So I went to the women's march yesterday and engaged feminists in various topics of discussion.

I avoid saying I'm "anti-feminist" because I don't oppose the idea of feminism in principle...but I'm being forced to re-think how I imagine the 'average feminist' to be..I used to like to think that the average person who identifies as a feminist is a good person, who just doesn't realize the nature of 'political feminism', or what the stats arguments for men's rights are. I'm not sure I believe that anymore.

There wasn't really 'hostility' in a sense of on confrontation, but overall, lots of hostility/lack of empathy towards men and male issues. A few things I heard:

-quite a bit of mocking of domestic violence against men, or saying 'men deserve it', or even bragging about it... thats what you want your son to grow up in? some quotes:

"i dont give a fuck, i hit him if i want to"

"men who complain about domestic violence are pussies"

"if a woman gets physical with her man, he probably deserved it."

Then there were those who wouldn't outright say that, but they simply couldn't bring themselves to say 'domestic violence against men is wrong', they'd give some weird circular answer without really answering.

-lacking empathy for homeless men, boys gap in education, etc. when i asked about the education gap (boys struggling in school and being less likely to graduate), one response was "honestly men failing is good for the world right now." But starting with children...this was in a group, and the other women in the group laughed.

-apathy or even mocking towards infant circumcision, including by some with 'body autonomy for all' and similar signs. one woman with a sign saying 'no vagina, no opinion' laughed and said it was good because she thinks it 'looks better'. (Needless to say, she didn't know what the frenulum or meissners corpsucles are). just seemed very hypocritical- does 'my body, my choice' only apply sometimes?

Now to be clear, this wasnt everyone and I DID meet some feminists who were fair minded, and like the 'average decent person' I imagined. But a depressingly high number of people were toxic, if I had to estimate I'd say roughly 50/50, or maybe 33/33/33 decent, apathetic, and toxic. To be fair, I tended to engage those who carried more provocative signs and looked more 'extreme', for lack of a better word. But also some 'regular' looking people too...I never felt in danger and there was never a sense of a risk of altercation- I could walk with my sign unimpeded- but it was definitely highly toxic.

Now you might say 'because this is a women's march and you making it about men!" but this argument fails for 2 reasons:

  1. thats not an excuse to brag about being abusive to your partner or how its good to do that

  2. feminism claims to be 'for equality' and 'for men to', so actually, it's fair game

Maybe I just got unlucky, or marches like these attract more extreme types, but it was a very poor showing and left a very poor impression.