The Ugly Truth About Feminism
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| Why the Feminist Lie Was Never Meant for All Women, Especially the Beautiful Ones. |
There’s a lie at the heart of modern feminism that almost never gets exposed:
the illusion that feminism was designed for all women.
It’s a seductive idea. Any woman can be a boss. Any woman can climb, conquer, and compete. Any woman can break glass ceilings, run companies, dominate politics, and become “independent.”
But the ugly truth is that most women don’t actually want that life. And many who try it end up regretting it. The relentless performance. The pressure to lead. The masculine energy needed to survive in competitive spaces is not liberating, it’s exhausting. It doesn’t fuel them. It drains them. And that’s because feminism wasn’t designed for all women. It fits a very specific kind of woman.
The Feminist Fit: Who It Actually Serves
Feminism—especially the corporate, power-obsessed strain—suits women who already have masculine traits: high aggression, low emotional neediness, a natural taste for risk and status, and a high tolerance for confrontation.
These women exist. They’re real. They’re outliers. When they ascend, they frequently take the lead and thrive in traditionally male-dominated settings.
Think Oprah Winfrey. Think Serena Williams. Think Ellen DeGeneres.
Think Marcia Mayba, South Africa’s automotive industry powerhouse, a lesbian or bisexual woman who operates like a man: unapologetically sharp, assertive, and commanding.
Think Thuli Madonsela, a woman of unmatched mental discipline and calm steel, logical, composed, unmoved by public opinion, and driven by principle over popularity.
Think Celeste Ntuli, South Africa’s comedic queen who commands male audiences without shrinking or softening herself to be more "feminine." Her confidence is blunt, her humour is dominant, and her energy mirrors male comedians, confrontational, loud, and firm.
And think Joyce Meyer, the global Christian speaker who preaches like a man: blunt, structured, commanding, and unafraid to confront. She doesn’t lead with softness or nurture; she leads with authority, clarity, and control.
These aren’t average women. And they’re definitely not the face of everyday femininity.
So what happened?
Feminism took this outlier woman, held her up as the standard, and told every woman: “You can and should be her.”
That’s when things started to fall apart.
Enter the RUGs: The Unspoken Backbone of Feminism
Let’s be blunt.
The feminist movement is not led by the Beyoncés and Rihannas of the world. Feminism’s most vocal and aggressive proponents tend to be Relatively Unattractive Girls (RUGs).
These are women who don’t naturally command attention in the sexual marketplace, women who are not pursued, provided for, or protected simply by existing. They are not chosen, and they know it. And over time, that invisibility hardens into resentment.
To cope, many adopt defensive tropes like “Who said we do anything for men?” as a way to rationalize rejection. They don’t benefit from beauty, so they build ideologies instead, frameworks that demand recognition when nature didn’t hand it to them.
This is an observation.
Because here’s what’s happening in plain sight:
- Beautiful women don’t need feminism.
- They’re already winning.
- They are treated better under patriarchy than most RUGs are under feminism.
Feminists will often argue:
“But Rihanna benefits from feminism too!”
Let’s get real. It wasn’t feminism that made Rihanna. It was sex appeal, beauty, mystique, desire. Her brand thrives off patriarchy’s male gaze. She didn’t need marches or quotas. She was elevated because men wanted her, women envied her, and the world watched her.
You don’t get billionaire status off feminism. You get it by captivating the world. And the world responds, first and foremost, to beauty.
The average feminist, by contrast, isn’t benefiting from her looks. So she chooses ideological power instead.
She pushes for laws. Quotas. Language policing. HR policies. Visibility campaigns because she can’t rely on the natural privileges that beautiful women exploit.
What the Stats Say
Let’s ground this in numbers. If feminism was a universal calling, the data would reflect it. But it doesn’t.
Global Overview:
- Only 10% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Most are single or childless because that’s often the trade-off.
- In the U.S. military, only 16% of active-duty personnel are women, and just 9% in combat.
- In STEM fields, only 28% of the global workforce is female, despite scholarships and pro-female hiring drives.
Even in the most “gender-equal” countries like Sweden, women still prefer healthcare, education, and human interaction while men dominate the technical, high-pressure, competitive fields.
Let's now take a closer look at South Africa.
- According to Stats SA, just 3.3% of executive directors in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s top 100 companies are women.
- Even with years of B-BBEE policies, gender representation laws, and corporate feminism, women still do not rise in large numbers.
- South Africa's military consists of 21% women, but women occupy fewer than 5% of combat or high command roles.
- In engineering and IT, female students make up only 13% to 15% at the tertiary level, and dropout rates are significantly higher among women by second or third year.
- A 2019 study by the HSRC revealed that only 6.5% of women surveyed said they aspired to top-level leadership roles, while the majority expressed preference for flexibility, stability, and people-oriented jobs.
Is this patriarchy or preference?
A common feminist claim is that women couldn’t succeed until laws were reformed implying that patriarchy alone was the barrier. That’s not accurate. Even amid severe legal constraints like coverture, women found ways to gain power, influence, and wealth, long before modern feminism.
1. From Incapacity to Legal Reform
Under Roman-Dutch law, wives were legally “perpetual minors” unable to own property, sign contracts, or litigate independently.
But the Matrimonial Affairs Acts of the 1950s and ’80s began chipping away at this. By 1984, marital power was abolished prospectively for civil marriages , and by 2000, under the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act, all wives—including those in customary unions—gained equal legal capacity .
Still, before these reforms, countless women contracted, litigated, owned property, and negotiated assets, often through trusts or separately held estates. This was especially true for women who remained unmarried, because coverture laws only applied to wives. As long as a woman wasn’t under a husband’s legal authority, she could run businesses, buy land, manage property, and build wealth, and many did.
2. Powerful Women in the Past
Before feminism's modern wave, South African women were already leading and advocating:
Bertha Solomon (1892–1969), South Africa’s second female advocate, successfully pushed the 1953 Matrimonial Affairs Act, enabling wives to control property and ending husbands’ legality over wives’ assets.
In the 1950s, Federation of South African Women activists protested apartheid-era patriarchy, demanding voting rights, economic advancement, and freedom from discriminatory laws.
3. Opportunity Exists Yet Women Remain Underrepresented
Legal equality is now nominally in place. Job and property rights are codified. But representation gaps remain:
- Only 3.3% of JSE Top 100 executive directors are women.
- Young women unemployment is roughly 6–8% higher than their male peers, even as they outperform men in education.
- Women in South Africa earn 6% less than men in entry-level jobs—approximately R3,240 per year difference.
4. Post-Apartheid: Black Women Got a Boost But Not a Transformation
After 1994, Black women became a top priority in government policy:
- Employment Equity Act (1998) and B-BBEE regulations were specifically crafted to advance Black women.
- Black women are considered a “designated group” for fast-tracking into corporate leadership, state appointments, and tender systems.
- Education access exploded: Black women now dominate universities, often outperforming men academically.
But here’s the catch:
Despite this legal and structural boost, Black women are still underrepresented in CEO roles, engineering, law, tech, and high-level finance.
Why?
Because opportunity isn’t the same as desire.
And representation doesn’t always follow access, especially when the space being opened is coded around masculine traits like confrontation, risk-taking, and emotional detachment.
5. Bottom Line
Feminists argue that patriarchy held women back but:
- Legal barriers have been removed.
- Affirmative action is active, especially in South Africa.
- Freedom is here.
Yet the numbers don’t lie.
Most women—including Black women—don’t choose the high-risk, high-stress, high-status paths that feminism idealises.
The feminist script says: “We were locked out.”
Reality now says: “You’re free but many of you just don’t want what you claimed to be fighting for.”
The Silent Cost: When Prioritizing Women Means Pausing Men
Post-apartheid South Africa created massive policy space for Black advancement but it didn’t treat Black men and Black women the same.
Black women were prioritized, especially in employment equity, B-BBEE scoring, state appointments, and funding opportunities. Corporate South Africa, government institutions, and donor programs were, and still are, more eager to tick the “Black woman” box than give equal consideration to Black men.
But women aren’t actually filling the spaces they were prioritized for.
Despite decades of incentives, boardrooms, engineering labs, tech startups, and executive offices remain male-dominated because most women aren’t interested. And the longer the system waits for women to occupy these roles in large numbers, the longer it blocks capable men who could be excelling in those very positions.
Men are literally being sidelined because the system is on pause, waiting for a female majority that never arrives.
The Silent Exit
Just a quiet return to what feels right:
- Starting small businesses
- Becoming nurses, teachers, mothers
- Choosing rhythm over rush
- Choosing love over leverage
- Choosing softness over struggle
They’ve woken up.
They tasted feminism’s offering and found no peace in it.
The Final Truth: Beauty Wins, Feminism Shouts
If we strip away the slogans, a blunt reality appears.
The most beautiful women are adored under patriarchy.
The most masculinised women thrive under feminism.
And the average woman is caught between a war she didn’t start and didn’t ask for.
Feminism offered a substitute life to women who weren’t winning in the traditional feminine one.
That’s not necessarily evil. But it’s not universal empowerment either. It’s a coping mechanism for women who didn’t receive nature’s first currency, beauty.
So let the warriors rise. Let the masculine-coded women lead if that’s their truth.
But stop lying to the rest.
Stop pretending feminism fits every woman.
Stop pressuring soft women to wear a hard shell.
Most women were never the problem. They were simply forced to wear a uniform that didn’t fit.
Now they’re choosing themselves again.
Not the self they were told to be but the self they always were.
And that’s what real liberation looks like.
-Mohau Darlington
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