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Notes -
A few thoughts on the male feminist sex pest.
With the (in internet terms, not very) recent news of Neil Gaiman's escapades, a lot has been said about the agency (or lack thereof) of women, and to the corrupting effect of fame on men, but I've been giving some thought again to the Male Feminist Sex Pest phenomenon.
Most people here are probably aware of it, it's notable enough to get a comic from good ol' Stonetoss. Basically, the idea is that male feminists are disproportionately prone to acts of sexual misconduct.
What is the reason for this? I've been thinking about a few possible ones:
The MFSP as a predator: The classic right-wing stereotype. Guys of dubious moral character will take up an ideology with the intent of making potential victims lower their guards.
The MFSP as salience bias: Basically, male feminists are not particularly rapey, it's just more suprising so it makes the news. This could be true, but is basically impossible to verify in either direction.
The Male Feminist as a man struck with guilt: In this formulation, the man's bad behaviour is in their past, and their male feminist views are, in a way, compensation for the fact that he has behaved shittily towards women.
The Male Feminist as a man seeking absolution: If all or most men behave poorly, then the male feminist's past behaviour is not particularly noteworthy. By subscribing to the most deranged feminist assumptions, the male feminist can morph from a "bad man" to just "a man", or even a "good man", because at least they're willing to fight their deplorable male instincts.
The Male Feminist as a man stuck in time: For this man, being a feminist means some vague notion of "equal rights" and it being acceptable to have non-committal sex with younger girls. This is not in line with which more modern feminists believe, as he might eventually find out.
I am aware this is not the audience most in tune with the mentioned cohort, but what do you guys think? Any of the above resonate more? A little bit of each? Something else entirely?
As an aside, the last few explanations imply a type of person that people here might be very familiar with: the nerdy anti-feminist nice guy (no capitalization). It is perfectly possible, as an upper-middle class guy in a moderately to very liberal environment who doesn't like partying or going clubbing, to never notice the behaviour many women complain about (because neither you, nor your close friends and family engage in it), see that they don't seem to be particularly disadvantaged in any of the environments they interact with them, see that their ire is directed very broadly at men in general, and conclude that the whole thing might just be a scam.
My experience of observing a serial-monogamist male feminist was that the "feminism" was just one element of the omni-leftist persona he had adopted in his quest to marry an affluent (preferably) white woman. It was a combination of tech startup agile corpo-speak, DNC volunteer, radical Marxist revolutionary, and Blackness (lots of talk about "Bodies" and playing up the Childish Gambino schtick). He also spent some time declaring he was non-binary (which apparently meant wearing a midriff-bareing top once or twice). Women apparently lapped it up, he didn't need to pester anyone. (Seeing all this made me hate the world)
He'd be emotionally manipulative to a pointlessly psychotic degree once they were in a relationship with him, though. Despite all this, he could do no wrong in the eyes of leftists, because how could a gay black feminist communist be a bad person? The very statement is an oxymoron.
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