Summary: Rather than argue moronic anti-feminism point by point Regina Barreca gets to the heart of the matter: anti-feminism is unsexy.

See… this is how you do it.

The twitosphere just coughed up a nice critique of one of “evolutionary psychologist” and London School of Economics professor Satoshi Kanazawa’s perennial screeds he decided to call “Why modern feminism is illogical, unnecessary, and evil“

The critique, from last August, is by Andrea the Nerd who points out that even before you get to his text the illustration he chooses proves he’s already wrong. Andrea says:

See what’s wrong with this image? They’ve replaced the word “people” with “men” in the Feminist Mantra. Already they’ve set up a subliminal Straw Man (or is it Straw Woman?) of Feminism to topple over.

She said it here.

Graphic illustrating Andrea’s point appears in Kanazawa’s Psychology Today post.

So what we see here is that, as usual, Kanazawa’s just plain fundamentally wrong. And not just wrong in the sense that I disagree with him, but wrong in the sense that he can’t get to the end of a short sentence about feminism without misunderstanding it.

One could spend a great deal of time responding to Kanazawa’s factual and procedural errors point by point. That would be playing to his strength: it’s infinitely easier to make shit up than it is to refute it since for the latter you, well, can’t make shit up.

Fortunately another Psychology Today blogger, Regina Barreca of the University of Connecticut, demonstrates what I think is a more effective way to respond in Why Anti-Feminism is Illogical, Unnecessary, Evil, and Incredibly Unsexy.

Barreca’s subtitle is even better: “Satoshi Kanazawa is just so cute when he rails against feminists!”

I think that’s about right. Kanazawa claims feminism is illogical because it’s a belief that men and women are identical. M’kay. He believes it’s unnecessary because Monica Lewinski was more “powerful” than Bill Clinton. M’kay. And he believes it’s evil because women’s “happiness” has decreased… three tenths of one percent in the last 35 years! Again the only “formal” answer this deserves is m’kay ookums, isn’t that just special?

What’s effective, and subversive, about Barreca’s title is that she finds such arguments deeply unsexy! Effective because saying a man is unsexy cuts deep. Subversive because it challenges the anti-feminist mantra that to be a feminist woman is to find all men unsexy.