Sugabelly, feminism, and terrible rebuttals – a counterpoint to a counterpoint

The man who pays my salary, Chude Jideonwo, believes no voice should be silenced. It’s a very laudable position and while I disagree with it, he pays my salary.

So…yeah.

Yesterday, I got this shambles of a rebuttal to Sugabelly’s post on Nigerian feminism in my email. Seriously, it was terrible. My first move was to ignore it like the other terrible opinions I get emailed, but management thought it was important to share the other side of the feminism debate.

Or maybe they just wanted the pageviews.

While Sugabelly’s passion can and should indeed be commended, her ideas, especially this not-so-subtle call to violence, are at once intellectually bankrupt and amazingly silly.

It’s intellectually bankrupt to read Sugabelly’s entire piece and reduce it to a “not-so-subtle call to violence”.

First, feminism seems to me to deal too much in generalizations. Sugabelly’s tweets often fall in this category. All men are this! Nigerian men are that! And the evidence for these categorical assertions that demonize men is almost always anecdotal.

Wait, we’re complaining about generalizations while using Sugabelly’s tweets to represent all of feminism.

Amazing.

Second, feminism often seems to me to be hypocritical. Because it is biased in favour of demonizing men, it easily creates double standards in matters such as rape. An allegation of rape more often than not becomes evidence of the rape. And none of these feminists seems to understand the damage that a false allegation of rape can do to a man.

A couple of people way smarter than I am got tired of hearing this strawman, so they actually did the research on it. Turns out only about 2% – 10% of reported rape allegations turned out to be false.

The feminists are so desperate to prove that their much-touted rape culture exists, that they are not ready to let a little thing like legal proof hold them back.

If you aren’t on it already, you should probably get on Bill Cosby’s defense team. In a country where marital rape isn’t illegal, I guess it’s easy to see how one can doubt the existence of rape culture.

Third, feminism seems to me to be fascistic. It censors. It shouts down opposing viewpoints. It shuns debate.

Look at you generalizing again. Cute.

Fourth, feminism appears to me to be a movement that will never give up the victim narrative. No matter how much progress is made, feminists will always claim that they are victims. This is evidenced by feminism in the first world where women have made tremendous progress in recent times. Claiming victim status is a sad feature of identity politics generally, but is no less an unattractive feature of feminism for that reason.

This is like that time my mother flogged me and I cried, then she told to stop acting like a baby for crying.

Fifth, feminism alienates. The language of feminists as epitomized by Sugabelly is almost always divisive.

What do we have here? Oh, it’s MORE generalization.

However, the idea that women have some kind of duty NOT to cook for their husbands is repugnant to me, and this is where I think @chxta may have been onto something.

Why does this feminism thing always boil down to food? Why are Nigerian men so hungry? Why is this counterpoint full of strawman arguments? Why do my bosses make me publish things from people like this?

Stress.

Sugabelly is right that women go through an awful lot. But violence? Viciousness? TONE. IT. DOWN.

SHUT. UP.

Comments (6)

  1. This is the rebuttal? Alright, in all places he put feminists/feminism perhaps he should just replace it with sugabelly?
    And what is this thing about “Nigerian men” being hungry? Or all arguments boiling down to food? You are not generalizing I hope?

  2. This piece is more:

    “Akintoye and his Conjecture on Feminism – In Defence of Sugabelly.”

    1. i thought his piece had a lot of holes in it. he complains about generalization and goes on to generalize for the entire thing

      1. No. Toye’s piece is a review of Sugabelly’s piece, dazzed as an oped. And is not anti-feminist. Cheta’s was. They are not the same.

        1. He makes sugabelly the spokesman for all that is feminism and claims all her failings are things feminists share.

          You can’t say all feminists generalize. That, in itself, is a generalization. Has he met all feminists?

          1. he rebutted Sugabelly’s piece. He didn’t make her spokesman. And he says that’s usually the voice most frontal feminist advocates use (you may count that as generalised tho).

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