French Feminism vs American Feminism

Editor’s Note: On Developed Man, I’ve tried to focus on self-development and avoid the fiery debate across the Manosphere and men’s rights sites that point the finger at “feminism” as being responsible for men’s problems.

However, undeniably gender issues do affect men’s lives, and how women view their other-half greatly influences our romantic prospects. A friend, using the alias “Latinluva”, is a global dating expert who encourages men to leave North America to increase the quality and scope of their love lives.

He submitted this article to me and I decided to publish it, as it presents an interesting perspective about how feminism differs in other countries and offers what I feel is a clarifying perspective about this controversial subject.

– Cyrus

These days, it’s becoming apparent that it’s a hassle to date in America. When I moved to Los Angeles from Mexico, I met many girls who were struggling actresses, working as waitresses with no time for meeting men, while many of the other women I’d meet were struggling in their own way as immigrants, working bad jobs for the city or at fast food restaurants.

Welcome to life in America, where everybody is a workaholic to pay expensive rent, where you spend 30% of your life driving alone in your car stuck in traffic, and where everybody is lonely.

So, a lot of both men and women are leading very lonely lives, and lately many men believe that the reason there is so much disconnect is because “feminism” has driven a wedge between the sexes, which has meant less dating and companionship for everybody.

Is this true? Here is my perspective as a global traveler.

Feminism itself is supposed to be the struggle for equal rights between men and women.

There are 2 main schools of thought relating to feminism: Western feminism and French / European feminism, which is practiced elsewhere in the world.

Western feminism / American feminism

This type of feminism basically teaches that women are inherently not equal to men. Therefore, women must compensate by working hard to gain equal footing and / or outdo men. This is why you may see terms like “Working Women” (as opposed to “Working People”), emphasizing a woman’s role that is just as strong or stronger. There is a focus on women being able to do the same jobs men usually do, and if necessary to adopt masculine attributes to be recognized as equal. This type of feminism is commonly seen to have an adversarial attitude.

French feminism

French feminism basically focuses on ensuring equal rights for women while admitting (versus fighting) the natural gender differences, so Men are A, and Women are B, but A is not superior to B, or vice versa. In other words, French and other European brands of feminism have no problems reconciling that men and women have inherently different preferences and desires, but they do not feel threatened by these differences.

It seeks to empower women through their own femininity. They seek equality in terms of civil rights (voting, that their decision counts, that they have the same amount of opportunities, etc.) but at the same time promotes feminine empowerment. For example: being sexually attractive as means for empowerment, focusing on embracing one’s feminine self, beauty, and celebrating more womanly tasks and jobs versus feeling limited by them. European feminism is about promoting feminine positions and ideas in society while not trying to imitate men who are, by nature, different.

Very often these two schools of thought fight amongst each other. For example, Western feminists may accuse French feminism of allowing themselves to be “oppressed” by men for feeling it’s acceptable to dress in a sexual way and being OK with men’s compliments and attention.

On the other hand, French feminism may accuse Western feminism of disempowering women by telling them to pursue manly tasks and behavior. French feminists may feel offended by the notion that behaving in a feminine way is just “wanting to satisfy men”.

I think these two images speak for themselves:

FrenchVSWesternFeminism

There’s nothing wrong with feminism (or at least the way it’s supposed to be). The real problem we are dealing with is that there’s something wrong with how people in America interact with each other and spread harmful ideas.

Something very bad happened in America, perhaps nourished by fear, control, overpopulation, and Hollywood that made its citizens too self-conscious. As a foreigner having lived in Los Angeles for a year, I am now absolutely sure that the USA is the most self-conscious country in the world, and this had led to a lot of confusion in matters relating to social interactions between genders.

So America has become the perfect fertile field for confused and unhealthy gender dynamics to grow. You can see this not only through the lens of Western feminism but in American’s day to day lives. Take a look at the following video related to “street harassment”:

I see too many problems in this video, related to both men and women. Here are the facts:

American Men are needy: Men who catcall women on the street are simply projecting unsatisfied desires, meaning they are not getting laid good or often enough. There’s also a problem with education: Social classes in America are more divided, the public education system fails to deliver, and men lack behavioral guidance in life. This is why men on this video lack the touch and chivalry to display value and they resort to needy behavior (cat-calling) instead of properly approaching and striking up a conversation.

But also I see an incredible amount of self-consciousness from these women, I mean, they dress sexy and complain of the unwanted attention, but we know every woman in the world craves attention. It’s just that these self-described “feminists” complain that they want the control of who gives them that attention.

The video also recounts stories of women who were sexually molested in the subway. This is a serious offense, but it’s not fair to associate an actual sex crime with a guy who calls a woman in a short black skirt “beautiful” (as we see early in the video).

This is very selfish in a way and also puts society at risk because they are basically looking to create laws that would prevent men from talking to women in public places. If such laws get approved then dating in America will become impossible, and it’s already hard.

Have you ever tried online dating in America? I have and guess what? It’s a joke. Even as an attractive man, I have no power in the digital dating marketplace. On the other hand, I found out that attractive women in the USA get 30 mails per day on average (according to statistics). In other words, an attractive woman in America has absolutely 0 problems for finding partners, so much that they can’t even read the amount of e-mails that get accumulated in their inboxes. Since the average woman is swimming in a sea of options, that’s why they never respond to most guys (even quality guys).

If that wasn’t bad enough, I recently read about these two entrepreneurial women who have created a new dating site (Siren) that has a specific algorithm that can completely filter women’s preferences so that candidates who don’t fit the desired profile will be absolutely unable to communicate with them (so becoming witty and skillful at conversation will no longer work in this case).

And then you have the news about “women only hotels”. . .

…And you get the picture: men in America are becoming absolutely powerless at dating: in a near future they will no longer have anything to do with the dating process, and it will be completely out of their control. This is one of the reasons pickup artistry and learning game is so popular in America, as it’s the only possible way for most men to try and retake some of their value.

If you’ve been following Developed Men, you’ve probably read many articles relating to behavioral patterns and learning the art of seducing women, these of course are tried techniques to make a difference in the extremely difficult and competitive dating scene in America. It’s basically an art that needs to be studied and perfected in order to make it work, and we are hopefully building true gentlemen—men who can display value in society and be appreciated by women.

However, I feel like the need for these skills is exacerbated in North America, where women are very difficult to connect with, and therefore many men become lonely and desperate and they require as much game as possible to try and force a broken system to work.

American men forget that in other parts of the world meeting women is natural and easy. The lack of options and loneliness that American men suffer is disproportionate to the rest of the world, and this is why American men get needy and act in a low-value way, such as with the cat-calling. As you can see it is a vicious circle.

There’s a fight going on out there, namely against Western and North American thinking, which is an ideology of self-consciousness and confusion that hurts gender dynamics and makes life much harder for both men and women. By contrast there are other ideas about feminism that do not promote a self-conscious and unhappy society, and this is the European and French model.

It’s very important for men and women alike to recognize these alternatives and to spread awareness about them, otherwise Western ideologies will continue to spread, and as we have seen by the very damaged social culture in the United States, we do NOT want Western culture and it’s wrong ideas about the sexes to overtake countries abroad that have much older and more balanced views on male / female relationships.

As for men who are stuck in America, your solution is global dating. Get out of the United States. In other places I have been to it’s amazing how the problems I mentioned so far do not exist. Online dating becomes easy, approaching women is much easier, there is no tension or hostility between the genders, the men do not act needy or pushy, and the women are not self-conscious or confused about themselves.

I’ll talk a lot more in my next article about global dating. Stay tuned.