After writing my last blog, How We and Protein World Confuses Beauty with Fitness, I was contacted by a number of women saying how much they agreed. A number of them said to me "it's good to see a man who is a feminist". I told them all "I'm not a feminist, the post isn't about feminism and I don't agree with feminism". In my view, we are approaching the end of feminism.
I'll get straight to the point. The reason why I believe this is simple; feminism has managed to achieve a lot for women but the last final push to full equity between the sexes requires greater engagement from men and feminism is utterly unequipped to do this. This is because feminists require men to change according to how they believe men should be, rather than men looking over their weaknesses and developing a strategy to change themselves. If anything, men have been going in the wrong direction over the last 10 years in response to hardline feminism, which vilifies masculinity and blames failure to achieve equity on men's inability to feminise.
When I discuss this with many of my female friends, the response is "no no no, feminism is about achieving equality of the sexes". But they are never able to answer one important question; what does it do to help men improve? Feminism is actually about empowering women (of which I believe is a legitimate aim) and helping them achieve parity with men, with various measures such as pay, employment opportunities, contribution to society and politics being some of the measures they go by.
I'll give you an example. Ben Machell in The Times wrote an article called "crisis on campus: the rise of lad culture" which very aptly describes the issues women face at university, with a growth of a culture which has allowed a growth in sexual assaults and a lack of respect in women. Ben says that his women friends 10 years ago do not remember the same systemic issue being at University when they were there; his friends have short memories. I very much recall my female friends at University saying "what's the deal with all the drunk idiot men grabbing us when we are out?". University Lad culture amongst men has been building for some time and feminism has no solution other than to point fingers and judge. And it has failed to help achieve better parity between man and woman.
It is time for a new movement, one that involves men. And men have to take a greater responsibility for their role in society, while women need to support men's needs to be men. Not feminised men, but gentlemen, men who are masculine and support women in their society so we can all achieve parity. These issues have been made plain and clear over the last few years, with the reddit posts releasing stolen pictures of celebrities, who then men then call whores after looking over their private pictures, jealous that these women would never be interested in the "internet hard men" who will send vitriol and hate over the internet but in reality are sad, lonely men begging for any woman to take them.
Men, we have to stop this ladification, this mistreatment of women, this jealousy of their success. And women, you need to ditch feminism, this exclusive club created only for the betterment of women. If we all don't work hard to improve the masculine aspect of our society, we will be cursed with an ever increasing number of badly educated young men, angry at the world, taking it out on women, who are unable to find their place in society. We are destined for more divorces, more fatherless families and more men in prison.
So what do you truly want ladies? Feminism or a society in which men and women can achieve?