The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Feminism as Rationalization or, Hating Men Because Men Don’t Like You Enough

Posted on | April 18, 2015 | 56 Comments

Lindsay King-Miller (@AskAQueerChick) writes a column for @thehairpin, which is a spinoff site from TheAwl.com, which is one of those Trendy But Not Actually Popular Kind of Blogs That You Should Never Call a “Blog.” There are dozens of these sites out there trying to convince investors that they could be The Next Buzzfeed. More accurately, the best they could hope for is to become The Next Salon.com, which has been losing about a million dollars a year since the 1990s. But I digress . . .

Lindsay King-Miller’s column is “Ask a Queer Chick,” i.e., her bid to become the Lesbian Internet Dear Abby. Of course, this ambition is problematic because there are entire sites like Autostraddle devoted to the Lesbian Lifestyle™ and, also, HELLO, IT’S THE INTERNET.

There is a reason why very few websites have “Advice for the Lovelorn” columnists, you see. Whereas in the Dead Tree Age, it was possible to be clueless about sex and relationships, in the Information Age, the only clueless people are (a) stupid or (b) quasi-autistic nerd types with impaired social perception. Everybody else is able to Google up their own particular issue and figure it out. By 2006, all potential relationship problems (“Is my penis too small?” “If you have to ask, the answer is yes.”) had already been answered somewhere on the Internet.

The only reason anyone would still be publishing an online Relationship Advice column in 2015 is to serve that niche readership of Pathetic Nerds Who Just Don’t Get It:

Q. I think the attractive woman in the next cubicle likes me. How do I find out for sure?
A.
No, she doesn’t like you. Nobody likes you. You are an ugly man with Asperger’s Syndrome and nobody likes you. This woman on whom you have a sick fixated obsession doesn’t like you. If she smiles at you, that’s because you’re creeping her out. You make her nervous, staring at her constantly. Her smile is a sort of defensive shield. She has nightmares about you stabbing her in the parking lot, you disgusting weirdo. Leave her alone. Leave women alone, period. Don’t even look at a woman.

This is all that’s left, in terms of readers for Relationship Advice columns in 2015. Except for extreme nerds — whose social skills are so impaired that they don’t even realize how utterly hopeless they are — everybody else can figure out their problem with a simple Google search. Beyond that, thanks to social media and online dating apps, any young single person who is even moderately attractive nowadays is swarmed with would-be dates. This drastically shrinks the potential readership for advice columns.

Don’t like your boyfriend? Zap! New boyfriend, just one text message away. That is, if you’re attractive.

The Internet has starkly divided the romantic universe into the Haves and Have Nots. Therefore, if you’re doing a Relationship Advice column in 2015, you have to understand that you are dealing with the hopelessly desperate types who are probably beyond help of “advice.” So, what kind of questions do you think Lindsay King-Miller gets at “Ask a Queer Chick?”

  • “I’m a twenty-five year old woman who is thinking about trying to date women. I’ve always had what I’m realizing were crushes on women, but have never talked about or acted on them. Do you have suggestions for the most respectful way to go about this, on say, OkCupid?”
  • “I have such a crush on my intern. I’m not her supervisor, though I’m a senior person on a team that she is also on, so I’m in a leadership role in relation to her. I’m only two years older than she is. She is so ambiguously queer I can’t even stand it. We either have extremely subtle, almost-undetectable queer-girl sexy eye contact going on, or I am totally imagining everything. When she leaves our office at the end of the school year, can I ask her out?”
  • “My girlfriend of over a year recently came out to me as a trans man. I’ve never been in a relationship with a man before: not because I’m unattracted to men — I am sometimes! — but because I’ve always preferred the company of women, and I love the queer community. I love my partner and support him and I want to stay with him, but I never thought I’d have a boyfriend, and I need some advice on how to proceed.”

Do you see what I’m getting at here? In 2015, people who have romantic problems that they can’t figure out without asking a Dating Advice columnist tend to be so far out on the freaky fringe — lesbians lusting for their interns, or dating a weirdo with gender dysphoria — that you don’t know whether to give them advice or report them to the FBI.

At least 90% of all “relationship” questions could be solved simply by asking the person a few questions:

  • Are you ugly? Here’s the basic problem for most people who have relationship problems. This is not to say that attractive people never have problems. However, attractive people have options. If you’re good-looking and things aren’t working out with your boyfriend or girlfriend, there are lots of other people you could be dating, so you just move on and find somebody you like better. If you are so desperate to find love you have to ask for help from an advice columnist, you probably aren’t an international supermodel.
  • Are you an introvert? Give them a Myers-Briggs test. If the result shows them to be an introvert, that’s the basic problem. Ceteris paribus, introverts have more social problems than extroverts, and also have more of a tendency to sit around brooding over their problems. However, being an introvert is probably not going to cause you a lot of dating problems if you’re extraordinarily good-looking, so if somebody’s asking you for relationship advice and the Myers-Briggs test shows them to be an introvert, they’re probably ugly, too. They’re batting with two strikes against them, you see.
  • Are you crazy? Mental illness is more common than most people realize. About 1-in-4 women take mental health medications, mostly for depression and anxiety. Guess what? People with mental health problems also often have relationship problems. So if somebody comes to you seeking relationship advice, it might be helpful to know if they’re gobbling Prozac, just one crisis away from their next suicide attempt.

Once you’ve screened out the ugly introverts and crazies, you’ll find that there aren’t a lot of people who need relationship advice. Sane, good-looking extroverts aren’t writing to “Ask a Queer Chick,” you see. And — here’s the key point — people who are such romantic failures they write to advice columnists aren’t likely to benefit from whatever advice they get. Here is an actual question to Lindsay King-Miller:

My surface question is this: How common, really, is the sort of stereotypical “femme/butch” dynamic in female same-sex relationships?
My real question is this: How can I, as a relatively femme cisgender woman, meet other relatively femme cisgender women? This is not the only sub-population that I’m interested in, but it’s probably the most compelling one to me. I tend to be kind of wary of “lipstick lesbian” groups, because the ones that I’m familiar with can be pretty exclusive (“bi/queer folks, trans*/genderqueer folks, and ugly folks need not apply!”). But it often seems that in the larger LGBTQ world, I run into two obstacles: First, my femininity does not signal “queer,” and so unless I explicitly share that with people, other queer women don’t realize that I’m a potential partner. Second, I’m wondering if most of the women who would be interested in me would tend to be a little more butch than femme.
But actually, I think my real question is this: Should I even be worried about finding a partner who fits with what is consistently and pervasively most compelling to me (femme, cis women)? My sexuality is fairly fluid; I can also be interested in non-femme women, men, and some individuals who are genderqueer. My last relationship was with a cis man and lasted two and a half years, and it was wonderful, and I miss it. But if what most reliably pulls at my heartstrings is a femme woman, do you think I should just take that self-knowledge and zero in on that? From your experience, how successful and sustainable are mixed-orientation relationships, or relationships that may be surprising to oneself?

The only honest reply to that 267-word question: Have you sought professional help? Are you on medication? If not, why not?

To begin with, let me bet $20 that this person is an introvert. How else to explain someone who is “most reliably” attracted to women but who nonetheless spent more than two years in a “wonderful” relationship with a man? Extroverts tend to be decisive and action-oriented. Figure out what you want and go get it — that’s the extrovert way. Certainly, extroverts don’t sit around wringing their hands wondering how to attract the people they like, or trying to figure out if they would be happy in a hypothetical relationship they haven’t actually had. Furthermore, while you may not have noticed this pattern, it’s actually my point here: Many women who experience same-sex attraction are not strictly lesbians.

Of the four “Ask a Queer Chick” questions we’ve cited, three-quarters of them are from women who could be described as bisexual. Their interest in the “queer community” can be described either as opportunistic or an alternative to confronting their own failures in heterosexual relationships. This phenomenon is common enough as to have spawned an entire genre of books, including Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire by Lisa Diamond and Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write About Leaving Men for Women, edited by Candace Walsh and Laura André. There are far fewer books about women who, after a lesbian past, have discovered that heterosexuality is actually not bad. Rosaria Champagne Butterfield’s Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith has gotten a lot of attention. I’m sure there would be more stories like Professor Butterfield’s were it not for (a) the fact that most women like her keep their lesbian pasts secret, and (b) there is a pro-gay bias in the publishing industry.

The LGBT community (to say nothing of feminists) would raise hell if there were a spate of memoirs by women telling their stories about how they were part of the college L.U.G. scene (“Lesbian Until Graduation”) but then went out into the real world, met a nice man and got over all that. More than four decades since the emergence of the Women’s Liberation movement, there is a distinct but seldom-mentioned prejudice against certain kind of narratives. The only stories women are now allowed to tell are stories about how men are to blame for all the problems in the world. After reading about five dozen feminist books, I’m ready for the first truly honest feminist memoir, Don’t Blame Men: Confessions of a Neurotic Lonely Overweight Bisexual Cat Lady. Such a book would never be assigned as a text in Women’s Studies class, however, so instead we keep seeing feminist books that amount to a rehash of the same familiar themes — Misogyny, Objectification, Harassment, Rape and Other Evil Consequences of Male Supremacy and Heteronormative Patriarchy.

Feminism means that the problems of unhappy men are not problems at all — because what’s the point of feminism if it doesn’t make men unhappy? — whereas the problems of unhappy women are social injustice.

It’s nice of Lindsay King-Miller to explain the true meaning of feminism. Not as if we didn’t already understand it, but it’s nice when they say it in so many words.

In case further explanation is necessary:

  • The reason feminists so often have to assert that they don’t hate men is because they don’t want to explain why they actually do hate men;
    and
  • The reason feminists hate men is spiteful revenge, because men don’t like them as much as they believe they deserved to be liked.

Sometimes, feminists are women who have actually been treated badly by men. Most often, however, it’s just about envy and frustrated narcissism. They think they should be admired, but there isn’t anything particularly admirable about them. Therefore, the feminist needs a rationalization to explain why this lack of admiration is not her fault. Otherwise, she might have to confront the reality that she is not as special and wonderful as she thinks. “Men don’t love me? It’s because men hate strong, intelligent women! This failure of men to love me proves that I am strong and intelligent, and proves that men are all selfish monsters!”

You keep telling yourself that, sweetheart.





 

Comments

56 Responses to “Feminism as Rationalization or, Hating Men Because Men Don’t Like You Enough”

  1. Feminism as Rationalization or, Hating Men Because Men Don’t Like You Enough | Living in Anglo-America
    April 18th, 2015 @ 3:49 pm
  2. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 18th, 2015 @ 3:51 pm

    Which is why you don’t see many pretty feminists. And those that are attractive are generally flawed in some other profound way.

  3. Eric Carson
    April 18th, 2015 @ 3:59 pm

    I love women.They’re beautiful!

  4. robertstacymccain
    April 18th, 2015 @ 3:59 pm

    This is why I don’t like it when guys do the point-and-laugh “look how fat and ugly she is.” That’s not why she’s a feminist. There are other equally fat and ugly women who are sane enough to cope with their shortcomings without having to resort to Marxoid rationalization to explain their problems. There are non-feminist women who are less attractive than Lindsay King-Miller and, of course, there are feminists who are more attractive. The problem is, feminists have such gigantic egos that no amount of admiration is sufficient to satisfy them. A good-looking woman may become a feminist because, while she is admired, she is not worshipped enough to make her happy.

  5. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 18th, 2015 @ 4:35 pm

    Sorry, I was not clear on the point I was making.

    This is a simplification, but most women who are man hating feminists (or for short just feminists) are very angry against men. That is not because of urinal lines. Either they were abused or neglected. Something happened. And they want to make everyone else as miserable as they are. They are not feminists because they are physically ugly, they are ugly because they are feminists.

    There are a few who still appear physically attractive…but they are rare (way rarer than in the general population).

  6. Feminist with Anger Issues? Pourquoi? | Batshit Crazy News
    April 18th, 2015 @ 4:54 pm

    […] TOM notes that some feminists seem to have anger issues  […]

  7. marcus tullius cicero
    April 18th, 2015 @ 4:56 pm

    …when Feminist Ugly Pigs give advise to other Feminist Ugly Pigs we have comedic material galore!
    H->sucks!

  8. marcus tullius cicero
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:04 pm

    ..so it’s wrong to stereotype women as ugly feminist lesbians when they do it to straight men?

    H->sucks!

  9. marew
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:04 pm

    Sorry lesbians and other “things” mentioned and shown in this post, but there is a whole lot of fat and ugly going on here. This is why you hate men, they are not attracted to you. I’m surprised anyone, male or female is.

  10. marew
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:06 pm

    Just because I’m a feminist doesn’t mean I “hate all men” indiscriminately. Every individual man is loathsome in his own unique way.

    —–

    This attitude is ugly too.

  11. marcus tullius cicero
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:08 pm

    …Attitude, not really just two words…penis envy!
    H->sucks….

  12. Daniel Freeman
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:15 pm

    Adolescents don’t know what they’re doing, so hardly anyone makes it out without a bad experience. I remember a woman retelling a story from her mom’s adolescence about how she had a crush on a guy, he told her she was ugly, and she cried for three days. Then she got up, brushed herself off, and said “Well, guess I’d better start working on my personality.” Men have similar stories of cruel girls, but there isn’t an ideology that supports turning a personal hurt into a demonization of women in general; instead of being offered acceptance and job opportunities, they would only be offered ridicule. You get more of what you incentivize.

  13. marew
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:20 pm

    Fat and ugly is a cheap and easy argument to make about some lesbians.

    When you run down a list a celebrity lesbians almost to a person they have admitted to some kind of abuse in the past.

    Creating physical barriers (looks, weight), is some kind of protection to them. Can’t fault them there.

    It’s the nasty attitude toward all men that grates and seems irrational and silly.

  14. Matthew W
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:28 pm

    Jeez, How hard was it to get those two horses to wear wedding dresses and kiss?

  15. Daniel Freeman
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:36 pm

    If H-> sucks, how do you explain Monica? Just sayin’. 😉

  16. Whitney
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:44 pm

    Come on. A lot of people still read Dear Prudence in Slate….even though it is abundantly obvious that at least 50% of the questions are fake. She seems to get a lot of letters from religious, conservative types. Color me skeptical but I don’t think those letters are real.

  17. Kirby McCain
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:46 pm

    I am so much more than a homophobic misogynistic, but there’s a young lady here needing a bb spanking so gtg

  18. RS
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:50 pm

    Here’s a clue: Note her M.F.A. from “Naropa University”:

    Naropa University is a private liberal arts college in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford University scholar Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda.

    Naropa describes itself as Buddhist-inspired, ecumenical and nonsectarian rather than Buddhist.[1] Naropa promotes non-traditional activities like meditation to supplement traditional learning approaches.

  19. RS
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:51 pm

    She’s lucky to have gig writing internet advice columns.

  20. Kirby McCain
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:51 pm

    Hard to leave the seat down on one of those!

  21. Kirby McCain
    April 18th, 2015 @ 5:53 pm

    Are you talked about Britt McHenry again?

  22. OrangeEnt
    April 18th, 2015 @ 6:01 pm

    Ha Ha! The school’s named after a “man”…..

  23. Quartermaster
    April 18th, 2015 @ 6:29 pm

    I’ve met plenty of women who are not very physically attractive, yet have husbands and are happily married. There are things a woman can do to make up for the lack, but hating men is not one of them.

  24. Adobe_Walls
    April 18th, 2015 @ 6:53 pm

    The fact that Monica sucked and H didn’t explains it all don’t it?

  25. BSR
    April 18th, 2015 @ 7:02 pm

    I don’t think it’s nice to pick on someone’s wedding photo. I read her article about not liking how she looked and it was actually a very sweet well-thought-out essay. However I could also point out, that it’s easier to look like the pretty princess in your wedding photo when your female partner doesn’t have a slenderer physique than you do. I also imagine it is difficult to smooch for two people with that much boobs between them. They have to slouch a lot just to get their lips to touch around those racks. (Sorry, bad bad humor and I feel entitled to make such a joke since I am not remotely flat chested)

    I am not a small woman. I weighed 190 lbs on my wedding day and thought I looked huge but it balanced it out a lot to have a 6’4 man standing at my side. He wasn’t going to look more princess-y than me on any day of the week.

    As for advice columns… never really paid much attention to them other than to point and laugh. I always thought of them as sort of a ‘misery loves company’ sort of thing where you could read about someone who undoubtedly had it way worse than you and feel better about your own situation.

    I think that the questions you highlighted pointed out something else though. The sorts of questions being asked brought to light how deeply disjunct a same-sex relationship is from social norms. You really have to congregate with other LGBTOMFG people in order to know what’s in fashion or acceptable socially to other people in that bubble of existence in order to interact with them romantically. If you’re not in with the group then you’ve got to write some loony-tunes advice columnist I guess.

  26. Jeanette Victoria
    April 18th, 2015 @ 7:12 pm

    I’m fat and old and I *still* have guys make passes at me, as recently as last night when I went to sing Karaoke.

  27. Jeanette Victoria
    April 18th, 2015 @ 7:14 pm

    Her “wedding photo” is with another woman….it really isn’t a marriage it’s a piss poor imitation of a real marriage

  28. DeadMessenger
    April 18th, 2015 @ 7:22 pm

    “You get more of what you incentivize.”

    This should be on a tee shirt. It applies to every situation in life. It’s very…philosophically pragmatic. =)

  29. darleenclick
    April 18th, 2015 @ 7:24 pm

    I admit it, I clicked through to “wedding pix” story

    She wanted to look great in her pics, but OBVIOUSLY she & partner were too flippin’ cheap to hire a professional and/or talented photographer.

    Whose Uncle Bob took those pics? Sheesh.

  30. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    April 18th, 2015 @ 7:25 pm

    The problem is, feminists have such gigantic fragile egos that no amount of admiration is sufficient to satisfy them.

    Feminists are actually like the Victorian stereotype of women, getting hysterical and having “the vapors” over perceived gender injustice. They are the opposite of strong women who would not have time to worry about insignificant imagined slights. They were too busy raising families and living their lives.

  31. DeadMessenger
    April 18th, 2015 @ 7:30 pm

    Is that place accredited?

  32. Zohydro
    April 18th, 2015 @ 7:49 pm

    Ya think?

  33. Daniel Freeman
    April 18th, 2015 @ 8:39 pm

    From his link, it has a regional accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

  34. trangbang68
    April 18th, 2015 @ 8:43 pm

    Naropa was a place where Allen Ginsberg used to hold court speaking of queer icons. It was regularly written up in the Whole Earth Catalog, that venerable hippie chronicle.

  35. concern00
    April 18th, 2015 @ 10:07 pm

    There are a whole bunch of so called ‘feminists’ out there that would claim the title without understanding the ideology. In fact, if you attempt to draw their attention to the crazy dogma that underpins their ideology, they would denounce this as radical feminism that isn’t shared by the whole movement. What concerns me is that it isn’t the fluffy “let’s all be equal” sh-t that’s being taught in college…it is exactly the crazy stuff that you have been highlighting in your articles and book.

  36. concern00
    April 18th, 2015 @ 10:09 pm

    It pains me that you would denounce yourself in those terms. You exhibit traits through your posts that are far more attractive to the average man than purely physical looks.

  37. concern00
    April 18th, 2015 @ 10:11 pm

    I think the ugly starts with their mind and attitude and then it starts to affect their looks. An ugly mind tends to manifest as an ugly person.

  38. Jeanette Victoria
    April 18th, 2015 @ 10:17 pm

    I’m not unattractive clearly and as my dear hubby says a happy deamor makes up for a lot….

  39. concern00
    April 18th, 2015 @ 10:21 pm

    How dare you criticize this loving couple’s special day! They have just made a solemn pledge to one another to share deviant sex until they physically attack each other and separate within the year. Maybe they’ll even be privileged enough to procure a child and introduce into this ‘loving’ environment.

  40. Steve Skubinna
    April 19th, 2015 @ 1:12 am

    Oh, I don’t know about writing to advice columns. I’m certain that most of the questions to Penthouse Forum were written by male college students trying to brainstorm the most outrageous question or story. The, if it got published it was high fives and brewskies all round.

  41. Steve Skubinna
    April 19th, 2015 @ 1:13 am

    Feminism is a way for these crippled individuals to reconcile with their self hatred. Then they define themselves by that projection of hatred.

    Could it be any more pathetic?

  42. From Around the Blogroll | The First Street Journal.
    April 19th, 2015 @ 6:36 am

    […] Robert Stacey Stacy McCain on The Other McCain: Feminism as Rationalization or, Hating Men Because Men Don’t Like You Enough […]

  43. JayJay
    April 19th, 2015 @ 10:16 am

    Funny that such a devout Christian has such a Darwinist view of life.

  44. Nan
    April 19th, 2015 @ 11:18 am

    It’s also difficult to look like a princess when you have tattoos.

  45. Quartermaster
    April 19th, 2015 @ 11:43 am

    It’s too pathetic to be a parody, and too sad to be satire. It is, at best, a sick imitation of marriage.

  46. dustbury.com » Can two be as bad as one?
    April 19th, 2015 @ 11:43 am

    […] Remember the old “Advice to the Lovelorn” columns? Useless in the Internet age, says Robert Stacy McCain: […]

  47. theoldsargesays
    April 19th, 2015 @ 3:58 pm

    “My plan to look like a beautiful princess didn’t quite work out.”

    Instead she became an obese lesbian with a tatoo.

    Plan“.
    I don’t think that word means what she thinks it means.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk

  48. theoldsargesays
    April 19th, 2015 @ 4:10 pm

    “…getting hysterical and having “the vapors” over perceived gender injustice. ”

    I love the “vapors” comparison but a proper Victorian woman would have gotten hysterical behind closed doors, perhaps in the company of a female friend, then she would have dusted herself off, straightened up and gone about her businesses in the manner of a proper lady.

  49. Dana
    April 19th, 2015 @ 5:35 pm

    I’m just doomed. The two lezzies who owned the other half of my duplex had a nasty breakup, and the house sat empty for three years until the bank foreclosed. (I tried to talk to the bank about buying it, at a discount, of course, but the bank wouldn’t talk to me at all, citing privacy laws.) Now it’s finally been bought again, by two queer guys.

    Whatever happened to all of the normal people?

  50. theoldsargesays
    April 19th, 2015 @ 8:29 pm

    Ah …an optimist.