Montaigne wept
Many of you may have been worried, but I’m happy to report to you today that the future of the Men’s Rights movement is in good hands! My evidence? The following essay on the evil that is feminism, posted recently to the Men’s Rights subreddit by a 5-year-old boy.
At least I’m assuming it was posted by a 5-year-old boy. If it was posted by a teenager, or — heaven forbid! — an adult, well, all bets are off.
The essay was inspired by the age-old question: What is the nature of evil?
To that, the fellow who calls himself newmressay answers: Feminism. Let’s let him explain:
The New Webster’s Dictionary defines evil as “what is morally wrong, what hinders the realization of the good,” and “what is materially, esp. socially, very harmful,” (328-329 New Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language). It also defines feminism as “the policy, practice, or advocacy of political, economical, and social equality for women,” (346 New Webster’s Dictionary and Thesaurus of the English Language).
Aw, yeah! He’s kickin it off Webster-style!
Now, for a massive leap in logic: Feminism is a modern evil.
Well, a leap, anyway. We’ll see about the logic.
Why? After all, in the past century it has achieved most of its goals in the developed world and is permeating into the third world; numerous pieces of legislation, specifically in the United States, have given women the right to vote, own land, and prevent discrimination and harassment in education and the workplace.
You can OWN LAND, ladies. All lady problems have been solved forever! Time to close up shop!
But wait! The feminists have the audacity to continue to exist?
Feminism is good to a fault. Much like a line, it keeps going.
Much like a line? A line!? That just doesn’t have much zing to it.
Much like the Energizer bunny, feminism keeps going and going …
Much like a shark, it must continually swim forward gnashing its giant teeth or it will die!
Much like sandpeople, feminism travels in single file to hide its numbers.
Like a banana, it splits?
I’m just spitballing here. I’m sure you can think of a million more.
It is no longer about equality, but equity.
Uh, equity means “fairness.” That’s a bad thing? Or do you mean “equity” as in “ownership?” I guess newmressay probably means that, but we’ll never know because he never says.
Western contemporary Feminism has become synonymous with the nature of evil: materialistic pursuits with adverse societal consequences.
Oh, so you quoted Webster’s but didn’t actually understand its definition. When it said “materially” it didn’t mean “materialistically.” Also, huh? What does feminism have to do with materialism?
Feminism has Orwellian tendencies to maintain and “enforce” its beliefs and goals in the name of following ideological tenets, rather than empirical data they see before them, Feminists censor and distort data found in their studies.
Newmressay then cites a self-serving paper by Murray Straus, who claims that feminists have unfairly dismissed his domestic violence research and threatened fellow researchers who’ve failed to toe the feminist line. In fact, there are many valid reasons to be wary of Straus’ work, as I point out here.
The alleged threats are more worrisome, but newmressay cites the example of only a single researcher; if you check his original sources you will find that the harassment took place decades ago and that the perpetrators were never identified.
Newmressay drags out his copy of 1984 to give us some quotes about our boy Winston being forced to change facts and figures to fit the party line. Which would be very damning if there were evidence that feminists actually did this, but there isn’t.
Then with the help of more antifeminist “scholars” he misrepresents the notion of “patriarchy” and gets mad at feminists for that. He follows this by summarizing (badly) two feminist-bashing columns from neocon faux-feminist Christina Hoff Sommers before moving on to his grand conclusion:
Feminism’s essence is that of a greedy quest, resulting in harm to society: evil.
Greedy quest? Greedy Quest sounds like a third-rate Bejeweled knockoff.
It pushes and pushes to further its agenda of equity, not equality.
You know, you really might want to rethink this whole “equity” thing, given that most people are going to assume you mean “fairness,” and given that your gal Christina Hoff Sommers actually calls herself an “equity feminist” and means that as a good thing.
In its pushing, it has damaged society by stereotyping men and belittling the issues of others in the developing world. Although in the past it has served for the benefit of all in society, it now is pushing an agenda that threatens everyone. This evil, that which damages society, will persist until more realize what it is doing.
Dude, I don’t even understand what you’re doing.
