Reason #345,763,930 why feminism sucks

It’s hard to be a feminist.

No, really. There’s a strict dogma attached to being a feminist that the even the most ardent bra burners can find hard to live up to. Woe be unto you if your natural feelings about your looks or aging collide head-on with the feminist rulebook.

Just ask writer and feminist Jessica Valenti. Girlfriend is a whirl of conflicting emotions as she bemoans the lack of catcalls coming her way as she walks the streets of New York City (what she calls “negative attention”).

Valenti writes in The Guardian that she was on the receiving end of such “negative attention” from an early age. It horrified and embarrassed her!

Being on the subways and streets of New York while female used to mean walking through a veritable gauntlet of harassment and catcalls. But lately, a curious thing has happened – my world is a much quieter place. The comments and lascivious stares from men have faded away the older I’ve gotten, leaving an understandable sense of relief. But alongside that is a slightly embarrassing feeling of insecurity that, with every year that goes by, I become more and more invisible to men.

So what was once horrifying in its presence is now embarrassing in its absence? Alrighty then.

Also, there is both relief and insecurity. Sounds like normal things a woman might feel as she ages, although it is a tad surprising coming from a woman who admits she has made it a priority to “scream at and shame catcallers in recent years.” Oh, the therapy bills that must be involved when one wrestles with needing the approval of the very same people you try to shame.

Alas, that is the hypocrisy of being a feminist.

…the thought of not being worth men’s notice bothers me. To my great shame, I assume I must look particularly good on the rarer days that I do get catcalled.

There’s that word again — shame. The shamer is now the shamed.

Being a feminist apparently means feeling extreme remorse about your emotions. This bears repeating, as this really speaks to the essence of being a feminist. Shame. Shame for appreciating male attention. Shame for wanting to look good to the opposite sex. Shame, ultimately, for not living up to the strict dogmatic lifestyle of feminism.

What I want to know is — where’s the empowerment amidst all this shame?

But, wait, there’s more.

I know that my reaction is normal, considering the culture I’ve grown up in …

But I can admit that - even as a seasoned feminist - sexism is a powerful enough force to still reside my head.

Being a “seasoned” feminist means never having to take responsibility for your feelings of inadequacy; it’s always a man’s culture’s someone else’s fault. Again, where’s the empowerment? The crux of Valenti’s form of feminism — the dusty, moldy kind that is well past its sell-by date — is, ultimately, and unsurprisingly, mired in extreme hypocrisy.

And most modern-day women reject it. Who wants to live a life of shame and hypocrisy, always having to the toe the line of a has-been sisterhood? If living a free, happy, self-determined life means putting up with some catcalls, we’ll take it … happily.

Thanks to Valenti, we now know the ultimate truth of feminism: the fish does indeed need the bicycle.