I wonder, can a feminist be be friends with a misogynist?
A good question. Can I, a feminist, be friends with a person who holds mysoginstic views?
To be clear I have lost friends in the past because of this. I was (what I thought very close to) friends with two women irl and on fb. These women came to my home and we went to club together. We had sleep overs, basically we were quite good friends.
Sadly they often attacked my feminist Facebook posts. Which were actually not that many at the time.
Instead of fighting, I just unfriended them on Facebook. I assumed we would remain friends.
In stead they chose to apologize to my male partner and never spoke to me again.
Recently a Nother male friend of mine who is a very outspoken misogynistic man in favor of the patriarchy, asked me if I would stay friends with him if he didn’t change his views.
But he really meant was he was uncomfortable staying friends with me I wouldn’t continually listen to him express himself.
But whatever. I replied that I was willing to remain friends, but that I thought we should stop trying to discuss our views. As I was not going to change mine.
He replied that he of course wanted to understand where I was coming from. It was important to him to understand me as his friend. He thought he would be a better person for listening.
So I replied that he should just do some reading online. That would help him understand where I was coming from.
I sent him a few links to bland but popular feminist articles in major newspapers.
And his response to that was that I didn’t know how to dictate properly, I wasn’t using logic, the articles were horrific to him. And all feminists wanted to do was to cut the balls off if man and the demasculine them.
And this was how he responded to his son, who happens to be my roommate, and a feminist and vegetarian. He then spent the rest the weekend talking about how real man acted and questioned his masculinity.
While his other son, attacked my posts on Facebook, attacking my character. He said I was only drawn to feminism because I was a weak woman. Prone to Anxiety. I was trying to make myself feel stronger.
He felt Real women, strong women, didn’t need feminism.
He did not stop is at attacks until my son stepped in, and then of course, listened to him because he was another male.
So in conclusion, no. I don’t think a feminist can remain friends with someone who has such a hate on for feminists.
Because they cannot put their feelings to the side and try and see another persons point of view or allow a woman to hold a different point of view than their own. That's the problem in the first place isn't it?
I have now decided to not ever try and explain feminism to a mysoginstic man. . He can do his research, and that’s that
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