Breaking down misogynist manure

Originally posted to Facebook on August 7, 2009:

I've been thinking a bit lately about what being a feminist means to me. A friend, perhaps unwittingly, drew my attention to this steaming load of horseshit, so I felt that maybe another note was in order.

Point the first: Kanazawa makes some fundamentally incorrect assumptions about feminism. The point of feminism is not to erase differences between men and women, or to deny that those differences exist. Rather, feminists work to ensure that people are not denied opportunities on the basis of gender. As Stacey put it: "Since YOUR basic assumption about feminism is wrong, you're wrong."

Plenty of feminists, myself included, enjoy getting dressed up now and again, putting on heels and a dress and maybe a little bit of lipstick. In fact, many feminists love, date, marry, fuck, and settle down with, men. The point of feminism isn't to hate men or to make Western society androgynous. Certainly, feminists believe that androgynous people should not be treated as freaks or forced to conform to specific gender roles they aren't comfortable with. The same goes for gay, bi, transgender, transsexual, or any other type of queer folks out there. And feminists do generally believe gender roles are largely socially constructed. (Until the early 20th century, little boys were often dressed in pink and little girls in blue. In some tribal societies, the men don face paint and fancy costumes to impress the women.)

So since Kanazawa starts off with some wholly inaccurate assumptions about feminism, it's hard to keep taking his piece seriously. Still, it's worth reading for this one little turd alone:

Another fallacy on which modern feminism is based is that men have more power than women. Among mammals, the female always has more power than the male, and humans are no exception. It is true that, in all human societies, men largely control all the money, politics, and prestige. They do, because they have to, in order to impress women. Women don’t control these resources, because they don’t have to. What do women control? Men. As I mention in an earlier post, any reasonably attractive young woman exercises as much power over men as the male ruler of the world does over women.

In other words, "Well, sure, menfolk control the money, politics, and prestige, and everything... But it's you women who have the real power because you guys have tits!!"

Or something like that. Anyway, this "pretty girls have all the power!" crap might even be more annoying than the disenfranchised-upper-midd

le-class-white-Christian-man garbage we've been witnessing so much of since Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court.

In the first place, it's not true. If women really did exercise that much sway over men, don't you think we would have had more than two sorry, three female Supreme Court Justices by now? Don't you think women would hold at least half the seats in the Senate and the House? If women really held that much power over men solely by virtue of sex appeal, don't you think we would have had at least one female president? So basically, it's bullshit.

Secondly, even if it were true (which it isn't), telling women to be satisfied with less-than-equal status because they have control over men's penises almost seems a little bit like telling black people to quit whining about prejudice because they dominate professional basketball. Why on earth would anybody think that sexual attractiveness or "sexual power" of some sort is any substitute for real political, social, and economic equality? Is that the message we want to send young girls? "Don't worry about going to college, getting a job, getting ahead or anything like that. All you need to do is find a powerful man and use sex to manipulate him."

Seriously?? That's degrading to both sexes. And furthermore, this proves my point about why feminism is still very, very necessary. It's sexist to suggest that women assert power by sexually manipulating men, and it's sexist to assume that men are incapable of using their brains when faced with a pretty girl.

And thirdly, what about less than "reasonably (read: conventionally) attractive" women? What do they get in this imaginary, made-up world where women don't have rights but don't need them because pretty women can exercise sway over guys' dicks?

Furthermore, Kanazawa''s point about "happiness" entirely misses the mark. The point of feminism isn't to make women happy. The point of feminism, as I stated before, is to ensure that people are not denied opportunities on the basis of gender. What you do with those opportunities are your business. Your own happiness is your responsibility alone, and Kanazawa never actually cites any studies to prove that women today are less happy, and even if he did, anybody educated past the 10th grade should be able to understand that correlation does not mean causation. (If people - not women, but people - truly are less happy than they used to be, we might want to ask about things like employment, education, debt, the economy, our increasingly sedentary lifestyles, etc., before dumping the blame on feminism - a movement which, innocuously enough, asserts that women have inherent equal worth to men and should therefore be treated that way.)

In concluding, Kanazawa writes, "... the culpability of modern feminism in making women steadily unhappy, because it is based on false assumptions about male and female human nature, is difficult to deny."

Don't worry. I fixed it for him: "... the culpability of modern feminism in making women steadily unhappy, because it is based on false assumptions about male and female human nature, is difficult to deny prove."

Damn straight, I'm a feminist! And guess what? I'm happy, too!