Feminist professor who wrote “Why can’t we hate men?” Washington Post editorial doubles down on her anti-male bigotry in Chronicle of Higher Education interview
I previously wrote about the Northeastern University feminist professor who wrote a Washington Post editorial entitled, "Why can’t we hate men?" In her editorial, sociology professor Suzanna Danuta Walters, claimed that hatred of men was not only justified, but a moral imperative for feminists. She even appeared to advocate for violence against men.
The Chronicle of Higher Education interviewed Walters about her editorial. The interview was originally locked behind a pay wall. However, it looks like the Campus Reform convinced the Chronicle to release the whole interview for free.
Walters' interview is one of the most revealing things I have ever read about the bigoted state of modern feminism. Walters turns a non-apology into a misandry-filled pseudo-academic rant mixed with unnecessary left-wing politics, Trump-bashing and even anti-white racism. She essentially admits she is more concerned with the advancement of feminist political power than the advancement or representation of women.
Professor Walters cannot be dismissed as a radical or fringe feminist. She claims to have been teaching for "30-plus years". She is the director of her university's Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program as well as editor-in-chief of an established feminist academic journal that has been in print since 1975. She has great authority to represent mainstream feminist ideology as well as serve as a demonstration of feminism's detrimental effect on the human psyche. That is why the interview is so disturbing and so important.
Below is the interview with my commentary added. The interviewer's words are printed in bold:
"Aside from the web reaction, you’ve had death threats and rape threats. How are you holding up? This kind of vitriol, really ugly misogyny and homophobia, has been so legitimized during these Trump times. For better or worse, I think we’re all becoming a little inured. And it’s very familiar to women writers who are in the public sphere."
I figured we were at the part of the story where the feminist who publicly promoted bigotry gets mysterious and vaguely defined "threats" and then uses these supposed threats to deflect criticism. Opening with this makes me think the interviewer may not be unbiased. I don't mean to sound callous, but people often brush this stuff off when it happens to other public figures. Why should it be any different with public feminist figures? Furthermore, many feminists have come forward with questionable, inflated or even invented threats against them (especially rape threats) to deflect criticism and garner support.
In fairness, Walters doesn't milk these supposed threats very much. However, the interviewer bringing it up (especially as the very first question) makes me think he isn't unbiased. I don't need him to yell at her, but why is he starting the interview by trying to humanize a suspected bigot?
Trump is brought up unnecessarily several times during the interview (even by the interviewer), which supports my theory this is all about getting people to vote against Republicans in the midterm elections.
"To ask the obvious question that you’ve probably heard a thousand times this week, I’m a man — do you hate me? No, my dear. I certainly do not hate you. But it’s so funny that that’s the question. Do I hate men? Of course I don’t hate men in some generic way. My point here was to say it makes obvious sense for women to have rage, legitimate rage, against a group of people that has systematically abused them. In the same way as if someone wrote a piece that said, Why can’t we hate white people? I would say right on. You’re absolutely right. #BecauseSlavery, #BecauseInstitutionalRacism, and the same thing here — the hashtag, as I said, #BecausePatriarchy."
It isn't "funny" to ask if Walters hates men. It’s completely understandable since she wrote an op-ed claiming the hatred of all men is not only justified, but a moral imperative for feminists.
Notice she doesn't say, "I don't hate men." She says, "I don't hate men in some generic way". Now you might be able to interpret this as her saying she doesn't hate men in general, if she didn't immediately talk about how the existence of slavery and institutional racism justifies the hatred of all white people.
She doesn't hate men as a group in a "generic way", she hates men as a group in a specific way, because they perpetuate the demonic patriarchy of feminist lore. I don't think the existence of slavery or institutional racism justify the hatred of all white people. However, at least slavery and institutional racism existed and even still exists in some places. The Jim Crow laws actually happened in the U.S. The "patriarchy" is just an amorphous feminist bogeyman.
I don't think anyone has Walters on a leash. If there was some sort of public relations guidance, she probably wouldn't be adding more groups to her public hate list. It is worth noting that Walters appears to be "white". This doesn't make her statement less bigoted. It just makes it more confusing.
"Do you hate your male colleagues and your male students? No I do not. If they are sexist schmucks, I do not like them. If they are supportive feminist folks who lean out a little bit, as I argue they should do, and have knowledge of and take responsibility for their male privilege, that’s what I’m talking about. To men who are not just taking responsibility but actively working to undermine and challenge toxic masculinity, go for it. I love ya. To men who are part and parcel of the problem, I am not your fan. Yet you have tweeted #YesAllMen. That was in context of the whole #NotAllMen movement.” “Right, but that’s what I’m asking you. Are there exceptions? And you’re saying to me, Yes, there are. Of course there are exceptions, but again, it’s interesting to me, even with you, Alex, that that’s where we’re going here. If there were so many exceptions, wouldn’t the world look different? If the majority of men were exceptions to this rule, wouldn’t we have gender equality?” “Would my daughter — I don’t know if you have a daughter — I do. — would we fear for their vulnerability all the time? If the majority of men were exceptions to this rule, would we have live-streaming of sexual assaults? Would we have men in fraternities getting women drunk so that they could rape inanimate women as objects? Of course there are exceptions, but it is interesting to me that we’re clinging to that, "Oh, there have got to be good men out there." So, I’m going to flip that question on you. Why aren’t more men stepping in and stepping up and stepping away from power and beginning to actually address this? Why do we have this "Oh no. Men? We’re not all bad." That’s not the point."
It gets increasingly difficult to follow Walters train of thought. I imagine because she is trying to keep it from derailing. Exception to what? We can only assume “men who are part and parcel of the problem”. Walters is establishing a with-us-or-against-us world view. On one side we have men who are "supportive feminist folks who lean out a little bit", "take responsibility for their male privilege" and "actively working to undermine and challenge masculinity" and on the other side we have every other man. Notice that Walters didn't really say she doesn't hate her male colleagues and students. She just doesn't hate the ones that embody these feminist values. Basically, you are either a feminist man or you are part of the problem.
Walters' "point" seems to be if one bad man does one bad thing to one woman, men everywhere as a group are responsible unless they are an active feminists. Feminism is the only escape from collective male sin. It is only through feminism that you are saved...from her hatred.
How often do these incidents that Walters uses to condemn the entire male gender even occur? Walters didn't offer any evidence of anyone live-streaming sexual assaults or statistics on rape perpetration among fraternities in her op-ed. I can only find a handful of incidents of someone live-streaming a sexual assault. Despite what feminists want you to believe, American universities actually have very low rape rates. These are the incidents that justify the hatred of half of the human race?
Walters brings up fearing for the "vulnerability" of daughters as if it is some kind of evidence. Most parents fear for their children's safety. However, fear of victimization doesn't necessarily mean greater or even significant risk of victimization. This is especially true when feminists have promoted inflated and erroneous data on female victimization for decades.
It is unclear what Walters means by "gender equality". Women generally already have equality under the law and equality of opportunity in most developed nations. In many nations women have greater legal rights than men (freedom from conscription, protection against forced genital mutilation, etc). Does she mean equality under the law, equality of opportunity or equality of outcome. The later generally requires unfairness, if not outright tyranny to pursue.
Walters also reaches for extra misandry points by unnecessarily saying "schmuck" - an obscene Yiddish pejorative word meaning penis. It basically the same as calling a woman a "cunt", although most Americans consider it less offensive (which is a whole other conversation about gender double-standards). This is just childish behavior for a supposedly accomplished academic.
"The Chronicle covers hate speech on a weekly if not a daily basis, and your op-ed’s main argument is, Hey, we have a right to hate you. You’ve just explained the context, but might someone still argue that your op-ed is itself, by definition, hate speech? I’m making an argument with material and data. It is not hate speech. I am not calling, obviously, for people to be hurt, to be demeaned, to be killed. Women, in general, do not do that. As you know, almost all acts of gun violence against children in our schools are done by young white men. That, to me, is weaponized hate speech. So to talk about a feminist author who writes an op-ed with data that is indisputable and says, We have a right to anger — to say that that is hate speech is absolutely ludicrous. Why can’t we allow those who have been historically and continuously victimized and marginalized and abused to actually name that and own their righteous and legitimate anger? Without saying, "Oh, poor me, it’s so divisive and mean." What’s divisive and mean, actually, is men with guns shooting up kids, rape camps, INCELs, wage inequality, women’s underrepresentation in government. Me writing this is not divisive and mean. Let’s have some perspective here. So to talk about a feminist author who writes an op-ed with data that is indisputable and says, We have a right to anger — to say that that is hate speech is absolutely ludicrous."
In my previous post, I went through the "material and data" in Walters' op-ed. It was a joke. Most of it wasn't from scholarly sources. Many were just isolated news articles. Some claims were just made without any evidence at all. Walters barely bothered to put up a facade of scholarship.
Also, it isn't obvious Walters isn't calling for people to me hurt. In her previous op-ed she wrote, "maybe it’s time for" women "to go all Thelma and Louise and Foxy Brown" on men. Both movies are infamous for the female protagonists committing violence against male villains. This certainly could be interpreted as a call to violence. How else should we interpret this statement?
Walters tries to deflect the possible accusation of inciting violence by claiming that women in general are not violent. This has little bearing on whether or not Walters called for violence. More importantly, Walters has spent the interview rejecting similar defenses when applied to men. Walters believes that all men bare collective responsibility for the bad actions of a minority of men because all men (unless they are feminists) some how create the stew of patriarchy that creates these bad actions. If a man wrote a similar op-ed, Walters wouldn't just condemn him, but would condemn all men for creating the patriarchal system that supposedly caused the man to write the article in the first place.
Walters might realize this hypocrisy if she wasn't so busy trying to cram in election issues like gun control and add a touch of anti-white racism for good measure. It might be surprising that most mass shooters are mostly male (although "mass shooting" is an nebulous term so I have mixed feelings about the data), but it is not surprising that most are white in a majority white country. Although, it's not like Walters cites any data for this.
Hearing Walters complain about "perspective" is particularly sickening. She is the one trying to justify hatred against the entire male gender because of a minority of men do bad things. Things that the majority of men would strongly disagree with. The wage gap has been debunked time and time again. Women's underrepresentation in government may have nothing to do with men.
It's like Walters has no concept over the intense scope of bigotry she is trying to justify. Hatred of over 3.5 billion people from varied backgrounds, races and nations that just happen to share a biological similarity they have no control over. That Chinese male researcher just invented a medicine that will save hundreds of women's lives, but he isn't a feminist and incels exist, so fuck that guy. He is just a schmuck.
"You edit Signs, which calls itself "the leading international journal in women’s studies … since 1975 … at the forefront of new directions in feminist scholarship." Does your op-ed represent the forefront of feminist scholarship? My op-ed represents solely me. It doesn’t represent Signs. I don’t speak for Signs. I don’t speak for Northeastern." Do I think that these kinds of arguments about feminist anger, about men really recognizing male prerogative, and leaning out, are important parts of feminist scholarship? I absolutely do. It is increasingly important in a world in which so much of the rise of the global right wing has been about male power. It’s anti-abortion, it’s anti-woman, and we’ve seen it in this administration. We have a groper in chief as a president. In this world, it is ever more important for feminists, and for all people of progressive good will, to not mince words. To be able to express deep critiques of structures and parameters of domination. And that’s precisely what I was trying to do here. Of course it’s provocative, but I’m not trying to be a provocateur. I’m trying to, what we used to call, speak truth to power."
Distancing her opinions from Signs and Northeastern is one of the few smart things that Walters says during the entire interview. I’m inclined to believe she wrote the op-ed on her own. However, I don't believe for a second her views aren't shared by others in her department or academic feminism. You expect me to believe she was the one bigot that just happened to rise to the top of feminist academia?
Walters then drags us back into the left-wing political weeds by claiming that the "global right wing" is anti-abortion and anti-woman. That "all people of progressive good will" need to stand up! First, I'm not sure the "global right wing" is universally anti-abortion. My thinking is the "global right wing" isn't really anti-woman, but anti-feminism. Feminism, even beyond it's universal support for abortion, has gone out of its way to align itself with the political left. In the U.S.A., we see feminist organizations taking unnecessary political stands on minimum wage, gun control and immigration that have little to do with women.
"I’m guessing that you disliked Trump’s generalization about Mexico sending "their rapists." Yet aren’t you generalizing about all men? Is it wrong to criticize Mexican men but OK to criticize all men? I have to say, I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. In fact, Trump was completely wrong — I mean, just empirically inaccurate. That’s not who’s coming over the border. There’s no overrepresentation among Mexican-Americans in rape statistics. What I am saying about male violence and male prerogative is empirically accurate. When you’re generalizing with accuracy, that’s what we call sociology. So I have to say that is a completely false comparison."
Now the interviewer is participating in the unnecessary Trump bashing. I’m not necessarily trying to spare Trump criticism, but this is unrelated to main topic of if and why Walters hates men. At least it presents Walters with some what of a hardball question. If Walters wrote the op-ed about black men, Hispanic men or Asian men, she would have been condemned as a bigot. Why should she be excused because she wrote an op-ed calling for the hatred of all three?
There are multiple ways to interpret Trump's statement in-question. Walters unsurprisingly chooses to take it as confirmation Trump is a racist. I think that Trump is merely pointing out that many of the people seeking illegal entry to the USA through Mexico are violent criminals.
More importantly, I would like see to this data on Mexican-American rape perpetration that Walters doesn't cite. Mostly because it probably doesn't exist. I have never seen any data set show rape perpetration for just Mexican-Americans. I suppose you could have a study that records rape convictions of immigrants by country of origin. I have never heard of such a study.
You can find statistics on Hispanic rape perpetration in the U.S. I'm not sure how reliable these are since it seems like you could easily mistake someone's race. Furthermore, not all Hispanics are from Mexico. I'm not even sure if all Mexicans are Hispanic. Not all people seeking illegal entry to the U.S.A. through Mexico are actually Mexicans and not all Mexican-Americans are necessarily Mexican immigrants. People born in the U.S.A. will sometimes refer to themselves as Mexican-Americans. "Mexican-American" doesn't mean illegal immigrant into the U.S.A. by way of Mexico.
I dwell on this because it further shows Walters plays fast and loose with evidence and data. How you could accurately empirically measure "male prerogative"? I'm willingly to admit there may be empirical truth to men be overrepresented in rape perpetration. However, that may be because studies specifically define rape to exclude female-on-male rape perpetration. Indeed, sexual harassment and intimate partner violence studies often do the same thing. It's easy to portray men as the only demons when you won't let people see women as anything but angels.
"Do you believe it’s possible to be sexist against men? No, I really don’t. Sexism is about the institutionalized and interpersonal treatment of women and people perceived to be women. Again, look at the world. Where is discrimination? Where are men being excluded? Where are men being abused? Oh, come on."
No, sexism is discrimination based on sex. Feminists just want to redefine it so their own anti-male bigotry can't be thrown in their faces.
Also, there is actual discrimination against men! Many countries have male-only military conscription. Almost no countries have laws protecting men from involuntary neonatal genital mutilation. There is evidence of bias against men throughout the legal system, especially in areas of domestic violence, sexual violence and family law. What about the numerous the women’s only quotas, grants, scholarships? You might think a gender studies professor might know that several universities have and are still are being investigated for excluding men from scholarships and academic programs.
"Do you think some men who are near the center of the political spectrum might see op-eds like yours and move further to the right as a result? It does seem like, in your ideal world, the left might not be a place for men. Whether that’s an understanding or a misunderstanding, do you worry at all about that reaction? It’s an interesting question. If that happens, I wonder what kind of leftists they are. If you’re a progressive man and you can’t take some hard truths about the history and persistence of male dominance and violence, if you can’t hear that, then you’ve got some learning to do. If you are a progressive white person and you can’t take on some hard truths about the persistent history of white supremacy, you’ve got some work to do. People often look for the easy way out: "Oh, this hurts my feelings," or "Ooh, she hates men so I’m going to pack up my toys and go home." If you’re packing up your toys and going home because of a sharp op-ed written by one middle-aged lesbian, I’m not sure how strong your toys are — you know what I’m saying? It’s kind of sad."
Why does Walters unnecessarily bring up her sexuality? She could have said she is just one “woman” or just one “person”. Did she just want to tell us she was part of a protected "marginalized" group? I wonder if Walters lesbianism is the result of her natural sexuality or feminist political lesbianism, which sees lesbianism as a necessary choice women must make to undermine the patriarchy. Notice she actually uses her lesbianism to dis-empower herself. How do you think she would respond if a man dismissed her opinion because she was just one "lesbian"?
It's telling they talk about men turning away from the political left and not men turning away from feminism. This comes up a couple of times during the interview. I think this might be what the interview is really about – midterm election damage control for the political left.
However, Walters response doesn't seem very conciliatory toward left-leaning men. It basically boils down her saying if you leave the left because of her editorial, you are childish, pathetic weakling.
Walters (perhaps intentionally) misunderstands why her op-ed could cause someone to move away from the left. Walters isn't just any "middle-aged lesbian". She is an influential feminist academic who runs feminist institutions. People recognize that Walters opinions reflect larger opinions within feminism, which have become a major force in the American political left. She is a warning of the hatred of men that has embedded itself in the political left. She is a symptom of a disease.
"Is gender, to your mind, a completely social construct? In a word, yes. Look, I wouldn’t be worth my salt as a gender-studies professor if I didn’t say that, and I believe it. It’s actually interesting that you ask that, because some of that nasty stuff I’ve been getting has been biologically determinist things: You stupid bitch, don’t you know that men and women are just different? If we rape you, we just can’t help ourselves, because we’re just hard-wired that way. I am a social constructionist through and through, I believe gender is a social construction, but it is a social construction in which one group is benefiting and another group, not so much. I think the world would be a better place for men and for women if we did away with gender altogether — gender norms, gender binaries, and so on. And God knows men would be happier and better people if we did away with that. But they clearly also benefit from it. If you get more money in the world simply by virtue of having a penis rather than a vagina, you’re benefiting."
"If we rape you, we just can't help ourselves, because we're just hard-wired that way"? I'm sure that is exactly what her male critics all tell her. Don't hate men because men are inherently violent rapists - sound argument. Certainly not something you would get from random Internet trolls or just make up as a straw man.
I've heard similar lines of thinking from feminists trying to claim they don't hate men. They claim that don't believe men are inherently evil, but they have merely been socialized to be evil by the sinister patriarchy. They may even claim that feminists are actually the saviors of men. The kind feminists will teach you not be a monster...because you clearly are a monster. This is not only insulting and ludicrous, but also a facade because feminists often either willfully ignore male suffering or directly cause it themselves.
It’s also strange that mainstream feminism pushes to destroy the gender binary. How do you have feminism if there are no women or men?
"Do you think it’s a good idea to vote on the basis of gender? That’s a great question. I think it’s a good idea to vote on the basis of feminism. Which is why I say very clearly, vote for feminist women. Look, we don’t need any more Maggie Thatchers or, you know, Trumpettes. I do believe we need more women in government — that just seems a no-brainer to me, just like we need more people of color in government. We need more people who have been excluded to be included. But we need to fight for Team Feminism. I’m a feminist through and through, and I believe a feminist perspective and a feminist critique is precisely what can heal this world. I think an intersectional, anti-racist, and feminist analysis is exactly what is needed. It is telling to me that the most massive resistance to Trumpism has come from this multicultural coalition of women who ran the women’s march. To me, that speaks volumes."
Could it be any clearer that feminism not about the advancement of women in society, but the advancement of feminism. Walters believes that we need more women in government...as long as they are feminist. "We need more people who have been excluded to be included"...as long as they are feminist.
Perhaps the destruction of gender identity wouldn't be so detrimental to feminists. Feminists don’t have to pretend to have any obligation to women who don’t subscribe to their left-wing politics if “women” don’t exist.
"What about progressive feminist men? Bernie Sanders would be an obvious example. You probably support a lot of things he supports, but he is a man. So what do you do? Do you try to find and fund a woman who thinks the same way? I think it would be better if we could. I believe in 90 percent of what Bernie says. But do I think we need another old white man in office? I do not. I think we need more women, more people of color, and, speaking as a middle-aged woman, we need some younger people. If Bernie runs against Kamala Harris, she’s what we need. It is not about animus toward him. It is just about, step back. When we talk about creating a different world, power is not just something that you grab for, it’s also something that you step away from."
Walters isn’t a bigot. She just wouldn't vote for Bernie chiefly because of his age, gender and race. It’s not like she hates him. She just doesn’t think he should have a job based solely on physical characteristics he has no control over. How could you possible consider that bigotry???
I wonder if Walters realizes she has the opportunity to create "different world" right now. She could “step away” to make room for a more racially diverse lesbian to fill her position at Northeastern University.
"If we divide everyone by gender, class, religion, race, sexuality, etc., when do we stop? After all, isn’t the individual the ultimate minority? It’s not me doing the dividing. Look, as a feminist activist and scholar, to the extent that we can break apart these binary oppositions — of gender, of race — obviously it’s all to the good. We need more fluidity. But as long as that is operative, you can’t pretend it doesn’t have effects. Right? You obviously can have a vision of a world in which gender is not even a meaningful category. Listen, I would love to live in that world. I spend 90 percent of my time as a feminist professor trying to imagine that world. But at the same time that you imagine that, you also have to live with the reality of how gender demeans, constructs, produces power, constrains. You can’t pretend it doesn’t."
Is there such a thing as a feminist scholar who isn’t a feminist activist? I want to stress how disturbing it is there is an entire branch of publicly funded academia that is dedicated to ideological recruitment and activism rather than objective study.
I’m also a little disappointed Walters didn’t elaborate on what a world without gender would look it.
"Rush Limbaugh is among rightists who find your column laughable and proof of the insanity of academe, and that’s pretty predictable. But in The Atlantic, too, Conor Friedersdorf called you a "wrongheaded eccentric." The economist Mark J. Perry at AEI nominated your column as "the most hateful, venomous, vitriolic, and reprehensible op-ed in history of WaPo. " Do you worry that Americans on the center or the right take hatred of an entire gender as typical of an academic argument and vote for populist candidates and against higher-ed funding as a result? Might they say, Hey, I don’t want my tax dollars going to a lady who hates all men. Well, Alex, if they do, I repeat what I said before, it really shows that they’re not progressives to begin with. I’m sorry. The piece in The Atlantic is such a perfect example. Some guy at The Atlantic is going to mansplain me the principles of feminism? A feminist professor of 30-plus years, who has written four books? I mean, seriously? It’s the ultimate in hubris. I read that and I cracked up. It is Exhibit A of mansplaining drivel. If men take this as an opportunity to legitimate their dismissal of feminism, they’re looking for those opportunities. They are not allies. They are not people who can be trusted and counted on. So I think we have to be honest about that. If there’s an op-ed that they might have some disagreements with, that they can’t really look at carefully and read carefully and see the data in it, if that sends them over the edge, then they are vacuous snowflakes that are no friends to progressive social movements."
Feminists seem to think its insufferably clever to accuse a man of ”mansplaing”, when all it does is highlight their own misandry. However, I actually somewhat agree with Walters here. Conor Friedersdorf’s review is worth it’s own post. However, it basically boils down to Friedersdoft claiming that Walters original op-ed is a "perversion" of true feminism. He doesn’t do this because he is a man. He likely does this because he is feminist who is trying to run damage control.
It still amounts to a random Atlantic journalist telling a "feminist professor of 30-plus years, who has written four books", runs a feminist department at a major university and edits a feminist academic journal that she doesn’t know what feminism is really about.
Notice Walters is suddenly not an insignificant "middle-aged lesbian" but a powerhouse "feminist professor of 30-plus years”. She is a both a nobody and a somebody when it suites her argument.
Aside from putting Friedersdorft in his place, Walters continues to excuse herself for any damage she may have done to the American left-wing progressive movement and feminism. I wonder if Walters' academic peers think it's not hating men, but driving people away from the political left that is her true sin?
While the interviewer seems to want Walters to keep people from walking away from the left, Walters seem more interested in trying to justify any political damage by claiming those potential supporters don’t matter. It is was actual good they left.
"You suggest that if men "lean out," cede positions of power to women, all will be well — or if not well, at least better. Yet there are cases of women in academe and corporate power harassing workplace subordinates. The recently ousted female CEO of Theranos, a biotech entrepreneur, is accused of committing fraud. And the female leader of Myanmar seems to turn a blind eye toward ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. What persuades you that women have a tendency toward, if not a monopoly on, good behavior? I do not believe that women have a monopoly on good behavior by any stretch of the imagination. I do believe, though, that the point of saying lean out is to reckon with your power. It’s not just sharing it, it’s stepping back. Are there examples all over of terrible, anti-feminist women in office, in business, or in academia? Of course there are. Believe me, I know a lot of them. But God knows that when we look at cases of sexual harassment, for example, the vast majority are men doing that to women. Samantha Bee had a great riff. She said, women really do generally know that when we come to the office we shouldn’t show our coworkers our genitals. I gotta tell you, I don’t know a single woman who would think that’s OK. There are always exceptions. It’s not about women being inherently good. I don’t believe anyone is inherently anything. I’m a social constructionist. It is to say that if you want to talk about really changing power, men have to think about their own investment in maintaining the structures as they are."
Walters can't be bothered to mention any actual research in the interview, but she cites a Samantha Bee comedy sketch!? The Chronicle even provided a link to it.
Walters is feminist clergy.
There were many hard questions that didn't get asked in this interview. For example, how can Walters be trusted to have a leadership position at the university when she wants to remove men from positions of power? Any application or hiring process she touches is now a possible gender discrimination lawsuit.
Regardless, Walters confirms almost all my common assertions about modern feminism. She tries to conceal her obvious bigotry toward men behind verbose language and jargon. She believes men are made a demonic force in society by a mysterious, ill-defined "patriarchy". She blames men as group for the actions of an evil minority of men, even though most men would find those actions abhorrent. She makes reckless claims using uncited data that may not even exist. She cares more about the societal dominance of feminism than the actual representation or advancement of women. She unnecessarily binds feminism to support of left-wing politics.
Walters so perfectly validates so many criticisms of modern feminism that defenders of feminism like Friedersdoft cannot accept she isn't some of straw man invented to discredit it. However, Walters impressive feminist credentials are impossible to deny. She cannot be brushed off as "radical" or "fringe". She is only a “radical” feminist in the same way a bishop is a “radical” Christian. She teaches the faith, she guides its adherents, she writes the scripture, she controls the direction of the ideology.
Walters' misandry is the natural response to fully accepting feminist ideology and embracing the patriarchal dominance theory that is at its core. She isn't a fluke. She is feminism's successful end product and she, like so many others, is being paid to make more just like her.
