“Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” should officially be the new feminist mantra.
One feminist at the overtly liberal outlet, Salon—illustrating this point perfectly—explains why a man can never tell a woman she’s pretty because this would make said man a misogynistic pig. Well, unless she wants you to, that is. How are you supposed to tell when it’s appropriate and when it’s not? No one knows.
Turning the crazy up to a Richter scale 10, Amelia Bonow has a complete meltdown after being called pretty by a man at a bar she was bartending at. (Pretend to believe that a woman is actually upset about being called pretty before you continue reading.) Bonow says that she felt “beleaguered” and “disgusted” by such a compliment, even though she made it clear that this man who dared to say she was pretty had “had a few” and was in no way “slimy or aggressive.”
“Recently, a young man walked into the bar where I was working, sat down, and told me that I was pretty. It just flew out of his mouth by accident; he’d obviously had a few. His vibe wasn’t slimy or aggressive. He just seemed excited to discover that a woman he found attractive would be opening his next beer,” wrote the feminist.
“[B]ut I wasn’t thankful. I just felt instantly beleaguered in a very familiar way,” Bonow continued. “I was disgusted.”
After Bonow shamed this poor guy into a bumbling apology by putting him in “time-out” via her body language and expressions, the man, now fully ensnared in this insane feminist-trap, offered up a $10 tip to show his regret for “offending” the bartender he had zero intent on offending.
Yes, this person had spent his time-out arriving at the conclusion that 10 whole dollars was enough to compensate me for feeling exposed, trapped, degraded and simultaneously invisible and on display at my own dumb job. I felt like a human sigh. “Just leave, please,” I said, and then he left.
She then agonized over her own faults—you know, the type of faults you list off at a job interview—such as her “generosity.” (She also works too hard and cares too much.) “As I step back and consider the way this story ended, my own generosity embarrasses me. I’m certainly not always that kind,” wrote Bonow. “I’m generally down to let a well-meaning dude off the hook if he acts right.”
Finally, the self-righteous feminist concedes that it is nearly impossible for a man to figure out when exactly it is appropriate to give a woman the most innocent of compliments when following the convoluted, self-contradictory rules of modern feminism.
“I totally understand that it’s difficult to know when it is an appropriate time to give women sexual attention. The modern woman is baffling,” writes Bonow, saying ultimately that it all comes down to “context” and “intuition.”
Good luck, men.