Is There Room in Feminism for Assholes?

Or: how “be decent” gets reframed as “authoritarianism” the second women stop coddling you.

I spent a lot of years debating idiots on the internet. I learned pretty quickly that I was never going to change their minds, but I figured a public exchange on an open platform like Twitter (long before it was X, I’m old) or Tumblr might allow someone else to see reason and change their mind.

I was disgustingly optimistic back then.

Still, old habits Die Hard¹ and I sometimes get caught up in the maelstrom of exchanges with idiots on the internet. Only these days I just use them as fodder for writing articles, which is somewhat more gratifying. At least I know my subscribers appreciate it.

And with that opening, let’s dive in to today’s newsletter.

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Every so often, the internet hands you a perfect little case study. Not in the fun “wow, look at this cool historical artifact” way. More in the “someone just walked into my comments, lit a match, and then tried to argue the fire is actually a philosophical thought experiment” way.

This one started with a sweeping claim:

“Feminism can’t really accommodate male existence.”²

That sentence is doing a lot of work while saying almost nothing. “Male existence” can mean anything from “men have feelings” to “men should be allowed to behave however they want without social consequences.” You don’t know which one you’re dealing with until you ask the simplest, most offensive question possible.

So I did: cite your source. I told him that none of the men in my life felt that feminism wasn’t accommodating to them.

He did not cite a source.

Instead, he immediately escalated into a string of homophobic slurs and ableist insults aimed at the men I know. Not “I disagree with you.” Not “here’s my argument.” Just pure contempt. The kind of language that isn’t trying to persuade. It’s trying to punish. My male friends and family for not being “his” type of masculine and me for…something? Being a woman who dared to contradict him I guess.

So I responded plainly:

“That’s not feminism being unaccommodating to men. It’s just you and those like you, regardless of gender.”

Because that’s the thing. “Feminism doesn’t accommodate men” is often a cover story for “feminism doesn’t accommodate my entitlement.”

The pivot: from slur to “deep thinker”

After the outburst, he tried to scrub the interaction clean by pivoting into faux philosophy. Suddenly he wasn’t the guy who just threw hate speech at strangers. Suddenly he was a serious man with serious concerns about power.

He wrote that my friends must follow:

“a very narrow and particular set of behaviors … [that] consist of the only ones that are acceptable.”

Then he tried to turn basic social boundaries into a grand moral crisis:

“What kind of power is implied in controlling the definition of one’s humanity like that?”

This is an extremely common move. You behave badly, get called out, and then reframe the call-out as “you’re dehumanizing me” or “you’re policing humanity.” It’s rhetorical laundering. Take a tantrum, run it through the vocabulary of oppression, and hope nobody remembers what you said two comments ago.

So I clarified, bluntly:

“I never said you weren’t human. I said you were an asshole.”

Because those are not the same thing. Naming behavior is not denying someone’s humanity. If you can’t tell the difference, that’s a you problem.

“Do men HAVE to behave like your friends?”

Then he shifted again. Now the question wasn’t about “male existence.” Now it was about whether men are required to behave like a specific approved type of man. He asked:

“My question is do men HAVE to behave like your friends … or is there some amount of room in feminism for them to behave not like your friends … like people you think are assholes?”

This is where the mask slips again, because it reveals what he thinks feminism is. Not a political framework. Not a critique of gendered power. Not a movement rooted in history and law and material reality.

He’s treating feminism like a social club with a personality dress code. Like women are the bouncers. Like the real injustice is that certain men aren’t being welcomed warmly while they behave however they please.

So I asked the only productive question:

“Again, what do you think feminism is? Because until I know how you are defining it, there’s literally no point.”

And then I spelled out the baseline he was treating as tyranny:

“Be non-judgmental, not use slurs, and find healthy ways to express their emotions.”

If that feels like oppression, we have located the issue.

The word game: “women can’t be bitches”

Then came the truly revealing detour: he tried to argue that refusing gendered contempt is “inhumane.” He wrote:

“What’s wrong with making it so women can’t be bitches?”

And then claimed it “isn’t sexism,” because “being a bitch” is “a woman thing inherently due to the language,” and that preventing it would be “basically inhumane.”

This is one of those arguments that accidentally tells on itself.

Yes, “bitch” is gendered. That’s the point. It’s not a neutral description of behavior. It’s a word that turns womanhood into an insult. It’s what you call women when they stop performing femininity correctly for you: too direct, too loud, too boundary-having, too inconvenient.

The word exists because assertive, angry, or boundary-setting behavior is gendered as unacceptable in women. Calling a woman a “bitch” has historically been a tool to police behavior that would be neutral—or even admired—if a man did it.

Then he tried to make “asshole” a male-only category by claiming he’d never heard a woman called that, so he was going to call it “a man thing.”

At which point I said what the entire thread had been circling:

We started by discussing whether feminism can accommodate men. Now you want to know if it accommodates assholes.

Because that’s what the “room” question actually is. Not “can men exist.” Can men behave with contempt and still be treated as respectable.

“Authoritarian” is what men call boundaries they don’t like

He escalated again, now describing basic expectations as political tyranny. He wrote:

“I hate, hate, hate your pleasant polite authoritarian … state!”

And then argued that people have every right to “piss you off and bug you,” and that my “regulatory instinct is far overreaching.”

That’s the heart of it: he wants harassment to be reframed as a right. He wants “bugging” women to be treated as a noble expression of freedom. He wants women’s boundaries to be recast as authoritarian control.

But social consequences are not state power. Me saying “I don’t tolerate this in my space” is not a law. Me saying “you’re being an asshole” is not legislation. It’s a boundary.

The final strawman: “laws and morality”

His last attempt was to inflate this into an imaginary legal regime. He wrote:

“I don’t know why you believe your belief of who is and isn’t an asshole should be the basis for society or laws or morality.”

Again: nobody proposed laws. I proposed standards for behavior that elevate society.

This is the endgame of the tactic. When you can’t justify the behavior, change the arena. When you can’t win the argument, pretend the other person is trying to govern your soul. It’s much easier to fight an imaginary feminist dictatorship than to answer a real question like, “Why did you reach for slurs the second you were challenged?”

So I ended it clearly:

“Your problem isn’t that feminism doesn’t accommodate men. It’s that feminism doesn’t accommodate YOU.”

And then the key line:

“It’s egocentric to think that your behavior is the quintessential male behavior and that means feminism hates men.”

Because plenty of men manage to exist without needing gendered contempt as a comfort blanket. Plenty of men can disagree without escalating into punishment. Plenty of men can be imperfect and still be decent.

If you cannot imagine masculinity without cruelty, that is not an indictment of feminism. It is an indictment of whatever you think manhood is supposed to be.

Let me say that again for the assholes in the back:

So is there room?

There is room in feminism for men who are learning. Men who are awkward. Men who grew up in a mess and are trying to unlearn it. Men who screw up and apologize. Men who don’t always get it right but are acting in good faith.

There is not room for men who believe being cruel is their birthright and women refusing to tolerate it is tyranny.

Feminism is not a customer service desk for male comfort. It’s an analysis of power and a political project to dismantle patriarchy. Men can absolutely be part of that work and benefit from it, but they’re not the default audience it’s required to reassure, accommodate, or make feel centered.

And no, feminism doesn’t need to “accommodate assholes” of any gender. Being committed to equality doesn’t mean tolerating boundary-pushing, bad-faith arguing, or “my right to annoy you” as some sacred principle. Feminism can be anti-sexist and still be allowed to say: you don’t get access to women’s time, patience, or emotional labor on demand.

If you want a movement that prioritizes not being challenged by women, that already exists. It’s called patriarchy.

There is room for men. There is room for disagreement. There is room for complexity.

There is not room for misogyny dressed up as philosophy.

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And now I will go back to suffering from whatever GODAWFUL cold bug I picked up last week.

Paid subscribers get the happy knowledge that they’ve paid for my cough syrup and paracetamol for the week.

1. Yes, it is a Christmas film. Fight me.

2. I have screenshots of the entire argument, but given how many slurs he slings, I’d just as soon not show them.