The article from the online publication Josephine titled “Why I’ll never date a feminist” splashed across online media platforms this past week with rage, sarcasm, agreement and confusion.
While I met this column with annoyance, I paid close attention to the outrage surrounding it. A lot of the criticism came in the form of targeting the author’s looks, saying that he “wouldn’t be able to catch a feminist anyway, looking like that.”
The headshot of the columnist (Dave Hon) sits on the left side of this article.
Hon’s red hair is balding and his teeth are visibly yellowing. His round face is covered in acne. He’s wearing glasses, so I’ll make the inference that his eyesight is bad and by the way the camera sits, I’d also infer that he is shorter than the average male.
While I would enjoy comparing Hon to Peter Pettigrew from the Harry Potter series, I won’t.
I think it’s a little cheap for self-proclaiming feminists to critique a man, or anyone, solely on looks before their opinions, simply because many feminist movements are trying to do just this: stop checking me out.
It is time for feminists to stop being hypocrites.
While I identify as a feminist, I would rather hold Hon to his degrading and problematic opinions.
Hon very forcefully attacks third-wave feminism, calling out the myths that women make to force men to a lower status: wage gap, rape culture, patriarchy and yes, the romancing.
I know that you, Mr. Hon, are blissfully unaware of the fact that the wage gap affects thousands of marginalized women every day, as the Institution for Women’s Policy Research reported that in 2015, full-time women still have made 79 cents to a man’s dollar.
I’m sure that rape culture is not relevant to Mr. Hon’s life, as he remains ignorant to the fact that in 2015, no colleges released a sexual assault report, ignoring the fact that the Association of American Colleges released 27 percent of women experience rape or sexual assault during college.
While this is not even the beginning of the tip of the iceberg that is rape culture, I will digress.
And finally, I’m confident Mr. Hon doesn’t believe in the patriarchy because, well, he is the patriarchy.
Ignoring feminist and women’s movements alike is a crucial power move in the patriarchal structure in today’s society.
By constantly disregarding the cries of the marginalized, you are creating a narrative built around isolation and abuse, that can indeed turn dangerous. Every day women are encouraged to dress more modestly, consume less alcohol and close their legs more often in order to avoid this harmful narrative of “boys will be boys.”
But yet, our social media feeds are bombarded with articles wishing a woman to “RIP” after being murdered for saying “no.”
So, Mr. Hon, I’m sure that you are just not aware of the statistics that back the horror of what women experience every day.
But you’re not going to snag a feminist because of your looks, you’ll never snag a feminist because of your open violence against us.
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