Criticism of Anti-Feminists

Discussing my own thoughts on feminism and gender equality

In my latest article about lonely men and women, I was trying to push back against the narrative that women are all to blame for the loneliness of men. Apparently, that makes me a radical male feminist, according to some of my critiques. So in this story, I want to address some of that criticism by talking about anti-feminism and my own perspective on feminism.

Let me start by explaining the motivation for my story about loneliness. Stories have to be read in context. For me, the context was all the hateful comments I had seen towards single women. To quote myself, my aim was never to claim men got all the blame instead:

So, is this piece only about dumping on men? Should men just shut up and not complain about being single, and women get all the praise and empathy? Absolutely not. I think both men and women should get understanding and sympathy if they struggle to find a partner in their life.

In other words, if you think I am fundamentally wrong, you are essentially saying: “No, women are indeed to be blamed for their own loneliness as well as for the loneliness of men.”

I was trying to bring balance to the debate, by trying to sympathize with the female perspective, but apparently that makes me a crazy feminist. The problem with reading what anyone writes is that there is a tendency to put people in boxes and interpret everything they say based on your assumptions around people fitting into that box.

That leads to caricatures of their opinions, as can be seen in one of the comments to my article:

Well, the article was written by a male feminist. Did you expect anything else?

It’s always one-sided view, whether they talk about history or present day. If bad things happen to men, it’s because they deserve it and if bad things happen to women, it’s because it’s men’s fault.

What is ironic about this remark is that the whole motivation for my article seeing so much hate directed at women, which presented women as being the cause of issues men face. Naturally, if you are going to write an article about why women are not always at fault, you need to actually mention cases where…