This is What an Anti-Feminist Looks Like

It's true.

I am an anti-feminist.

I get a lot of crap about this from people who assume that because I am anti-feminist, I am anti-women.  This can't be further from the truth, as I am sure my many female friends will attest to.  I'm not anti-women.  I am not a misogynist.  I am not a hater of the female. I do not promote rape.  And here's precisely why:  "Women" is a demographic.  "Feminism" is an ideology.  This is a very important difference to keep in mind, because if you can't keep it in mind, then it is impossible for us to speak intelligently when it comes to gender issues.

It is entirely possible to be against feminism and not be against women.

I keep getting told that since I believe in gender equality, wholeheartedly and without reservation, I am by definition a feminist, because feminism is all about gender equality.  Sorry, but I do not think that is true.  I really don't.  For one thing, its right there in the name.  "Feminism."  Not "humanism", or "people-ism" or what have you, but "feminism."  For another thing, it is entirely possible to be a believer in gender quality and yet not be a feminist.  Oh sure, there are individuals who self-identify as feminists who insist they are right there with me when it comes to gender equality, but I think they're fooling themselves if they really think feminism is about equality.

Contrary to what it claims with a dictionary definition, Feminism is not about equality in practice. Did you hear that part?… in practice. Based on its overall actions, it is about socially engineering society to give special privileges to women and special punishments to men. That’s not equality. That’s not respecting genders.

Once again, I don’t give a crap about your dictionary definition.

It’s the actions of organized feminism that turned me against feminism. The actions do not, and have not for a long while, matched the rhetoric.

And don't talk to me about "patriarchy."  There is no "patriarchy."  You see, in a real patriarchy, women wouldn't be allowed to vote, divorce, own property, go to college, retain their own money, be responsible for their own lives, hold a career, make their own choices as to sex and children, and so on.  If our society is an example of a patriarchy, then it’s a pathetic example, and attacking it is like attacking a little boy as if he were a man.

There are, in my opinion, three ways to approach gender issues.

The first way is the so-called "Male First" way:  this viewpoint sees women has having achieved a permanent advantage over men in all things, so all gender issues should be addressed in terms of masculine advantage.

Then there is the feminist, "Female First" view, in which men are permanently advantaged over women, so all gender issues should be addressed in terms of feminine advantage.

Just so we're clear, I see both of these viewpoints as sexist and wrong.

Which brings me to my own viewpoint, a viewpoint I share with hundreds of thousands of people across the United States, both male and female.  This viewpoint states that there are situations in which men have the advantage, and situations women have the advantage, and that each situation and each issue should be considered on its own, and the solution to that issue should be approached differently depending on the who the issue affects and what the issue is all about, with an eye toward fixing these issues in such a way as to promote maximum equality for both men and women without promoting one gender to the detriment of the other.

This is a harder thing to do than you think, but to me that's true equality.  How can we even out the social position of each gender?  How can we solve problems without harming one another?  To me, that's how you end discrimination.  That's how you end sexism and gender prejudice:  by acknowledging that both genders have issues and those issues are equally important.

What you don't do is continue the discrimination by merely changing its target from one gender to the other.

Now, I'm not saying that no feminist cares about men's issues.  I'm sure there are people out there who self-identify as feminists who care equally about (to name one male-oriented issue) the fact that men have to prove their fitness as a parent in a custody fight while women are naturally assumed to be fit parents.

I'm talking about organized feminism, here.  I'm talking about the "feminist machine" that uses money and political power to influence public policy and legislation.  Organized feminism says that it cares about men's issues, but the way they approach such issues is to concentrate solely and wholly on women's issues and ignore (or deny) that men suffer any sort of "issues" at all.  Or even worse, they claim that by addressing women's issues and solving them, men's issues will vanish into the vapors and be fixed as well as a sort of "side-effect."

Sorry, but that's just stupid.  It's stupid and its foolish and it ignores the fact that men's issues and women's issues are sometimes very different things.

I will believe that feminism is for gender equality when I see organized feminism championing as a cause a men's issue that does not also affect women.  When a feminist lobbying group champions funding for a shelter for the 48% of domestic violence victims who aren't female, for example.  Or when a feminist group starts campaigning and protesting against the fact that women get lighter sentences than men despite committing the same crime.  Or when a feminist group goes just as ape-shit over a female teacher having sex with her underage student as they do when its a man having sex with an underage girl.  Hell, I'd even believe it if organized feminism took as much time to put muzzles on their more extreme members (the ones who really are dyed-in-the-wool man-haters) as they do turning such people into folk heroes.

Feminists claim to be against enforced gender roles, and to their credit they've done a lot to free women from these traps.  But when it comes to the enforced gender roles men are forced into, when it comes to the fact that even today, it is men who take the hardest, most dangerous jobs in society, they don't see any need to do anything.  And while they go berserk over the fact that even today there are two male corporate executives for every female executive, they seem perfectly okay that for every homeless woman, there are eighteen homeless men in this country.  Yes, they avoid looking at the bottom rungs of our society, because nothing ruins the fantasy that we live in a society run by men for the advantage of men and at the expense of women than acknowledging that there are more men living on the streets than there are women.

To me, feminism is unempowering to women.  Think about it for a minute.  Feminism promotes the idea that women are fragile damsels-in-distress who must be rescued by an external entity in order to be protected from having their feelings hurt by words that they disagree with.  Feminism encourages women to think in terms of weakness.  I know too many strong, empowered women to believe them to be weak and fragile, beginning with my mother and ending with my multiple female friends.  I wish I was as strong and as capable a person as they are.

Feminism is also all about hypocrisy.  Feminists preach against slut-shaming, but then turn around and march in the streets while calling themselves sluts.  They scream against "sexual objectification", but then turn around and objectify men for their abs, looks, money, and status. They claim to be for equal rights, but they only advocate for the rights of one gender.  They claim to be for "lifestyle choice" but they call women who choose to be homemakers "traitors" and imply they were somehow brainwashed by men into "choosing slavery over freedom."

So there it is.  I oppose feminism because at its heart it's organized sexism and hypocrisy writ large.  It is about female privilege (and yes, female privilege exists, just as male privilege exists), not about gender equality.

There will be people, of course, who are about to tell me that I just don't get it and that I say all of this because I'm secretly a woman-hating misogynist rape promoter and that I'm just wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.  To them, I once again have to say that they are fooling themselves.