February 14th is one of those special days. Love fills the air as romance becomes the theme of the day. In households throughout the nation, candlelit dinners and chocolates will be as common as television sets and computers. It’s just how it goes on the holiday dedicated to love.
Unless, of course, you really think it’s all about oppression.
Seriously, there are people out there who think this, and I’m not the only one annoyed by this brand of stupidity.
Valentine’s Day, we are told by a feminist blogger, is “a consumerist holiday, personified by patriarchal and heteronormative traditions which reinforces sexist stereotypes.” The anonymous 25-year-old assures her readers that she is “a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man.” This is fortunate because, apparently, no man needs her. She is alone and unloved, eating chocolate and watching Netflix while scrolling through profiles on the Tinder dating app — and this is what feminist “success” looks like.
An entire vocabulary of jargon phrases has been created by feminists to express their contempt for all things male and/or heterosexual. It is “sexist” to believe that women enjoy romance — cards and gifts, flowers and candy, etc. — and it is “heteronormative” to think that any woman might actually desire male companionship. Because the feminist is a “strong, independent woman,” she must regard males as utterly useless, insofar as she does not actively hate males as evil oppressors. “We identify the agents of our oppression as men,” Shulamith Firestone and her comrades in the feminist Redstockings collective declared in 1969: “All men receive economic, sexual, and psychological benefits from male supremacy. All men have oppressed women.”
I advise you to read the whole piece, because it’s very well done.
The problem here is actually pretty simple to understand. It’s hard to be open to the magic of love when you view the opposite gender as the enemy. Further, if you’re straight–and let’s face it, the vast majority of people actually are whether they view their preferred sex partners as evil or not–it complicates romance when you’re just waiting for the oppression to start.
Under that mindset, it’s not surprising to see someone believe that a holiday like Valentine’s Day is worthy of scorn and ridicule.
Frankly, it’s one day of the year. If this was the only time modern feminists lashed out at romance and heterosexual relationships, most of us would shrug and walk away. Or laugh hysterically. To each their own and all that.
Unfortunately, it’s not just one day. This is how so many of these harpies act every. Single. Day. Of. The. Year.
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