This is a facebook message response I sent to somebody who was outraged about the women's soccer team getting paid less than the men's. I ended up writing a very long message that I thought I would share. How'd I do?

"I’ll start off by saying that I don’t think we are going to get very far, since we have radically different worldviews. Your writing is full of feminist rhetoric which is usually a red flag that neither of us are going to make any ground. That being said, here is my stance:

We need a women’s advocacy group as well as a men’s advocacy group. Because men = privileged and women = oppressed is pretty much an absolute in all feminist thinking, I think that feminism is not the women’s advocacy group that we need.

I have a few problems with feminism. Feminism seeks to paint women as perpetual victims when in reality men and women are separate but equal: we both enjoy our own advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses. Feminism says that differences between men and women are the result of socialization, despite evidence that there is a huge biological component that drives our interests and behavior. In other words, feminism equates equal opportunity with equal representation. When women are underrepresented, feminism says its because of sexism rather than choice (talking about STEM fields, Chess players, etc). Feminism says that women have been oppressed throughout history. That doesn’t really make sense to me: why would men oppress the very people who they form their most intimate bonds with- sisters, mothers, wives. Nature is unbiased, and selected for patriarchal societies where the reproductively valuable (women) were protected and revered while the reproductively disposable (men) were relegated to the more dangerous and labor-intensive tasks. In these societies, men were more involved in the outside world and women were more involved at home because life was tough for everybody and that was the only way to survive. It makes sense, then, that men were making the decisions: they were the ones with the knowledge of the outside world. Does it really make sense that no matriarchal societies progressed past hunter-gatherer status simply because men were strong and were oppressing women? Wouldn’t natures select for those matriarchal societies that succeeded and weren’t based upon oppressing half of the population?

Another thing that feminism ignores is that on some level, we live in a gynocentric society. That is, the needs and feelings of women are prioritized over men’s. This is tied in with male disposability: if a ship is sinking, women and children get the lifeboats. If a house is burning, women get out first. If a woman hits a man, people laugh or ask the man “what’d you do this time?”. If a man hits a woman, people flock to her aid and see the man as despicable, trash. This is precisely why feminism has been able to gain so much traction - it’s not that we are suddenly becoming enlightened as a society, but rather that we have always been more sensitive to the needs of women. Just look at the multitude of government programs that exist exclusively for women but not men. Look at the disproportionate amount of research funding given to a predominantly female condition (breast cancer) vs. a male equivalent with more or less the same morbidity and mortality (prostate cancer). Aside from medical spending, government spends 10 to 100 times more on women than men. Where is the outrage that men commit suicide at 4 times the rate as women? What about the fact that men are dying on the job over 14 times as much as women? Why aren’t people rallying for equal representation for women in these dangerous jobs? How come men are significantly more likely to be homeless and yet there are far less shelters for men than for women? Men gained the right to vote in exchange for risking their lives with conscription. 50 years later, women gained the vote by asking for it. Right now, women are treated better than men in all aspects of the legal system. For instance, women receive lighter sentences and a higher chance of acquittal, simply for being women. A recent 2012 study found: "men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do," and "[w]omen are…twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted." This gender gap is about six times as large as the racial disparity. How is feminism addressing these issues in a real way? You are literally the first feminist I’ve seen that has attempting to raise awareness surrounding these issues.

One of my biggest problems with feminism is how it treats domestic violence. In my mind its sexist to attribute this to toxic masculinity. And yet the government diverts huge funding to NOW and Violence Against Women to conduct biased research that paints DV as a male-perpetrated crime when the overwhelming evidence suggests that it is gender-equal. See this link: http://web.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm

Its absurd and sexist to reduce the complex dynamic that leads to domestic violence down to men living up to a standard of manhood. At its simplest, DV stems from extreme frustration mixed with lack of empathy for the other party. Not to mention various psychological/personality disorders that can lead to domestic dysfunction, which is not a gendered issue. Narcissists, sociopaths, borderline personality disorders, etc—these are the people hitting their partners.

Not to mention, I disagree with nearly every public sphere manifestation of feminism that I’ve seen. Take the Rolling Stone UVA Rape hoax: the entire country rallied behind Jackie while feminists yelled “See!!! I told you so”. Meanwhile I sat back skeptical, too afraid to be labeled a victim-blamer or misogynist, and I was right all along. The story was completely unbelievable. Do I even need to go into “manspreading”? Then there’s nobel prize winner Tim Hunt who was crucified for making “sexist comments”. The feminist who initially publicized this said that the room fell silent and was appalled. It turns out she was lying and the crowd politely laughed, while he went on to say “Now seriously…” and praised female scientists for playing a major role in industrialization of various Asian countries. Then there was the guy who landed a drone on a comet and wore a tacky shirt that his female friend gave him during the press conference. It had “sexualized depictions” of women on it, supposedly being representative of an environment that is hostile to women, and the guy was reduced to tears on national TV when it should have been the best day of his life. It was just a shirt for god’s sakes.

We don’t need feminism going around telling people that girls are victims. That they can’t make it into science because old geezers say a slightly sexist joke or some guy wears a stupid shirt. I grew up in a house where my father got nowhere in life and my mom singlehandedly raised herself, broke into a brand new field of medicine and excelled purely based on merit. I have way more faith in the strength and competency of women than feminism does it seems.

I know this ended up being extremely long. I also know that your gut reaction, since you are so entrenched in the feminist movement, will be to reject what I’m saying. “Not all feminists are like that” etc. You say that feminism seeks to create a world where social structures don’t harm men or women. I can empathize: I used to be a feminist. But over the years, I haven’t seen feminism have predictive value. I’ve seen way more lies than truths. So I implore you to see this from my point of view, that maybe feminism isn’t the women’s advocacy group this country needs. Maybe a group/movement that is more grounded in logic than emotion. Feminism seems to equate “that hurts my feelings” with “that is not true” - ie unwilling to accept that chess is male-dominated because it is a game that plays to the strengths of the male brain. Or unwilling to accept that female players don’t get paid as much as male players because they just aren’t as good at the sport. People want to see the sport played at the highest level possible. When a solid men’s collegiate soccer program could easily beat the women’s national team, is it really because of sexism that the primary consumers of sports entertainment (men) don’t feel like watching? Is it sexism or simply inherent preference that women, responsible for 80% of spending in the US, don’t feel like watching women’s soccer?"