Let me begin by saying, I cannot stress enough the importance of a liberal arts education. I would like to thank my professors for teaching me the importance of two crucial things: reading comprehension and backing up your statement, however small, with evidence from a legitimate source. With these elements, you will succeed in digesting the information that surrounds us 24/7, making an informed opinion, and, if you should be so lucky after college as to land a job blogging for free, being armed with cold, hard facts instead of spouting off whatever you please.

Now that I’ve expressed my gratitude, I will show you how to use these two elements. First, reading comprehension. Arguably the most important thing to learn to do after reading and arithmetic. Without this, you cannot understand anything from recipe instructions to boiling down political spin or grasping foreign policy. It’s a lovely skill — the anti-feminists simply must try it! I’m assuming they have not; otherwise, they would not have connected a pitiful rant from a man who cannot get laid to their opinion that feminism and equality have wronged women, and more importantly, men. 

Amanda at Pandagon wrote a great post about this, which is how I came upon all of this. The pitiful man, voodoojock, just seems to have had bad luck with "ladies" who, by his account, seem like selfish snobs, airheads, and drama queens. They also seem like women who just plain weren’t interested in him. "How dare they?" he asked. It must be the fault of feminism. He never mentions the F-word and cannot connect the lack of chemistry or romantic success to any particular woman’s political or social beliefs. Yet his piece has been hijacked by an anti-feminist blogger named KellyMac and labeled, "Ladies, Wonder Why You Can’t Get Men to ‘Talk To You?’" She read this and somehow came to the conclusion that there’s something wrong with women. Specifically, women who believe in, or have been brainwashed by, feminism and equality.

But KellyMac using this piece as an argument against feminism makes as much sense as using a birthday cake recipe to show that the war in Iraq has been a mistake. You don’t need a liberal arts education (or even a middle-school education) to see that one man not getting any in a bar does not equal feminism harming anyone.

Just as the fight to ban birth control and abortion is less about the health of women or children than about giving the government and the church control over the sex lives of others, anti-feminism is not about how or if either gender has been harmed by an ideology. When a person (or gender, in this case) cannot face his or her weaknesses or faults, he or she turns the blame on someone else. If a man goes home alone, it must be the woman’s fault. So, please, Ms. KellyMac — please tell me one more thing that females have done wrong in life (i.e., not wanting brief or long-term contact with voodoojock), therefore making the world a worse place for men to live. It’s been a whole day since I’ve read a finger-wagging article addressed to my gender. 

If only it stopped there.

Further down the webpage, you’ll find a post entitled, "Twenty One Indicators of Systemic Discrimination Against Men." (Wait, wait — let me get into self-flogging position.) There are too many sins to list. Besides the outlandishness of each item, I have a major bone to pick with the list creator. After some, and only some, of the items, the name of a source is listed. However, there is no link to any source. Writing "Forbes Magazine" or "Dept. of Health and Human Services" at the end does not satisfy me. For one thing, I don’t have time to go through the Forbes archive to find the single article from which you’ve extracted this information. Either the anti-feminist blogger doesn’t have time either, has chosen to be lazy, or is lying about the source. Second, while still assuming the fact came from Forbes, if a link can be provided, I would like to read it for myself. Oh darn — more reading comprehension for me. Good thing I reaped the rewards of feminism to be the first woman in my family to get a college education and can wade through big words in intimidating publications to see exactly how, and in which context, the information as used.

If I were the weaker sex I’d be tired by now, but I’m just getting started!

Next up — "Dept. of Health and Human Services?" Which state? Federal? What year?

The item about the war casualties of men vs. women is in reference to the Vietnam War, before women were allowed to fight alongside the men as they do in Iraq. If there were fewer women in that particular, or any, war zone, then there were fewer female casualties of that war. Maybe my third crucial element should be logic.

But all of this questioning is moot anyway, as I took the liberty of Googling one of the "sources" and I did find a connection to Forbes. Except, this was not used in a Forbes article or by a Forbes reporter or even approved by Forbes magazine. It was posted by a nobody on a Forbes message board in response to the absurd opinion piece, "Don’t Marry Career Women." The feminist (or just sane) reader who posted a message after this list went through it item by item, with links to legitimate sources, including the Department of Justice.

Eventually I found the origin of this list: the Christian Party and Fathers’ Manifesto. They do include links in their list — links to another page on their website. And on each page that you’re taken to, there is another link that takes you to another page on their website. For instance, one item reads, "…zero percent of American 12th grade girls were able to correctly answer basic math and physics questions…" Zero percent? As in, none? I clicked on four links, only to be led to four pages of their site repeating this fallacy. One can only assume that the Christian Party itself made this up. (If you’re going to fabricate a statistic, at least make it believable.)

So, boys and girls, today’s lesson has been: do not B.S. a feminist armed with an education.

Jennifer Leblanc