{"id":80703,"date":"2023-03-14T05:00:28","date_gmt":"2023-03-14T09:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=80703"},"modified":"2023-03-13T16:41:04","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T20:41:04","slug":"strangely-my-friends-have-a-more-negative-view-of-the-feminist-movement-than-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/03\/14\/strangely-my-friends-have-a-more-negative-view-of-the-feminist-movement-than-i-do\/","title":{"rendered":"“Strangely, my friends have a more negative view of the feminist movement than I do”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bryan Caplan<\/a> explains why he chooses to write the books he writes:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Almost by definition, writing controversial books tends to provoke negative emotional reactions. Anger above all. Anger which, in turn, inspires fear. And not without just cause; the sad story of Salman Rushdie sends shivers down the spine of almost any writer. If you write controversial books — or care about someone who does — you should be at least a little<\/em> afraid of the anger your writing inspires.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In contrast, when I announced the imminent publication of Don’t Be a Feminist<\/em>, the fear went through the roof. Several folks warned me of “career suicide”. Others told me that I had no idea what horrors awaited me. Friends staged mini-interventions on my behalf.<\/p>\n

The underlying premise, naturally, was that the feminist movement is at once terribly powerful and horribly bad-tempered.<\/p>\n

My best guess is that the warnings are overblown. Strangely, my friends have a more negative view of the feminist movement than I do. Whether my guess is right or wrong, though, all this intense, widespread fear really ought to trouble the feminist conscience.<\/p>\n

If I said, “Hi” to one of my kids’ friends, and they responded by fleeing in terror, my reaction would be, “Did I do something to scare him?” I would ask my kids, “Why was he so afraid of me?” If such incidents started to repeat, I would be severely troubled. “I thought<\/em> I came off as a friendly dad, but I guess I’m seen as an ogre.”<\/p>\n

The same applies if I were a feminist, and I discovered that critics are literally afraid to criticize feminism. If only a few critics feared feminism, my question would be, “What did we do to scare them?” If I discovered that fear of feminism was widespread, a full soul-search would be in order. “I thought<\/em> we came off as a friendly movement, but I guess we’re seen as ogres.”<\/p>\n

And guess what? Fear of feminism plainly is<\/em> widespread.<\/p>\n

What, then, are feminists doing wrong? Above all, cultivating and expressing vastly too much anger. Sharing your angry feelings is an effective way to dominate the social world, but a terrible way to discover the truth or sincerely convince others. Maybe you don’t mean to scare others; maybe you’re just acting impulsively. Yet either way, the fear feminists inspire is all too real.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bryan Caplan explains why he chooses to write the books he writes: Almost by definition, writing controversial books tends to provoke negative emotional reactions. Anger above all. Anger which, in turn, inspires fear. And not without just cause; the sad story of Salman Rushdie sends shivers down the spine of almost any writer. If you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,28,53,13],"tags":[86,987,622,43],"class_list":["post-80703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-criticism","tag-feminism","tag-ideology","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-kZF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80705,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80703\/revisions\/80705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}