I need people to understand that âmen amiright?â is a, um, REALLY COMMON REFRAIN among conservative pericishet women. I hear it CONSTANTLY from my conservative relatives. âMen are so smelly they never wash their socks! Men are sex-crazed fiends who canât turn it down haha look how perverted they are! Men are dangerous and scary and will assault you if you run into them so you have to never go out alone at night and always cover your drink and go to the bathroom with friends and cover up so those Scary Rapist Men Who Canât Help Themselves wonât assault you! Boys will be boys lol if a boy hits you that means he likes you âcause thatâs just how boys are! Boys are stupid and bad at cooking and gross and weird and annoying and thatâs why you have to take care of them!â Thatâs not feminism, no matter how you spin it, itâs just oppositional sexism.
The patriarchy wants people socially imposed female to be attracted to people socially imposed male, yes. The same way amatonormativity encourages âmarriage bad / I hate my wifeâ jokes while still expecting everyone to get married. But the patriarchy doesnât want women and others socially imposed female to actually date men because we like them. It wants us to submit, to give in. Because men might be gross and smelly and awful and dangerous but we still have to pick one and submit to them because itâs our rightful place. But weâre not supposed to be making active choices. Weâre not supposed to have agency.
And, to some extent, I get where man-hating radfeminist sentiments come from. Especially among people who arenât attracted to men at all. Because, on the surface, it does feel countercultural and revolutionary to go âyou know what? If men are really so smelly and gross and awful then I donât want to date them! Why should I want to marry someone whoâs inherently stupid and predatory? Fuck men let them pick up their dirty socks themselves and do their own cooking!â
I get it, I get where the impulse comes from. But thatâs a trap. Because at the end of the day, youâre still affirming the central premise of the patriarchyâwhich is that Women and Men are ontologically separate types of beings. Youâre still feeding into oppositional sexism. And by acquiescing to the idea that men are scary disgusting predator freaks, youâre tacitly admitting that women who are interested in dating men canât hope to find one who will treat them well. In fact, you canât do this sort of rhetoric without at least partially implying that womenâand indeed anyoneâwho is attracted to men must be in some sense responsible for any abuse they receive at their hands. That they are at least somewhat silly, misled, misinformed sluts bimbos pick-mes & fake feminists.
Itâs a hop, skip and a jump from there to biphobia (because what kind of person would date a man if they didnât have to?), whorephobia (because what kind of person would let a man fuck them for money?), kinkphobia (because what kind of person would let a man spank or whip them? what kind of person would trust a man enough to do that without abusing them, unless they are already being abused and just donât know it yet?), butchphobia (what kind of person would want to dress like a man?), transmisogyny (how can we possibly trust this person who society regarded as a man? how can any âmanâ actually be a woman? surely this is just an invader trying to make us put our guard down), and transandrophobia (because what kind of âwomanâ would want to become a MAN?). And, nearly always, it also leads to homophobia and racism and ableism and classism and a dozen other prejudices because itâs okay if theyâre all aimed at marginalized men.
And once youâve done that, once youâve started throwing people out and viewing everyone who has a beard or a penis or short hair with suspicion, once youâve shunned anyone who views men in a better light than you doâŚyou know how much youâve changed pericishet society? Zilch. Zippo. Not at all. If anything, youâve just contributed to it. Youâve fed the fear that people socially imposed female are expected to live in, youâve widened the divide between the artificial categories of Man and Women, and youâve made it harder for anyone to even dare to hold men to higher standards because youâve accepted the notion that they are just Inherently Bad and Gross. This is what I mean when I say that radical feminism is a reactionary movement. This is what I mean when I say that you guys are two steps away from fascism. This is what I mean when I say you need to stop.
