The only type of woman more sad to me than a woman who bashes her entire gender for purposes of patriarchal head pats is a woman who bashes her entire gender in such an inadequate, illogical, and offensive way that even anti-feminist men are like, "Whoa! Even we think that's bad."
I'm not going to link to it because, wow, is the National Review Online publishing hack "theories" on the Newton killings just to get page views? (And if so, can I officially check out of the human race immediately?), but have you all read Charlotte Allen's "thinking" on the tragedy?
To summarize (and I wish I were creating a strawman here, but I'm really not), she points out that Sandy Hook was populated at the time by mostly women and children and asks us to just think about how things might have turned out differently if, say, there were a male janitor around to a "heave his bucket" at the killer or, you know, some "male teachers who had played high school football, or even some of the huskier 12-year-old boys" to "converge" on the killer and his semi-automatic weapons.
Her thesis, if it can be called that, was to bemoan a culture that has purportedly feminized schools and society.
Aside from the fact that, I don't know, maybe she's not familiar with the Ft. Hood murder, notice how her piece is, of course, offensive to both men and women, boys and girls. A Real Man (or even a "husky" pre-teen boy) stands ever-vigilant. Disposable as he is, he should be prepared to heave his bucket at men wielding semi-automatic weapons, in order to save the weak, passive women and girls. And, when women heroically throw themselves in front of bullets to save children, they're derided as "passive" and an example of everything that's wrong with our ultra-feminized, feminist society.
Sure.
Sure.
It's always interesting isn't it? We live in an incredibly violent culture in which men commit the vast majority of violent crimes and we're still somehow living in a matriachal, feminized, feminist paradise? And, well, I have my picture of what a feminist utopia is, and it sure as shit ain't this.
Doubling down and digging herself even deeper, Allen later "responded" to her critics in a separate piece and acted very hurt that even, like, conservative dudes such as Jonah Goldberg (accurately) accused her of victim-blaming.
She went on to add that there's a kernel of truth in her original piece. After all, Allen notes, Hanna Rosin once wrote a piece at Salon encouraging boys to play with Easy Bake ovens and OMG isn't that ridiculous for people to encourage boys to do girly sissy things?! But wait! In the next breath, Allen asks:
Why aren’t there more men [teaching in schools]? Perhaps not enough want the job? But why? Because they are tacitly discouraged from careers in elementary education?Yes, and just who the everloving fuck does Charlotte Allen think is discouraging men from doing girly sissy things like teaching?
Anti-feminists like her have a serious logical disconnect.
[ETA: An anti-feminist commenter below has taken it upon himself to comment extensively on this post. Unfortunately, when challenged with counter-arguments and expectations that he formulate clear, specific, and civil arguments, it seems he has chosen to delete his comments and place an "x" in each of his posts. Just letting readers know that I would have preferred to let the conversation stand as it was.]
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