The top complaints men have about my work--and why I don't care about any of them
I don't care if men don't like me. And shitty men not liking me is sort of the point.
Each of them seems to think they’re presenting me with truly novel information—that, really, their email is for my benefit, not theirs. As if I—a happily married woman—have never considered the possibility that not all men are monsters, or whatever other revelation they want to serve.
I don’t care what men think of my work, because it’s not for them.
Men can choose to get with the feminist program and become better, or they can be left behind, as more and more women treat them like the unfuckable losers they are.
Here’s some of the nonsense they share with me—and why it’s completely empty.
It’s just an echo chamber
Nope, we actually have a wide variety of perspectives here—on sex work, on men, on sexuality, global politics, how we get free, liberatory praxis, parenting, and so much more. It’s just that the one opinion we all share is that women (and more specifically, mothers) are fully realized human beings whose time, lives, and needs are just as important as men’s.
And that’s not an opinion. It’s a fact.
Men only feel like my pages are echo chambers if they think feminism and its attendant rights and beliefs should be up for debate.
They also spend their lives in a society that tells them women have little to no value, and in a culture that teaches them it’s ok to treat women with disdain. When they come to my page and are promptly put in their place, it feels like an attack. Because when you spend your whole life hearing that your misogyny is valid and that you’re a Very Special Snowflake just for speaking while male, no longer being treated this way can make it feel like you’re in a foreign land—an echo chamber, where women are actually human.
You’re attacking potential allies (men)
“You’re turning men against you.”
“If you keep calling me sexist, what reason do I have to be a feminist?”
These are the battlecries of self-declared nice guys who demand that women accept their own self-assessment, without critique or complaint. Because, of course, feminism should totally be about women believing whatever men tell them.
If you are going to withdraw your support for women because you feel insufficiently rewarded for being a feminist, you’re not actually a feminist at all. You’re just using feminism as an excuse to demand praise from women. Demanding emotional labor from women because of a labor you’ve applied to yourself is inherently misogynistic, and we don’t need this kind of “ally.”
We need to focus on the real issues
This usually comes from leftist dudes who insist that feminism is “dividing” people, by which they really mean feminism is reducing women’s sexual interest in low-value men.
Sexism affects slightly more than half the population. It’s hard to imagine an issue more real. And no social movement can ever fully realize its benefits in a world that oppresses women.
Mothers make everything about themselves
Lol. Yes. In a world where mothers give everything and society continuously demands that they give more, and so they do. LOL.
Society continues to spread the message that mothers are lazy and entitled, and that no matter how much work we do, it’s both not work at all, and a sign of our incompetence and narcissism. Which is a really great way to discount anything and everything mothers say.
Men (and some misogynist women) get very threatened when mothers demand things. Because if mothers push back on our abuse, then eventually we can’t foist an entire society’s worth of work on them, and then we would have to treat them like people.
My God, the horror.
I feel sorry for your husband
Well, he spends his life with a wife who doesn’t find him sexually (and otherwise) repulsive, who will never leave him, and who fully supports everything he does without resentment, because—unlike the misoygnists who write me—he actually deserves love.
So he feels sorry for you, too.
You’re too aggressive
Men only perceive my work as aggressive when it’s about them.
Good men feel unthreatened by my work. In fact, I have many male subscribers who value my work so much that they’re paying for subscriptions for women they don’t even know.
These men all share in common that they are successful and have positive relationships with the women in their lives—and all that means, including active sex lives.
They know that men are only threatened by my hatred of misogynists if they are misogynists, that they only feel offended by my assertion that men have to be equal parents if they themselves are inadequate parents.
I am indeed aggressive to men who deserve it. And they immediately see themselves in my work, which is why they react so defensively.
Men are structurally disadvantaged, and that prevents them from being equal partners
Hahahahahahahaha.
Our entire world is designed around the needs of (white, middle class) men. The idea that we have structurally disadvantaged men in any way is preposterous. Instead, men are advantaged by the ongoing labor of women, and our world applauds them for it.
It’s not that he doesn’t get enough parental leave. It’s that he doesn’t want to parent full-time, and he gets praised for that fact.
It’s not that he somehow is too stupid to know how to do the dishes. It’s that he lives in a world that both pretends men are superior and pretends they can’t do basic tasks of self-care.
Men are fully capable of not exploiting women. They exploit women for one reason, and one reason only: They continuously choose to.
You’re ignoring neurodivergence
Neurodivergent women never get a pass, and in fact, do more work than any other group.
Neurodivergence does not cause exploitation.
Blah blah blah white women Karens
This literally always comes from a white guy who has no apparent interest in antiracist work unless and until such work involves attacking white women.
I’m white. And as a white person, I am always open to critiques about my lens, my commitment to racial justice, and where I fall short. Especially when that critique comes from Black women.
But antiracism is not a weapon you can or should wield in service of sexism. And that’s usually all this is. Predictably, low-value men who don’t understand social justice have conflated the tendency of white women to demean Black people with any instance in which a white woman asserts any need at all.
The new misogyny: where having needs somehow makes you a racist.
Readers, what are your favorite ways men whine about my work, or about feminism in general? I’ll be updating this piece over time, so check back!
I care not for men advocating for ' free speech', then blocking me for,
and UNWILLING to listen to, let alone, to learn from ... ... MINE !
SMASH sexism. SMASH the PATRIARCHY.
One I hear constantly is that we (I as a woman who mentions gender inequality often) just see problems but don't point out the solutions... Right, because I, a lowly individual woman in the vast world, can come up with the perfect solution to a centuries old social problem that has taken all sorts of forms over time, encompasses every aspect of our lives, is very layered and is relentlessly recursive 🙄. It's so aggravating. Or the men who want the complete roadmap to becoming better completely outlined for them by women. I just read a comment on a YouTube video about household inequality by a guy who said that he needed to be told exactly how to be better because, the problem is not that men are not able to be organized, but that the impulse to procrastinate is just too hard to overcome... I just..... Honestly, I am not interested in engaging dudes on gender anything anymore. It's a neverending battle that I just don't have the bandwidth for. I'd rather spend that time doing emotional labor for women who haven't quite seen the light yet instead. At least with them I feel like we're working together towards improving our lives somehow.