Henry Makow is not an individual likely to receive much approval from the feminist lobby.
“Women were designed to find identity and self-fulfillment in their husband and family. This is positive. Ultimately, women do not get satisfaction in worldly achievement. They find fulfillment from giving and receiving love. They are creatures of love, God’s creatures. … In order for union to take place, a woman must identify her self-interest with her husband’s. She becomes part of him. He becomes part of her. Their happiness is one.”
These are just a couple of the many thoughts penned by Makow and contained on his internet website, which is at www.savethemales.ca. They stem from the life experiences – personal and work-related – of the former instructor at the University of Winnipeg.
Brought up in Ottawa, Makow received his BA and MA degrees from Carleton University and his PhD in English literature from the University of Toronto. He went on to teach part-time and in 1985, became the developer of the board game Scruples – a contest of moral dilemmas.
That kept him busy until 1999, when he returned to part-time teaching in a university environment that had evolved into something far from what he had experienced before.
“I discovered, to my surprise and chagrin … that the university system … is being used for indoctrination,” he says.
In teaching a class on modern literature, he discovered that it was not possible to refer to heterosexuality in anything but feminist terms. His daring to do so led him into an encounter with what he calls “feminist zealots” – students and administrators who were trained by women’s studies programs to “swarm and slander” anyone who questioned feminist orthodoxy. Ultimately, he had to leave the institution.
“They made up a lot of stories alleging improprieties, none of which existed,” he says. “The administration, which kowtowed to feminism, basically ushered me to the door as fast as they could. That’s what’s happens to intellectual discourse in the universities today.”
Makow observes that the real agenda of feminism is to undermine heterosexuality and the traditional family.
“When you get into feminist literature, there is a strong lesbian undercurrent. Normally, these people would not be taken seriously. But they’re being used by the powerful elite that controls society to undermine and destabilize society and to take over universities and prevent them from doing what they’re supposed to do, which is to perpetuate the values of Western civilization and have free inquiry.”
Makow went on to compose a book, A Long Way to Go for a Date, which was a personal diary of his experience with relationships. Now on his fourth marriage, he believes he’s finally figured out how to have a successful relationship. The book mainly deals with his travelling to the Philippines to find a bride who remained true to traditional values.
It was in August 2000 that he launched his savethemales.ca website. He has since written about 120 articles on subjects ranging from feminism to heterosexuality to the “new world order” and more. Perhaps surprising, he has received an immense amount of supportive mail in response to his efforts.
“There’s a lot of people who agree with me. My articles are carried on about seven other websites and my website gets about 1,500 hits a day. Frankly, I get very little negative feedback, because people who disagree don’t read it.”
Makow stresses that he has no quarrel with feminism itself, in the sense that women deserve equal treatment and opportunity. What he takes issue with is feminism’s “brainwashing” of young women, so that they believe traditional femininity is unworthy and disreputable.
“Women are being socially engineered to become incompatible with men,” he says. “That’s reflected in increasing divorce rates, declining marriage rates and declining birth rates. The secret aim of feminism is to bring down population.”
Makow says his views have been influenced by what he saw of his mother, who was brought up to believe that being a wife and mother were keys to fulfillment. Now, however, women are being told that being a wife and mother is somehow oppressive, and that it’s preferable to “drive an hour in heavy traffic and work as a loan manager at a bank or something.”
“Women are spending their prime years of fertility learning to be suspicious of men,” he says. Makow blames feminist leaders such as Betty Friedan for this. Friedan, he says, pretended to be an average housewife who suddenly discovered that being a wife and mother was horribly oppressive. She even went so far as to compare it to being a concentration camp inmate.
According to Makow, Friedan was a paid communist activist ever since her days at Smith College in the 1940s and went on to work for communist trade unions. Friedan’s husband was quoted as saying that his wife was the most violent woman he’d ever known. Many times, her husband claimed, she came after him with a steak knife.
It’s all part of a conscious and deliberate attempt to degrade us, says Makow.
“You see this in the obsession with sex. You just can’t avoid it – in advertising, television, movies. It’s as though sex is supposed to be a lifetime preoccupation for us … I don’t know if society will ever wake up to the facts, because people are being confused and distracted by mass media.”
One of the reasons Makow places so much stock in his website, and others like it, is that he believes the internet is now the only source of uncensored information the common citizen has left.
“I actually think it’s our best hope for survival. Anything that is done is exposed and communicated instantly. I would recommend people shut off their televisions and radios, and stop going to the movies, except very selectively. They’re all infused with propaganda and brainwashing. Focus instead on selected internet sites.”