The Problem With Modern Feminism

I’m not a big fan of country music, but I have a huge crush on Carrie Underwood. She has an amazing voice, and she’s cute as a button (Cuter, even, as my mind strains to recall a moment in my life when I’ve seen a button and stopped to say, “Hey, that’s cute”). Sometimes, I think about what life would be like if we were together, and my mind wanders, asking questions about our compatibility. Questions, like, would she also be passionate about legislation to allow domestication of polar bears? Is she also banned from public libraries? Does she share my irrational fear of Maroon crayons? Perhaps I ask too much. In fact, I probably wouldn’t care about any of those things, so as long as she fell within two standard deviations of the (already rather high) mean value of crazy that most men have come to accept women are. Which, if she is anything like the characters she voices in her songs, she isn’t. I call into evidence her recent hit, “Before He Cheats”:

Chorus
And he don’t know…
That I dug my key into the side of his pretty little suped up 4 wheel drive,
carved my name into his leather seats…
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires…
Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats.

I’ll admit, at the cost of my “indie street cred,” that I love this song (Can you imagine me singing this in the shower? Well, apparently neither can my neighbors, who ended up calling the police amidst beliefs that I was physically abusing a spouse). I can’t help but wonder, though, if anyone heard this song and made it their “girl power” anthem. You know, don’t let a man push you around; vandalize the frak out of their automobile instead of approaching problems in a civilized matter, like men do.

That’s when I realized feminism needs a public relations facelift. Yes, yes, I am quite aware that feminism is about gender equality and banishing prevalent beliefs about gender roles, but it, in fact, has come to be associated with unnaturally muscular women, asexuality and androgyny, “girl power” slogans, unshaven legs, and general disagreeability. The feminist movement needs changes, and it needs them soon:

1. Drop the use of the word “feminism” and push hard for neutral terms. “Womens’ rights” is probably the clear winner here, but a master marketeer can probably spin a better sound byte. Everything else about feminist philosophies should remain exactly the same, it’s just the name that really should change. Look to Henry VIII for guidance. Which leads me to my next point …

2. Axe the leadership, axe the current spokespeople. The womens’ rights movement needs better faces! Women are not attracted to the feminist movement because women are vain, and because women are constantly in competition with every other woman within three degrees of separation (don’t lie … men know, we just don’t care, no matter what we say to get around the bases). Women will not join an organization if there is any chance of their appearances being associated with the idea of being unattractive, because it puts them at a competitive advantage to all other women who are not associated with being unattractive. The new leadership needs to be women who are confident, successful and attractive, yet, are not overly aggressive, became successful without explicit use of their sexuality, and are well respected by men and women alike. In other words, the leadership and spokeswomen should be superhuman. Force Barbara Walters back into hiding in the attic, and bring Ivanka Trump into the foreground.

3. Begin recruiting them young. Women generally shy away from disciplines regarded as mens’ territories such as math and science due to their smaller brains, but the negative images of women in business have generally faded away, thanks to the emergence in America in the last thirty years of prominent women CEOs. Use business as the foot in the door. At a young age, create programs for budding businesswomen. The Girl Scouts kind of do this with their cookie racket, but they are thinking too small and not encouraging troupes to be creative with their product lines to grow revenue and grab market share. When these programs become fully accepted, even by the staunchest proponents of the school of My Daughter Will Be A Housewife Dammit, then it is time to sneak in the sciences into these programs.

4. Rewrite fairy tales. Monica Geller, one of the characters on Friends, quips at one point about how she has been thinking about her wedding since she was 4 years old. It was a scary moment in my life when I realized that this joke was based on much truth. Where do women get this idea of marriage and relationships being their end-all panacea? I’ll tell you where: Prince Charming, that rat bastard that ruined it for the rest of us that now have to work for womens’ affections and do things romantic things that violate our very genetic tendencies. I heard about some “feminist fairy tales” a while back. One of the stories has Rapunzel spending five hours a day doing pushups and pullups, saving herself from the tower, shaving her hair off, and joining a militant womens’ organization at the end of the story. Another story has Snow White filing date rape charges against Prince Charming, then, while in counseling, spending five hours a day doing pushups and pullups, shaving her hair off, and joining a militant womens’ organization at the end of the story (both stories, by the way, are exactly the type of press feminism does not need). These are bad examples, but they’re a start.

5. The last, and most important: don’t villanize men. This is important. Don’t villanize men. I’ve known enough feminist types in my heyday who are too quick to answer, “Well, women do that because MEN oppress women, yadda, yadda, MEN start wars”. Hey, it might be true, but get off your high horse and stop thinking that a matriarchal society would have been any different. I’m not suggesting this to win over the men, which it will help with; I’m suggesting this so it’ll win over the women, who still want the men, who are alienated by all this “you suck” rhetoric. Many men associate feminism with man hating, and man hating with the smashing of cars when angered. Women know feminism is associated with negative traits when men are looking for mates, and many womens’ organizations will shy away from teaching members feminist principles to avoid a negative reputation as membership equating to a red mark to the single men on the market.

Intelligent men and those like me who fake it rarely have any quarrel with womens’ rights. It doubles the potential employment pool. It doubles the number of buyers for goods. It doubles the number of inventors innovating. There’s a theory that division of labor along gender lines is why Cro-Magnon man outlived Neanderthal man, but we’re no longer a society of hunters and growers. Division of labor should be done by merit and ability. By supporting womens’ rights, we can advance our progress in maximizing the potential of our species. But until the womens’ rights movement corrects some very negative public perceptions, it will fail to gain effective traction and lose support. Already, several major changes in the worlds’ climate are moving against womens’ rights. The religious right, for instance, works to throw its political clout to keep women virginal and in the home. Globalization has the potential to help women advance, but if the womens’ rights movement never takes off, it also has the potential to turn the equality gap between men and women into a permanent impasse. Women need to wise up and take action to protect the world for their daughters, because the philosophies that would open up opportunities for them are stagnant in gaining support, and in several decades, may very well be in grave danger of extinction.

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