Quote: (11-21-2015 01:38 AM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:
I've really reached the point where I don't want to hear anything any woman has to say about anything related to masculinity or men's issues.
Even if they may be sympathetic or favorable to us, I can't forget the fact that they don't live the experience. They're lace-curtain tourists, and pretenders.
I resent the idea that any of them can, or should, speak for us in any way. Attention-whoring is so deeply ingrained in their DNA that there's no way to separate them from their "messages."
They can applaud us from the sidelines. They can support us when they can. But they can never join us, and they can never speak for us.
Some may call this extreme. Maybe. But that's how I see it.
All of which is true. But Christina Hoff Sommers is an exception to this -- perhaps
the exception. I've pointed this out before, but I'll repeat my ideas for those who missed them.
Sommers' books "Who Stole Feminism?" (1994) and "The War Against Boys" (2001) were published before there was a manosphere or a strong anti-feminist push.
So it's not like she's bandwagon-jumping or doing this to steal anyone's thunder. She was among the first to define what we discuss here and what what the manosphere became all about. If there is a "Mother of the Manosphere," it's her.
I'm old enough to remember what was happening in '94 and '01. Outside of Rush Limbaugh, few people of note were speaking out against feminism. And fewer still even thought to look into how boys were faring in school. This was an era that was shaped by the book "Reviving Ophelia" (1994), a hugely influential feminist tome which claimed adolescent girls were getting the short shrift in schools. That book still affects educational policy today. She was pretty much the lone dissenting voice to it.
While I'll agree it's a bad idea to let women define men's issues or take the spotlight, the fact is that Sommers was singing this tune while a lot of us were in school or oblivious to these issues. It's also instructive to note that her anti-feminism book came out at the height of Riot Grrrl Clinton-era feminism. She had to deal with the mainstream media without the backup of a forum like this or the many alternative news sites we now rely on to expose mainstream media bias.
And besides all that, I find this woman really hot for her age. She was born in 1950 and has kept the body (and especially the legs) of a twentysomething. If we're gonna criticize older women who let themselves go, we have to give credit here.