As for ordinary users, we need to fight back against companies that now oversee so much of our day-to-day communications. Learn the data laws of your home country—what information social media companies are allowed to keep on your activities, and what they’re required to hand over if asked. Find other people who have been treated unjustly by social media companies, and form pressure groups. Organize letter-writing campaigns to your congressmen. Tell conservative and libertarian journalists what’s going on. Better yet, start your own business and create a platform that will live up to the original hopes for social media.
Fighting back against politically biased social media companies is the most important battle for conservatives and libertarians in the coming decade. Leftists at a college campus might influence a few hundred other students if they’re lucky. A social media company can influence tens of millions. There is no greater danger to free expression and free speech today than the far-left biases of Silicon Valley. Do not let them get away with it.
In the end, the censors always lose. But only if there are enough brave free speech warriors calling for their heads.
4
WHY FEMINISTS HATE ME
“You don’t know how hard it is having to hold on to your keys when you’re walking alone…”
I’m going to stop her right there. Do these women really think all men are just raring to fight, no fear of the world, all the time? And yet I’m the sexist.
Also, you have the right to bear arms, bitch. If there’s one thing Buffy taught me it’s the ageless equalizing power of weaponry. I don’t walk around with two armed guards because they’re so adorable (they are). It’s because they make better kill shots than I do.
Feminism is dying. Although it has enormous influence on politically-correct elites in the media and Hollywood, support for it is collapsing among ordinary people of all political persuasions, thanks, at least in part, to hysterical, feminist activists who pedal lies and conspiracy theories on a daily basis.
Because I’m a compassionate soul, I’m going to explain in this chapter not only why feminists hate me, but also how they can turn things around for themselves. I’m not just doing this because I’m kind. I’m actually fond of giving my enemies a guide to beat me.
It also doesn’t hurt that when I explain the real world to feminists it drives them even crazier than they already are. They call it Milosplaining.
The fight for women’s rights started in the late 19th century, and focused almost completely on women’s suffrage. Although these brave women were hideously ugly, they were pioneers and even heroes. This is generally known as the first wave of feminism.
The second wave, starting in the middle of the twentieth century, was broader, but also grounded in laudable goals: ending sexual harassment in the workplace, ending discrimination, repealing archaic laws enabling marital rape, and, above all, establishing full equality of opportunity for women. Few reasonable people could disagree with their objectives.
Still today, fair-minded women like Christina Hoff Sommers continue to beat the drum for what she calls “freedom feminism;” a feminism that promises equal legal rights and equality of opportunity.
Third wave feminism reared its fishy head in the 1990s. The feminism Sommers speaks of is almost unrecognizable in their messaging.
To understand what it is third wave feminists want, look at what they spend their time on now.
Manspreading: a term used to describe the practice of spreading your legs apart on public transport. This alleged sexist outrage, which grew out of a feminist Tumblr blog, was made illegal in the city of New York.54
Mansplaining: the grievous sin of explaining something to a woman whilst being male. Manthreading: doing the same, on social media. Not illegal… yet.
Eggplant emojis have also drawn the attention of third-wave feminists. According to one blogger, they’re the “next frontier in online harassment.”55 Eggplants look too similar to purple penises, apparently. In a sign of just how eager mainstream society is to please feminists, Instagram banned the eggplant. I’ve since switched to using the Eiffel Tower emoji when my boyfriend asks me what I want for dinner. Don’t anyone tell Jezebel.
Air conditioning is also sexist. Men can deal with the cold better, feminists say, and obstinately keep it cranked up.56 You know, I also get cold quite easily, but I’ve never considered turning it into a sociopolitical issue.
How did all these things come to be nationally politicized, at a time when fewer than one in five American women describes herself as a feminist? How and why did corporations start taking complaints from New York bloggers seriously, when their actual customers so clearly don’t give a shit? As the politically moderate columnist Heather Wilhelm puts it, “I didn’t leave feminism, it left me.”
Wilhelm’s sentiment is shared by increasing swathes of the western public, male and female, liberal and conservative. Feminism describes itself merely as a movement for female equality. But it behaves like something quite different: a vindictive, spiteful, mean-spirited festival of man-hating.
In Britain, only 7% of people choose to label themselves as feminist.57 In America, the number is higher: 18%, according to a Vox poll.58 Another poll from YouGov and The Huffington Post found that 23% of women and 16% of men identified with the term.59 The number of people who identify as feminists in the West is approaching the number of people who believe that blacks are innately inferior to whites.60 (That’s fewer than 10%.)
Researchers at the University of Toronto discovered that people who were already inclined to favor feminist causes were less likely to do so if they came into contact with a “stereotypical” feminist activist.61 The more people see feminists, the less likely they are to identify with feminism… even if they’re already feminists! The researchers concluded that feminists and other activists ought to behave in a less abrasive manner if they want to win support for their causes.
Fortunately for meme creators, feminists continue to do the exact opposite.
MANHATERS
When you tell a feminist you don’t believe in feminism, she’ll often respond with the inane line, “So you don’t believe in equality for women!” Yet in both polls referenced earlier in this chapter, overwhelming majorities supported equality of the sexes—86% of men and 74% of women in the U.K, and 85% overall in the U.S.
Can you think of any other topic that you can get 85% of Americans to agree on? This is a country where 5% of people believe Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a double, and 14% are unsure.62
Clearly, both genders overwhelmingly believe that feminism and equality no longer mean the same thing.
In 2013, feminist filmmaker Cassie Jaye began making a documentary about the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM), feminism’s favorite boogeymen. Jaye went into the project with the assumption that she was going to be examining a hate group—that’s what feminist bloggers and activists were then branding the MRM.
The facts didn’t match the narrative.