Emma Watson recently delivered a speech to the U.N. attempting to co-opt men into the ranks of feminism. Before I do any real analysis, here’s a link to the Chateau that demonstrates hypocrisy. At a deeper level, it really shows the conflict of interest between female sexual desire and feminist desire to neuter men. In one quote she laments that British men are too shy and consequently she’ll likely not be dating British men in the future while American men have fewer inhibitions about suggesting a date; a boldness that she finds attractive. The second quote from her U.N. speech reads, “If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be submissive.”. So which is it Emma? She goes from celebrating the boldness of men she finds attractive to suggesting men and women can just switch roles as they see fit. You yourself said you find bold men attractive Emma. After hearing say that, but then turn around and ask men and women to switch seats, you leave listeners the impression that they’d still be attractive to each other. I can see how that is a great selling point. I can also see how that is under-handed and manipulative and flies in the face of the fact that women prefer bold men (see here and here for details).
Besides the hypocrisy, this suggests that male and female sex roles are completely interchangeable and can be dissolved. Effectively, it pits humans against their own biological urges and desires to attain a higher moral ground. Of course if you don’t take up the battle against your own innate desires and behaviors, you do not attain the higher moral ground and are thus not a worthy individual. And by the way, what is wrong with bold men? Why should they avoid being bold? What is wrong with submissive women? This again, ladies and gentleman, is an example of the mixed messages getting tossed around today about sex, including and especially how men should conduct themselves.
Even the title of the initiative, “HeForShe”, suggests how men should act. What does this title suggest?
for [fawr] (preposition) – Intended to belong to; suiting the purposes or needs of
Well, shit. After defining ‘for’ not much is left to the imagination, is it? Other likely titles could have been “Men intended to belong to Women”, “Men suiting the purposes and needs of Women”, or maybe “Men doing the things for Women”. You intend to co-opt men to your efforts with the suggestion you are both equals (implicit to the text-book definition of feminism, which she of course uses), but instead regard them as your minions. Didn’t Orwell write about this? I believe he labeled it doublethink. Brilliant.
Apart from the skewed title of her initiative, Emma made one salient point in the entire speech. Mustering all the try-hard emotion possible, she laments that “Women are choosing not to identify as feminists”. That was her one good point. Everything prior to it was deflection and everything after it was a smoke screen.
Her deflection was designed to avoid mentioning what feminism actually does (since stating such material would give reason not to be a feminist) but to instead give us that oft quoted text-book definition of feminism. Emma, I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but if you are going to analyze something as nebulous as a movement, your research needs to dig deeper than just Wikipedia or the dictionary. But this is nothing new from equity feminists attempting to assuage their damaged reputation after decades of cold and self-interested manipulation of Western society. So I guess I’m disappointed but I’m not surprised.
She then goes into her smoke screen; a fallacy laden diatribe of Western society and how it hasn’t truly adopted women as equals. She does this with a varied pallet of logical fallacies, but one especially caught my ears. She again suggests that men and women have interchangeable sex roles and desires.”When at fifteen my girl-friends started dropping out of the their beloved sports teams because they didn’t want to appear muscly.” What is wrong with this Emma? Why is that bad? Are we to reject that biology plays any factor in determining sex roles, orientation, and consequently behavior? ~sigh~ By only partially explaining, and thereby misrepresenting the reality, Emma leaves listeners believing girls are <pick one or more: pressured, taught, brainwash> to become girls. Just as Catholicism forces its members to reject basic human desires as sin, feminism dictates that women reject biology as a lie. In essence, it seeks to pit women against themselves in a battle over their own minds and bodies while pinning patriarchy (and by proxy men) as the evil-doer who started the conflict. Orwell was right.
But this comes no surprise. The idea that sexual roles are interchangeably, even pejorative, has been a continued theme for feminism. #WomenAgainstFeminism became a thing because women have started outright rejecting the doublethink. They have stared to embrace their innate desires and reclaim their bodies. The walls are closing in on feminism. Knowing this, feminists are not going to co-opt women; their PR is too damaged. They instead opt to recruit men before #WomenAgainstFeminism can give them a taste of a better life. If that doesn’t clearly show how feminism seeks to control men and women (and ultimately their happiness) then I don’t know what else will.
Emma, you’re talented, beautiful, and very bright. But you are also very young. Please reconsider your proposal to subdue men and to join feminism. You too need to consider your PR. I suggest considering yours at a higher value than that of feminism’s. Wouldn’t that be truly empowering?
