How to Become a Cat Lady

Posted on Comments

Lisa Bonos (@lisabonos) has published a column headlined “How to find a feminist boyfriend” that reads like an Onion parody:

“I find it really attractive how successful you are,” my date said, leaning in for a kiss.
Sure, it sounds like a line. But it also sounds like feminism. . . .

(No, it’s a line. Trust me.)

[W]hat I want a partner to be: cute, smart, funny and … yes, feminist. So go ahead, alert Susan Patton, Lori Gottlieb and the rest of the get-married-already crowd: A 30-something single woman, eggs unfrozen, is telling other single women that they should dare to want it all if they ever hope to have it all. . . .

(Hint: If you’re a “30-something single woman,” you’ll be lucky if you get to have any of it, much less “have it all.”)

But how do you spot a male feminist if he’s not at an abortion rights rally wearing a “This Is What a Feminist Looks Like” T-shirt?
It shouldn’t be hard. After all, as Aziz Ansari said on David Letterman’s show recently, everyone’s a feminist now. Unless you think Beyonce shouldn’t have the right to vote, should earn 23 percent less than Jay-Z and should be at home cooking rather than performing. And who would think that?
Few guys will proudly say no when asked if they’re feminists. . . .

(Few guys who want to sleep with Lisa Bonos would say that, perhaps, but exactly how many guys want to sleep with Lisa Bonos?)

Instead it’s a wholehearted yes, a lukewarm maybe or Can you define what you mean by “feminist,” please? . . .

(In some cases, it means “lonely bisexual English major.”)

Here’s how I’m defining it: Feminist daters — male or female, gay or straight — aren’t constrained by gender roles. Anyone can do the asking-out, the feelings-confessing or the initiating of any kind. . . .

(Perhaps you see why bisexual English majors are so often lonely.)

A feminist dater or boyfriend (and yes, feminists have boyfriends) is aware of the ways women have traditionally been held back, by others and by our own accord, and actively pushes against that. He’s sensitive to the fact that women’s bodies are frequently judged, abused and legislated, and takes no part in that. He gets it. . . .

You can read the rest and “get it.” It’s really a Craigslist ad disguised as an op-ed column, a pseudo-defiant gesture typical of certain women who have wasted their 20s in a series of going-nowhere “relationships.” On Twitter, Kyle Smith offers an alternate headline:

How to remain single until you are Maureen Dowd’s age

Maybe I’ll come back with more snark later, but this column is just such a motherlode of nonsense, it needs a special touch.

Update (Smitty):Ace-o-lanche

133 comments

  1. Again, it depends upon your definition of feminist. I believe that everyone ought to have an equal opportunity to succeed, or to fail, and that everybody should be judged by the same standards. It wasn’t all that long ago that that would have been a perfect definition of feminism.

  2. What has it accomplished? Feminism was supposed to enable women to have great careers, but it wound up simply requiring most of them to get not-exactly-glamorous jobs.

  3. I replaced the motor coupling on my girlfriend’s washing machine this weekend. I think this disqualifies me. I should have supported her while she did it. Or I could have cooked a crappy meal.

  5. This video, which I first saw at American Digest, Everything Wrong with Feminism in 8 Minutes or Less is hilariously perfect. These women sound like dolts (that’s the mildest thing I could call them).

  6. All of this nonsense she carries is self inflicted and knowingly so. No sympathy for her or those like her.

  8. I’ve always wondered if she came by that amazing silhouette naturally or used a corset.

    Ok, I admit it: I’ve had a crush on Julie Newmar since first I saw her.
    ?;~)}

  9. Collateral damage.

    It’s really hard to bomb an enemy position without that. Even when crafting lefgislation, let alone a hard-hitting article.

  10. You’re out of shape if you find this tiring.

    Try reading some post-modernist stuff. Then attempt to understand it. The mental gymnastics involved should get your reading muscles in shape for something as straightforward and fact-filled as a McCain article.

  12. Nailed it. Once the marxist homosexuals took over the movement, the family unit in inner cities was doomed, and the already weakened institution of marriage has been erased, as far as government is concerned.

  13. This one is a little older, but it might’ve slipped under your radar at the time: All the Single Ladies

    In their 1983 book, Too Many Women? The Sex Ratio Question [link], two psychologists developed what has become known as the Guttentag-Secord theory, which holds that members of the gender in shorter supply are less dependent on their partners, because they have a greater number of alternative relationships available to them; that is, they have greater “dyadic power” than members of the sex in oversupply. How this plays out, however, varies drastically between genders.

    In societies where men heavily outnumber women—in what’s known as a “high-sex-ratio society”—women are valued and treated with deference and respect and use their high dyadic power to create loving, committed bonds with their partners and raise families. Rates of illegitimacy and divorce are low. Women’s traditional roles as mothers and homemakers are held in high esteem. In such situations, however, men also use the power of their greater numbers to limit women’s economic and political strength, and female literacy and labor-force participation drop.

    One might hope that in low-sex-ratio societies—where women outnumber men—women would have the social and sexual advantage. . . . But that’s not what happens: instead, when confronted with a surplus of women, men become promiscuous and unwilling to commit to a monogamous relationship. . . . In societies with too many women, the theory holds, fewer people marry, and those who do marry do so later in life. Because men take advantage of the variety of potential partners available to them, women’s traditional roles are not valued, and because these women can’t rely on their partners to stick around, more turn to extrafamilial ambitions like education and career.

    The fascinating part to me is that the author of the article wanted for women to also have more power in the case where they outnumber men, even though that would’ve gone against the central thesis of the book. She just can’t seem to wrap her around the fact that when women have the power, traditional marriage is what they want.

  14. The MOFE way. Destroy the gender roles, except where one can be made out as “better”, then you need two of them again.

    The funny thing is that the left used to understand that feminism was about equality before the law. I remember a moment on the Prairie Home Companion show, years before Garrison Keillor lost his mind entirely. He had Willie Nelson on the show, and the biggest laugh of the night was when they were doing a bit where Willie says,

    “There’s always lots of work on the farm. We don’t have time to think of it as women’s work or men’s work. It’s just work.”

    The feminist hippie chicks of the sixties and early seventies who got into that whole, “back to the country” movement (many of the hippie males were fine with supporting feminism) were all about doing hard work. I knew a few of those folks, living on a big community farm, and all of the work was shared as much as feasible.

    And what did the women discover? That some work was clearly better handled by the men. Killing and skinning bears, felling big trees, and dealing with bulls and boars on the farm are things which some women can handle. Most simply cannot.

    But they have to leave the heavy lifting to the men. It’s obvious.
    And while the mean are doing it, someone has to watch the kids. Also obvious.

    MOFE males would run screaming like little girls from a charging boar or bull. You really have to know how to deal with those animals, and showing fear is step one in becoming a gored pancake.

  16. Maybe she’ll find her perfect boyfriend, but when he can’t take care of business, she’ll be sneaking around with the occasional alpha male.

  20. People who carry that nonsense aren’t all people. They’ll reap what they sow and if they can inflict their nonsense on everybody else. I’ve no sympathy for SJWs in particular or leftists in general. I’ll save my sympathy for those who deserve it.

  22. Communist version of feminism enforced woman to do not-so-glamorous jobs with slogans like “Woman on tractors”. In the case of the West the emphasis of feminism is on highly prestigious jobs like police, firefighters, high paying desk job where feminist can show they can do “it” same as man or even better. It pretty much excludes whole sector of agriculture,mining and other not-so empowering/glamorous tasks for the feminist of the West.

  24. I was a young fellow when “My Living Doll” premiered. The possibilities were mind-boggling – but they put it up against popular shows like Bonanza so it didn’t last. It never was a funny as the old Bob Cummings Show with Ann B. Davis, but Julie brought something to it that Ann never had IYKWIMAITYD.

  25. What’s interesting is that in polygamous societies like those Mormon fundamentalists in the Arizona Strip, there is a surfeit of females, because young males are driven out of society. The females have great value, but the market is created by a religious belief that one’s status in the afterlife is determined by the number of wives you have. The regular rules of economics regarding relationships do not apply because it is a completely unique and artificially created “market” with its own economic system.

  27. The chick is clearly twisted. Oh, it might be nice for a night but in a week she’ll be waiting outside your work and kidnapping your pet rabbit.

  29. It’s when you actually read the linked article that you really get amused:

    Here’s how I’m defining it: Feminist daters — male or female, gay or straight — aren’t constrained by gender roles. Anyone can do the asking-out, the feelings-confessing or the initiating of any kind. (As for who picks up the check on a first date, let’s obliterate the gender pay gap first, then put that one back up for debate.)

    ROTFLMAO! If it’s a first date, are the daters going to be pulling out their pay stubs to see who gets the check . . . or is that, as is required by proper etiquette, and as it should be, the responsibility of the party who asked for the date? (If the respondent makes it clear that, being a first date, he wishes to pay for his half, in advance of the date, that should be respected, but the respondent should never insist that he pay for the entire date, unless the respondent suggests an entirely different dating venue.)

    But he lovely Miss Bonos is saying that while it is perfectly legitimate for the lady to ask the gentleman out, because of the overall pay gap between men and women, and not any pay gap between the two daters, it should be the man’s responsibility to pay for the date. Feminism, indeed!

  30. Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to me! You are very sweet. 🙂

    We are all on the same side, and I hope one day sanity will prevail and modern Western feminism, and indeed, all forms of leftist victimology, will be shown to be the mentally and emotionally disturbed and destructive farce that it is.

  32. That reminds me of Siberia, in which the government is being petitioned to allow polygamy for women’s sake. (Men are down to a third, largely because of alcohol.) Perhaps there’s a threshold near the two-thirds level where women are able to substitute population power for scarcity power and once again enforce marriage (of a much older tradition in that case).

  33. They used to write about dating at 39. It tells me that maybe some of them learned something. 😉

  34. My parents were talking about dating in their 40s, but they had a hi skool boy looking into such things.

  35. Sounds like she wants a harem; except one at a time. Good luck with that Sultana. I’d practice making tuna salad sandwiches as a back up plan.

  36. It’s why I’m using MOFE as an acronym for the MOdern FEminists. Back in the Sixties and Seventies, the deranged part of feminism was more or less confined to academia, and ignored by the party-on! types and the more serious, glass-ceiling busters.

    By the mid-Eighties, the homosexual marxists had arrived in numbers, and the entire enterprise was washed away in a few years, to be replaced by the folks Stacy writes about today.

  45. I’m a re-virgin. I read it about a quarter of a century ago, and can barely remember it. I think there was skinny-dipping in a cave?

  46. Best thing for the male femynist to do is self-castrate (Literally, I mean, not figuratively. Thereby ensuring no procreation.

  47. IIRC, Woody Allen once said that being bisexual doubles your chances of getting a date on Saturday night. Maybe Woody was wrong after all.

  48. What women want is a man to sexually take them vigorously and to completion and then talk to them afterward. Feminists are all old pesky yentas from NYC.

  49. Um, wouldn’t a single guy prefer a female driver to a male one?

    I mean, there’s a chance the female driver is young, hot, and single. Maybe she’s not, but still a chance.

  50. There’s also chance for her to be shrieking harpy who doesn’t stop talking about “male privilege”, “heteronormativity”. 😉

Comments are closed.