How Erin Pizzey imagines most feminists live, apparently

Longtime antifeminist crusader Erin Pizzey recently did an “Ask Me Anything” session on Reddit. Here are some highlights — by which I mean lowlights — from her answers.

Ms. Pizzey wants to ban feminism as a hate movement:

Personally, I would like to see the feminist movement described as a hate movement, so that we can then ban them from the government, from university faculties, from anywhere where they can destroy the minds of young women and men.

It’s just a teensy bit ironic, I would say, that she characterizes feminism as a hate movement at the very same time that A Voice for Men, a site she has very publicly aligned herself with, is leading a hate campaign against an individual feminist activist. (More on this to come tomorrow.) Indeed, Pizzey herself adds to the vilification of the activist here.

And speaking of A Voice for Men, she apparently agrees with AVFM’s Paul Elam that feminists are only interested in the issue of rape because they have rape fantasies and are angry that they’re not getting enough attention from men:

If you’re referring to Paul’s statement that many or most women fantasize about being taken, I’m sorry but that’s the truth. That doesn’t mean they want to be raped, but it’s a fantasy I think almost all women have. And I think he went on to say that feminists like Andrea Dworkin who were and are so obsessed with rape are really projecting their own unconscious sexual frustration because men don’t give them enough attention. Andrea was a very sad lonely woman like this-I didn’t know her but I knew of her, and I knew Susan Browmiller and you can just read her stuff to see it there.

Yeah, I’m thinking that Dworkin’s “obsession” with rape might have had less to do with her wanting “attention” from men than it did with the fact that she had been raped.

In response to a question about using Title IX to increase the number of women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), Pizzey argues that most women’s brains aren’t equipped to handle all that sciencey stuff, and that most women would rather be raising children:

what will happen is that a few women will come out of that world in those areas that suit men’s brains better than women’s, and do well, but most of them won’t, and they’ll just leave and go on to other professions or to have children or family. That’s what’s been happening all the time when they’ve had quotas.

But what about the men who get excluded because of that? That’s the tragedy isn’t it, and the waste of money. Harriet Harman has proposed quotas for women in parliament, quotas for women in all the high-status fields, and women have flocked in but do not want the gruelling hours that men are willing to put into their professions because most of them-MOST of them-want to be spending time with their children at home, and that God for that.

Pizzey believes that most feminists are “mental patents” who deserve only condescension:

Personally, I don’t get into arguments with mental patients, which is what most feminist women are. Look at them with pity and compassion if you can, speak the truth as you know it.

But if you want a real reaction, pat her on the head and tell her not to worry her pretty little head about it. That’s what I do! I think men have to start using their sense of humor as a weapon. You must get past any sense of anger when you do such things though!

She believes most prominent second-wave feminists were feminists mainly because they hated their dads:

One of the early mantras of the feminist movement was to make the personal political. Therefore, those women who had bitter and violent experiences of the first male their lives (e.g. their father) then branded all men as violent and dangerous. They are also what I call the walking wounded. As far as I’m concerned the prominent feminists of the day virtually all had appalling relationships with their fathers. So if feminism grew out of a justified sense of grievance, and created a platform where they did not attempt to heal their own damage, but to project onto all men… so yes it’s very cultlike that way. But it’s any cult group that works that way, they all have either a figure they adore or a hate object that keeps them together. And their hate is against men, even when they deny it.

Yes, that’s right, she says all this and somehow does not notice the hatred of women amongst the MRAs she’s aligned herself with.

While she dismisses feminists with “daddy issues” she urges those who have been abused by their parents to forget the abuse they’ve endured, forgive their abusers and “move on.”

[T]each yourself that the past is truly the past, it is done and you cannot change it, all it is is a loop in your brain that needs to be closed down so that you can move forward. Because those patterns are deep within you, it takes a lot of hard work, but in the end you FORGIVE YOURSELF and you FORGIVE YOUR PARENTS and move on.

Meanwhile, she thinks that it makes sense for men who don’t like feminism to “head for the hills” and Go Their Own Way.

It was many years ago I was talking to a very eligible bachelor, who was a lawyer, and asked him about American feminists. He laughed and he said “what they never banked on was that men would get together and take to the hills.” This is where that expression comes from. He and his male friends would get together and have a wonderful time, they did not make permanent relationships with women, because they realized they would have too much to lose: their homes, their children, and their money. I always remember this. When 40 year old feminists complain that they can’t find any men to commit themselves, why is it men’s fault? I can’t blame men who feel this way in today’s legal environment. If the so-called women’s movement, the feminists, want men, they have to care equally about men’s desires and men’s need for protection.

This sort of makes sense, given that Pizzey seems to live in an imaginary world in which women, not men, are the truly privileged.

The actual irony of this situation is there is nothing more privileged than white middle class women, who are most of feminists. Very very privileged, because they know when they are born that either the state or a man will take care of them if they do not choose their own career. Men on the other hand are born underprivileged, particularly now, even as small boys they are demonized and discriminated against. …

I cannot see how sane sensible educated intelligent woman can consider that men are privileged. It has always been rich and middle class women who have been protected, and they are the truly privileged.

Indeed, she’s managed to convince herself that “never in the history of the world have men been so unprivileged, if you think about it.”

Naturally, all of her comments were happily upvoted by the Reddit masses, and her “Ask Me Anything” post itself got more than 1200 upvotes. Evidently pandering to Reddit’s collective fantasies about the oppression of men pays off big in the upvote department.