Jennifer Hansen is a feminist writer who recently produced a list of six reasons to keep poisonous insects as house pets, why to drive without a seat-belt, motorcycle without a helmet, why to acquire heroin addiction, and why you should place your infant in a pen amongst unfed crocodiles. Also, why look for gas leaks using a lit match, and why to wipe your ass with poison ivy after shitting in the woods.
Actually, Hansen argued for none of these things, rather she recently wrote a list of six reasons for men to date feminists[1]. Several of these are good and compelling reasons to not date a feminist, such as the flatly moronic idea that dating your future employer is a good plan, and the rest are simple lies.
Hansen’s first reason is the claim, made without apparent irony that: “Feminists are, by definition, educated women.”
To address this, it’s necessary to define a few terms, notably: “educated”, and “feminism”.
Educated, in it’s colloquial meaning generally implies some handful of years at a university or college, and the attainment of an academic credential. Pretty obviously, almost all universities and colleges are highly feminized environments, but there is a qualitative difference between acquiring proficiency in a body of expert knowledge, skill in business methodology or mathematics, or engineering, and the mere acculturation into an ideology. In contrast with academic subjects such as biology, physics, philosophy, political science or systems analysis, Feminism is an ideology. Many usefully educated graduates of other fields also become acculturated to feminist ideology during their education, but acculturation and education shouldn’t be confused as the same thing.
And what is the ideology of feminism? This is sometimes hard to answer, as adherents to the ideology indulge in almost never-ending obfuscation of what feminism actually is. “The radical notion that women are people” still gets tossed out as a pat-answer, but women being people is not now, and never was a radical notion.
Cutting through the fluff, feminism is a doctrine built on the pre-supposition of victimhood of women by men as a foundation of female identity. In it’s goals is always the utilization of the state to forcibly redress this claimed victimization. In other words, the proxy use of violence and wealth appropriation. In whatever flavor, and variation, these two basic features are common to every doctrine using the label feminism. Feminism is therefore, a doctrine of class hatred, and violence.
According to Hansen, feminists also “read, travel, play golf, and hold interesting jobs”. And nobody else does any of those things, reading, having interesting jobs, feminism has the monopoly. Seriously, this is satire right? Oh yeah, you might end up dating your future boss. Checking the article, this is reasons to date a feminist, not reasons to run far and fast in the other direction. Oooookay.
Hansen’s next reason to date a feminist is that “There is no presumption that you should pay”. Obviously I have no presumption that I will pay, but what has this to do with feminism? Having dated self described feminists in the past, I know the cultural onus on me, the man to pay remains present regardless of whether a woman declared herself feminist and therefore liberated from all gendered expectations. Unfortunately, this self actualization seems strangely transient, taking effect when advantage can be had, and returning when traditional female advantage is up for grabs, like the man pays. Cue knee jerk protestations of no-true-scotswoman in three, two, one…
The fact is that in social settings, almost all women, feminist or otherwise continue to expect financial gallantry from men, which is identical to prostitution, simply less honest. As a man with self respect, I do not pay women for the privilege of entertaining them. Feminism or it’s absence has nothing to do with that. Hansen bludgeons her readers with a re-iteration of the claim that “Remember, feminists are educated women.” Which betrays her continued confusion between the concepts of education and ideological indoctrination.
Reason number three to stick your head in a deep-fryer: “You might get laid on the first date”.
Because after all, everybody knows men are sex-obsessed, hormone driven subhumans who are always horny, and and desperate to fuck everything with a hole in it. I know this is true because my TV tells me so, quack quack quack quack! And don’t forget, feminists are educated, so says Jennifer Hansen for the third time in a row, and by golly, now I believe her. Educated, that’s what feminist means – an educated woman, and a non feminist is an uneducated simpleton. If only i’d known sooner, I could have saved myself so much trouble. Woof woof!
Setting aside the asinine cultural dogma that men are foolish sex-obsessed simpletons, claiming I fuck on the first date isn’t much motivation to spend an evening with somebody, sex is easy enough to come by, that dating the town bike doesn’t hold much appeal to an adult with a developed sense of self.
Hansen’s forth reason is that when dating a feminist, it is “unlikely [that a] shotgun wedding scenario [is] in your future.” The feminist dating apologist continues to bang the drum that “feminists are educated women” apparently unaware that the ideology is equally subscribed by men. However, the fact that feminist women-folk are so well educated they’re safe as sexual partners. “Safe sex is part of the package.”
Apparently, Hansen believes her male readers are stupid. Apparently, she – and they, have no awareness of the fact that in western societies, reproductive rights are owned entirely by women. That men, in spite of the legal onus to finance any women’a exercised reproductive choice, in spite of the state’s enthusiasm for garnisheeing wages, or imprisoning men, or treating them as breeding and paying livestock – sex with a feminist is totally safe. Because as we know, in addition to being educated, feminism endows women with superior ethics, and the legal right to accidentally-on-purpose get pregnant and then force a man, under colour of law – to make a man pay, while excluding him from the life of his child – no feminist would ever do that. They’re too ethical, as well as too educated. For that matter, no feminist would ever turn a willing sexual encounter into a criminal accusation – because the next morning that guy didn’t look so good, or she’s been caught cheating. Or any other trivial reason hundreds of women every year file false charges of rape. But oh yeah, lets fuck on the first date, its not like feminism is an ideology of hatred in which casual destruction of a man’s life is fodder for comedy.
Hansen’s reason number 5: “Not only is there no crying in baseball, but there [is] also no crying in feminism.”
It may be that Jennifer Hansen has lived a life in which she has never been challenged on any assertion, no matter how silly, how false, or cross-wise to reality that assertion might be. Perhaps in an environment free from differing opinion, she now simply believes any self-flattering dribble which spills from her keyboard. “..there [is] also no crying in feminism.”
Crying, whether using actual salty tears, or in the form of repeated histrionic complaint over trivial issues and imaginary oppression is foundational to feminism. To claim there is no crying in feminism is to claim there are no baseball bats, or balls, or bases, in baseball. women are oppressed, therefore, the government much change the laws, re-distribute wealth, and use force to redress that oppression. That is feminism in a nutshell, feminist crying to motivate the proxy violence of others.
Hansen’s sixth and final reason why men should date feminists is a repetition of her fifth reason, rephrased. “no drama”.
Words fail me in trying to address this, except to wonder possibly if Hansen is satirizing feminism. A strange possibility, if true. A woman with the same name, who may be the same person teaches at St Lawrence University, including a course called: Feminist Philosophy.
Notable that ideologies, of which feminism is one are distinguished by starting from a pre-supposition, and then selecting and crafting evidence to support that doctrinal truth. Philosophies, by contrast, start with evidence and observation, and formulate a view of reality based on evidence and observation. Feminism – which starts from the doctrinal truth of female oppression is an ideology, and not a philosophy.
The absurdist claim of “no drama” isn’t even a clever attempt at spin, it’s simply the polar opposite of reality so obvious even dyed-in-the-wool inductees to that ideology must roll their eyes.
But those are Jennifer’s reasons for men to date a feminist.
However, as dangerously unsound as that advice is, a simple rebuttal of Hansen’s six blatant lies is insufficient. Not only should men not date feminists, they should be considerably more pro-active in opposing that ideology of hatred and violence.
No man should date any woman who is not avowedly anti feminist. Remembering, in all of the various flavors and brands of that doctrine common to all is the doctrine of universal male oppression of women, and the endless grasping after the power of legal violence and legal financial appropriation through the state. If you are a man, you are an oppressor, and the only way out from that blanket definition is to renounce and denounce other men, allowing that you’re provisionally “one of the good ones”. Feminism’s endless claim of female oppression takes no note of the millions of men throughout history who died defending women, and the expectation of male protection of women. No historical mountain of female corpses balances the male dead on which civilization is built. Female favouring changes to education, in the past 4 decades have created a system with 65% female graduates – and rather than acting to correct this, modern feminists celebrate and gloat over male marginalization in education. Feminism is a doctrine of the hatred of men, and it is the practice of violence against them through the financial instruments of the modern state, as well as legalized force against men through police, and through war.
Obama, the self declared feminist president of the United States just re-classified foreign civilian men as “combatants”[3][4]. Thus, the male civilian casualties of American military adventure will not be counted, although female civilians continue to matter as humans. Feminism is absolutely a doctrine of hatred and violence. It is therefore necessary to recognize it’s adherents, and not only not date them, but to exclude them from your life if you have any concept of yourself as a man being a human of human value.
This is not to say exclude women from your life as a man, as feminism and women are two separate things. Women are human beings, as worthy of human consideration, affection and love as everybody else. Feminism however is a thing built from ideas, and feminists are it’s adherents. Dating them, or allowing them into your car, apartment, or life, is ultimately a bad plan.
[1] http://www.thedatereport.com/dating/attraction/dating-feminist/
[2] http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/women/
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
[4] http://www.salon.com/2012/05/29/militants_media_propaganda/singleton/
