One of Britain’s leading voices in the radical feminist movement, Julie Bindel, has called for a ban against heterosexual men and heterosexuality in general, also advocating that heterosexual men be put into camps. While her views may seem extreme, she enjoys widespread support among the radical feminist movement. In an earlier time, the feminist movement sought equality in areas of politics and employment. There was a time when government bureaucracies were staffed exclusively by men while the reviled private sector was actually creating new employment opportunities for women, the result of inventive men have created the appropriate tools.

Two centuries ago, slave owners put black women to work on their farms and plantations doing onerous, tedious and backbreaking work. Joseph Singer’s invention, the foot treadle sewing machine, allowed a woman to sew as much material in a day as 100 women working with needle and thread. Eli Whitney’s invention, the cotton gin that separated tufts of cotton from cotton plants, allowed two people to separate as much cotton as 50 who worked by hand.

Slave owners recognized that male slaves were physically stronger than female slaves and were capable of physically more demanding work. But inventive men continually developed tools that made physical work more productive and less physically demanding. They installed waterwheels on the banks of fast-flowing rivers and let water power do physically demanding work, easing the burden on slaves and animals. Improved designs of waterwheels delivered ever-increasing amounts of power and changed the nature of work, requiring a worker with technical ability to open and close valves on water pipes and operate levers to control how water performed the physical work of production, replacing dozens of animals and slaves.

Inventive men developed the typewriter that eased secretarial work and opened the doors for non-slave women to become employed and earn a wage or salary doing work that was of great importance and that required comparatively minimal physical effort. The invention of the electric telegraph during the 19th century allowed for rapid long-distance telecommunications and employed workers who had to memorize the Morse code of dots and dashes and operate a button to compose and transmit messages. While the majority of telegraph operators were men, women were also hired as telegraph operators.
 

“Are radical feminists out there proud of this leading voice? Or will they speak out and denounce her totalitarian suggestion?”

The invention of the telephone during the early 20th century allowed people who were at a great distance from each other to converse in real time. Telephone technology required operators to keep the system functioning by doing work that required minimal physical effort. Shortly after the introduction of telephone services, telephone companies hired and trained women to work as telephone operators, many becoming supervisors prior to the outbreak of the First World War, when government bureaucracies were the exclusive domain of men, but employed women as secretaries.

The early women’s rights movement campaigned for women’s right to vote. The early women’s rights movements targeted their lobbying efforts against governments and not against private business owners that employed women as secretaries at offices and cashiers in then-newly created department stores. The invention, development and implementation of tools that minimized the physical effort applied to the task of production while greatly increasing productive output often required that workers be trained for such job classifications. Jobs appeared that required increasing numbers of workers capable of reading, writing and basic numerical calculation. Technical advancement indirectly created a need for teachers, including women, who taught children.

Today, the majority of private sector professional level occupations that require educated and trained personnel are open to women and vast numbers of women are employed in such occupations. Most of the technologies that educated women use in the course of performing their professional duties are based on technologies that were invented decades ago, by a comparatively small number of male inventors. These technologies have made it possible for women to start and run their own small businesses, and in today’s economy, the majority of successful small businesses are started by women.

While large numbers of women are starting businesses worldwide today, the history of female entrepreneurship is long, involving such activities as sewing services, clothes repair, baking, typing services, bookkeeping services, child care, child education, food preparation and other home-based entrepreneurial businesses. There is nothing to link the early women’s movement, the later women’s liberation movement, the early feminist movement, and more recently the radical feminist movement, to opening doors for women to become entrepreneurs and business owners. Women entrepreneurs seem to have achieved their successes independently of any action by such movements.

Now a leading voice of the radical feminist movement calls for heterosexual men to be put into supervised camps and for heterosexuality to be banned? Are radical feminists out there proud of this leading voice? Or will they speak out and denounce her totalitarian suggestion?

Harry Valentine is a free-marketeer living in Eastern Ontario.

From the same author

▪ Residential Schools and Governmental Failure
(no 333 – June 15, 2015)

▪ Ontario Sex-Ed Curriculum Protests & Government Infallibility
(no 332 – May 15, 2015)

▪ Water as State Property
(no 332 – May 15, 2015)

▪ Free Market Trade and Border Towns
(no 330 – March 15, 2015)

▪ Growing Concerns about Sexual Violence on Campus
(no 329 – February 15, 2015)

▪ Alberta Challenges Home-Schooling Families
(no 329 – February 15, 2015)

▪ More...

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