“Stacy, where do you find all these crazy feminists?”

That question pops up from time to time, as if crazy feminists were rare and it takes some kind of special skill to find them. Well, there are a few secrets. Do a Google search for combinations of certain terms — misogyny, male entitlement, objectification, heteronormative, etc. — common to feminist jargon and then use “search tools” to narrow the range to the past week or the past month. And this was what I was doing when I encountered an article with this headline:

13 Things You Thought Were Romantic

In The ’90s That Are Kind Of Creepy

In this article, Kat George wrote:

Our idea of romance in the ’90s was skewed towards the “man imposes on woman”, and now that feminism is such a huge conversation, a lot of the things you thought were romantic in the ’90s just wouldn’t fly today. Even some of your favorite ’90s rom com couples were kind of creepy.

There are some ’90s dating trends we should bring back, like talking to each other on the phone rather than incessantly texting, but there’s a lot that we should be really glad we left behind too. Between all the bets dudes were making over girls, all the Cinderella stories, and all the persistence despite being told no, romance in the ’90s was defined by some pretty heteronormative, misogynistic ideas.

She said the magic words, see? Whenever I encounter the word “heteronormative,” it makes me want to scream, “What is wrong with you people? In what sense is heterosexuality not normal? Human beings are mammals! Did you sleep through eight-grade biology class?”

So, Ms. George would have us believe, it is “creepy” to believe that men are attracted to women, or vice-versa, and it is also “misogynistic” — meaning if you think heterosexuality is normal, you hate women. This is the logic of feminism, which is “such a huge conversation” now that heterosexuality is practically illegal for college kids in Connecticut.

If you guessed Ms. George has some distinctly weird ideas, you are correct, but do we really want to talk about what she considers “totally normal” for “young girls discovering their sexuality”? I think not.

We could discuss Ms. George’s efforts to “figure out what my vagina was” — apparently her mother never had the “where do babies come from” talk with her — but we won’t. Instead, let’s talk about this:

6 Things You Might Not Think

Are Harassment But Definitely Are

(Because Apparently We Need

To Clear A Few Things Up)

Here, we have Kat George playing expert and everybody else is supposed to shut up while the expert lectures us about harassment. You will, perhaps, not be surprised to learn that she considers basically anything a heterosexual man might ever say or do to be harassment:

So many people have no idea what does and does not constitute harassment.

Here’s the thing: by the inherent nature of being a woman walking in the street, almost ALL uninvited attention from men is threatening. Women are victims of sexual violence EVERY SINGLE DAY, even in “liberal” cities like New York. . . . Women feel vulnerable on the street, period. When a man interacts with her on any level she did not invite, it’s threatening, period. You can’t change that just by saying someone is being “nice.” . . .

And here’s the other thing: we can tell when someone is just being nice. In fact, after enough years of encountering enough different kinds of people engaging in enough different kinds of interactions, all women (YES, ALL WOMEN) develop a sixth sense: We can immediately tell if someone is, in fact, being “nice,” or if their seemingly innocuous words or actions are laden with latent undertones of objectification and entitlement, and the threatening implications that go along with someone who holds that view — who views you as a less-than-human thing which they want and feel entitled to have — has set their sights on you. We can tell. So it doesn’t matter what actual words they say, if any. And for someone to argue about the relative threat level of the words themselves if to completely signify a lack of understanding about where the real perceived threat comes from. In other words, if you tell a woman that an act of “harassing” wasn’t, in fact, “harassment,” all you’re saying is: “I don’t understand anything about the experience of living your life.”

The only way to avoid harassing women is to avoid women completely, you see. If a man is anywhere in her vicinity, he is a “perceived threat,” and if he “interacts with her on any level,” this is harassment. Kat George has a “sixth sense,” and “it doesn’t matter what actual words” a heterosexual man says to her, “if any,” his “latent undertones of objectification and entitlement” make his mere presence threatening.

Let me offer three bits of advice to young women:

Avoid cities — Like so many other feminists of her generation, it would seem that Ms. George grew up watching Sex and the City and got the idea that the most glamorous thing in the world is to be a young single woman living in New York and working as a writer. In reality, cities are very dangerous places and, as a father, I would never want my daughter living in a wretched hive of scum and villainy like New York City. Never be a pedestrian — This is something most Americans don’t need to be told. We don’t live in big cities, and we drive our cars everywhere we go. We don’t walk anywhere, if we can help it. Kat George is originally from Australia, so maybe she doesn’t understand the American lifestyle and our great love of the internal combustion engine. Our devotion to automotive transportation means that most Americans never think about “the inherent nature of being a woman walking in the street,” a problem that does not affect anyone we actually know. Certainly, if a woman is walking the streets of a wretched hive of scum and villainy like New York City, where women “are victims of sexual violence EVERY SINGLE DAY,” she is doing so against my advice. Move to a small town in someplace like Alabama or Oklahoma and get yourself a pickup truck — problem solved! Get yourself a husband — Preferably one who lives in someplace like Alabama or Oklahoma. The comparatively low cost of living in rural America makes it possible to do very old-fashioned things like getting married, having children and driving pickup trucks. Also, in rural America, a woman can keep a firearm handy so she doesn’t have to worry about “sexual violence EVERY SINGLE DAY.” (Scarlett O’Hara: “I can shoot straight, if I don’t have to shoot far.”)

Of course, it’s heteronormative misogyny to suggest that the life of a young single woman living in New York is not as glamorous as TV shows portray it to be. Those of us living out in rural America with our families — and our trucks and our guns — are just ignorant bumpkins who don’t know anything about anything, except maybe eighth-grade biology.















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