Culture Creep: Anti-Male Edition

Rebecca de Winter

Recently I wrote a piece about the progressive left’s insidious agenda to creep society bit by bit towards the fruition of their radical utopia where, among other things, human beings no longer have a gender.  

The fight to eradicate gender is just one tentacle of the monstrous entity known as the Social Justice Warrior (SJW), which resides comfortably within the progressive movement. Other goals include the eradication of free speech (or rather, speech they deem offensive), the triumph of diversity over merit, the shaming and exclusion of straight men (especially if they’re white), and the punishing of those who dare disagree with their agenda (among other things).

Today I’m going to focus on the anti-male agenda of the regressive left.

I’d like to point out the hilarious irony of a movement that claims “gender is a social construct” while at the same time belittling males in particular at every turn. Just chew on that for a moment.

The feminist contempt and hatred for men is nothing new, of course. Here are some choice words feminists have had for men over the past few decades:

“I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig.” - Andrea Dworkin

“I feel that ‘man-hating’ is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.” - Robin Morgan, Ms. Magazine Editor

On the topic of campus rape allegations: “Why could we not expel a student based on an allegation?” - Amanda Childress, Sexual Assault Awareness Program coordinator at Dartmouth

“I’d kill myself.” - Lena Dunham’s response to the question “What would you do if you woke up as a man?”

"The patriarchy is using equality to oppress women. We need a new wave of feminism to be more equal than men."  - Jessica Valenti

These quotes do not exist in a vacuum. Spend half an hour browsing feminist forums and websites and your hair will stand on end from all the spittle-flecked vitriol spewing from within these hardened hearts.

She seems nice

It’s a lot more than hysterical quotes, however (yeah, I went there). Some women want men to grovel.

The shaming of a male scientist on what should have been the greatest day of his life for the style of his shirt stands out as particularly painful. He was part of a team that landed a probe launched from earth onto a comet 300 million miles away, but never mind that, his shirt was offensive. He was scolded and shamed, and his public apology, in tears, made my heart ache for him.

On the political front, some are ratcheting things up a notch. A PAC named, aptly, “Can You Not” was started with the goal of asking straight white men to step aside and not bother running for office. A large part of their goal includes, and this is a direct quote, “defeating mediocre white dudes.”

In another sharp jab, Harvard recently announced that, starting in the fall of 2017, students who join social clubs geared for males only will be ineligible to serve in leadership positions in other campus groups.

A charming blogger at the  online community aptly named Feministing is so excited about this she is doing “a happy dance.”

Meanwhile, Duke just green-lighted an “all-female selective living group” to ensure a special space “not dependent on male influence.”

These developments have nothing on what may be the largest threat against men – and that is the demonstrably false “college rape epidemic” hysteria seizing campuses across the nation.  The constantly touted “1 in 5 women are sexually assaulted in college” is a flat-out lie, and make no mistake, this harms men and ruins lives, especially given that the accused seldom get fair due process protection.

While hipsterish male feminists write think-pieces earnestly addressing their “male privilege,” which includes having a short morning routine (this is not a parody), the grim realities of the challenges men face are routinely ignored.
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About that male privilege...

While it may be debatable that men are in crisis (men of older generations still rule the roost when it comes to positions in Congress, or as CEOs, for example), for younger generations, there is no question boys are falling far behind.

For a brilliant, sharp analysis of the roots of this decline, Christina Hoff Sommer’s “The War Against Boys” is a must read. Sommers references the “climate of disapproval” in which boys now grow, which has dramatically increased in recent years.

​None of this is really surprising, having witnessed decades of  media portraying men as bumbling morons, with brilliant and beautiful wives barely tolerating their existence with thinly veiled condescension.

As writer Avi Woolf describes in a brutally honest piece, “All the traditional avenues of value and self-worth seem to be closing off for an increasing slice of the male population. And many are simply dropping out of life as a result.”

I fear that in society’s mad rush to empower women (and I address the problem with women’s empowerment here), we have dismissed men altogether. It’s not a zero-sum game. We can celebrate and inspire boys without diminishing girls, and we should.
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