Response to Marni Soupcoff's article "Of females, feasts and famine"

The following began as a submission to the "letters" page of the National Post in response to an observation made by Marni Soupcoff in an editorial. I forwarded this piece to Marni herself, who replied that she agreed with most of it and offered to post it on the Full Comment blog page on the Post's web site.
I have included the link to Marni's original editorial.


I was stunned to read in Marni Soupcoff's column "Of females, feasts and famine" (The National Post, Aug.8 2009) of the"feminist insistence that men create eating disorders by objectifying and judging women." Having known someone who has suffered with one of these disorders, I sincerely doubt that many of these women themselves would blame men for their condition. However, if this is an accurate reflection of contemporary feminist thought, then not only does it reveal how low into self-serving circular logic the feminist movement has sunk, it also begs a couple of crucial questions: What is it in women that makes them much more pre-disposed to developing eating disorders? And what is this pervasive yet inexcusable tendency of many women to divert responsibility for their own flaws and short-comings onto men?
We live in a culture where generalizations about male foibles are common place; where pointing them out for scorn or for humour is the social norm. Men are expected to have the maturity, character and moral fibre to look at themselves with uncompromising self-awareness and honesty and acknowledge their failings. Anything less subjects the offending male to un-contested ridicule and contempt.
Women by contrast, are encouraged by our culture to think of themselves as "goddesses;" to assume their gender's moral and spiritual superiority as a given; to resist any challenge to these self-serving assumptions and to reflexively privilege the perspective that comes to them most easily.
This is not equality, respect or acceptance - it's just patronizing. The big, unspoken secret is that men know it. Yes, there are those guilt ridden guys who have swallowed the cool-aid of collective male shame - the original sin of merely being born male. But outside of this subset of New-Age self-flagellators, several hundred thousand years of evolution has bred into men a "sixth-sense" for detecting falsehood and lack of authenticity in others. Whether skulking across the pre-historic savanna under threat from marauding sabre-tooth tigers; or facing attack from insurgents in Afghanistan, men have by necessity needed to know if the guy next to him in whom he has placed his trust is in fact who he has represented himself to be.
To put it crudely, evolution's gift to men is a built in B.S. detector.
The pre-feminist man was able to indulge in the self-certain righteousness of his exclusively male-centric universe. The post-feminist man, having fully integrated the female perspective and her critique of patriarchy, male aggression, sexual objectification etc.-cannot help but observe less than admirable characteristics common to women, but pretends he doesn't - either out of consideration, to avoid conflict, or simply out of fear of being attacked for applying the same awareness generating critique that has been applied to him.
We are left with the genders playing a massive game of denial; with men feeling it necessary to humour female self-righteousness, much the way an adult indulges a teenager's self- absorption out of recognition that teenage narcissism prevents true self-awareness.
This head in the sand state of affairs does nothing to advance the cause of women, the cause of men, mutual understanding between the genders, or society in general. Over the last 50 years, men have had to face the unpleasant truths of their own worst tendencies and take responsibility for them - stripped of the scapegoats of Eves, Jezebels, and Delilahs. Is it not time that women in general did the same?