Reddit mentions of The Fraud of Feminism

The only difference between "current extreme" feminism and the feminism you think was good is marketing. All the same bad ideas we're fighting against now were just as present in the first wave.

If you want to know more, I'd start with reading about the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848. That's more or less where feminism got its "official" start. Of particular interest is the [Declaration of Sentiments] (http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/docs/seneca.html) presented at same.

To be fair, there are some reasonable points there, particularly the one about women being seen as essentially morally blameless, but the oppression narrative it's trying to weave rings rather hollow when one considers the socioeconomic status of the attendees (hint: they weren't poor) and most of the items listed are couched in terminology painting men as big meanies who simply want to keep all the goodies for themselves^1 . Never mind the fact the men were the ones held legally (and socially) responsible when things went tits up.

I'd also recommend [The Fraud of Feminism] (https://smile.amazon.com/Fraud-Feminism-E-Belfort-Bax/dp/1533387095/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496102290&sr=1-3&keywords=E.+Belfort+Bax) by E. Belfort Bax, first published in 1908, in which he authors many of the same criticisms of the then-fledgling movement as are commonly voiced over a century later. Of additional note is [The Legal Subjection of Men] (https://smile.amazon.com/Legal-Subjection-Men-Perfect-Library/dp/1515039730/ref=pd_sbs_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1515039730&pd_rd_r=DQJPTVT7Y0SYSTHPXFA9&pd_rd_w=3bgPe&pd_rd_wg=Vcfzw&psc=1&refRID=DQJPTVT7Y0SYSTHPXFA9), which was published the same year and seems to have been a response to J.S. Mill's The Subjection of Women published roughly 40 years prior.

All of which doesn't even touch on the ugliness to be found in many of the "founders'" personal views regarding race and ethnicity, to say nothing of the rather cozy relationship between the Suffragettes^2 and the Ku Klux Klan. Granted, said views were generally fairly common for their time, but hey, if social justice activists want to tear down monuments to significant historical figures who owned slaves or held what are now seen as regressive views... "What's sauce for the goose" and all that.


^1 "As a teacher of theology, medicine or law, [woman] is not known." Nary a word about more women in coal mines or on sailing ships. I'm shocked.

^2 Not to be confused with the Suffragists, who, despite the best efforts of feminists over the intervening century to conflate the two, were not at all the same group.

Edit: conflation in second footnote

Pretty easily. Ernest Belfort Bax was was of the earlier MRAs we know about.