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The Goddess That Failed: Feminism's Unending War against Men, Families, and Civilization Itself
Janice Fiamengo was once a true believer, completing a PhD with specialization in feminist literature and theory. Her reading as a university student convinced her that women had been unjustly oppressed for centuries, and that empowered women would lead their societies into a better future. Then she confronted the reality of female rage, false claims, the denial of merit, shattered families, and heartbroken fathers. She saw young men blatantly discriminated against in academic hiring. She came to see that feminism is a false god that leads women to hate by telling them that they are victims. She has spent the past decade alerting men and women to its dangers.
In these richly-supported chapters, Fiamengo shows why feminism has nothing to do with gender equality. It is a radical ideology that seeks sexual license, unearned economic privileges, and freedom from adult accountability for women. It enforces economic servitude, shame, and legal disempowerment for men. It impugns male goodness while excusing female wrongdoing; even worse, it encourages women to be their worst selves while telling men that they can never be good enough. Feminism thus destroys the very thing it claims to true reciprocity between the sexes.
In these richly-supported chapters, Fiamengo shows why feminism has nothing to do with gender equality. It is a radical ideology that seeks sexual license, unearned economic privileges, and freedom from adult accountability for women. It enforces economic servitude, shame, and legal disempowerment for men. It impugns male goodness while excusing female wrongdoing; even worse, it encourages women to be their worst selves while telling men that they can never be good enough. Feminism thus destroys the very thing it claims to true reciprocity between the sexes.
216 pages, Paperback
Published August 4, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 4, 2026
In this work, Dr. Fiamengo presents us with a benchmark publication that examines 225 years of feminism in Western culture.
Dr. Fiamengo has given us an eminently readable and erudite exploration of the premises feminists have used to justify the current gynocentrism and imbalance in the West. She points out that this imbalance has given us plummeting marriage and birthrates, as well as tens of millions of men walking away from the workforce, higher education and roles that men, previous to feminism, had nobly accepted as protectors and providers.
Her analysis is as eye-opening as it is literate. She examines the tenets of feminism that are based on hatred of men (almost all of them) and points out the invalidity of those tenets as merely products of undifferentiated rage with no legitimate basis.
Dr. Fiamengo enlightens us that feminism has become a religion. She echoes the observations of Camille Paglia who wrote:
“Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead. The women’s movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There’s no room for dissent. Feminist ideology is like a new religion for a lot of neurotic women. You can’t talk to them about anything.” - Paglia
Dr. Fiamengo expands on Paglia’s sentiments and outlines the unspoken abuses of the feminist movement from Cady-Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” in 1848 (reflecting the origins of feminism in communism and Marxism) and modern feminist hate commentators such as Julie Bindel who wrote “Why I Hate Men” (2006).
The book is an easy read for intelligent readers. I read it in an afternoon. It offers a fresh view of relations between men and women that is long overdue. This work promises a first step for repairing relations between men and women and perhaps a means of halting civilization’s decline in the West.
Dr. Fiamengo has given us an eminently readable and erudite exploration of the premises feminists have used to justify the current gynocentrism and imbalance in the West. She points out that this imbalance has given us plummeting marriage and birthrates, as well as tens of millions of men walking away from the workforce, higher education and roles that men, previous to feminism, had nobly accepted as protectors and providers.
Her analysis is as eye-opening as it is literate. She examines the tenets of feminism that are based on hatred of men (almost all of them) and points out the invalidity of those tenets as merely products of undifferentiated rage with no legitimate basis.
Dr. Fiamengo enlightens us that feminism has become a religion. She echoes the observations of Camille Paglia who wrote:
“Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead. The women’s movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There’s no room for dissent. Feminist ideology is like a new religion for a lot of neurotic women. You can’t talk to them about anything.” - Paglia
Dr. Fiamengo expands on Paglia’s sentiments and outlines the unspoken abuses of the feminist movement from Cady-Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” in 1848 (reflecting the origins of feminism in communism and Marxism) and modern feminist hate commentators such as Julie Bindel who wrote “Why I Hate Men” (2006).
The book is an easy read for intelligent readers. I read it in an afternoon. It offers a fresh view of relations between men and women that is long overdue. This work promises a first step for repairing relations between men and women and perhaps a means of halting civilization’s decline in the West.
September 25, 2026
Excellent book. Required reading for anyone critical of feminism.
October 8, 2026
In her book “The Goddess That Failed,” Janice Fiamengo says: “All feminisms are animated by the belief that the history of humanity in the west has been a history of privileged white men oppressing women and other marginalized groups. None escapes a founding binary logic whereby the world is divided up into categories of oppressor and oppressed, victim and victimizer, with individuals to be treated differently according to their identity category.” In terms of this definition, it is hard to see how there could be a conservative feminism. Feminism is just like other left-wing ideologies, like post-colonialism, only the oppressors are men and the oppressed are women, whereas in post-colonialism the oppressor are the colonizers and the oppressed are the colonized. They are both variations on the Marxist distinction between the capitalists and the proletariat.
Unlike other left-wing ideologies, feminism did not emerge from Marxism but preceded it. Its founder was the Englishwoman Mary Woolstonecraft, today better known as the mother of Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein.” Amanda Dorney outlines Janice’s take on Woolstonecraft so well it is worth quoting: “’There never was a moderate feminism,’ she writes, and all feminism is ‘rotten to the core.’ To prove this, Fiamengo alludes to the radicalism of the first feminist. Mary Wollstonecraft writes that she seeks to “advance, instead of retarding, the progress of those glorious principles [articulated in the French Revolution] that give a substance to morality.’ Woolf writes of Wollstonecraft: ‘The Revolution thus was not merely an event that had happened outside her; it was an active agent in her own blood. She had been in revolt all her life-against tyranny, against law, against convention.’”
Janice notes that Friedrich Engels’ 1884 work, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, “argued that the family was the primary site of women’s oppression” and promoted feminism’s war against the family, which occupies several chapters of her book. “Engels linked the position of women in marriage with the position of oppressed workers under capitalism.”
It is a short step from defining the husband-wife relationship as exploitative of women, to concluding that heterosexuality is exploitative of women “and that women are better off as lesbians.” Perhaps the most famous lesbian relationship in literature was Virginia Woolf’s with Vita Sackville West, and there is a strong lesbian strand in feminism from early on.
Janice notes that “[In 2012] Lorber and Martin predicted that within the next 50 years, female runners might well beat out male competitors in the Marathon, because women were at last coming to believe in their own abilities.” Fourteen years on, it seems obvious that this will never happen. Long-distance running is one of the sports where there is much less difference between male and female performances than in some others (e.g. boxing) but the differences are still there. The higher fat content in the female body can theoretically convey an advantage in longer ultramarathon races, but it is dubious that it actually overwhelms the factors that favour men. The 100K even is the longest ultramarathon distance that World Athletics recognizes, and there and for it men still have a 7% advantage. A 2020 study showed that in races beyond 314 kilometres women had a 0.6% edge. The difference is so small, it is dubious that this represents an actual gender gap, and not just a statistical anomaly due to the very small number of women competing in these events.
In the case of long-distance swimming races in cold water there seems to be a stronger case for believing women may have an advantage, but here the evidence seems basically anecdotal. A remarkable female swimmer, Penny Lee Dean, still has the overall record time for swimming the Catalina Channel, which she set in September 1976, although several hundred male swimmers have swum the distance since then. Were the conditions especially favourable when Dean made her swim? There is no adjustment for that looking only at finishing times. In any case, 10 kilometres is considered the marathon distance for swimmers, so a 20.2 mile race would be more than three times that distance, a distance a very small percentage of swimmers, more or female, would ever swim, and when they do, almost never in competitive races.
So there are very few sporting endeavours where males do not enjoy a competitive advantage.
Janice may be interested in knowing that feminism seems to have infected our national statistical institute, Statistics Canada, as one can see in the 2023 study “Measuring the value of women’s contribution to the Canadian economy: New insights based on recent work.” This was an attempt to measure the contribution of women’s housework to the economy, which is excluded from measured GDP. Statistics Canada has showed no similar interest in measuring the value of self-built dwellings that are added to the owner-occupied dwelling stock, mostly by male labour. These, unlike hours spent on housework, contribute to the national housing stock and the national stock of capital as a whole. These should get picked up in surveys, but some of it is certainly missed from such estimates.
I would like to end this review with a number of quotes from Janice’s book with occasional comments by myself:
“Fathers’ groups have amassed peer-revied (should be “peer-reviewed”) data showing that children do better with both parents fully in their lives. . . “ (145)
“Ultimately parenting equality did not long remain in favour with feminists, because of the enormous financial incentives that came with sole custody. . . [footnote] Tom James explains: ‘According to an analysis conducted by economist Robert Willis, less than one third of actual custody payments are actually used for children; the remainder is profit for the custodial parent.’” (149)
“Feminist journalist and former academic Helen Joyce titled her article ‘The New Patriarchy: How Trans Radicalism Hurts Women, Children and Trans People Themselves.’ Noticeably, men are absent from her title or article as subjects of concern.” (191-2) [It seems a nit-picking criticism of Joyce, who has done outstanding work on this subject. Where female sport is concerned, the problem is not just with trans radicalism but with so-called intersex radicalism as well, which Joyce has discussed in her work. A title can’t properly detail everything to be discussed in an essay. A father whose daughter cannot qualify for a spot in a higher-level competition because a trans female or a so-called intersex athlete has unfairly seized it no doubt feels bad about it, but why state the obvious? And his daughter’s hurt is almost certainly deeper than his.]
“As Captain Frank Lima commented in [an] interview for that essay: ‘It is hard to go into a fire with someone when you know from drilling that she can’t lift the ladder.’” (195)
“Taylor was part of a European Space Agency team that sent a tiny probe four billion miles through space to land on a comet.” (199) [This was a truly outstanding achievement but the distance between the comet and Earth was only 560 million kilometres or 310 million miles.]
Unlike other left-wing ideologies, feminism did not emerge from Marxism but preceded it. Its founder was the Englishwoman Mary Woolstonecraft, today better known as the mother of Mary Shelley, the author of “Frankenstein.” Amanda Dorney outlines Janice’s take on Woolstonecraft so well it is worth quoting: “’There never was a moderate feminism,’ she writes, and all feminism is ‘rotten to the core.’ To prove this, Fiamengo alludes to the radicalism of the first feminist. Mary Wollstonecraft writes that she seeks to “advance, instead of retarding, the progress of those glorious principles [articulated in the French Revolution] that give a substance to morality.’ Woolf writes of Wollstonecraft: ‘The Revolution thus was not merely an event that had happened outside her; it was an active agent in her own blood. She had been in revolt all her life-against tyranny, against law, against convention.’”
Janice notes that Friedrich Engels’ 1884 work, “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, “argued that the family was the primary site of women’s oppression” and promoted feminism’s war against the family, which occupies several chapters of her book. “Engels linked the position of women in marriage with the position of oppressed workers under capitalism.”
It is a short step from defining the husband-wife relationship as exploitative of women, to concluding that heterosexuality is exploitative of women “and that women are better off as lesbians.” Perhaps the most famous lesbian relationship in literature was Virginia Woolf’s with Vita Sackville West, and there is a strong lesbian strand in feminism from early on.
Janice notes that “[In 2012] Lorber and Martin predicted that within the next 50 years, female runners might well beat out male competitors in the Marathon, because women were at last coming to believe in their own abilities.” Fourteen years on, it seems obvious that this will never happen. Long-distance running is one of the sports where there is much less difference between male and female performances than in some others (e.g. boxing) but the differences are still there. The higher fat content in the female body can theoretically convey an advantage in longer ultramarathon races, but it is dubious that it actually overwhelms the factors that favour men. The 100K even is the longest ultramarathon distance that World Athletics recognizes, and there and for it men still have a 7% advantage. A 2020 study showed that in races beyond 314 kilometres women had a 0.6% edge. The difference is so small, it is dubious that this represents an actual gender gap, and not just a statistical anomaly due to the very small number of women competing in these events.
In the case of long-distance swimming races in cold water there seems to be a stronger case for believing women may have an advantage, but here the evidence seems basically anecdotal. A remarkable female swimmer, Penny Lee Dean, still has the overall record time for swimming the Catalina Channel, which she set in September 1976, although several hundred male swimmers have swum the distance since then. Were the conditions especially favourable when Dean made her swim? There is no adjustment for that looking only at finishing times. In any case, 10 kilometres is considered the marathon distance for swimmers, so a 20.2 mile race would be more than three times that distance, a distance a very small percentage of swimmers, more or female, would ever swim, and when they do, almost never in competitive races.
So there are very few sporting endeavours where males do not enjoy a competitive advantage.
Janice may be interested in knowing that feminism seems to have infected our national statistical institute, Statistics Canada, as one can see in the 2023 study “Measuring the value of women’s contribution to the Canadian economy: New insights based on recent work.” This was an attempt to measure the contribution of women’s housework to the economy, which is excluded from measured GDP. Statistics Canada has showed no similar interest in measuring the value of self-built dwellings that are added to the owner-occupied dwelling stock, mostly by male labour. These, unlike hours spent on housework, contribute to the national housing stock and the national stock of capital as a whole. These should get picked up in surveys, but some of it is certainly missed from such estimates.
I would like to end this review with a number of quotes from Janice’s book with occasional comments by myself:
“Fathers’ groups have amassed peer-revied (should be “peer-reviewed”) data showing that children do better with both parents fully in their lives. . . “ (145)
“Ultimately parenting equality did not long remain in favour with feminists, because of the enormous financial incentives that came with sole custody. . . [footnote] Tom James explains: ‘According to an analysis conducted by economist Robert Willis, less than one third of actual custody payments are actually used for children; the remainder is profit for the custodial parent.’” (149)
“Feminist journalist and former academic Helen Joyce titled her article ‘The New Patriarchy: How Trans Radicalism Hurts Women, Children and Trans People Themselves.’ Noticeably, men are absent from her title or article as subjects of concern.” (191-2) [It seems a nit-picking criticism of Joyce, who has done outstanding work on this subject. Where female sport is concerned, the problem is not just with trans radicalism but with so-called intersex radicalism as well, which Joyce has discussed in her work. A title can’t properly detail everything to be discussed in an essay. A father whose daughter cannot qualify for a spot in a higher-level competition because a trans female or a so-called intersex athlete has unfairly seized it no doubt feels bad about it, but why state the obvious? And his daughter’s hurt is almost certainly deeper than his.]
“As Captain Frank Lima commented in [an] interview for that essay: ‘It is hard to go into a fire with someone when you know from drilling that she can’t lift the ladder.’” (195)
“Taylor was part of a European Space Agency team that sent a tiny probe four billion miles through space to land on a comet.” (199) [This was a truly outstanding achievement but the distance between the comet and Earth was only 560 million kilometres or 310 million miles.]
September 23, 2026
The Goddess That Failed is a provocative and thought-provoking book that takes a critical look at feminism, gender relations, family structures, and the broader social changes that have shaped modern life. It presents a strong argument and invites readers to examine assumptions about gender, relationships, and society from a perspective that is often debated.
What I found most interesting was the book’s willingness to challenge conventional ideas and encourage deeper reflection. The author connects feminism with broader questions about family, cultural values, and social institutions, creating plenty of material for readers to consider. Whether readers agree with every argument or not, the book provides a clear point of view and raises questions that can lead to meaningful discussion.
The writing is engaging and direct, making the central ideas easy to follow. I also appreciated that the book goes beyond individual issues and attempts to place them within a larger historical and cultural context.
Overall, this is an intellectually stimulating read for anyone interested in feminism, gender politics, family life, and contemporary cultural debates. It is unapologetically argumentative and gives readers plenty to think about after turning the final page. A worthwhile choice for readers who enjoy challenging perspectives and books that encourage serious discussion about the direction of modern society.
What I found most interesting was the book’s willingness to challenge conventional ideas and encourage deeper reflection. The author connects feminism with broader questions about family, cultural values, and social institutions, creating plenty of material for readers to consider. Whether readers agree with every argument or not, the book provides a clear point of view and raises questions that can lead to meaningful discussion.
The writing is engaging and direct, making the central ideas easy to follow. I also appreciated that the book goes beyond individual issues and attempts to place them within a larger historical and cultural context.
Overall, this is an intellectually stimulating read for anyone interested in feminism, gender politics, family life, and contemporary cultural debates. It is unapologetically argumentative and gives readers plenty to think about after turning the final page. A worthwhile choice for readers who enjoy challenging perspectives and books that encourage serious discussion about the direction of modern society.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 4, 2026
Janice Fiamengo is a professor of English literature and a former feminist. She does a good job in exposing how feminism has been rotten from its beginning. My 4-star rating is due to her ambivalence towards those of us, including young women athletes, who oppose transgenders in women's sports and locker rooms. Because female reporters were allowed into professional male athlete locker rooms several decades ago and thus invaded men's spaces, Fiamengo does not call out male cross-dressers' access to women's sports and locker rooms. (I do not believe women should have been sent into male locker rooms and agree with Bowie Kuhn that it offends common decency.) For example, she writes: "Fallon Fox, a male-bodied fighter who takes hormone therapy to suppress testosterone, fractured the orbital bone of opponent Tamikka Brents just 44 seconds into the first round of a mixed martial arts bout. . . . While defenders of trans athletes pointed out that orbital bone fractures are not unusual in mixed martial arts, many observers were horrified at the image of Fox bashing Brents" (p. 191). Fiamengo seems to miss the fact that trans "women" are biological men (who were mediocre when competing with their own sex) pretending to be women. Methinks Fiamengo has work to do in this area.
This is the third book I have read on the history of feminism, and I give it third place. If I were to only read one book, it would be Rachel Wilson's "Occult Feminism: The Secret History of Women's Liberation." My second choice would be Carrie Gress' "The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us."
This is the third book I have read on the history of feminism, and I give it third place. If I were to only read one book, it would be Rachel Wilson's "Occult Feminism: The Secret History of Women's Liberation." My second choice would be Carrie Gress' "The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us."
August 4, 2026
In this work, Dr. Fiamengo presents us with a benchmark publication that examines 225 years of feminism in Western culture.
Dr. Fiamengo has given us an eminently readable and erudite exploration of the premises feminists have used to justify the current gynocentrism and imbalance in the West. She points out that this imbalance has given us plummeting marriage and birthrates, as well as tens of millions of men walking away from the workforce, higher education and roles that men, previous to feminism, had nobly accepted as protectors and providers.
Here analysis is as eye-opening as it is literate. She examines the tenets of feminism that are based on hatred of men (almost all of them) and points out the invalidity of those tenets as merely products of undifferentiated rage with no legitimate basis.
Dr. Fiamengo enlightens us that feminism has become a religion. She echoes the observations of Camille Paglia who wrote:
“Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead. The women’s movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There’s no room for dissent. Feminist ideology is like a new religion for a lot of neurotic women. You can’t talk to them about anything.” - Paglia
Dr. Fiamengo expands on Paglia’s sentiments and outlines the unspoken abuses of the feminist movement from Cady-Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” in 1848 (reflecting the origins of feminism in communism and Marxism) and modern feminist hate commentators such as Julie Bindel who wrote ““Why I Hate Men” (2006).
The book is a easy read for intelligent readers. I read it in an afternoon. It offers a fresh view of relations between men and women that is long overdue. This work promises a first step for repairing relations between men and women and perhaps a means of halting civilization’s decline in the West.
Dr. Fiamengo has given us an eminently readable and erudite exploration of the premises feminists have used to justify the current gynocentrism and imbalance in the West. She points out that this imbalance has given us plummeting marriage and birthrates, as well as tens of millions of men walking away from the workforce, higher education and roles that men, previous to feminism, had nobly accepted as protectors and providers.
Here analysis is as eye-opening as it is literate. She examines the tenets of feminism that are based on hatred of men (almost all of them) and points out the invalidity of those tenets as merely products of undifferentiated rage with no legitimate basis.
Dr. Fiamengo enlightens us that feminism has become a religion. She echoes the observations of Camille Paglia who wrote:
“Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead. The women’s movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There’s no room for dissent. Feminist ideology is like a new religion for a lot of neurotic women. You can’t talk to them about anything.” - Paglia
Dr. Fiamengo expands on Paglia’s sentiments and outlines the unspoken abuses of the feminist movement from Cady-Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” in 1848 (reflecting the origins of feminism in communism and Marxism) and modern feminist hate commentators such as Julie Bindel who wrote ““Why I Hate Men” (2006).
The book is a easy read for intelligent readers. I read it in an afternoon. It offers a fresh view of relations between men and women that is long overdue. This work promises a first step for repairing relations between men and women and perhaps a means of halting civilization’s decline in the West.
August 4, 2026
In this work, Dr. Fiamengo presents us with a benchmark publication that examines 225 years of feminism in Western culture.
Dr. Fiamengo has given us an eminently readable and erudite exploration of the premises feminists have used to justify the current gynocentrism and imbalance in the West. She points out that this imbalance has given us plummeting marriage and birthrates, as well as tens of millions of men walking away from the workforce, higher education and roles that men, previous to feminism, had nobly accepted as protectors and providers.
Here analysis is as eye-opening as it is literate. She examines the tenets of feminism that are based on hatred of men (almost all of them) and points out the invalidity of those tenets as merely products of undifferentiated rage with no legitimate basis.
Dr. Fiamengo enlightens us that feminism has become a religion. She echoes the observations of Camille Paglia who wrote:
“Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead. The women’s movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There’s no room for dissent. Feminist ideology is like a new religion for a lot of neurotic women. You can’t talk to them about anything.” - Paglia
Dr. Fiamengo expands on Paglia’s sentiments and outlines the unspoken abuses of the feminist movement from Cady-Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” in 1848 (reflecting the origins of feminism in communism and Marxism) and modern feminist hate commentators such as Julie Bindel who wrote ““Why I Hate Men” (2006).
The book is a easy read for intelligent readers. I read it in an afternoon. It offers a fresh view of relations between men and women that is long overdue. This work promises a first step for repairing relations between men and women and perhaps a means of halting civilization’s decline in the West.
Dr. Fiamengo has given us an eminently readable and erudite exploration of the premises feminists have used to justify the current gynocentrism and imbalance in the West. She points out that this imbalance has given us plummeting marriage and birthrates, as well as tens of millions of men walking away from the workforce, higher education and roles that men, previous to feminism, had nobly accepted as protectors and providers.
Here analysis is as eye-opening as it is literate. She examines the tenets of feminism that are based on hatred of men (almost all of them) and points out the invalidity of those tenets as merely products of undifferentiated rage with no legitimate basis.
Dr. Fiamengo enlightens us that feminism has become a religion. She echoes the observations of Camille Paglia who wrote:
“Feminism is dead. The movement is absolutely dead. The women’s movement tried to suppress dissident voices for way too long. There’s no room for dissent. Feminist ideology is like a new religion for a lot of neurotic women. You can’t talk to them about anything.” - Paglia
Dr. Fiamengo expands on Paglia’s sentiments and outlines the unspoken abuses of the feminist movement from Cady-Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments” in 1848 (reflecting the origins of feminism in communism and Marxism) and modern feminist hate commentators such as Julie Bindel who wrote ““Why I Hate Men” (2006).
The book is a easy read for intelligent readers. I read it in an afternoon. It offers a fresh view of relations between men and women that is long overdue. This work promises a first step for repairing relations between men and women and perhaps a means of halting civilization’s decline in the West.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews