A Satirical Romp By A Proud Male Feminist

The male feminist does not think he is capable of treating women in ways that would upset the decorous compartments of his feminist imagination. I am not saying that his is a sisterhood of like imagination with other feminists. But his reconfigured disposition is out of sync, he and his female partner imagine, with the cheap, vulgar sensibilities of working class or ethnic men, or vulgarians from any background. They live under the idea that their sexual imagination is manageable under the strictures of ideology. They have made a covenant with an ethos that allows them to disclaim the contradictory messiness of sex, sexual fantasies and deep sexual needs that dare not admit their politically out-of-order nature.

The male feminist labors under mental matriarchal colonization. These men are not only content with sanctioning just principles that guarantee the civil liberties and fair treatment of women.  Esteem and self-worth are deeply lodged not only within the practice of those values but in the recognition of women who count—women that is, who are emancipated, who no longer labor under false consciousness and eroticize their subordination. This recognition is crucial because it legitimizes the emerging male feminist’s identity that makes the world a safe haven for women. The peace of mind whose absence haunts women’s lives is the goal of the anxious, worried, sensitive male who cannot feel good about his existence unless he can guarantee the emotional and physical safety of all women. This emotional stronghold has its origins in childhood, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. It is the flawed relationship and the attendant guilt they experience that fuel the zeal for reparation and harmony between them and other females. Secured ascension to the throne beside the all-powerful and all honor-bestowing mother is the goal that keeps the fire of the male feminist burning. He is the prototype for the new knight in shining armor righting female oppression.

In shedding his gendered identity the male feminist will often assume social roles associated with women. He will cook dinner, bathe and feed the children, wash the dishes, read the children bedtime stories, put them to bed, and massage the knots out of his wife’s back while she rants and raves about the corporate sharks or strategy-obsessed, backstabbing assholes that are making her life miserable at work. His wife is proud of the egalitarian spirit of her highly evolved man. Yet he performs his roles completely oblivious to the murky and problematic tensions that these progressive acts create in the psyche of his equally progressive soul mate, who, somewhere in the depths of her outlaw psyche, wants a “real man.” Somewhere in her bad false consciousness she wants a man with balls, not vaginal fortitude. Vaginal fortitude is what she displayed when giving natural birth to their two children. She wants balls overflowing with testosterone. A strange schizophrenia develops in human beings whose unconscious refuses to be glossed over, ordered and bullied into submission by an ethical disposition that both grow bored with from time to time.

If you watch closely the relationship between male feminists and their heterosexual partners, if you have observed them carefully, as I have for years, you see  that there is an earnestness and a sense of glee in the satisfaction of these women, who, no doubt, are engaged in some ritualistic cleansing of any trace of the collective Him—that unruly and oppressive substratum that lies like filthy, rough scales under every man’s soul. My mother once had a friend, who, after leaving her second husband, made a statement that I have heard repeated a few times: all men are crab-lice. The partner of the male feminist dares not harbor this possibility in relation to her own mate. The denizens of her world are auditioned, screened and possess no heretic values. One does not sleep with the stranger at all, much less the enemy.

But there is a nagging sense in which she goads him in his ability to shed his gendered identity. The process of the male feminist shedding his gendered identity is strange, rich in erotic undertones, and reeking with sadomasochistic bites and scratches. Any man who voluntarily emasculates himself and partakes in the mild taunting rituals (my husband makes a good wife, doesn’t he?) is either a blatant or closet masochist.  And this is precisely why he tops the list of those who are most capable of exploding into deadly rage. Commenting on a male feminist friend of mine, one of my longtime friends with deep psychological insight warns: “He is going to shoot her and the kids one day, mark my words. Neighbors will be shocked, and they will say he was the nicest, most soft-spoken man one could ever hope to find. J, you’d better encourage him to go to a strip-club, hang out with the boys or something. He is marooned and imprisoned in that house. He is a ticking time bomb.

But you realize you've had hetrosexual envy all along. He won't explode. He is the prototype of the new man. He is the new Man. And it is to this model that we ought to aspire.

This is the end of the satirial romp. All hail the male feminist.