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The sly sexism of Left-wing men Supporting porn and prostitutes isn't feminist

This man wants to tell you how to be a feminist. Credit: JIM YOUNG/AFP via Getty Images

This man wants to tell you how to be a feminist. Credit: JIM YOUNG/AFP via Getty Images


March 4, 2022   6 mins

It’s a year since Sarah Everard was abducted, raped and murdered — and the London Mayor this week called for men to lead a “fundamental cultural shift” to help end violence against women. Sadiq Khan said the problem was not just violent men, but men who engage in sexist behaviour and who stand by silently when other men harass women. So far so good.

But is he really the best candidate to speak about sexism? This is the same man who dropped Joan Smith from her role as Co-Chair of the Mayor’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board without explanation, although it is thought to have been because she has campaigned against giving biological men access to women-only refuges. Khan, like so many prominent Left-wing men, is on the “trans women are women” side in the gender war; he appears not to understand what sex is.

The gender wars have proved useful for these men over the past few years. They have used the issue to firmly and incessantly position themselves as progressive superheroes, bending over backwards to be seen as supporting the oppressed and marginalised at all times. These men signal their support for Black Lives Matter — and spout, at every opportunity, “trans women are women”. But scratch the surface of Left Man and you will find all kinds of hypocrisy.

Left Man uses liberal feminism as a smokescreen to mask his misogyny. He is unwaveringly committed to the “sex work is work” and “porn is empowering” ideologies. So long as there are a few female voices claiming that women freely choose to rent out their body parts for men’s one-sided sexual pleasure, the social structures that underpin porn and prostitution worldwide — the racism, colonialism and misogyny — can be set aside.

While men on the Right tend not to bother pretending to support feminism, progressive men not only claim to be feminists, but also then try to dictate feminism’s terms. Recently, in the interval of a play exploring the history of racism in the US, I heard a white, bearded dude shout, “my feminism will be intersectional, or it will be bullshit”. He was sitting with a group of mates, sipping real ale, and I heard mumbles of “transphobia” and “TERFs”.

The mantra that the young man shouted out was coined by Flavia Dzodan who, in her scathing critique of feminism, argued that “intersectionality” means including men in the category of women, and celebrating prostitution. It is a twisted version of the original definition, which was created by the feminist law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe the specific challenges faced by black American women in the workplace. If you’re standing in the path of multiple forms of oppression and exclusion, Crenshaw argued, you are likely to get hit by both.

The shouty beard at the theatre brought home to me what a gift Dzodan’s bastardisation of Crenshaw’s concept has been to so many men on the Left. They get to look progressive, while still disdaining women.

Likewise, as Tom Farr, a lawyer and pro-feminist campaigner against violence against women says, the reason so many white men are keen to attach their name to anti-racism activism is because they can look as though they are challenging their privilege without actually doing anything. They have precious little awareness when it comes to their own racism — or indeed their sexism.

“The championing of ‘sex work’, which is in part built upon the racist objectification of black women, makes it clear these men care not one iota for deconstructing their actual privilege”, says Farr. “But to actively challenge sexism and misogyny they would be required to change their behaviour and own up to their own contribution to male oppression and exploitation of women”. They can virtue signal about ending racism, but to work towards ending misogyny, they would have to give up the advantages associated with their male privilege, and their right to treasured modes of sexual release.

Some men get it, and their genuine commitment to tackling misogyny shines a light on the posturers. Robert Jensen, the author of The End of Patriarchy: Radical Feminism for Men (2017), believes that men on the Left who celebrate pornography and prostitution tend to downplay the prevalence and devastating effects of rape and other forms of violence against women. It is no longer possible for men on the Left to claim that racism, economic or global inequality is irrelevant to their work, he tells me, “but men on the left can, and routinely do, ignore the relevance of patriarchy”. He writes not only about the misogyny explicit in pornography, but also the racism; unlike many men on the Left, Jensen understands Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, and is able to apply it.

But for every man like Jensen, there are ten like Owen Jones. The leftist uber bro insists he is a massive supporter of feminism, while defending men’s use of pornography, despite its inherent racism and obvious harms to women. Jones has even defended MPs and judges — our public servants — accessing it during office hours, because however much men like Jones want to be seen as on the right side of history, they will almost always defend the right of men to debase women. As Jones himself said, magnanimously forgiving the disgraced judges, “There’s clearly a sound argument that judges should be doing their jobs, not getting off on porn. Fair enough, but there’s all sorts of procrastination that goes on in the workplace.”

Men tend to bond over sexual entitlement, and porn specifically. The American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson waxed lyrical about the commendable anti-racist values of Hugh Hefner — the pimp and pornographer responsible for transforming images of women being sexually degraded from a niche market into mainstream entertainment. Hefner “featured” black women in his pornography, because selling the racist stereotype of “exotic” women to white men makes money. Jackson was thrilled to be interviewed in Hefner’s flagship porn rag Playboy, and in an article following Hefner’s death in 2017 lauded him thus: “Very few whites associated with blacks publicly. But Hefner opened his nightclubs to African-American performers and patrons.”

Hefner hated women and referred to them as “dogs”. But boys stick together and damn those bitches that make a fuss about being degraded and abused. It is almost as if they only support social justice movements in which men have a stake. Or, as feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon put it, “It seems that if your oppression is also done to a man, you are more likely to be recognized as oppressed, as opposed to inferior”. As these men of the Left might put it, it’s bros before hoes.

And, in their quest to put men first, they tell actual feminists how to do feminism properly — using intersectionality, again, to silence women. There was a particularly egregious example at Washington’s march against Trump in 2017. Perched on a plinth above the crowds were two young white men, sporting smug expressions, standing either side of two young black women. The men were holding the poles of a huge banner bearing the slogan “White feminism was built on the back of women of colour”. The imagery is clear, and straight out of the Marvel Universe: Left Man saves the poor powerless heroine, while pouring scorn on the lady villains of “white feminism”. This is a toxic combination of white knighting and virtue signalling, covered by a progressive smokescreen.

And you can see this toxic mix guiding policy. Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch (and a highly paid white man), has lobbied for the removal of all laws pertaining to prostitution, including pimping and brothel owning. When criticised by feminists (including black women) for his support of the sex trade, Roth erected a façade woven from arguments about free choice, and economic empowerment for women from the Global South. “All want to end poverty, but in meantime why deny poor women the option of voluntary sex work?” tweeted Roth. To which sex-trade survivor Rachel Moran responded with: “Wouldn’t you say, if a person cannot afford to feed themselves, the appropriate thing to put in their mouth is food, not your cock?”

But patriarchy is depressingly resilient. It can thrive in all sorts of environments. “As a member of the Labour Party my whole adult life, I’ve always taken it for granted that lefties were the progressives ones, and the racism and sexism was left to the nasty party (the Tory’s)”, says Lucy Masoud, a former firefighter who was one of the very few black elected officials in the Fire Brigade Union, and the only black lesbian. Like many feminists, she is sick of the new breed of progressive man. “They describe themselves as ‘cis’ and hang around in Dalston drinking stout and declaring that trans women are women. But under all the faux progressiveness always lays the same entitled misogynist.”

What worries me, a life-long leftist, is how much power and influence Left Man has over young women looking to find their way as feminists. It is hard to see and believe that these men are seeking only to protect their own interests. But these sexists in sheep’s clothing can’t be allowed to set the agenda.


Julie Bindel is an investigative journalist, author, and feminist campaigner. Her latest book is Feminism for Women: The Real Route to Liberation. She also writes on Substack.

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Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago

Men who claim to be feminists are always creeps.

Lindsay S
Lindsay S
2 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

its why (female) feminists exist! They date these creeps under the illusion that they’re decent human beings and the best the world has to offer and then judge all men from the experience!

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  Lindsay S

Sounds plausible.

Nick Wade
Nick Wade
2 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

I agree. My own view is that it’s not my battle. Feminists seem happy enough to fight each other, without me getting involved. I still recall those ridiculous pictures of Nick Clegg and Ed Milliband, wearing t-shirts bearing the slogan, “This is what a feminist looks like.”

John Riordan
John Riordan
2 years ago
Reply to  Nick Wade

And I admired David Cameron for not being stupid enough to fall for it at the time, too.

David Morley
David Morley
2 years ago
Reply to  Nick Wade

I loved those t shirts. Somehow they made everyone who wore them look exactly how you thought a feminist looked.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  Nick Wade

To my mind, there are two types of feminist:-
(A) Misandrists.
(B) Non-misandrist women who want to improve the lives of women.
I like my adult daughter, and B-type feminists are fine by me. I agree with you about Clegg and Miliband, though.

Lindsay S
Lindsay S
2 years ago

What Bindel et al dont get when it comes to men is that the majority of men are not misogynists, they do however, (generally) have a juvenile sense of humour and enjoy winding people up and as feminists (generally) have no sense of humour, they are easy targets.
When it comes to male feminist however, the phrase “the virtue hides the sin” springs to mind.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  Lindsay S

The truth.

leculdesac suburbia
leculdesac suburbia
2 years ago
Reply to  Lindsay S

Oh–trying to be po-mo there. Very clever.
And such a strategy of abusers–if you recount our abuse, you’re 1) stupid; 2) unfunny; 3) paranoid; 4) lying; 5) oversensitive; 6) crazy; 7) have actually harmed the abuser.

Chris Mochan
Chris Mochan
2 years ago

“The championing of ‘sex work’, which is in part built upon the racist objectification of black women,”

Are there any other fields of endeavour anywhere where someone can make wild and unsubstantiated claims like this without being challenged or made to show their working? It seems that as long as you identify ‘racism’ as the villain, you can say virtually anything.
Is there any evidence for this whatsoever? And how would it explain those who champion sex work in places where there are very few black people?

Richard Slack
Richard Slack
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris Mochan

it is pretty much the Unherd house style

Mike Michaels
Mike Michaels
2 years ago
Reply to  Richard Slack

Unherd’s great.. cut them some slack, Richard.

Richard Slack
Richard Slack
2 years ago
Reply to  Mike Michaels

had that joke several times now

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
2 years ago

Followed by utterly unsubstantiated conflation of the week

“The championing of ‘sex work’, which is in part built upon the racist objectification of black women.”

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
2 years ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

I think the moderator should have picked up this article

R Wright
R Wright
2 years ago

I laughed when Bindel said that colonialism underpins prostitution. Absolute madness.

Malvin Marombedza
Malvin Marombedza
2 years ago
Reply to  R Wright

I used to laugh at it too. Now I don’t. Too many people are starting to think that way. Its worrisome instead.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
2 years ago

I suspect if you ask college educated 20-30 year old women, the majority would agree with that statement.
I was gobsmscked when I saw figures for support for Labour in the last election amongst this demographic.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
2 years ago
Reply to  R Wright

Miss Andry writes another tedious column complaining about misogyny.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
2 years ago

What worries me, a life-long Tory voter, is how much power and influence Left Man has.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Same here.

Milos Bingles
Milos Bingles
2 years ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

The Tories have absolute influence. What do you think Brexit is? You’ve been in power for over a decade. An Etonian is in power. You own all the newspapers? Pointing at a bunch of radical lefties and claiming society is biased is blinkered.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
2 years ago
Reply to  Milos Bingles

It’s a fair push back but not entirely accurate- the Guardian and the Independent being two pretty radically left papers.

It’s a shame GB News hasn’t entirely got its act together yet, but some of the better analysis pieces highlight the enormous chasm between the BBC/Sky etc and any semblance of unbiased reporting.

Every day on here we read of some professor, or student, or poor Joe Soap, who has fallen foul of the SJW mob and been threatened out of his or her workplace or educational institution.

Anybody who works for a corporate will have been exposed to DIE indoctrination.

I have been accused of white fragility by my own (Oxford educated) children.

My grandson tells me that assembly at his bog standard comprehensive school is dominated by racism/homophobia etc everyday. Fortunately he’s fairly sensible, I quote “Oh yeah, the kids that need attention are all bi or fluid, or something, now.”

Eton fired a master for taking on feminist ideology. The Tories are just less bad than the alternatives, but they’ve also been infected.

The cultural zeitgeist across much media, and almost the totality of academia, and the arts (ie all the key communication channels), is woke dominated.

Finally, you remember that the Tory PM, and most of his cabinet, campaigned against Brexit. What Brexit is, is the people exercising a voice. A voice the current Leader of the Opposition and the bulk of the establishment went to great lengths to try to silence.

So, from my perspective, a fair bit of evidence that society is biased.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

The Independent? Are they still plying their trade? I stopped following them some years ago on Facebook when they just dropped provocative one liners that were lapped up by the mediocre.

Milos Bingles
Milos Bingles
2 years ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

prat.

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
2 years ago
Reply to  Milos Bingles

Good, subtle argument.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  Milos Bingles

prat.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  Milos Bingles

Stop gaslighting us, it’s boring.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Milos Bingles

The Guardian is owned by Bill Gates… wink wink. As an outsider who once thought it contained some fine pieces, I have realized that they are 24/7 spewing the same load of nonsense as the BBC and Sky.

Last edited 2 years ago by Lesley van Reenen
Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
2 years ago

Extreme left and right are the same. They want to see those who disagreed with them tremble and be crushed. They are the pathological wings of politics. The addicts of power whether petty or grand.

Brian Villanueva
Brian Villanueva
2 years ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

While that may be true, the extreme Right has effectively no political or cultural power, while the extreme Left currently controls every major institution in America: media, education, universities, government, nonprofits, corporate boards.

Until all the serious Catholic Integralists in America can no longer fit into a Denny’s, I know which side’s loons I’m most worried about.

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago

WTF…?

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
2 years ago

Would you care to explain … ?

Francis MacGabhann
Francis MacGabhann
2 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

The comment was not immediately clear, at least to me. Is he for or against integralism? I read it to mean he’s against, ergo, WTF.

Nick Brooks
Nick Brooks
2 years ago

The extreme Left (not really extreme, more like neoliberal centrism LARPing as radicalism) certainly has the power in the media and the federal government, but it’s a bit of a stretch to say that the Right has “no” political power at the same time that state governments are restricting abortion access and banning critical race theory in schools. Whether you think these are positive or negative developments, they would suggest a certain amount of real power held by the Right.

Brian Villanueva
Brian Villanueva
2 years ago
Reply to  Nick Brooks

I agree that the Right has some political power at the state level in America. But this pales in comparison to the Left. Name any major cultural institution controlled by the Right today. Media? Universities? K-12 education? Teacher colleges? Non-profits? Corporate boardrooms? Chamber of Commerce? I can’t think of any.

Last edited 2 years ago by Brian Villanueva
Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  Nick Brooks

Republicans in some states are banning CRT in schools, because that is what the voters told them to do.

Brian Villanueva
Brian Villanueva
2 years ago

Since apparently I wasn’t clear, the Right has loons, but all our cultural elites (and even most of the Right) treat them as loons. They effectively control nothing.
The Left has loons too, but our cultural elites treat them as serious participants in society. They control corporations, NGOs, media empires, universities, etc…
I am far more concerned about the Left than the Right at the moment. If the Right’s loons ever start to get power, I’ll worry about a theocracy, but that seems pretty unlikely at this point. (Hence my comment about “all the serious Catholic Integratlists [one of the Right wing loon groups] fitting into a Denny’s”.)

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
2 years ago

I am concerned about the “loony” left because of their seizure of so much of the cultural and educational establishment, but, if I were an American, I would be concerned about the “loony” right because they have guns.

Last edited 2 years ago by Linda Hutchinson
William Shaw
William Shaw
2 years ago

Julie Bindel always undermines her own case, even when she has a valid point, by engaging in extreme and blatant misandry. She reveals herself as bitter and damaged, with resentment eating away at her heart, What a terrible way to spend the few years of life we each have.
What’s sad is that her reporting on serious issues more often than not makes for humorous reading because, no matter what the subject, she inevitably gets side tracked into telling us that all men are evil oppressors of women.

Last edited 2 years ago by William Shaw
David Morley
David Morley
2 years ago
Reply to  William Shaw

Any chance she could be sent to report in the Ukraine then?

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
2 years ago
Reply to  William Shaw

This is the main problem that I, too, have with Ms Bindel, I often agree with many of her points, but she insists on over-egging the pudding by a general rant against all men instead of restricting her criticisms to the sub-group against which she is arguing.

David Morley
David Morley
2 years ago

Yup. But I think that’s because she just sees this as an opportunity to attack all men. The particular sub groups just provide the occasion.

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
2 years ago

“But these sexists in sheep’s clothing” are mainly on the pull.

Jonathan Nash
Jonathan Nash
2 years ago

My life and thoughts, and those of my family and friends, are so far removed from the picture which Julie Bindel paints of people, and the relations between the sexes, that it is like listening to an account of life in Aztec Mexico, or on Mars for that matter.

Last edited 2 years ago by Jonathan Nash
Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago

While men on the Right tend not to bother pretending to support feminism”
Ah Julie, you just don’t understand men on the right. We don’t really care about feminism in particular, we just want everyone to get a fair crack at a good life, without the identity distractions.
Lets explain it:
Left man feminist pretends to support women and their rights. So he’ll sneakily undermine feminists because he doesn’t value womens rights over the rights of other groups.
Right man cares about everyone’s rights but, now equal rights are generally established, doesn’t care about identity rights for specific groups such as women. So he will oppose anything that upsets equal rights – but you can convince him that women’s rights may require reinforcement to achieve equality.
Your best ally is man on the right, as so many feminists writing in these pages and being ejected from left wing society and publications are now finding out.

Christine Ilesley
Christine Ilesley
2 years ago

I’m wary of people who want to disempower women by taking away our right to women only spaces and use specious terms such as intersectionality. Any man who supports use of prostitution and claims to be a feminist is a self deluded and potentially abusive misogynist. Support for trans rights should not be about silencing the voices of women.

Richard Lyon
Richard Lyon
2 years ago

My neighbour’s dog will suffer any indignity to secure a condescending rub between his ears.
My neighbour’s dog, and male feminists, would understand each other perfectly.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
2 years ago

Sounds like someone has never heard of football.

Lennon Ó Náraigh
Lennon Ó Náraigh
2 years ago

Or pints, or motorsport, or fishing, or poetry, or art, or any of the other 1000s of other things that normal people bond over.

Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
2 years ago

Besides which porn (which I have studied purely to work out what I think of it) is really, really boring. It’s akin to those cookery contest programes where the viewer can neither smell nor taste the winning dish. All one sees and hears is a lot of oohing-and-ahing, the viewer necessarily being excluded.

Last edited 2 years ago by Arnold Grutt
Andrew D
Andrew D
2 years ago

Indeed. In fact just about anything but porn, which tends to be a solitary pursuit

Alex Tickell
Alex Tickell
2 years ago

I agree, but am always puzzled at why these commentators always neglect to address the fact that humans are only half a step away from “the beast” and much more closely linked than they would have us believe. Much of human nature, especially regarding sexuality is driven by urges received in our DNA millennia ago.
Civilisation is a very fine, almost transparent veneer.

Yendi Dial
Yendi Dial
2 years ago
Reply to  Alex Tickell

finally a comment that makes sense

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago

“He writes not only about the misogyny explicit in pornography, but also the racism; unlike many men on the Left, Jensen understands Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, and is able to apply it.”
Reading this sentence, I suddenly started intensely disliking Julie Bindel.

R Wright
R Wright
2 years ago
Reply to  Drahcir Nevarc

Anyone that uses the term intersectional uniromically is likely to have several screws loose

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
2 years ago
Reply to  R Wright

Exactly.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
2 years ago

” … group of mates, sipping real ale, …” It’s difficult to believe that that sort of thing still goes on in 2022.

David Morley
David Morley
2 years ago

And drinking “stout”. Do any of these chaps have whippets?

Sally Owen
Sally Owen
2 years ago
Reply to  David Morley
Sally Owen
Sally Owen
2 years ago
Reply to  Sally Owen

That first reply was a laughing face David!..:)

Caroline Watson
Caroline Watson
2 years ago

Surrogacy is a form of prostitution supported by ‘progressive’ men, particularly gay couples who want to pretend that one of them has given birth. In fact, it is the farming of impoverished women and the deliberate creation of children who will be brought up without a mother, causing trauma in later life.
Speak out against it, however, and the masses have been so brainwashed by the ‘celebrity’ media, and by the culture of mawk, that you will be attacked by hordes of idiots with ridiculous eyebrows saying, ‘As long as a child is loved…..’
It is strange that the ‘progressives’ are rightly appalled by the forced adoptions that took place in the post-war years, where babies were taken from unmarried mothers who loved them, but think surrogacy, because it benefits men and ageing celebrities, is absolutely fine.

Milos Bingles
Milos Bingles
2 years ago

There are extreme views on both sides of the political spectrum. Of course, women should have equality and parity. I think the whole porn/prostitution debate should be framed in terms of people’s safety. Whatever policies make it safer for women should be followed. What does the evidence suggest?
As for extreme left men, there is probably a part of them that is desperately insecure and they are looking for a place to belong. They are looking for their tribe. The same way far-right hooligans join the EDL.

Last edited 2 years ago by Milos Bingles
Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
2 years ago

.

Last edited 2 years ago by Julian Farrows
John Riordan
John Riordan
2 years ago

“Left Man uses liberal feminism as a smokescreen to mask his misogyny. He is unwaveringly committed to the “sex work is work” and “porn is empowering” ideologies. So long as there are a few female voices claiming that women freely choose to rent out their body parts for men’s one-sided sexual pleasure, the social structures that underpin porn and prostitution worldwide — the racism, colonialism and misogyny — can be set aside.”

The main problem with left-wing man on this point is that he doesn’t need any women to agree with him. Whether one likes it or not, sex work is indeed work: it is a service provided for money. It may well be wrong that this is both legal and regarded as acceptable by liberal-minded adults, but that is a different issue to the question of whether sex work represents a transactional exchange of time for money, and this specific question is a matter of fact, not something that can be true or false depending upon whether women agree with it.

As for this: “It is no longer possible for men on the Left to claim that racism, economic or global inequality is irrelevant to their work, he tells me, “but men on the left can, and routinely do, ignore the relevance of patriarchy”.”

It would appear that left-wing men are not insane enough to actually believe nonsense about patriarchy (surprising to me at least, if they’re daft enough to think that transsexuals are actually women). I know of course that just me saying this is taken as as a form of denial, but that’s the politics of the witch hunt for you: one is damned irrespective of the facts.

Last edited 2 years ago by John Riordan
D M
D M
2 years ago

Sorry but I am seeing a lot of sweeping generalisations pitting ‘left’ vs ‘right’. There’s no obvious rational conclusion.

Last edited 2 years ago by D M
Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
2 years ago

Live by Critical Theory, die by Critical Theory, whether the racial, feminist, or queer variant. Like most evil ideologies it eats its own.

Don P
Don P
2 years ago

Fact check: There are places where one can find objectification and degradation of black women but Hefner’s Playboy isn’t one of them. For most of its existence Playboy was famously, notoriously white. In later years it “featured” the occasional black model but remained overwhelmingly a showcase for airbrushed, idealized white women.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
2 years ago
Reply to  Don P

Ironically, black men seem to agree with that.

David Morley
David Morley
2 years ago

That’s right – to be on the left is to be eternally “not good enough”. Not very appealing is it?

David Morley
David Morley
2 years ago

Recently, in the interval of a play exploring the history of racism in the US, I heard a white, bearded dude shout, “my feminism will be intersectional, or it will be bullshit”. 

Oh God – his poor parents!

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
2 years ago

I always get a good laugh out of the comments under JB’s articles.

leculdesac suburbia
leculdesac suburbia
2 years ago

The comments section is just oozing with resentful men who compete with each other to craft the freshest rehash of their predictable put-downs.
And as usual, the resentful ones are only resentful because they feel entitled to something they can’t have. Guys who 1) have lives; 2) are good at their work 3) have healthy egos and 4) let’s face it, have lots of sex whenever they want it, because women are attracted to 1-3, don’t try to bond in online comments sections over how much they can degrade women’s concerns.
Cause, you know, raping, assaulting, and killing trafficked teen girls and then distributing it, like is ALREADY happening in Ukraine, is FUN.
At least one upside is that every moment you’re venting here, you’re not out somewhere hitting on 16-year-old cashiers.

Milos Bingles
Milos Bingles
2 years ago

Well said.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
2 years ago

What is amusing is a lot of “feminists” think men are supposed to be insulted or inferior unless they “have lots of sex whenever they want”

Which is doubly ironical because it tells us more about how some women view themselves, as trophies to be won by some sort of alpha male to boost their shallow vanity

And because the kind of men whose endgame in life is merely “have lots of sex whenever they want” often display the kind of male behaviour those feminists feign to condemn.

Andrew D
Andrew D
2 years ago

I’m not sure whether this is ironical

Val Colic-Peisker
Val Colic-Peisker
2 years ago

Go Julie! a great article. Angry, obviously, but we have to be angry about all the bullshit that have buried feminism under all this leftie pretence. I’ve noticed that pretty much every feminist article gets lots of flak here from entitled, not to say privileged as it sounds leftie, blokes who have time to read every article and comment on them, and therefore surely have a woman, paid or unpaid, to do their shopping, cooking and cleaning.

Sally Owen
Sally Owen
2 years ago

Oh dear!!

Sally Owen
Sally Owen
2 years ago

Very well put Sean

Lennon Ó Náraigh
Lennon Ó Náraigh
2 years ago

My query as to whether this is true in general:

Men tend to bond over sexual entitlement

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