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Why Socialism Doesn't Work

Why Socialism Doesn't Work

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Impress Polly
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Oct 5 2025, 9:18 PM
#1
There's a thread over on Womad.Life called "Submission is a male trait" that reads as follows:

Quote:men operate best in systems built around a hierarchy. examples: the government, the military. We see it in the workplace. We can even see it in their friendships. There is the one who dominates and makes all the decisions/who is idolized as better, and the many who are dominated, who seek validation and will support the leader unconditionally, and it just so happens men work best in these conditions. They thrive when they are being told what to do.

In a male only workplace, the employees naturally submit to the boss, however, in a female only workplace the women don't usually dominate or submit to each other. It's more of a collaborative space where every woman's thoughts are taken into account by the manager.

Men naturally submit to stronger men around them. They idolize men that are better than them and they actually want and expect those men to dominate them. They like making the boss happy. Men only want to dominate others if they believe they are the strongest in the room.

Men have this ingrained need for a pack, you can see it with teenage boys vs teenage girls. Teenage boys are in a pack, while teenage girls have like 2-3 best friends with whom they are equal. But with pack comes hierarchy. Women are more independent by nature, like cats, while men are more like dogs.

Also the giveaway to me was the male's propensity to create idols and follow them, like those manosphere influencers. Nothing is more beta than being a follower, yet they do that so readily. They like being told by an alpha man what to do


TL/DR The masculine is both domination AND submission. The feminine is cooperation

And one of the noteworthy comments on this reads:

Quote:Hierarchy is a patriarchal thing. Men will destroy one another and put their own patriarchal world in danger through their own stupidity. I've also seen women arguing that it's nothing wrong to fight against each other for power in a women-only society, and they point to hyenas as an exmaple. I always disagree with that. Where there is hierarchy, there is opression, and no women should suffer from that. A women-only world should be decentralized and everybody deserves equal rights.


It's a slight oversimplification, to be sure, but there's definitely something here, IMO. Like you can even see it in young children; like how everyone knows the ranking system of the Boy Scouts, but few could tell you what that of the Girl Scouts is because the latter ranking system barely matters. I'm a lifelong hardcore video gamer and I've similarly noticed over the years that men tend to prefer more challenging games (something to conquer) that are more straightforward and linear, with clear directions, or else ones that are designed mainly as competitions between players, while women will tend to prefer more open-ended experiences that allow them more freedom and opportunities for collaboration. In these and a thousand other different expressions, you will find the point that both dominating and submitting to power are male-skewing traits, while autonomy and free cooperation are female-skewing desires, valid.

I think you'll also find that that which works for hyenas isn't necessarily in the human woman's DNA. It seems pretty clear to me that human females are much less competitive, and this gets to the heart of why experiments in socialist socio-economic reorganization never seem to work out. Of course they don't! They all involve men, invariably including as the leaders of these projects! Seriously, whenever you talk to an ideological capitalist about why socialism failed in the 20th century, the argument you get back is that equality is unnatural to our species; that human beings strive to compete with each other, pursue social stratification on instinct, and so trying to force them not to is always going to fail and make them less productive. But ideological capitalists are also mostly male, by no coincidence! It begs the question of whether vying to always be part of a competitive game is in fact human nature...or whether it's more like just male nature. Is the case of the free market crowd really just men projecting their own instincts onto the rest of us? I think it is.

Why do you think socialist societies tend to wind up as repressive police states and personality cults despite ostensibly being aimed toward the elimination of the class system? Men. The hierarchical male mind turns them into castes; turns shared property into state property and the state into private property run by men. Men as a sex are incapable of building an egalitarian world. It's not the way they're hard-wired. They need to be excluded from such efforts. Conversely, I can see no reason why women, left to ourselves, cannot build more sharing into our economies and less tyranny into our systems of government. We're naturally more collaborative and caring!

This is why I disagree with the socialist feminists -- the Bernie bro types who insist that economic restructuring must precede female empowerment. It's not that I ain't a socialist, it's that socialism can only be built successfully by women on our own, to which end the liberation of women from male oppression must take precedence as a priority over a socialist reorganization of the economy in order for the latter to have hope of working out.
Edited Oct 6 2025, 10:20 PM by Impress Polly.
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Impress Polly
The kind they warned you about.
Oct 5 2025, 9:18 PM #1

There's a thread over on Womad.Life called "Submission is a male trait" that reads as follows:

Quote:men operate best in systems built around a hierarchy. examples: the government, the military. We see it in the workplace. We can even see it in their friendships. There is the one who dominates and makes all the decisions/who is idolized as better, and the many who are dominated, who seek validation and will support the leader unconditionally, and it just so happens men work best in these conditions. They thrive when they are being told what to do.

In a male only workplace, the employees naturally submit to the boss, however, in a female only workplace the women don't usually dominate or submit to each other. It's more of a collaborative space where every woman's thoughts are taken into account by the manager.

Men naturally submit to stronger men around them. They idolize men that are better than them and they actually want and expect those men to dominate them. They like making the boss happy. Men only want to dominate others if they believe they are the strongest in the room.

Men have this ingrained need for a pack, you can see it with teenage boys vs teenage girls. Teenage boys are in a pack, while teenage girls have like 2-3 best friends with whom they are equal. But with pack comes hierarchy. Women are more independent by nature, like cats, while men are more like dogs.

Also the giveaway to me was the male's propensity to create idols and follow them, like those manosphere influencers. Nothing is more beta than being a follower, yet they do that so readily. They like being told by an alpha man what to do


TL/DR The masculine is both domination AND submission. The feminine is cooperation

And one of the noteworthy comments on this reads:

Quote:Hierarchy is a patriarchal thing. Men will destroy one another and put their own patriarchal world in danger through their own stupidity. I've also seen women arguing that it's nothing wrong to fight against each other for power in a women-only society, and they point to hyenas as an exmaple. I always disagree with that. Where there is hierarchy, there is opression, and no women should suffer from that. A women-only world should be decentralized and everybody deserves equal rights.


It's a slight oversimplification, to be sure, but there's definitely something here, IMO. Like you can even see it in young children; like how everyone knows the ranking system of the Boy Scouts, but few could tell you what that of the Girl Scouts is because the latter ranking system barely matters. I'm a lifelong hardcore video gamer and I've similarly noticed over the years that men tend to prefer more challenging games (something to conquer) that are more straightforward and linear, with clear directions, or else ones that are designed mainly as competitions between players, while women will tend to prefer more open-ended experiences that allow them more freedom and opportunities for collaboration. In these and a thousand other different expressions, you will find the point that both dominating and submitting to power are male-skewing traits, while autonomy and free cooperation are female-skewing desires, valid.

I think you'll also find that that which works for hyenas isn't necessarily in the human woman's DNA. It seems pretty clear to me that human females are much less competitive, and this gets to the heart of why experiments in socialist socio-economic reorganization never seem to work out. Of course they don't! They all involve men, invariably including as the leaders of these projects! Seriously, whenever you talk to an ideological capitalist about why socialism failed in the 20th century, the argument you get back is that equality is unnatural to our species; that human beings strive to compete with each other, pursue social stratification on instinct, and so trying to force them not to is always going to fail and make them less productive. But ideological capitalists are also mostly male, by no coincidence! It begs the question of whether vying to always be part of a competitive game is in fact human nature...or whether it's more like just male nature. Is the case of the free market crowd really just men projecting their own instincts onto the rest of us? I think it is.

Why do you think socialist societies tend to wind up as repressive police states and personality cults despite ostensibly being aimed toward the elimination of the class system? Men. The hierarchical male mind turns them into castes; turns shared property into state property and the state into private property run by men. Men as a sex are incapable of building an egalitarian world. It's not the way they're hard-wired. They need to be excluded from such efforts. Conversely, I can see no reason why women, left to ourselves, cannot build more sharing into our economies and less tyranny into our systems of government. We're naturally more collaborative and caring!

This is why I disagree with the socialist feminists -- the Bernie bro types who insist that economic restructuring must precede female empowerment. It's not that I ain't a socialist, it's that socialism can only be built successfully by women on our own, to which end the liberation of women from male oppression must take precedence as a priority over a socialist reorganization of the economy in order for the latter to have hope of working out.

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Clover
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Oct 5 2025, 11:48 PM
#2
Yeah, so, a good majority of this is biological essentialism, which starkly distinguishes black pill women (black pill feminists..?) from radical feminists.

Things like:

  • "Submission is a male trait"

  • Pretty much the entire first quote

  • Most of the rest of your commentary in the post

All fall under the stereotyping of the sexes, usually with the pretense that the stereotyping is "natural" or "innate", which is antithetical to radical feminism.

The "noteworthy comment" quote is interesting.

  • "Hierarchy is a patriarchal thing."
    • Yes.

  • "Men will destroy one another and put their own patriarchal world in danger through their own stupidity."
    • Yes.

  • "I've also seen women arguing that it's nothing wrong to fight against each other for power in a women-only society, and they point to hyenas as an exmaple."
    • I'm probably out of the loop since I assume this arguments around the introspection of a "women-only society" is deep into black pill... feminism (..?), but yeah, generally when one gets to the point of equating human beings to other animals as the primary arguments, especially non-primates, the debate likely has gone to shit. See also: TRAs justifying transgenderism with every animal under the sun with some quirky sex based behavior ("B-b-but clownfish! B-b-but male seahorses! B-b-but female lions growing manes!!!").

  • "Where there is hierarchy, there is opression, and no women should suffer from that."
    • Absolutely.

  • "A women-only world should be decentralized and everybody deserves equal rights."
    • I, uh... Again, I'm not part of this blackpill culture, but I guess I find it a bit ironic to want to make a world where "everybody deserves equal rights" (which is a lovely desire that I wholeheartedly support) but also believe men should not exist? lol.

Quote:It seems pretty clear to me that human females are much less competitive, and it gets to the heart of why experiments in socialist socio-economic reorganizations never seem to work out. Of course they don't! They all involve men, invariably including as the leaders of these projects! Seriously, whenever you talk to an ideological capitalist about why socialism failed in the 20th century, the argument you get back is that equality is unnatural to our species; that human beings strive to compete with each other, pursue social stratification on instinct, and so trying to force them not to is always going to fail and make them less productive. But ideological capitalists are also mostly male, by no coincidence! It begs the question of whether vying for power and domination over others is in fact human nature...or whether it's more like just male nature. Is the case of the free market crowd really just men projecting their own instincts onto the rest of us?

This is an interesting observation. However, why is the conclusion here that the explanations of the ideological capitalist [men] back in the 20th century with socialism being deemed "unnatural" by them one of male nature and not of capitalist (male) nature? Patriarchal structures and institutions have existed well before the entrenched capitalism of the modern day, where men in their thoroughly male-dominated capitalist system have had enough comfort at the top of their sexist hierarchy that they began to feel comfortable using pseudoscience as a way to justify their unjust oppression on both women and the working class?

I believe "vying for power and domination over others" is in fact human nature (and "male" nature is ultimately "human nature"), but a harmful and corrupted form of it. It is an antisocial behavior and therefore ultimately poisonous to human beings, a social species who are most successful using the social tool of collaboration. The desire to seek power and domination is a corrupted form of human nature that spreads kind of like a mind virus, as those "infected" with it realize the gains to be had with it and refuse to let go of it, and then some others attempt to "join in" to reap the "benefits", much to the detriment to the rest of human society.

When patriarchy is established, then the "power and domination over others" is established, with the "others" being women. When this power and domination over others collides with capitalist systems, then the "others" also include the working class. Therein lies one of the intersecting axes of oppression: class and sex.

Quote:Why do you think socialist societies tend to wind up as repressive police states and personality cults despite ostensibly being aimed toward the elimination of the class system? Men. The hierarchical male mind turns them into castes; turns socialized economies into state property and the state into private property run by men.

That's uh.... I guess I can't fully disagree that men are the reason socialist systems fail, but that's because I'd think patriarchy usually has already been instilled into the society to some degree, which socialist systems would dismantle, and men comfy in their patriarchal culture would rather toil under regressive capitalist systems than give up their ability to oppress their society's women. 

Quote:Men as a sex are incapable of building an egalitarian world. It's not the way they're hard-wired. They need to be excluded from such efforts. Conversely, I can see no reason why women, left to ourselves, cannot build more sharing into our economies and less tyranny into our systems of government. We're naturally more collaborative and caring.

I mean, since this is a radfem-aligned forum, hard disagree on most of this. A majority of this is straight up biological essentialism. I do believe men can help build an egalitarian world, but humanity is facing quite the uphill battle, given the power the male class holds through patriarchy. And I know we have this core disagreement, so there's not very much I can say here since it boils down to a matter of opinionated belief in the limits of humanity.

I do think men can be and have been part of egalitarian "worlds." I am reminded of the excerpt from Caliban and the Witch (also shout-out to Bubzy3D from Ovarit for occasionally blasting this quote on Ovarit when she was active there, which is where I read this from, bless her where ever she is 💜):

Caliban and the Witch As often happened when Europeans came in contact with native American populations, the French were impressed by Montagnais-Naskapi generosity, their sense of cooperation and indifference to status, but they were scandalized by their “lack of morals;” they saw that the Naskapi had no conception of private property, of authority, of male superiority, and they even refused to punish their children (Leacock 1981: 34–38). The Jesuits decided to change all that, setting out to teach the Indians the basic elements of civilization, convinced that this was necessary to turn them into reliable trade partners. In this spirit, they first taught them that “man is the master,” that “in France women do not rule their husbands,” and that courting at night, divorce at either partner’s desire, and sexual freedom for both spouses, before or after marriage, had to be forbidden. Here is a telling exchange Le Jeune had, on this score, with a Naskapi man:

“I told him it was not honorable for a woman to love anyone else except her husband, and that this evil being among them, he himself was not sure that his son, who was present, was his son. He replied, ‘Thou has no sense. You French people love only your children; but we love all the children of our tribe.’ I began to laugh seeing that he philosophized in horse and mule fashion” (ibid.: 50).

Backed by the Governor of New France, the Jesuits succeeded in convincing the Naskapi to provide themselves with some chiefs, and bring “their” women to order. Typically, one weapon they used was to insinuate that women who were too independent and did not obey their husbands were creatures of the devil. When, angered by the men’s attempts to subdue them, the Naskapi women ran away, the Jesuits persuaded the men to chase after their spouses and threaten them with imprisonment:

“Such acts of justice”—Le Jeune proudly commented in one particular case—“cause no surprise in France, because it is usual there to proceed in that manner. But among these people … where everyone considers himself from birth as free as the wild animals that roam in their great forests … it is a marvel, or rather a miracle, to see a peremptory command obeyed, or any act of severity or justice performed” (ibid.: 54).

The Jesuits’ greatest victory, however, was persuading the Naskapi to beat their children, believing that the “savages’” excessive fondness for their offspring was the major obstacle to their Christianization. Le Jeune’s diary records the first instance in which a girl was publicly beaten, while one of her relatives gave a chilling lecture to the bystanders on the historic significance of the event: “This is the first punishment by beating (he said) we inflict on anyone of our Nation …” (ibid.: 54–55).

Learning about historical accounts like this prevents me from entertaining blackpill ideals. There is kindness, compassion, morality, and ethics, in all human beings, and yes, that includes men. Men have been socialized for millennia to degrade and oppress women, but I do believe it is possible for them to unlearn this. 

Quote:This is why I disagree with the socialist feminists -- the Bernie bro types who insist that economic restructuring must precede female empowerment.

This is more of a sidenote, but I have learned some socialist feminists would deride being grouped in with Bernie Sanders. They would consider him a sellout to the Democrat party. Ngl, I'd probably be described as a "Bernie Bro" and I'm not an expert in socialism/socialist feminism, so I asked one socialist feminist what's wrong with Bernie Sanders and she shared with me this article: Bernie Out of the Closet: Sanders’ Longstanding Deal with the Democrats

In response to your statements on why socialist experiments have failed in the past, she mentioned that it's not because humans are inherently greedy, but it's because of the “capitalist contradictions carrying over into socialism and what we would call a ‘two line struggle’ (an ongoing struggle between communists and those who want to restore capitalism).”

Quote:It's not that I ain't a socialist, it's that socialism can only be built successfully by women on our own, to which end the liberation of women from male oppression must take precedence as a priority over a socialist reorganization of the economy in order for the latter to have hope of working out.

I'd think radical feminists would agree, but I think it would end up being a chicken-or-the-egg kind of situation? Like, how do we begin to achieve female liberation? I think radfems would point out the entanglement of patriarchy and capitalism as one of them; both are hierarchial systems and like that Womad commenter duly pointed out: “where there is hierarchy, there is opression”! And I think perhaps this is where one of the significant radfem-blackpill split happens: radfems want to restructure the systems which they believe would lead to women's liberation; blackpillfems want to isolate from men, which they believe would lead to women's liberation, and then restructure the systems? I think then maybe both groups are in agreement than that the systems need to be restructured, radfems just don't believe we strictly need to separate from men to accomplish it. (Although it sounds like there is even debate amongst black pill women on Womad on whether or not power hierarchys would/should/can be allowed to happen in a women-only society..?)
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Clover
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Oct 5 2025, 11:48 PM #2

Yeah, so, a good majority of this is biological essentialism, which starkly distinguishes black pill women (black pill feminists..?) from radical feminists.

Things like:

  • "Submission is a male trait"

  • Pretty much the entire first quote

  • Most of the rest of your commentary in the post

All fall under the stereotyping of the sexes, usually with the pretense that the stereotyping is "natural" or "innate", which is antithetical to radical feminism.

The "noteworthy comment" quote is interesting.

  • "Hierarchy is a patriarchal thing."
    • Yes.

  • "Men will destroy one another and put their own patriarchal world in danger through their own stupidity."
    • Yes.

  • "I've also seen women arguing that it's nothing wrong to fight against each other for power in a women-only society, and they point to hyenas as an exmaple."
    • I'm probably out of the loop since I assume this arguments around the introspection of a "women-only society" is deep into black pill... feminism (..?), but yeah, generally when one gets to the point of equating human beings to other animals as the primary arguments, especially non-primates, the debate likely has gone to shit. See also: TRAs justifying transgenderism with every animal under the sun with some quirky sex based behavior ("B-b-but clownfish! B-b-but male seahorses! B-b-but female lions growing manes!!!").

  • "Where there is hierarchy, there is opression, and no women should suffer from that."
    • Absolutely.

  • "A women-only world should be decentralized and everybody deserves equal rights."
    • I, uh... Again, I'm not part of this blackpill culture, but I guess I find it a bit ironic to want to make a world where "everybody deserves equal rights" (which is a lovely desire that I wholeheartedly support) but also believe men should not exist? lol.

Quote:It seems pretty clear to me that human females are much less competitive, and it gets to the heart of why experiments in socialist socio-economic reorganizations never seem to work out. Of course they don't! They all involve men, invariably including as the leaders of these projects! Seriously, whenever you talk to an ideological capitalist about why socialism failed in the 20th century, the argument you get back is that equality is unnatural to our species; that human beings strive to compete with each other, pursue social stratification on instinct, and so trying to force them not to is always going to fail and make them less productive. But ideological capitalists are also mostly male, by no coincidence! It begs the question of whether vying for power and domination over others is in fact human nature...or whether it's more like just male nature. Is the case of the free market crowd really just men projecting their own instincts onto the rest of us?

This is an interesting observation. However, why is the conclusion here that the explanations of the ideological capitalist [men] back in the 20th century with socialism being deemed "unnatural" by them one of male nature and not of capitalist (male) nature? Patriarchal structures and institutions have existed well before the entrenched capitalism of the modern day, where men in their thoroughly male-dominated capitalist system have had enough comfort at the top of their sexist hierarchy that they began to feel comfortable using pseudoscience as a way to justify their unjust oppression on both women and the working class?

I believe "vying for power and domination over others" is in fact human nature (and "male" nature is ultimately "human nature"), but a harmful and corrupted form of it. It is an antisocial behavior and therefore ultimately poisonous to human beings, a social species who are most successful using the social tool of collaboration. The desire to seek power and domination is a corrupted form of human nature that spreads kind of like a mind virus, as those "infected" with it realize the gains to be had with it and refuse to let go of it, and then some others attempt to "join in" to reap the "benefits", much to the detriment to the rest of human society.

When patriarchy is established, then the "power and domination over others" is established, with the "others" being women. When this power and domination over others collides with capitalist systems, then the "others" also include the working class. Therein lies one of the intersecting axes of oppression: class and sex.

Quote:Why do you think socialist societies tend to wind up as repressive police states and personality cults despite ostensibly being aimed toward the elimination of the class system? Men. The hierarchical male mind turns them into castes; turns socialized economies into state property and the state into private property run by men.

That's uh.... I guess I can't fully disagree that men are the reason socialist systems fail, but that's because I'd think patriarchy usually has already been instilled into the society to some degree, which socialist systems would dismantle, and men comfy in their patriarchal culture would rather toil under regressive capitalist systems than give up their ability to oppress their society's women. 

Quote:Men as a sex are incapable of building an egalitarian world. It's not the way they're hard-wired. They need to be excluded from such efforts. Conversely, I can see no reason why women, left to ourselves, cannot build more sharing into our economies and less tyranny into our systems of government. We're naturally more collaborative and caring.

I mean, since this is a radfem-aligned forum, hard disagree on most of this. A majority of this is straight up biological essentialism. I do believe men can help build an egalitarian world, but humanity is facing quite the uphill battle, given the power the male class holds through patriarchy. And I know we have this core disagreement, so there's not very much I can say here since it boils down to a matter of opinionated belief in the limits of humanity.

I do think men can be and have been part of egalitarian "worlds." I am reminded of the excerpt from Caliban and the Witch (also shout-out to Bubzy3D from Ovarit for occasionally blasting this quote on Ovarit when she was active there, which is where I read this from, bless her where ever she is 💜):

Caliban and the Witch As often happened when Europeans came in contact with native American populations, the French were impressed by Montagnais-Naskapi generosity, their sense of cooperation and indifference to status, but they were scandalized by their “lack of morals;” they saw that the Naskapi had no conception of private property, of authority, of male superiority, and they even refused to punish their children (Leacock 1981: 34–38). The Jesuits decided to change all that, setting out to teach the Indians the basic elements of civilization, convinced that this was necessary to turn them into reliable trade partners. In this spirit, they first taught them that “man is the master,” that “in France women do not rule their husbands,” and that courting at night, divorce at either partner’s desire, and sexual freedom for both spouses, before or after marriage, had to be forbidden. Here is a telling exchange Le Jeune had, on this score, with a Naskapi man:

“I told him it was not honorable for a woman to love anyone else except her husband, and that this evil being among them, he himself was not sure that his son, who was present, was his son. He replied, ‘Thou has no sense. You French people love only your children; but we love all the children of our tribe.’ I began to laugh seeing that he philosophized in horse and mule fashion” (ibid.: 50).

Backed by the Governor of New France, the Jesuits succeeded in convincing the Naskapi to provide themselves with some chiefs, and bring “their” women to order. Typically, one weapon they used was to insinuate that women who were too independent and did not obey their husbands were creatures of the devil. When, angered by the men’s attempts to subdue them, the Naskapi women ran away, the Jesuits persuaded the men to chase after their spouses and threaten them with imprisonment:

“Such acts of justice”—Le Jeune proudly commented in one particular case—“cause no surprise in France, because it is usual there to proceed in that manner. But among these people … where everyone considers himself from birth as free as the wild animals that roam in their great forests … it is a marvel, or rather a miracle, to see a peremptory command obeyed, or any act of severity or justice performed” (ibid.: 54).

The Jesuits’ greatest victory, however, was persuading the Naskapi to beat their children, believing that the “savages’” excessive fondness for their offspring was the major obstacle to their Christianization. Le Jeune’s diary records the first instance in which a girl was publicly beaten, while one of her relatives gave a chilling lecture to the bystanders on the historic significance of the event: “This is the first punishment by beating (he said) we inflict on anyone of our Nation …” (ibid.: 54–55).

Learning about historical accounts like this prevents me from entertaining blackpill ideals. There is kindness, compassion, morality, and ethics, in all human beings, and yes, that includes men. Men have been socialized for millennia to degrade and oppress women, but I do believe it is possible for them to unlearn this. 

Quote:This is why I disagree with the socialist feminists -- the Bernie bro types who insist that economic restructuring must precede female empowerment.

This is more of a sidenote, but I have learned some socialist feminists would deride being grouped in with Bernie Sanders. They would consider him a sellout to the Democrat party. Ngl, I'd probably be described as a "Bernie Bro" and I'm not an expert in socialism/socialist feminism, so I asked one socialist feminist what's wrong with Bernie Sanders and she shared with me this article: Bernie Out of the Closet: Sanders’ Longstanding Deal with the Democrats

In response to your statements on why socialist experiments have failed in the past, she mentioned that it's not because humans are inherently greedy, but it's because of the “capitalist contradictions carrying over into socialism and what we would call a ‘two line struggle’ (an ongoing struggle between communists and those who want to restore capitalism).”

Quote:It's not that I ain't a socialist, it's that socialism can only be built successfully by women on our own, to which end the liberation of women from male oppression must take precedence as a priority over a socialist reorganization of the economy in order for the latter to have hope of working out.

I'd think radical feminists would agree, but I think it would end up being a chicken-or-the-egg kind of situation? Like, how do we begin to achieve female liberation? I think radfems would point out the entanglement of patriarchy and capitalism as one of them; both are hierarchial systems and like that Womad commenter duly pointed out: “where there is hierarchy, there is opression”! And I think perhaps this is where one of the significant radfem-blackpill split happens: radfems want to restructure the systems which they believe would lead to women's liberation; blackpillfems want to isolate from men, which they believe would lead to women's liberation, and then restructure the systems? I think then maybe both groups are in agreement than that the systems need to be restructured, radfems just don't believe we strictly need to separate from men to accomplish it. (Although it sounds like there is even debate amongst black pill women on Womad on whether or not power hierarchys would/should/can be allowed to happen in a women-only society..?)

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Impress Polly
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Oct 7 2025, 11:59 PM
#3
There's a lot here to respond to, so think I'll just pick off the highlights to save on emotional labor.

Quote:Clover wrote:
Yeah, so, a good majority of this is biological essentialism, which starkly distinguishes black pill women (black pill feminists..?) from radical feminists.

Womad isn't a black pill community. Black pill politics are defined by doomer-ism that's grounded in biological determinism and Womad isn't a doomer site. They're a Korean female supremacist community that maintains an optimism that building a matriarchal future is both desirable and possible. Black pill feminists, by contrast, consider feminism a doomed movement of women who are simply smarter than most in truth, and believe matriarchy is really just women doing all the work while men more or less just coast and reap the benefits and therefore undesirable anyway.

Black pill type feminism is something I discovered on r/BlackPillFeminism back before Reddit banned all black pill sites at the start of the current decade. Here's an archived glimpse of what it looked like in its heyday. As you can see, it got to be much bigger and more heavily trafficked than places like Vexxed are today. Most of the links don't work anymore, but the one to the primer does. I'd recommend taking a read to it, including the extensive comment section, for a clearer understanding of the premise. Anyway, after the sub was banned, the survivors did what banned communities usually do and regrouped in a more obscure place that promised them more autonomy. The consequent Black Pill Feminism message board on Said It still exists, though as you can see, only a fraction of those who were on the subreddit made the transition and it's pretty dead at this point. I also know of a surviving blog adjacent this scene that's still updated fairly often. 

Anyway, female supremacist politics and feminist defeatism may may seem tough to distinguish on the surface to the untrained eye because their spaces share a rejection of radfem socialization theory and instead base their understanding of the relationship between the sexes in biological realism and brain science and are not woke (i.e. they don't do intersectionality politics, queer theory, sexual liberalism, or tone policing). There is, as such, a good deal of overlap in their ways of thinking. Female supremacist politics and black pill feminism share in common that their adherents are mostly former radfems. That's why I like to call these post-radfem ways of thinking. The graduation happens by way of accepting biology. You might think of them as two sides of the same coin that way.

My own thinking is a bit of a compromise of both of those things. I consider myself not necessarily a full-blown biological determinist, but a pessimistic female supremacist.

ANYWAY...

Quote:I, uh... Again, I'm not part of this blackpill culture, but I guess I find it a bit ironic to want to make a world where "everybody deserves equal rights" (which is a lovely desire that I wholeheartedly support) but also believe men should not exist? lol.

What, you don't see the elimination the male sex as an egalitarian proposal?  :catwhaaa: :meowshock:

In seriousness, what's being said in the referenced comment is that all women deserve equality. Like equality between women, not equality for men.

Quote:This is an interesting observation. However, why is the conclusion here that the explanations of the ideological capitalist [men] back in the 20th century with socialism being deemed "unnatural" by them one of male nature and not of capitalist (male) nature? Patriarchal structures and institutions have existed well before the entrenched capitalism of the modern day, where men in their thoroughly male-dominated capitalist system have had enough comfort at the top of their sexist hierarchy that they began to feel comfortable using pseudoscience as a way to justify their unjust oppression on both women and the working class?

I believe "vying for power and domination over others" is in fact human nature (and "male" nature is ultimately "human nature"), but a harmful and corrupted form of it. It is an antisocial behavior and therefore ultimately poisonous to human beings, a social species who are most successful using the social tool of collaboration. The desire to seek power and domination is a corrupted form of human nature that spreads kind of like a mind virus, as those "infected" with it realize the gains to be had with it and refuse to let go of it, and then some others attempt to "join in" to reap the "benefits", much to the detriment to the rest of human society.

When patriarchy is established, then the "power and domination over others" is established, with the "others" being women. When this power and domination over others collides with capitalist systems, then the "others" also include the working class. Therein lies one of the intersecting axes of oppression: class and sex.

If our goal here is to get to the root of the issue, then it is important to understand where the problem begins. The problem of endemic male violence against the female sex in fact precedes not only capitalism, but also the existence of our species. It's characteristic of primates writ large. If you're interested in following this path of thought further, checking out Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans is a good place to start.

Quote:I mean, since this is a radfem-aligned forum, hard disagree on most of this. A majority of this is straight up biological essentialism. I do believe men can help build an egalitarian world, but humanity is facing quite the uphill battle, given the power the male class holds through patriarchy. And I know we have this core disagreement, so there's not very much I can say here since it boils down to a matter of opinionated belief in the limits of humanity.

I do think men can be and have been part of egalitarian "worlds." I am reminded of the excerpt from Caliban and the Witch (also shout-out to Bubzy3D from Ovarit for occasionally blasting this quote on Ovarit when she was active there, which is where I read this from, bless her where ever she is 💜):
......
Learning about historical accounts like this prevents me from entertaining blackpill ideals. There is kindness, compassion, morality, and ethics, in all human beings, and yes, that includes men. Men have been socialized for millennia to degrade and oppress women, but I do believe it is possible for them to unlearn this. 

A great read! Thanks for sharing! :meowqueen:

Your point is well-taken. After all, there are still some relatively egalitarian traditional communities left in this world even today, like the Mosou over in China for example, where men run the government, women govern family life (and lineage is traced through the female line) and live separately from their husbands, and both sexes contribute to the economy, typically in somewhat gendered ways. Goddess worship is still practiced among them as well. Sometimes very old, indigenous communities can be inspiring that way. The comparative freedom of the Indigenous women they observed  was in fact a major source of inspiration for the women who organized the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 here in the U.S. But when it comes to the Mosou, like with the Naskapi before them, duly note that this example too is being documented while it is being destroyed.

Quote:This is more of a sidenote, but I have learned some socialist feminists would deride being grouped in with Bernie Sanders. They would consider him a sellout to the Democrat party. Ngl, I'd probably be described as a "Bernie Bro" and I'm not an expert in socialism/socialist feminism, so I asked one socialist feminist what's wrong with Bernie Sanders and she shared with me this article: Bernie Out of the Closet: Sanders’ Longstanding Deal with the Democrats

In response to your statements on why socialist experiments have failed in the past, she mentioned that it's not because humans are inherently greedy, but it's because of the “capitalist contradictions carrying over into socialism and what we would call a ‘two line struggle’ (an ongoing struggle between communists and those who want to restore capitalism).”

To be clear, when I'm talking about the socialist feminists, the Bernie bro types, I'm thinking about groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. And though you may be on their side, that doesn't mean they're on yours. (Link is to one of many noteworthy articles denouncing radical feminists to appear in their official newspaper, Jacobin. This one's among the earliest that I saw, but quite far from the last.)

But anyway, yes I know there are socialists who are well to the left of Sanders. Ones who fancy like overthrowing the government. Communists, that sort of thing. I used to be one of those for a brief while. (Yes, I've been around the block of fringe politics.) Speaking of which, "two-line struggle" is a choice of phrase that has a specifically Maoist ring to my ears. In fact, if my radar is right, I'm guessing she's someone specifically in the orbit of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, a.k.a. the Bob Avakian cult. My guess could be wrong, but she just talks like they talk, so that's why it's my instinct. Anyway, in plain English what she's saying is that communists in the past failed to fully uproot the feudal/capitalistic cultures that they overthrew, to which I say "duh". They failed because they failed, in other words. The question is why. Why the consistency of failure despite the variety of societies and schools of thought that were at work and what's on offer today that's different? Ask this and prepare yourself for more vague and unsatisfying explanations that sound like dodging the question because that's what you'll get. The RCP doesn't technically count in the category of women I was referencing though because they're not much of an economist group like the more mainstream DSA and don't consider themselves feminists either.

Quote:I'd think radical feminists would agree, but I think it would end up being a chicken-or-the-egg kind of situation? Like, how do we begin to achieve female liberation? I think radfems would point out the entanglement of patriarchy and capitalism as one of them; both are hierarchial systems and like that Womad commenter duly pointed out: “where there is hierarchy, there is opression”! And I think perhaps this is where one of the significant radfem-blackpill split happens: radfems want to restructure the systems which they believe would lead to women's liberation; blackpillfems want to isolate from men, which they believe would lead to women's liberation, and then restructure the systems? I think then maybe both groups are in agreement than that the systems need to be restructured, radfems just don't believe we strictly need to separate from men to accomplish it.

Naturally any future without patriarchy will be structured differently. On that much you, me, and the Womad women can certainly agree. But when it comes to our differences concerning first steps, I think it worth pointing out that even here there is overlap. After all, female separatism is a thing in radfem circles too, including here on this message board. The Womad women though really tend to think a lot about subjects like advancements in artificial wombs; of stuff like that one day opening up the possibility of men simply not needing to exist anymore on this Earth.
Edited Oct 9 2025, 12:07 PM by Impress Polly.
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Impress Polly
The kind they warned you about.
Oct 7 2025, 11:59 PM #3

There's a lot here to respond to, so think I'll just pick off the highlights to save on emotional labor.

Quote:Clover wrote:
Yeah, so, a good majority of this is biological essentialism, which starkly distinguishes black pill women (black pill feminists..?) from radical feminists.

Womad isn't a black pill community. Black pill politics are defined by doomer-ism that's grounded in biological determinism and Womad isn't a doomer site. They're a Korean female supremacist community that maintains an optimism that building a matriarchal future is both desirable and possible. Black pill feminists, by contrast, consider feminism a doomed movement of women who are simply smarter than most in truth, and believe matriarchy is really just women doing all the work while men more or less just coast and reap the benefits and therefore undesirable anyway.

Black pill type feminism is something I discovered on r/BlackPillFeminism back before Reddit banned all black pill sites at the start of the current decade. Here's an archived glimpse of what it looked like in its heyday. As you can see, it got to be much bigger and more heavily trafficked than places like Vexxed are today. Most of the links don't work anymore, but the one to the primer does. I'd recommend taking a read to it, including the extensive comment section, for a clearer understanding of the premise. Anyway, after the sub was banned, the survivors did what banned communities usually do and regrouped in a more obscure place that promised them more autonomy. The consequent Black Pill Feminism message board on Said It still exists, though as you can see, only a fraction of those who were on the subreddit made the transition and it's pretty dead at this point. I also know of a surviving blog adjacent this scene that's still updated fairly often. 

Anyway, female supremacist politics and feminist defeatism may may seem tough to distinguish on the surface to the untrained eye because their spaces share a rejection of radfem socialization theory and instead base their understanding of the relationship between the sexes in biological realism and brain science and are not woke (i.e. they don't do intersectionality politics, queer theory, sexual liberalism, or tone policing). There is, as such, a good deal of overlap in their ways of thinking. Female supremacist politics and black pill feminism share in common that their adherents are mostly former radfems. That's why I like to call these post-radfem ways of thinking. The graduation happens by way of accepting biology. You might think of them as two sides of the same coin that way.

My own thinking is a bit of a compromise of both of those things. I consider myself not necessarily a full-blown biological determinist, but a pessimistic female supremacist.

ANYWAY...

Quote:I, uh... Again, I'm not part of this blackpill culture, but I guess I find it a bit ironic to want to make a world where "everybody deserves equal rights" (which is a lovely desire that I wholeheartedly support) but also believe men should not exist? lol.

What, you don't see the elimination the male sex as an egalitarian proposal?  :catwhaaa: :meowshock:

In seriousness, what's being said in the referenced comment is that all women deserve equality. Like equality between women, not equality for men.

Quote:This is an interesting observation. However, why is the conclusion here that the explanations of the ideological capitalist [men] back in the 20th century with socialism being deemed "unnatural" by them one of male nature and not of capitalist (male) nature? Patriarchal structures and institutions have existed well before the entrenched capitalism of the modern day, where men in their thoroughly male-dominated capitalist system have had enough comfort at the top of their sexist hierarchy that they began to feel comfortable using pseudoscience as a way to justify their unjust oppression on both women and the working class?

I believe "vying for power and domination over others" is in fact human nature (and "male" nature is ultimately "human nature"), but a harmful and corrupted form of it. It is an antisocial behavior and therefore ultimately poisonous to human beings, a social species who are most successful using the social tool of collaboration. The desire to seek power and domination is a corrupted form of human nature that spreads kind of like a mind virus, as those "infected" with it realize the gains to be had with it and refuse to let go of it, and then some others attempt to "join in" to reap the "benefits", much to the detriment to the rest of human society.

When patriarchy is established, then the "power and domination over others" is established, with the "others" being women. When this power and domination over others collides with capitalist systems, then the "others" also include the working class. Therein lies one of the intersecting axes of oppression: class and sex.

If our goal here is to get to the root of the issue, then it is important to understand where the problem begins. The problem of endemic male violence against the female sex in fact precedes not only capitalism, but also the existence of our species. It's characteristic of primates writ large. If you're interested in following this path of thought further, checking out Sexual Coercion in Primates and Humans is a good place to start.

Quote:I mean, since this is a radfem-aligned forum, hard disagree on most of this. A majority of this is straight up biological essentialism. I do believe men can help build an egalitarian world, but humanity is facing quite the uphill battle, given the power the male class holds through patriarchy. And I know we have this core disagreement, so there's not very much I can say here since it boils down to a matter of opinionated belief in the limits of humanity.

I do think men can be and have been part of egalitarian "worlds." I am reminded of the excerpt from Caliban and the Witch (also shout-out to Bubzy3D from Ovarit for occasionally blasting this quote on Ovarit when she was active there, which is where I read this from, bless her where ever she is 💜):
......
Learning about historical accounts like this prevents me from entertaining blackpill ideals. There is kindness, compassion, morality, and ethics, in all human beings, and yes, that includes men. Men have been socialized for millennia to degrade and oppress women, but I do believe it is possible for them to unlearn this. 

A great read! Thanks for sharing! :meowqueen:

Your point is well-taken. After all, there are still some relatively egalitarian traditional communities left in this world even today, like the Mosou over in China for example, where men run the government, women govern family life (and lineage is traced through the female line) and live separately from their husbands, and both sexes contribute to the economy, typically in somewhat gendered ways. Goddess worship is still practiced among them as well. Sometimes very old, indigenous communities can be inspiring that way. The comparative freedom of the Indigenous women they observed  was in fact a major source of inspiration for the women who organized the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 here in the U.S. But when it comes to the Mosou, like with the Naskapi before them, duly note that this example too is being documented while it is being destroyed.

Quote:This is more of a sidenote, but I have learned some socialist feminists would deride being grouped in with Bernie Sanders. They would consider him a sellout to the Democrat party. Ngl, I'd probably be described as a "Bernie Bro" and I'm not an expert in socialism/socialist feminism, so I asked one socialist feminist what's wrong with Bernie Sanders and she shared with me this article: Bernie Out of the Closet: Sanders’ Longstanding Deal with the Democrats

In response to your statements on why socialist experiments have failed in the past, she mentioned that it's not because humans are inherently greedy, but it's because of the “capitalist contradictions carrying over into socialism and what we would call a ‘two line struggle’ (an ongoing struggle between communists and those who want to restore capitalism).”

To be clear, when I'm talking about the socialist feminists, the Bernie bro types, I'm thinking about groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. And though you may be on their side, that doesn't mean they're on yours. (Link is to one of many noteworthy articles denouncing radical feminists to appear in their official newspaper, Jacobin. This one's among the earliest that I saw, but quite far from the last.)

But anyway, yes I know there are socialists who are well to the left of Sanders. Ones who fancy like overthrowing the government. Communists, that sort of thing. I used to be one of those for a brief while. (Yes, I've been around the block of fringe politics.) Speaking of which, "two-line struggle" is a choice of phrase that has a specifically Maoist ring to my ears. In fact, if my radar is right, I'm guessing she's someone specifically in the orbit of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, a.k.a. the Bob Avakian cult. My guess could be wrong, but she just talks like they talk, so that's why it's my instinct. Anyway, in plain English what she's saying is that communists in the past failed to fully uproot the feudal/capitalistic cultures that they overthrew, to which I say "duh". They failed because they failed, in other words. The question is why. Why the consistency of failure despite the variety of societies and schools of thought that were at work and what's on offer today that's different? Ask this and prepare yourself for more vague and unsatisfying explanations that sound like dodging the question because that's what you'll get. The RCP doesn't technically count in the category of women I was referencing though because they're not much of an economist group like the more mainstream DSA and don't consider themselves feminists either.

Quote:I'd think radical feminists would agree, but I think it would end up being a chicken-or-the-egg kind of situation? Like, how do we begin to achieve female liberation? I think radfems would point out the entanglement of patriarchy and capitalism as one of them; both are hierarchial systems and like that Womad commenter duly pointed out: “where there is hierarchy, there is opression”! And I think perhaps this is where one of the significant radfem-blackpill split happens: radfems want to restructure the systems which they believe would lead to women's liberation; blackpillfems want to isolate from men, which they believe would lead to women's liberation, and then restructure the systems? I think then maybe both groups are in agreement than that the systems need to be restructured, radfems just don't believe we strictly need to separate from men to accomplish it.

Naturally any future without patriarchy will be structured differently. On that much you, me, and the Womad women can certainly agree. But when it comes to our differences concerning first steps, I think it worth pointing out that even here there is overlap. After all, female separatism is a thing in radfem circles too, including here on this message board. The Womad women though really tend to think a lot about subjects like advancements in artificial wombs; of stuff like that one day opening up the possibility of men simply not needing to exist anymore on this Earth.

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