Interview of Hernán Firpo
for the argentine newspaper
Clarín Sunday 14-04-2018
Roxana Kreimer:
"Feminism is
intolerant and
authoritarian"
Dedicated to "Scientific Feminism"
,
she checks data and strongly disagrees
with some referents of the movement.
-You are a philosopher, you have a PhD in Social Sciences and you are promoter of "Scientific Feminism". What is it?
- A movement that seeks to know the differences between men and women based on scientific evidence, to make good diagnoses and find solutions to gender problems. Hegemonic feminism errs in much of its analysis because it ignores that we are not born as blank stlates, but with innate psychological predispositions that are powerful enough to drive different motivations and interests in men and women. We always talk about averages and nobody denies that culture influences, but feminism only conceives equality of rights if women mimic men. If many choose to focus on their family, earn less and have more time or don´t want to be bosses, they see them as victims of patriarchy.
-You presented yourself rather reactive to feminism. You even take charge of "checking" their data. Is it an unreliable movement?
-I agree with the agenda of hegemonic feminism in the decriminalization of abortion, the need to pay in some way the reproductive work and the need to extend parental leaves to 52 weeks, divided between men and women. I don´t not join the victimhood that fosters a model of a vulnerable and heteronome woman, nor the idea that the exhibition of beauty reifies or that we live in a patriarchy. There are specific problems and sexism suffered by women and men, something that corporate feminism doesn´t accept because it judges that every men´s claim injures their rights.
- Does feminism have a will to dialogue?
-Many feminists interrupt talks and screening of films with which they don´t sympathize and block in the networks at the slightest discrepancy. They disseminate data without evidence such as the wage gap or that 70% or the poors are women. We check that information on the page www.feminismocientifico.com.ar and on our Twitter accounts @feminiscience (in English) @feminisciencia (in Spanish) and in Facebook "Feminismo Científico" (in Spanish).
- Is there a feminism that deals with femicides, and another that is more political?
-I don´t find problematic the fact that feminism has a political agenda. What it´s objectionable from my point of view is the intolerant and authoritarian climate of the movement. I consider myself a leftist, but today, with some exceptions, the moderate right of dissident feminism and of masulinism has a more open attitude to dialogue and has become more updated with the scientific gender literature.
- Is there a right and a left feminism?
-At the international level and in Argentina, the one of the left predominates and questions radically capitalism.
- Is there any kind of relationship between intellectuals and feminism?
- Only for respectfully raising a diverse perspective on social networks they accused me of being a "hidden male". It was the case of the journalist Luciana Peker, who blocked me on Twitter just for disagreeing. I decided to create the space of Scientific Feminism at the moment when Diana Maffía, a professor of the Faculty of Philosophy, director of the Observatory of Gender in the Magistracy of the City, stopped answering my mails when I asked her for her opinion on the Norwegian video "The paradox of equality. Brain Wash". The director of the female supplement of the newspaper "Página 12", Martha Dillon, said she wouldn´t read my article "Nobody less" because she didn´t like the title (In Argentina the feminist movement "Nadie menos" denounces the murder of women and the article stated that the murder of men is as problematic as that of women). The extreme case was the one of Mercedes D'Alessandro, founder of the site "Economía feminista", who instead of arguing, defamed me publicly on Twitter, for which I initiated a lawsuit. My treatment was always respectful, but feminism is intolerant and authoritarian. And no movement is enriched without dialogue and without opening up to new ideas.
-You answer with names of journalists. Do you consider them intellectuals?
-In a broad sense, as Gramsci would have considered them, they are intellectuals. But in academia the picture is equally daunting: Swedish research by Therese Söderlund showed that "gender studies" are the best funded, but also the most biased and least objective of all disciplines within the humanities. They cite each other and ignore or distort scientific advances because they judge that they don´t fit with their ideal model of women.
- At this rate will a "Movement for the Rights of the Male" be necessary?
-Men´s Rights Movement (MRM) has decades of existence. If feminism cared about equality, it would be as concerned about the low representation of males in humanistic careers as it is about the low representation of women in technical careers (STEM). Or it would be worried because more and more boys drop out of formal education or commit suicide, or because they die on average eight years earlier.
-The "Nadie menos" ("Not one less") started being a movement of communicators in social networks. Despite its loss of prestige, is journalism still important?
-Yes indeed, but it´s an exception that it risks publishing ideas that don´t sound politically correct. Feminism is fashionable and 99% of the press is dominated by a single vision of feminism. Luckily there are social networks.
- What is that vision of journalism?
-The one that sees women as victims of the oppression of patriarchy, without corroborating whether this is indeed the case. Even Jorge Rial invites feminists daily and they all think similar.
- When looking for equality, would it be logical to think that women have to go to the war?
-The philosopher David Benatar argues that although the average woman is physically weaker than the male, on the one hand the wars are no longer fought hand-to-hand, and on the other, as there are women taller than many men, also there are stronger ones, and they should participate in the war as much as men do. We have suffered unjust wars waged by men, but we have also been liberated from dictators like Hitler thanks to the sacrifice of men who have marched to war.
-In the labor market should women give up certain advantages?
-They should stop retiring before men, considering that they die, on average, eight years later, and there should be less biased judgments in tenure judgments.
-A survey that is circulating indicates that all women suffered harassment at least once in their life. Did you check it?
-The "National Index of Male Violence", published by the collective "Ni una menos", concluded that almost 100% of women have suffered harassment. A more detailed scrutiny of the data allows to see that within "men violence" they include categories such as "low self-esteem for being a woman". The survey did not include questions asked to men as to have a frame of comparison. A survey conducted with 6,251 adults after #Metoo revealed that every two sexual harassments declared by a woman, there is one declared by a man.
- Do you say that men suffer almost as many sexual harassments as women?
- They suffer more sexual harassment. But 21% of women and 9% of men between the ages of 18 and 19 suffered sexual harassment online, according to a 2017 Pew Research survey. And they suffer the most from non-sexual harassment on the Internet. That is, repeated aggression or threats of physical violence. Any rigorous study of the data shows that women are not worse in everything, and that a true movement for equality must also consider the specific problems of men.
