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.
Josh, I feel this on the DEEPEST level. It brings me back to Jordan Peterson's order and chaos example - masculinity being order, and femininity being chaos. They both play an important role. However, our society is being dominated by the feminine - the chaos - and it's out of place. Just like an overcorrection of masculinity can bring a sense of order that breeds chaos (hello, Kim Jong Un.), this overcorrection into femininity has brought us here. We're out of balance.
As you stated, you're not making up the tone of these women. It's real, and I can see it too. And don't even get me started about how our society treats men who are assaulted (sexually, physically, etc) by women. I somewhat speak from experience on that.
Excellent description of a very real problem. FWIW, it happens to women who don't buy into feminist dogma, too. Substitute "internalized misogyny" or "you're just a 'pick-me'" for the patriarchy bit and otherwise it's remarkably similar. I have no suggestions for how these things interfere in a relationship, but one tactic that's kinda-sorta worked, sometimes, for the point in a relationship before it might get there, because I have run into something very similar with regard to Christians/Christianity.
Plenty of Christians, especially online friends, take a lot of umbrage at my discussion of my experiences with Christians. They declare that the Christians in my childhood, who took "Beat him with the rod and save his soul from hell" and "The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil" and other such verses that call for abusing children in the name of discipline literally, were interpreting the Bible wrong and weren't real Christians and therefore my conclusions about Christianity are all erroneous. How could I understand anyway, being an atheist? It takes the Holy Spirit to properly interpret scripture!
When I see one of these situations developing, I will say something like: "The word 'Christian' isn't very useful. Anything that both the Westboro Baptist Church and Barack Obama have equal claim to gives zero information. I'm referring to Christians of the sort who raised me. I know YOU aren't like them; you weren't there and didn't participate. But I have every right to accept their claim to know Jesus at face value, as I accept yours. And I'm not going to not-all, not-all, not-all every time this topic comes up. I shouldn't have to say this part of it more than once." (And lately, I end it with: "As my friend Josh says, you can supply your own 'not-alls'.") I find that this works well with people who are genuinely interested in conversation and doesn't, with people who aren't.
It strikes me that 'feminist' is a similar word to 'Christianity,' with an equally wide range of people having a claim to it (if they want such). The suffragists and the equal-pay-for-equal-work campaigns were obviously justice-based. Very little that's come after has been unambiguously positive. Although it strikes me now, having typed all this, that if someone needs you to clarify that of course you agree with adults of both sexes getting equal pay for equal work and having the franchise and all, it's just what feminism has turned into that you have objections to, they're probably not going to like talking to you for very long anyway, ha ha!