Terry Lawrence

The women's movement, born in high hopes, has devolved in the past sixty years. What started as a struggle for parity-equal pay, equal opportunity, and equal respect-has disintegrated into an existence of a material, self-centered, and spiritually empty society. Modern feminism, which at one time promised freedom for women, has degenerated into a mere shadow of what it once was.

Today, it is more concerned with finding external validation, mass consumerism, and status than with the higher and greater ideals of spiritual and emotional growth. Not only did this revolution halt the personal development of numerous women, but it also created social disintegration, broken families, and a growing isolation for children, women, and men. The term "shiny object syndrome," the slang name for the popularity of surface distraction, is the most accurate description of the shortcomings of modern feminism. Girls just want to have funds.

Once aspiring towards fulfillment through self-knowledge and profound connection, women are now inundated with empowerment messages paired with designer handbags, beautifully crafted Instagram profiles, and a neurotic quest for body and facial perfection. There is not much room in this material world for cultivating inner peace, emotional resilience, or spiritual wisdom. The ricochets of such a cultural change extend far into every realm of society, from the dissolution of the family to the loss of trust between the sexes.

The Shiny Object Syndrome: Materialism as Spiritual Growth

The old feminist movement was founded on equality, justice, and principles of self-determination.

Women fought for the vote, the right to work, and the right to be equal before the law.

Those were causes won by sacrifices made in the struggle. But somewhere, the movement has lost its way. The search for status and material wealth overshadowed the search for equality, and the search for self-respect became conflated with the search for shiny things. Empowerment today charades as the size of one's paycheck, the brand of one's handbag, or the number of one's social media followers. The contemporary woman is not urged to lean into inner or spiritual fulfillment but into the boundless pursuit of money, power, and status. This consumer culture has created a generation of women who, for all their wealth and career success, sometimes feel vacant and unfulfilled.

The shallow material possessions they pursue, such as movie-star fame, luxurious cars, designer clothes, or a certain number of social media followers, please momentarily but never fulfill the empty soul. This worldview has created the religious poverty one perceives. Women who once sat at the center of family and society's values now float on a sea of superficiality. Asking for feminism’s permission has become more important than establishing inner peace, and the pursuit of being perfect has outpaced the self-accepting nature. Not only has this shift halted single women's spiritual growth, but it has also created a cultural epidemic of fragmented families, unconnected men, and emotionally starving children. Self-worth is completely dependent on 401k-size.

In 2025, the basic gist of the “feminist movement” is to diddle one’s sick ego with self-adoration via echo chambers, ownership of luxury goods and properties and a Hollywood-esque ego-chamber: no, you are the greatest. No, no, you are the greatest. You look so good in Armani. No, you look so good in Anne Klein.

The Men's Disillusionment: 60 Years of Modern Feminism

Since the arrival of modern feminism, the dynamics between men and women have also changed. What was a union of shared purpose and mutual respect has devolved into a battlefield of resentment and suspicion. It's crucial to remember that men and women, once persons-in-arms in the struggle for equality, are increasingly depicted as the oppressors, their voices shut out and their contributions erased. The new feminism founded upon the doctrines of male privilege and toxic masculinity spawned a hate culture that disenfranchised and disillusioned a vast number of men. 

Women complain incessantly about toxic testosterone as the ride the coat tails of The Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, George Washington Carver, Lorenzo L. Langstroth, Benjamin Franklin, James Watt, Eli Whitney, Samuel Morse, Alexander Fleming, Jonas Salk, Alfred Nobel, Dmitri Mendeleev, Marie Curie, Tim Berners-Lee, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos, Grace Hopper, Hedy Lamarr, Ada Lovelace, Johannes Gutenberg, Louis Pasteur, Michael Faraday, Guglielmo Marconi, Karl Benz, Rudolf Diesel, Charles Babbage, Edwin Land, Cyrus McCormick and Percy Spencer. 

One cannot ignore such double standards of discourse. Women have lost sight of the collaboration of invention, i.e., Marie Curie's work was inspired by the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist. She also worked with her husband, Pierre Curie, on their discoveries of polonium and radium.

Men are perennially villainized for being supposedly toxic, but the toxicity of women-their toxic behavior-is discredited or ignored. Feminist books and writings, with their single-source histories and absence of accountability, have added to this fugue space, a state of confusion and disorientation, even more. Books and articles purporting to be fighting for equality do so on the backs of men, blaming them for everything going wrong and steering clear of human complexity. Its effect is enormous. Men, exhausted from being blamed and exploited, are now increasingly opting out of fatherhood, marriage, and relationships.

Modern feminist women are also blamed at times for having traits of being too confrontational, impatient with dissenting views, or motivated by self-goal at the expense of others. They are often labeled as being confrontational, polarizing and blamed for having a victim complex or over-sensitivity to issues of gender discrimination.

Feminists are often seen as passive-aggressive, condescending, emotionally blackmailing, more interested in transactions than in love but hypocritical about it (gamey), angry, moody, difficult to get along with, extremely materialistic-with their self-esteem completely dependent on shiny luxury items and of course always blaming men for these traits. Such is the status quo of modern feminists.

There are also presumptions that some women preach individuality at the expense of their collective forward movement, with potential damage inflicted on the goals of feminism. 

Men do not understand why they must invest in a system that hates and mistrusts them. It has created a culture of disposable relationships, where deep, intimate relationships are traded for superficial contact and casual affairs ladled with suspicion. The sociological impact of this shift is profound, e.g., declining birth rates, rising rates of loneliness and suicides, and rising rates of alienation among women and men.

The Breakdown of the Family Structure

The Breakdown of the family structure is the most apparent consequence of the breakdown of modern feminism.

Skyrocketing divorce rates, once indicators of success (by women leapfrogging to a richer husband after each divorce), are now indicators of severe cultural disease. Feminism's "have it all" promise-family and happiness and a fulfilling career, all neatly constructed-is still an illusion that few women have ever achieved. Pursuing the chimera has been at the cost of broken marriages, fatherless children, and diminishing family stability. Children, who used to be the center of family attention, are now relegated to the margins. Screen addiction, emotional neglect, and latchkey parenting are the new norm in most households. The paradox of modern feminism is that the quest to free women has ended up making them lonely and unfulfilled.

Women who prioritize their independence and careers over their families are often lonely, and their success in the workplace is unable to comfort them in the context of home solitude. The two generations of men confronted with this grim reality want no part in it.

The cultural effect of the transition from one generation to the next is terrifying. Children who mature in shattered homes, with absentee dads and overworked mothers, are predestined to possess emotional and psychological issues. They are to find comfort in screens and solace in a virtual community rather than in their parents' arms. The social toll is staggering, with rising rates of anxiety, depression, and alienation among youths.

The "I Am Both Mom and Dad" Fallacy: Divorced Mothers' Destructive Ego

Perhaps the most destructive of all feminism's myths is the lie that a woman can be both mom and dad. This single mothers' chorus cry, repeated over and over again by single mothers across the globe as a ludicrous creed, is not just a fallacy but a pain-inducing one. 

It negates the unique role the father must play in the lives of his children and legitimizes the fantasy that a woman can step into a man's shoes when it comes to being a father. The existence of the working single mother is not what it has been made out to be, at least not by the popular media. As much as one may marvel at their strength, these women are being pulled in three directions: work, childrearing, and homemaking. Time, energy, and emotional capital are not to be had, so something must give, and that something more and more is the children. Fathers also have a set of strengths that they can bring to parenting-discipline, risk-taking, and emotional equanimity-ones that mothers are not able to match.

The cultural destruction caused by the "I am both mom and dad" culture is vast. It demythologizes the father completely and reinforces the fantasy that women can do anything. The psychological and emotional costs of a lack of father figures in early life are well documented; children brought up in fatherless families are likely to be afflicted with behavioral problems, educational attainment levels, and emotional well-being.

The Egomania of Modern Feminism

An inflated ego is what is behind the failure of modern feminism. Women once encouraged to seek equality, are now often taught they are superior-moral, intellectual, and emotional. It is this narcissism that has fostered a universe of unrestrained female egoism, where women believe they have been "put here to cure men's ills" and have opinions more than men.

The irony of such rhetoric is that, in most instances, it is used to destroy the equality it claims to defend.

Women who demand privileges and special treatment in the name of agitating for equality are practicing a form of hypocrisy that undermines trust and respect between men and women.

The social ramifications of this unrestrained egotism are profound, with mounting and mounting levels of male disconnection, falling birth rates, and growing men's and women's alienation.

Men's Growing Rejection of Women: From Partners to Anchors

The more familiar image of men that women are an anchor around their ankles-a burden, not a partner-is the direct consequence of the collapse of modern feminism. Men who are tired of being demonized, used, and taken for granted by women now engage women as playthings of sexual convenience instead of life-long partners. This new ideology has spawned disposable relationships, in which sexual relationships are substituted with shallow experiences and superficial encounters. The impact of this shift is staggering. Men are increasingly dropping out of marriage, long-term relationships, and traditional masculinity, and women are left to deal with the aftermath in a landscape of isolation and loneliness. The social consequences of the trend are dire, with declining birth rates, rising levels of loneliness, and growing alienation between men and women.

Failure of Feminist Literature and Discourse

Feminist literature, which was previously a source of inspiration and motivation, has turned into an instrument of victimization and bias. Books and articles claiming to be the torchbearers of equality do so by victimizing men, holding them responsible for every social evil, and belittling the nature of man as multifaceted.

The hypocrisy of the "toxic masculinity" pieces, viz. disregarding female toxicity and women's responsibility in facilitating toxic gender trends, is one that cannot be overlooked.

The lack of solutions within feminist literature is also concerning. As much as criticism of gender relations is justified, it should be followed by constructive lines of development for both men and women. Feminist texts that only declare the problems but offer no solution contribute nothing to resolving the source of social decadence.

Yes! A more subtle and varied one with a bit of editing is: Modern feminism, which used to be a liberator, has been reduced to a complicated mesh of contradictions that has totally disillusioned men. The call for equality between the sexes has been hijacked by a type of feminism that pitches men against each other and presents them as toxic and tyrannical by nature.

This narrative has robbed men of self-image, relegated their experience to the margins, and left them untouched by the movement and the women it claims to liberate.

What has been produced is a generation of men who, instead of discovering a common purpose with women, are set more and more against the ideological traps sown by modern feminism.

They blow across a terrain that was previously seen as sacred and has since been degraded to the level of transactional, with emotional intimacy being eroded due to cultural pressure and gendered resentments.

Disillusionment is all the more bitter when men discover that the same women who were supposed to be their comrades in the so-called equality struggle are most often the most distant, the most enigmatic, and the hardest to approach-weighed down by their ideologies, their neuroses, and their endless demands.

Disillusionment strikes harder for the ordinary man with time. In fleeting moments of clarity, they understand that they know something that they used to take for granted: their male friendships, particularly the ones they formed in their early high school years, have endured to a certain degree, but not with women. There is a crude, unadorned honesty and reciprocity of understanding, which is noticeably absent in most of their relationships with women, who appear endlessly wracked by internal conflict, their very self-fragmented and chained by the demands of modern feminism. This can be a painful, uncomfortable realization-men, who once delighted in discussing things with women on equal terms, now lapse into the rough, unbridled camaraderie of male friendship.

Disillusionment is a rejection of feminism in general, not so much of the feminist movement today, but rather a wake-up call to the realization that the cooperation, equality, and common ground that was always preached have been part of the ongoing struggle to dominate, seek approval, and be supreme.

The belief that men are inherently defective and women universally oppressed has crystallized into a stifling straitjacket which men are keen to be liberated from.

The hard reality, one which many men learn only too late, is that their most extended and most meaningful relationships have been with other men-relationships untangled by the ideological baggage that the modern feminist movement has imposed on gender relations.

Lastly, modern feminism left men neither empowered nor fulfilled. Still, instead, they were awash in deep, ontological despair-a burning realization that movement promises were hollow words, and the people they used to count on to understand them were so embroiled in their ideological crises as to not see them as such.

The education system in the U.S. is completely dominated by feminism. All aspects, PTA, staff meetings, school board of directors are permeated with women clamoring about following this rule and that rule, indoctrinating the boys and girls with their jaded versions of reality. Most of them drive home tailgating, running red lights and stop signs alike - the mindset is that you must follow the rules that the feminists themselves have no need to follow.

The Shiny Object Syndrome: A Rebuttal to Modern Feminism and American Women's Spiritual Stagnation

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© 2025 Terry Lawrence