Joyful gender equality

Anti-feminist backlash?

Dear Friends,

In August 2020 — at the peak of cancel culture and just six months into the pandemic — a group of white feminists in Washington D.C. wrote an email to the general counsel of my employer asking that I be fired for something I posted on Twitter. Ready for the offending Tweet?

Seriously. I had referenced a protest campaign that went viral when Samuel Garcia, an up-and-coming opposition Mexican politician, scolded his influencer wife for showing too much leg during a live-streaming session.

Even in Mexico, it’s a bad look for a politician to tell his wife that she’s showing too much leg while munching Fred Flintstone-style on a BBQ rib. But then he dug the hole deeper: “I married you for me. Not for you to show your body to everyone else.”

What an idiot.

Across Mexico, feminist activists responded by uploading photos of their thighs to social media in solidarity with Mariana Rodríguez, a conservative influencer known for her workout videos and makeup tutorials. I rolled my eyes and mentioned it on Twitter without giving it much thought.

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Meanwhile, Mexico is ranked as the most dangerous country for women in the Western Hemisphere, and among the most dangerous in the entire world. Every week, I read an article in the local paper about a woman who was killed or severely beaten by a jealous boyfriend/husband. Child marriage is not uncommon. Oaxacan women are trafficked across the border to work as prostitutes in the U.S. And while 89% of homicide victims in Mexico are men, an increasing number of women are killed by their jealous husbands. In other words, Mexican women are in more danger inside than outside their homes.

What do we know about femicide victims in Mexico? They are definitely not social media activists uploading photos of their thighs in solidarity with a conservative social media influencer. We can get some insights about the victims from a mapping project by the Oaxacan nonprofit GESMujer:

Their researchers used official crime data and newspaper archives to map the location, name, and details of every femicide victim in Oaxaca from 2017 to today. The victims are overwhelmingly based in poor, rural, indigenous villages — and the corresponding newspaper articles are heartbreaking.

How can we stop violence against women by men? If only it were as easy as a social media hashtag, a nonprofit report, or a conference at the Hilton in Mexico City.

Donors don’t want to fund men to support women, but it’s only through the multi-generational, grassroots work of organizations like GENDES that future generations of men will learn how to process their jealousy, diffuse their anger, and seek help so that women aren’t the victims of men’s unprocessed emotions.

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I’ll cut to the chase: I wasn’t fired. The general counsel shared the email with my supervisor who asked me to apologize to the women for the insensitivity of my tweet. “Not gonna happen,” I responded. If what I posted on Twitter offended any Mexican woman, I’d happily apologize and explain myself. But I wasn’t about to apologize to a bunch of upper-class, over-educated, white feminists in Washington DC who tried to get me fired for mildly criticizing a ridiculous hashtag campaign. My supervisor was taken aback. Our meeting ended awkwardly, but that was that.

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Over the past few months, I’ve been following the Substack of a writer who goes by

Radical Radha

. Over a series of posts, she describes how she overcame depression by escaping the toxic mix of social media vanity and a feminist victim ideology that hands over all sense of agency to the nebulous bogeymen of systemic oppression, capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy.¹ She explains how she used to blame men and white people for her failure to meet her own unrealistic, perfectionist standards:

Many of us are raised in such a way that perfectionism is a leech on our psyches, so it would follow that in the quest to be perfect enough, it’s tempting to find a reason for your failure, something firmly outside your control.

When I was blaming (white) men for all my problems or even white people in general, I was miserable and let life happen to me, feeling like nothing I did to better it mattered.

Her use of social media to blame white men for everything wrong in her life led to depression and contributed to her divorce. Eventually, she got her groove back by getting off social media, reading books, and working with a cognitive behavioral therapist to take responsibility for her behaviors and emotions.

Radical Radha and I have exchanged a few messages over Substack. She seems truly happy, at ease, and in a healthy relationship with a new partner. She uses her newsletter to reach other women who feel hopeless after falling down the rabbit hole of social media, astrology, and feminist righteousness. And she occasionally addresses men:

You can do something here. I’m speaking to those of you who don’t think women owe you something but who suffer under a domestic regime of emotional warfare. I say this because I used to enforce such a regime on my former partner, and it was a contributor to divorce. It wasn’t until I met a man who challenged my positions and, dare I say it, fought back when I was weaponizing emotion that I realized what I was doing.

Above all, don’t treat your partners like children by acquiescing and accepting blame for things or shutting down. Not pushing back could be one of the contributors to intractable fights later on.

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I’m not one to subscribe to “isms,” so I don’t eagerly label myself a feminist, but I’m pretty passionate about the well-being of women. I think about my wife, my sister, the many wonderful women in my life. I want them to always feel safe and never experience sexual harassment. I preach financial literacy so they don’t become economically dependent on a man. I want them to cultivate and share their passions. I want the women in my life to thrive. I don’t know if that makes me a feminist, but the women who most vocally identify as feminists seem to be thriving the least.

There has been a lot of talk about the Gen Z gender divide. Michelle Goldberg told Ezra Klein:

Look, I think men and women, young people are having a really hard time connecting with each other. There’s a lot of resentment more generally. There’s a lot of depression and anxiety about sex and gender and a kind of mutual disappointment among young heterosexuals. Some theorists have called it heteropessimism.

Dozens of polls across the world show how women are becoming more liberal as men shift more conservative.

And while older American men have always voted more Republican than older women, new polling data from the Wall Street Journal suggests that a majority of young men may vote Republican for the first time in over two decades.

Perhaps Trump’s appeal among young men is part of an anti-feminist backlash because, as Kate Manne suggests, “some men, including young men, are enraged by women's progress and autonomy.”

Maybe. Maybe a significant portion of 18- to 29-year-old men are upset that women are doing so well and would like them to return to cleaning the house, changing diapers, and preparing dinner. But when you look at the details of survey results, as Richard Reeves kindly digs up, it seems that young men are very positive about gender equality even if they’re turned off by the label “feminism.”

What if young men want gender equality, but are tired of the kind of righteous feminist scapegoating described by

Radical Radha

above?

Also, what has the Democratic party offered young men over the past decade? “The left has become more adept at shaming toxic masculinity than at showcasing a positive masculinity that is distinct from femininity,” writes Derek Thompson, adding: “The Democratic Party appears to have made a conscious choice not to make young men a political priority just as the GOP under Trump seems unconcerned about the ways it may be alienating young women.”

Republicans are launching a well organized campaign to reach young men while Democrats have nothing. Why? Why can’t liberals say something nice about young men?

David French points to a commencement speech by Navy SEAL Admiral William H. McRaven as the kind of masculinity liberals should celebrate, an antidote to Trumpist bullying. Here’s an excerpt:

“Start each day with a task completed. Find someone to help you through life. Respect everyone. Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often. But if you take some risks, step up when the times are the toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never ever give up — if you do these things, the next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today.”

That is progress, the root of progressivism. That is how you cultivate young men with empathy and ambition instead of shame and malaise.

I hope that is the man I have become in my 40s. I hope that I can inspire young men to be to the same. I’m still fighting for women’s liberation — not to impress or appease angry feminists, for that is a losing game. I want women’s liberation because I love the women in my life, and because it’s good for men too, as John Stuart Mill argued over 150 years ago.

When I open up the Time Capsule in 20 years, I hope that men have become more empathic — less likely to bully — and that women have become less judgmental — less likely to blame others for their own anxious perfectionism. But for now, we seem to each be heading in our opposite directions, unwilling to learn from each other.

I hope you have a gender bender weekend, your joyful feminist,

David

1. Hers is the rare Substack where the comment threads are just as thought-provoking as the original piece.