Are Women and Feminism Really to Blame for Men’s Rising Hate?

A refusal to adapt to changing times harms men more than anything women do.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

I once took a bus from Chicago to South Bend, on a route bound for the east coast. As I cozied up next to the window, I warned myself not to fall asleep, because I didn’t want to risk missing my stop in Indiana and ending up in Ohio.

Dozens of people who were once liberals critical of the extreme left have gone all the way to the right, and many of them will tell you that the left pushed them there. But in my view, that’s like waking up in Toledo and blaming the bus. If you know yourself and your values, you know better than to blow past your stop. Criticizing excessive, unhelpful and alienating ideas from the left is important, but to go from that to embracing wild ideas on the right is a choice, not the result of ideological coercion.

There are bad ideas on the left, and some messaging is going to have to change if we have any hope of righting the ship, but I’m not going to get into all that.

Robert Reich

already covered that in his post, The Lesson, and I think he’s right. Go read it. 

Instead, I want to tackle the notion that feminism is to blame for men’s choices. Sure, you can look at movements like #metoo, complaints about toxic masculinity, memes about drinking male tears and point to a backlash that followed. But men’s brains are not software and feminism is not a line of code that triggered a full-system meltdown. 

Women said, “We’re tired of men hurting us,” and many men, many good men, chose to reflect. Many others chose to react. They passed out on the bus and now tell us it’s our fault they woke up in a regressive fantasyland. 

It’s the Lack of Perspective, Stupid! 

I remember my psychology professor, Marvin Frankel, saying something like, “There’s nothing shallower than someone who would take their own life because their lover has left them.” It’s shallow, he argued, to be unable to picture your life without that person in it.

Professor Frankel went on to argue that after World War I, the Germans were unable to create a perspective that would have allowed them to adapt to their new circumstances, and chose hatred instead. 

Article after article laments men’s problems, how women’s liberation and a changing employment landscape have left them behind. A penis and a paycheck aren’t enough anymore, and men now have to think about what they can offer to women if they want to have relationships. Blue-collar jobs that once offered men pride and stability have diminished in the face of globalism and technological advancement. A shift in values has left men confused about their place in society.

Creating a new perspective would help men deal with all this, but many seem unwilling or unable to do it. More to the point, there are no male leaders showing them how to shift their thinking, or offering new ways to look at and cope with the world as it is. Instead, they wallow in shallow nostalgia for their grandfathers’ heyday (while knowing little about history) and inhale hateful ideas presented by vile influencers who advocate for nothing less than the total subjugation of women.

Women Didn’t Do This to You 

Women and feminism get the blame for many of men’s problems, but a closer look reveals that many of these issues have nothing to do with women. 

The vanishing of vocational education? I don’t recall feminists of the 1970s holding signs that read ‘Kill Auto Shop!’ (For the record, I’m for bringing back vocational education. How’s this for an idea: ban planned obsolescence, establish a right to repair and bring back the neighborhood repair shop? That would be better for everyone. Also, there’s a guy in Hibbing who repairs antique appliances, and I have a crush on him, but lack the courage to slide into his Instagram DMs.) 

Men have no close friends? Sorry, but you cannot pin that on women. Women didn’t disband the bowling leagues or burn down the VFW halls. Women aren’t hogging all the volunteer opportunities at soup kitchens and nursing homes and stretches of highway where trash needs spearing. Martial arts gyms are everywhere; I made many friends of both genders at my Krav Maga and Brazilian Jiu-jitsu gym. No one is locking men at home with Reddit and video games. Making friends as an adult can be challenging but the solution is very simple: Go do things.

Men can’t get dates? The thing about misogyny is that a man’s capacity to like women directly correlates with how much he likes himself. If you hate yourself and the person sitting across the table from you, it should not be a surprise when there’s no second date. If you spend your entire day in online forums inventing new misogynistic slurs and screaming about repealing the 19th Amendment, don’t be surprised when no one wants to meet you in real life. To circle back to Professor Frankel’s point, if it’s shallow to choose suicide because your lover left you, it’s just as shallow to choose destruction because you don’t have any lovers.

We’re Not Going Back

Listen, I like circle skirts, Doo-Wop music, cars with fins and kitschy basement bars as much as anybody who hangs out at antique malls. But there’s a difference between embracing vintage style and clinging to outdated values. And by the way, the 1950s weren’t so much about family values as they were about consumption and keeping up appearances.

“If the idealized American of the 19th century was provident and sensible, the idealized mid-20th-century American was a buy-now, pay-later, status-craving climber unmoored from most traditional values,” wrote Ronald W. Dworkin in 2018. I suspect that many people who are falling behind today wouldn’t have kept up in the ‘50s, either. 

Forcing women back into domestic slavery may appeal to some men, but they should realize that women’s workforce participation is correlated with a strong economy. Those who yearn for deflation should realize a steep price drop comes with a substantial side of unemployment, and you can’t support a tradwife or pay for a house on one salary when you have no job at all. 

As Ronald W. Dworkin wrote, “One can’t just resurrect values from any time period, be it the 1950s or the 19th century, and apply them to the present.” 

Angry men and pundits can blame women and feminism for today’s ills, but they should realize that, as Dworkin noted, they’re yearning for something that is both rooted in ahistorical fantasy and downright impossible. 

Get Off the Damn Bus 

If feminism bothers you, realize that ratcheting up misogynistic rhetoric -- like Nick Fuentes’ rancid “Your body, my choice” tweet -- will not make feminism go away. If feminism is to blame for your extremism, then you can own the fact that your rhetoric makes women hate you. No one is forcing you to ride that Greyhound to hell. You can get off at any time and take a bus going back the other way, but you’re the one who is going to have to make that choice.