Feminism Destroyed Womanhood
On the men who need women. But need them to be less.
You wonder if humanity will survive this shitshow. I say yes, and bring the receipts. Confronting the dark and steering to the light with clarity, honesty, and a dash of British humour. Come in.
Yet again, a man has arrived with his opinion.
Feminism destroyed womanhood
says a man in my comments, a man with the unintentional comedy name Daniel Mancini.
How hilariously thick. ‘Womanhood’, the condition of being a woman, is not destroyed by anything except, sometimes, testosterone and the violence of testosterone-makers. Feminism, the belief that women are not inferior to men, destroys the subjugation of women. And CLICK, there it is: that’s how Dan the Man is defining the word. The condition of being a woman = subjugation.
No wonder Dan hates feminism, and feels the need to tell me in the comments of a post about — woah, Dan! — an anti-rape device. First comment:
I am amazed at the level of ignorance perpetrated by people thinking this is a justified means of solution.
Ladies, men can do as much damage as they like, but spiking their peen isn’t justified, and for rape survivors to promote this device makes them “ignorant.” They know nothing about rape, after all, whereas Dan is an expert.
Dan is more concerned about feminism than rape. Rape, yeah, listen, ladies, shit happens, I guess, allegedly, if you can believe what the woman says, and they clearly want it and change their minds later and ruin the lives of innocent men, and the rest of the time, look at the way they act or dress, they’re asking for it.
Feminists, though, don’t get me started on those bitches. First they come for your college places and jobs, and then they expect you to clean up after yourself like a full-grown adult, learn life skills like cooking and washing and knowing your child’s birthday.
Feminists have absolutely ruined dating. You send a woman a dick pic and they act like you’ve flashed them or something. You buy them a couple of drinks, and instead of giving you a blowy in the car park, they blow you off, and later when you text “U owe me 😉”, they reply “I’m not a bargain bin sex worker” (fully punctuated to humiliate you) and block you.
But Dan:
Yes, Dan, men don’t all get a housekeeper now. You don’t all get a replacement mummy by virtue of what’s in your pants. Feminism has freed men’s domestic slaves, and that’s a good thing, right? Because slavery is bad. People — and women are people, Dan, remember —should be free to choose what they do with their lives, and not have it decided by the body they’re born with. Feminism brought women the freedom to vote and get an education, a career we enjoy, a bank account, a house, a car, the works. Daniel. I know this is gutting, but women don’t need men anymore. Some of us might want men, but yes, a lot of us don’t want men who think women are naturally subservient; that our value lies purely between our legs, as sexy maid, incubator, then your brand new mummy. We have brains and dreams and creative brilliance. We always have. And how much further along would humanity be if half of humanity hadn’t spend a thousand years crushing the other half into domestic oblivion?
Dan, this post isn’t really for you, but for entertaining folk who are sick of your shit. And since so many other women are singing this same song so loudly now, and I’ve got work to do (that doesn’t involve the kitchen), I shall bring in some soloists from that choir.
Men are not in crisis because of feminism, but because of a skill gap.
Men aren’t needed anymore and they’re struggling to adapt to being wanted.
Yes, we are not the same.
But there isn’t a “gender war.”
Yes, if we’re honest, we all have some gendered expectations. If you’re a man, and we’re with you, and we hear a noise at night, we might ask you to check it out. But we don’t feel entitled to our expectations. We don’t, like the men in the Married At First Sight investigation this week, expect sex as the price of marriage. We don’t threaten to throw acid in your face if you tell anyone. We don’t respond to disappointed expectations by ending your lives.
I have never met, heard of or read about a woman who murdered a man because he refused to take the trash out… Men, on the other hand, stretch their entitlement to the point of resentment and violence. It is not theoretical…Women have been beaten, battered and killed by their husbands over their inability to cook or because the food had too much salt.
Anita Damina, ‘A Man and a Feminist Go Out to Dinner’
As Marie Shear said in May 1986, "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."1
That’s months off the time that I got my first job — the only woman in a room of forty men in my aptitude test (for logic, coding) — the only person in that group to pass it. Two years later, the only woman on my floor on a management grade, I was sent on a training course for interview techniques. Told the difference between closed questions (yes/no) and open ones, the trainer asked for a volunteer: pick anyone in the room and ask them an open question. The balding man opposite jumped at the chance, and picked me: the only woman on the course.
“Are you married?” he asked (an instant fail, which the trainer failed to pick him up on.)
“No,” I replied.
“WHY NOT?”
Asked with such aggression that it floored me.
I was too young, then — to challenge him, to laugh it off, to tell him it was none of his business — and too young to be married. He didn’t care about the answer. He wanted me to know I wasn’t welcome in that room full of men. My place in the world wasn’t earning good money programming computers, it was housework for a man, having babies for a man, being owned by man. What sickens me is that I was, in fact, already engaged to the man who would (once he had trapped me with children), abuse me and try to destroy every shred of my independence and self-esteem.
A man for whom the idea that women are people was laughable.
Forty years to the month after Marie Shear said it, the fact that it still seems a radical notion to some is, frankly, gutting. But I’m not giving up on this. I’m doubling down. I’m trickling my real-life stories like organic weedkiller (vinegar and love) onto a meadow of flowers and weeds, that the weeds might shrivel, and the flowers might grow.
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I love your comments (if you know that women are people) and will usually respond.
Marie Shear, reviewing Kramarae and Treichler’s A Feminist Dictionary in the news journal New Directions for Women, volume 15, issue 3 (May/June 1986), page 6.
I’m possibly maybe going to start thinking about ending men who don’t take the trash out, especially when they pile it on top of the full bin, the floor next to the full bin, the next available surface, etc.
If that happens, you are welcome to use it in your research.😁
I love how you bring in other voices. I love the from Letters From a Feminist - the difference is stark. Great piece, Ros. You continue to bring these issues forward and with such good British humour.