mythago

Dizzy writes an excellent post about dealing with “friends” (sadly, she left out the quotes) who think it’s their job to lecture us girls on how we shouldn’t be all angry and feminist-y, and how mean we are to men, and how if we were really, truly strong women we wouldn’t need all that strident feminist nonsense. tenacious snail follows up with her own thoughts. Both get comments in the idiotic-to-clueless range.

From my point of view, it’s really very simple: I’m not interested in “defending feminism,” soothing the hurt feelings of guys who are offended, deeply offended, that anyone would suggest they have male privilege, who confuse plain old traditionalist Cosmo Girl man-hating with feminism, or who want to dissect what “feminism” means and why it should really be “humanism”.

In other words, I’m a feminist. If you can’t deal with that, fuck off. Dying in the process is preferred, but optional.

I don’t mind if you hesitate to use the “f-word” for your own self. I don’t care if you like or dislike particular feminist organizations or writers; your opinions on NOW or Andrea Dworkin are not deal-breakers. But if you get pouty because It’s Not My Fault I Have A Penis; if you really believe women are pampered and spoiled and men always get the short end of the stick; if you think there is no such thing as male privilege; if you truly think that only weak women are victims of sexism, and then only at the hands of a tiny minority of men; if you think discussions of sexism are a personal insult to you…then I refer to, and incorporate by reference herein, the previous direction to fuck off.

Oh, and the above applies to women as well. If you preen at how much more special you are than all those silly girly-girls, if you are convinced that sexism is a myth invented by less-capable women because you’ve certainly never seen any of it, if you have ever used the phrase “vive le difference” in earnest, if you like the idea that your role in life is to have doors opened for you and your bills paid as your proper due for allowing someone to have sex with you…you, too, are offered VIP seating on a fast vessel that will take you back under your rock where you belong.

If you see yourself in the above, or if it merely hurts your little feelings, don’t bother commenting here. Don’t bother responding in real life, either. We’ll be much happier without each other.

While the New York Times patiently (and probably futilely) points out that men’s and women’s reports of their number of sex partners doesn’t match, John Scalzi has a much more elegant explanation.

Less amusing is the possibility that women aren’t counting nonconsensual sexual encounters, and men are. But this probably isn’t skewing the numbers to the point that, as in the article, one survey finds men reporting twice as many sex partners as women.