I first became aware of Hugo Schwyzer when I listened to debates he would have on the Glenn Sacks show (his side). He struck me as a softly-spoken gimp-like character; a man who took an almost fetishistic-like joy in self-flagellation and, by extension, the flagellation of his entire sex. Every solution to every problem was to declare men to be the weak perpetrators of evils based on their terribly flawed patriarchally-based natures. In short, he was a quintessential feminist.
However, whilst we can see why a female may find feminism alluring because it allows them to attach to a movement which offers catnip to blame all their shortcomings and failures in the game of life by buying into the belief that that game is essentially rigged. Feminism is a theory that offers women a chance to feel superior about themselves, whilst also feeling sorry about themselves and acting as the cringing victims.
This double-barreled appeal, whilst seemingly contradictory, has a great pull to it; a pull that we can see in the terrible characters of the many feminists we have run into through the years. The strength of the pull is entirely dependent on being a female though. If you don’t belong to that exclusive club but yet are a feminist, then you are coming into it for entirely different reasons.
I’ve been rather appalled at the Hugo Schwyzer story that has been unfolding unpleasantly lately, but since Ms. Daisy Cutter brought it up and Comrade Physioprof has a good post on it, I thought I’d throw in a few words to the pigpile.
Schwyzer is a professor who lectures on feminism…he’s also a professor who had sex with his students and who tried to murder an ex-girlfriend. We could stop right there; just those acts alone make him contemptible. But for some unfathomable reason, he now makes money lecturing women on feminist ethics and patriarchal culture; would you believe that the title of one of his lectures is “Holding Men Accountable”? And now many people are arguing that he should be recognized as a useful ally for women, that we should forgive and move on, and recognize him as a changed and better person.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/page/2/
P.Z. Myers is himself a cringing politically correct feminist. He is not into it for the same reasons that Schwyzer is though. Myers is a feminist because he sees it as the correct position to take, not morally, but correct in the context of his leftist politically correct nature. To not support the victim group is unconscionable. Myers won’t be “into it” to a degree even approaching Schwyzer though. I don’t think that money is the reason Hugo does his thing. I even don’t think it’s a pursuit of sex. I think he is weak and substantially flawed and riddled with guilt over his own feelings for women. His embrace of feminism is a way of getting acceptance and of being seen as a “right thinking” when the winds change over to a female-centric world.
In short, Schwyzer is messed up and weak, and in desperate need of validation from females.
Posted on: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 7:22 PM