How Women Use Feminism to Suppress Women (Simone's Realization)

In this provocative discussion, Malcolm and his guest challenge common feminist narratives and explore controversial topics around feminism, intra-feminine competition, and the role of influential feminists like Margaret Atwood. The dialogue delves into the complexities of women's empowerment, critiques feminist movements and literature, and debates the underpinnings of female dynamics in social and professional environments. With references to historical studies, psychological theories, and cultural phenomena, this episode questions whether some feminist ideologies may inadvertently restrict women's freedoms and propagate competitive behaviors among women.

Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I'm so excited to be here with you today because we're gonna talk about feminism. My views on it may be totally wrong. I might've been lied to all my life about what it meant. And now I'm asking myself, what if the real threat to women's freedom isn't patriarchy, but rather.

The matriarchy. And, and this is, this is thanks to a random feminist lecture on Margaret Atwood that I felt down this, this disturbing rabbit hole. And I mean, at first I learned that apparently Margaret Atwood hates women. And, and I also learned that not. Satisfied with the hero's journey. Some feminist created the heroine's journey and it sucks.

And then a bunch of feminist practices and campaigns apparently also just curtail women's freedom. Like when I looked at, well, like what if feminists done? Mm-hmm. And I'm like, this isn't, this is not good. This is not good for women. What, what do you do?

Malcolm Collins: And I'll be bringing data as well, where we'll go over a number of studies that show that women don't like to work with other women.

That women are much more likely to betray other women than men. Are everything bad? Like, like women are women's worst enemy. Yeah. I, I wanna,

Simone Collins: yeah, let, let, let Malcolm and I pull you into this dark hole and, and ask you, can women actually be feminist in the end or is, is subconscious intrasexual competition?

Women's undo

Malcolm Collins: it. Well, I, I've heard it said before and I completely agree with this sentiment. Which is that feminism is not women versus men. Feminism is about low market value. Women against high market value women or high market value women trying to trick their competition into becoming oppressing

Simone Collins: low market value.

Yeah, I mean, I, I kind of feel like from classic literature to Instagram, women are not empowering women. They're just finding new ways to keep each other in check. And so, yeah. We'll, I'll share my findings. You, you share your notes. Let's, let's explore the surprisingly misogynistic elements of feminism.

Woo. So excited for this. But yeah, so I was, while cleaning up the, the other night just looking for stuff on Audible Plus to listen to, and there was, now they're doing lecture series, apparently, and there was some lecture series on like the, the literary legacy of Margaret Atwood. And so many people.

Name, check her when criticizing us, where I'm like, okay, I need to understand this woman and what she stands for. So this is a good thing for me to spend my time listening to woman wrote a fetish book Handmaid's Tale, the famous women's fetish novel, A Handmaid's Tale. So she's, she's actually been a prolific author for a very long time.

And, is she among, you know, other things? She's written a lot of poetry. She's written many books including a Handmaid's Tale. No. Hold on,

Malcolm Collins: I have to, I have to interject here for people who dunno what we're talking about. You check out our video. Is this actually a fetish? Where, you know, it very clearly is for a lot of these women who are like, dressing up and like going out.

A Handmaid's

Simone Collins: Tale for Context is a, a dystopian. Fiction novel in in which America becomes this, this like place called Gilead, where women have no rights. They're not even allowed also to read. And the few fertile women who are left are forced to. Sort of be, be bred by family. It's, it's just gross and weird and a lot of women seem to

Malcolm Collins: be really into it.

Oh, no, please, please, conservative, tough military man. Don't breed me in front of your jealous high status wife. All of you need, it's me and you can't survive without me. And I live this life of privilege. But I'm actually also super,

Simone Collins: so no, no. Okay, so like Margaret Atwood is so much deeper of a horrifying.

Rabbit for me than I thought, like, than, than just this surface fetish thing. Because I mean, it's, it's easy enough. And when you look at any like fantasy, romantic, any sort of romance novel, you're gonna see stuff like this. I just thought that she was touching on that, you know, that she accidentally managed to make, basically women's erotic material that made them feel like they were reading highbrow political content and commentary. You know, like, oh, I'm reading 19 84, 54 Shades of Gray. So I, I thought it was that, but no she, I think she just hates women. I mean, I, this is not, this is my theory. Okay. Just my opinion.

But she wrote this alternate version of the Odyssey called the Penelope A in 2005 which reframes several female characters from Homer's Epic, most notably Penelope, that the wife of Odysseus in her 12 maids and also to some extent the Helen of Troy. I. But you'd think that like, okay, she's, she's gonna reframe them in some kind of like very empowering way.

But, but no, in, in Homer's Odyssey, Penelope is the archetype of the loyal, long suffering wife. She patiently waits Odysseus's return and resists hundreds of suitors and uses her wit to sort of keep them in check. And this is for a really long time. Like I remember when reading the Odyssey for the first time being like.

I can't believe she's doing this. Like, I mean, I almost feel like if Odysseus was at home and they were happily married, their kingdom would be less stable than it is right now. It's just really impressive. But Atwood's, Penelope, no. I mean, like, you'd think, okay, well she's just gonna make Penelope cooler, but she No, no, no.

She gives Penelope direct voice. She narrates her story from the afterlife and she's, you know, reflecting on her life and her marriage and her legacy. And Penelope is, is, she's, she's deplete as portrayed as, as clever, but also manipulative. Deeply aware of her own powerlessness within a patriarchal society, shown as jealous, embittered, and sometimes ineffectual, especially regarding the fate of her mates who, you know, were executed for being traitorous.

So yeah, they just sort of frame her as this more like. Resentful. I remember powerless

Malcolm Collins: the original book. She's like playing all these political power games to prevent all of these suitors who are like trying to hook up with her. Yeah. And she's like, she's

Simone Collins: constantly weaving because she says she'll marry one of them when she finishes a tapestry and she, she goes and unweave it like each night and there's all this other stuff

Malcolm Collins: going on.

She, she, she's, yeah. She's being clever and manipulative and Exactly like Odysseus. What, what's interesting? Yeah, she's very good and mirrored partner for Odysseus. Yes, she's undergoing a similar sort of challenge where she needs to do a trick to win this challenge and, and, and, and play against these un un.

Poss impossible circumstances, but, but, but tied to what it would be to be a high value woman within the society of everybody wanting to marry you. And, and so the, in the original, s