HOLLY Combe, who contributes to the feminist blog, The F-Word, appeared on BBC Radio Five Live to endorse male-only clubs and associations on the basis that “men are more patronising than women”.
Rather than defend her stereotypical remarks or bother to explain that when it comes to denigrating comments men are fair game whilst women, immigrants, obese people and the disabled are not, she merely goes on to say that men “should just accept it because it’s not about them”. Ordinarily, one would expect a feminist to complain if their local golf club tried to exclude women, but Ms. Combes and her freaky friends clearly prefer a male-free environment due to their ferociously bigoted and gender-centric opinions.
When it comes to male political action, on the other hand, the people at F-Word appear to contradict themselves by dismissing the notion that men, like feminists, should be able to organise separately. Take the following comment from Glen Noble, a blogger who just-so-happens to lecture on postmodernism, homonormativity and autoethnography at the University of Brighton:
“Movements have power and legitimacy. The last thing we need is another male-dominated movement. We only have to look at the problems of whiteness in feminism, or patriarchy in POC movements, or class for LGBT equality to see how movements can reinforce marginalisation.”
Previously, Noble has set up so-called Privilege Discussion Workshops in which he and his fellow self-flagellators spend endless hours taking full responsibility for the evil that is man. A right cock-and-bull story, if you ask me. At the same time, he argues,
“I don’t think this should form the basis of a men’s movement, because we find it hard to see privilege in ourselves or people that are like ourselves and it often takes someone else to call us on it. But I do think that men need to take a more proactive and personal role in addressing patriarchy and privilege, and to do so in distinct spaces where it doesn’t detract from other work that is being done.”
In other words, if we all totter off to the safe confines of the local golf club then the people behind The F-Word blog can quietly lay the foundations for total female world-domination. Or not.
