to analyze, theorize, and penetrate cause and effect inevitability - examines nearly every angle of the feminist movement, clearly illustrating its many pitfalls and the pernicious ways that it drastically undermines social stability and has the very real potential to wreak havoc on naturally ordered cultures. In the micro, it ultimately brings dissatisfaction to every member of society and in the macro - if not counteracted - is destined to culminate in "a boring, loveless society of automatons, blindly following the dictates of technocratic masters, OR degeneration and entropy will occur, leading to a state of societal barbarism." Does that sound exaggerated to you? If so, then I hereby challenge you to read McDermott's book and see if you can find any significant flaws in his reasoning!

With his powerful logic, the author takes us through a sound examination of every specious aspect of the Feminist Movement, from the methodology that the movement uses to deceive the masses and silence its detractors, to the terrible effects that it is having on individuals of BOTH genders and the nation as a whole, as well as the disastrous consequences that can be reasonably expected should the feminists succeed in their aims of creating a virtually androgynous society.

McDermott's insight linking Feminism with an inevitable Socialistic state is entirely on target, and evidences a deeper level of contemplation and profound understanding of his subject matter than you will find in the vast majority of publications focused on this topic. Only in one relatively minor respect do I diverge from the author's assessment:

In chapters 3 and 4, the author explains how the feminists came to power and acquired the means for mass deception by capturing the American media and academic fields. On page 59 he writes: "From discussion with a number of professors, it's apparent that they frequently perceive themselves as the brilliant and brave leaders of a foresighted leftist rebellion, but fail to realize that they exist only as pawns in the pockets of feminists. They are so naive that they are incapable of understanding that leftist thought and speech no longer require intellectual bravery and that the reverse is now true."

McDermott couldn't be more right about it now being the Conservative voices that must exhibit the greatest amount of bravery and fortitude in our society since the leftists are the overwhelming coercive force that mindlessly shouts down and ridicules all opposition with ad hominem attacks (due to years of academic and media brainwashing). But I disagree with the author about which party is the pawn in the other party's pocket...

As far back as the autumn of 1920, Vladimir Lenin said from the Kremlin, "We must create a powerful international women's movement." Where did this important communist get the idea that a women's movement would further promote the cause of Socialism? (Certainly of greater interest to him than improving the plight of women around the globe!) Well, look no further than the Communist Manifesto itself. It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate from the following quote from Marx's manifesto that reengineering the social structure as it pertained to men and women would go a long way toward breaking down society at large and conditioning it to accept new political systems: Marx wrote, "Communists everywhere SUPPORT EVERY REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT AGAINST THE EXISTING SOCIAL...ORDER OF THINGS. Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible OVERTHROW OF ALL EXISTING SOCIAL CONDITIONS." (Emphasis mine.)

Although after 40 years of infiltration, there can be no doubt that innumerable feminists hold positions of great influence in the mass media, in academia, congress and the judiciary, however, in its earlier stages, Feminism could never have gained a foothold had it not been for the socialists already entrenched in those influential spheres who supported and enhanced the feminist agenda through indoctrination and legislation. Not every feminist is a socialist (or could even define the term) and it is clear to me that it is the feminists who have always been the pawns in the pockets of the highly organized socialists, it is the feminists who have been used - often unbeknownst to them - to further the goals of Socialism's revolution. (Do the feminists REALLY think that when the A.C.L.U. goes to bat for them it is because that Socialistic front group is earnestly concerned about women? Oh, please!) This is the only point on which the author and I disagree, but who is manipulating whom is mostly irrelevant as the end result is the same, as McDermott states, it all must end in Socialism (surprise!)

My only other (small) complaint is that although the author usually cites his sources in the body of the text, occasionally he does not and so this book is in need of a references section. And I always feel that a book of this nature requires a subject index.

Nevertheless, 'WHY WOMEN AND POWER DON'T MIX' by J.P. McDermott is a cogent and scholarly in-depth examination of the negative social, economic, and psychological manifestations resulting from the artificial suppression of the NATURAL patriarchal social order (even feminists concede that no matriarchal society has ever been found) and the installation of androgyny in its place, resulting ultimately in matriarchy and then Socialism. Whether you be a man or a woman, if you are committed to the path of understanding this dire social condition's impact which we can clearly discern in our daily lives now, then I unhesitatingly say that your journey on that path should start right here - McDermott's book is step number one! Now get walking, will ya?

JP McDermott's Why Women and Power Don't Mix is a work with a lot of potential, but its sloppy execution renders it more like an angry blog than a seminal piece about the faults of modern feminism. He hits many of the right themes--how the feminist agenda affects sex roles, how the nuclear family is endangered, what the social effects of this are for relationships, and so forth. These are welcome thoughts and the concepts are well-illuminated.

However, the book suffers from a lack of credibility. First, the title is a misnomer, designed solely to antagonize other patrons in the coffee shop. The book is not about why women and power don't mix, though a book could be written about that; it is about how feminists are ripping apart the fabric of western society. Even then, Mr. McDermott would have been well-suited to do some historical research and illuminate how our current trends reflect excesses that have already occurred throughout history, and what the results for those societies were. That would have made for some very interesting reading.

Further, Mr. McDermott, in developing his themes, falls short in citing facts or studies to support his assertions. He uses, for example, slipshod argumentation in chapter 14 (and this is a recurring fault through the book--this is just the chapter I picked for this) when he says, at the end of the opening paragraph, "... the leaders of feminism can so frequently be heard scorning and ridiculing the family..." Can they? Great. Cite some examples or sources--else you come off as unable to support your argument. On the next page, when saying "This family [the nuclear family], overall, provides the most beneficial living arrangement for its members, for its community, and for society as a whole." Does it? Great. Cite studies and show what they mean, instead of just making assertions. This is the key point to the entire chapter, and it's just thrown out for the reader to take at face value. On the next page: "Moreover, many--particularly children--have absolutely no choice about living in such conditions[alternate forms of family], though we all know what their true preference would be if they did have a choice." The "we all know" fallacy does NOT support the argument--it just exposes lack of research, citation, and explanation. In a footnote and several other places, Mr. McDermott says "There is a growing body of evidence that [x]"-- Great! Show us the evidence! Please! Don't just tease with assertions!

These are not the only examples I found, but for this review I think they are enough. There are many studies available including various longitudinal studies of youth, media surveys, modern psychological research, think-tank reports, and so on, that Mr. McDermott could have used to support his arguments. However, he chose not to. I am not sure why, because he could have had a very compelling and credible work if he had put in the foundation for it. Without the facts to support him, Mr. McDermott opens himself up to a number of attacks, not the least of which being that he is just an opinionated crackpot because he can't support his assertions. Citations and explanations would prevent that and help him be taken seriously.

He makes it difficult for people to argue for his point of view, because when someone calls out an assertion and asks what the source is, he'll hear "well... we all know..." which is poor argumentation. I personally enjoy taking good talking points into conversation, but they have to be credible for me to do that. I look to the author to back his own statements up.

Unfortunately, Mr McDermott turned a potentially great book into a sort of cathartic blog echo-chamber prompt instead of developing a really solid work. I miss it for what it might have been.

I understand all-too-well the desire to bait feministas as it can be both entertaining and satisfying, but I do wish that J.P. McDermott, in this seldom referenced book, had resisted the urge to call his publishing house "Patriarchic Publishing" as it gives his enemies unearned justification for dismissing his insight. Furthermore, one could say the same thing about the title which really should be less adversarial in my opinion. The reason why this is rather tragic is that the author shares some excellent analysis with his readers in this concise work. When he mentions the research he put into its writing, he is being serious because many of the quotations cited are quite valuable. Unlike some of the other men's rights books out there, McDermott's attacks on feminists cannot be confused with attacks on women. He does not make the mistake of giving the radicals ground by pretending that they are somehow representative of the whole--which they definitely are not. I think readers will find that this is a more scholarly work than they expected and that many of the author's views are unique. I think he's the first one I've read to thoroughly dissect why it is that conservatives, and men in general, fair so poorly in arguments with feminists despite their lies being easily identifiable and their positions having the consistency of beef stew. I can honestly say that this book adds greatly to the literature indicting feminism.