Fear of Feminism

I only write controversial books. For multiple reasons:

1. I want to advance human knowledge. While I have many conventional views, multiple books ably defending these conventional views almost always already exist.

2. I want to excel in my writing. My greatest intellectual strengths - imagination and iconoclasm - help me create high-quality controversial works. They wouldn’t help me craft conventional works. Probably the opposite, really.

3. I want to enjoy my work. While I have many conventional views, they rarely excite me. Controversy is fun.

4. The world is wrong, in the spell of an array of bizarre political religions. As a result, the controversial position is often true despite its unpopularity.

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 afraid of the anger your writing inspires.

Still, I’ve managed to write all of the following without severely scaring myself, my family, or my close friends.

1. A book harshly criticizing voter rationality and democracy itself.

2. A book defending hereditarianism and natalism.

3. A book that calls education “a waste of time and money.”

4. A book defending unlimited immigration.

Out of all of these, the education book inspired the most fear in my well-wishers. Above all, they were worried that my employer, a public university, would retaliate against me for arguing that taxpayers were wasting their money funding higher education.

In absolute terms, though, the fear was at once modest and overblown. While The Case Against Education definitely made some critics angry, almost no one was livid. My university president even took me out to lunch for a pleasant conversation about the book.

In contrast, when I announced the imminent publication of Don’t Be a Feminist, 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.

The underlying premise, naturally, was that the feminist movement is at once terribly powerful and horribly bad-tempered.

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.

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 I came off as a friendly dad, but I guess I’m seen as an ogre.”

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 we came off as a friendly movement, but I guess we’re seen as ogres.”

And guess what? Fear of feminism plainly is widespread.

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.

Fortunately, the remedy is straightforward: Get your anger under control, and earnestly try to make amends with all the people you’ve frightened. I offer this advice in all sincerity. The feminist movement really does need to repair its reputation - and not getting angry at me for saying so is a great way to start.