Maybe the headline writer thought the scare quotes would do the trick, but I think that word "self-proclaimed" is crucial, especially since the headline lures in people who think they're going to read something provocative about how a man dedicated to feminist values isn't going to meet a woman's deep-down needs. Do not click if that's what you're looking for. The columnist simply takes the position that the man — who, we're told, "does whatever he wants, my needs be damned" — is just a fake and not a feminist at all. The solution is go get a real feminist man. But where will she get him? Here's where she found the "fake" one:
We traveled in the same local circles, working on campaigns for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mary Burke and other liberal candidates. He’s a feminist, an environmentalist, a passionate advocate for civil rights.... I got to know him during the protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 and developed a huge crush.I don't know if the letter-writer will find a "real" feminist man there and male feminism will manifest itself in a beautiful, giving form, but the letter-writer is given another task, ruining the man's reputation in the lovely group of local campaign workers:
[S]pread the word about this hypocrite. It sounds like his reputation deserves a hit so future potential girlfriends know what they’re getting into.
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85 comments:
It's called gravity. Things fall towards the centre of attraction.
Wy do child molesters become child minders and teachers ?
If you want to plow a wide furrow through a field of easy, ditzy, clueless airheads, put on your "feminist" mask, join a Dem campaign, and get the plow out.
Or forgo female chauvinism, and male chauvinism, and fashionable ideologies, and proceed with the premise of equal in rights and complementary in Nature (and nature).
If the letter writer has the awareness to realize that "feminist men are the worst boyfriends", then it seems like the simplest path to happiness is to avoid feminist men, rather than take the unproductive step of pissing and moaning to an advice columnist.
but the letter-writer is given another task, ruining the man's reputation in the lovely group of local campaign workers:
Eh...who gives a shit? He's just a splooge stooge after all.
A fake Feminist Man is showing his girlfriend zero respect. He thinks she is stupid enough to fall for a line of malarky. Authenticity uber alles.
Re-phrasing the question – "Why are my boyfriends such jerks?" – helps to lead to a more productive answer: "Maybe I'm a jerk too." That's something she can work on.
She was woke, but sleepy.
Reconciliation, not feminism. Conservation, not environmentalism. A philosophy based on principles that are internally, externally, and mutually consistent, not selective and opportunistic. Strive.
He was not only good-looking, smart [This means agrees with the letter writer on everything political.] and confident, but also deeply respectful of women — in other words, a dream partner, if only he were available.
Last year, I learned that he’d broken up with his longtime girlfriend. I wasted no time moving in, and soon we were a thing. After a blissful start, however, disillusionment has set in.
I’ve come to find out that, for all his feminist ideals, he’s selfish as hell.
Imagine that, a good looking, confident guy isn't a pushover when you pulled your first girlfriend move. Evidence of actual selfishness is pretty thin here.
The problem is that feminist history and feminist grievance are bullshit fabrications.
U.S. women are the most politically powerful, richest, most privileged and safest group of people in human history.
So, if you take up with a man who's peddling this shit to get in a women's pants, you're dealing with a con artist or an idiot. You've been taken in by a sneaky fucker.
Feminism is a lie. All of it. There was never a good feminism. Everything proceeds from there.
A man with any decency and intelligence will tell a feminist woman to take that shit and stuff it. Look for an honest man, feminist ladies, who tells you the truth and won't kowtow to your con game to get laid.
But no, the 'advice columnist' advises the writer to work on honing her worst impulses, and becoming an even bigger jerk. She would have been far better off not writing at all.
A progressive warlock hunt a la #MeToo? Civil rights are a fleeting concept.
A real feminist man could simply be assuming that the woman will do whatever she wants, his needs be damned-- and, as a believer in equality, claims the right to do the same himself. (And, for all we know, that may be just what the letter-writer does.)
"spread the word about this hypocrite"
That's like telling rodeo cowboys, here's a horse nobody can ride.
"Self-proclaimed?"
If people can wake up in the morning and choose their gender for the day, why can't they choose to be feminists?
Out him. Shame him. No prisoners. Doesn't matter how 'cute' he is.
Is that about it? He'll be sooooo busy. @Bob Boyd nails it.
A real feminist man could simply be assuming that the woman will do whatever she wants, his needs be damned...
Equality is a necessary but insufficient criterion for an equitable relationship. Feminism and masculinism are complementary ideologies, selective and opportunistic, equal.
Now imagine misogynist in quotes.
There's the best boyfriend.
gender for the day, why can't they choose to be feminists
With gender fluidity, comes ideological fluidity. It's all very congruent. Pro-Choice.
The #TooManyLabels and #Judgment crowd are surprised.
This reminds me of the Chris Hardwick article. Why do we need to know if someone is a bad boyfriend? Are private relationships now in the public interest? Do these women want their contribution to the relationship publicly assessed?
The columnist simply takes the position that the man — who, we're told, "does whatever he wants, my needs be damned" — is just a fake and not a feminist at all.
If she wants a boyfriend who will cater to her every need, she should find a traditional non-feminist man. A feminist man is going to assume that you are his equal and treat you like he would any other man. He's not going to coddle you, but he may respect you.
He made her forget that men are pigs for a just a little while.
Then it all came rushing back.
I don't like that toy anymore, but I don't want anyone else to play with it.
Maybe she should have gotten to know him better instead of moving in as soon as he was available. Given all we know, dump him. But keep her mouth shut. No good comes from being a spurning lover if he didn't do anything worse than be self centered. You don't get to break up and pretend to be the aggrieved party over something like this.
"That's like telling rodeo cowboys, here's a horse nobody can ride."
-- Should we all start wearing continental suits?
That's pretty much the same excuse for the hundred million dead in communist regimes in the 20th century. "They weren't real communist"
"That's like telling rodeo cowboys, here's a horse nobody can ride."
Ha ha. Exactly.
Key fact: He's good looking. The other women will think — as soon as letter-writing lady frees him up — I'll bet there was something wrong with that woman that's not wrong with me. There was a "blissful start," well give me some of that, and I'll be more attentive. I'm sure there's something that woman did that made him go sour on her. Yeah, "disillusionment set in," but why? Probably something she did.
I'll bet there are many Madisonian women who want to figure out who is this handsome, bliss-providing guy who's about to become available. And even Madisonian women who think they might be mistaken for the letter-writers and whose men therefore look as thought they're about to become available.
"We traveled in the same local circles, working on campaigns for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mary Burke and other liberal candidates. He’s a feminist, an environmentalist, a passionate advocate for civil rights.... I got to know him during the protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 and developed a huge crush."
Sorry, lady, he was the real deal.
By the way, you do realize feminism was a trick the patriarchy played on you, don't you?
I mean, it was a bold ploy, all that talk about equality and liberation, but it seemed to work.
A few unintended consequences, sure.
Paco Wové said...
Re-phrasing the question – "Why are my boyfriends such jerks?" – helps to lead to a more productive answer: "Maybe I'm a jerk too." That's something she can work on.
There used to be a great demotivational poster from www.despair.com that noted, "The common denominator in all your dysfunctional relationships is you."
Feminism is a lie. All of it. There was never a good feminism. Everything proceeds from there.
Never? Forty-plus years ago the word applied to people — of both genders — who believed that a woman deserved a fair chance to pursue her goals on a level playing surface, whether that meant working on a STEM Ph.D., or a J.D., or even, if that’s what she wants, her MRS. It meant squaring around professors who insisted that female students wear skirts and sit in the front row. It meant including skilled female programmers when divvying up choice programming assignments.
From what I see the feminists of today are different. They apparently want a Ph.D. in physics without having to learn calculus, much less partial differential equations. Needless to say, “feminists” like this cheapen the real accomplishments of female physicists who have no trouble mastering quantum mechanics.
"We traveled in the same local circles, working on campaigns for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mary Burke and other liberal candidates. He’s a feminist, an environmentalist, a passionate advocate for civil rights." We are beginning to understand that many people in these circles are simply not kind. I don't purport to know whether there is some natural connection, I only observe it in public behaviors and in the Washington Post comments section. If you want a good boyfriend, find a man who is kind.
"That's like telling rodeo cowboys, here's a horse nobody can ride."
...and we'll be friends for life
she'll be just like a wife...
She going to let all those feminist know who's getting into them.
A question for the prof.
Despite your repeated exhortations to the contrary, Hillary keeps coming up as the model for feminism.
She's totally corrupt. She built her career riding on the coattails of a powerful man. She was born to a privileged, upper middle class family in suburban Chicago. She slimed other women to advance her husband's career.
Now, she's plunged the country into political turmoil and strife as the woman spurned. The stereotype is true.
Hillary is feminism. The whole phony pile of shit. Your political philosophy is built on a rotten foundation.
Where's the real, essential, necessary feminism you keep talking about?
He's so vain, he prob'ly thinks this letter's about him.
You’re not woman enough to take my man.
...and when I do,
I'll give 'r my brand...
If you want a good boyfriend, find a man who is kind.
There's two kinds of men, excluding the vast, invisible majority, of course, boyfriends and husbands. Nobody wants a husband type boyfriend, and boyfriend type husbands are a train wreck of their own.
"Never? Forty-plus years ago the word applied to people — of both genders — who believed that a woman deserved a fair chance to pursue her goals on a level playing surface, whether that meant working on a STEM Ph.D., or a J.D., or even, if that’s what she wants, her MRS. "
Forty-plus years ago, Althouse was in law school. She became a tenured professor of law at UW and she's retired to a very generous pension.
So, what was your point?
'Feminist Man' is a contradiction in terms.
"Where's the real, essential, necessary feminism you keep talking about?"
I got yer real, essential, necessary feminism right here, babe.
That is one aggressive looking cardinal, BTW. Made me go out and fill the feeder.
My mother was a factory worker in a small town into her mid 50s. This was in the mid 1960s.
The factory moved to Japan.
She returned to school, received financial aid, and passed her LPN certificate exams by the late 60s.
She spent the rest of her life earning a salary of around $80,000 in rural Illinois.
So, what again was your point about a "level playing surface?"
"Made me go out and fill the feeder."
LOL!
Thank you.
At least now he will vote for Trump.
He does whatever he wants, my needs be damned
I'm curious about this complaint. Feminism teaches women to do exactly this so why do they believe this is a problem?
"'Feminist Man' is a contradiction in terms"
Yes. And obviously so is 'Feminist Woman'
From what I see the feminists of today are different. They apparently want a Ph.D. in physics without having to learn calculus, much less partial differential equations
You should see the beautiful bridges they build.
Mona Charen has a new book out, "Sex matters: How Modern Feminism Lost Touch with Science, Love and Common Sense" --in which she chronicles the failure of Feminism to improve happiness indices for women.
This post perfectly illustrates her point, that since Feminism, women report that they're more unhappy than ever, more than their mothers and grandmothers were at their stage of life.
Why? Charen pegs the overarching reason: that feminism neglects "duty and commitment."
Here's a link to her piece, which had me cheering.https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/the-price-of-feminism-it-neglects-duty-and-commitment/
@Shouting Thomas, your mother is one data point. I'm talking about the very talented software engineer who told me that she overheard her manager tell his manager that if he had realized how challenging the assignment was, he'd have never given it to a woman. I'm talking about the woman who was forced to go into nursing after her acceptance to med school was taken away and her slot given to a man with a lower GPA. I'm talking about my wife overhearing her dissertation advisor telling another professor that "If you let a woman have a Ph.D. she'll just take a job away from some guy who has to feed his family." Her dissertation advisor! I'm talking about pretty women forced to make themselves look plain in the office lest they be hit on. Stuff that was typical in the 1970s but thankfully petered out by the mid-1980s (except for pockets here and there).
The feminists, male and female, of that era look down on the feminists of today. If you can't compete on a level playing surface, then get out because you only cheapen the accomplishments of the women who can.
Regarding Althouse, she graduated first in her class in New York University School of Law in 1981. I don't know where NYU Law ranked in 1981, but today it is fifth in the country. Ten years earlier I imagine that they'd have laughed at the effrontery of a BFA applying to a prestigious law school, no matter what her LSATs were. Wikipedia has a list of law articles she has published. let me know when you can make your way through any one of them. She earned what she has.
People who make negative generalizations about the other sex are actually acknowledging their own poor judgement and the poverty of their cognition and values. She doesn’t realize that the joke’s on her? That her ideology has smacked a big fat “Sucker” stamp on her forehead?
The circles these people move in are filled with eccentric characters.
Neurotic, obsessive, narcissistic, and typically with some sort of inferiority complex.
Not unusual that they often don't get along.
You should see the beautiful bridges they build.
Six people in Miami had a chance to see a bridge designed by a woman up very, very close. When it fell on them.
Isthmus, the Madison, Wisconsin alternative newspaper
This always cracks me up. Madison does not have an "alternative" newspaper. They're all varying degrees of lefty tripe.
A conservative or libertarian weekly would be protested and sabotaged.
This always cracks me up. Madison does not have an "alternative" newspaper. They're all varying degrees of lefty tripe.
A conservative or libertarian weekly would be protested and sabotaged.
Ain't it the truth! This is the case in about every city in the US. There is only one allowable narrative and yet the press still sees itself as edgy and iconoclastic.
The columnist, by following the "he's a fake" meme, fails to explore the possibility that a Truly-Duly Feminist Man would always be in "Yes, Dear, and what can I do for you now?" mode and, OMG, could anything be less attractive than a man attempting to simulate a doormat?
The feminist case for "building equality" is like Stalin's case for "building socialism": the goal can never be reached, for if it were ever to be achieved then the need for the political movement would be over, and no political movement can tolerate that.
"Equality" must always be something not yet been achieved; thus, demands for "equality" must inevitably morph into "never enough- whatever we have, whatever we may achieve, whatever, it can never, ever be enough!
Since the true-feminist-ally-male can never abnegate himself sufficiently to satisfy this, what's left for such other than a choice between deception or doormat?
"'Feminist Man' is a contradiction in terms"
Yes. And obviously so is 'Feminist Woman'
Yes. To clarify, one could be a feminist male or a feminist female.
How the feminist lost her feck.
“She earned what she has.”
Which is entirely the point.
There was nothing in her way. Absolutely nothing. True for my mother, too.
Everybody, male or female, has their stories. Yours are not only anecdotal, they’re second hand. People get in your way. Cheat you. Do crazy things to you. This is just the reality of human existence. It’s not specific to women.
My father was born into poverty in the Depression, and he escaped that by being drafted into the Army where he enjoyed 4 years of hellish combat in Europe. My mother stayed home and got a job.
Male chivalry drives the stupid shit you’re doing. Every generation of men gets caught up in the White Knight syndrome, and is eager to please drama queen young women to get laid. Our fathers were great people. Very few or them were executives or professionals. Like my father. A factory worker. Where in the hell do you get the idea that men like my father had any animosity toward women or any desire to hobble them?
This stupidity is driven by the bizarre and manufactured history that men of my father’s generation were primarily executives and professionals. They weren’t. They were mostly factory workers, truck drives and laborers.
I’m the first member of my extended family to graduate from a four year college. Everybody in my extended family, men and women, prior to my generation, earned their living at dirty, dangerous and low paying jobs. My mother drove a tractor on her father’s farm from the age of 14.
You’ve been indoctrinated in a bullshit, phony history. Dump the stupid White Knight routine. American women are the richest, most powerful, most politically influential and safest group of people in human history. They’ve never been denied anything. For the past 60 years, in fact, they’ve been the beneficiaries of quotas.
Now, let me tell you the downside to my mom’s story.
Nobody was ever home to take care of me and my 3 sisters. My oldest sister was delegated the chore of trying to keep her three younger siblings from setting the house on fire.
We basically ran wild.
Mom loathed housework and cooking. So our house was a pigsty and I could barely stand to eat our meals.
I’m trying to be kind to my mom, but she would extend herself in all manner of ways to take care of strangers for money, but she left her own kids to rot.
I would have preferred to be a lot poorer and have a mom who took care of me and my siblings.
So, who takes care of the kids in your world? The streets are now full of trashed kids living with single parents. Where I live this is an ongoing social disaster, expressed in its extreme in heroine overdoses.
And before you get all huffy, I’m a retired grandpa, and I live in an in-law unit with my grandkids. I’m retired to care for my grandkids.
Want to come over to my place and see my feminist manifesto?
Big Mike said...
"I'm talking about the very talented software engineer who told me that she overheard her manager tell his manager that if he had realized how challenging the assignment was, he'd have never given it to a woman. I'm talking about the woman who was forced to go into nursing after her acceptance to med school was taken away and her slot given to a man with a lower GPA. I'm talking about my wife overhearing her dissertation advisor telling another professor that "If you let a woman have a Ph.D. she'll just take a job away from some guy who has to feed his family."
Ladies! Ladies! We've got one over here!
Headline writing is hard. "Self-proclaimed" takes a lot of space.
The surest thing in the world is that if you give a presumption of goodness to a specific class of people, all of the real *****s in the world will try to appear as if they belong to that class.
Throughout my life, I was tripped up by opponents for a variety of reasons.
People succeed in this life despite the obstacles before them and despite their competitors attempts to distract and defeat them.
For what reason, exactly, are women supposed to exist in a beautifully perfect world where they don’t experience this?
Shouting Thomas said...
"People succeed in this life despite the obstacles before them and despite their competitors attempts to distract and defeat them."
I have noticed, that the things I am proudest of doing are mostly things I had really hoped I wouldn't have to do.
In my experience all males who call themselves feminist are skeevy jerks who should be avoided at all costs. On other hand, 21st century feminists are rather unpleasant as well, so maybe they are made for one another.
I hate to tell this dullard the truth, but here goes- her boyfriend wasn't a "self-proclaimed" male feminist. All of his political positions are almost surely authentic- he truly believes in them, right down to the proclamations about equality. That she seems to think this means he should have been a kind and thoughtful boyfriend because of these beliefs is what is shocking to me.
Yancey, I think it is more that she wants the political to also be the personal. She realizes, in a dim way, that it is of no real value to her if the guy she is screwing is concerned with the well-being of generic "Womynz". She wants him to be concerned with her well-being. But put like that, it sounds selfish. It is not a virtuous signal! So she tell herself that anyone who is a feminist would necessarily be inclined to do what she -- a female, after all, and not one of those fake ones, either, we're talking authentic double-X here! --wants him to do. Which, in this case, is to talk about "our relationship". Hoh-boy!
I'm talking about the woman who was forced to go into nursing after her acceptance to med school was taken away and her slot given to a man with a lower GPA.
I wonder about that. When did it happen ?
I have a niece who could have gone to medical school but she did not want to be far from her father who was quite ill. So she went to nursing school on scholarship, got a BSN and is an OR nurse on a liver transplant team. She loves it and probably makes nearly the money she would have as an MD unless she went into a heavy duty specialty.
I know a PA who makes $145 k a year assisting and running the office for an orthopod.
Granted women were discriminated against by admission committees when I was a medical student but the reason was that a doctor shortage was a big issue and it was assumed women would not practice full time like men did.
You know what ? They were right.
You know that a smart girl (or a smart boy) has figured out by age 15 or so that some members of the opposite sex (it's so confusing now that there are 32 of them) will say or do whatever it takes to "get in their pants" so to speak. And by the time that smart boy or smart girl reaches the age of 21 or thereabouts, they've figured out that poseurs exist; and that it's not worth the effort to continue a pose on their own part.
But I was referring to smart people--not the sort of airhead that wrote this load of bunkum.
I wonder about that. When did it happen ?
1960s. Probably circa 1967, give or take.
Granted women were discriminated against by admission committees when I was a medical student but the reason was that a doctor shortage was a big issue and it was assumed women would not practice full time like men did.
You know what ? They were right.
Yeppers. But they damn well expect the same pay as the guy who does 51 70-hour weeks a year. Of course, they want to work about 50 hours, tops, with lots of time off....
So she tell herself that anyone who is a feminist would necessarily be inclined to do what she -- a female, after all, and not one of those fake ones, either, we're talking authentic double-X here! --wants him to do. Which, in this case, is to talk about "our relationship".
It's almost as if feminism had less to do with equality than with women getting their own way.
@Shouting Thomas, I think we are getting somewhere.
As a manager responsible for the successful delivery of working software systems I tried to put my most talented people to work on the most critical pieces of the system, regardless of sex or skin color. It's a formula that worked well for me and made me fairly successful at what I did.
I get your resentment of your mother. All I can say is that in my experience some stay at home housewives were also lousy cooks and worse at keeping the house clean. Sorry you had to deal with that. Lots of people have issues to deal with, and I think Jupiter's comment at 10:06 speaks for a lot of us.
"Why are "feminist" men the worst boyfriends?
Because they are faggots.
AA, love your articles! But this entire exercise is for naught because of one word "FEMINISM". What does this mean? In today's world it has picked up mostly negative baggage that only people susceptible to propoganda actually use this word. Sorry, the letter writer is a child. What she found out is that the 'cartoon' like world she lives in comes crashing down when she talks this way about relationships.
I assumed that an "alternative" publication in Madison would have to be conservative.
In the 1970s, at my small southern liberal arts college, frat boys joined Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship, because that's where the most naive, sweet, innocent, pliable, available, Mrs-degree-seeking, females hung out.
In the 1980s at an enormous state university, a fellow grad student used to call his pursuit of female companionship "clubbing baby seals" because he'd go to the local dance club and hit on freshman females.
Self proclaimed male feminists just continue that tradition of hunting their prey where the prey is most found. And modern feminists are just as naive and even more available than the young Christians and dancing females of past decades.
Because they're pussies and you already have one of those.
@Big Mike
I don't know how this happens, but you seem to have assumed that I believe women should suffer discrimination.
I said no such thing.
He's not that into you.
I'm not sure how this woman's problem is related to feminism.
The poor girl doesn't seem to realize that the political positions her ex-fella holds are more SERIOUS than his concern for - frankly - her orgasms. (I didn't read the linked piece - maybe she was talking about whether he rubbed her feet at the end of a long day of protesting, but I do suspect that, stated or not, her lack of satisfaction figured in her, er, dissatisfaction.)
Young women, generally men want to have sex with you. This is a feature, not a bug, if you understand that (a) it's not the only thing they will want out of either life or you, and (b) you value yourself sufficiently to sell that privilege for the proper coin. NOT a free night's drinks, and NOT the warm fuzzy feeling of carrying matching signs to the protest.
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