She doesn't need you, she needs a man

Manly Thor's Day Special
Every time you think feminism has reached an absolute nadir, it digs deeper. Check out Hugo Schwyzer, a "gender expert":

The fewer genuinely good men there are, the greater the bargaining power they have in relationship — and the more concessions women (at least those who are eager for marriage) are told they must make.

The title of the piece this insight pops up in tells us everything we need to know: "It's not Your Fault You're A Mean Girl" . Well, no, of course not, because nothing is ever a woman's fault! That is the thing that Schwyzer wants you to believe. The larger context of his argument here is that it's men's fault that so many women turn into backstabbing bitches towards other women.

... perhaps the most painful repercussion is the alienation that comes from competition. For young women in particular — including a great many of my students who have nothing to do with the modeling business — the pressure to compete with other women seems to be worsening.

That women have been writing novels for three hundred years now and that these novels have always featured women in competition of the type that Schwyzer insists is something new and awful apparently means nothing.

Of course, the real "innovation" here is the crazy belief that women are morally superior beings who have this special kind of relationship called "best friends forever" that is ever so superior to anything we men are capable of having with either women or other men. And we're all supposed to believe the theory and not our own lying eyes that have seen girls and women doing nothing but undermining one another since Grade 1.

But let's forget all that for a while and go back to that first quote again:

The fewer genuinely good men there are, the greater the bargaining power they have in relationship — and the more concessions women (at least those who are eager for marriage) are told they must make.

Because there is a rather shocking admission implicit in that: Women need a man.  Hugo Schwyzer—who has so completely internalized feminist mythology that he has become a walking argument for more bullying—believes that women need a real man to be happy. Peel away all the political correctness here and what he is saying is that to reach her full potential as a woman, she needs a good man. Otherwise, she is going to turn into a mean girl.

And the thing is, he's (almost) right. The thing he gets wrong is that she isn't going to turn into a mean girl: she either already is a mean girl or she is the victim of mean girls. What she needs to change is a genuinely good man.

Which implicitly raises a question: what is a genuinely good man? That's a (very) long answer and I only know part of it anyway. Clement 1 gives a good hint as to what the answer is not:

Love is neither servile nor arrogant.

In other words, neither Hugo Schwyzer (servile) nor Heartiste* (arrogant) have the answer. Sadly, simply picking the point midway between the two doesn't work either. Sometimes Heartiste is right on the money and I'm sure Schwyzer has his good days too.

But the payoff is this, the world is full of women who need a genuinely good man. I saw this recently with my father after the death of my mother, the speed with which women latched unto him when he became available was stunning. All any of us has to do is to be a genuinely good man.



* If that name means nothing to you, you're probably better off leaving it that way. If you really need to know, Google away but don't say I didn't warn you.