Essay: What the Fuck is Wrong With Men?

Adrien Brody and Kieran Culkin at The Oscars. Photo: Frank Micelotta/Disney via Getty (2)

What the fuck is wrong with men?

I know that’s a bizarre question coming from Ms. Fuck the Patriarchy, but twice in two days I’ve had run-ins with misogynist fucks, and when I’ve told female friends about them, they’ve shared their own “What the fuck is wrong with men?” encounters. I know this is anecdotal, but I also know the answer to my own question.

Donald Trump.

When the most powerful man in the country is a sexual predator who mainlines misogyny and whose hiring criteria for his cabinet requires the assault of women as the primary if not the only skill of the men he surrounds himself with, then he gives a blaring, glaring greenlight to men everywhere that they can treat us like shit and face no accountability. Worse–that they can treat us like shit and be rewarded for it.

Misogyny wins!

When Vice President Childless Cat Ladies posits women’s happiness firmly within the confines of a heterosexual marriage that she cannot leave (J.D. Vance wants to end no-fault divorce), where she is financially dependent on her husband (Vance believes working outside the home brings women misery) for whom she pops out one baby after another (the destruction of Roe v Wade and a possible abortion ban will usher in forced births as a national norm), he gives a blaring, glaring greenlight to men everywhere that women are the walking incubator property of men.

Misogyny wins!

When during the apex of the U.S. cultural elite known as the Oscars not one but three Oscar winners treated women like walking incubators for their progeny (Kieran Culkin channeled Vance by reminding his wife that she promised him babies as rewards for an Emmy and an Oscar), a trash can for their used gum (Adrien Brody literally took the gum out of his mouth and tossed it to his partner to catch before he accepted his speech and bloviated forever while saying nothing), and hapless and incapable ditzes and not the Oscar winning animators they are (Hossein Molayemi literally grabbed his wife and co-director Shirin Sohani’s smartphone out of her hand to read word for word what she had just said already) then it gives a blaring, glaring greenlight to men everywhere that women ain’t shit.

Misogyny wins!

And while misogyny got a repeat performance at the Oscars, not a single person at that apex of the U.S. cultural elite said a peep about the fungus that is fascism seeping into every crevice of U.S. life.

When the big men all repeat the same message–Misogyny wins!--it is no wonder that ordinary little men not only listen but flex their misogyny muscles on women they encounter in their day-to-day lives in a desperate attempt at power and relevance.