Rule #1: Whatever pro-feminists advise, do the opposite

Janice Fiamengo

Apr 23, 2023

It’s always a bad idea to tweet an article without reading it to the end. In my case, the article was about the last words of suicidal men. A 2015 study had found that “useless” and “worthless” were the two most common epithets of men who killed themselves.

I tweeted that such self-condemnations amount to a “societal indictment” for which feminism is largely responsible. It is feminism, after all, that pushed “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” that has repeatedly called men “obsolete” and the future female, and has formulated laws and policies to push men out of their jobs and families. Society, I tweeted, needs to love men better.

It was only when a number of commenters pushed back, critiquing the article and noting that “Men need purpose more than love” that I went back and read the whole thing.

The article, by popular author and illustrator Carlyn Beccia, isn’t about loving men and certainly not about criticizing feminist policies or affirming male purpose. Its feminist-compliant subheading actually laments “how we indoctrinate men as providers.” With now-dreary predictability, the article develops an Alice-in-Wonderland argument: men need to get used to being useless.

Beccia takes one of the most fundamental of male roles through history—that of provider—and tells men to be thankful it’s gone. Men don’t need to be providers anymore, she claims, and their salvation will come when they are—well—more like women, or at least less typically masculine. To be masculine is to be motivated by “risk-taking,” which Beccia lumps in with a list of other supposed negatives such as “aggression, […] violence, and sexism.” She omits to mention that such qualities have also been necessary for social order and invention. According to Beccia, women have a commendably flexible sense of purpose because they aren’t bothered by the need to earn their way.

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