#466: The Feminist
#466: The Feminist
Articles on dateless feminist men, succumbing to evil, and misguided views on reading
Dear Readers,
Thank you for your kind words and thoughtful comments about last week’s issue. My intent was not to disparage the author but rather to highlight the piece’s weaknesses in argumentation. Several of you said you appreciated seeing how I read and annotate. No promises, but maybe I’ll do this again in an upcoming issue — that is to say, if a piece moves me so.
This week, let’s get back to classic Article Club — in which I scour the Internet and bring you four great articles, from a variety of publications, on race, education, and culture. Today’s lead piece is a short story, “The Feminist,“ by Tony Tulathimutte. Honestly, I’ve never read anything quite like it. In short, the story is about a white man with feminist politics who wonders why he can’t find a woman to date. My feelings while reading the piece ran the gamut. When should my compassion for the main character begin and end? What’s the line between cluelessness and creepiness?
If you’d like to steer clear of anything resembling incel energy, I’ve included three other pieces for you in this week’s issue. They are about:
a Black man who lashes out at a white police officer after finding out that he has cancer
two additional perspectives (here and here) on last week’s Atlantic article on reading
Hope you enjoy this week’s articles. As always, if a piece hits you, let me know. I’d love to hear from you. Or if you prefer, show your support by becoming a paid subscriber (like Frances!). I would be very grateful.
1️⃣ The Feminist
Tony Tulathimutte: “If you ask him where he went to high school, he likes to boast that, actually, he went to an all-girls school. That was sort of true — he was one of five males at a progressive private school that had gone co-ed just before he’d enrolled. People always reply: Ooh la la, lucky guy! You must’ve had your pick. Which irritates him, because it implied women would only date him if there were no other options, and because he hadn’t dated anyone in high school. One classmate junior year had a crush on him, but he wasn’t attracted to her curvaceous body type so felt justified in rejecting her, just as he’d been rejected many times himself.
“The women he tries to date offer him friendship instead, so once again, most of his friends are women. This is fine: it’s their prerogative, and anyway, lots of relationships begin platonically — especially for guys with narrow shoulders. But soon a pattern emerges. The first time, as he is leaving his friend’s dorm room, he surprises himself by saying: Hey, this might be super random, and she can totally say no, but he’s attracted to her, so did she want to go on a ‘date’ date, sometime? In a casual and normal voice. And she says, ‘Oh,’ and filibusters — she had no idea he felt that way, and she doesn’t want to risk spoiling the good thing they have by making it a thing, she just wants to stay . . . and he rushes to assure her that it’s valid, no, totally valid, he knows friendship isn’t a downgrade, sorry for being weird. Ugh!
“Right? she replies, dating’s so overrated and meaningless in college anyway, and she knows that he knows he’ll find someone who deserves him, because he’s great, really great, so thoughtful, so smart, not like these SAE sideways-hat-wearing dudebros, but of course he already knows that, and she really appreciates it. Then he thanks her for being honest, because it’s proof their friendship is real, and don’t worry about him, he gets it.”
By Tony Tulathimutte • n + 1 • 29 min • Gift Link
✚ Check out this recent profile of Mr. Tulathimutte in The New York Times. It also discusses his new book, Rejection, a collection of seven connected short stories.
💬 Your Turn: What do you think?
What did you think of this guy? What did you think of this piece?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and get a conversation going in the comments.
➡️ Did you have compassion for the main character? Or, like me, did you draw a line?
➡️ Did you find the main character clueless or creepy, or something else?
In typical Article Club fashon, be sure to be kind and thoughtful!
2️⃣ Letter From Home
Kiese Laymon: “I do not want to disappoint God, Mississippi, or home with this letter, but I have to disappoint God, Mississippi, and home with this letter. I am currently succumbing to evil.
“I refuse to believe that the height of human being, which is really the act and art of being human, in this nation, is our capacity to kill, to incarcerate, to systemically humiliate, to discipline or to own people most efficiently. I believe that the height of human being in Mississippi, in New York, in Gaza, in Israel, in Sudan, everywhere on Earth, can be our ability to atone, restore, share, and vigorously accept when we have succumbed to evil.”
By Kiese Laymon • Bitter Southerner • 6 min • Gift Link
3️⃣ They didn’t like The Atlantic article on reading, either
Turns out, it wasn’t just me who disliked The Atlantic’s viral article on reading, which lamented that elite college students have difficulty finishing books. By the looks of last week’s comments section, several of you didn’t much like it, either.
Big thanks to loyal readers Caroline, Debra, and Knitwish, who sent these thoughtful pieces my way. The first is by an English teacher interviewed for the piece. The second is a well-written rant with analysis similar to mine.
The Atlantic Did Me Dirty
By Carrie M. Santo-Thomas • Personal Substack • 9 min • Gift Link
Carrie M. Santo-Thomas: “[Rose] Horowitch’s article reflects a frighteningly narrow definition of what constitutes worthwhile literature. Passing references to Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment, and even my unit about The Odyssey, confine literary merit to a very small, very old, very white, and very male box. As a staunch advocate for diverse and representative literature, I was immediately curious about the actual texts at the center of this ‘crisis’ so I asked Horowitch directly what types of books were the sticking points in her professor friends’ curricula. Unsurprisingly, it was canonical classics. As Horowitch points out, I am just ’one public-high school teacher in Illinois,’ but while professors at elite universities sound the alarm over Gen Z undergrads not finishing Les Miserables because they are uninterested in reading a pompous French man drone on for chapters about the Paris sewer system, my colleagues and I have developed professional toolboxes with endless other ways to inspire our students to read about justice, compassion, and redemption.”
Rose Horowitch And The Obsession With Belief Over Empiricism
By Chad Post • Three Percent • 6 min • Gift Link
Chad Post: “This argument is a perfect exemplar of today’s op-ed obsessed content economy: Is it true? WHO KNOWS! But does it sound plausible? Does it give you something to rail against? FOR SURE. It’s Thanksgiving dinner fodder: ‘Kids sure are dumb these days. They can’t even read all of Crime and Punishment!’ (‘Generally, they only read “Crime” ‘ is the most appropriate response.)"
“I do want to point out that NOT A SINGLE STUDENT was interviewed for this piece. Instead, it’s all anecdotal stuff that professors would say at a cocktail party for laughs and so that everyone could commiserate over how ‘teaching is so much harder now, because students are dumber.’ ”
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Perhaps AC readers were thrown off a bit this week—“The Feminist” is not an article, after all, it’s a short story. A fiction. It’s SATIRE.
A friend shared that this response is an example of an internet phenomenon known as Poe’s Law. Somehow at this point in the 21st century, we appear to be losing recognition of a grand genre in literature represented from Ancient Rome through the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, to Dickens, and right on up to Tony Thaliamutte’s hilariously biting parody of an incel.
POE’S LAW: “an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some viewers or readers as a sincere expression of the parodied views.”
Got it.
Why do I feel like the Joker wanting to say “WHY SO SERIOUS”? Oh, come ON, people—this guy’s the male equivalent of Dickens’ Miss Havisham!
“The Feminist” shows how “woke” lingo does NOT a feminist make, but how men damage their own interests by believing the hype in expectations patriarchy has engorged them with for millennia. He thinks he’s rejected for his narrow shoulders; I think he’s read too many comic books, or seen too many Marvel flicks urging slender guys to hulk out, from companies owned by men! It’s not his looks—great gods, we live in a world where reedy Harry Styles or Timothée Chalamet in a dress is a sex god for millions of girls!—it’s his whingeing neediness that women reject. Nor should women be blamed for succumbing to the tropes and traps of toxic masculinity; they are trained from birth to acquiesce. Why can’t men admit patriarchy wounds them, too? Isn’t it heartless to deny a little boy the release of his own tears—worse, to deprive tears to men wracked by real grief? Isn’t it the same cruelty to judge a man as weak because he’s thoughtful and giving, as a woman too fat to deserve love?
Surely no one can or would expect a woman to share any part of her body or mind with someone who actually believes women are “treacherous, evasive, giggly yeastbuckets”?? This is a caricature, NOT a person, consumed by a hate that’s poisoning him, as all hate does, from the inside out. It makes great copy by being outrageous; the author only lacked the rat-infested wedding cake. Must we be so sympathetic for the truly deluded? I don’t recall any such compassion for ol’ Miss Havisham—& SHE only damaged the ONE boy.
We would live in a much better world, if only the miseries inflicted on women were to be received with as much compassion as we have here for one fictional guy whose own odiousness deprives him of a decent lay. Multiply him by many thousands in real life and I’m sorry, I still see no equivalence between the brutalities and deaths among women, being inflicted daily by men who think women pee from their vaginas—and the unhappiness of men who can’t get laid. I have read that some young men feel so deprived they consider suicide. I’ve also read the average male thinks of sex 19X/hr. Whether that’s a blessing or a curse, the one thing it categorically is NOT is a burden women must carry for them.