I have always believed in women’s rights; but there were many in feminism who treated me abominably. As an intellectual exercise I would suggest this. Suppose you have goodwill toward someone and want the best for them; but they insist on being horrible to you. What kind of a hell would that be?
Even in spite of this mistreatment, I never became misogynistic. I am willing to see each woman for who she herself is. I am reminded of when I had a dental appointment with an Iranian hygienist, and I asked her if she as a woman from Iran found it therapeutic to inflict pain on men. She told me, “Not at all, you are not Hashemi Rafsanjani.”
People here – both women and men – stand a lot to learn from that woman’s attitude. Here was someone who most likely has received horrendous mistreatment, but she did not allow it to make her hate men. Rather she saw every man for who he is himself. She has a lot to teach both men and women in America.
Both misogyny and misandry are wrong. Anything capable of choice can be good or bad; and that includes both men and women. One of the worst behaviors I’ve seen from the other side is deciding, when one woman does something wrong, that women are bad. So we have Eminem taking out his legitimate hatred of his horrible mother on all sorts of women who are completely innocent. This is completely wrong. Women are not a unified entity. There are many different kinds of women doing all kinds of different things. It is completely wrong to punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty when they had nothing to do with the matter and had no influence on the guilty.
Now the fathers’ rights people want to claim to speak for their gender. They claim as their authority their gender and say that things are owed to their gender. Nothing is owed to a gender. Nothing was ever owed to a gender. Things have been owed to people who have contributed to humanity in all its aspects. This includes both women and men. What we have here – and also in Marxist feminism – is a completely illegitimate power grab. These people claim to speak for 50% of humanity without 50% of humanity having voted for them to do so. More people – both men and women - should stand up to these usurpers and say that they do not speak for them, either as men or as women.
I am tired of ugliness on both sides of this conflict. Precisely the wrong people get hurt. The feminists take it out on liberal men who believe in women’s rights, and the father’s rights types take it out on women who are willing to be good to their men. The feminists have no guts to confront the misogynists, and the misogynists do not have the guts to confront the feminists. Instead they take it out on, respectively, men and women who have done the least to cause either problem. And that makes both sides in the gender conflict cowards and hypocrites.
I want to see men and women have better relationships. I do that by confronting the forces that stand in the way of that outcome. Both Marxist feminists and father’s right types are wrong. They encourage horrendous behavior, they commit an illegitimate power grab, and they hurt precisely the wrong people. And that makes the world worse for everyone.
If feminists think that I’m bad, they have no idea. Similarly if father’s lobby types think that my former wife is bad, they have no idea either. I was never violent or abusive to her; and when we split she never stood in the way of me having a meaningful relationship with my daughter. Whereas there are many men in father’s rights who are severely violent to their wives, and there are many women in feminism who want to screw their ex-partners for everything they can get from them.
People’s perceptions can not only be wrong; they can be precisely wrong. They can be the exact opposite of what actually is the case. The feminists who attacked me have no idea what they are talking about. They haven’t had to deal with real abuse and misogyny. And until they do, they are cowards and hypocrites who attack people who are easy to attack while doing nothing to confront real wrongs.
As for the father’s rights types, they are a bunch of brats. They haven’t had to deal with women who were actually bad, such as the feminists who kept attacking me. In stead they have at their disposal women who are beautiful, kind and willing to be good to their men; and all they can think to do is use them as punching bags. These people need to know more American feminists. That should give them appreciation for what they have with their women. And if that motivates them to be better to their women, then that is the best outcome that this situation can have.