Jessica Crispin writes:
Okay, so this is what I want: I want, when someone changes their mind about something, for them not to go ideologically swinging to the far other side. I was reading some reviews of Mark Simpson’s Male Impersonators: Men Performing Masculinity, and there are some of former feminists writing about it. And when I say “former” I mean “anti.” We’re taking PhDs in women’s studies who have suddenly realized men are people, too, and they are also oppressed by our patriarchal structure, and so that means we have to wipe out decades of feminist thought, because obviously the two cannot coexist.
Someone can explain to me why this is later, I have tickets to the opera tonight and I have a feeling it’s going to take a while.
Quiet Riot Girl, the ex-feminist with the PhD in women’s studies whom Ms. Crispin refers to, has a short, simple, eloquent response:
That is easy. It is because feminism is fueled by misandry and a need to present men as the oppressors of women.
In that one pithy sentence, Quiet Riot Girl (should we call her “Dr. Quiet Riot Girl?”) manages to encapsulate what I’ve often inarticulately felt since I was a boy growing up in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the meantime, Girlwriteswhat, herself a sharply intellectual critic of the Patriarchy Theory of female oppression, appears to have gotten herself a new fan club. Complete with bloodied pictures of her face, attacks on her boyfriend, and abusive distortions.
You know, there’s nothing some people hate more than a woman speaking her mind. Funny how often that turns out to be people who call themselves “feminists.”
I think the old guard feminists are mostly aging Baby Boomers with foolish assumptions who are not used to having their prejudices challenged, but a new generation of women who don’t accept all their doctrines as dogma is starting to slowly appear–and to speak out because they know the men in their lives love them, and they love them back, and that the “Patriarchy Theory” of women as oppressed and men as oppressors isn’t just oversimplified, it’s blatantly insulting to many of the women, and men, of history.
The funny part is I think it’s going to have to be women to do the heavy lifting on changing these attitudes. Men who complain about it are dismissed as whiners, losers, and more. We’re going to need women to speak up if anything’s really going to change.
(This item cross-posted to Dean’s World.)
*Update*: Quiet Riot Girl responds with more on the often ruthless attacks on women who dare to dissent.
Dean Esmay is the author of Methuselah’s Daughter. He has contributed to Dean’s World, Huffington Post, A Voice for Men, Pajamas Media. Neither left nor right wing, neither libertarian nor socialist.