In Which The Author Becomes An Icon Of Modern Feminism Somehow

What a long, strange week it's been --- and it's only Tuesday. Last week I wrote what, at the time, felt like a total throwaway piece on a few incidents that I've observed as a long-haired male motorcyclist. As previously discussed here, the article got a couple pretty hard-chop edits for length and rambling on my part. By the end of Thursday, it hadn't even racked up 1,000 Facebook shares. I gave it up for dead and started working on the next thing.

Then something happened.

It appeared on Instapundit. Then on multiple subreddits; at one point, it was the top story on /r/motorcycles, /r/women, and /r/TwoXChromosone, all at the same time. Then it made Yahoo Autos' front page. Then it made the regular Yahoo front page. Finally, it appeared as a top story at the Daily Mail's "Femail" section. There are too many comments for me to read --- perhaps five thousand between Reddit, Yahoo, and DM. Women are sending e-mails and contact information to me, to R&T, to TTAC.

Thousands of people, mostly women but not without a smattering of long-haired bikers and cyclists, are all saying the same thing: This has happened to me. Thank you for talking about it. At the same time, hundreds of men are accusing me of being an "SJW" or a "libtard" or a homosexual. One guy said I was "practicing for being a tyranny". I'm thinking that he meant to imply I was "genderqueer", not that I was working on a Stalin-style reign over America's roads. One fellow, Reddit user "IMR800X", called me a bitch, a honey, and a few other homo-implicating things. When I called him an "anonymous coward" in response, he went full-monty and decided to passive-aggressively threaten my child:

That's how seriously some people take Reddit, ladies and gentlemen. Can't say that it does much to undermine the Redditor stereotype.

Anyway, before I get to all the wonderful things the womyn said about me I want to respond to the primary complaints about the story from male readers:

0. I probably made it all up.

1. I must drive like an asshole.

We'll start with Complaint Zero. Did I make it all up? No. It never would have occurred to me to make it up. I'm really not an SJW --- quite the opposite. I'm an old-fashioned conventional fellow with Fifties notions of male and female roles. As I've previously written, I'm also a reluctant believer in much of that "Red Pill" stuff, as horrible and depressing as it is. I wrote the long-hair story without a political agenda, and I wrote it because I actually experienced the incidents that I described.

Many of my critics, including the aforementioned IMR800X guy, probably share more opinions on more subjects with me than they could possibly realize. The problem is that I'm just not in love with my own opinions and therefore when I see something that conflicts with my preconceptions, I have no emotional-based problem with adjusting those preconceptions to reality. Over the past 45 years I've been both a rabid liberal and a screaming conservative but nowadays I think of myself as a reality addict. I'm interested in conforming to reality no matter how unpleasant it might be. If that means that I believe "Red Pill" or "MRA" or "SJW" or "progressive" things, that's fine. As long as they are real, and true.

Now for Complaint One, which is the most common problem people have with the article. Do I drive/ride like an asshole? Well, I'm probably faster and more aggressive in traffic than most people. Does it matter in this case? Not in the slightest. The article isn't about what I do to be confronted; it's about what happens next. When other drivers think I'm a woman, they are more likely to approach me in a challenging or threatening fashion.

Listen, this is reality as well and if you don't believe me then ask yourself if you've ever honked or screamed at some Rusty Coones dude or four thugged-out brothers in a lowrider '64 Impala. Human beings are hard-wired to defer to any creature or person who looks like they could be extremely dangerous. That's why your ancestors survived long enough to create you instead of dying in a fist-fight with a sabertooth tiger.

Sure, it's a little depressing to read people describing my perfectly legal zipper merge onto a highway as "road rage", but that's not the point. The point is what people do when they think I've wronged them, and those actions are far more aggressive when they think I'm female.

I thought about excerpting a few of the comments and emails I've seen from female readers in the space below, but it's probably best just to summarize what they're saying: that thousands of women have written emails to me or left comments on various webpages related to my article stating that they have been the target of violent, aggressive men on the American road. We're talking more than just honking and flipping-off here. Apparently women don't feel safe from their fellow motorists. I wonder how much of the current trend of every car in America evolving towards the same turret-top, bunker-window, lifted-crossover stance product has to do with women who want to feel armored by their vehicles.

In the interest of fairness, I'm going to present both a "progressive" and a "Red Pill" rationale for this:

Progressive: Women have been the subject of violence from men since the dawn of time. Until we teach young men to view women as completely equal, perhaps identical, to them, they will continue to bully women and treat women like weaker, lesser creatures who can be violated at will. Feminism is the answer and rigorous societal shaming is the method to make it work.

Red Pill: Women make up more than half of college students, white-collar workers, and the upper class. They have every advantage possible. Why bother treating them with respect or chivalry when they're all either Tinderella sluts or crazy old Wall-impact femiNazis? Might as well treat them like what they are. A return to traditional American values would create a world where men treated women like valued princesses. But if a woman wants to act like a man, I'm going to attack her like she's a man.

I think I could sit on either site of that debate panel, to be truthful. My own synthesized reasoning is below:

Jack says that: Men and women are created equal in the sight of God. But we're not identical. In a perfect world, men and women would treat each other with respect, with the understanding that it's okay for us to all be different. It's less okay for a man to hit a woman than it is for a man to hit another man. It's also less okay for a woman to taunt or provoke a man than it is for a woman to taunt or provoke another woman. Let's try to cherish the diversity between the sexes the way we're all being told to cherish the diversity between different cultures. Or something like that.

I imagine that some of that wouldn't sit well with the female readers who are praising my "feminist stance", although it might be okay with the one who referred to me as a "Hell's Angel" in an admiring tone. The truth is that I don't have all the answers. Maybe I don't have any of them. I look at America and what I see is eighty percent of men deciding to "go their own way" into video games and Internet forums and reclusive hobbies while the remaining twenty percent has all the sex and all the fun. I see women endlessly shaming the "beta" men who go to work every day and basically carry the country on their backs. I see young men being told that their natural impulses to fight and do crazy things and chase impossible dreams and fall in love with girls makes them "cisgender oppressors".

We can't continue as a society if we don't fix it. We'll wind up like Europe, essentially turning out the lights on our way of life and handing the keys over to the next tenants.

So this is what I'm going to ask all my male readers: Treat women with respect. Save your anger and your intimidation and your violence for your fellow men.

And this is what I'm going to ask my female readers: Maybe, just maybe, you'd be better off dating the nice guy from Technical Support or the friendly engineering student down the hall in your dorm instead of having one-night-stands with some roided-up musclehead or some needle-tracked bass player or some charming but vacant bartender... or even some long-haired outlaw biker with blue eyes and an unpredictable temper. If you want American men to be decent people, give us some incentive.

And now, if you'll excuse me, we'll return to our regular schedule of cars and bikes and watches and movies and jazz music and completely irrelevant things...