an anti-feminist movement, which means it’s based in the idea that women shouldn’t be equal to men.

Ever hear a saying to the effect of liking Christianity if it weren’t for the the Christians ruining it? As in that the ideals are fine on paper and in theory (love thy neighbor, care for the less fortunate, etc, etc), but in practice the adherents don’t really do them as such?

The same applies to feminism - in theory the idea is gender equality, but in practice it often isn’t.

I’ve been around long enough to remember when the standard feminist response to question about what should be done about male victims of abuse or sexual assault done by women was to dismiss them as not existing.

I remember a man opening the first men’s DV shelter in Canada (Men’s Alternative Safe Housing) and being denied funding because it wasn’t a women’s shelter until he could no longer keep it afloat from private donations and out of pocket funds so he had to close it and hanged himself in the garage. He left a left a four-page suicide note, condemning the government for failing to recognize male victims of domestic abuse and wrote that that he hoped his death would bring more awareness to the issue of male abuse. I wonder what ideology permeates domestic abuse services, again?

I remember big and loud feminist protests at the University of Toronto against checks notes a talk about suicide in men given by a former member of the New York board of the National Organization For Women (who he left when they opposed more equal child custody). If you’ve ever seen the “Big Red” memes with the red haired angry shouty feminist, they were inspired by a real person who was at this protest shouting a Jezebel article at the crowd and calling anyone who tried to engage with her “fuckface”. The group hosting the talk (CAFE) would go on to create another men’s shelter which still exists and is to my knowledge the only one in Canada.

Speaking of Jezebel, I remember them writing an article casually joking about the times they’ve been violent with their male significant others, including in one case hitting her boyfriend because he was worried he might have cancer.

I remember listening to a recording of a radio show on Soundcloud 9 years ago where Mary Koss (prominent sexual assault researcher - nearly all research on campus sexual assault in the US descends from her work, she’s the source of that 1-in-4 number that gets thrown around sometimes, and she coined the term “date rape” among others) was asked about male victims of female perpetrators and her response was to ask how that would even happen, how could a woman make a man have sex by force, threat of force or by incapacitating him? (I’d give you an exact quote but SoundCloud isn’t playing nice ATM, not sure if it’s the site or my adblocker- either way it’s close to her phrasing but I’m going from memory, the episode is Male Rape from You Were Here on WERS) and when given an example of a man being drugged into compliance declared that that wasn’t rape, it was just “unwanted contact.” You see, “rape” needs to be reserved for girls and women because men don’t feel violation or shame like real people women do.

Or when KY wanted to pass a law requiring family court judges operate from a rebuttable presumption of equal custody in contested child custody cases - that is that both parents having equal custody is what’s best for the child unless there’s a good reason for it to be otherwise. Out comes the feminist opposition and trying to align any supporters of it with domestic abusers.

And I could keep going like this for a while if I really wanted to, but probably 9/10 readers stopped several paragraphs ago.