If You Haven’t Won the Lottery

People have interesting friends:

Recently, I politely declined to debate with one such baffled male friend, who followed up by sending me some well-intentioned advice on how I could be a more effective feminist. Having never thought much about feminism before, he said, he just didn’t find my social media posts appealing. Too shouty and academic. What I needed was to explain things in a way that appealed to men.

Considering himself as the sort of bloke who “could be part of the solution”, he helpfully sent me a link to a twelve-minute TED talk which contained, in his words, “a basic yes/no test” for misogyny together with proposed steps to solve the problem. In an impressive gesture of hubris, he suggested the next time I was asked to educate a man who was genuinely trying to learn about feminism, I forward this snappy sound-byte resource he had just found for me.

The long post misses the most interesting part: how the author trashed the “friend” for being a condescending, self-congratulating freakazoid and made him curse the horrible day on which he was born, exposing himself to the dark future of crossing paths with her.

In the meanwhile, one is sitting here, itching to brutalize somebody for using the word “shouty”, yet never getting a chance. Life is unfair. Some people

basically already won the life lottery just by showing up

while others never get any luck.

Happy International Women’s Day, everybody, and remember that trashing freakazoids is a great way to celebrate.