I Am Tired Of Male Feminists Telling Me How To Feel

I had a (male) friend who told me, in absolute sincerity, that men were better at everything than women. Even in “feminine” areas like cooking and fashion design the people at the very top are all men. Because they’re just better. When male feminists feel the need to talk about what I should be offended or empowered by, I get this same feeling.

For instance, when Blurred Lines came out, I was pumped to have a fun radio hit to car dance to for the rest of the summer. Boy was I wrong! As it turns out, I was only enjoying the song on account of the patriarchy brainwashing my simple lil brain. Good thing literally every guy I know was writing or posting articles about how sexist it was on the internet, or I’d be completely lost right now.

Quick un-scientific google search: browsing articles posted in the wake of Blurred Lines-gate, the number of articles attacking and defending the video were about even–except all the “pro” articles are being written by women, and the “con” articles by men.

I don’t understand why anyone would take it upon themselves to talk about what is best for a group of people to which they do not belong. Where does the need to have an opinion on behalf of people, who are perfectly capable of forming and expressing thoughts on their own, stem from? Wouldn’t it be easier to just get a hobby or something?

French philosopher René Girard has an interesting theory that I’d like to apply here. He says we borrow our desires from others. Like toddlers at the park, a certain toy looks much more attractive as soon as someone else is playing with it, via mimetic desire. Couple this with a deeply engrained cultural portrait of woman as passive, docile beings eternally waiting for a white knight to show up and rescue us from Robin Thicke and it’s not difficult to understand why male feminists do what they do. Maybe it just looks like we women are having too much fun over here forming our own opinions.

I am exhausted of this. It’s enough work actually being a woman and living through the initial experience without also listening to it being misinterpreted by people who weren’t even there. I don’t want to share ownership over my experiences. Time to butt-out, boys.