The Final Update (Part I)

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(01/13/07)

The late August sun was shining-down on Haruna and me. It wasn't hot to the point where it glared oppressively because the summer was almost over and the steady zephyrs made today a perfect occasion for wine outdoors.

The two of us were sitting together on a blanket in the tall grass halfway between the woods and my deceased grandmother's country home. Slightly over an hour beyond my hometown, it sits on 40 acres with rather thick clusters of trees and brush around its periphery. For several acres around the house, the grounds took-on a park-like appearance. It was dead quiet apart from the wind and birds.

After my grandma died late last year the house and its property went to my parents. My girlfriend and I decided to spend the weekend alone.

Her head was on my lap, looking-up at the clouds. We were situated on a blanket in long grass with a near-empty bottle of Chardonnay and two glasses at our feet beside a fat wicker basket of brie and baguettes. She and I were discussing some of the finer points of Japanese transliteration of English place-names.

"So it's not 'Detoroito.' It's 'Detroit.' Right?" she asked.

"Right." I replied.

"But I can't say 'Tront?'" She looked kind of puzzled.

"No, it's pronounced 'Toronto.' Exactly the same as Japanese." I chuckled.

"That's confusing."

"Yeah, it doesn't make sense." I started rummaging around in the basket with my free hand. "You want s'more brie?"

"No, I'm fine." She inhaled deeply, still looking-up at the sky. "I like it here." She whispered.

"Aye. 'Tis a decent spot. In the winter, the house is warmer than you might think. You could experience the wonders of sherry-drinking by the fireplace."

"The vegetable garden needs work, though." She observed while parting the long grass in an attempt to see the fenced-in garden plot fifty yards away from us

"Yeah, it hasn't been tended in a few years. My grandmother sort of... she couldn't really live here on her own." I shrugged. "But the garden wouldn't be hard to fix. You can't really see it from here, but there are a bunch of bushes in the back. A few years ago, I spent the summer looking in the woods for wild blackberry and I transplanted them. Did you ever have blackberry pie?"

"No."

"I've got the recipe somewhere."

"Do you want me to make it?" She reached-up and ran her hand over my cheek.

"Honey, I was going to make it for you!" I smiled and kissed her palm.

"Oh." She jut-out her lower lip. "Have you ever thought about living here?"

"Here? Uhm, maybe once or twice. I miss Japan too much to live here." I sighed.

"Me too."

"We'll go back to Japan as soon as we can. Promise!" I sighed. "I really don't see a future here. Er, in this country, that is. There are just too many... just... ugly things. Depressing things. I feel like I'm wasting my time." I leaned-forward and kissed her on the forehead. "I'm wasting time which could be better-spent elsewhere."

"In some ways I'm happier here." She replied. "But not in every way. The job I have now is easier than the one I had back home but it's not something I want to do for very long."

"You've been working for nearly a year now, right?" I asked her knowingly.

"Right."

"You know your coworkers pretty well by now, right?"

"Yes." She nodded.

"Do you remember a joke you told a few years ago? We were driving one night and you asked me about a joke you heard."

"What joke?"

"A joke about the best kind of life and the worst kind of life. The best kind of life…" I recited. "…is an English country house, a Chinese chef, an American salary and a Japanese wife. But the worst kind of life is…"

"Oh, yes. A Japanese apartment..." She nodded.

"Yeah. An English chef, a Chinese salary... and an American wife."

"Right." She smiled.

I smiled mischievously. "So tell me about your coworkers?"

Her face changed to one of disgust. "Oh, God. My supervisor's a bitch. She's rude to everyone for no reason." She sighed and rubbed her forehead, looking irritated. The relentless nastiness of her supervisor was a sore point of which I was well aware. "So many of my coworkers don't care about doing a good job. They just don't care."

"And?" I nudged her. "What else?"

"They're always five minutes late and leave five minutes early. They don't want to get their hands dirty. They always complain about meaningless, useless things instead of doing work…"

"Anything else?" I egged her on.

"They say mean things about a person after they leave the room. As soon as I leave the room, I think they're saying mean things about me, too."

"Is that all?"

"No, their conversations are like crap. They say things like: 'my boyfriend said blah blah blah, and I was pissed, so I said blah blah blah, what do you think?' and the other says 'oh, blah blah blah, and I think blah blah blah and he's an asshole and blah blah blah' and it doesn't stop. It just goes on for years and years like that."

"So your coworkers have a juvenile addiction to complaining?" I asked. "And they act like someone stuck an eggbeater into their heads and scrambled-up their brains?"

"Yes. They're like children. It's like they're twelve." She replied.

"Close your eyes." I instructed her.

"Okay." She did.

"So remember that punch line about American wives? Imagine marrying one of your coworkers!" I placed both hands on her cheeks. Haruna's eyes opened and she laughed.

"That would be terrible!" she moaned.

"Do you get the joke now?" I asked.

"Okay, the joke makes sense." She conceded.

"Good!" I yelled to the sky. "Thank you, God!"

Haruna smiled and added "I wouldn't marry one of them if I were a man. I'd probably kill myself."

"Hey, do you remember Seinfeld a few nights back?" I asked.

"Which one?"

"Elaine was talking to Jerry about how her great new boyfriend. Then she goes back to the apartment and her boyfriend is cooking. He cleaned the apartment, everything is going great. And then Elaine looks at a phone message he wrote-down. Remember what happened?"

"Oh yes. She starts a fight."

"Because he didn't put an exclamation point on the note!"

"And they have a fight." She grinned.

"Yes! They fought over that."

"It was completely unnecessary!" She insisted.

"But I've had real arguments like that with my past American girlfriends! They always manage to find some meaningless chickenshit thing to overanalyze and fight about. The toilet seat is up. I don't want that ice cube, I want the other one. My porridge is too hot. My porridge is too cold. My tiara is too heavy. The pea under the mattress is hurting me. Nag, nag, nag, please shoot me." I sighed. "Half of the American women out there complain that men don't care if they experience sexual pleasure and the other half complains that they need to fake orgasms to please men. Okay, so which is it? Why fake an orgasm if men don't care if you orgasm? Does that make any sense?"

"I don't know!" she laughed. "Why can't they make-up their minds?"

"And you've seen how my sister acts, right?"

"Your sister treats her husband like a dog." She remarked. "She scolds him like a pet. Like this." She shook her index finger. "Bad! Bad dog!"

"Right!" I agreed.

"It looks crazy!"

"Why is he a bad dog?" I asked. "He didn't write an exclamation point on the note?"

"I don't know!" she laughed.

"He did nothing wrong. He doesn't have to do anything wrong to be punished. So that's what American wives are like. They refer to their husbands as 'the jerk I married' or 'that idiot' or they act like their husbands need adult supervision. Hey, riddle me this: Why would a woman marry an idiot who can't be trusted with simple tasks?"

"I don't know." she chuckled.

"I don't know either. It makes no sense. Doesn't that make the wife an idiot, too?" I was getting nicely buzzed from the bottle of wine and I think she was too. "Hey, honey?" I asked.

"Yeah?"

"Tomorrow morning, do you want to grab some scuba gear and plunder the ruins of Atlantis?"

"What?" she laughed.

"It'll be fun! C'mon! Atlantis! We can steal their gold and their, you know, steal- steal their stuff." I smiled down at her.

"Are you being silly?" she poked me gently in the stomach.

"Eh, never mind. Here, have more wine." She held-up her glass I poured-out the last few dribbles.

"You just like being silly." She smiled.

"Nah, it's just …" I exhaled loudly. "I just want to get out of here."

"What's wrong with here?" she asked, gesturing around the open field.

"No, not here, I mean this country. It's driving me out of my mind. Ugh. Did I tell you what happened when I was at the community center two days ago?"

"No."

"I was tutoring those two Arab girls again. Remember the ones I mentioned?" I sometimes volunteer to help ESL students with their homework.

"Yeah." She nodded.

"These girls… okay, they're in summer school and they come-in with their homework. They're the biggest sweethearts you've ever seen. They come in and they have their hair covered and they have these bright smiles and they want their homework to be done perfectly. They're worried about going to college and the Internet-based TOEFL and so on. They're a pair of sweethearts. And after I got done, I went out to the car and I saw this group of white girls. They were about the same age, probably the same grade. And these were… ugh… they were… just…" I shook my head and groaned.

"Go on." She poked me in the stomach.

"Okay, they were spitting gum at each other and pulling each other's hair and were just… tsumaranai! Trashy, okay? Low-grade and gross with narrow, decaying little brains and it made me depressed all the way home. You know? How the hell am I supposed to not notice these things?" I asked in exasperation.

"It's like there are almost no standards here." She answered. "Do you know how rude the clerks are in the stores? They don't want to be bothered by customers."

"Well..." I stiffened my back and shook my head. "Honey, there's a lot I haven't told you."

"Okay, tell me?" she softly poked me in the ribs.

"Hoo boy. There are a surprising number of women out there who think you're a simpering doormat."

"Who cares about them?" she shrugged dismissively.

"Well, it's helpful to gain insight into their mentality. It doesn't matter that you have a college degree and you had a demanding job with tons of responsibility before you moved here. No, they say you're a simpering doormat and that's why I'm with you." I shrugged.

"Assholes." She waved her hand dismissively. "Bitches. Why listen to them?"

"Careful with the word 'bitch,' it's a compliment in some circles. There's a significant subculture out there which likes to pretend that destructive, self-obsessed behavior is wonderful if it can be spun to fit-under the rubric of women's liberation. Usually, these kinds of women behave like rude men except they're not subject to accountability like men are. Let me give you more samples of what they say about you…"

I pointed a finger at Haruna's face. "You're a house nigger. A traitor to your gender. If you want to marry me, you're a masochist. You are so stupid that you don't know what's best for your own life."

"I know the things I want." She replied testily.

"No you don't honey. Not according to them. You're a weak-minded fool. If you cook me a meal, society brainwashed you into doing it. You actually don't want to cook a meal."

"I know what I choose to do."

"No honey, you don't. Not according to them. You don't know what you choose to do. Cooking meals is what mentally-defective women do so you're a mental-defective."

"Why do they think they know my mind better than I do?" she demanded, sounding impatient.

"Because the 'patriarchy' brainwashed you. The 'beauty myth' makes you want to wear lipstick. You're made to feel 'uncomfortable' in the workplace. You've been 'silenced' from saying what you think. You weren't 'encouraged' to make this or that career move. Okay? So you're being driven by subconscious blandishments to 'embrace your own oppression.' Patriarchy has downloaded marching orders into your skull. You didn't leave your old job in Japan because you wanted to leave your old job. No way-"

"I'm glad I left my old job! The stress was terrible." She replied.

"-and, quote, THE PATRIARCHY, unquote, makes you want to buy pretty clothes. And THE PAYYYY-TRIAR-KEEEE makes you not become a Harvard mathematician. Okay? All of this stuff fits a sinister pattern. A nefarious master-plan that men designed for you. And you've fallen for it. Fallen for it like a sucker. Fallen for it like an idiot."

"Whatever." She waved her hand dismissively.

"Yeah, I know." I laughed dryly. "What, you've been brainwashed to run the microwave? That's the master-plan? THAT? Of all things you could be brainwashed to do, you're brainwashed to bake casserole? I mean, why not make it so you'll hand-over your jewelry to me? Something tangible like that? Oh, no, no, you've been brainwashed to put bread in the toaster. Jesus. What a pathetic accusation. Oh God, but there's so much more. If you don't think you're crippled by sexism, you need to be trained to think you are. You're so mindless that you silently accept every indignity that I heap on you without saying a word."

"What?" Haruna laughed. "That is so untrue!"

"Not according to them. And according to them, I want to abuse you. I love abusing you. I love it!"

"What?" she laughed. "YOU like to abuse me?"

"Yeah, I didn't even know that myself." I shrugged.

"Ooookay." She looked at me amusedly. "When are you going to start abusing me? I'd like to get ready."

"I dunno. How about next week? Is that okay with you?"

"Yeah, okay." She smiled sarcastically. "I'm so submissive that I don't mind."

"That's the spirit!" I smiled back. "Also, here's a good one." smiled oddly. "Ready for this?"

"What?"

"I love this one. They say I can't 'handle' a real woman. So you're not a real woman."

"WHAT!?"

"Oh honey, it's only because you're Asian. Asians aren't real people. You're subhuman, half-animal, not a 'real woman' at all. You have to be white and weigh, oh, maybe two-hundred pounds to be a real woman."

"What bitches." She sneered in exasperation. "What the hell is their problem?"

"Here's what's kind of funny about it: 'handle' can also mean 'endure.' So these women have to be endured. Like a punishment or a torture. And every time they say I can't 'handle' a real woman, it's conceding they can't compete with you. The fact that they're also suggesting you're less-human does not register in their brains at all. And it's not only white females who do this. Black women constantly jeer that black men are inadequate if they hook-up with white women. Oh yeah, black men have that shit thrown at them all the time. But don't ever suggest that a woman of any race is inadequate for sleeping with a man of a different race. That's racist. But it's not racist when white women say you're not a real woman and you're too stupid to know the difference between a catch and a loser like me. See? It all makes perfect sense." I rolled my eyes. "But they are completely right about one thing. You aren't a 'real woman.' You're an adult woman."

"Why do they have to be like that? What makes them that way?"

"Oh, honey. There's so much which can be said. There are entire ideologies devoted to this insanity. It's fun to foment polarization, you see."

"Pffft." She sputtered.

"See, you need to understand something. American women entertain the paranoid belief that if they treat a man with a tiny amount of respect then their right to vote will be revoked within 3 hours."

"That doesn't make any sense." She insisted with an amused smile.

"Of course it doesn't." I sighed. "Look, the cultural milieu in this country has a lot of different strands to it but if we're going to talk about relations between men and women, you really have to talk about the feminist ideology because it's undeniably done more than anything else to set the modern rules of engagement." I replied. "See, I went through college and I was exposed to all the little tinkertoy theories and all the historical fantasy-narratives. Feminism is based on a number of assumptions, many of which turn-out to be fallacious or fantastically untrue. Hell, entire planks of the ideology can be refuted if you use your brain for 2 seconds. The fact that intelligent people can take feminist statements seriously is a rather damning indictment of the intellectual life here. Although a lot of feminists have bumper stickers which say 'Question Everything,' they refuse to ask too many questions about their own beliefs. And- ER" I paused suddenly.

"What?" she asked.

"Okay, hold on a sec. I've just started to criticize feminism. Any-- and I mean ANY-- criticism of that ideology is not to be tolerated. It is truly that brittle a belief system. Part of the defense mechanism is to dismiss criticism on the grounds that 'there are many different feminisms' or 'not all feminists are like that' and so on. Well that's an interesting sentiment from a camp which refers to 'men' while downplaying 'there are many different men' or 'not all men are like that.' The differences between 'the many different feminisms' are stylistic rather than substantial anyway. Another line of defense is to dismiss any criticism as being an overgeneralization. Again, that's an interesting sentiment from a camp which says 'patriarchal' every twelve seconds. That's not making overgeneralizations for some reason. Oh yes, and one of the latest fashions is to dismiss criticism as an attack on 'strawfeminists.' Every feminist you want to criticize is a 'strawfeminist.' Those are strong words considering that they come from a camp which routinely lambastes men as out to 'keep women barefoot and pregnant.' That isn't beating-up on straw-men." I rolled my eyes. "Anyway, these quibbles are just evasions. The point is to make it so feminism can't be put into a debatable framework by those who aren't true believers. Just to keep it clear, from here on out I'm talking about people who call themselves 'feminists' while reserving the right to judge who is and who isn't a 'real' feminist. With me so far?" I ran my thumb across the thin stubble on my chin.

"Okay." Haruna nodded.

"See, feminist ideology provides you with a kind of ready-made personality. If anyone criticizes the ideology, it's like a personal attack on your identity. Any critic is a de facto enemy of humanity because feminists lack a faculty for dealing with criticism. They looove dishing-out the criticism but the instant they have to take any, they act wounded and shout clichéd stock-phrases. 'Bet you don't want us to vote, too!' and stuff in that vein. The irony is that they think they're independent because they're psychologically-dependent on an ideology. Anyway, the point is that all of 'the feminisms' share a number of assumptions which are highly debatable."

"Like what?" she asked.

"Well, they share a kind of idealistic belief in the near-perfectibility of the world and assert that the main obstacle is a bunch of rotten men. In fact, 'rotten men' is sort of redundant because they typically use 'men' in a negative context. In feminist writings, you could easily swap 'men' for 'jackasses' and no one would really notice a big difference." I quipped "So all 'feminisms' share to some extent an idea that everything in the world would be great if men weren't a bunch of jackasses. Men play very important roles within the feminist melodrama: those of villain and the butt of jokes. Men are evil geniuses or brainless Neanderthals, perhaps both at once. Just ignore the contradiction. Women on the other hand are the tragic heroines, rather overplayed at times. The ideology itself functions as narrator and savior riding on horseback. This formula requires men to be dehumanized and demoted to subhuman status, doing exactly what feminists say only men do to women. So it's got that projectivity element to it." I shrugged before continuing.

"What else? Oh yes, 'power' in the hands of men is bad and 'power' in the hands of women is good. Men are a bad influence on women but women are a good influence on men. Biologically, men are defective versions of women. Every problem can be solved if men are regulated in punitive ways and everything will turn-out fair if women are exempted from the rules they don't like. Any kind of improvement in the status of women is compared against a utopian standard, so every improvement is inadequate and the current situation remains no better than hell. And, of course, you have to repeat that it's all about 'equality.' So if you're a woman who likes saying bigoted things about men, just call yourself a feminist and you'll be above criticism. You're a bigot for equality so now you're a morally superior kind of bigot."

"Hah!" she laughed. "That doesn't sound very equal!"

"It gets better. The ideology doesn't truly emphasize men and women resolving any problems. It simply frames every problem as being men's fault and demands women be compensated. Feminists only say 'equality' under the unquestionable assumption that women are always worse-off. In that kind of context 'equality' means something closer to 'making the bastards pay.' In fact, the belief that women are always worse-off is more important than any other idea. If you don't believe that women are worse-off, you're not a 'real' feminist. Haruna, be honest here. Do you believe that the women in this country are always worse-off compared to men?"

She thought a bit. After a few seconds, she shrugged "No, I don't really think so."

"Are you sure?" I pressed her. "Isn't it obvious to you that women in the U.S. are always being insulted and crushed and singled-out for the most sadistic horrors everywhere you turn your eyes?"

Haruna shook her head and smiled oddly. "Most of the women I meet in this country seem to have an easy life."

"Whoa, whoa, hold on! Let me get this straight." I held-up my hands. "You, deluded fool, actually think the women in this country are generally doing okay?"

"Yes, basically. It seems very strange to insist that the women here are so badly-off." She smirked.

"Well, gee. Now you've done it." I shook my finger and pretended to scold her. "You're clueless! Women in America always have everything worse. They walk-around in rags, always on the edge of being destroyed, dropping-dead from dirty jokes, always being menaced by everything. If feminists are correct, women are so weak and so easily-bruised that a soft breeze can knock them over. So they're owed colossal amounts of reparation for all the hell they have to endure every day. You're not suggesting that feminists would ever distort the truth for ideological reasons, are you?"

Haruna laughed and shrugged. "Sorry!"

"Oh, you naïve fool. You must be repressing all the painful indignities you experience. Yes, that's it. Or you've embraced your oppression! You poor, tormented thing."

"If these people think like that, they're silly." She gripped my hand. "How silly that is."

"But honey, it's not being silly. These aren't ordinary complaints. There's a truly bizarre sort of mentality you need to have. If there's a headline saying '100 Killed in Ugandan Village, 2 Women Among Dead,' feminists will say it proves that women have everything worse. Feminism requires you to develop a weird tunnel-vision that blocks-out about 85% of reality. The omissions are simply amazing at times. Look, let me ask a simple question: If your belief-system requires you to never question it and compels you to scorn or shun or tune-out people who do, doesn't that suggest there's something deeply false and fragile about your beliefs? In colleges, Women's Studies is the academic branch of this ideology. It's not a real social science. If you look at how it formed, it mainly came straight-out of politically-motivated literary criticism. It's a discipline that is politicized to an extent unheard-of in any other field. Anyway, the professors who teach Women's Studies sometimes talk to each other about 'resistance' from their students. 'Gee, how do we handle student resistance?' That's an interesting complaint. Haruna you're a reasonable person. Does a normal kind of subject get 'resisted' by students? Does, like, geography get resisted?" I shrugged.

"Probably not." She replied.

"Right, my guess is that the students are resisting a collection of narcissism and spite and cheap-shots and bogus scholarship which are designed to make the female students angry at the male students. In fact, teachers in other departments sometimes complain that the Women's Studies majors are unwilling to think or work very hard. Anyway, the point is that a lot of feminists never think too critically about their own beliefs and they wind-up projecting a flawed resentment-based ideology onto the world. It is projection. It's some of the most blatant projectivity you'll find anywhere. They constantly accuse men of stereotyping women while spouting paranoid stereotypes about men. Much of their ability to reason is subordinated to a Party Line. Literature, art, research, entertainment, advertising, none of these things should conflict with the Party Line. Feminist beliefs are just a collection of ideological preferences and poses of political utility, many of which are unconnected by logic. So they flip from pose to pose without seeing the gaps in between." I looked-up at the clouds for a second. "So one minute, they might say something pious like 'one female victim of violence is too many!' but the next minute they'll turn-around and dismiss woman-on-woman violence in the news as being baloney media hype. The ideology simply can't handle the notion of women being violent, you see. Talk about a huge omission."

"Huh?" She looked at me curiously. "But American women sometimes seem very violent to me. On the news the other night, a woman was arrested for stabbing another woman."

"Honey, that was baloney media hype. One female victim of violence- one victim- ONLY ONE- is intolerable. We can't condone one single solitary victim, not one. Right? Oh, but that woman who was stabbed? Yawn! Media hype. No big deal." I made dismissive gestures with my hands. "So yeah, that's how seriously feminists take their own beliefs. They're very selective on what they get angry about. The first VAWA didn't even gather statistics on girl-on-girl violence. For years, feminists denied that battered lesbians exist. Today, they deny ever denying it! So yeah, feminists don't care about female victims when other females are the cause. It's totally selective outrage. The outrage turns on and off like a light switch depending on who did it. There are lots more examples of this. Like, objectively, it's pretty hard to take claims of discrimination seriously when they come from white, Ivy-League women. Right? It's extremely charitable for me to say that such a claim stretches the meaning of 'discrimination.' But feminists totally eat that stuff up without a second thought. And it goes on and on like that."

"I see." She replied. "I think."

"Look, you kind of need to understand the class-based component of feminism. Everything get analyzed in terms of gender and race with 'class' as an afterthought but class really explains a great bloody deal about feminism."

"Okay, like what?"

"It's irrelevant whether or not a given feminist is from a well-off background because the ideology automatically assumes that perspective. For instance, most of them have a kind of mania for scoffing at 'ladylike' behavior. They get all huffy and militant. 'Whatsamatta, I'm not being ladylike ya dumb fuck? Huh? HUH?' But here's the problem: 'ladylike' behavior isn't required from all women, just from women above the middle-class. Men of the same strata are ideally raised to be gentlemen but ignore that because there's no significant presence of gentlemen in the feminist universe. So when feminists reject the 'ladylike' behavior which they say is imposed upon them, they're just rejecting the behavior demanded from upper-middle-class females. This is an ideology largely by and for preppie rebel-girl wannabes. What makes it such a phony pose is that they don't reject class-deference. Can you guess what kind of man is prominent in the feminist demonology?"

"Who?" Haruna asked.

"The leering construction worker!" I smiled. "He's a huge bogeyman. One of the worst villains out there. Is it random? Not at all. He didn't go to college. He's a working-class figure who doesn't show the proper deference to a layyyy-dee. Oooh, lah-dee-dah! So even though feminists reject ladylike behavior, they go totally apeshit bonkers if they don't get ladylike treatment from the riff-raff. Moronically, feminists regard working-class men as privileged oppressors. Working-class men are in secret alliance with male CEOs through the 'patriarchy' so they're all on the same team! See how breathtakingly messed-up this all is, hon? Class-differences suddenly vanish when we start talking about men. A blue-collar man is both poor and privileged at the same time, so he's a huge gross-out. When working-class men don't defer to middle-class feminists, they get portrayed as orangutans. Feminists demand to be deferred-to like ladies while rejecting the behavior of ladies. The second bit is what justifies the first bit, but ignore that. They want it both ways. This is what makes all their anti-elitist poses so bogus! They reject the behavioral norms of the upper-middle class while feeling entitled to its lifestyle. The promotions and the fancy trips? Oh, they want those. Do you see why this is such nonsense?"

"Is it only that?" Haruna asked.

"No! The same kind of classist bias appears all over the place. Feminists are obsessed with bourgeois afflictions. Like anorexia and the chicks who cut themselves. And how about their grandstanding cries of 'I wear what I like, I go where I like!' It's straight out of a rarefied upbringing where the Little Princess is surrounded by virtual bodyguards and never has to fight her own fights. Get real. There are lots of places you shouldn't go at night. This is the reality for both sexes! There are lots of places you don't wear gang-colors or expensive jewelry. That's being streetwise, all right? Working-class women get it and men get it. But only an affluent white chick doesn't get it! She's the only person on the fucking planet who doesn't comprehend these simple things. Only a white chick is shocked to discover that the world doesn't bow to her whim all the time. Only a white chick is clueless enough to think that she-or anyone- can guzzle nine Coronas at a frat party without taking any risks whatsoever." I stuck my finger down my throat and pretended to barf.

"What else? Oh yeah, you'll find this same class-based perspective all over the big feminist novels and autobiographies. The character archetypes give it away very clearly. The male characters have names like 'Hank' and 'Bob' and they drink beer. The female characters have names like 'Mira' and 'Isolde' and drink wine. Much of feminism is a deflection of class-based disgust from upper-middle-class women, mutated with 'patriarchy' claptrap. Much of this ideology is a misdirected class-war of upper-middle-class women against everyone else. Almost. Whenever a rich woman complains, they'll automatically take her side. Because they wish to join the upper-class women. Feminists demand state-subsidized day care because nannies are what rich women have. And they get outraged if a female stockbroker earns $1.4 million instead of $1.5 million. Oh, yeah, big fucking tragedy. Never mind that 90% of men don't earn that much, the stockbroker's a victim. A victim of hooting construction workers maybe. Women can't win. Boo hoo. The complaints of the well-off become desperately important if they're the complaints of well-off women. Give me a break." I groaned. "Yeah, so feminists talk about how disadvantaged they are but they talk about rarefied things which suggest they don't really know what it's like to be disadvantaged. They make mountains out of the trivial. They disgust me! It's all fucked-up, Haruna."

"Hmmph." She replied with a curt nod.

"As I said before, if you ask too many questions, feminists put-up breathtaking structures of sophistry. Labyrinths of equivocation and fudges and semantic games. They nit-pick your terminology, use postmodernist gray-language, do anything to fuzz or deflect the question. If you point-out that their reasoning is frequently awful, they might say that logic is rigged against them because it's 'inherently male.' Okay does that make women 'inherently less logical,' then? That's when they start insulting your penis. That's usually how it goes. They never give real answers."

"That sounds silly. Or crazy." Haruna grimaced.

"That's because you don't comprehend the latest postmodern theories, honey." I quipped sarcastically. "Look, it's a totalistic ideology. Totalistic ideologies claim to explain everything. It's comforting to have the answer to everything, to have an easy map in your head that simplifies everything. You get a smug sense of superiority, intellectual and moral. Everyone outside your group is stupid and morally-inferior and that's part of why feminism is appealing. The ideology points to a reason for all human misery: men. Individual men, men as a group, masculinity, the dumb blanket-term 'patriarchy,' whatever. Our culture is pretty chivalrous so there's not much resistance if you want to scapegoat men. If all problems are caused by someone else, you own a reduced burden of responsibility for your own life. The university programs and journals that traffic in this schlock are sort of like experiments in long-term arrested development. And there's a quasi-religious aspect as well. It's a secular religion with 'patriarchy' as the devil. Men, straight men at least, are agents of sin who messed-up Eden-like matriarchies of the distant past. These unrecorded matriarchies are the true natural state. A Golden Age to which we can one day return." I made some gagging noises before continuing. "And consider the word 'patriarchy.' It just a stand-in for 'society.' But ooh… it sounds scaaaary." I wiggled my fingers before Haruna's face. "Ooooh, it sounds dark and Kafkaesque. OOOH! Scary stuff. So you enjoy a sensation of being rebellious against 'society,' except you face no risk. This same society you're rebelling against has taboos against punishing you. So it's play-time rebellion. When the going gets rough, they huff over to the Dean's Office or the campus police or the civil courts or some other parental authority figure. Some rebellion that is."

Haruna began to laugh. "Are you making this up?" she asked.

"I wish I was. And it gets sillier. Want to know one of their core demands? More women need to work for the Establishment. As if a tobacco corporation will magically become better if a woman were in charge of it." I smiled and shrugged. "If you're a tobacco CEO, you're going to be a total bastard. You knowingly addict people to a deadly product which kills millions of people and you don't lose any sleep about it. So if a woman graduates through the bureaucracy to that position, she has to be a total bastard too. If she got there and decided to run the place like a charity, she'd be kicked-out by the board of directors in two seconds. All right? That's how things work in grown-up land. But feminists believe- truly believe- that putting a woman in charge of something will make it better. She'll make everything better because she is a woman." I sighed and rolled my eyes. "You have to ignore when it doesn't happen. So, like, when Jeanne Kirkpatrick became a major architect of US foreign policy in the '80s, she went-around offering weapons to every fascist dictator in Latin America. But ignore that. At the UN, she watered-down international condemnation of Saddam's use of poison gas against Iran. Hell, when Argentina invaded the Falklands? She wanted to side with Argentina! Oh, but ignore all that. Putting a woman in charge makes everything better. Because she is a woman. So biology is destiny, except for when it's not useful to say so."

"This is confusing." Haruna replied. "Can't they make-up their minds about whether women are better or equal or what?"

"No, they defer to both positions depending on utility. Similar interpretation applies to men: How can a group so meat-headed and flawed stack the world in their favor so cleverly?" I shrugged and sighed. "Look, the kind of women who are wrapped-up in this- ugh- most of them lack a scholarly command of any area outside literary analysis or the humanities. When it comes to scientific or technical matters, they have almost nothing intelligent to contribute. Except for stuff that sounds like it's from Trofim Lysenko. Like 'gender is a social construct' despite a mountain of irrefutable scientific evidence to the contrary. Look, when you read a piece of literature specifically looking for sexism, you're going to find it. If you don't find any, you conclude it's evidence of a cover-up. So feminists misapply a lit-crit methodology to social analysis and their conclusions tend to be projective and preordained. They start at the conclusion, working backwards to twist the facts to support the conclusion. In the sciences, that gets you thrown-out. In Women's Studies, it gets you an A." I smiled queasily. "Look, the only common denominator to virtually all works of feminist analysis is that men don't come-out looking so good when you reach the end. THAT, honey, doesn't change. It always turns-out that way and it never gets tiresome or repetitive or-"

"Wait, wait, they're mostly young people?" She asked.

"Huh? Some are, some aren't. I sometimes come across dewy-eyed young people who are fresh out of college." I waved a bug away from my face. "They're freshly indoctrinated to say: 'Feminism is about equality for everyone!' Okay, so let's test that. Shall we?"

"Okay, how?"

"There are lots of simple tests. How would feminists treat a man who's a victim of domestic violence? Would they give him the same level of sensitivity that a female victim would get? Absolutely not. First, they'd deny his existence. And if they acknowledged his existence, they'd call him a fucking whiner and jeer at him to get lost. If the same guy had a sex change? Oh, now there's ton of sympathy. And if a woman complained about anything, would they say the word 'whiner'? I don't even need to answer that. So that's how much they believe in 'equality.' They mean 'go fuck yourself.'" I gently ran my hand down Haruna's arm.

"There are lots of tests like this. How do feminists feel about 'equality' when it comes to punishing lawbreaking women? When you ask them straight out, they have the tact to say yes but the real attitude surfaces when you see their reaction to real cases. They do not believe in punishing women but they believe in punishing men. The instant there's a high-profile case of a mom bashing her kid's head with a cinderblock, they close ranks to say she had postpartum depression or a bad childhood or a disorder or she was abused and her socioeconomic blah blah whatever. She should be sent to therapy on weekends as punishment. But a man who does the identical crime? Oh, lock him away. He never had a bad childhood, he never had mental problems or whatever an accused woman always seems to have. Punishment is for men, not for women. Be punitive to one sex but not to the other. I mean, Jesus, look, feminists only support 'equality' when women gain something. Okay? In situations where equal treatment would be to a woman's disadvantage- or if it would even make women look bad- feminists start arguing against equal treatment."

"I see." Haruna frowned. "So if a woman says she feels bad, they say: 'Oh, you poor dear! You poor dear!' But if a man feels bad, they want to make it worse."

"Pretty much. If a man feels bad, you'll see them gloat and do little victory dances and so on. In a nutshell, you're basically correct. And what's so amazing is that feminists feel compelled to say, over and over, 'feminism is about equality' as if other people are too dumb to understand what 'equality' means. Feminism is easy, you see. It's 'equality' and nothing else. Oh, gee, why don't people understand that? Why don't people get it? Oooh, it must be backlash. Yes! We're too successful! Backlash against our success!" I gagged.

"But here's why it's phony. Ready for this? If feminism was about equality, they wouldn't have to keep saying it over and over! It would be so self-evident that it wouldn't need to be said." I brushed some hair off of Haruna's forehead and continued. "See? The reason they need to repeat 'feminism is about equality' is because most people see that 'equality' doesn't square with their other beliefs. Most people believe in the idea of equal opportunity. No sane person argues against it. But feminists think 'equal opportunity' is bullshit because of the 'patriarchy' which hangs over everything like a gaseous demon. So feminists obsessively conflate individual rights with group outcomes. Every outcome should be 50-50, but not in situations where women can get 80-20 outcomes. The dishonesty here is pretty amazing. This game they play- this ruse, this pretense- I think it has to be cynical or something."

"What do you mean?"

"When they explain themselves to a person like you- and they think you're a moron because you're with me- they'll say 'Feminism is about equality. Simple!' That's all. 'If you believe in equality, you're a feminist!' So it's simple! All right? But to each other, they say stuff like: 'myeh patriarchy myeh phallocentric paradigms myeh myeh!' To each other, 'equality' requires a massive overhaul of society and equal opportunity means nothing. The whole of society needs to be transformed. That's not 'simple,' is it? To you, they'll say that equality is an unobjectionable little thing. To each other, they'll talk for hours about everything needing to be subverted and everything needing to be rebuilt and everyone has to be reeducated and whatnot. Do you see the dishonesty?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"There's so much more to this, hon. If you talk about granting special dispensation and special immunities to one segment of the population while not granting them to other segments, you're advocating favoritism, not equality. Any person with a grain of reason agrees, but this is exactly the sort of thing that feminists endorse. You're nodding and understanding what I said because it's a simple idea. But if I were to say that to a feminist, she'd accuse me of talking gobbledygook."

"Why? What's so hard to understand?"

"From her point of view, feminists never endorse different treatment between men and women. From her point of view, men always get everything they want all the time, so demanding that women be given everything they want all the time on the basis of being women is perfectly reasonable."

"But that's not true!" She protested. "Obviously it's not true. If my brother got everything he wanted, he'd have a Ferrari."

"Honey, ignore that it's not true. Ignore that it's an ignorant and sexist stereotype to say that men get everything they want. Ignore everything factual. Being a feminist feels more satisfying than dealing with facts. You create your own facts! Let me make the dishonesty more obvious: Let's say you think women should get free candy on Tuesdays."

"Okay!" Haruna laughed. "I don't mind free candy."

"Right. On Tuesdays, for women only. To a feminist, that's completely reasonable. Demanding free candy on Tuesdays is not demanding special treatment. Why? Because men get free candy every day. It's irrelevant that it's a total lie. Just project onto the world and say it's true. Just keep projecting. Feminism is more satisfying than reality. It feeeeels right. So now you're aggrieved and you love being aggrieved. It's a delicious feeling. You're a victim of discrimination and you can angrily take revenge now. And you're owed free candy! Yes, yes! And your comrades agree. Yes, every man has a gumdrop house and a licorice hat. Project as hard as you can. Poof, now it's true. And you can always find some guy with a candy store and point to him as proof. He's a man with candy, so he gives free candy to other men, so all men get free candy, so giving women free candy on Tuesdays isn't special treatment. It all makes perfect sense like that."

"But that's-" she trailed-off, unable to come-up with the words.

"Painfully obtuse?" I offered.

"Yes!"

"Of course it is! There's also a circular argument in there. If a man does something, it has to benefit other men. Why? Because that's what men do. Why? Because it benefits other men. And so on. Look, if you want the damned candy, just say what'll get you the candy. This isn't about fairness, honey. This isn't about honesty. It's about free candy. Free candy on Tuesdays isn't special treatment, it's equality. If someone says you're full of baloney, throw a fit, insist you're a victim and maybe they'll back-off. Appeal to their chivalry. Ideologies unleash passion, not rationality. The more passion required by an ideology, the less likely it is to be true. The major theme you see running through feminism is anger. Anger anger anger all over the place. That's why they constantly talk about lurid stuff with high emotional appeal: They turn anger into a fucking fetish. But it isn't a normal kind of anger I'm talking about here. It's an implacable anger which escalates after its demands are complied with. That's the behavior of opportunists. People who've learned that anger gets them what they want. The desire for 'equality' is a demonstrable fraud, honey. The real impulse is 'winner take all and women should never lose.'"

"But that's childish!" Haruna shot back. "How ridiculous it is."

"These are childish people. The word 'responsibility' scares the fuck out of them. I mean, go back to the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments. It's a major document of the early women's movement. They demanded the rights of citizens because they were citizens. Good idea! Superb idea. And they didn't demand cutesy double-standards 'to get even' or special programs for women-only or demand that men be regulated while women shouldn't be regulated. Right? But fast-forward to today and the modern women's movement here openly demands stuff like that. Openly! And in one way or another, modern feminists make the point that women are owed these things not because they are citizens but because they are women. That's a huge difference. It's alien to what early feminists did. It's a whole different ball of wax when you insinuate that crimes against women are viler than crimes against men and taxpayer money needs to come from both sexes to serve only women and so on. All right? 'She gets this job because she's the best for this job' is wholly different from 'She gets this job because we want more women in this department.' Right? One is fair, the other is discriminatory. But to a feminist, there's no moral difference between them at all. So much of what bills itself as 'feminism' nowadays is simply a crass type of partisanship. It's sex-based cheerleading and a sex-based spoils system."

"I see."

"And here's something they never fail to forget: Responsibility is the flip side of a right. When you demand a right without acknowledging its responsibilities, that's also a demand for privilege. Right? Simple. You understand this perfectly. Okay? But that's gobbledygook to a feminist. If you say 'equal responsibilities for women,' she'll act like you're speaking ancient Sanskrit or something."

"But why?" she asked.

"Responsibility is acknowledging that you're the source of your own behavior and the misuse of your rights can have negative consequences. But feminists swear, all the way down to their bones, that women have so little standing in American society that they're not the sources of their behavior and their actions have little consequence."

"Oh, please!" Haruna scoffed. "That's ridiculous!"

"I know it's ridiculous! According to feminists, women are two inches tall. Like this." I held-up my thumb and forefinger. "So demanding responsibility from women is heartless. Oh, but they recognize the positive types of responsibility. If a woman wins an award, she deserves total responsibility. She's not two inches tall. She does something dumb? Oh, she's two inches tall now. Plus, they think men are less responsible than women anyway, so go ahead and demand responsibility from men and demand 'social responsibility' from organizations but never ever demand it from women. And while you're out there demanding responsibility from men, you can't acknowledge their rights. Merely acknowledging the rights of men makes you barf. So when it comes to providing child-support money, you demand that men fulfill their responsibilities. The right to be a parent to your kids is the flip side of providing the child-support, but when it comes to giving a dad access to the kids feminists don't give a sh-"

"Wait, wait, hold on." She stopped me. "If you have a right to free speech, what responsibilities do you have?"

"Huh? Well, you have a responsibility to not use it to infringe other people's freedom. Once again, feminists don't get it. They think women are so easily-bruised that they need to be protected from offensive speech while reserving the right for women to be as offensive as they want. Look, they think 'free speech' is just a sly way to perpetuate white-male-what-the-hell-ever. But there's no such thing as unacceptable speech from a feminist. Oh no, a feminist has to advocate mass-murder before she'll get censured. An academic named Mary Daly once called men a cancer upon the earth in the book Gyn/Ecology. Hey, didn't Julius Streicher call Jews a cancer upon the earth in the 30s? Well that's different. Daly's an attack-dog for the proper side, so it's okay when she says it. Why? Because, uh… er… 'power differentials!' Yeah! That's right. 'Power differentials.' We just made that up so everything's fine now. Calling men a cancer upon the earth is okay. Even though it's comparable to the worst stuff in the annals of hate literature, it's okay if Daly does it. It's not even tasteless, unless she risks making feminism look bad. Yeah, so you can criticize Daly on the grounds that she could hurt the image of feminism but apart from that there's no problem." I twirled my finger around in the air, making the Japanese gesture for 'crazy.' Haruna laughed as I continued.

"So feminism never crosses the line into man-hating. When I say 'some feminists hate men,' I am making unfair generalizations. When Daly says that men are a cancer upon the earth, it's just a metaphor. If you're a man who doesn't like being called a cancer upon the earth, you're an unsoldierly whiner who can't handle a strong woman. So women can say that half the population is a cancer upon the earth. Don't ask what'd happen if a male academic wrote that women are a cancer upon the earth. That's different. That's hate. Gee, what about equality? Not when it comes to saying identical things. There's always a good excuse to not demand from women the kind of accountability they'd so casually demand from men. Everyone should take feminist opinions seriously but not their nastiness. There should be no limits on bashing men but feminism isn't about man-bashing. See? It's simple!" I repeated the twirling gesture for 'crazy' again to more laughter.

"Here's what's most fascinating of all. In the feminist universe, 'free will' is where the shoe pinches the foot. It's where the ideology trips all over itself. Everything that women do that feminists aren't proud of is actually men's fault. Because of brainwashing. Women are brainwashed into doing stuff that's too girly. You've been 'pressured' to pursue certain careers and you've been 'socialized' to wear pretty clothes and you've been 'made to act' a certain way and you've 'internalized' alien ideas and whatnot. Your locus of control is external. You're a little finger puppet without autonomy. So they see most women as being brain-dead morons, like psychiatric patients or kindergartners or something. Naturally, feminists don't really see themselves that way. Only when it becomes convenient to evade censure. But in the main, they think other women are morons who need feminist guidance. If you don't think you need feminist guidance, it proves how stupid you are."

"Baka jya nai?" Haruna muttered.

"So, gee, I guess it was a mistake to give women the vote because they're brainwashed by Ladies' Home Journal, right? Women shouldn't be allowed to sign contracts because maybe they're 'socialized' to sign stuff against their will. Women shouldn't own property lest they be 'pressured' into giving it away. They shouldn't work in a company if they can't distinguish between TV and real life. They shouldn't testify in trials or handle money or- look, it's SO stupid! When convenient, they take the stance that women are passive, gullible, weak-minded dupes who can't think for themselves. Women lack agency because they're driven by mind-control beams. My God, if feminists are correct then women should be kept in locked rooms and fed pellets through a hole in the wall!"

"Omoshiroi!" Haruna laughed.

"But it goes on and on like that! Oh, here's my favorite. I love this one. Ready? You've 'internalized a phallocentric bias.' That's awesome. You don't have a phallus yet you've internalized its bias. Wow, how did you do that? Here you are, no phallus to help you, but you absorbed a phallocentric bias! Even with your handicap, you did it without trying. Amazing." I grinned. "Look, this crap all amounts to a disavowal of your judgment to make you innocent no matter what you do. If you're brainwashed into doing something then your action is morally neutral. If you make lunch for me, it's not your choice. You're making lunch under duress. You've been 'pressured.' No free will. Oh, but hold up a sec…" I paused.

"What?" she asked.

"When it's time for you to vote, whoa, now you've got free will! Where the hell did that come from? You're not 'pressured' now? When you want an abortion, it's a 'choice.' Gee, women didn't have an ability to make a choice one second ago. Aren't women 'socialized' to do men's bidding? Well, not any more. Now you can 'choose.' There you go. Okay, you're 16 and you want a Plan B contraception pill? Poof, you're autonomous like an adult. Oh, but 20 years later, you're 'made' to act a certain way so now you're 36 and you're not an adult. A 16-year-old is an adult but a 36-year-old isn't. Men are all adults compared to you, unless you're 16 and you want Plan B. So feminists get all mad if you suggest that a woman can't make her own decisions or run her own life while they simultaneously believe that women are routinely 'pressured' by 'the media' into starving themselves to death." I made a 'cuckoo' gesture. Haruna giggled as I continued.

"Honestly, the two ideas don't go together very well, can they? Women can fully manage their own lives, except they might starve themselves to death if the TV shows them skinny models. I've never met one man who'd be turned-on by a skeletal famine victim, but feminists charge we all 'pressure' women to look that way. I mean, jeez, the lunacy just keeps going on like that! For the last 40 years, feminists have likened uncomfortable shoes to Chinese foot-binding. Well, jeez, in this day and age who the hell forces a woman to wear uncomfortable shoes? Honestly, now. Who 'makes' a woman do that? Who the hell stops you from buying comfortable shoes? No one, that's who. But no matter. Women have no free will and they have total free will. You believe both at once. How the hell can anyone's brain not fly-apart from these ideas?" I rubbed my temples, as if getting a headache. "But there's a point to this madness. See the point? It's a ploy for adult women to be absolved of adult responsibility. If you do something dumb or irresponsible or ideologically-incorrect, you could not have done it freely. You wear an apron? You have no free will. You refuse to wear an apron? Free will. Sign a form to enter a job on Wall Street? Good choice. Sign a form to enter a bikini contest? Men made you do it. Ugh!" I stuck my finger in my mouth like a gun and pretended to blow my brains out.

"What a fucking joke! And it gets even dumber sometimes. I've seen feminists say that women are socialized to act a certain way, therefore women bear no blame for doing whatever they do, and then they switch gears to say that men are socialized to act a certain way and men bear total blame for what they do. Huh? How the hell does that work? How the deuce can one robot be morally superior to another if they're just running programs?" I shrugged. "Oh, that's a puzzle. Gee we need a really smart answer, right? Hmmm, let's think. Well how about this: Men are robots, and they program themselves and everyone else. Yes! That's it!" I waved my hands in the air. "Hallelujah! Brilliant!"

"Silly!" She poked me.

"I'm not making this up! Intellectually, it's like a Dance of the Seven Veils. There's a widely-read feminist blogger out there who actually said something like that and no one disagreed with her. All of your brain are belong to us! Yeah. Well, if that's so, then everything good about women comes from male programming. Men are the cause of everything good that women do because women are programmed by men, yes? If Marie Curie won a Nobel Prize, men deserve all the credit because they're the ones who programmed her to do it. That's the only logical conclusion. But that's when she started deleting my posts." I managed to force a dry laugh.

"Look, arguing false consciousness for convenience is just cowardly. You might as well blame Leprechauns. So, like, the chicks in the Girls Gone Wild videos were programmed? They were brainwashed to smile and laugh when they flash their tits? Yeah, okay. The idea that a lot of women out there make themselves into sex objects out of vanity or out of squalid self-interest is out of the question. Oh no no, they're 'dependent on male approval.' So the Ms-readers blame men for the behavior of Cosmo-readers. The tit-flashers don't know what's going on but men really know what's going on. That's right, men always know the score. They're puppet-masters who know how to manipulate everything. Men are much smarter than women, except women are just as smart. Actually, no. Women are only smart if you want to dispel the stereotypes of feeblemindedness that feminists revert to if a woman does something stupid." I paused and shook my head in wonderment. "This is not liberation, honey. This is thinking and acting like a damned weasel."

"Here's another thing about feminism that should arouse suspicion among anyone: If you demand to define what 'equality' is for everyone else, you're demanding a higher level of authority. You're demanding to be a dictator, not an equal. When you start telling other people how to behave and who has to give what to whom, you're not claiming equality with them and it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise. That's pretty intuitive, right?"

"Right." She nodded.

"It's also pretty hard to understand the kind of reasoning whereby feminists say that men in groups might unintentionally exclude women, therefore, women can hold meetings which intentionally exclude men." I shrugged. "The second is considered totally justified by the first. So if you say that all-female meetings are necessary but all-male meetings are evil, you're basically demanding that women be given more freedom of assembly than men should be. So when women get together into a group it's an act of 'sisterhood' or 'solidarity' and when men get together it's 'exclusion' or a 'little boy's club.' Unconsciously excluding women is wrong and it justifies consciously, purposefully excluding men. How the fuck can that idea find any purchase in the minds of supposedly rational people, Haruna?"

"I understand what you're saying, but how can anyone think it's equality?" she asked.

"No sane person can! Seriously. If feminists were to design a board-game, the female players could roll the dice until the best numbers came-up. The game would be called 'Equality.' 'Equality' would be written all over the box. Women can't win any other game so they shouldn't be allowed to lose ever again. We need to guarantee women a space in the winner's circle by giving them special routes to the finish line. If a man loses, well, he's just a loser but no woman is ever just a loser. If a woman wins a rigged game, it's a huge accomplishment. Well done. Huzzah. A victory for women everywhere." I groaned. "I mean, look at one of the core contradictions: Relations between men and women are defined as those of 'oppressor' and 'oppressed.' These are morally-loaded terms, with 'oppressor' being morally inferior. So women are equal to men but morally superior to men. Okay? Do those two ideas fit together very well?"

"Not really. How can you call yourself morally superior to someone if you're also calling yourself their equal?"

"Exactly. It's chauvinistic."

"It's kind of… what's the word? Sneaky?" She asked.

"Dishonest?" I suggested.

"Right." She nodded.

"Yes. A million times yes. That's why you're a sane woman, honey. You understand very reasonable ideas." I kissed the back of her hand. "So starting from that core contradiction, all these other contradictions pile-up like a train wreck. Do feminists take an accusation of discrimination against men in the workplace as seriously as discrimination against women? Hell no. If a man goes to court to claim discrimination, it gives feminists a chance to jeer at the fucking whiner. 'Hah, fucking whiner!' and stuff like that. Oh, but a woman goes to court for discrimination? They eat that up with a fucking spoon. A man does the identical thing? Hah, laugh at the stupid crybaby. If you demand equal treatment but you're the wrong sex, feminists will laugh at you. More 'equality' right there. And, wonder of logic, there's never any need for 'diversity' when women comprise 90% of a department's personnel."

"What? How can that-"

"No, don't ask!" I held-up my hand. "There's no answer. It's a Zen riddle. Nursing schools and primary education departments and speech therapy departments which are 90% female are completely diverse. There's no need for reforms or affirmative action or any special measures." I sighed. "Hon, some of these double-standards are just so egregious, that-"

"Wait." Haruna held-up her hand to stop me. "Wait, wait. So feminists are a bunch of women who want to have everything for themselves." Haruna said. "That's what it sounds like."

"No, hon. They don't want to 'have everything.' They want to 'have it all.' See? Totally different."

She made a face in disapproval. "How greedy and selfish. Why are there so many stupid women in this country?"

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