Hello my lovelies.
I’ve been a long time fan of AVFM as well as a teacher; with my recent suspension from answering questions on Quora, and the departure of Emily “Dear Prudence” Yoffe from Slate in favor of a younger model, I feel like it is time for me to bring my counselling efforts to the fore in a place where feminism does not hold sway. You can still ask me to answer questions on Quora but I may not be allowed to answer there, so AVFM permitting, I’ll try to answer them here in future columns if I can.
Oh, and the limericks? Just skip over them if you find them annoying. I still write them because they capture a playfulness and risqué vibe that feminists wish to destroy in society so that ladies nary take offence.
Let’s get to it, then.
Dear Anne Claude –
Do women tend to find receiving sympathy more emotionally soothing than men do, and if so, what is the reason for this? I’ve noticed that it seems to be more common for women to bring up the topic of how they were mistreated in the past and had a lot of disturbing stuff happen to them. I wonder if this is because they have more trouble getting over it, or because they thrive off of the sympathy they receive in a way that men usually don’t.
Signed, Hugs from Quora
Dear Hugs,
I feel that both men and women can find sympathy to be soothing but men face gendered social approbation in situations where sympathy is offered to them that simply does not happen to women. Women find emotional support when they display weakness, and men find contempt when they admit to weakness. This double standard makes it seem that women embrace victimhood while men seek to get past it as soon as possible.
This leads to an impossible choice: to bring about gender equality, should we toughen up women, or soften men?
For example, consider shelters for victims of domestic violence. 99% of domestic violence shelters cater to women only and reject men as clients, even though both men and women experience domestic violence is roughly equal amounts. This exclusion of male victims from support is because men are expected to “man up” to adversity, whereas a “damsel in distress” gets first priority from both men and women. Feminists openly laugh at the idea that men can be victims of women, and because feminists hold all men responsible for “patriarchy,” they carry a strong and invincible contempt for men and believe that men deserve whatever misfortune befalls them.
Even on those rare occasions when feminists speak to men’s issues, as Emma Watson did in her “HeForShe” speech to the United Nations, no promise is made to men that their issues will be addressed. Indeed, both the “HeForShe” label and their on-line pledge promise to fight only for women’s issues, and ignore men’s completely.
A ddffy young witch out of Hogwarts,
Tried getting her hands on some men’s shorts,
“I’ll give blokes a mention
And pretend to attention,
When they pledge, I’ll have them to extort!”
Dear Anne Claude –
What do feminists think is the cause of the high divorce rate?
Signed, Responsible Adult from Quora
Dear RAQ,
All feminists (99.9% or more) believe that “patriarchy” (rule of the fathers) is the cause of all the negative things in the world, so, if the feminist in question sees divorce as a bad thing, the odds are close to one hundred percent that she will blame “patriarchy” as a proxy for blaming men – in this case, for divorce, despite the fact that 2/3 of the people who file for divorce are women. Blaming the “patriarchy” in this case is a political ploy to deflect criticism from the ways that feminism has created skyrocketing levels of divorce since the rise of the 2nd wave feminism in the 1960s.
Under the myth of the patriarchy, women are never responsible for anything, or indeed, for any part of the civilization that men built for us. How could we be held responsible (or get any credit) for building society? We can’t be because we were too oppressed by men to help! Feminists systematically sanitize history of all references to women’s contributions because acknowledging the importance of women’s and men’s partnerships interferes with the feminist narrative that all women have been oppressed by men (patriarchy) throughout all time.
Because feminists recognize that male-female partnerships like marriage spoil their narrative, not all feminists see divorce as a bad thing. Feminists place women’s conveniences ahead of the welfare of both children and husbands, so the fanciful joys of “freeing” a woman from marriage via divorce or spinsterhood take priority over the well-established deleterious effect divorce has on husbands’ lives and children’s futures. Our prisons are crammed full of people who were raised by single mothers but since most of these prisoners are minority men, it is acceptable to dispose of their lives so that women are allowed to shirk parental and marital responsibilities that used to be a marker of adulthood. You can see an example of this feminist attitude in the YouTube video “10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman,” in which feminists portrayed their contempt for minority men who dare to greet them in public.
Feminist Meghan Murphy wrote in xoJane that: It seems that if women were truly “embracing feminism,” they’d reject such an unnecessary tradition [marriage] so firmly rooted in sexist practices and ideas. While you can’t guarantee commitment or “till death do us part,” you can guarantee is that marriage, over time, has harmed women more than it’s helped them.
Murphy’s claim that a lifetime of financial and emotional support between husbands and wives is somehow harmful to women is one that I find doubtful at best, especially considering that women live longer and happier lives than men, but her notion does explain why feminists are so blasé about divorce rates.
Of course, feminism is itself the reason why you can’t guarantee commitment – “women’s liberation” from their own freely-given wedding vows and “no fault” divorce laws make it legally painless for women to ignore their pledges of sexual fidelity and yet still harvest their husbands’ money through alimony, spousal support, and child support payments that are more likely to fund a “girl’s night out” than put food in the kids’ bellies.
For such feminists, divorce is like the pain of an ear-piercing that, while momentarily unpleasant, lets you wear all sorts of stylish earrings that you can change as often as you change sexual hookups, all the while laughing at the poor patriarch you duped, who still has to send you a monthly check even though you are giving him nothing in return.
This is why about 80% of women reject “feminist” as a label – we are keenly aware of how feminism makes us look bad by denying women the right and responsibility to make and keep adult commitments, while feminists are stocking “safe spaces” for women with coloring books.
There once was a lady of Letters,
Who got rid of all of man’s fetters,
“I spend all my time,
In coloring and rhyme,
While ex-hubby works hard for his betters!”
