A Rural Male Reflects On Feminist Incivility, While Calculating Windage

Maybe I'm just a country boy at heart, and lack sophistication, and don't see things the way I should. But when I watch one of those radical-feminist women heave onto a podium, like the forehaunches of an under-nourished giraffe but with more hair on her lip, and start hollering and carrying on about what slugs and bandits men are, I start thinking of the curative powers of a shotgun full of rock salt.

I recommend a 12-gauge duck gun.

It's the incivility of these feminist people that gets to me. Most of them seem to have the manners of a guard dog , but without the utility. (I know, I know, I'm going to get angry letters. From guard dogs.) For pure bile, you can't beat a radical feminist. The average specimen can turn out bad temper for hours on end, like lumber from a sawmill, and any of it sounds like all the rest. The following, which gives the flavor, is from Andrea Dworkin, who I gather is a sort of museum-piece siege howitzer for feminism.

It's pretty much how they all talk. Listen:

"Men use the night to erase us...The annihilation of a woman's personality, individuality, will, character, is prerequisite to male sexuality, and so the night is the sacred time of male sexual celebration, because it is dark and in the dark it is easier not to see: not to see who she is. Male sexuality, drunk on its intrinsic contempt for all life, but especially for women's lives, can run wild, hunt down random victims, use the dark for cover, find in the dark solace, sanctuary, cover."

I do?

How does a man respond to such a broadside? The prose could use some lubrication, of course, and maybe a new set of plug wires, but I'm talking about the content. My first impulse is to reassure the poor woman: "There, there, Andrea, you're safe, nights just don't get dark enough." My second impulse is to wonder just how much radical feminists know about male sexuality, and what book they read it in.

I like to picture myself on a Saturday-night date in high school, parking on a back road.

My date: "You're driving kind of funny. I reckon it was the beer."

Me: "Why, no, Sally. I'm drunk on my intrinsic contempt for all life."

Sally: "You're so silly. Come here."

Me: "Soon...soon. Do you mind staying here by yourself for a bit?"

Sally: "Huh?"

Me: "I need to, uh, you know, run wild for a few minutes. Hunt down a few random victims. Use the dark for cover. Guy stuff."

Sally: "You nuts or something?"

Me: "It's...night, Sally...the sacred time of male sexual celebration."

Sally: "You're gonna do it out there?"

OK, I understand that the radical feminist ladies are a few french fries short of a Happy Meal. They can't help themselves. What I can't figure is why more-or-less grown-up editors publish all this clucking and scratching as if it made sense. And I also don't understand how the rules got fixed so that a Dworkin can say anything at all about men and get away with it--but men can't say anything back.

Any loon feminist can accuse men of being rapists, killers, sadists, and Marines. These are pretty serious charges. A fellow could take exception to them. But if I say something comparatively innocuous in return, such as that I weary of being harried by a rat-pack of diesel-fired tarantulas who mostly look like Rin Tin Tin's littermates--why, they get mad. (Yes, I know, that was a three-animal zoological-automotive metaphor. Patent applied for.)

I figure if radical-feminist ladies can talk ugly about us, then we can talk ugly about them. And we're probably better at it, which they might bear in mind.

What I say is, if you have pool-hall manners, you ought to expect to play by pool-hall rules. Any guy who doesn't work for the Washington Post knows this. Go into the wrong bar, and somebody will likely hit you over the head with a pool cue. Nothing wrong with that. But the assailant will grant you the right, while questioning your ability, to smack him on the head with your cue. Symmetry. Reciprocity. Conservation of parity.

Not those feminist people. They want to swing cues. They don't want to get swung at. I say let's treat'em equal.

It'll happen. Some day before long I'll be talking about something sensible, like a '57 Chevy with Carter AFBs and a three-quarter Isky and 17 coats of hand-rubbed Orchard Mist lacquer that looks like Chinese emerald carving if they'd done it right. Sure enough, some dog-biscuit feminist is going to sniff, "Ah, yes, boys and their toys. Boys will be boys. Intrinsic contempt for...."

And I'm going to say, "Mercy, lady, mercy. Yes, we males are a sorry lot, sinners all, and neck deep in iniquity. The shame of it bores into my soul. Now you go stand in the middle of Dupont Circle at high noon, with a pair of seven-by-fifty binoculars, and look real carefully all around, and point to one thing, with a moving part, that was invented by a radical feminist."

Then I'll go for my duck gun.

Fred Reed's Column Page

Copyright � 1999, Fred Reed www.FredOnEverything.com