#1: Criticizing women is not misogyny
This brick of logic reminds the world that women aren’t special.
You can replace “women” with “men,” “Singaporeans,” “Jets fans” or anything under the kaleidoscopic constellation of humanity in the argument and still be right. The sound of the brick’s impact resonates when it hits the stupid pedestal that women end up on all the time.
“If women ran the world, there would be no violence!”
CLACK
“Women are more spiritual than men!”
CLACK
“Girls don’t fart!”
CLACK
There is nothing misogynistic about criticizing women. After all, they’re only human.
#2: Anger can be healthy
“Hey MHRAs, when are you going to stop whining and do some actual activism?”, some ask. The Dayton Rally, UoT dramas, Karen’s excellent RU speech, Kennesaw State University Men and the upcoming international MHRM June conference should answer that question. If it wasn’t for righteous anger at gynocentrism and misandry, no activism would have taken place.
It is okay to be angry about injustice. If you contribute to injustice, it is okay to be angry at you. Those who profit from hatred such as Anita Sarkeesian, Laci Green [1][2], or Micheal Kimmel will be treated with the disrespect that they rightfully earned.
Since men are often told to be stoic, encouraging men to express healthy anger helps them develop their confidence. Unhealthy anger is often the product of dwelling in isolation, which is not something we encourage. But denying men their anger is a surefire way to castrate their emotional growth.
#3: Specialization is not Gender Centrism
Animal liberationists helping baby turtles are not blamed for undermining whales, so why are humanists helping men blamed for undermining women? If helping men makes you androcentric, then volunteering at a church make you a Christian zealot.
I used to think “equality” meant not helping demographics until I realized that helping everyone at once is like trying to put a tornado in a thimble. It makes more sense to work on specific problems without getting drunk on utopian ideals that blind you to scale.
But even the people who continue to advocate universal solutions put women first in gender issues. There is no “first!”
Helping men does not stop others from helping women at the same time. A humanist specializing in women’s issues is fine so long as he or she does not fuck with other innocent people in the process.
We do not need a generalist Utopian consensus to do work concurrently.
#4: Dictionaries do not reliably define ideologies, including “feminism”
My butt clenches when someone says “If you are fighting for equality, then you’re a feminist!”
Jesus Christ in a titty bar, please go back to calling me a misogynist. PLEASE.
People who say this nonsense often have a dictionary open to the definition of “feminism.”
The map is not the territory, so unless you solved world hunger by chucking a globe in a vat of pudding, put the dictionary down and look out the window. Dictionaries don’t always make sense because they are written by the linguistic equivalent of mob rule.
This is not to say that dictionaries are bad, but definitions must be empirically verifiable to be useful. To verify the definition of “fork,” look at a fork.
Ideologies, being normative and malleable, take work to define. If you have ever argued semantics with an ideologue, you may have noticed that your opponent equivocates to avoid committing to any part of his or her ideology that you criticized. This is what’s called being a chicken shit.
To define an ideology, describe how the ideology translates to actions, policies, traditions, institutions or precedents that are either endorsed, enabled or excused by self-described adherents to the ideology.
Motivations and actions change with the times, so the definitions of ideologies change over time. Dictionaries can accurately define an ideology if the definition is freshly updated to match the description.
But no matter what the dictionary says, people have always experienced political ideologies in terms of their institutional manifestations. If you think a dictionary accurately represents the sum total of these experiences, then please don’t act on your stupid thoughts.
#5: MHRAs are not the mirror image of feminists
Show me a bunch of MHRAs doing the below, and I will entertain the idea that MHRAs “mirror” feminists:
- Sexually abusing and hitting female church-goers while pantsless.
- Pulling fire alarms at events they don’t like.
- Shooting someone’s goddamn dog in response to that person saying that people hit each other.
- Screaming “SHUT THE FUCK UP” at complete strangers in public, on camera.
- Pasting random women’s faces on a poster reading “CHILD ABUSER OF THE MONTH.”
- Making excuses for a man who basically grinds a woman into hamburger as “self-defense” before selling T-Shirts at the trial.
- Attacking ad-revenue streams of tech giants to impose gender-centric interpretations of issues that affect both men and women.
We evaluate people on an individual basis without making comparisons to some ideal benchmark that we change at will (which is a feminist habit). All we know is that if you, as a self-declared MHRA, act crazy, then fuck you. Making exceptions on the law based on ideals, no matter how well-meaning, opens the door to forgiving vices in the name of an ideology. Universal accountability is a must.
#6: Suffering is not a competition
You are not special, but you matter. If everyone thinks that you, as a real victim, aren’t worthy of consideration because someone looks like a bigger victim, something is wrong. I emphasize “looks like” because the human protection instinct is so exploitable that people can easily be fooled into aiding someone for almost no reason at all.
Feminists are the champions of manipulating unwary men into a cycle of codependency, while teaching women the toxic art of narcissism. The results are soul-crushing on a couple-by-couple basis, so imagine the problem scaled to the size of culture itself. Feminism contributes to a political climate where you don’t deserve attention if you individually aren’t a bigger victim than women as a demographic. Feminists do not see women as anything more than victims, and they will fight to make sure that you aren’t as important as women.
This toxic climate clouds reality. The reality is that life is not fair, and people suffer. Justice is not about adopting idealistic principles defined subjectively by the perpetually unsatisfied, justice is about (attempting to) resolve unfairness in a context-centric and reasonably proportional manner.
Making suffering a competition where women are always declared the winner before the game is played is denying men justice.
#7: Where is this motherfucking Patriarchy?
As a white, good-looking, cisgendered, soulless ginger (“cisginger,” according to Alison Tieman and Hannah Wallen) male business owner, I never got a memo from the Patriarchy asking me to bring donuts to the next good-ol’-boy rape orgy.
But radical feminists do not claim that the Patriarchy is a legislative body in a volcano lair, they claim that the Patriarchy is a ubiquitous institution that permeates global culture.
But under “Patriarchy,” women have gained suffrage, affirmative action, scholarships, legal preference, media focus, and other benefits that many human beings don’t actually get to enjoy in some parts of the world for reasons that go beyond sexism. The vast majority of the major benefits women enjoy were either implemented or approved by men.
Women would not have been given an inch in the socioeconomic pecking order over the whole of human history if the Patriarchy actually existed.
Women, as the majority voter in many developed Western countries and the primary consumer, must approve of market conditions and politicians for either to remain institutionalized. You don’t need to have an impressive title to have decision-making power. And despite the favor genetics gives to men in terms of physical strength, women have no trouble dissolving men in fucking acid and becoming Internet sensations when they kick the shit out of men.
If this is the Patriarchy, what are feminists complaining about?
