Feminist Life Skills

I am a truth-teller, if nothing else.

So says Meghan Murphy, whose frankness and modesty entertained us quite recently. Not least with her belief that the world needs “a feminist revolution… an end to masculinity,” and that “it’s time to consider a curfew for men.” Our self-effacing Amazon and speaker of truths, and editor of “Canada’s leading feminist website,” is once again sharing her wisdom with the world’s downtrodden womenfolk, with “Ten things every woman should know by the time she’s 36.” The nuggets on offer cover a spectrum of womanly woes, from the prosaic – buying shoes that fit as opposed to ones that don’t – to matters more profound:  

(3) Love, marriage, and heterosexual couplings will not complete you or make you happy.

Specifically,

I’m not saying that having positive, loving relationships with men is impossible. But it’s very hard.

Because,

First of all, most men are men… They are men who have been socialised as men in a world that teaches them male entitlement… As much as a man might be good and kind and loving, he’s still going to exhibit certain behaviours that will remind you that, oh right, I’m a woman living with a person who has spent their whole life in a position of power over me and my sisters and he will never fully understand what that’s like. 

You see,

Patriarchy makes heterosexual love next to impossible. Do your best to live the life you want regardless of whether or not there is a man in it and remember that having a man in it won’t necessarily make your life any better… Often, in fact, it makes it worse.

At which point readers may wonder if this severely jaundiced view of men – in which masculinity is something to “end” as a matter of urgency, and in which a male presence in one’s life is deemed likely to make it worse – is an obvious aid to success in the world of heterosexual romance. With heterosexual love being “next to impossible,” despite it occurring frequently across much of the planet’s surface. And some of you may be wondering whether the wholesale regurgitation of radfem boilerplate, including demands for male curfews, may give potential suitors the impression of being seated with a woman in need of medication. A perception unlikely to enhance any hopes of contented lifelong coupling.

However, if attempts to attract a male life partner fail – possibly as a result of explaining to him, at length, why he and other men are so ignorant, oppressive and dysfunctional – there is a consolation prize:

(10) You should get a dog.

So. Not a total loss.