A man decides feminists can ruin him and wisely opts to not engage

 

 

Just over a year ago, I signed with a literary agent in New York and we have worked together to craft a book that I am very proud of – I could not have done it without his help. Before we ever signed our agreement, I told him about my online activism and blog, which did not particularly bother him, at the time. I felt it would be very unethical of me to simply blindside him with that information after the fact, so I was truthful from the beginning. He has always known about Janet Bloomfield and JudgyBitch.  Sadly, something has happened (I don’t know what) and my agent has decided to drop me as a client and forego any and all income the book might potentially generate. He does not wish to be named or acknowledged in any way.

 

I do not know how common a practice this is in publishing but my guess would be that few agents invest a year in a book and then decide it wasn’t worth the effort. I could be wrong, but who knows. Maybe I wrote a shitty book that no one in a million years will buy. It’s possible.

 

But something tells me that is not what is going on here.

 

I am now left with a professionally edited manuscript, and a friend of mine has created beautiful cover art, and I am free to self-publish the book, which is what I plan to do. Ironically, the book has absolutely nothing to do with feminism or men’s rights and is simply a story about family, courage and survival. It’s a work of fiction inspired by many true stories.

 

Nothing to do with men’s rights, and then again, everything to do with men’s rights. I believe that I have crafted characters who are fully human – characters that do not follow stereotypical gender roles, but who at the same time do not deny the central identity of gender and who exist in a time period where those identities could be confining and oppressive, for both men and women. Without men’s rights, and all the ways I have come to understand how humans are nuanced, I do not think I could have written the male characters without descending into stereotypes and pantomimes of real people. I’m not especially proud of the fact that my original orientation towards men was to see them as caricatures, but I have made the effort and done the work to unpack those stereotypes and learn a new way of looking at the world. In that sense, this book has everything to do with men’s rights.

 

Ultimately I have no idea what spooked my agent, but I do not question his decision at all. No one should have to sacrifice their career and livelihood.  I have always known resisting the tyranny of feminism would come with a price, but this is my battle and I do not require civilians to go down with me.

 

Now I must learn the fine art of self-publishing and see what I can do with it. I am profoundly disappointed, but it takes more than disappointment to knock me out.

 

Stay tuned and I will let you know what is happening.

 

Lots of love,

 

JB

REPOST: The moment I knew feminism was a crock of shit

In light of all the interest in anti-feminism lately, I thought I would repost this older article explaining how I came to reject feminism.

 

When I originally started university, I was enrolled in the Sociology of Work and Industry specialization, thinking that I would complete a degree that would give me some sort of qualifications for employment. I wanted to get a head start on my program, so I took my first course during summer school and it took me all of twelve weeks to figure out that a professor’s job is pretty much the best one you could possibly have. Professors have more or less complete control over how and when and what they work on, and they are free to follow their own interests. I watched with complete envy as professors strolled into class late, gave lackadaisical lectures, rambled on about their own ideas and then went to the pub with us to grab a few beers and discuss some esoteric bullshit in further detail.

Going to university was a revelation for me. Suddenly, pointing out in exquisite detail exactly why people were stupid and their arguments were retarded was not some awkward social flaw, it was the key to getting those participation marks! Explaining in graphic detail why other’s people’s ideas were ludicrous was called an essay! Being all judgy and bitchy was the entire point!

Needless to say, I loved it.

True story: I once made a girl cry in class by calling her stupid (not in that exact word, of course). For one of my electives, I took Women in Christianity (hey – bird course!) and some little chicky thing got up to explain the virgin birth as an example of parthenogenesis. Basically, that means self-fertilization. An ovum develops into an embryo without sperm, commonly occurring in insects and plants. Leaving aside the fact that insects and plants ARE NOT HUMANS, obviously the offspring would have to be genetically identical to the parent. Where would any new genetic information come from? So not five minutes into what was supposed to be a 30 minute presentation, I put up my hand and said, “Wait! Are you saying Jesus was a WOMAN”?

She thought about that for two seconds, realized her entire argument was a colossal piece of shit and burst into tears.

Yeah, I’m a bitch. And kind of judgy, too.

So I knew that I would never leave the university. I would go on take graduate work, then post-graduate work and snag me an office of my own. I became very good friends with an untenured history professor who cemented my resolve to become a professor. She had to “work” quite hard, but her thesis was on farm girls and what they actually did, and to me, spending hours in the library pouring over agricultural records didn’t seem much like work at all.

It seemed like heaven.

FarmGirl’s thesis was eventually published as a book (earning her tenure) and she is now compiling a historical record of the evolution of the butter churn. For well over $100 000/year. What a great fucking job. FarmGirl encouraged me to choose something that really interested me, and so after careful consideration, I decided that sitting on my ass watching movies for the rest of my life seemed like an excellent use of my time and intellect. So I left sociology for the Department of Film Theory, and so began my journey deep into the heart of feminism.

Naively, I thought a degree in Film Theory would involve film and theory. Little did I know that the theory was a rather specific one: men suck and women are awesome. AKA feminism. Well, okay. I was just a teenager myself, having walked away from a marriage proposal from an awesome guy because I was suspicious that being married and having children might ruin my life – that’s what all the ladies around me were saying. “Don’t do it! You have your whole life in front of you! Don’t throw it away on a man, even if he is kind of fantastic”.

So down the rabbit hole I went. My first “theory” was written by Laura Mulvey, called “Visual and Other Pleasures”. The theory is that when men look first in a film, that gaze is controlling (bastards!) and turns women into objects (assholes!) and then when women DO look first, they get punished (misogynists!). We watched an Alfred Hitchcock film and then sat about railing about what dicks men are. Sadly, the class was overwhelming male, and I wonder what has happened to those men? Sitting through class after class, learning that men are cruel and useless and stupid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mulvey

Throughout the four long years of my indoctrination, I was always a bit nervous and embarrassed and dare I say ashamed of the things I was learning. I have three brothers, and going home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and summer holidays was always a stark reminder that my life was filled with men and they were nothing like the men I was learning to fear and hate at school. There was always something a bit off with all the theories. It wasn’t until my fourth year, when I confronted Moniqe Wittig that the bulb suddenly blared into full spectrum light.

Essentially, Wittig’s argument is that only lesbians are truly women and that only lesbians experience true freedom. Taking as a starting point the idea that freedom is central to the definition of humanity, Wittig is basically arguing for the end of the human race. If the only way to experience freedom is to be a lesbian, men are instantly irrelevant. Without men, there are no children. Without children, there is no future. It’s PD James and the End of Men.

http://feminsttheoryreadinggroup.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/one-is-not-born-a-woman-by-monique-wittig-1981/

That’s when I knew the whole theory was just a giant crock of shit. My last essay was “Feminism as Nihilism” and I think I made the professor cry, but you know what? Fuck her. Fuck all of them. Fuck their ugly theories and their hatred of men and their cavalier attitudes towards the flesh and blood men who sat in front of them taking notes on their own extinction. Fuck my whole four years of useless squabbling and arguing and pointless pedantic pedagogy.

I left university and decided to go to work. And with a degree in Film Theory – yeah, that worked out well. I know how to make awesome lattes and frappacinos. Thanks feminism!

So we know what happens next: I go to MBA school and walk away with an MRS and every day I breathe a sigh of relief that I escaped a life of endless whining and complaining and imagining myself a victim and railing over at Jezebel about what a bunch of fuckers men are!

http://judgybitch.com/2012/11/03/i-went-to-mba-school-to-get-my-mrs-degree-and-it-worked/

In retrospect, I should have married that lovely boy when I was 19. I should have done dishes for a decade and thought about my future and what I wanted and why.

http://judgybitch.com/2012/11/03/a-decade-of-dishes-will-turn-a-girl-into-a-woman-and-a-sensible-one-at-that/

I’m very lucky that things worked out for me so beautifully. For many women, that isn’t the case. They bought the “men suck, women are awesome” theory of reality and find themselves living lives they hate with men they don’t respect and children they never see. How sad.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1196180/Why-women-unhappy.html

And how splendid is the irony that in just a few short years, I WILL be a professor? In the Faculty of Business. The one faculty where women’s studies majors fear to tread. We try to limit our bullshit to currency swaps and derivatives pricing.

One thing that strikes me, looking back at four years of Catherine McKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Luce Irigaray, Germaine Greer and Kate Millet.

Why are all these bitches so ugly?

Could be a theory there.

Lots of love,

JB

REBLOG: Feminists, Stop Shooting Yourselves in the Vagina: Examining the Outrage Over “Women Against Feminism”

 

Link to original post

by Caitlin Elam

While spelunking in the vast cave that is the Internet, exploring the concept of “Women Against Feminism”, I did a double take:

“Women against FEMINISM? Burn them at the stake! Someone fetch me my fainting couch and some smelling salts, I’ve got the vapors!” Yes, I’m guilty of being a tad overdramatic…sometimes.

I composed myself and thought about it logically: what would it hurt me to go check out their site with an open mind, read what they have to say, and comment on it via blog? Aren’t we supposed to be open-minded creatures of tolerance these days? That’s what I thought and what I’ve always believed/been taught.

I read their Facebook/Tumblr pages and got a look at what this was, exactly. This isn’t women hating on other women but rather trying to reshape what modern feminism has become and I like a good deal of what they’re saying. They’re not saying women should go back in the kitchen and be barefoot and pregnant (unless they want to). They’re not saying that women shouldn’t have rights to healthcare, decision-making power over their bodies, be able to vote/own land/hold office/join the military/etc, or be safe from anti-victim rape legislation. I didn’t see one iota of any of that in any of the posts..

What I found was a bunch of thoughtful, ballsy women coming together for a common cause and supporting one another. Their name is either a misnomer or really cleverly crafted trolling/satire because these are actual feminists (or what feminists are supposed to be), in my humble opinion. In a couple of cases, some of these women have said that feminists have told WAF women they should be raped for their beliefs. Counterproductive, much?

I didn’t agree with all of the women that posted but that’s ok; I don’t think they were looking for my approval and that is wonderful because they shouldn’t need my approval – only their own. If it feels right, do it (unless it’s against the law – no brainer).

It was evident to me that they want the freedom to choose based on what theywant personally. You want to go be a stay at home wife and mother? Go ahead – I’ve done it and it’s the hardest freaking job on the planet but easily the most rewarding. Do you want to be a multi-billionaire CEO? Go for it! I suggest reading “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss and listening to “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor to jazz you up.

I’ve been working in vocations where males are more prevalent than females since I could legally work because those fields are where my passions were/are. The jobs I loved working just happened to be ubiquitously male, not because I felt I had anything to prove or needed to spank the patriarchy with my uterus of mightiness. I’ve been employed in a video store (I love movies), a movie theater (did I mention I love movies?), a comic book store (I love comics), a pizza joint (who doesn’t love pizza?), and a police officer in the United States Navy (I love me some justice).

Have I been sexually harassed before? Yes, I have and it was while I was in the military. It was absolutely a horrible experience. Do you want to know what I did? I reported the infraction (at the encouragement of a man). My “chutzpah” sparked something because a few other women were encouraged to speak out about this Sailor for his wrongdoing; he had done the same thing to them that he had done to me.

The man responsible was put up for Captain’s Mast (Non Judicial Punishment) and he was subsequently and unceremoniously kicked out of the Navy. I was then, unfortunately, reprimanded by his Chief for “ruining” the guy’s life, family, and career by reporting the harassment. Navy isn’t ever going to be perfect. Doesn’t matter – I’m still proud of standing up for myself and others.

I didn’t automatically glean from those two bad experiences that all men are horrible, women-hating trolls because that would be stupid. Overgeneralizing is not only myopic but also unfair. For every one man I had making my life hell, I had five supporting me every step of the way. My Commanding Officer, my Executive Officer, my Security Officer, my Leading Petty Officer (MA1 Darren Clayton – whom I consider my mentor to this day and a hell of a friend/person), my coworkers/brothers in arms – all of them house Y chromosomes. All of them helped and supported me. And yes, I had female Sailors supporting me, too. Good Sailors all.

The military does have a long way to go in its treatment towards women but it is experiences like mine that generally give me hope. It was also kick-ass women (like my grandmother) who were in the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service) that made it so I could even take the oath to join the Navy in the first place.

Yes, the system does bomb and there injustices commented against women every single day all over the world. It tears my heart in two. I want to fight for those women, not women that tell me I’m a piece of shit because I like getting manicures or I let my daughter wear pink. Newsflash: the kid LIKES pink – shut up about it (she also pretends to be Wolverine from the X-Men if it helps you sleep better at night).

While it is a sickening/sobering thought that women suffer abuse every single day, it does not mean that the whole male race are vicious brutes ready to spring out and hurt ladies at all hours of the day. If that were the case, I wouldn’t be able to walk out of my house.

I wouldn’t have married my husband if I thought he was just going to persecute me; I was raised better than that. Could you look at this picture of Sam asleep with our daughter on Father’s Day and honestly tell me that he hates women? He’s helping me with raising one (very well, I might add).

The modern feminist movement has gone from women supporting each other, fighting against real injustices, and having a common goal of equality with men to the other end of the spectrum where women viciously attack each other and compete against each other for who can be the “most feminist” (but God forbid there be a pageant for that title because that would be *gasp* sexist).

I do fundamentally consider myself a feminist, though, but I always have to have to add a disclaimer so I’m not lumped in with the radicals that have the loudest voices in the media. I strive for female equality with men rather than superiority over men; there, that’s about as concise as I can get it.

I think the feminist movement has come a long way and accomplished a lot but has most definitely overshot the mark to its own detriment. It went from “all men are better than women and should dominate” to “all men are scum and must be stopped!” Whatever happened to happy mediums? As Billy Joel says, “I don’t know why I go to extremes; too high or too low, there ain’t no in-betweens”. Apparently you’re either for the feminist movement or you’re against them.

I’ve seen most of the blogs coming out against and demonizing Women Against Feminism or celebrities like Shailene Woodley because they’ve said they’re not feminist (probably because they, like me, don’t want to be pigeonholed). “Big feminism”/radicals represented in these blogs throw WAF and other anti-feminist celebrities into that aforementioned false dichotomy and it really makes you wonder if they even read anything WAF wrote. There are misogynists in this world but these women ain’t it.

I was NOT put on this Earth to entertain or please men but I wasn’t put here to hate them, either. I learned from the best feminist on the planet (my mother, whom I’ve written about before), to stand up for myself, fight for what I believe in, pick my battles, hold my head up high, and be proud to be a woman. I have, I do, and I am.

Feminists – stop shooting yourselves in the vagina, grow up, and make yourselves a cohesive/inclusive unit with a clear mission statement. If being a feminist means I have to be a man-hating bully then count me right the hell out; I choose to support rather than demean.

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Caitlin Elam is a contributor for the Never Daunted Radio Network. You can reach her on Twitter at @SuperCaity