Mutual Mistrust

I've been thinking about mutual mistrust. This dynamic obtains between so many "groups" of people.

The one I'm thinking about right now is the group "Josh, and feminist women."

On my weekly show I talk a lot about what I see as today’s coddling of women who engage in abusive behaviors. Part of this, in my view, is the false notion that we live in a “patriarchy”. That “women don’t have political power.”

This is an article of faith for many feminists*. I mean that literally, even though the phrase is so common now that most people take it as a metaphor. It’s not a metaphor.

This set cannot accept that it’s possible for women to have political power unless they have absolute titular and numerical parity with men in the domains of being a lawmaker, a CEO, etc. They’re wrong. That’s not the only way to exercise power, and women are exercising plenty of power in its absence. They’ve feminized our public culture stem to stern.

Because such feminists hold this and other articles of faith, I am, by default, wary and guarded among any women who say they’re feminists.

Why? First, I lost nearly all my friends when my mind changed politically from leftism to Independent/Conservative. Most were women, but about 20 percent were men. These women decided that I had revealed myself as a misogynist, finally, as they always suspected. Several of my closest erstwhile friends called me a personality disordered woman-hater in public.

This is what I expect from feminists. Yes, including feminists who believe they are my friends. Because I have noticed that they don’t act very friendly at all when I disagree with their formulation that “male violence” or “special burdens handicapping women” are at fault for a woman’s misfortune (sometimes they are; I’m referring to those more numerous times when they are not).

This dynamic comes up sometimes in comments and responses to an episode of my show, Disaffected. Feminist-leaning women, who claim they like my show, or claim that they like me (or at least don’t actively dislike me), feel very free to respond to me with outrage and condescension. The tone is often “I can’t believe you don’t understand that women are specially oppressed this way, but being a man who benefits from patriarchy, how could you understand it?”

I react badly to this. Yes, I know that some think I over-react. Nearly all the women that I respond to make that claim.

To those women**: No. I’m not making up the tone you’re using. I’m not mind-reading something that isn’t there. You do, in actual fact, feel very free to condescend, patronize, and take a lot of liberties in how you dismissively react to my point of view. You may not know it, but you signal aloof bafflement or contempt, and specifically because I’m a man.

I’m not willing to take it. This is why I “overreact” (a convenient formulation when you don’t want to admit that you might be acting unfairly, or like a jerk).

I expect feminist women, including those who claim to be my online friend, to turn on a dime and instantly see me as a member of the patriarchy. I expect it because it’s happened repeatedly. It is a real pattern, not a fantasy. It is typical, not “unusual”, behavior for feminist women.

I don’t trust you.

I know these women mistrust me on some level that I suspect is similar to my wariness about them. I suspect that, as I see them as poised and waiting to bare their fangs at me, they may see me as poised and waiting to “take a shot at women because that’s what men do.”

What to do about this mutual mistrust? I don’t know. Perhaps there is nothing that can be done about it.

You have any ideas?



*I will not be caveating or qualifying, or saying “only some feminists,” and “not radical feminists, but liberal feminists.” Supply your own “not alls”.

**Do not personalize. If this doesn’t sound like you, then it’s not you.