A History Of Idiot Men Saying Feminism Is Dead
Because when it comes to feminism, I really want an old guy's opinion.
Ah, it’s so fantastic to be a woman. Today British journalist and all round red-faced gasbag Piers Morgan, declared that “feminism, as it was intended, is dead” as a response to a topless selfie by Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski.
If you’re not across it, a few weeks ago Kim was criticised for uploading a naked selfie to Twitter and Instagram for various archaic reasons (It’s super slutty! It demeans all women! A mother shouldn’t be sexual!) but instead of shying away from the conversation, Kim wrote a decidedly woke blog post on International Women’s Day about slut shaming and female empowerment. Emily was a supporter of the sentiment and thus, their joint topless selfie was born.
Piers, a man that knows the plight of women more than real women do, decided that feminism is dead because look at these women staring at themselves in a mirror, they’re not Emmeline Pankhurst! To be fair he has a solid point: neither of these women are Emmeline Pankhurst.
RIP feminism. pic.twitter.com/dqxKla2i5Q
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 30, 2016
This isn’t the first time that Piers Morgan has said horrible things about women (he often tweets about ‘FemiNazis’ because feminists are just as bad as Nazis, get it) and it’s not even the first time that he has said something shady about a Kim Kardashian selfie. When she posted the last naked image, he very gallantly offered to buy her some clothes; then when she responded, he wrote an article about how deluded and desperate she was.
It makes sense that Piers would hold up the leader of early 20th century suffrage as the pinnacle of respectable feminism, because men like him only like feminism when it’s ‘safe’; which means the feminism that is long ago enough that it no longer feels radical and dangerous, and is led by a woman who has been dead since 1928.
Feminism died in 1998, doofus @piersmorgan pic.twitter.com/oVg1ta9eXv
— ıpıɐz uɐɹɯı (@i_zzzzzz) March 30, 2016
Even if you don’t like Kim Kardashian’s brand of body positivity, she should be free to make a choice without the judgement of a male surveillance. Critiques of feminism are important and create meaningful dialogue — for example, if you don’t agree with mainstream feminism’s focus on a white, cisgendered experience then hey, that’s super legit! But for reactionary idiots like Piers to say that feminism is over just by virtue of it not meeting his idea of what a feminist should look or act like, is fucking dumb and borderline hilarious.
To be completely fair to Piers, he is not the first idiot to decide that feminism is no longer needed or has been ruined by upstarts. Let’s take a brief look back, a greatest hits if you will, at some other times that men have decided that this whole feminism thing was dead and buried:
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Norman Mailer, 1971 until he died.
“What I still hate about the women’s movement is their insistence upon male piety in relation to it. I don’t like bending my knee and saying I’m sorry, mea culpa. I find now that women have achieved some power and recognition they are quite the equal of men in every stupidity and vice and misjudgment that we’ve exercised through history… They’re narrow-minded, power seeking, incapable of recognising the joys of a good discussion.” – Time magazine, 1991.
Feminism is redundant because small changes have already been made.
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Homer Simpson From The Simpsons, 1995.
“Marge, you being a cop makes you the man. Which makes me the woman. And I have no interest in that. Besides occasionally wearing the underwear, which, as we discussed, is strictly a comfort thing.”
Feminism inverts traditional gender roles to the point where everyone is confused about their gender.
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Taylor Doose From Gilmore Girls, 2005.
“Look what Jane Fonda hath wrought!”
Feminism is now excessive because it gave us Jane Fonda and Jane Fonda made us disobedient.
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Tony Abbott, 2010
“I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.” – Four Corners.
Feminism doesn’t matter because it’s not physically possible.
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Tyrese Gibson From Fast And The Furious, 2011
“Y’all are on some independent kick, ‘I don’t need no man, I’m independent’… You’re going to independent your way into loneliness.”
Feminism has gone too far and is now destroying relationships.
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Alan Jones, 2012
“Fair dinkum, mate… $320 million to increase the number of Pacific women in leadership and decision-making roles, to increase women’s access to financial services and markets, to improve the safety of women through better violence prevention. She [Julia Gillard] said, ‘We know that societies only reach their full potential if women are politically participating’. Women are destroying the joint — Christine Nixon in Melbourne, Clover Moore here. Honestly.” – 2GB radio.
Feminism is allowing women to destroy everything in the world.
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Andrew Bolt, 2012
“Feminism has become the last resort of the scoundrel.” – Herald Sun.
Feminism doesn’t liberate women it gives them an excuse to be scoundrels.
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Redfoo, 2014
“The women have gone crazy on me. Then what happens is, if you’re a blog writer, you have to do 25 articles a day … I don’t know how ‘Redfoo’ and ‘rape culture’ got into the same headline, but that’s a clickable link. And then it got to the groups, the feminist groups that came in.”
Feminism has gone overboard because it’s causing inaccurate blogging.
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Donald Trump, 2016.
“Women have one of the great acts of all time. The smart ones act very feminine and needy, but inside they are real killers. The person who came up with the expression ‘the weaker sex’ was either very naive or had to be kidding. I have seen women manipulate men with just a twitch of their eye — or perhaps another body part.”
Feminism is redundant because beautiful women can be very manipulative with their vaginas.
Actually there are so many more Trump quotes that I’ll let the ladies take this one: