American Woman

I have a public confession to make. Or rather, an acknowledgment, because it is a truth I have put forth very little effort to hide over the years.

I'm not a feminist. My parents tried to raise me as one growing up, but I became disillusioned with the movement one fateful winter night at the age of 19, when my family's estate caught fire. The women of my family, who I had always been taught were "warriors", not only failed to help in fighting the blaze, but fearfully forbade both my father and I from extinguishing it, lest we be injured by the fire. My father relented, ordering me to stand idly by as the small flames began to spread. And so our beautiful home, where my siblings and I had spent the better part of our childhood, became engulfed in fire, and was burned to the ground. I still see the look of pain in my father's eyes every time I greet him, as if some part of him died that night, and that whatever remains, forever lives on only in ignominy and shame.

My belief in feminism was laid to rest that night as well, when I learned that most women were... well, women. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to me, and I refuse to blame them for being who they are. What I blame some of them for, however, is pretending to be something they clearly are not. I've seen women warriors with my own two eyes, so I know they exist, but like their male counterparts, they are not as common as some would have the world believe, and for every one of them, there is an army of boisterous pretenders who will wilt under the slightest of trials. And that is what modern feminism has been built upon: an exaggeration which borders on a lie.

So when the MeToo movement first sprouted, I was of course skeptical. Its advocates preached equality, which most people in the progressive times we live in could support. But as the movement evolved, I began to struggle to understand what it was trying to achieve, as well as how it was defining itself.

Was the goal fairness? Was it to confront misogyny? Why then was it ignoring arguably the most misogynistic man in the world: our current President? Moreover, why did a significant majority of white women not only refuse to denounce him, but support him in such large numbers as to propel him into office, even when he was running against a well qualified female candidate? And why was the movement mostly targeting men of religious and ethnic minorities who had mistreated white women, while largely ignoring the equally brutal crimes of white men against women of all races?

What may have begun as a just cause has clearly begun to evolve into a movement with noticeable anti-Black, anti-Jewish, and anti-Muslim fringe elements, which leaves it vulnerable to serious accusations of being at the very least sympathetic to white nationalism, if not altogether allied with it. And that is an association that feminists should be avoiding like the plague. Just as the movements of the Obama Era were largely undone by their alleged associations with Islamic Fundamentalism, which their founders didn't do enough to dispel in the minds of ordinary Americans, the MeToo movement will have trouble surviving the trials of history as well if it fails to communicate a message that is easily distinguishable from that of its powerful but corrupt allies.

As for my own family, our woeful tale is an ugly stain upon us that will never be lifted. It is an embarrassment that cannot be ignored, stitched over, or swept under the rug. Generations of both men and women will tell of how my father and I were played as fools, duped into believing that we had no obligation as men to protect or defend our household, and it will become a story of indelible shame which will haunt us beyond our graves. I can only hope that anyone who reads this message can learn from our mistakes, and understand that men do still have a profoundly important role to play in human society, despite what some of the more extreme feminists may claim.