I was listening to the FDS podcast episode with Gail Dines, and for the most part, I was enjoying it- until she went off on a tangent about her son and how proud of herself she was for 'raising him to be a male feminist'. Her example of proof that her efforts paid off- how he didn't go to a strip club with his bros- bros who he's still friends with, whose sexist behavior he's still happy to tolerate- just so long as they don't do it around him.

I really didn't understand how someone like Gail Dines of all people could be so naive about socializing a male child out of misogyny, but with any luck, here's hoping she's an ovarit lurker and finds this post.

And for all you other Ovarit boymoms, please don't think this is me dissing your parenting. I don't think any of you are bad mothers. I'm the daughter of one of ya'll myself. And just like you, I know my mom did the best she could, raising my kid bro to respect women.

That said, I totally get it if your first instinct reading this post's title was to get offended. Your son was probably your last ray of hope for the male sex after a lifetime of being disillusioned and disappointed by it's member's collective scrotery. Growing up, you probably dreamed of the day you'd be swept off your feet by a fellow like the ones in your favorite romance novels/Disney movies and live happily ever after, only for a lifetime of dealing with the sh*ttiness of irl men to leave this fantasy tarnished (we've all been there). Unfortunately, most only love women for what we can do for them, and not without viewing us as subhuman to some degree. It is what it is.

But as a result, you never found the kind of love you were taught to desire from childhood, did you? Maybe not even from your own husband. Not until you found yourself the parent of a male child who would eventually reach adulthood under your care and guidance, And which woman can any man love as strongly as his mother? What man has any other choice but to love her unconditionally?

So you did what any woman in your position would. You raised him to be a good husband/boyfriend based on all the qualities you sought in your ideal romantic partner. In your eyes, your son is quite literally, the 'perfect man'

Now, I am NOT implying that you want to date/f*ck/marry your son. I am, however, suggesting that you make an effort to self-reflect on your perception of him, and reevaluate your role in his life as a parental figure, lest you end up like the women in the following tiktok compilation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br6hju8dIAk&t=1144s

Or even worse, like the mother of Junko Furuta's murderers who defaced Junko's grave for 'ruining her son's prospects'. Or the mother of Luis Rubiales, who locked herself up in a church and went on a hunger strike in protest of his innocence- after he sexually assaulted a woman on live TV. Or Brian Laundrie's mom, whose following letter was found on his corpse after he murdered Gaby Petito.

“I just want you to remember I will always Love you and I know you will always Love me. You are my boy. Nothing can make me stop loving you, nothing will or could ever divide us. No matter what we do, or where we go or what we say- we will always Love each other. If you’re in jail I will bake a cake with a file in it. If you need to dispose of a body I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags. If you fly to the moon, I will be watching the skies for your re-entry. If you say you hate my guts, I’ll get new guts.

This behavior is understandable to a certain degree. After all, if raising a man from birth and instilling in him all your ideals regarding women's equality wasn't enough to stop him from becoming yet another sexist Scrote ... maybe men really do just kinda suck as a whole? And that's a terrifying thought to bear, isn't it?

Well, it doesn't have to be. Not if you make peace with the fact that there's only so much you can do regarding your son's attitude towards women, and recognize him for the man he is, instead of as a canvas for you to project your ideal 'male feminist' romantic partner onto. And you can start by familiarizing yourself with all the reasons why it's impossible to raise a "male feminist".

1. We all live in the same world and unless you're teaching your son about feminism in a padded cell, he's going to be exposed to male supremacist ideas/rhetoric alongside your influence and there’s no way in hell he won’t subconsciously internalize at least some of it. Whenever he goes outside, he’s going to be bombarded with images of women in lacy lingerie with full faces of makeup. Every time he turns on the TV, he’ll be exposed to shows treating violence against women as a lighthearted punchline. If he’s using social media, it’s only a matter of time before he stumbles onto the manosphere. No matter how hard you try to instill the importance of respecting women, it ultimately falls to him and him alone which values he’ll decide to align with. What’s stopping him from putting on a front to please mommy while secretly letting his misogyny loose the moment she’s not around anymore?

2. Men value nothing more than masculinity, and they base their entire sense of it off the subservience of women- men's entire identity is based on how much control they can obtain over us. Masculinity as a construct, fundamentally exists so that men can retain the illusion of superiority over women, and non-masculine men are considered embarrassments to their sex. In fact, masculine men go out of their way to antagonize them because they see every single one of their number who isn’t actively upholding male supremacy as a liability. How much harassment, mockery, and possibly even physical violence can your son withstand before he decides to take the path of least resistance? And if he decides to stick out the abuse, how long before he starts to resent the women who he’s enduring it on behalf of once he learns that they aren’t obligated to reward his efforts by sleeping with him?

3. Dehumanizing women is an essential part of male culture. Examples include locker-room talk, viciously nitpicking women’s appearances online, sexist jokes, watching porn in groups, and nonconsensually spreading nudes. Men who condemn such practices are branded ‘simps’ worthy of nothing but derision and scorn. And even ‘male feminists’ have class solidarity, along with which comes the desire to earn their fellow men’s approval. Approval your son isn’t going to earn so long as he’s viewed by them as a sanctimonious killjoy.

4. Even if your son personally doesn’t believe women are inherently inferior, or that they were put on this Earth for male gratification, as a man, he still benefits from male supremacy, regardless. Even if he, himself doesn’t partake in any kind of sexist behavior, he still has an incentive to enable other guys who do, because the proliferation of bad men allows men like himself to justify exploiting women’s inequity to less severe degrees while self-soothing under the delusion that ‘I could be a whole lot worse’.

5. Men’s sexuality is inherently sadistic and rooted in the need to dominate. If it wasn’t, male soldiers wouldn’t be commiting mass rape every single time there’s ever been a war, regardless of the time period, countries involved, or whose side was winning. It’s still terrifying even when free from the influence of porn. It still involves viewing compartmentalizing women into a collection of sexy parts that just so happen to be sentient. It still involves treating sex as some sort of a conquest, with men priding themselves on how much pain they can inflict on their partner by the end of it. And when it comes to getting their rocks off, you’ll be amazed at men’s capacity for cognitive dissonance. Your male feminist son is not an exception.

6. Male allies to feminism tend to get such a big ego over not doing all the shitty stuff they see other men getting away with, that they inevitably start to believe women owe them for their bare-minimum standards of human decency. Which in turn leads to them policing feminist’s anger and resentment towards his sex by insisting that misandry is ‘just as bad’ as misogyny, or attempting to co-opt the movement to center men’s interests because ‘men are victims of the patriarchy too’

(Bear in mind, this was NOT an attempt on my part to convince you that your precious baby boy is a monstrous rapist waiting for the chance to pounce. In fact, I’m sure all your sons are wonderful fellows who will never go that far. But when it comes to men, they can absolutely be a ‘wonderful person’ and still have misogynistic tendencies. Mahatma Ghandhi raped underage girls. Martin Luther King cheated on his wife with prostitutes. The fact remains that there’s absolutely no failsafe tried-and-tested method for raising a male child that 100% guarantees he won’t grow up to be sexist and by assuming you found one with your parenting approach, you’re placing unrealistic expectations on your son that he’ll never be able to live up to and setting both him and yourself up for disappointment, when he inevitably falls short.