Did you hear the alarm cock, guy feminists?
No, I didn’t mean “clock”. I meant male feminist Hugo Schwyzer’s recent dick-sexting meltdown (link NSFW), failed 2nd suicide attempt, and self-ejection from the grrl-o-sphere after a career that lasted about the same length of time as the two and a half-year stint of the last lady Governor of Alaska.
Because Sarah Palin thought she could be a feminist, too.
A male feminist faces a difficult task – licking the feces off of the Birkenstocks of hirsute female feminists while walking on eggshells and pretending that he is still, somehow, more man than cockroach. Sure, some men are into that – some see any attention from a woman as better than no attention. For those men who define their worth through the moistened lenses of their vaginal idolatry, becoming a male feminist might seem like a great idea, but as they continue to follow that road, gnawing away at the back of their minds will be a growing unease – a certain feeling of cognitive dissonance.
Let’s name that dissonance for what it is: the awareness by feminist men that feminists hate men who identify as feminists.
A movement that seeks equality should practice it, don’t you think? Some feminists would not even grant men in their movement the equality of the title of feminist, preferring to call such men “male allies of feminism” or “pro-feminists.” That’s right – the movement that espouses “equality” is unwilling to grant it to the men in its own ranks, not even through something as trivial as allowing their manslaves the title of “feminist”. Cognitive dissonance.
Sure, feminist supremacist slights like this roll off the backs of feminist men like the tears they dare not show any woman – we’re men, they think, and we’re not supposed to express what we feel because “patriarchy” (men like us), and feminists are working to tear down patriarchy (men like us), and we should help the feminists rip down men like us, because…Cognitive dissonance.
More and more feminists are expressing skepticism and rejection of male feminists even as they claim they want men in their hate movement – Meghan Murphy writes in xoJane that “It’s not that I don’t think men can be feminist. I know many men who clearly align themselves with the feminist movement. The problem seems to be with men who self-identify as ‘feminist’ as a means of gaining credibility or avoiding accountability. The problem is that many men who claim to be ‘good men’ or to respect women, don’t actually… well… respect women.”
You see the eggshells, don’t you? Be careful, guys – your nominal, scare-quote “feminism” will not protect you from the wrath of women – it will make you their primary targets. Men who self-identify as “feminist” don’t gain credibility with women (they lose it) and they sure as hell don’t dodge their accountability as patriarchal assholes – feminists expect them to shut up, empty their wallets and destroy their own lives just like all men will be forced to do as feminism expands. Like Hugo Schwyzer did, and will, until the day he dies.
Murphy knows that to keep men in line, feminists must first, and always, shame and dehumanize them – treat them like dogs. She writes when men claim feminism as their own either to gain legitimacy in feminist spaces and conversations or as a way to excuse their misogynist behaviour, it makes me wonder whether men might be better off staying away from the title completely. “I’m a feminist,” when coming from a man, always feels to me like demanding a pat on the head. Cognitive dissonance.
Shame is a normal human emotion – properly used it can guide us away from unethical, unjust and unsafe actions. Feeling shame is unpleasant and seeking to avoid shame, or gain relief from shame, can be healthy. But there is no relief from shame in feminism, especially for men, and men who seek to address their shame and improve their self-image by becoming male feminists are going to be less successful than someone drinking molten lead to relieve heartburn.
Now, in addition to seeking to become feminists to relieve the shame feminists have instilled in them, some men think that achieving the feminist title will gain them sexual access to women. When they are not shaming men, feminists shamelessly exploit men’s normal and natural sexual desires. In a remarkable article that exposed the entire feminist sexual playbook for exploiting men, Anthony Weiner groupie and feminist Sydney Leathers cackled out her 10 tips “for seducing politicians”, although these tips would reduce any blue-pill pussy-beggar to mush.
Leather dehumanized Weiner by describing him as “a weird science experiment. I wanted to see how far it could go. How far could I push it? How long could it go on?” Leathers’ feminist seduction tips include indulging his ego, playing coy, avoiding aggression, resisting being sexual (“It will drive him crazy!”), exploiting his weaknesses (“If he’s insecure, you’ve hit gold”), alternating between making him feel jealous/secure, finding out his fetish, giving him detailed attention, telling him he’s sexy, painting a picture of herself in his brain, and so on.
Sure, it is all fun and games with feminists until they turn on you and publish your penis for all the world to see – and back we go to the shaming, and, you guessed it, Cognitive Dissonance.
The feminists would kill you like a lab rat when they tire of playing with your feelings and dignity but they lack the depth of feeling for even that measure of mercy. They will drive you to attempt suicide but your identity as a man will be so damaged that you will fail at it and wind up damseling just like feminists do.
But damseling only works if you are a woman. “Manseling” – asking for help as a man – will only make feminists sing “Cry me a river”.
The only hope for you, male feminists, is in places that hold some compassion for men. Places like A Voice for Men, where Paul Elam admits his compassion for men like Hugo: “To be completely honest, for the first time I actually feel sympathy for this troubled soul.”
There were other men who offered their solace – commenter Dragnet at The-Spearhead was strongly up-voted when he wrote “I actually kind of feel bad for the guy. He is obviously in some serious psychological distress and is a danger to himself and, quite likely, others around him.”
Even purple pill, not-a-feminist Ally Fogg of the Guardian wrote “Although I disagree(d) with him on just about everything, and we had more of our share of cross words, I wish Schwyzer nothing less than a full recovery and the chance to find the peace of mind that has obviously long eluded him.”
So, if you are a man who believes in equality for both women and men, and grasps how ludicrous it is for feminists to assert that they merely want equality with the people they are trying to destroy, then there is one place to be.
Nowhere near a feminist.
