I have been called a misogynist and I have been called a male feminist. I am neither. My stance is the rational one: That anything capable of choice can be good or bad regardless of gender. I want the choices made on both sides to be the right ones. I want men to be good to women, and I want women to be good to men.
I judge it wrong to take sides with one half of humanity against another half of humanity. Among both men and women there will be ones who choose to act rightfully and those who do not. It does not make sense to take the side of men against women, and it does not make sense to take side of women against men. It makes sense to take the side of men and women who choose to be good people against men and women who do not choose to be good people. It makes sense to reward rightful choice both by men and by women and to confront wrongful choice by both.
In recent times, we have seen the opposite on both sides. On one side of town, violent and truly misogynistic men brutally abuse women who, for the most part, have good will toward men and are willing to be good to their partners. On the other side of town, nasty women viciously attack men who, for the most part, have good will to women and believe in women's rights. In both cases ugly behavior gets rewarded and goodness gets punished. And this teaches everyone – both men and women – that it pays to be a jerk. The result is a worse world for everyone.
I have known a man in Tucson who went to jail for “beating up [his] wife's fist with [his] face.” I also know a woman in Kansas whose husband broke her skull so badly that she needed over 40 stitches and walked away with the child. Both the man in the first case – and the woman in the second case – were good people. They were the last people in the world who deserved such treatment. I would much rather see Eminem or Ayatollah or Michael Murphy in prison than the first man. As for the woman in the second situation, she was kind, hard-working and beautiful. But even if she had been Andrea Dworkin, she still would not have deserved either to get her skull broken or to lose her child.
When scoundrels win and good people lose, we see a wrongful set of incentives in society. People – both men and women – decide that being a jerk pays, and being good gets you abused. This makes everyone worse, both men and women. Men become violent and corrupt, women become vicious. Everyone becomes the worst thing that they can be.
I believe that we can do better. No; not can; must. We must do better than that. We must be better people than either the followers of Andrea Dworkin or the followers of Eminem. We must be better to our partners, and we must be better to those of the other gender with whom we interact outside the home. We must resolve to be loving and kind to our partners. And when some scumbag of either gender tells us that we owe it to our gender to either (in case of men) control women or (in case of women) be ugly to men, then we must have the strength and the courage to tell them to fuck off.
And if they press on, we can tell them that absolutely nothing is owed to a gender, and that rather things are owed to those who have been contributors to humanity in all aspects, whether they were female or whether they were male.
At the stake is nothing less than what kind of world our children inherit. Do you, as a man, want your daughter to be a punching bag for some idiot? Do you, as a woman, want your son to be maliciously abused by Dworkin - McKinnon feminists or falsely portrayed as a misogynist or a sociopath when he is not? Do you want your children to live in a world where these are the two possible options? Or are you – and your children – better than that?
In their single-minded push for equality, the leaders of feminism have denied women things that may in many cases be more important than mere equality, attacking such things as family, love and religion. In their psychological deconstruction of men, they have taught women who listened to them to suppress their best qualities and turn from kind and compassionate human beings into vicious monsters. For a long time they have denied women the right to family life even if the woman was choosing such willingly. And this was in many cases more oppressive to women than much of what we see done by men. If a woman wants to be an Amazon, fine, let her join the military or the police. But do not deny women the right to family life or beauty or romantic love or children or Christian religion if such be her deliberate inclinations.
As for the reaction against feminism – led by people such as Eminem, Osama Bin Laden and Michael Murphy – it has taught men to be brutal and corrupt. It has told men that real men beat women and then sneakily cover it up in court while subverting the police and the social services to maintain the deception. I can think of no more contemptible standpoint. It takes absolutely nothing for a man to beat up on a woman. It takes a lot more for a man to love her.
And I, as somebody who can do 200 fingertip pushups at age 46, am hardly weak for my age.
In both cases the bad guys won and the good guys lost. This is the case for both men and women.
The solution is not the gender war. The gender war is the problem. The gender war teaches everyone – both women and men – to be the worst thing that they can be. The worst choices are being taught and encouraged, and the better choices put people into ugly situations. And this sets up a dynamics by which everyone becomes the worst thing that they can be.
The solution to the gender war is the opposite. It is to inspire men and women to be good to one another, and to give them the courage to stand up to the scoundrels on both sides of the gender war who exploit people's failure and misery to advance a destructive agenda while making the world worse for everyone. It is to give men and women the courage to love one another and treat one another rightfully. And it is to respect and reward the men and the women who choose to do so while confronting the men and the women who choose to treat their partners – or people of the other gender in general – like dirt.
It makes sense to side neither with men nor with women. It makes sense to support the men and the women who are willing to treat the people of the other gender right. It makes sense to encourage, reward and support kindness toward one's partner and confront abusive behavior. It makes sense to support the better choices in both men and women. And it also makes sense for men from the first side of town to get together with women from the second side of town, resulting in matches in which each party will be treated better than it expects to be treated at home.
The last of this, I call the economic solution. A major theme in economics is that, when left to their own devices, people will seek what benefits them, and that competition among the producers rewards those who can deliver the best product at the best price. Here, people will naturally gravitate toward those who are willing to treat them right. The men will go to women who are willing to be good to men, and the women will go to men who are willing to be good to women. This will reward rightful behavior by both men and women, resulting in more people choosing that right behavior.
And this will do more to correct both injustices of which I have spoken than either government-enforced feminist action or man-on-woman violence and court abuse.
So this is the solution. Reverse the incentives. Make it pay for men to be good to women and for women to be good to men. Create a large-scale flux between the side of town where nasty women abuse men who have goodwill toward women and the side of town where nasty men brutalize women who have goodwill toward men. Let men who are willing to be good to women get together with women who are willing to be good to men. Create better relationships for the participants. But more importantly, improve the incentives within society, rewarding good behavior and punishing ugly behavior both by women and by men.
The result of this will not only be better relationships. It will be a better world.