I came in early to the office in order to write my work log. However, my coworker—an intern—is always early and sits next to me, so I make my text editor instance small and type out what I can muster in the few minutes I have before real work starts.


In my interactions with feminists I will often say "well, there are many points with which I agree with feminism, but there are some points which I feel they've gone too far". When I detail these objections, they take me to be a holdout from patriarchy. I take myself (perhaps with some arrogance) to be "post-feminist"—I believe that that feminism was necessary and useful to bring justice to women and other suppressed groups in society, but it many places it has gone too far.

Some weeks ago I was on a trip in a car accompanied by feminist women, and they mentioned this joke which I hand't heard before: I'd rather encounter a bear than a man if I got lost in the woods. Then someone said "if I were truly lost in the woods and I saw a man, I wouldn't ask him for help". I asked her if she truly meant it. She said yes. I said "but you do know that only in the most exceptional circumstances he would harm you instead of assisting you, right?" and then all jumped on me, "can't you see we are afraid of you?", "you've done all these things to us". As I didn't want to sour our trip I played dead and conceded to their demands that I acknowledge that men are horrible creatures and we should self-flagelate for our sins.

I can already see some fellow men call me on my cowardice, but this was a lost struggle. What we are dealing here is trauma. Many women have been abused and harmed by men in their life, and thus have an unreasonable fear of men from which you won't be able to argue your way back. I call this the "feminist bypass" in which their trauma becomes unresolved because they find shelter in feminist beliefs. It is their loss because they leave under a narrative which tells them 50% of the population is dangerous and would jump at the opportunity of raping them should we find them helpless and lost in the woods. What a horrible world to inhabit!

The funny (or sad) thing is feminist have inadvertently become sexist. If I were to say: if I were lost and saw a gypsy man in the woods, I would hide instead of asking for help, it would be clear that I'm being racist (or at least that I hold a grudge against the Roma people). Should things continue this way, the oppressed will become the oppressor. Still, I think this applies only to some contexts, the struggle for equality must go on in certain places and contexts, in others it's time to even correct for an overshoot.