Excerpt: The Guy’s Guide to Feminism

The Guy’s Guide to Feminism is a new book by Michael Kimmel and Michael Kaufman. Kimmel, as regular readers will know, is one of the leading thinkers on masculinity in America and the author of Guyland and Manhood in America. Kaufman is the co-founder of the White Ribbon Campaign and the author of a number of books about gender, including Cracking the Armor.

The Guy’s Guide is a fun, quick read that makes the case that feminism is as good for men as it is for women. At the book’s site, they’re publishing a short excerpt every week. This week, they provide an easy diagnosis guide to determine if you have caught the scurrilous and highly infectious scourge that is… feminism.

FIND OUT IF YOU’VE CAUGHT FEMINISM!

Do you believe that women should have the right to:
• Vote?
• Go to college?
• Drive a car?
• Open bank accounts in their own names?
• Enjoy sex?
• Work in whatever occupation they might choose, and get paid the same as men when they do the same work?

Did you answer yes?
Then you better lie down. . . . You’ve probably caught feminism.

The feminist contagion has spread far and wide. It infects both women and men. Most people in North America, Europe and many parts of the rest of the world have caught it. The terrible truth is that, nowadays, most of us support these rights and actually see them as basic rights of individuals in a democracy.

QUESTIONS FOR CONCERNED INDIVIDUALS !
What was it like before we had to worry about being infected? For one thing, women had none of these rights. Ask your mother or grandmother: as recently as the 1960s, she had to get her hubby’s signature to open a bank account.

How did the contagion spread? Not by being ladylike. Women spent a hundred years campaigning for the right to vote (and winning it first in New Zealand.) They fought for a century to control their own bodies and work alongside men in the jobs of their choice.

Yeah, but aren’t things equal now? This disease is relentless. Give ’em the right to vote and they want the right to equal pay. Give ’em that and they want childcare as part of the public education system. And, who knows, when they get that, they’re going to expect an end to rape and partner assault. This disease knows no bounds!

Tee hee, feminists can be funny. You can read the rest here.

New York, NY

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia. She joined the Feministing team in 2009. Her writing about politics and popular culture has been published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, New York magazine, Reuters, The LA Times and many other outlets in the US, Australia, UK, and France. She makes regular appearances on radio and television in the US and Australia. She has an AB in Sociology from Princeton University and a PhD in Arts and Media from the University of New South Wales. Her academic work focuses on Hollywood romantic comedies; her doctoral thesis was about how the genre depicts gender, sex, and power, and grew out of a series she wrote for Feministing, the Feministing Rom Com Review. Chloe is a Senior Facilitator at The OpEd Project and a Senior Advisor to The Harry Potter Alliance. You can read more of her writing at chloesangyal.com

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia.

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