Feminism is a dead end for women.

Posted by Pointman on September 5, 2019 · 10 Comments 

I’m a bloke who writes a blog, so all you’re ever going to get here is a bloke’s viewpoint, and it’ll be honest and unvarnished – that’s my contract with you, the reader. I get paid nothing for doing it and you’re under no obligation to read beyond the first paragraph of anything I write, should you find it in some way offensive. I’ve no interest in, nor ever will allow, somebody else to control my narrative.

My thoughts and opinions are my own, and I’ll express them in my own words and manner, and with complete disregard to what is currently politically correct. I’m not interested in doing fashionable things like exploring my feminine side because I know I simply don’t have one. No man does, except if he’s homosexual, or just likes running around in women’s dresses. When it comes to women it’s always been simple for me. Respect them, love them, cherish them and look out for them, and a natural male protectiveness that was welded into the hinterland of my brain from the word go. You may consider that a patronising attitude, but I think without that, as a man, you’re pretty much second rate.

In an unconscious way, some men see women as barely sentient bovine objects and even more sadly, that appears to be the basis of some long-term relationships that people have settled down to. There’s no contact between a man and a woman there. Different folks, different strokes, as they say. On the other side of the coin, it’s become fashionable for a certain type of woman to just hate men. Ask most men and women in public if they support feminism, and you’ll get a tepid yes, of course, but in private, Gawd no.

The more outspoken of them are not afraid to say in public that they’re horrified at a reasonable movement that started in the 70s with Women’s Lib and has now mutated into just hating men and being incapable of seeing a problem with like things a freedom activist, aged 20, who gets sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in Iran for “spreading prostitution by taking off her hijab” – why wasn’t there a single feminist march to protest such medieval brutality towards a young woman?

Or to find nothing offensive with the sight of a woman walking around covered from head to toe in black with just a slit left for her eyes and who’s had her sexual organs hacked off as a child. It’s as if putting a collar around a woman’s neck and attaching a leash to it simply wouldn’t be humiliating enough. The tough women’s libbers of the ’70s would have looked at feminism and recognised it for what it is – a club for self-indulgent brats who’re only campaigning on trivial or non-existent issues, while studiously avoiding real issues for women like child marriage, genital mutilation, draconian dress codes enforced by imprisonment and a Muslim husband’s right to beat his wife sanctioned by creeping Sharia law in the civilised world.

Friends I know who were part of the original Women’s Lib movement despise them as white, middle-class decadents who think women’s rights are nothing more than a fashion statement, and who avoid like the plague any thorny issues.

At a recent dinner party, I had a conversation, perhaps better described as a verbal fire fight, with a woman who had not a good word to say about any man. We were sat opposite each other by the hostess, I think in part to provide a few mild fireworks and a break from the usual topics of work, the kids and how your pension plan was doing. Sitting down and seeing the instant glare she gave me that I recognised so well, I decided from the very start not to play.

I threw a venomous look the length of the table which the hostess caught, and just grinned back at me. The message was clear – you’ve got her for the night. I love the hostess, but she can be such a cruel and catty bitch at times. She knew there was no way we wouldn’t rub each other up the wrong way. I munched through the starter after the introductions, and did the noddies to whatever bollocks she was talking.

I think it took less than 30 seconds for her to bend our conversation in a direction more to her liking; feminism, the patriarchy and female victimhood. I survived to the end of the starter by basically going the noddy route and excused myself from the table. I was heading out momentarily to the back garden to have a smoke. I gave up years ago, but when I go to any sort of party, I sometimes buy a pack. I was standing there having a blessed smoke, looking at a perfect winter moon and thinking of the Yeat’s poem where he talks about the “The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun” and who should appear at my elbow but the crazy woman, determined to continue what wasn’t a conversation but a harangue of me.

She didn’t smoke and from the sneer on her face, me having a cigarette confirmed all her worst stereotypes of me. She resumed her unasked for rant on my cigarette break and I thought fuckit, we’re in a private space here. The essential devil in me came out to play, because I was irritated at the lack of perceptiveness of somebody who didn’t see I was only outside in the freezing cold smoking a fag to escape her scintillating company. I turned to her and interrupting her tirade, offered the open cigarette pack to her.

Do you want a cigarette?

Of course not!

Then would you mind fuckety fucking off while I enjoy my one?

I think it might have been some time since somebody was that direct in telling her where to get off. I went back to gazing at the moon and thinking about Wandering Aengus and his life-long search for that glimmering girl with apple blossom in her hair, and the mad cow was blessedly no longer there. I finished the smoke and put the butt into a small ceramic jar I know the hostess puts out purely for me, knowing my foibles. She’s observant and thoughtful, even if at times she can’t resist prodding the beast in the cage with a stick. I reentered the house and made sure to swing by the head of the table where the hostess was sitting.

I leant down and whispered in her ear – I will find a way that’s suitably cruel and unusual to get back at you for seating me opposite that mad cow. I’m still working on that revenge plot.

My bum had barely hit the seat before round two began. While I’d been having my sanity break and taking a Nicotine hit, a cunning plan B had been hatched by mad cow – she was going to psychoanalyse me in public. Her unasked for thumbnail sketch of me wasn’t complimentary, loaded with stereotypical assumptions, inaccurate and socially just too vicious a step over the dinner party etiquette line. The whole dining table stopped talking to listen.

She was looking for some sort of screaming match confrontation and I simply wasn’t going to oblige. The hostess looked a bit stunned. She hadn’t realised mad cow didn’t have much in the way of manners, never mind social boundaries. When you’re a guest at someone else’s doo and confronted by another guest who’s become totally fixated on you because they’re either blind drunk or totally out of order, and the host doesn’t appear to be able to control it, you’re best to call it an early night, otherwise the whole thing just escalates. I stood up and started to make my excuse about buggering off and the hostess, who was not best pleased at mad cow’s excessive behaviour, finally started trying to calm the whole thing down.

Mad cow wasn’t used to being reined in – So, you’re going to run away from me then? Typical man.

Some people just don’t know when to stop, even when they’re nominally ahead. I glanced at the hostess, and she gave me an almost imperceptible nod, which I interpreted to mean, feel free to give the silly cow hell, so I sat back down and looked at her. I’m an articulate person who can think on his feet, and when circumstances demand has a sharp tongue, which I rarely use in polite company, because that combined with on occasion being able to read quite deep into another person’s fragile psyche becomes verbal violence, which always leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth. Crushing a weak personality is a no win for me.

I looked at her, acutely conscious of the silence around the table of people waiting to hear what I’d say in return, but I did that mental count to ten thingy and exercised some restraint before speaking. The pause built the tension up nicely. I too can be a drama queen at times.

I can’t think of one thing you got right in your Saturday night special stab at analysing me. I’m not getting over my third divorce, I’ve been married only once and for several decades to that same woman you see down the end of the table who’s having a lively conversation with the woman across from her, who also knows how to enjoy and have a laugh at these occasions without acting out like a petulant child.

Yes, I do have children but I’m not estranged from them, in point of fact one or the other of them turns up back home nearly every weekend to see if there are any jobs Dad might need done around the house or garden. They love and respect me, and both of those sentiments I return. I’ve grandchildren who visit and stay over at least one weekend a month and totally enjoy their time in our house because it’s safe, fun, slightly chaotic and unpredictable because I take care to make it slightly chaotic and unpredictable for them, and I always take the weekend off to make lots of time to play with them.

Yes, I like a drink, but like is as far as it goes, and yes, I like an occasional smoke, but again it’s a once in a while thing. I don’t do drugs. Professionally, I had a very good business career, primarily I think because if you make fair deals with people, and stick to them, word gets around that you’re a person whose word can be trusted, you’re someone they can do business with.

Now, most people around this table have known me for years and know that’s a fairly accurate thumbnail sketch of me. Do you want my analysis in return of you, or are you scared of that?

After a pause – I can take it.

I sat through your offensive and inaccurate profile of me as a person without once interrupting or talking over what you were saying to drown it out. You won’t get my analysis of you unless you extend the reciprocal courtesy. You interrupt me once and it’s end of conversation, do you agree to that condition?

Since by now we’d the whole table’s attention, she looked around before giving a nod. Social pressure cuts both ways. Hopefully, I’d nailed her mouth shut, and she’d be listening rather than talking, which is the start of civilised discourse. It wasn’t a trap I was setting, rather more just establishing some ground rules for a measured conversation.

Fine, let’s go. Either there’s something fundamentally wrong with all the men in the world, or you’re the one with a problem. Given that proposition, I’d be inclined to think the latter. You’ve never had a relationship with a man that’s lasted longer than six months or in your case I’d say even three.

She glanced down the table at the wretch she’d brought along to the dinner, but resisted gainsaying me.

Yes, I know you’ve dragged your boyfriend du jour along, but five minutes watching you two interact, it’s obvious you’ve totally emasculated him, and to be blunt, the average woman wouldn’t take a second glance at him because he’s tatty, weak, superficial, boring and whiney. He’s basically a whipped cur on your leash, probably the nearest thing to a relationship you can maintain with a man, so he doesn’t count. Let’s face it, in your heart of hearts, you even despise him yourself.

The whipped cur instead of telling me to fuck off, looked at her to defend him. She stayed silent, because I’d maneuvered her into the no interrupt rule.

The way you’re going, you’ll never have a simple family life with husband and kids you find such joy in, sunburned days playing at the beach with them, involving them in decorating the Christmas tree, watching them finally learning to use a swing for themselves rather than you or your wife always having to push them back and forth and seeing that flash of independence in their faces, of holding on to the saddle of a bicycle you’ve just taken the stabilisers off at their insistence and then after evening after evening, them finally getting the hang of it, negotiating them down from a Maserati or pony for their birthday, of celebrating with a massively relieved kid that they’d got through some bloody exam that was the whole world to them and had totally stressed them out for months.

What you also won’t have is trying to jolly your wife along when she’s in labour and not showing your secret worry about whether your baby will have the right number of fingers and toes because of the effect it might have on her whom you know wants her own perfect baby, of feeling that totally out of control in that situation, of sharing the heartbreak of comforting your teenagers in the aftermath of a teenage romance break up they’re simply too young emotionally to handle, of worrying about them when they go out Saturday night on the piss with all their mates and they’re not home at a reasonable hour, of being a parent and looking at a surgical permission slip and absolutely refusing to sign it until you’ve met the surgical fucker who’s going to cut into your boy because you’re shit scared and want to look into his eyes because that’s somehow a way to judge his competency, of a shadow on your wife’s lung x-ray, of a myriad of worries you’d have never had if you hadn’t made a commitment and stuck to it.

You’ll never have any of these things because you’re a coward.

Look around the table, the only thing all us couples here have in common is that our marriages have all been of thirty years plus duration and apart from the inevitable ups and downs, have lasted. The only thing we seriously have in common was we all looked at our spouse in our younger years and liked them, and the risk we took was that it’d work out. There is no way on God’s good green Earth anyone knows for sure whether such a long term relationship will survive misfortune, unemployment, infidelity, losing a child or simply just falling out of love. So many don’t, and that’s another heartbreak you’ll never have.

You’re now entering your middle thirties, and unless you have a fundamental and honest rethink about your attitude and relationship to men, nothing will ever change for you. Take a chance, or otherwise you’ll end up in thirty years time as a pensioner somewhere on the south coast as a spinster biddy of the parish in some fucking animal shelter pretending to be a retirement home. No visitors, no friends, except perhaps the occasional email from one of that shrinking coterie of sisters in the sisterhood who absolutely know they were right all along, but who’ve ended up like you in the same desolate end of a life situation and are now just sitting in God’s waiting room keeping each other company.

I won’t speculate about how you arrived at your nihilistic view of men, because I despise excuses for being a life-long coward and cowards always have a fine array of excuses for not trying, but what I do know is that it’s up to you to make a serious life decision, and soon, or nothing will ever change for you. You’re a grown up woman now. You can’t let childhood or adolescent experiences or most especially fashionable viewpoints which do nothing more than legitimise your coward’s claim to victimhood because you’re a woman dictate the prospects for the rest of your life.

I let it trail off there.

She looked at me and didn’t reply, so normal conversation slowly resumed around the table. For the rest of the dinner, our conversation was polite but subdued. From the occasional glances I got from her, I could tell she was thinking about what I’d said, and I think she realised I hadn’t stamped on her feelings quite as hard as I could have. Even with the subtle permission of the hostess, I wasn’t going to do that, and anyway, most feminists like to have it both ways. As a man, you either stand and take the abuse saying nothing in return, or if you fight back, it’s a flood of girlie tears and poor little me being bullied by a big bad brute of a man. To be fair to her, she hadn’t done that.

At the end of the dessert course, I made my way out the back door with a brandy in one hand to have my second cigarette of the evening. She appeared at my elbow but said nothing. I finished the smoke and the butt went into the small ceramic pot. I had criticised her but not too harshly and had been careful to point out that her future was hers to shape. Sensing she wanted to say something, I broke a personal rule and lit another cigarette and waited for whatever it was that she was going to say to come out.

Am I really that bad?

If you didn’t think there was a lot of truth in what I said, you wouldn’t be out here. You’re bored and frustrated with being you because you know every day, and more and more, it’s just going nowhere.

Can I have that cigarette you offered me earlier?

We smoked together under a full moon, she in that awkward clumsy fashion of the amateur smoker, without saying anything more to each other, and I thought there’s hope for you yet, because she’d listened to what I’d said and was thinking it over.

©Pointman

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