Feminist academics have found a new spokesperson for their radical ideology in Suzanna Danuta Watters, a sociology professor at Northeastern University who recently published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled, “Why can’t we hate men?”
In the op-ed, she answers her own question by asserting that it is rational to hate all men on the basis of the laundry list of claims, ranging from general sexual violence perpetrated against women by men, to their underrepresentation in a variety of fields. Watters claims that all men are guilty of the sin of misogyny and have played an active part in enforcing these disparities. Why? Because men hold positions of power and have not yet rectified these inequalities.
She insists that if men don’t want to be hated by women, they should “lean out so we can actually just stand up without being beaten down.” That really means, “Pledge to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power.”
But Watters can’t be right. Is this really feminism? Her opinions certainly don’t fit in with what we’re told about feminism in our American History classes. Where did feminism go wrong?
First- and second-wave feminism, the feminism of Susan B. Anthony, fought for equality in the workplace. It was about choice, and by extension, freedom. Freedom to decide to vote – for either progressive Democrats or conservative Republicans. Freedom to decide to take on a professional career – or be a stay-at-home mom.
But modern day feminism, the feminism of Watters, isn’t about choice – it’s about power. Modern day feminists want to exercise power over women and men. They want to tell women and men which life choices to make.
And if you don’t fit their cookie-cutter mold? You’re labeled an enemy combatant. You’re not exercising your free will as a woman by deciding, for instance, to continue through with a pregnancy. Instead, these feminists will tell you that you’re waging a so-called “war against women.”
Today’s feminists always reframe an issue in a way that gets furthest away from what it’s really about.
Defunding Planned Parenthood, they claim, is about taking away a woman’s right to choose or violating her right to privacy under the constitution, rather than simply being a matter of allowing taxpayers to decide where their money ought to go.
This shows that feminism, as we know it, is not about freeing women from the crushing tyranny of some mythical patriarchy, but is, in fact, a partial, partisan ideology that wants to control people’s lives and money. You must think correctly, speak correctly, and act correctly, or face exclusion and attack from this small and noisy minority of women who label themselves “feminists.”
Feminists are using the idea of women’s rights and the equality of the sexes as a bludgeon against their political enemies, especially if they happen to be men. As Watters demonstrates, feminists, who always rail against “misogyny,” embrace misandry, or the hatred of men.
But where does all this hatred come from?
No better example of modern day feminism can be found than feminist icon Valerie Solanas’ 1968 SCUM Manifesto, or her plans for establishing a “Society for Cutting Up Men.” Whether or not Solanas was mentally-ill when she composed her hateful tract, her willingness to publicly state her dream of an ideal society where men have exterminated is the contemporary feminist’s daydream and fantasy.
Solanas describes men as:
“A biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.”
In Solanas’ demented world – of contemporary feminists such as Watters – “man” becomes the catch-all for evil, the source and cause of all women’s ills, real and imagined. The fact that Watters can air her hate without receiving a strong rebuke from her colleagues is evidence enough of how deeply entrenched this worldview is on college campuses.
