September 14, 2015
By Elizabeth Hobson
Gloria Steinem christened Camille Paglia “The Antifeminist.” While Paglia rejected the label, the anecdote provided me with supreme validation.
I assumed that I was a feminist for years. When I embarked upon motherhood, the empathy I felt for other mothers led me to start wearing the label. I would digest experiences of people lacking basic rights and meditate on them, usually working my way to women’s issues. I believed that no problem was the sole preserve of one sex, and that it was productive to have people work simultaneously to support different demographics.
I thought that as a woman wanting a better world, I was naturally destined to put my energies into pushing for the progress of my gender. My transition to antifeminist happened shortly after I started talking to feminists online. The vast majority of feminists disgusted me; online, in media, in literature, and in modern activism.
Typical modern feminists parade the following features in varying degrees:
- Misogyny - I happen to be a fan of gendered language, but it’s absolutely ridiculous that the average feminist will go straight from hearing another woman express a statement that irritates them – to calling them a “bitch,” “slut,” or “degraded wretch” for not agreeing with their views. Feminists attack the parental competency of mothers who disagree with them, which is inexcusably shitty. Insults are more sufferable than condescension however, and it is the feminists contention that a woman who doesn’t share their beliefs is a brainwashed daughter of Patriarchy. I suspect that their ability to justify not viewing all women as fully ‘women’ allows feminists to go on about how a women’s subjective experience must never be challenged, meanwhile failing to listen to many women who offer completely different outlooks.
- Dangerous fanaticism - Rape culture hysteria belies the fact that feminists could not care less about the well-being of women. The feminist addiction to calling out victim blaming is so recklessly absurd, and the logical analysis is suggestive of deliberate victim manufacturing. They slam anti-rape nail polish. They slam rape prevention campaigns that gave sensible advice, such as to look after your friends. They even slam factual information about how 1 in 3 rape victims have consumed alcohol. They impede genuine healing by using trigger warnings, safe spaces, and militant sanctification of any victim with the right narrative; often regardless of the veracity of their claims. (see Mattress Girl) They are great at villainising or pitying the victims who have healed, as long as these victims have the wrong narrative. There is no “listen and believe” for women who own their traumas.
- Misandry - Patriarchy theory is misandric at its root. It can be dressed up to be palatable for the vast majority of people, but its underlying assumption is that the nature of men is to either harm women or be pathologically unaware of their well-being. According to Guardian columnist Caitlin Moran: “150 years ago, men generally thought that women were on par with animals.” This is a moronic statement, oblivious to the mountains of romantic literature that men have dedicated to women; the artwork, the music, and the Taj Ma-fucking-hal. I suspect that the origin for her belief may lie in the traditional paternal role as disciplinarian, extending to children and wives, and reinforced by societies as a duty to be performed out of love and commitment to family. It is in no way equivalent to animal husbandry, in the same way that a mother’s care for her child is not, although comparisons are frequent and amusing in some circles.
Feminists are, as a rule, ignorant of men’s issues. They take positions of denial, dismissal and derision. Meanwhile, these are positions that the feminist is hypersensitive to. Hypocrisy sucks.
- Men can’t represent women (except white knights, on special occasions) - A popular parlour game for feminists is ‘defining feminism’. I’ve found myself defending the ID of radical feminists against their perkier counterparts. I was irritated to witness the fate of male feminists getting caught up in these discussions. It’s rarely pleasant to watch decent people prostrate themselves in front of false idols, but when their oracles transmogrify into harpies to punish a senseless transgression, it’s just depressing. “You are a man, you have no right to define feminism for me.” This political movement is not about ideas, it is about vagina. It is not about progress, it is about vagina. It is not about sexual discrimination or objectification, because vagina is historically oppressed and she is colonised and dem women who let dem men talk over dem vagina is cockroach.
- Refusal to acknowledge evidence - “If there is ambiguity, we see what we want to see.” (Haidt) Everybody is trapped in a prison of their own perspective, but these feminists are truly blind. Sometimes I wonder exactly what it is that they want to see. Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams, psychologists from Cornell University, wrote a peer reviewed article which stated that “national hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track.” Although fewer women than men apply for STEM jobs, those who do apply are hired at a higher rate. Bizarrely, Williams has divulged that instead of taking that news as something women should be grateful for (if not ashamed of), feminists have refused to accept their findings, launching into vicious and personal attacks on social media.
- Contempt for free speech - Freedom feminist Christina Hoff Sommers found herself excommunicated from “a religion she didn’t even know existed” for expressing concern about the way gender studies courses were being taught. Her book The War Against Boys (advocating for nothing more than equal concern for both genders) has been burned by petulant shrews from within the movement, and they organise safe spaces within their universities when she visits to protect them from her moderate, liberal, evidence-based words. Their overtly threatening behaviour compels her to be accompanied by bodyguards to some of her engagements. This is idiosyncratic of feminists, who live completely immersed in micro-aggressions and their original victim status. Free speech is actually perceived by them as violence.
- Self absorption - When I ID’d as a feminist, I wanted to talk about rape as a weapon of war. I wanted to talk about the situation in Islamic countries. My peers were too busy language-policing journalists and attacking obtuse misrepresentations of their messages to give genuinely oppressed women a minute of thought. In Iran, August 2014, Atena Farghadani was arrested for crimes for which she would be sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. Her charges were “spreading propaganda” and “insulting members of Parliament.” This was by means of a satirical cartoon she uploaded to Facebook, criticising proposed legislation to restrict birth control and women’s rights. Her case has failed to register in the feminist mainstream. By way of contrast, in Canada, August 2015, feminists petitioned the state to deny Roosh V entry to their country to deliver two planned talks on neo-masculinity. Hashtags trended, and it was all over Canadian news outlets that feminists militantly attacked free speech as a threat to women. Their lack of perspective is despicable in so-called human rights activists, and proves that it is not advocacy of women’s rights that motivates them but simple egocentrism.
The slur “misogynist” has become a compliment for genuinely free thinkers. It comes from these feminists who apparently don’t know what it means. They sling it at people who support equal rights and respect women, whilst bearing all of the hallmarks of genuinely hating the vast majority of women themselves. This is exactly what feminism has become. Having acquired ‘equal rights’ they now wish to change the nature of both man and woman.