The patriarchy is a giant parasitic space porcupine.

[psiradish]

Some time ago I was doing a google image search for something-or-other, when I got a result from yonder livejournal entry: http://hyel.livejournal.com/895483.html In this entry was a link labeled The Internet Superhero Feminists. And one can hardly see a link labeled The Internet Superhero

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[psiradish]

Aaand responses. Which took a very long time to write.
And must also be split into multiple posts.

1) Admittedly, the letter isn't the best introduction to feminism for most men (and, in hindsight, probably shouldn't have been placed before the links that were meant to be introductory). It's meant for liberal men who, after accepting one of feminism's fairly frequent invitations for male involvement, are then surprised when feminists actually find faults in them (and not just, y'know, those other guys), and moreover insist they take responsibility for them, extending no credit for just having shown up. It's for liberal men who need to realize that they're not nearly as enlightened as they think they are, that perhaps for the first time in their liberal lives a progressive cause genuinely finds them lacking, and that they must actually better themselves before they can hope to better the rest of the world. That's a bitter thing to swallow no matter how much honey is put on it, but there's no avoiding it. A man can't fight for social revolution while he still thinks like everybody else, but as long as he gets nothing but honey he'll keep showing up matter how useless he is. Vinegar forces the real sympathizers to wake up, while scaring off the dead weight.

That being said, starting the letter off by accusing all of these men of deliberate sexism and duplicitousness is rather unfair. I would think in most cases they're just ignorant. Oh, and "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" is in fact commonly said in approximately 207 distinct regions worldwide.

2) We're being conditioned by society, both for good and ill, from the day we're born, and no amount of intelligence makes one completely immune to the dumb stuff. My hero complex still has a noticeable fondness for damsel-in-distress scenarios, though only if I'm the hero - if any other male rescues a damsel, whether in fiction or reality, I'll sourly grumble about how cliche and unoriginal it all is (because reality can be cliche and unoriginal). I'm also scared of black people. Not fear-for-my-life scared, but just a feeling of self-consciousness and uncertainty, as if black people might pose some sort of challenge to my powers of acceptance and tolerance, and I will of course feel like a massive ass if those powers fail. I do not have this fear towards Arabs, Asians, Hispanics, Indians, Native Americans, Whites, or people of any other ethnicity; just the (apparently) African-descended. I'm pretty sure I've picked up this "special regard" for black people from pop culture at some point, since it was through noticing it there that I came to see it in myself.

There is an argument to be made that our society conditions us to be overly concerned with appearance. However, that it conditions us to be disproportionately concerned with the appearance of women is irrefutable. But it is not the prerogative of feminism to shame women with extensive grooming habits; these are the actions of individuals with an above average amount of bitterness (even on the feminist scale). The same goes for other purported dictating of choices for women as a whole. It does indeed seem that feminists are always doing this sort of thing, and if it irritates you imagine how much it irritates feminists. Feminism gets skewed representation in the media, and the reality is that, like most any sensationalized group of people (Christians, homosexuals, politicians, etc.), feminists run the entire gamut, and most fall in the range of "fairly normal" and are perfectly easy to get along (and reason) with.