Don’t like how you’re treated? Don’t like the racism and misandry? Feel abused? Tell us why. Yes, I’m serious.
Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash
Women must know more than men about how to be a real man because it seems like 910% of advice articles written about How To Be A Better Man are written by women.
It’s embarrassingly sexist. Remember the days when almost exclusively men wrote articles and whole books teaching women how to be better wives, mothers, human beings? The kind men approved of? And we didn’t get to say much about it? Our job was to listen, nod, and take notes to Improve Ourselves To Please Men More?
No, me neither. It was the ’50s and ’60s. I was either waiting to be born or to become functionally literate.
Before second wave feminism, wimmins’ mags were replete with what you must do to find, attract, please, nail, and keep your man (happy) so he doesn’t leave you, because if he does, it’s all your fault.
If you miss all that stupid shit today, no worries! You can still subscribe to Cosmopolitan. Now the tables have turned, feminism has given women a lot more personal power, and men feel like they’re under constant siege. Payback sucks.
Today women profess to know everything about men and they’re happy to share, whether you asked or not.
And no one finds this the slightest bit inappropriate or presumptive!
I understand why men don’t want to speak up. Victimhood-addled ‘feminists’ can be brutal if you don’t acknowledge their narcissistic worldview that men are the architects of all their pain.
Cosmo still makes it clear: If you’re not sexy
and man-pleasing, you’re worthless. And
feminists say *men* are patriarchal…!
Worse, they can be cruel and dismissive when men try to point out how being a man in a man’s world isn’t exactly skybox seating at the Superbowl.
This is all about me me me and MY suffering! Shut up with your narcissistic whiny-ass white male keening!
We undermine our own cause and give lie to our profession of a desire for equality when we treat men the way they have historically treated women.
We complain about male trolls who swoop in on a woman ‘telling her truth’ they don’t want to hear: How she’s been victimized, assaulted, talked over, overlooked, written off. How vicious emasculated-feeling little wannabe insurrectionists can be when women speak up with their stories.
I’m so glad we’re not like that with men.
So fuck the other 20%. Unless they’re women now. THEN you can feel and acknowledge their pain.
“Next man-hating bitch who says something misandrist gets a week’s worth of my feminist-hating.”
Hilarious.
Celebrate bigotry while claiming to be ‘woke’.
Yes, she really said that to Johnny Depp.
Irony abounds.
Feminists get a few things right — actually, a lot of things right, if you listen to the ones Christina Hoff Sommers calls ‘equity’ feminists — those who are interested in genuine equality — versus ‘gender’ feminists, those who see the world through a chronic victimhood lens. I prefer Naomi Wolf’s distinction, ‘power’ feminists versus ‘victim’ feminists. Technically, we’re all gender feminists since feminism is, primarily, about the historical patriarchal social structure and men’s domination over women.
That said, two wrongs don’t make a right, and women didn’t have a voice at the table on Howtuhbeabetterwoman until they spoke the fuck up and told their stories.
Some were great, some were, well, imperfect. Man-hating. An early iteration of second wave feminist man-hating was Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto in which she argued men had ruined the world and women needed to create a Society for Cutting Up Men to fix it, and called for the elimination of all men.
(I believe the word she was looking for was genocide.)
She later tried to murder Andy Warhol, turning it into an early example of a mass shooting. She came for Warhol, and shot two other men besides.
Other truth-tellers were less extreme, made perfect sense, hit men where it hurts, and received a lot of backlash for their trouble.
Who do you remember now — Valerie Solanas or Gloria Steinem?
Men, it’s time for you to tell your stories.
Don’t let women write your scripts for you. Women can talk about toxic masculinity but we don’t get complete say in defining how that changes (and it must change).
I know, it’s scary. Especially on platforms dominated by hard left or far left social justice warriors. The kind who think equality only applies to them, not the people they dislike. Similar to right-wingers who think equality is only for white people and men (born ones).
Right now, some perceptions about men, women, and female victimization may or may not be true. Here are a few:
Four out of five abuse victims are women.
Women almost never lie about rape
Males are a lot more narcissist; women less so
Female psychopaths are less common than male ones
If men are sexually abused, it usually isn’t by a woman
Only men objectify
Women don’t lie, cheat, manipulate, gaslight, psychologically/emotionally/physically abuse men nearly as much as men do to women
The numbers for victimhood may ultimately turn out to be skewed toward women as genuine victims, but I wonder if the discrepancy is as wide as some women think. How common is female sexual abuse of boys or men? I don’t know. I don’t even think I know. I’m asking.
I’ve disagreed with and occasionally gotten into fights with certain writers who would prefer never to turn the critical analysis spotlight on themselves (“Pay no attention to that woman behind the curtain!”) but I still respect their willingness and labia to tell their truths, however imperfect and one-sided.
The ones who genuinely want to learn and grow will be open to at least honest criticism, male or female. Some don’t want to learn, only vent; you learn to let them go. Remember this about trolls: If they have a gray head and near-zero following, they’re trolls, and yes, this includes women. Anonymity isn’t always about ‘protecting themselves’ from ‘male backlash’ — it’s to act like an asshole with impunity.
You ain’t got time for ‘feminist’ trolls. They’re unworthy of your attention.
When I call for men to tell their stories, their truths, we can expect a fair amount of perpetual, overblown and often self-inflicted victimhood tales, same as women. Men who prefer to tell us everything wrong with women while never questioning their own lordly selves. La plus ça change.
Others will mightily piss off chronically aggrieved women by telling truths and pointing out hypocrisies that hit a little too close to home. I might be one of them.
For my power/equity feminist sisters, we need you to support our men in telling their truths and standing up for themselves in the face of often overwhelming misandry and overstated victimhood. We need to stand up more against the man-haters and call out their misandry. We call for men to do this to help women; well, working towards equality means adopting ever-increasing levels of responsibility for others. Including owning our own words, faults, and behaviors.
“I had to go and ask him to talk about his feelings.” Photo by vystekimages on Vecteezy
We’re always asking sympathetic men to support us fighting ‘patriarchy’, now it’s time for US to support THEM and their truths.
Are you ready to hear men’s side with an open mind? Have you got the labia?
Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash
This story first appeared on Medium in June 2021.
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