There’s been some pushback on my “Mata Hairy” article which you can read here: https://atomicfeminist.com/2019/05/01/mata-hairy/

I am being told, by those who claim to understand reality far better than I, that the liberals have a sinister agenda with their fat acceptance and hairy women and that the Lena Dunhams of the world are out there marching around pushing their boobs into people’s faces trying to get a particular reaction. 

I am being told by these reality-understanders, that what I’m saying in “Mata Hairy” – requesting a basic level of politeness from conservative men – amounts to thought control. THOUGHT CONTROL. It’s good and right that conservative men belittle and mock not only Lena Dunham but ALL ugly and overweight women, publicly, because Lena Dunham has an agenda and in order to fight this agenda we as cons need to use every weapon at our disposal. And if other, non-liberal-agenda-promoting fat chicks get their feelings hurt in the process, it’s unfortunate but it’s collateral damage.

Let me just pause to say that these are not bad guys. These are not pussy-grabbing boors. These are otherwise decent men who simply think it’s ok to go through life deciding if a woman is worthwhile of existing or not based on literally no other quality than her physical attractiveness, and not keeping that silently to themselves but broadcasting it loudly into the public arena every chance they get. I recently had a tweet about whether or not women should wear yoga pants or not. I have an opinion about that (which is FUCK YEAH) and some dude came winging in from the stratosphere – a Twitter follower of a Twitter follower, a person I didn’t even know, to mention “you ladies can wear whatever you like but be aware, cargo pants are highly unattractive!”

GEE THANKS MISTER!

BTW I’m sure it comes as no surprise that the dude in question was not at all attractive. He looked like a hippie took a shit on an Ayn Rand book and left it to age in the sun for 75 years. And since the question on the table wasn’t even cargo pants, he wasn’t exactly the sharpest tool in the shed either. But I of course took the high road and thanked him for his opinion, pulled up my big-girl cargo pants and decided to write this piece instead, getting my revenge behind his back which is my favorite way to get revenge since it’s less stressful that way.

It is obvious and undeniable that yes, many liberal feminists do have an agenda with their slut walks and Lena-Dunham-posing (honestly, I’m worried about that girl, she seems a lot less empowered and a lot more terrified and desperately trying to stay relevant to me). SO DAFUQ WHAT. Why does the liberal agenda then give carte blanche to conservative men to act like the worst stereotypes the liberals have created about them? Why is it then THOUGHT CONTROL for me to point out, in a highly entertaining and comedic fashion too BTW in one of my very best pieces of the whole wide year last year, that hey, maybe they shouldn’t do that? 

The answer is, it isn’t. It isn’t thought control any more than it’s thought control for them to point out that they think I’m being unfair, that I’m wrong, that my take is bad, that I see trends where there are no trends to see. If it’s ok for men to shout into the public arena that ugly girls make their peepees sad and justify it because they’re achtually fighting against the liberal agenda, surely it’s ok for me to shout back, “maybe so but you are being super mean assholes when you do.”  

Because I am fighting against an agenda too. You see, cargo-pants-hating-men, it is possible to both be your compatriot in the Culture War but at the same time be an internal critic of trends that I see in conservatism that I don’t like. In fact, it’s my bread and butter, yo. Just because we both agree that the liberal movement in 2020 is thoroughly rotten and needs to be stood up to, it doesn’t mean that now conservatives never get things wrong, that any cockamamie idea conservative persons come up with from now till forever will be 100% completely and totally right. And it doesn’t mean I’m a Quisling for taking note of those times when members of the conservative movement are wrong and pointing it out. Indeed, it’s one of the strengths of conservatism that we’re a big tent with lots of ideas in it, unlike the libs who have to be in lockstep on everything all the time or they get drummed out of their own damn movement.

My dudes, I’m saying this stuff not because I think you’re bad people, it’s because I know you’re BETTER than you’re being and I want to spur you on to doing so. I know from firsthand experience and making my own mistakes along the way (like, back in middle school and not when I was fifty years old but whatevs) that lot of the times when people tease and mock others, they’re not even really thinking things through. They get caught up in the heat of the moment, in the mob mentality, think of something funny, and blurt things out that they’d never say if they’d thought about it longer, things they may not even truly believe. But whether or not you truly believe these things you say, they affect the feelings of other women who may happen to be your conservative compatriots and do not deserve being bullied and shamed because of the size of their clothing or because their face looks like the north end of a south bound cow.

YOU’RE BETTER THAN THAT, guys. I’m not trying to control your thoughts, I promise.  I’m trying to get you to control your deeds because I believe conservative men really are gentlemen down deep inside, somewhere, even though at present they aren’t acting like it, and a conservative world based on conservative values really is better. 

Don’t you? Because I thought you did.

It seems to me, as a casual observer looking in from the outside while I adjust my bra, that many men (conservative and liberal alike) want to take what benefits them most from old-school retro conservatism and what benefits them most from new-school self-indulgent liberalism and combine it into this toxic stew where scantily-clad nymphomaniacs with no rights, no body hair, and no interests of their own are bringing them a steady stream of beers in between scrubbing toilets and cooking 5 course meals and pole dancing while the men sit there watching “2 girls, 1 cup” on their computer and wondering how they can get a piece of that action. It seems to me, as a casual observer looking in from outside while I unwedge my deeply wedged thong underwear, that many men (conservative and liberal alike) have written this fantasy story where if they don’t get to indulge their sexual whims to the nth degree and have the hottest chicks doing the most fucked up stuff with the least output of energy and effort on the man’s part, then somehow they done been robbed of what is rightfully theirs.

But this is not a harem, and you are not the sultan. Not getting everything you want precisely how you want it all the time every second of every day is not a tragedy. It’s part of the human condition to not always or even usually get what you want and to have to count your blessings every day to remind yourself how good you actually have it.

I look around and I see a lot of guys who don’t count their blessings often enough.

I am acquainted with this guy who claims not to be able to find “love” but when you pressure him on it (I didn’t, but this other really nice woman did with far more patience and understanding than IMO he deserved) he admitted that his problem was he only liked women with “glam and flash”.  Dancers. Actresses. Regular ordinary women didn’t do it for him, because in his words, he deserved better. He’d waited so long for love, that meant he deserved only the best of the best of the best. And by the way, he also expects women to ask him out, feels galactically wronged that they don’t, and since by his own admission he only likes super attractive women, I’ll wager he would turn down a girl of lesser attractiveness doing exactly that.

Yep, I’m mean. This a mean post that is beneath me, which is why the bulk of it has sat on my word processor for months as a vent I never intended to publish, before I finished it today in a rage after this person was inconsiderate to my friend.

I’m feeling mean about this right now because it’s such a goddamn anti-women double-standard to have the entire culture created as Xanadu pleasure palace for the entertainment and gratification of men and find that some of them are still whining because girls don’t ask them out when they’ve admitted they’d turn down the ones they don’t think are attractive because they deserve better and their window of attractive is as small as that tiny corner window of an old car, the ones you have to twist to the side to open.

It’s kind of hard to have sympathy for a guy like that. And there are a LOT of guys like that. But this guy would say, as was said to me by some others after reading “Mata Hairy” that you can’t help who you’re attracted to. If you like “glam and flash” and aren’t attracted to anything short of that, you can’t MAKE yourself be, right?

It’s funny to me how the implication of “glam and flash” is that women have wronged this poor man for not keeping themselves up to his standards, though. Isn’t it? He definitely seems to feel like he’s been screwed over unfairly by women and said he’d been FROZEN OUT OF the romance area of life!) But as it was pointed out to him (and remember, he agreed, I’m not creating a straw man here, he agreed this was true) he was deliberately choosing to ignore any woman that didn’t meet a very narrow standard of beauty. Because he deserved “better”. (implying that every woman who didn’t meet that very narrow standard of beauty was “worser” by default). And there ain’t never been a narrower standard of beauty than the standard of beauty that exists here in 2020. They have beauty products to put on our beauty products, people!!

The problem underlying “Mata Hairy” and “glam and flash” is that no woman in the history of all womankind has ever had to do even a fraction of what modern women are supposed to do to keep themselves up, to keep a man, to be a good girlfriend, wife, and mother. The expectations are not only unrealistic, they’re freaking IMPOSSIBLE unless a woman is very rich, very genetically gifted, and very bored. While I completely have sympathy for a person who really just likes a certain thing (I do, absolutely), if what you like is freaking impossible, maybe your personal unhappiness has a lot more to do with where your head is at and not the many flaws and failings of women as a class.

Given all this, do you really think that “glam and flash” is a fair and rational standard?

It’s not. It isn’t. Hollywood standards are infiltrating your brain, boyo. You want to talk about thought control, let’s talk about how much YOU have let – you, men, not me – how much y’all have let Hollywood and pornography and corporations peddling beauty products, aka, the people who want to sell you shit, control YOUR thoughts. Because it’s considerable. You want women that look more like sex toys than real people because you saw pictures of them in a book or something and never stopped to think that no woman ever looked like that without interventions that stop just this side of sorcery.

That’s on you. That is not on me for pushing back against it and requesting a basic level of consideration for the 95% of us who do not look like sex toys because we have better things to do with our time than starve ourselves for our entire lives and endure the 5 hour beauty routines models go through before they get their pictures taken to go into books. THAT SHIT ISN’T EVEN REAL! 

Thought control??  Are you SERIOUS here?  I am Morpheus trying to give you a colorful pill and wake you up from the sinister spells of the people who are actually controlling your thoughts. I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only open the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it.

MY CONSERVATIVE DUDES, YOU ARE BETTER THAN THIS.  And my liberal dudes, you are better than this too.

There’s a whole world of women out here in the world, we are real and we are spectacular, and you do not get to lurch through your life saying that the gorgeous ones are the only ones that matter, at least not without hearing from me about it. 

I ain’t the bad guy here. Not even close. If I’m calling for “thought control” aka a basic standard of fucking politeness, it’s only because I want you, the supposed gents of conservatism in particular, to control your OWN thoughts and wake up from the airbrushed-makeup plastic-surgeried capped-teeth hair-extensioned shaved-pussy fake-tittied bleached-a-hole “glam-and-flash” haze that debauched liberal Hollywood magicians and corporate shills have enchanted you with like you’re Mr Spock smelling a flower on a foreign planet. And liberal men, if you want to jump on that bandwagon too there’s plenty of room. It’s basically me alone with a bullhorn up here.

A wise person once told me that the only person who can ever give you everything you need is God. No one else can fully live up to another person’s expectations. Because every other human being on the face of the earth has their own likes/dislikes, their own needs, their own wants, their own burdens to carry, their own physical failings, their own limitations, and so if you go through life demanding only the best of the best of the best, sir, well unless you’re real rich or you’re SuperChad you ain’t gonna get that (and probably not even then). You’ll end up lonely and perpetually dissatisfied, and that is your choice, but should you further choose to then flap your flap about how mean the girls are for not making themselves acceptably pretty for you and/or beating down your door to ask you out after having made themselves acceptably pretty for you, to such extent that you get a chip on your shoulder about how terrible and selfish women are when mostly women are just tired of having to be perpetually perfect AND now apparently shoulder the responsibility of asking super picky men who will probably reject them out as well, I’m gonna have a mighty hard time drumming up a whole lot of sympathy for you.  

I may even write an essay about it.