So I’m listening to Beam Me Up Scotty by the one and only Nicki Minaj while scrolling on tiktok. I come across these two tiktoks that say this and i’ll summarize: The first one was of a woman who wanted her man’s masculinity to outweigh hers and the other was of a woman saying she wanted to take the submissive role in a relationship. Many women were in those comments validating her. Many other women on tiktok and on twitter talk repeatedly about men doing more and paying for the majority of expenses in a relationship and going the extra mile. Many of them supported this idea of men pursuing and chasing, and them never settling. Mind you, many of them were “feminists” and used feminist lingo to defend this.

Below these videos I saw another tiktok. This time, a man was talking about how the patriarchy tells women to settle and tells men to chase and never settle. Nevermind the literal historical systems that punished non hypergamous women (in Ancient India and in England, for example) and the fact that RIGHT ABOVE HIS VIDEO there were women using FEMINISM to defend men chasing and doing more. The contradictions seriously undermine feminism. I mean at this point any woman or man can talk about how men have harmed them, slap patriarchy and call it a social system, and all of a sudden you’ve made a very valid point and this problem is widespread.

But you know what? It goes to show a much deeper issue. And that is, many women are okay with male dominance as long as it is benevolent and beneficial to them.

Karen Straughan (who I vehemently disagree with but will mention) once used the analogy of a carpenter and a hammmer to demonstrate the concept of male dominance. A carpenter is given a hammer to work with. That hammer has power. It can destroy or build. Now you want the carpenter to build, but you’ve seen some of the shit other carpenters have done with that power and resent them for it. You hate their power and want to take it from them. Nonetheless, you don’t actually want them disempowered, because you want your house built. In reality, if you could be assured in the fact that your carpenter will not use that power to do you harm, you are okay with him having power over you. Because if he isn’t harming you, that power will only benefit you and him.

This is the analogy I draw to these women who use feminism to want to be chased and provided for and dominated by good masculine energy. You want male dominance with the assurance of zero backlash. Okay, that’s fine. But the fact of the matter is that to have a man provide and protect and go the extra mile, you have to give him more power than you have to do those things. And then you need to rely on trust to make sure he doesn’t abuse that power.

You talk about things like the wage gap. Okay, but if you and every other woman wants a man to provide for them, there is going to be a standard placed on men to be financially dominant in order to be in relationships with women. That means feeding into capitalism and being career oriented and aggressive. That isn’t gonna help the wage gap at all. Anne Marie Slaughter addressed this double standard in a talk she gave, yet it strangely got talked down on by the boys and men who supposedly care about men’s issues (which is why anti feminism is rarely productive and mostly reactionary). If anything, it’s only going to produce a generation of men who will employ aggressive tactics to get to that financial stability, and women will have a harder time meeting that standard. Thus, other womens’ preferences harm other womens’ goals.

And this example is why I say most women want to live in a benevolent patriarchy. They want to be ruled by men in a way that protects them from the evils of some men and life in general. They want to be provided for.

The problem is that doing this requires giving men more power than women in a few major spheres of influence, and that might have negative consequences for women looking to get into those spheres. Even more, if that power is not checked by other women, then it can go awry. If there is no security checking up on the carpenter, whose to say he won’t sabbotage the house or kill you with the hammer?

And this literally happens! When women expect men to chase and use feminism for it, now you have a bunch of men chasing. Now a few of those men takes it too far and chasing you ends up as stalking. You want men to provide for you but in order to sustain his career you have to play a submissive role which fucks you over when you find out he cheated on you with the secretary. Now you got no career.

And so you’re asking for a benevolent patriarchy without ever realizing that this means giving men power. And sure, you can use social systems to protect against abuse of this power, but how are you going to do that without enlisting other powerful men?

Going back to the carpenter analogy, in order to make sure he doesn’t sabotage you, you need an accurate enough knowledge of architecture and sustainable design. That requires education you probably do not have because you are literally asking someone else to do it for you. And even if you did have that knowledge, you would no longer need a carpenter. The only reason you want one is because you don’t want to do the work yourself. In addition, if you aren’t going to be putting that carpentry education to work, the chances of society allowing you to enter that sphere and flourish diminish. So you need other trustworthy carpenters and other customers to check up on this carpenter of yours.

And as for safety from him using the hammer to kill you? You need security and safety by a stronger individual or someone that can combat his tools. And depending on who you are, that can be some other man.

And so very quickly you are playing a game that will never offer you complete safety. The only way to ever ensure that you will never be taken advantage of by that power is to have the power yourself. But that entails responsibility, which many of these women do not want.

You don’t want gender equality. You want a benevolent patriarchy. And you will NEVER get it, because there is no way men with the power you want them to have will be 100% checked and vetted.