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🪞⚔️👁️ Post-Feminizm 🪞⚔️👁️

(Turkish)

“Real-socialism” came to symbolize the grim reality of a promising idea gone awry—where utopian visions of equality led to authoritarianism, suppression, and misery. Similarly, what we might call “real-feminism” represents the dark flipside of another seemingly noble cause. Feminism promised empowerment, equality, and justice for women. But in its many real-world manifestations, it has often led to new hierarchies, cultural dogmas, and social dysfunctions that echo the very oppression it aimed to dismantle. From aesthetic dictatorship to cancel culture and reverse sexism, the track record of feminism in practice reveals a pattern not of liberation, but of control.

The Dictatorship of Aestheticism

Despite its early critique of beauty standards and objectification, feminism quickly turned on itself by enforcing its own rigid aesthetic codes. In some circles, hyper-femininity is declared empowering; in others, it’s condemned as internalized patriarchy. Women are no longer simply judged by male standards but are now judged by feminist standards, which can be just as demanding, contradictory, and punitive.

Rather than freeing women from oppressive beauty norms, real-feminism has often replaced one standard with another—only this time, under the guise of empowerment. Whether it’s the pressure to reject traditional femininity to prove political loyalty, or to embrace sexual exhibitionism to demonstrate liberation, the autonomy of the individual is subordinated to ideological conformity. What was supposed to be a personal choice has become a political litmus test.

Male-Bashing as a Feature, Not a Bug

Real-feminism has too often normalized a culture of hostility toward men, not as a byproduct of frustration but as a core rhetorical stance. Entire discourses have evolved around collective blame, where “men” are treated not as individuals but as a singular, oppressive force to be resisted, corrected, or punished. The presumption of male guilt has become standard in many conversations—from media to academia.

This male-bashing isn’t just venting; it’s often policy-adjacent. It influences hiring decisions, public narratives, and even judicial outcomes. What started as a critique of patriarchy has slipped into a cultural sexism of its own, where masculinity is pathologized, male suffering is trivialized, and basic decency is withheld from half the population.

Cancel Culture and the New Orthodoxy

Where earlier waves of feminism fought for a broader range of voices, real-feminism has birthed a culture where dissent is punished with ferocity. Say the wrong thing, question the wrong assumption, or cite the wrong data, and you risk being exiled from public discourse. Careers are ended, reputations destroyed, and intellectual debate replaced with ideological purity tests.

Feminism in practice has contributed significantly to this cancel culture. A movement that once claimed to speak truth to power now often operates by silencing inconvenient truths and branding skeptics as enemies. The pursuit of justice is no longer a dialogue—it’s a performance of ideological submission.

Perverse Sexism and the Creation of New Inequities

In its quest to expose systemic inequalities, feminism has often created new ones. Legal and institutional systems are frequently biased toward women in matters of family law, education, and workplace grievances. Gender quotas replace merit, false accusations are treated as social facts, and discussions of male victimhood are met with indifference or mockery.

Sexism hasn’t disappeared—it has merely changed direction. And while feminists may argue these are necessary corrections for centuries of imbalance, in practice, this simply entrenches a new kind of injustice. Feminism, far from being a neutral arbiter of equality, has become a political force that too often acts in bad faith.

A Failed Ideal

It’s tempting to fall back on the idea that these distortions aren’t the fault of feminism itself, but of its misinterpretations. But after multiple waves and decades of influence, the failures are consistent enough to suggest a deeper flaw. Feminism has never succeeded in producing the balanced, harmonious society it envisions. Instead, it cycles through anger, puritanism, victimhood, and authoritarianism—disguised as liberation.

Just as real-socialism failed not because it was misunderstood, but because its assumptions clashed fatally with reality, real-feminism fails because it overpromises and underdelivers. It centralizes power while claiming to dismantle it. It demands empathy while showing none. It seeks fairness but cultivates resentment.

Feminism, in all its practiced forms, has not liberated society—it has polarized it. It has not unified the sexes—it has deepened divisions. In chasing an ideal of equality, it has too often produced a culture of control, resentment, and sanctioned hostility.

The dream may have sounded noble. But the real-world execution, time and again, reveals something else entirely.