Op-Ed: I Have Never Heard of Judith Butler, But I Have a Valid Opinion on Why Feminists are Wrong

Let me get this out first: I have never read Judith Butler’s seminal Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, and I don’t presently intend to. But I do intend to voice my important, well-informed, noteworthy opinion on why feminism is stupid anywhere the internet gives me space to, which is everywhere.

Now, maybe I don’t know Simone de Beauvoir (and I certainly haven’t read The Second Sex, so don’t bother asking), but I think my beliefs about the feminist movement properly engage with the current discourse. Moreover, I think people should listen to and follow my advice – namely, that feminism is dumb.

I did have to read The Handmaid’s Tale in high school English freshman year, and I only Sparknoted three fourths of it. In light of that, I think that the opinions I hold of Margaret Atwood and the feminist literary tradition she was engaged in are very good and worthy of respect. To be explicit, those opinions are that feminists are idiots.

Okay, I also don’t know Shulamith Firestone, bell hooks, or Betty Friedan, and I only know Ellen Page from Inception. But those are no grounds for you to dismiss my opinions on feminism as “juvenile,” “half-baked,” or “based on a very limited (if not nonexistent) understanding of the ideology, its context, and the issues motivating it.” Indeed, everyone I speak to should respect my nuanced view that feminism and its subscribers by proxy are moronic and delusional.

I am a straight, white, cisgendered male; all I know of the feminist movement is from tumblr links lampooned on men’s rights websites; and I will not continue to have my voice silenced, suppressed, or otherwise regarded as illegitimate for no other reason than because I’m a man.